Authors: Steven Becker
The warden knew Davies had the upper hand although he tried to humble him with his patented look over his reading glasses.
“Oh, stop it. You know as well as I do that this is a game and I just got dealt a winning hand.” More than anything else with prison life, it infuriated him that he was controlled by men so inferior to him.
The warden stared at him as if he knew what was coming.
“Of course, I’ll need to travel to Marathon to see the condition of the girl first-hand. This is a grave matter and must be handled in person.” This was so easy he had to steel his face again. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t do my due diligence.”
“Get a judge to sign it and I’ll work out the details,” the warden said and rose.
The meeting was over. Davies got up fighting the urge to extend his hand. Surly as he was, he still needed the warden to be his pawn, and although it tore him apart, he had to show the man respect. He turned and walked to the door, where a guard waited to take him to his tennis match.
***
The hull smashed through the wake again, causing Mac to duck behind the windscreen. Instinctively he turned his head to avoid the spray and watched the sea water covering Trufante who stirred and sat up. Mac turned back to the bow, found the rental boat, and made a correction to their course until the other boat appeared to remain in place on the horizon.
“You’re on a collision course,” Trufante said. He shook out his hair and ducked behind the windscreen beside Mac.
Mac’s fingers tightened on the wheel. “I’m tired of chasing him. I think it’s time we had a face-to-face.”
“Shit, that’s a roll of the dice, and being CIA and all, he’s bound to have them rigged.”
“Got no choice.” He focused on the chase. He estimated they would be on him in five minutes. He watched the gap close and steered straight for the other boat. Talking points swirled around his mind. Provided he could signal the man that he wanted to talk, and didn’t get them both shot, he needed a very persuasive argument to force the man to do what he needed. He had little to offer other than his silence, and Armando, but he knew the man could easily kill them, dump their bodies in the ocean, and find the Cuban on his own. That would be ironic, Mac thought, as he was already assumed drowned.
He adjusted course to put him slightly in front of the other boat and pushed down the throttles to the stops. He needed to use the speed of the boat to his advantage to throw the other man off guard. They closed to within a quarter mile and watched. The man realized what was happening and tried to turn behind them. Mac countered and the gap closed to two hundred yards. He could clearly see the man reach behind his back and pull a gun. They were a hundred yards away and he saw the man flinch with only a split second to make his decision. Mac steered wide and circled the boat. The other boat slowed and the man lowered the weapon.
Mac dropped the speed to an idle and coasted to a stop in front of the rental boat. He stayed behind the windscreen, hoping its tempered glass would stop the bullet he thought was coming, and raised his hands. “Just want to talk,” he yelled over the engines. “Gonna throw a line over.”
Trufante tossed a line to the man while Mac maneuvered the boat alongside. The man put the gun in his waistband, caught the line and tied it off to a cleat. Both men put their engines in neutral, neither willing to shut them off, and went to the adjacent gunwales.
“What can I do for you?” the man called across the gap.
Mac stuttered, his rehearsed lines fading from memory. “Let’s end this. I got no war with you.”
The man stared back, clearly more comfortable in this kind of situation. “Relax, Travis. You need me more than you know.”
NINE
Mac followed the rental boat into the channel between Man and Crawfish Keys, careful to follow in the wake of the other boat. He had already experienced what could happen without a GPS and depth finder in these waters.
Norm was arrogant enough that he didn’t even look back to see if they were still behind him. He knew Mac was like a gut-hooked fish and there was no place else to get help.
It went against Mac’s grain to deal with people he knew he couldn’t trust, but desperation makes people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.
The other boat reached the backside of a mangrove-covered island and dropped anchor. Mac idled over and they tied the boats together.
The men faced off, each standing by the gunwale of their boats, neither willing to share the same deck.
“Why the look, Travis,” Norm said. “It’s not like you have anywhere else to turn. I hear your girl’s in the hospital too.”
“Leave her out of this,” Mac growled.
