To Honor We Call You: A Florida Action Adventure Novel (Scott Jarvis Private Investigator Book 9)

by Scott Cook

  On the other hand, if those ships were privateers and not national ships… hell, even if they were, they might boast three or even four hundred hands in combination. This number was superior to the British frigate’s own compliment of three hundred odd men. If the French captains could range up alongside and lock horns with the Indefatigable, then they might carry her by boarding.

  Kate could afford to lay off a bit and see how the tide ran. However, with the situation as it stood, she felt compelled to act. The schooner was incredibly fast and maneuverable, and Kate would order Pallier to range off the bows and quarters of the French ships and rake them at close range. At close pistol shot, something like fifty yards… or even within biscuit toss, even those six pounders, well served, would inflict a terrible toll when they sent their shot fore and aft along the enemy’s decks.

  For her own part, Kate would send her brig in to support the heavy frigate however she could. She would attempt raking and quartering fire and if push came to shove, she’d board them in the smoke. She’d use Horatio Nelson’s own patent bridge for boarding.

  In February of that same year, Captain Horatio Nelson, now knighted, had truly made his mark on history at Cape Saint Vincent. Along with Admiral John Jervis, now the Earl Saint Vincent, Nelson had taken part in this epic battle and had distinguished himself by ranging his ship, Captain, alongside the Spanish Saint Nicholas. Nelson led the boarding party that captured the two decker. Not satisfied with this, however, he went on to capture the San Jose, the Spanish three decker that had gotten entangled in the first Spanish vessel’s rigging. Shortly thereafter, Nelson’s bold maneuver had become known as Nelson’s patent bridge for boarding first rates.

  “On deck there!” The lookout screeched excitedly from the foremast. “The Indi is wearing round and engaging the Frogs!”

  They were barely two miles distant now. Kate watched as the big British frigate brought the wind astern, luffed up and resettled on the starboard tack, putting the wind abeam and, with her canvas shortened down to fighting sails, she drove directly toward the gap between the smaller French ships, her big bow chasers puffing out smoke and jets of flame as twin booms wafted across the narrowing gap.

  “Christ!” Palander exclaimed from beside Kate near the wheel. “She’s going for their throats! God help the poor Froggy bastards!”

  Another Nelsonism came to Kate’s mind. The venerable sailor was also quoted as stating that in a pitched battle, you should never mind maneuvers and just go straight at em’.

  It was a common Royal Navy concept. Most captains and admirals believed that a British man o’war could do little wrong by simply getting in close with her enemy and battering them yardarm to yardarm before sending the men over the rail to finish the job. An admirable goal, yet there was another school of thought as well.

  There was something to be said for pointing and serving a piece well. For knocking your enemy about from a distance first. Perhaps knocking away a spar or cutting up the rigging before coming in in order to slug it out. Kate was in favor of both schools and would do just that had she her druthers.

  The French, who commonly preferred making long bowls to shoot away spars and rigging, seemed to be taking Nelson’s advice as well. Their own sails were beginning to vanish in order to slow them down. This had but one purpose. Their goal was indeed to range up to the Indi, engage her on both sides and send a horde of men aboard to overwhelm the British crew before the heavier frigate could batter both of the smaller ones into matchwood.

  “Signal to Sword,” She said too little Willis who was manning the signal halyard at the taffrail. “Close within hail.”

  “Aye, aye, mum!” Willis said excitedly, flipping through the signal book and digging the appropriate flags from the locker.

  He was slow about it but there was little to be done. It wasn’t as if he’d been trained for the task. After a moment or two, the signal flew up to the main peek.

  The schooner, which had been trailing along off the brig’s larboard quarter at about a cable’s length, was already bearing down and came under the Whitby Castle’s lee only fifty feet away.

  “Mr. pallier!” Kate called out. “I want you to run in and harry the French, do you hear me, there? Lay on their bow, stern and quarters as best you can and pour on raking fire! Do what you can to stay out of their sights, now! Use that schooner’s turn of speed and maneuverability to bloody their noses!”

