Of course, the shipping yards grew to house all kinds of horror stories and tall tales about Dedrick and his big guard dog. There were whispers that Dedrick was some sort of crime lord and he had bred his son to be nothing more than his enforcer. Since Dedrick couldn't crush someone's skull himself, he had his son do it.
Delroy ignored most of those stories. He knew the truth; that he and his father were making Jamaica a safer place by getting rid of the bad people. If becoming feared was a consequence of that, then he didn't mind. It was all worth it to protect what was yours. Those people just didn't understand what was actually happening. They were much safer now than they had ever been before.
The world was looking so bright and hopeful—until the day Delroy learned that his father was hiding money from him. All it had taken was a few extra looks at some of the work they were doing to realize that he was being ripped off. His father was making very bold, underhanded financial decisions that weren't his to make.
Some of the cut that Delroy deserved—his money—was going somewhere else. It wasn't where it was supposed to be. It went against everything that he ever learned; against everything his father preached for years.
He had never felt so much anger before, not ever. The sense of betrayal oozed into his massive body and fueled such terrible thoughts. He wanted to crush his father's head in; not just for betraying him, but for betraying his wife as well. He was stealing from his own family, the people who he was supposed to be protecting.
Suddenly, all of the things that Delroy had ignored about his father seemed to become so much clearer, and made so much more sense. All of those people who had ever badmouthed his father seemed to so much more validated all of a sudden. His father was a small man, nothing more than a dock worker who used his son to do things that he didn't have the strength to do himself. Worst of all, he couldn't even practice what he preached. He was just as much of a thief as all of the other ones that they had punished.
When Delroy told his mother this information, he saw her cry for the first time in years. He had helped give her such a happy life with all of the money he had made. Even as her health failed, she was happy thanks to Delroy's efforts of protecting their family. When she heard what her husband had done, she put her hand to Delroy's puffy cheeks and told him to do whatever he felt was right. She knew exactly what he was going to do and her approval was what solidified Delroy's resolve. He had to protect what was his, from all enemies.
One night, Dedrick asked him to meet him at the docks to deal with another situation. Delroy was used to these summons. It always meant they were going to go punish someone who dared to take something from them. This night wouldn't be exactly like the others—but his father could rest assured that a thief was still going to be dealt with.
When Delroy found his father at the dock, he didn't bother listening to what he had to say. His perception of him as an infallible dad who knew best had dissipated. He didn't want to listen to a liar and a thief open his mouth. He wouldn't let his father take precious time away from him. He wouldn't let him take anything else.
Before Dedrick even had a chance to greet his son, Delroy smashed his knuckles against his father's head, and knocked him out. He looked down at him, and how frail he looked, and surprisingly felt no sympathy or pity. Instead, he was disgusted that he had once looked up to this man as his hero.
Delroy dragged his unconscious father out to the pier, to the same spot where he had drowned that man years prior. This time, Dedrick wasn't the victim of theft, he was the thief—and he needed to face the consequences for his actions. Delroy was going to take everything from him, just like his father had taught him to do to people who dared take from him. No one took from Delroy. No one. Not even his own blood.
The fact that it was his father just made the severity of the crime even worse. Unlike all of the other times Delroy had killed someone who stole from them, he was feeling so much hurt and rage. This one wasn't going to be like the others. He wanted his father to know exactly what he had done and to see the mistake he had made. He was going to be exactly the man that his father raised him to be, but unlike Dedrick, he was going to not compromise. He was going to ensure that Dedrick knew never to steal from him again.
He didn't know exactly what he was going to do at first but it had to be worse than just holding his head under the water. This wasn't just about retribution and justice. This was about a personal slight that needed to be answered for. He needed his father to understand his pain, to realize what he had done.
So Delroy concocted something more for his father. He didn't want to crush him beneath his weight like he had the others, he needed it to be even heavier than that. He needed him to be gone and crushed, and not have to worry about dumping his body in the water—so he tied an anchor to his back, to ensure that he would feel the weight of his betrayal.
When Dedrick woke up, he was suspended over the sea, attached to the anchor, and being held up by a pulley system, with his own son on the other end of the rope, ready to drop him. There was confusion at first, and Dedrick yelled down to Delroy.
“What do you think you are doing, boy!?”
“You know what I am doing,” Delroy said, trying to keep his emotions in check. Part of him wanted to cry. The other part of him thought that this was too merciful of a punishment and wanted to rip his father to pieces. “You stole from me.”
“What?!” Dedrick spat, looking around for help. “I didn't!”
He couldn't look his son in the eye when he said it and the words seemed so hollow. He knew he'd been caught and he probably knew what was going to happen next. He'd raised his son not tolerate thievery and to protect his possessions. He may have even raised him a little too well, given the situation he now found himself in.
“Lies,” Delroy boomed. “I will rip out your tongue if you keep speaking lies!”
It was extreme, but Delroy meant every word. His father not having a tongue would make this a lot easier. Then he wouldn't have to listen to any of his lies or attempts to play to Delroy's emotions.
