by Scott Cook
I suddenly remembered that this very same captain and crew had come back from one of their cargo runs a few weeks ago and came ashore seemingly as rich as Bill Gates. I wondered if he was in on this, too. Certainly if this vessel had been used to mule dope from Central America and had… or its boat had… rendezvoused with one of Tavares’ shrimpers, it couldn’t have been done outside this man’s knowledge.
That thought made me uncomfortable. Might the crew of the ship be in on this? And if so, might that mean that Juan and I, not to mention the two women in the fishing boat below were in even more danger?
I decided to play it as if I didn’t’ know any of this, “It’s the least I could do, Captain.”
“Do you have the papers?” Garcia asked eagerly.
I speared him with an angry glare, “No, Garcia… I just drove all the way over here and entered a foreign port without checking in with the authorities just for kicks. For Christ’s sake… Nikki, are you coming back with us or can I assume you’re going to stay with your new boyfriend, here?”
The beautiful blonde who’d once been my lover smirked, “What do you think, Scott? You think I’m going back to the U.S. to face a trial?”
“It’d be the least you could do,” I said coldly.
Nikki harrumphed and folded her arms across her chest. Garcia treated me to a nasty grin.
“Perhaps we should get off the deck,” The captain remarked as I began to undo the top buttons of my shirt. “It may not be wise to do this exchange in view of any Cuban authorities that might be watching.”
Garcia nodded, “Good thinking. Where do we go?”
The captain waved at a door in the forward bulkhead of the superstructure, “We can do it in the wardroom.”
Juan and I exchanged glances. Neither one of us was too thrilled about going inside and out of sight. Nikki seemed to read my mind and grinned at me. She walked over and stepped in front of me.
“Go ahead and hold your gun on me,” she said calmly. “Or have your friend do it. A safety precaution.”
Garcia smiled, “Good thinking, Nicole. Okay, Jarvis?”
“Swell,” I said, pulling out my .45 and touching the barrel to her right breast, “None of your goons, though, Garcia. Just the five of us. Your boys can take a smoke break.”
“And leave me to face two armed men?” Garcia asked.
I quickly ran a hand over Nikki’s back and her front pockets. A small pistol rested in a hip holster in her right front one.
“She’s armed,” I said.
“I’ll only take Jaime,” Garcia said, pointing at the man beside him. “Luis, go check on the boat.”
“Scott…” Juan whispered urgently.
“No choice, Juan,” I said in a normal speaking tone. “We’re going to have to go inside the superstructure with Garcia in order to do this. Lead the way, gents.”
The captain took the lead, followed by Garcia and then by Juan, Nikki and me. His guard walked behind us and I didn’t have to turn around to know his gun was aimed at my back.
The captain opened the steel door that led into a lighted corridor that continued along the ship’s centerline. Just inside and to the right, he opened another door and led us into a twenty by thirty foot room with an eight person conference table at one end and at the other, a small wet bar and entertainment center. Two large round ports looked out over the harbor and a healthy looking fern sat along the bulkhead between them. Even a ship’s office had a fern! I was glad that I’d joined the professional ranks some time ago and wondered if Ferny the fern would enjoy a boat ride.
“All right,” I said, opened the buttons on my shirt and pulled out a large Ziploc bag. Inside was a manila folder in which were two sheets of parchment that had been in my family for over two hundred years. “You win, Garcia. Here’s what you asked for.”
I tossed the packet on the tabletop and waited. Garcia grinned, greedily opened the bag and removed the folder. He opened it and there indeed were the original map and deed to El Dorado, as it was known.
I’d made copies, of course, but neglected to mention that to Garcia. I didn’t know if it would matter, but as he examined the yellowed sheets, I once again caught site of the oval design at the bottom of the deed. It was perhaps an inch wide and twice that in height and had an intricate design that didn’t seem to mean anything other than as an artistic touch. For some reason, though, it stuck in my mind.