  “Aye, Captain, aye!” Pallier said, knuckling his forehead with one fist while the other held fast to the big tiller. His brilliantly white smile seemed to glow out from his dark face. “We been a’waitin’ to serve out dem Frenchie’s, mum! You can count on us, certain sure!”

  “Good man!” She called out. “Now get in there!”

  With admirable efficiency, Épée de Vengeance’s main and fore sheets were hauled in, her inner and outer jib sheets hauled aft and her main and fore tops’ls braced round. Like a thoroughbred kept in its stall just a bit too long, the Yankee built schooner seemed to leap forward, gathering way at an astonishing rate. Within moments, the schooner had gone from the brig’s eight knots to nearly thirteen.

  It would still be fifteen minutes at least until the brig could come within close range of the three-ship battle already beginning. A great deal could happen in fifteen minutes. And almost until the last moment, Kate would have to stand by and watch with nothing to be done. The brig had no bow chasers. Even if she could get one of the forward six pounders trained round and secured, her six pound ball would be of little use until she was within a cable at best and really half a cable before any appreciable effect could be hoped for.

  In the meantime, the Indi was nearly up with her opponents, and all three ships’ broadsides were close enough to perpendicular of her own course where the French corvette’s disengaged side could be brought to bear on her own vessel long before she could open fire.

  She had to hope that the French would be so occupied with the heavy British frigate and so harried by the schooner that they would pay little or no heed to the plump, slow, slab sided brig creeping up to them.

  Kate studied the situation for a long moment. In her mind’s eye, she saw a two-dimensional chart on which moved five sailing vessels. The French ships were headed about west northwest and the Indefatigable was headed between them. This meant that the broadsides of all three ships, assuming they didn’t alter course, were facing about two points west of south and two points east of north. The Whitby was headed roughly northwest at an angle designed to meet the other ships within the next few minutes. Without the corvette altered course or her larboard gun crews trained their pieces as far aft as they could, it would be nearly ten minutes before their shot could touch Kate’s vessel. Even should they be trained round, there would still be another seven or eight minutes remaining before any shot had even the slightest chance of coming aboard.

  “Mr. Palander,” She finally said. “We’ll get the stuns’ls off her and put her another point to starboard. Then when we’ve halved the distance, let’s have the royals, t’gallants and all but the outer jib struck and the fore course scandalized.”

  Palander gaped at her. This was a great deal for the crew to accomplish in the short time they had. With so few hands, it would be a chore for them to lay aloft, strike the main and tops’l studding sails, then clue up the royals and t’gallants and have them lowered and secured. On top of that, the fore course would need to be drawn up into Spanish reefs.

  This part at least wasn’t so difficult. It only meant drawing the clues and tacks up to the yards so that the sail was loosely bunted and took on the appearance of bat wings. This would keep them from drawing. It would keep the sail out of any danger of catching fire as well as allowing it to be reset more rapidly than if it were brailed.

  “What’re you gaping at, man!?” She snapped. “Look alive, there!”

  Palander recalled himself to his duty and bawled the orders forward to the boatswain. Men left their pieces and flew up the ratlines,
laying out on the yards and getting the sails handed with admirable speed. Once again, Kate was privately thankful that the crew was well-drilled at sail handling.

  “The Indi is—“ Someone’s superfluous exclamation was drowned out by a tremendous thundering crash as something like seventy guns boomed out in a rippling fire that rolled across the sea and who’s force was so great that the brig’s heads’ls luffed up momentarily. Kate could see that the schooner, now nearly on top of the three combatants actually heeled over to the concussion wave.

  As the two frigates and the corvette vanished in a dense cloud of powder smoke, Catherine Cook crossed her fingers and prayed that her efforts would not be in vain.

