by Cap Daniels
My heart pounded in my chest, and my mind raced with a million thoughts and one terrible fear. If the girl on the beach was the sniper from Belmont Park, she certainly wasn’t there by coincidence. There has never been a coincidence that incredible. More likely, the girl on the beach bore a striking resemblance to the sniper I’d seen from a thousand yards away through the lenses of my binoculars, but it certainly couldn’t have been her. My mind was imploding as I tried to process the possibility of it actually being her. If she was the sniper, she’d been dispatched by Barkov to find, identify, and kill me—just like I had done to Suslik.
I was unable to look away. Every ounce of me was captivated by her. I wished I hadn’t had so many rum drinks. Maybe I could’ve thought more clearly and figured it out, or maybe if I was sober, I wouldn’t have imagined that some random blonde on the beach was the woman I’d been dreaming of for months. It had to be a case of hopeful mistaken identity.
As I turned back to the bar to order another drink, I saw my second ghost of the day. Sitting beside me, in a Pineapple Willy’s hat, tropical print shirt completely unbuttoned, cutoff cargo pants, and a pair of sandals was none other than Dutch. The implosion that my mind was experiencing immediately became an explosion, and I shook my head in disbelief.
Before I could react, Dutch pounded on the bar. “Hey, I think my buddy here needs another drink. Fix him up, why don’t you?” He turned to me as if he’d never seen me before. “Hey. My name’s Scott. How you doin’? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost. Are you all right, partner?”
I tried to gather my wits and pretend to understand what was going on around me, but I did a miserable job of both. I stammered, “Uh, I’m ah . . . what are you—”
“I’m here on vacation, down from Panama City Beach. This place sure beats the hell out of the redneck Riviera, if you know what I mean. How about you, fella? What brings you down here?”
I was still confused, and I questioned if the man sitting beside me really was Scott from Panama City. Was it just a day of unthinkable coincidences, or had I suddenly begun to believe that everyone around me looked like mysterious and familiar characters from my not-so-distant past?
When the blender behind the bar came to life, belting out its grinding, whirring song, Scott leaned in close to me and whispered, “Relax, kid. Have another drink, pretend you’ve never met me, and enjoy yourself. We’ve got a lot to talk about, but we’ll get to that soon enough.”
In time with his speech, the blender stopped whirring and another daiquiri landed on the bar in front of me. As soon as the drink came to rest on the bar, Scott said, “Hey, man. Set me up with one of those and put his on my tab, will ya?”
“Sure thing, buddy. Whatever you say. Wanna make it a double?” asked the bartender.
Without hesitation, my new friend said, “Why not? Keep ’em coming.” Scott spun around on his barstool, leaned back, and placed his elbows on the bar. “Sure is a pretty place, ain’t it?”
I swallowed a third of my drink and assumed the same pose he’d taken up. I reached into my pocket, produced a pair of Cuban Cohibas, and offered him one.
“Care for a cigar, Scott?” I asked.
“Don’t mind if I do.” He reached for the perfectly wrapped stogie, then pulled a golf tee from behind his ear and punched a hole in the end of the cigar while I pressed my Xikar punch into mine. He watched me work the punch into the leaf. “That sure is a fancy tool you got there for poking a hole in your cigar. My ten-cent golf tee seems to do the same job. How about a light?”
I produced my lighter, and he rolled the tip of his cigar into the flame with an expert hand. What an actor he was. I chuckled, reclaimed my lighter, and watched the flame kiss the wrapper of my Cohiba. As always, the cigar lit perfectly and a cloud of white smoke began to rise around our heads.
After two deep draws, Scott looked at his cigar. “Not bad, kid. Not bad at all.”
We sat drinking, smoking, and watching tourists for an hour without saying more than two dozen words to each other. Finally, when the Cohiba had become a nub, he ground it out against the leg of his stool and tossed the butt into the sand.
