Redemption in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  “There’s some limestone on the other side of the island,” I said. “It’ll make quick work of those zip ties.”

  I started to turn around and head for the cockpit, but Baldy’s voice caused me to pause.

  “There’s something else you should know,” Baldy said as he tried to blink the saltwater from his eyes.

  “We’re listening,” I said.

  “I want water,” he said. “If you give me water, I’ll tell you.”

  “You’ll tell us and then we’ll give you water,” Kyle fired back.

  The big guy sighed, realizing that was the best offer he was gonna get.

  “Alright,” he said, raising his hands in the air. “There’s someone else coming after you guys. Someone with a little more of a reputation than the three of us.”

  “Who is he?” I said.

  “I don’t know his name,” he said. “But they call him the Russian Devil. He’s the most… well known of all of the operators working with Darkwater and also the one people know the least about.”

  The name rang a bell in the back of my mind. In my years working as a mercenary, I’d heard the name brought up a few times, and never in a good light.

  I walked over to the cooler, grabbed a bottle of water, and tossed it to Baldy.

  “Just watch your backs,” he added. “I’m sure he’ll run into you guys sooner rather than later.”

  I nodded and glanced at Kyle. I could tell that he recognized the name as well, but we didn’t say a word. Instead, I moved into the cockpit and started up the engines, and the small island quickly became nothing more than a dot on the horizon at our backs.

  ELEVEN

  We still had eighty miles of ocean to traverse until we’d hit the northern section of Cay Sal Bank, and another sixty miles beyond that to the location where Kyle said the plane wreck was located. I put the Baia on autopilot at her cruising speed with a south-southwest heading. Our first order of business was sustenance, as we’d only had occasional snacking to keep us going since breakfast that morning.

  I climbed down into the salon and grabbed the two brown paper bags that had spots of grease stains bleeding through. After reheating and plating the food, I brought it topside and we ate while lounging around the dinette. I’d kept Atticus locked in the main cabin since the confrontation, so he was excited to come topside and see what was going on. He sniffed the deck for a few minutes, then turned his attention to the food Kyle and I were chowing down on.

  The mahi Reubens were incredible. Fresh mahi-mahi marinated in secret island spices and grilled to perfection between fresh Bimini bread with swiss cheese, coleslaw, and thousand island dressing. The seafood sampler contained a variety of island favorites including lobster bites, fish fingers, and cracked pepper shrimp, which we dipped in a homemade spicy cocktail sauce.

  We enjoyed our meal under a brilliant blue sky, with the tropical sun warming us from over the starboard bow and fresh ocean air in our lungs. After a few minutes of eating, I heard a loud splash ahead of us. Straightening my body, I tilted my head and directed my gaze just forward of the port bow, where a small pod of dolphins was swimming. I stood up and slowly eased back on the throttles, bringing us down to just fifteen knots. They looked like bottlenose, and knowing that they had a top speed of twenty, I was hoping to get them to put on a show. The sentient beings didn’t disappoint. They noticed right away when the Baia slowed and swam just forward of the bow, splashing into the water ahead of us one after the other.

  Kyle and I both laughed and stood, watching the magnificent show as we finished off the rest of our food. I’d heard of dolphins jumping in front of large yachts and freighters but had rarely heard of them doing so in front of a boat as small as Dodging Bullets.

  “A good omen,” I said.

  After a few minutes, the pod shifted off towards the east, jumping and waving their flukes at us. As they disappeared from view, I brought us back up to forty knots, wanting to reach Cay Sal before nightfall.

  I grabbed us both a couple of coconut waters from my Yeti to wash it all down, then grabbed my laptop while Kyle went to work on Baldy’s cellphone. I did a quick generic Google search of our new adversary, the Russian Devil. After reading a few news articles, I was only able to solidify what I already knew: that he was a deadly assassin and that he was great at staying in the dark. There wasn’t even so much as a blurry picture of him.

  “Find anything?” I asked, glancing at Kyle, who was looking frustrated as he pressed buttons on the flip phone.

  He shook his head. “You?”

  “Nothing we don’t already know,” I said.

  As I finished off the rest of my food, I cleaned my fingers with a napkin, then slid my sat phone out of my front pocket. We needed intel, and I knew exactly the man to call. I brought up his contact info and pressed call, and Scott’s voice came over the small speaker after the third ring.

  “Hey, Logan,” he said. “Is this an emergency?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Just looking for some info.”

  I heard a group of people talking in the background and I could tell that they wanted his attention.

  “Alright. Look, I’ve got an important meeting, so I need to make this quick. What do you need?”

  “I need whatever intel you can scrounge up on the assassin known as the Russian Devil.”

  Scott paused a moment, then said, “Okay. I’ll get this to Willy and have him give you a call.”

  “Thanks, Scott.”

  Kyle’s eyes darted to mine when he heard me say the name. His face displayed a combination of confusion and amazement.

  “You bet. If I had more time, I’d ask what you’re up to.” He spoke to someone beside him, then added, “Just be careful. If you need any backup, I’m just a call away.”

  We ended the call and I slid my phone back into my pocket.