  25

  After Lisa and Jackie left, I made a few phone calls. I needed to put together a team to go with me to Havana. I was rather surprised by Grayson’s declaration that his people couldn’t participate. I was under the very strong impression that ICE, the International Counter-criminal Enforcement agency was blessed with broad intra as well as international powers. They could operate within and without our borders. They could do things that perhaps the military and even the CIA couldn’t.

  Either they weren’t nearly as effective as the Colonel claimed… or there was something in all of this I didn’t know… yet. If they couldn’t send in operatives for a simple operation like meeting Garcia and exchanging something for the release of a cargo ship, then what the Christ good were they?

  No… I had a feeling Grayson wasn’t telling me something. Even as I thought of it, I was beginning to believe that he’d lied to me. That it wasn’t that ICE couldn’t go with me to Cuba… it was that they wouldn’t go. That thought pissed me off and not just a little.

  It was this kind of garbage that had pushed me out of the Orlando Police Department. Politics, red tape and too many constraints on how I worked. Now, having very reluctantly joined this new law enforcement group, I seemed to be facing the same nonsense.

  Well, if Grayson was going to jerk me around, then I’d just have to put together my own team. I wasn’t without resources in that area. I could no doubt call on my friends Wayne Jackson and Sharon Nolen as well as Juan Fuente. All three of them were Orlando cops and had assisted me in a variety of ways. Wayne and Sharon had both helped me to rescue Jillian Moore and Marcus Peters from a sinking boat. Juan Fuente had come to Costa Rica to help me rescue Clay. Wayne had been with me when I finally confronted Shade not long before. All three of them, even Juan, whom I’d only known since February of that year, were intensely loyal and I was grateful for that.

  I had other resources as well. There was Clay himself, who while no longer an active duty marine was certainly capable and could handle a combat situation. The problem there was that he was married and had three children from ten to fourteen years old. His wife, Missy would probably kick my ass around the block for drill if I even asked for Clay’s help. It’d be one thing if Clay needed to help me personally… but not on something like this.

  Then there was Charles Conklin. A man who’d been the catalyst that had propelled me into the current life I led. Aside from extricating him from the clutches of the mafia, he and I had had dealings since. In fact, Charles was also one of the people who’d helped me in Costa Rica and Nicaragua not long before. He was, for lack of a better term, a mercenary soldier who could be called upon for dangerous operations. He apparently had many connections that could get him a variety of military gear.

  Then there was Gregorio Santino. The head of one of the country’s most powerful organized crime families in New York. Also a Marine, Gregorio had assisted me in Nicaragua and on the case surrounding the U-2626 and the U.S.S. Bull Shark. Gregorio was both well connected and a highly skilled soldier in his own right.

  Then there was the crew of the Robert Ballard. They’d also come into my life during the events I chronicled in Sins of the Fatherland as well as in A Fortune in Blood. Jack Brody, military wreck salvager, his partner Jibreel Al-Rajid and their captain, Joe McClay, were already entangled in international intrigues. McClay was apparently with MI6 and the advanced salvage ship was now something of a Q-ship. In addition to the wreck salvaging missions, the advanced and capable vessel, which included an advanced minisub, was used by a variety of intelligence agencies. If it weren’t for them, I might not have been so successful in my attempt to rescue Clay and his son.

  I had some other contacts as well. People with financial means on whom I could probably depend for monetary support. However, that didn’t seem necessary now. For the mission I had to go on tomorrow, I needed soldiers. People with grit. I hoped I wouldn’t need them at all… yet it paid to hedge one’s bets.

  Due to the short time frame, I eliminated Santino. He could probably get down to Miami in time, yet it seemed like far too short notice. I had no idea where Conklin was, but he’d given me an email to use in the event I needed him. That message would be filtered through any number of intermediate services and probably end up in a satellite phone someplace. I did send him a message of inquiry but kept it vague.

  I also sent an email to Jack Brody. I wasn’t sure where the Ballard was at that point. The ship had been in Florida waters during the summer and then over to Central America for a while. But unless they were within five hundred miles of the Keys, that option was probably out.