“Well,” he said, “I reckon I’d better get back to the bungalow. Momma will be wondering where I ran off to. You ought to stop by later for a drink. I’m in the green one with big red butterflies all over it. You can’t miss it. Come on by.”
It wasn’t a cordial invitation. It was instructions, and perhaps even orders. I would definitely be spending some time in the butterfly bungalow later, but before that, I would be scouring the beach for my Russian sniper look-alike. If I couldn’t have the real thing, I’d have to settle for an imposter.
* * *
My search for her was a complete failure, but I wasn’t giving up hope. When I knocked on the door of Dutch’s bungalow, it swung open about a foot. I could hear the shower running and Dutch badly singing an old Michael McCloud song. I made myself at home and poured a pair of drinks.
When he arrived in the front room of the bungalow, his hair was still wet, and his eyes were bloodshot—presumably from the soap, or perhaps not.
I handed him his drink. “So, how did you find me?”
He swallowed a long drink, then looked at the glass with curiosity. “Finding people is what I do, kid. You really messed up in Cuba. I guess you figured that out by now, huh?”
I hadn’t wanted to accept that fact, but I knew he was correct. Letting Barkov see me was nothing short of stupid, and I knew it. Now I was going to have to listen to Dutch beat me down for being such an idiot. I knew I deserved the verbal lashing, but it didn’t come. Instead, he laid out a list of the things I had done correctly.
With obvious pride, he said, “You did a hell of a job of thinking on your feet and adapting to a volatile environment. That thing you did with the anchor chain was a masterpiece. Even I wouldn’t have thought of that one. And your decision to pulverize Suslik instead of shooting him? That was genius. Pure genius. You’re definitely on the road to becoming a master in this little art of ours, but you did make one mistake.”
“I know,” I said, “I let Barkov see me and I didn’t kill him. I just winged him with a pretty terrible shot.”
“No!” he said. “That’s not it at all. Barkov was too drunk and too surprised by the muzzle flash to see you. It wasn’t him. It was the hookers who saw you. I don’t know where they were while you were shooting Barkov and trying to yank Suslik’s head off, but they sure got a look at you. Oh, and Barkov didn’t die, by the way, but I’m sure you already knew that.”
I hadn’t known, but I’d assumed he wouldn’t die from a small caliber shoulder wound.
“Okay, so the girls saw me, and Barkov is still alive. What does that mean to me?”
He headed for the kitchen. “You want another?” he asked.
“No, no. I’m good, thanks,” I said as he refilled his glass. I wondered how bad things were going to get. Then I said, “She’s here, Dutch.”
“What? Who’s here? What are you talking about?” He looked at me as if I knew more than he wanted me to know.
I lowered my head. “The sniper from Belmont. The one who blinded the horse. She’s here. I saw her on the beach today, just before you showed up at the bar.”
“No way, kid.” He swallowed a long drink. “You’re just paranoid, and maybe a little horny. There’s no way she’s here. She was just some low-level nobody. She’s no threat. You’re seeing things. Besides, you told me you didn’t get a good enough look to pick her out again. Have another drink. It ain’t as bad as you think.”
I started to protest, but he was probably right. I wanted to see her so badly that my eyes were fooled into believing the woman on the beach was the Russian sniper.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “You’ve been spotted, but the good news is that it was dark, you were moving quickly, and shooting. Considering all of those factors, it would be almost impossible for anyone, especially two drunk, frightened hookers, to put
together an accurate composite sketch. The bad news is that they do have a rough idea of what you look like. Did you stand up at any point during the attack?”
I tried to put the pieces together in my head and remember everything I’d done, but I couldn’t remember ever standing up. I had intentionally stayed low in the dinghy to not only keep my balance, but to provide less of a target if someone started shooting.
“No. I’m sure I never stood up.”