  “Don’t tell me that was who I think it was,” Kyle said flatly.

  He’d been eyeing me with a questioning gaze since I’d mentioned Scott’s name. Scott Cooper and I had known each other since I’d first arrived to my SEAL team. He’d been my division officer, and our hard-headed personalities had clashed at first, but we soon made up and became good friends. After the Navy, he’d gone into politics and was currently serving as a senator representing the state of Florida. You would think that after trading up his rifle for a briefcase, he would stay away from action and adventure, but Scott was a unique breed. He’d gone on and even instigated more than one adventure with me since I’d migrated to the Keys.

  “He’s one of my most trusted friends,” I said. “And I didn’t say anything about you, did I?”

  “He’s a politician,” Kyle said. “None of them are to be trusted. And in case you forgot, he didn’t exactly back me up when the shit hit the fan.”

  “He did everything he could,” I said, then shook my head as I stared off into the horizon. “He vouched for you. He put his career on the line for you even though there was a mountain of evidence against you.”

  “Falsified evidence,” he shot back.

  We went silent for a moment. I took in a deep breath and sighed.

  “Look, we need all the info we can get on this guy,” I said. “And if it comes down to it, Scott has a long list of valuable connections. He’s also saved my ass more than once in the past few years.” When he started to interject, I cut him off. “And remember, you agreed to my being in charge.”

  Kyle stood, then moved forward toward the steps down into the salon.

  “Alright,” he said before disappearing, “but if this comes back to haunt us, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “It won’t,” I assured him confidently before he dropped out of view and shut the hatch behind him.

  Roughly an hour after depositing our guests on their own private island, I noticed a shift in the weather.

  The wind, which was blowing in from the east-southeast, had picked up strength and was now gusting in excess of twenty miles per hour, creating
a carpet of whitecaps ahead of us. Far in the distance to the south, a mass of dark clouds had moved in and extinguished the blue sky.

  My phone vibrated to life in my pocket and I pulled it out. It was CIA Deputy Director Wilson, a man who’d helped Scott and me on more than one occasion over the past year. As usual, Wilson didn’t waste time on pleasantries. He cut right to the chase.

  “I don’t know what kind of situation you’re in,” he said in his rich Georgia accent. He paused momentarily as if giving me a chance to explain what was going on. When I didn’t, he continued, “But this Russian Devil has been on our radar for some time now.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “Well, as I’m sure you’ve learned on your own, he’s very good at staying under the radar.”

  The whitecaps were getting a little too big for my liking, so I put my phone on speaker, switched off the autopilot, and grabbed hold of the helm.

  “Hey, is everything alright?” Wilson asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. You were saying?”

  “So, what we do know is that his real name is Drago Kozlov. He’s been doing major jobs around the world for over twenty years, mainly working for criminals. We believe he’s in his mid-forties, is well over six feet tall, and has a frame like a fence post. Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures of the sumbitch.” He paused for a moment. “Logan? Did you get all that?”

  “I did,” I said. “Thanks. Is there anything else?”

  Even over the strong gusts of wind, I could hear him sigh on the other end.

  “This guy is trouble, Logan,” he said, his tone shifting. “Wherever he goes, people die, and usually more than necessary to complete his job. All evidence points to him being a genuine psychopath who also happens to be one of the most highly trained killers on earth.”

  Great, I thought, shaking my head.

  I’d known that he was bad news from the moment Baldy spewed out his name, but when the deputy director of the CIA sounds worried, you know it’s serious.

  I was about to thank him and end the call when he said, “One more thing—he’s had multiple run-ins with our agents over the years, and the consensus is that he likes his knives. Prefers to kill with a blade if possible.”

  I took a mental note, and thought about what he’d just said.

  Multiple run-ins? Maybe he wasn’t as dangerous as I was imagining him.

  “Is there any way I could talk to one of those agents?” I said. “Just to see if I can learn anything about his tactics?”

  Wilson paused a moment. “No. You can’t, because they’re all dead. He killed all of them.”

  I swallowed hard, then thanked him.

  “Like I told Scott earlier, we really want this guy, Logan,” he said. “If you feel like letting us in on whatever’s happening, I’d be happy to offer the support of the Agency.”

  I told him I’d be in touch with him soon, and we ended the call. I appreciated their offers, but how could I tell them what was going on without bringing up Kyle? They were friends and I trusted them, but telling them that I was working with a believed-dead fugitive was out of the question. They worked for the government, and even if they did understand, I couldn’t put them in that kind of position.

  “This guy Drago sounds like he’s really fun at parties,” Kyle said as I put my phone into a small locker beside the helm.

  I smiled and we both looked out over the horizon in front of us.

  “There it is,” I said, pointing at a strand of jagged rocks jutting out of the angry ocean.

  The clouds overhead appeared much larger and had shifted to a menacing, dark black color. We were heading right into the thick of it.

  “You were saying something about an omen,” Kyle said, his eyes wide as he gazed upon the coming storm.