  So that left Wayne, Sharon and Juan. I certainly couldn’t get either Sharon or Juan without the other. They’d been dating since sometime in March and were now living together. Wayne was probably my best bet, as he had recently lost his longtime girlfriend and had no one to answer to. Yet it nagged at me to ask any of them. This wasn’t their fight. It wasn’t their job and if things got messy, I could get one or more of them hurt or killed. It was one thing to ask them to look somebody up in police records or to help me capture a suspect. It was another to ask them to take time off work to do something potentially very dangerous for me… for people they didn’t know or care about.

  And I knew that when I told Sharon about Nikki, she’d go ape shit.

  “Damn you, Grayson!” I cursed, pacing in the main saloon.

  That’s when I decided to take my mind off the problem and see how Lisa was doing. I called her and apparently interrupted an exciting car chase.

  It was rather odd to listen to it on my phone. Especially since they weren’t actually very far away. Tavares’ yacht was downtown and Lisa was apparently on Thirteenth Avenue headed for Seventh Street. I rushed out through the entry door and down the gangway to the dock.

  “Shit!” I heard Jackie yell. “They’ve stopped!”

  Then I heard the gun shots. Not through the phone, but off in the distance. They could’ve been firecrackers going off half a mile away, but I knew better. Then when I heard the curses and screams of the women over the phone connection and the sound of screeching tires, horns and a resounding boom from less than a dozen blocks away, I knew what had happened and my stomach seemed to flip-flop.

  When I heard Lisa laughing, the cold fear inside abated a little. The crash must not have been too severe.

  “Lisa!” I shouted. “Jackie!”

  Was the Bluetooth still operating in the Mercedes?

  “Uhm… I hear you, baby…” Came Lisa’s slightly quavering voice.

  “Jesus Christ… are you okay? Where are you guys?”

  “I’m okay, I think… Jackie…?”

  “Oh, just fuckin’ great… Just hanging out, Scott…”

  “What happened? Where are you, dammit!?”

  “Our quarry shot out my tires,” Lisa explained over the grunts and groans of Jackie. “I lost control and we hit the curb on the other side of the street… and rolled onto the driver’s side.”

  “Oh my God…” I breathed.

  “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay… the airbags deployed and we were wearing seat belts… fuck!”

  This last was accompanied by a thud and a few more gasps and grunts. I felt helpless and afraid and wasn’t liking it some, none atall, any.

&nb
sp; “What--?” I started to ask.

  “Einstein over here undid her belt and fell on me…” Lisa grumbled. “For Christ’s sake, Jackie… get off… open your door and climb out so I can… ow… Jesus…”

  Lisa laughed a little and Jackie said something I couldn’t here and laughed. My fear was turning to anger now.

  “This a fuckin’ joke to you ladies?” I growled.

  “Better that than the alternative,” Lisa replied. “Okay, I’m shutting the car off and getting out…”

  “Goddammit! Where are you?”

  “Thirteenth Ave. and Seventh… duh.”

  “Okay… I’m on the way,” I said just as I caught sight of Grayson and Amanda Wilson walking down the dock toward me. A tall and very fit man walked a few paces behind them. “And what do you mean, duh? Shit… Grayson is here…”

  “It’s okay, baby… We’re gonna have to talk to the cops anyway,” Lisa said and then sighed. “And they got away with Ray’s mom, too.”

  I sighed, “Shit… sorry, kid. Not your fault, though. You guys obviously did all you could. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  Amanda smiled at me as the trio approached, “Hey…! What’s the matter?”

  I blew out my breath and glared at Grayson, “Plenty. Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Commander Bryan Turner, Navy SEALs,” Grayson said by way of introduction. “Bryan, this is the young man I’ve been telling you about.”

  Turner was about six foot one with a lean and muscular build. His close-cropped blonde hair framed a handsomely chiseled face. A strong jaw, bright blue eyes and a broad clefted chin. He stuck out his hand and grinned.

  “Nice to meet you finally, Commander,” Turner said. “How have you been enjoying your training sessions at Patrick?”