Dedrick looked back at him with some shame. “I did.” There it was. The admission. “I have been for years. The amount of money we have been making ... you would not know what to do with it. People have been giving us tributes just to leave them alone! We are practically becoming gods to them, son! They know they will be punished for their crimes! Punished by us!”
“By me,” Delroy said coldly. He was the one who held them under the water. He was the one who pinned them down. He was the one who picked their corpses up and dropped them into the sea. “That was me. Not you. I made sure they never took from us, not you. Instead, you took from us. From me. From my mother. You took what was mine. Mine.”
“Ours! It was all ours, my son!”
“No,” Delroy said firmly. “It was mine.”
Looking back, it really was. They would never have gotten any of it, never punished anyone, if it weren't for his strength and the fear that that strength inspired in others. That was all him. He could do all of this on his own, without his father looming over his shoulder and stealing from him behind his back.
Dedrick glanced down at the water and then back to his son. “You do not have to do this. You don't.”
“Yes, father,” Delroy said and loosened his grip on the rope. “I really do. You stole from me and I need to make sure you never steal from me again. That is the only way. Just like you taught me.”
Delroy let go of the rope and the anchor dropped hard into the dark sea. The last glimpse he caught of his father, he saw the same fear on his face that he had seen on all of the other thieves. He knew this was what he deserved. He hoped, that while he was losing breath down there, that his father was proud of him for staying true to his convictions.
The disappointment was raw in his heart but Delroy didn't let it get to him too much. He needed to keep going, to protect his possessions and everything he was building from anyone who dared tried to take it away from him.
/> As the years went on, Delroy's legend grew, as did his power. He was able to consolidate so much of it, since he wouldn't allow anyone to steal any of it from him. And as his power grew, so did his reach, finding trustworthy allies to follow in his ideals. The ones who proved not to be loyal were always dealt with, which helped keep the others honest, knowing what would happen if they weren't.
And to some, like the twin brothers he took under his wing—Alton and Oniel—he was a better father to them than his father ever was. He may have ripped out Oniel's tongue during a particularly harsh disagreement, but he never took anything from him that he didn't deserve to lose.
His connections and relationships grew vast and complex. He made sure that he had a hand in everything that happened on or around his island. He wouldn't let anyone else control his fate and instead made sure that he knew exactly how things were going to play out.
Soon enough, the rumblings in the shipping yards, the whispers about the mountain of a man who controlled the coasts grew, and Delroy Campbell became a name that no one even thought to utter. All he was to most people was the Wharf Man, whose great, big shadow loomed over all of Jamaica and the waters around it.
And no one dared take from the Wharf Man—at least, no one before the day he met David Purdue. That fateful day would change everything for him.
11
CHAPTER ELEVEN – JUST BELOW THE SURFACE
The Wharf Man. That guy just couldn't take a hint. He never gave up no matter how many times Purdue got away from him. He'd done it twice now and the Wharf Man was still chasing after him, even under the ocean. The crime boss certainly had a long reach, and a stubborn refusal to take a loss. The Wharf Man must have been tracking him somehow, waiting for him to come closer to the surface.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wharf Man...” Purdue greeted him casually. “Fancy bumping into you down here. Thought it was just going to be me and the fish. You're not a fish, are you?”
“You thought you could get away from me, hmm? It is not that easy. It is not that easy at all!”
“I can see that,” Purdue replied, trying to stay calm despite being a sitting duck. “You're a persistent bastard, I'll give you that. Clingier than some of the women I've been with, if I'm being honest. How the hell did you find me?”
“Had a tracker put on you when we first grabbed you. We cannot have you running off like you did without knowing we can get you back. So here we are. You are coming back with us and you are going to give me what is mine. I just want my gold you took from me.”
“I don't think so,” Purdue said, but didn't know how he could exactly resist if they pursued any further. “You just can't wrap your head around that the gold was never yours, can you?”
“Where is it?” The Wharf Man growled.
“I spent it,” Purdue said, somewhat honestly. It was partially the truth. He did give a whole lot of it away to make this whole venture possible. “You see what I'm in? You don't think this was cheap, eh? It wasn't.”
Unlike when he had told the Wharf Man he spent it when he was being tortured, he had physical proof that he at least purchased something that cost money. He maybe could convince him that it took all of that gold to get the Challenger.
“You spent it?” The Wharf Man's anger was palpable even through audio alone. “You spent it on that little ship?”
“I did,” Purdue said. “I have to admit, part of me regrets it. But, there's no point staying angry anymore. It won't do you any good. It's gone. Let's just move on.”
“Move on? You did not just take my gold, Mr. Yesterday!” Purdue wanted to correct him again that it wasn't his gold but was overwhelmed by the Wharf Man's hollering. “You took my people! They belonged to me!”
“No one belongs to anyone. Get over it.”
There was silence and he could feel the heat emanating from the Wharf Man even with all of that water between them. He was stewing in his anger, trying to figure out just what he wanted to do next.
“That boat up there ... are my old workers in it? Aya and all those other blood sucking leeches. Maybe I should give them a torpedo too. Then they will see how wrong they were to turn their backs on me ... after everything I did for them. I can make you watch. How does that sound, Mr. Yesterday? Sound good, hmm?”
