by Mike Brogan
Maccabee warned him that his not-giving-up tendency might catch up with him some day. Maybe it would today. Maybe he should call it off and head back.
Or maybe he owed it to Nell and Lindee and the President to search a bit more. If weather forced the pilot back to shore, he’d use his presidential mandate for a few more minutes to search. But no more than that. He would not risk the lives of Manning, the pilot, and the FBI rescue team beyond that.
The wind sideswiped the chopper hard to the left – then to the right.
“We’re ordered back in three minutes!” the pilot said.
Donovan looked at the pitch-black sky, then leaned toward the pilot. “Just give me five.”
The pilot stared ahead at the storm, then turned toward Donovan. “You’re nuts! But you got five, unless lightning or wind-shear kills us first!”
“Thanks.”
Vicious crosswinds whacked the chopper hard again. But it managed to level off seconds later.
Donovan focused his binoculars on a large fishing boat heading northeast about a half mile away. The name read - Kathryn Marie & Hunter Scalloping Enterprises. Fishermen hoisted aboard a large net bulging with scallops and placed them on deck.
Lightning flashed beyond the Kathryn Marie, and Donovan thought he glimpsed something tiny in the water.
“This wind is brutal! We gotta head back!” the pilot said.
“I saw something!”
“What?”
“Like a speck . . . no . . . two specks. Look - bobbing in the waves.”
“Small markers, buoys maybe?” Manning said.
“No.”
“Where?”
He pointed. “Eleven o’clock - beyond that Kathryn Marie boat!”
Everyone focused binoculars on the area.
“I don’t see anything,” Manning said, as lightning flashed nearby.
“I don’t either,” the pilot said. “We’re ordered back now!”
“No wait - waves just blocked our view.”
A big wave collapsed and again he glimpsed the two specks in the water. He squinted into his binoculars, and his heart started pounding.
“Sweet Jesus – those are heads!” Donovan pointed.
Manning squinted and leaned forward. “I see ‘em!”
“Me, too!” the pilot shouted.
Manning directed the Coast Guard cutter over to the location.
As the chopper raced closer, Donovan saw the heads were female, their upper bodies slumped over a nearly deflated raft, their legs dangling in the water.
The women were not moving.
The pilot said, “The water temperature is fifty-one degrees! Death occurs in one to two hours.”
Their motionless bodies already looked dead, like they might slide off the submerged raft any second.
The Kathryn Marie lifeboat would reach the women first.
Seconds later, Donovan watched two Kathryn Marie fishermen lift the limp bodies of Nell and Lindee aboard and race them back toward the Katherine Marie. The women still had not moved.
We’re too damn late . . .
Donovan watched their bodies for any signs of life. He saw none. A fisherman began CPR on Nell. Nothing. He kept pushing down on her chest. Nothing. Another fisherman began CPR compressions on Lindee. No response.
“They’re dead!” Manning said.
Donovan closed his eyes. How will I tell Jacob?
He opened them – still nothing.
Seconds later, he saw water explode from Nell’s mouth. Her hand jerked and she twisted her head back and forth and more water poured out.
Donovan couldn’t speak.
Slowly she reached over and touched Lindee’s arm. But Lindee did not react. Nell shook Lindee’s arm harder, still no reaction. Lindee looked gray.
Beside him, Manning shouted, “Come on, Lindee!”
A fisherman pumped CPR a bit faster. Water spilled from Lindee’s nose, but no response.
Then suddenly – a gusher of water erupted from her mouth and nose. She twisted left and right, coming out of it. More water erupted from her mouth and her arms jerked.
“BREATHE LINDEE BREATHE!” Drew Manning shouted.
Lindee’s eyes pealed open and she saw Nell. She reached over and touched her sister’s arm.
Manning high-fived Donovan and the pilot.
Donovan swallowed the lump in his throat.
“Tell Jacob,” Manning said.
Donovan called Jacob Northam and said, “Nell and Lindee were just rescued. They’re fine.”
“How are they?” Jacob asked.
”Wet,” Donovan said, deciding not to elaborate. “But fine. Gotta go . . . I’ll update you in minutes.”
Moments later, Donovan and Manning roped down to the deck of the Kathryn Marie & Hunter. Donovan smiled down at the two shivering women who managed teeth-chattering smiles.
The big Coast Guard 760 pulled alongside the Kathryn Marie. Two female sailors boarded, checked the women, and had them carried aboard the cutter to treat their hypothermia.
Donovan and Manning were pulled back up into the chopper.
“More good news!” the pilot said. “The storm eased up. We just got green-lighted to fly fifteen more minutes.”
“We need it!” Donovan said.
“Why?” the pilot said.
“To get Hasham’s DNA. Snuff out any rumors he escaped.”
The pilot nodded and raced at full speed back toward the bullet-riddled Leyla. They began searching for Hasham’s body in the surrounding water, moving in wider and wider circles around the yacht, seeing nothing human . . .
Donovan looked for a pool of blood. But the waves and swells climbed higher now, making it difficult to see between them.
Minutes later, he saw an odd distortion in the wave pattern about a thousand yards north of the Leyla. He zoomed in on the distortion and saw water splashing and swirling . . . caused by several jet-black fins twisting, jerking something under water.
As the chopper drew closer, he saw a group of sharks in a feeding frenzy, ripping into what looked like part of a human torso.
He saw Hasham’s head. It dangled loose on a long twelve-inch tendon to his neck . . . like a yo-yo. Oddly, his glasses were still on. But his intestines were strung out several feet like a scrunchy garden hose.