  TWELVE

  We cruised through the strong winds and heavy rains without much trouble and reached the long strand of rocks known as the Elbow Cays just as the storm passed and the sun was sinking into the ocean. The sky had cleared as the monster ran away, heading northwest towards the mainland of Florida, and giving way to a brilliant streaking sunset.

  I gazed over the horizon at the clear waters of Cay Sal Bank, watching as the surface twinkled with the dying evening light. The westernmost of the Bahama banks, Cay Sal is located between Cuba, Andros Island, and Southern Florida. With a surface area of just over two thousand square miles, it is one of the largest atolls in the world. The Bank is littered with almost a hundred rocky islands ranging in size from three hundred acres to barely scratching the surface at low tide. Most of the islands are desolate, with only light patches of vegetation and the occasional flocks of birds.

  As we watched the sunset, North Elbow Cay came into view, marked by its long and narrow shape and a sixty-foot stone lighthouse jutting up near its center. Built by the Spanish in 1839, the light had gone out in the 1940s but had been reactivated during the seventies for a short time when the Bahama police set up the island as a lookout for drug smugglers. Today, the lighthouse, and what remains of the few scattered houses around it, are nothing more than remnants accessed only by brave tourists and refugees, the latter oftentimes carving their names into the old stone.

  I kept us cruising at just twenty knots as we moved towards Elbow Cay. I glanced back and forth between the radar and depth readings, the side-scan sonar, and the surface of the water, careful to avoid the numerous cuts and reefs. As we approached the northern tip of the cay, I spotted something on radar. It was big, and it was heading north into the strait. A few seconds later, two more echoes appeared behind it.

  “Check this out,” I said, glancing up from the screen and motioning Kyle over.

  He moved beside me and stared down into the screen.

  “Looks like a cluster of boats,” he said. “What do you think?”

  I shrugged, “Could be a number of things.”

  I brought up the VRM or variable range marker, which allowed us to see that the echoes were just under nine nautical miles away from us. Keeping our course, I brought us along the eastern side of Elbow Cay. The steep, rocky island formed a handful of natural coves, which would provide as good a place as any to drop anchor and hunker down for the night.

  “There’s more of them,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “Smugglers would never travel in such large numbers in daylight. My money’s on a bunch of fishing boats.”

  It made sense. Cay Sal, being somewhat isolated from general human populations, offered exceptional fishing. And while it was common to see commercial fishermen, it was also common to see poachers catching whatever they desired without regard for marine life or regulations. Regardless of who they were, it was unlikely that they’d give us trouble so long as we kept our distance. Still, there was something about the small flotilla that made me feel uneasy, and by the time we spotted a suitable cove, I’d counted nine vessels in all.

  The winds were still in the upper teens, making it a welcomed relief from the chop as we cruised slowly into the protection of the cove. The mooring site would suit our purpose well, having a relatively narrow opening of just a hundred feet or so, but widening out enough for us to anchor without worrying about the Baia drifting around with the wind and colliding against the jagged rocks surrounding us. The sky grew dark as the last glow of sunlight vanished behind the cay. I killed the engine, then dropped the anchor and paid out enough line to keep us secure. Since we were only in about ten feet of water, I dropped seventy feet of chain to do the trick. My side scan sonar indicated a few shallow rocks, but none were close enough for the Baia’s hull to strike, even if she somehow shifted 180 degrees in the night.

  We kept a sharp eye on the boats as they maintained their course, watching on the radar screen as they cruised within a few miles of our position, then continued northwest along the edge of the bank. It wasn’t long before the flotilla cruised out of range, disappearing from the screen entirely.

  I grilled up some lobster, a large grouper filet, and a pile o
f chopped-up garlic potatoes for dinner. We ate out around the dinette while going over maps and depth charts of the area. The sky calmed considerably as the night progressed, and a first quarter moon cast a silver light over the water and rocky island beside us. It was quiet, with only the sounds of lapping waves and the occasional caw of gulls on the shore.

  We decided to call it a night around 2300. I turned off the dim topside lights, then locked up the salon door and switched on the security system. I told Kyle I’d see him in the morning, then moved forward into the main cabin with Atticus at my heels. After brushing my teeth, I pulled off my tee shirt and plopped onto the queen-sized bed. Atticus took up his usual position at the foot of the bed as I plugged in my phone and set the alarm for 0500. We’d debated going looking for the plane in the dead of night but decided against it when we read that most illegal activity around Cay Sal Bank took place at night.

  I turned off the overhead light, then collapsed onto my pillow. Within minutes, the deep welcomed sleep after a long day on the water overtook me.

  Atticus crawled beside me and licked my face, waking me up half an hour before my alarm went off. I reached up and petted him behind the ears.

  “What is it, boy?” I said.

  He wagged his tail and tilted his head back and forth between me and the hatch a few times. I’d never owned a dog before Atticus and I’d only had him for a few weeks, but it was clear what he wanted.

  Patting his head, I said, “Okay.”

  Rolling out of bed, I slid my phone into my pocket and secured my Sig on the right side of my waistband. I lumbered into the head, splashed cold water on my face, then moved into the salon and started up the coffeemaker. There was no sound coming from the guest cabin, but I saw a faint glow under the door, letting me know that he was already awake.