Purdue shook his head and spoke into his microphone. “Not exactly a fair fight.”
“Fair is a word I never liked. A bad word. A weak word used by weak men.”
The submarine started changing course toward the shadow of the ship high above. He was going to do it. He was going to try and sink their ship. Sam, Aya, and the others had no idea the Wharf Man was even coming. They wouldn't know until it was too late and a torpedo was tearing a hole in the hull.
Purdue grabbed the controls and set a course to pursue the enemy submarine. The submarine was already ahead of him and there was no way he could catch up in time. Hell, even if he did, there wasn't much he could even do. He had nothing to fight it with. The Deepsea Challenger wouldn't stand a chance against something like that. He'd be destroyed in an instant.
A thought drifted through his mind like a whisper and his gaze shifted to the strange looking pearl beside him. If that pearl really was the treasure that Admiral Ogden got rid of then it supposedly had the power to control the ocean itself. Purdue prayed that it was true because that would be very useful right about now.
Purdue picked up the pearl. Once it was in his grip, he immediately felt a change in the water around his submersible. Maybe it really did have the power...
A torpedo launched from the Wharf Man's submarine ahead, cutting through the sea straight at the silhouette of the boat above. It was too late. The crime boss was going to kill them all.
No. No, Purdue couldn't let that happen. He wouldn't lose any more of his friends or his allies. He had already had enough taken from him. No more.
That torpedo needed to miss and the moment he wanted that to happen—it did.
The currents around the projectile batted it downward, sending the torpedo rocketing off course. It descended and exploded somewhere far below them. It really worked. The water followed his will and obeyed his command. He used the ocean itself as a weapon ... a shield against that torpedo. He glanced down at Admiral Ogden's pearl. He could feel it. The sea was under his control now.
He looked back to the enemy submarine ahead. The tides of the battle had literally turned. He was far from being outgunned now. The Deepsea Challenger finally had a weapon and a way to defeat that far larger submarine.
He spoke into his headset, hoping the Wharf Man still had his channel open to hear him. “Looks to me like you lot had a weapons malfunction, eh?”
It took a minute for a response. They were probably all scrambling in there, trying to figure out what happened, probably even preparing another torpedo to fire. Purdue would stop that one, just as easily as he had the first if they dared to try.
“Your friends are very lucky,” the Wharf Man finally said in his ear. He sounded more agitated than usual, though he tried to hide it. It gave Purdue a great surge of satisfaction to hear the Wharf Man sound so uncertain. He continued though, trying to maintain his dominance. “I do hope you are watching this next one. It will not miss again.”
There wouldn't be a next one, Purdue decided. He was going to put a stop to the Wharf Man's attack immediately, and not even risk letting another torpedo launch. He clutched the pearl tighter and imagined the submarine being plucked from the sea and reeled up to the surface. The sea would expel that heavily armed vessel—with its just as heavily armed occupants—from its depths.
And just like that, the submarine ahead of him careened one way and then other awkwardly, like it had just been tackled by an invisible force. The water was wrestling with the metal vessel, and the water was winning. The submarine lurched and was slowly rotating its tail end, rising like it was being pulled up by an enormous hand of sea water. It might as well have been.
Purdue could hear the faint yells f
rom the people inside of the submarine on the speakers. He wanted to raise that submarine up to the surface and it slowly did exactly that. Against all of the war machine's attempts to control its own direction, it was being hauled up.
Purdue brought the Deepsea Challenger up first. He was happy to see the sun again and was really looking forward to breathing fresh air. The boat was beside him and most of the crew had gathered along the edge of the deck waving to him. They had no idea what he brought with him.
He squeezed the pearl tightly and then stared at the water a short distance away. Suddenly, there was an explosion as the Wharf Man's submarine broke through the surface, raining water down on everything around it.
The crew on the boat looked stunned by the sudden entrance. They had no idea that there as such a big threat beneath them or how close they had been to being killed. Purdue would make sure to remind them that he saved them ... with the very artifact that Sam had doubted the existence of. Right now, he needed to finish putting a stop to the Wharf Man.
Purdue brought his submersible beside the submarine and opened up the Challenger's door. He was met by a welcome breeze and took in a mouthful of air, relishing every second of it. He jumped onto the Wharf Man's submarine and climbed to the top of it.
“Purdue! What the hell do you think you're doing over there?!” Sam hollered over from the boat. “And just what the hell is that?!”
“The Wharf Man again,” Purdue called back. “Poor man just doesn't know how to let go of an old grudge.”
The submarine's hatch opened and the first person to come out was one of the Wharf Man's lackeys, armed with a machine gun. Before he even had a chance to raise his weapon, Purdue commanded the ocean to get him out of the way. A plume of water whipped out of the sea and slammed into the man, knocking the man off the vessel and skittering across the sea.
“Your thugs aren't going to be too successful, sorry to say!” Purdue called out, hoping his voice carried down the hatch and echoed through the submarine. He needed the Wharf Man to hear him. “Stop wasting my time and come on out yourself! You want to end this? Come on and let's end it then. Right here and right the hell now, aye?”
Order of the Black Sun Box Set 10 Page 12