Manning directed another Coast Guard boat to collect Hasham’s body parts for DNA verification at the FBI’s Washington laboratories.
“May he rest in pieces,” Donovan said.
“Like his asshole mentor, Bin Laden.”
EPILOGUE
TWO MONTHS LATER
Donovan looked around at two hundred or more customers sitting in Auntie Billy’s ScallopoRama, a sprawling, family restaurant in New Bedford, Massachusetts. People “yum-yummed” over their delicious seafood dinners.
On the walls, he saw ancient marine diving suits, fishnets draped over lanterns and sexy mermaids, and a massive bronzed anchor from the distinguished battleship, the USS Miele.
He and Maccabee sat at an enormous oak table with Nell, Jacob, and their daughter, Mia, who played with Donovan’s daughter, Tish. Beside them sat Lindee and Drew Manning, shoulder to shoulder, making goo-goo eyes, very close friends now. Any closer, they’d have to get a room.
Nearby, sat the entire crew of the Kathryn Marie & Hunter fishing boat, the Coast Guard Cutter sailors, as well as the NSA’s Bobby Kamal and wife, and the Mobil gas station attendant, Mustafa, and his mother.
Donovan admired a magnificent Montague Dawson painting of a ship on treacherous waves like those Nell and Lindee were rescued from. Now the two women laughed like teenagers.
For Hasham Habib, the sharks had the last laugh.
The waiters walked in with heaping platters of scallop chowder, pan-seared scallops, bacon-wrapped scallops, Parmesan-crusted broiled buttery scallops, even scallop carbonara . . . all compliments of the Kathryn Marie and Hunter Scalloping ship.
Donovan tasted some scallop chowder and purred.
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His phone rang.
The boss: Director of National Intelligence, Michael Madigan. Even at a celebration dinner, one didn’t refuse a call from DNI Madigan. Donovan answered.
“Sounds like party time!” Madigan said.
“Yep. With delicious sea food.”
“The bad guys are shark food!”
“Works for me,” Donovan said.
“But one bad guy is missing his food.”
“Who’s that?”
“Fatty Warbucks, Bassam Maahdi.”
“The guy we missed two months ago in Rome?”
“Yeah. But we just nabbed him.”
“Where?”
“Rome. Hotel Largo. A hotel clerk tipped us off that Maahdi had checked back in a couple weeks ago. All thanks to Bobby Kamal’s tip.”
“Is Maahdi talking?”
“Faster than a strung out junkie.”
“You use enhanced interrogation?”
“Nope.”
“Sleep deprivation?”
“Nope.”
“What?”
“Lamb deprivation! We lowered his eleven-thousand-calorie-aday, lamb-stew diet to nine hundred fifty calories. No talk, no eat! Six days later, he sang like a Yellow Tailed Cockatoo. Just in time, too. His European cells were planning sequential suicide attacks in London, Paris, and Brussels. We grabbed his laptop, too. It’s a treasure trove of cell names, aliases, phone numbers, addresses even.”
“That’s big!”
“True, but so unfortunately, is the final VX-check death total.”
Donovan felt his stomach sink.
“Four-hundred eighty-seven people died from holding the VX IRS checks and letters. Sixty-one are still critical. Another three hundred or so will fully recover. Plus sixty-eight kids died from drinking ChocoYummy.”
Donovan felt sick. “Sorry we couldn’t stop this sooner, Director.”
“How could you, Donovan? Think of it this way - your team’s FBI and Homeland warnings helped prevent over four hundred fifty thousand people who received deadly IRS checks from opening them, holding them in their hands and probably dying. Those are SAVED lives! That’s a huge win!”
Donovan felt some relief, but still anguished that he couldn’t save more.
“We also froze Bassam Maahdi’s assets in US banks,” Madigan said. Over ninety-eight million US dollars. The President will sign an executive order redistributing the money as compensation for the families of those killed or injured by the IRS checks.”
“Great. So what’s next, Mr. Director?”
“A quiet White House ceremony. The President asked me to thank all of you for everything . . . and also for rescuing his favorite cousins, Nell and Lindee. He’d like to honor Nell, you, Drew Manning, and Bobby Kamal and Lindee and anyone else you think should come to the White House in a few weeks.”
“They’re here. I’ll tell them.”
“Good. We’ll talk later.”
They hung up.
Maccabee nudged his elbow. “Check out Drew Manning and Lindee.”
Donovan looked down the table and saw them still making goo-goo eyes at each other. Donovan remembered how Lindee was attacked and left for dead in her apartment a year ago, and how Drew Manning’s girlfriend died in a car accident three years ago and left him inconsolable for months.
Now, things were looking up for both of them.
“Methinks, the stars have aligned for those two,” he said.
Maccabee nodded. “For us too,” she said.
“How so . . .?”
She opened her purse and took out long blue stick and showed it to him.
“Is this . . . what I think . . . ?”
“Congratulations, Papa. Tish is going to be a big sister.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MIKE BROGAN is the Writers Digest award-winning author of BUSINESS TO KILL FOR, a suspense thriller that WD called, “the equal of any thriller read in recent years.” His DEAD AIR thriller also won national awards, as did MADISON’s AVENUE.
His years in Kentucky, gave him a unique perspective in writing KENTUCKY WOMAN…as did the amazing, but true story that inspired him to write this new mystery thriller.
And his years living in London and Brussels, narrowly escaping terrorist bombs on two occasions, gave him the experience and background to write G8 … and his latest thriller - BREATHE.
Brogan lives in Michigan where he’s completing his next novel. To learn more, visit MikeBroganBooks.com