“That’s good” he said. “You’re a tall guy. If they never saw you standing up, they have no way to know how tall you are. In the dark, there’s nothing unique enough about you, other than your height, to distinguish you from a hundred other would-be Suslik killers. His list of enemies is long and powerful. Oh, and let me tell you that you’re a hero in their world. You pulled off an op on one of the top three assassins in the world. I gotta tell you, a lot of people were betting against you, but you showed ’em.”
I tried not to react to what he’d said, but remaining stoic was getting more and more challenging.
“So, here’s what we’re going to do. You surprised a lot of important people, so you’re my boy now. I’m now your handler.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that you work for me now. It means that it’s my job to get you the jobs that pay the best, and it’s my job to keep you alive. You’re gonna be a star, Chase.”
I considered what he’d said, and I wondered if he’d assigned himself as my handler or if it had come from whoever we worked for. I remembered what Dr. Richter had said about Dutch. “He does it for the money now, and that’s a shame.”
“So, about the money. How much did I make for killing Suslik?”
He looked at me, astonished, as if I’d said I was Hitler’s grandson. “What do you mean how much did you make? Are you serious? You don’t know?”
“No,” I said. “I have no idea. Two guys just showed up on my boat, showed me some pictures, and told me to go kill that Russian bastard. It never occurred to me to ask about the money.”
He stood again and quickly headed into the kitchen, but he returned shortly with a bottle of rum. He refilled my glass and topped his off again as well.
Matter-of-factly, he said, “You’re not going to believe this, kid, but there was a ten-million-dollar bounty on Suslik’s head. That makes you a rich man, my friend . . . a very rich man, indeed.”
I was in awe, and my glass fell from my fingertips and crashed onto the floor of the bungalow. Shards of glass, crushed ice, and crystal-clear rum exploded at my feet, but I never heard a sound. He was right—I didn’t believe him. There was no way I’d just earned ten million dollars for one night’s work—work that I actually enjoyed.
I mumbled, “So, are you telling me I have ten million dollars now?”
He ignored the puddle of rum and glass on his floor. “No. Don’t be silly. It cost over a million bucks to pull it off, with all of the logistics, intelligence work, and equipment. You’ll only get a little over eight. There’s always expenses.”
Only a little over eight million dollars?
Only? I was twenty-four years old, living on a gorgeous sailboat, drinking rum with a spy in the Virgin Islands, and I was the world’s newest multi-millionaire. It was all a little overwhelming.
Dutch wasted no time breaking my moment of silence. “You know, kid, most operators think they should share the wealth with the people who taught them the craft. You know what I’m saying?”
I decided to stick with my good old dependable response of a simple nod. It wasn’t the response he wanted, but I think it made my point. I stood and pointed at the puddle on the floor.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said. “The house girl will take care of it. Where are you going?”
“Back to my boat. I have a lot to think about.”
“Okay,” he said. “Find me tomorrow, or I’ll find you. We still have a lot to talk about.”
I pulled the door to his bungalow closed behind me. I couldn’t get the sum of eight million dollars out of my head.
Is it possible that he’s right about the money, or is he playing one of his games?
I found my way back to my boat for a nap. Apparently, my mind was overwhelmed with incomprehensible information, so it needed to rest. I’d never slept so soundly in all of my life. I slept so deeply, in fact, that I never heard or felt the intruder climb aboard my boat.
When I was awakened by a sharp, open-handed slap across my face, I jerked so abruptly I thought my spine would snap. As I formed a fist with my left hand and began to power forward with a crushing blow to the head of my assailant, I felt a slicing pain from a thin wire binding my wrist to my ankle. When I felt the wire tug at my ankle, to my astonishment, I discovered that my feet were bound together with a section of line and tied securely to a locker. The harder I tugged at my restraints, the tighter they became. I felt blood seeping from my wrists as I struggled against the wires. I flexed my abdomen in an effort to sit up and perhaps lash out with a head-butt, only to realize that the same wire that bound my wrists also encircled my neck like a garrote. I was bound not only by hand and foot, but also tethered by the neck. I did not like my situation.
