Wood's Wall (15 page)

“You sure you’re ok? We could take you over to the hospital and have them look at you.”

“I’m good.” He looked at his wrist, where his watch would have been if he’d remembered to put it on, and sighed. “Didn’t he tell you what happened?” he asked, looking at Jeff.

“We know what happened in the house, how the drugs were found, and about Cesar taking the women.”

Trufante looked like he was going to fall over. “You mean you don’t know?” he gasped.

“Know what?”

“Well …” He tipped off his chair and fell before he could complete the thought. His head hit the floor and bounced several inches before coming to rest.

Heather was immediately on him. He was out cold. She quickly examined him, and found his vitals steady, no evidence of a head injury. In fact, he just looked like a sleeping baby. 

“Crap. Help me get him out of here. We should have taken him to the hospital as soon as I saw him.”

Heather’s mind was racing as they each grabbed an arm and walked him out of the bar.

24

Mel wrote late into the night. It was cathartic and calmed her swirling mind. After the fight with Mac, she’d gone on a rampage, first cleaning the house, then burning her body with pushups and squats. She even tried to go for a swim to blunt the pain. And she hated to swim.

In the end, she wrote it all out. Her entire case, in longhand. The entire incident where Jim Gillum and the Navy had spied on her and Mac. And everything that followed. It took pages — mostly lists of reasons that drones had to be regulated now, not after they were in use. This was really the crux of the issue for her. Drone use was inevitable. The hardware and software had already been developed to fight terrorists. It was just a matter of time until they were crisscrossing the skies. Her concern was that they not be used against innocent citizens. As she wrote, though, she began to feel her quest was hopeless. She looked down at the cup of coffee she had brewed, thinking. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t win, she was starting to doubt if she had the energy and resolve to fight the battle. 

She’d had an idea brewing for the last year. It kept floating around in her head, surfacing whenever conflict arose. The concept was still fuzzy, so she started to write again, hoping she could finally define her thoughts. It was becoming harder to fight her cases. Battle lines, once clearly drawn, were now fuzzy. Her opponents had hidden agendas. Even her supposed allies, like Patel, had their own agendas. She’d always believed the law was defined by the constitution and should be argued by the merits of a case - not it’s blowback or affect on another case that may be won or lost based on this one. That was politics - not law. 

Then there was the general state of sanity. If you looked through someone, really got down to their motivations, you found that they were only motivated by a few things. Money was the usual culprit. Follow the money, and it usually led to the truth, and underlying motivation. Next were the genuine do-gooders. They truly wanted change for the sake of improving people’s lot in life. The thing they didn’t understand was that their agenda could have unintended consequences. They couldn’t see past their initial goal, and really analyze a situation. Last were the people who had an agenda to make every one live by their point of view. This last group had surrounded her for the last ten years, and during that time she’d come to realize that they were actually insane. 

Maybe Mac was right. It was a losing battle. Her latest fight against the use of drones showed all this. Advocates for either side were hysterical in their support of their cause. These groups were as polarized as the zealots they sought to find with the drone programs. This made for an unwinable situation. The government was too big, had too many branches, most not knowing what the other was doing. They had the press in their pockets. Then there were private contractors working for the government with their own set of rules. How could one issue take all that on, make it into the national spotlight and last more than one twenty-four-hour news cycle? The founding fathers, who she had come to respect more and more as time passed, used to deliberate and write things down. This was a stage of analysis and discussion that allowed time to pass, not the hurry up and get in front of a microphone before people forget who you are which was the culture of politics today.

The edge had worn off by the time she finished writing. The room was in shadows, illuminated only by the gas lamp on the table. Her rage spent, she started to tear up as she looked around the room at her father’s life. Every book and picture reminded her of good times or bad. Their relationship had been special through her first year of college. He’d raised her alone, her mother passing when she was in middle school. She admitted to herself reluctantly that he’d done a good job. She glanced around the room., surprised to see her certificate from The University of Virginia. Going to the school had filled the void from being raised in the Keys, but had caused a rift between them. She had decided quickly, against her father’s wishes, to get a law degree. As the years passed, she’d visited him less and hung out with her law friends more, their world views diverging, as generations often do. She had blamed it on his stubbornness, but realized later that stubbornness was a family trait, and she was just as guilty. 

And now Mac. The lunkheaded conundrum, she called him. Part hardcore Marine and part monk. The guy who could talk to Trufante in his Cajun slang, and turn around and quote Seneca about stoic values. She knew she had a way of intimidating men, but he was unusual. He would hear her out, not take her crap, and even give a healthy dose back to her. 

She walked back to the shelves and looked at a picture of Mac and her dad some twenty years earlier, standing on a bridge piling next to a stack of books on Mayan civilization. She knew something was changing deep within her. She knew Mac had overreacted earlier, but she had pushed his buttons. He was the guy she truly wanted.

She fell on the couch and wept, the isolation here forcing her to reconcile with her demons. Her phone had died hours earlier, with no chargers out here. She turned the 12-volt VHF radio on for some background noise, and turned the squelch down, the static soothing her. Then she cried herself to sleep.