“Suit yourself. Just saying it might be nice to be able to visit.”
“Let’s hear it. I need my name cleared and I’m thinking you’re the fastest way to get that done,” he said with his head down, fumbling with the lines that held the boats together and thinking about the tenuous tie between them. There had to be something the CIA man wanted from him if he was willing to help. “Bait’s in the water. You wouldn’t be sitting here if you didn’t need me for something - so spit it out.”
The other man thought for a minute. Mac held the lines tighter as if clinging to his best hope.
“Truth, Travis, I like your style. No screwing around.” He paused. “You get me the Cuban out of the Krome. You know that place up in Miami, used to be called a detention center, now they’ve got on the politically correct bandwagon and call it a processing center. Anyway, you do that for me and I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“You can do that with one phone call,” Mac said.
“If it was only so easy; you see, the Cubans want him back.”
Mac suspected there was something else. “That can’t be all of it. With your connections …”
“You want my help or not, Travis? I’m losing patience here.” His voice rose and he paused. “The man trusts you, and with all the publicity about the new diplomatic and trade relations with old Raul, it wouldn’t look good for the media to get a hold of a story like this.”
Mac tried to process this and run it through his BS detector. He’d been around the transients that passed through the Keys for years, each bringing their own story of how the world had wronged them. Trufante was a prime example, as his own past changed with each telling and the number of beers he had. This had a ring of truth to it, and that small nugget was enough to hold Mac’s interest. And the man was right. Armando might trust him.
“So I get him out of Krome and bring him to you - that’s it?”
“Almost; you need to repatriate him.”
“Repatriate what?” Mac heard Trufante mumble behind him.
He ignored him. Something was not right here. Once Mac had the man, he had all the cards. He could hide him somewhere, leaving the CIA man powerless. Then he realized they would be at a stalemate. There had to be some leverage here, he thought.
“Deal, but I’m going to need some official papers or ID to get him out of Krome.” The processing center resembled a jail and in fact, the old name might have been more accurate.
“I’ve got an associate that can help you out. You got a phone?” Norm asked.
“Lost it somewhere in the wreck,” Mac answered and flinched as the man reached into his bag, but what he thought was the black handle of a gun turned into a phone.
“It’s a burner. When we’re done, destroy it. My number is programmed into it. As soon as we get back to Key West, I’ll set things up on my end. Be expecting a call tonight,” he said and tossed Mac the phone.
“Tell me what time and I’ll have it on,” Mac said, looking the plain black, old-style flip phone over. He suspected at the least it had some kind of tracking device in it, maybe even a camera or listening device. He would remove the battery once the other boat was out of sight.
“Seven,” Norm responded.
Mac grunted and started to release the lines. “We done?” he asked as the boats moved apart.
“Just remember - you need me. Don’t screw this up.”
Mac turned to Trufante and handed him the phone. “Take out the battery.” He followed the wake of the rental boat until he saw the water change color to a dark blue, deep enough that he no longer needed his escort. He turned seaward and pushed down the throttle. The boat jumped forward, and crashed through the waves, Mac using the wheel to balance as well as steer. The pounding of the hull against the seas felt good - water under him, spray flying around them, and just the plain speed uncluttered his head. He looked over at Trufante, who held a stainless steel rail anchored to the dashboard; the grille that was his smile glittered in the sunlight.
Key West came into view and he changed course slightly, scanning the horizon for the first green channel marker. It appeared a minute later and he kept the boat straight, lining up the more distant markers behind it. He passed the last pile, turned to port and entered the channel. They entered the space between Tank Island, the old military depot, now the tourist haven called Sunset Key, and the mainland when he saw the boat coming straight towards them.
“That’s Commando’s old hull,” Mac yelled to Trufante. “Missing the top, but I can tell from here.”
“Shit!” Trufante said. “Boys must be on the prowl looking for us.”