My vision was blurry from the depth of sleep, but my instinct to identify the threat was sharp. I picked out the outline of my captor as her golden blonde hair fell across her thin shoulders. She was good. She was very good.
I don’t know if the emotion I was experiencing was fear, self-disgust, or excitement. I suspect it was some combination of all of those and many more. When I opened my mouth to speak, the blade of her knife landed sharply on the surface of my tongue, and I froze, motionless with the taste of the steel blade and my blood filling my mouth.
In exquisite, Russian-accented English, she spoke calmly. “Who sent you to kill Dmitri Barkov?”
I had imagined, and even fantasized, of how her voice would sound, but in my dreams, it was under far less painful circumstances. She spoke in perfectly formed words that seemed to bite her lips as they left her mouth. Her tone was smooth, calculated, and calm. She was neither nervous nor frightened. That made me believe she had no intention of letting me leave my boat alive. Realizing that a lie was a waste of time, I chose to go with the truth.
With my tongue bleeding and my body exploding with pain from my bindings, I said, “I don’t know.”
She struck me again, but this time, she hit me with the bottom of her clenched fist like a hammer, the blunt steel handle of the knife protruding from her fist. The blow from the hard, solid steel of the knife left me dazed.
With her calm, smooth tone completely gone, she yelled in a voice that would make a grizzly bear tremble. “Bullshit! You know! Tell me now who sent you!”
I tried not to gag on the blood pouring from my tongue, and I mumbled, “I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know who sent me. I’m just a—”
The cold steel of her knife pierced the back of my right wrist and lodged against the steel pins and screws that lay beneath my skin where my wrist bones used to be. She pressed the blade with all of her weight, but it was no use. It wasn’t going to penetrate what the surgeons had spent hours building inside my arm. I sensed her frustration and watched her withdraw the blade from my wrist and reposition it beneath my chin.
Her calm, measured tone returned, but when she spoke, it came out in far less polished English. “You will tell me who sent you or I will gut you like pig!”
Ah, there’s the Russian I expected.
I didn’t believe she’d actually “gut me like pig” until she knew the answer to her question, so I stuck with my story, which happened to be the truth. “I’m telling you I don’t know who sent me. Two men showed up with a picture and instructions. I was simply doing as I was—”
A shot rang out. It was a small caliber pistol fired from the galley of my boat. The mirror in the front of my cabin exploded, sending shards of glass hurling through the air and leaving my ears ringing as if I’d
been inside a church bell when the clapper collided with the brass. I watched my attacker disappear through the hatch above my bed, followed closely by Dutch’s bulky frame. Dutch had a pistol clasped firmly in his right hand. I felt his foot land on my thigh, and it sent waves of pain through my already tortured body. I watched his hips come to an abrupt halt as his bulk met the limits of my hatch. He was not only standing on my leg, but he was also solidly stuck in my hatch. Through the ringing in my head, I heard a faint splash as the Russian’s long, graceful body slipped into the water beside Aegis’s hull.
21
How Many?
With blood pouring from his nose, Dutch finally wiggled his way down from the hatch, and the disgust and confusion on his face was unlike I’d ever seen from him. He’d always been the epitome of confidence and in full command of his environment. Had the situation not been so serious, I would’ve found his expression humorous. He clearly saw nothing funny about the situation.
“Who the hell was that?”
My tongue was on fire. “That’s her. That’s the sniper I saw at Belmont. She wanted me to tell her who sent me to kill Barkov.”
His eyes shot wide. “What did you tell her?”
I motioned helplessly at my bindings that he was clearly ignoring. He quickly cut me free. With the tips of my fingers, I felt to determine how badly my tongue was cut. What I felt made me fear for the future of my tongue. My hand was almost instantly drenched in warm, thick blood.
I pointed to my tongue. “Do something about this, would you?”