***

Mac eased the boat to the dock, skillfully judging the wind and tide, and using both to set the boat in place. He jumped out to tie the bow off before the wind got a hold of it. When he turned to go for the stern line, he found a gun to his head.

“Jose, tie off the boat. You,” a hand pushed Mac toward the house, “we need to have a talk.” Mac felt the pressure of the barrel on the back of his head as he was pushed towards the house. 

They entered the building and moved towards the office, Jose came in behind them. 

“Tie him up.” The man pointed to the office chair. He kept the gun on Mac as Jose secured him.

He struggled against the restraints, watching as the man started to search the safe. “You got what you came for last night.” Mac said.

“No, actually we didn’t.” The drug runner jabbed a finger in his face. “The material was switched. Didn’t think I’d figure it out so quickly, did you?” He took a revolver out and spun the empty chamber. “You know, it’s not really a gun if it’s not loaded.” He removed a box of bullets from the safe and loaded the gun, then spun the chamber again.

“Now, it’s a gun.” He held the gun to Mac’s head. “Why don’t you tell me where the right material is?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My friend asked me to keep the box for him. I just put it in the safe. That’s all.”

“Your friend, the Cajun with the large smile? He’s not smart enough to do that kind of switch.” He waved the gun toward the shop. “You, on the other hand, look like you could easily accomplish the task.”

Mac was at a loss now. He was about to deny it further when Cesar rammed the gun into his temple, knocking him unconscious.

***

Ibrahim walked in the door. He looked at Mac. Cesar had finished with the safe and was now rummaging through the office. 

“You’ll never find it in this mess. Let me question him.” Ibrahim said.

“Suit yourself.” He moved into the workshop and started digging through the piles of tools and gear.

Ibrahim went out to gather supplies. He found an empty bucket and filled it with water. Half was tossed on the unconscious man. He waited as he came to. 

“Tell me where the material is, infidel,” 

Mac’s voice was slow, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told the other guy that I was just holding the box for a friend. I don’t even know what’s in it.”

Then the drug runner was back. “Trufante ratted you out the moment the first drop of blood spurted from his finger. Maybe the same should happen to you.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

“You keep looking.” Ibrahim spotted a marine battery on the floor. “I will make him talk.”

The terrorist found two wires and attached them to the battery. “Put his feet in the bucket.”

Cesar complied. 

“Now, before I have to hurt you, you will tell me.”

Silence greeted the question. Sparks flew as Ibrahim grabbed the terminals and brushed them together. Satisfied he clipped a clip to each earlobe and watched Mac writhe in pain.

25

Sweat dripped from Mel’s brow as she yanked the cord again. Nothing. She massaged her arm, tired from the exertion and sore from the thousand pushups she thought she’d done the day before. She’d been at it for a half-hour now, getting more frustrated with each failed pull. She’d moved Wood’s old skiff out of the mangroves, where he had fashioned a camouflaged shelter for it. Now the 18-foot aluminum hull sat in the water, bow resting on the sand, but it wasn’t going to do her any good if she didn’t get it started.

Mel was no mechanic, but she’d grown up around outboards, and had no confidence that this one would start. The carburetor was sure to be gunked up from the old gas, and that was probably the least of it. Motors ran when you used them. Let them sit for a year and forget it.

She’d been up since dawn, after a restless night spent sleeping in short spells, broken by reenactments in her head of how the fight with Mac could have gone differently. She’d tried him on the VHF radio, knowing it was kind of a long shot, and her phone was dead. The solar system worked well, but she had no cable to charge it. Feeling isolated, she’d checked the horizon every few minutes, not really expecting to see the hull of Mac’s boat appear, but hoping it would anyway. It would be afternoon at least before he came looking for her; knowing how long it took her to cool down was one of his attributes, although not convenient now. 

Waiting wasn’t in her genes, but the skiff wasn’t going to start. She tied the boat off, too tired to pull it out of the water, and noticed an old canoe pushed back into the mangroves. The water in the bottom had turned brown from the decayed mangrove branches, mosquitoes hatching on its surface. Spider webs clung to every possible attachment. She was able to pull it out, but it held too much water for her to flip it. 

Faced with the choice of cleaning the canoe or cleaning the carburetor, she chose the latter. She didn’t dread the paddle as much as she feared hitting a wave and swamping the canoe. She released the cowling from the engine and removed the cover. The carburetor was not immediately visible so she followed the fuel line to reveal it’s location. It took several trips back to the shed to accumulate the tools she needed to remove the fuel lines and choke cable from the carburetor. Once everything was disconnected she went to work on the screws holding it in place. 

Now for the hard part. She took the carb to the shed and cleared room on the workbench, leaving the door open to allow more light to enter. The 12-volt fan did little to cool her off as she began to disassemble the unit. A dog eared manual, pages splayed from humidity sat open on the workbench. It’d been a long time since she’d watched her dad do this. She followed the cryptic instructions wishing she had her phone so she could take pictures as she went. Taking it apart would be easy - putting it back together was the real challenge.