Mac had taken the Scout and not one of the more distinctive go-fast boats to blend in better, but in the close quarters of the channel there was nowhere to turn. They couldn’t outrun the faster boat. He pulled back on the throttle to buy some more time and desperately searched for a way out. The boat was closing fast and he felt something wiz by his head. A second later he heard the retort and ducked. Instinctively he swerved the boat to disrupt their aim, but the next shot hit the windshield, shattering it into tiny pieces. The tempered glass held, but his view was obstructed and he was forced to lean out of its protection to see.
They were just about to pass the cruise ship pier when a line of jet skis appeared from its bow. Another bullet hit the console and he steered towards the convoy, hoping the men would not shoot at tourists. The lead jet ski slowed, waiting for the rest of the pack, before angling his craft and gunning it towards Sunset Key. Mac wondered about the safety of the maneuver, but jet skiers had a reputation for ignoring the rules of the road and doing whatever they wanted. The others followed and Mac used the diversion to cut behind them.
The line of jet skis extended across the channel, disrupting traffic and causing both boats to slow. Mac needed to keep the tourist train between them as a buffer until he could figure something out. Just as he was about to accelerate behind them, two stragglers appeared and he got an idea. He cut the wheel hard to starboard and angled the boat to force the two skiers back in the small harbor behind the cruise ship. The jet skis had no choice but to stop and seek shelter behind the liner. Mac spun the wheel and steered between the bow and seawall, almost crashing as the hull slid into the turn. He looked behind to see if he was being followed, but the only thing visible was the mass of the ship, tourists leaning over the rails.
Mac looked around the small harbor. The five docks jutting out from the seawall were all crowded with launches shuttling passengers to experience Key West for the day. He turned to look at the ship and saw a string of jet skis tied off to the landing where cruisers disembarked for shore excursions. A portable dock jutted from the boat, impatient tourists massed at the gate waiting for a launch to return to take them to the shopping and decadence of Duval Street.
They had to act fast. Mac cut the wheel, and pulled back on the throttles, allowing the boat to coast to the side of the landing. Men and women, uniformed to look like naval officers, called out to him to keep clear, but he knew the bars on their epaulets held no authority. Several held radios to their heads, probably calling security.
“We have to ditch the boat and lose them on the ship,” Mac yelled to Trufante. The boat slammed into the metal landing. Mac jumped onto the retractable dock, pushed past two men holding clipboards and forced his way into the mass of tourists. He heard screams as the visitors moved out of the way. They had seconds to find a hiding spot on the cruise ship before security found them.
Trufante was behind him as they exited the mass of people waiting their turn to go ashore and ran past the shore excursion desk, where he overheard a rotund tourist repeat his room number to the befuddled agent. He looked left, but saw only shops surrounding the huge atrium in the lobby. The area was too exposed. To the right was a hallway with cabin doors on each side. A chime startled him as he passed the elevator on the starboard side and they ran back to the restrooms.
Mac entered the marble-lined bathroom, cracked the door and watched the hallway. A toilet flushed and he jumped, but it was only Trufante playing with the expensive fixtures. Three men ran from the elevator, past the bathrooms, in the direction of the excursion desk.
“You done playing?” He looked back at the Cajun fixing his hair in the mirror. Without waiting for an answer, he left the cover of the bathroom and ran for the open elevator door. It started to close before Trufante reached him and the Cajun stalled in the opening, but the doors reopened. Mac grabbed him and pulled him into the mirror-lined cab. He pushed the button and the two men were left alone in the compartment.
“Twelve freakin’ stories,” Trufante said. He started to push the button for deck twelve. “Crap, Mac, you could live on this sucker.” He grabbed the rail as the elevator took off. “Wonder what they have for bars? I could use a cocktail right about now.”
Mac felt a queasy feeling in his stomach and tried to remember the last time he was in an elevator. He could take ten-foot seas, but this floating den of iniquity was too much for him. Trufante was looking at a pamphlet he had picked up from the floor.
“What in the world? They got a rock wall on a ship.” He stared at the brochure. “Damn, Mac, pools and shit too.”