“I half believed you wouldn’t bring them,” Garcia stated.
“He keeps his word, pendejo,” Juan growled.
Garcia gave him only a passing glance, “So it seems.”
“Now you keep yours,” I said. “Contact the Cuban government and tell them to release the vessel and her crew. I’ll escort them out of the harbor in my boat.”
“Just like that?” he asked with a wry grin. “No tricks? No trying to stop me?”
“No,” I said. “What’s the point? I seriously doubt those papers are actually worth anything. Certainly not the lives of a dozen or two people. Ray Tavares is going to be pissed about his cargo being snagged by the Cubans… but better that than a bunch of funerals. Are you going to make the call or not?”
Garcia eyed me for a long moment and then pulled out a burner phone and flipped it open. He pressed a few buttons and waited. Someone answered and he informed them in Spanish that his business was complete and that there was no longer any need to detain the Theresa Maxwell. He nodded and closed the phone.
“Done,” he said amiably. “The patrol boat will escort you out of the harbor. Will you release Nicole now?”
I lowered my gun arm. Nikki subtlety pushed her backside against me before striding over to stand very close to Garcia. He grinned another nasty grin at me before turning his head and kissing her hard on the mouth. Nikki wrapped her right arm around him and made a pleased moaning noise. I felt a wave of nausea flutter through my belly.
“You trying to get yourself shot?” I grumped.
He laughed, “I just wanted you to know who is the true winner, Jarvis. You may have won a small victory by freeing your friend from my camp a few months ago… but in the end, the true victor is me, comprende? I have your great, great, great, grandmother’s papers and your woman.”
“Uh-huh,” I said flatly. “Why don’t you get lost while you can, cabron?”
It was at this point in the proceedings that the situation degraded from tense to outright chaos.
30
I told myself that the irritation I was feeling wasn’t born from jealousy. I hoped that were true, anyway. Nikki and I hadn’t been together in years, and after her deception about pretending to die not long after we’d gotten together, there could never be a possibility for us again. Even without Lisa in the picture, what attraction I might still hold for her, or for my ideal picture of her, had to take a remote backseat to trust.
I wasn’t terribly surprised, therefore, to see Garcia and Nikki kissing so openly. It was no doubt just one more way for Garcia, or perhaps both of them, to try to twist the knife. On the other hand, I was quite surprised when Nikki’s arm fell from around Garcia’s waist and in a practiced movement I could barely follow, her small pistol was in her hand and jammed up against his ribs.
“Everybody hold it!” she said harshly. “Manuel Garcia, you’re under arrest!”
I had to admit I didn’t see that coming…
Although there was little Garcia could do, his man Jaime was nearly as quick off the line as Nikki was. He raised his gun in both hands and leveled it at her Dennis Weaver style. However, the angle was bad and he couldn’t hit Nikki without possibly hitting Garcia.
That’s when the door to the wardroom flew open and the other man leaned in and started fanning his weapon. His angle was better and at least one of his shots struck the FBI agent and spun her away from Garcia. Juan took the opportunity to lunge forward, his weapon still tucked into his waistband and tackle Jaime. I yanked my gun out, turned, dropped to one knee and squeezed off three shots, hitting
Luis in the center of his chest, each impact erupting into miniature explosions of crimson. As I did, Garcia bolted for the door and swung out and around into the hallway before I could fire again.
“Captain!” I shouted to the man, who simply stood there gawking. “Are you anchored?”
“Yes, at a short stay now, just waiting to get underway.”
“Contact your bridge and tell them to snap to!” I barked, momentarily agonizing between seeing to Nikki who lay sprawled on the deck and going after Garcia.
There was little to be gained in that. He had the papers and that was the plan all along. However, apparently that wasn’t Nikki’s plan.
“Scott… get him, I’ll be fine…” The blonde croaked.
I hesitated for only a second, although it seemed like a lifetime. In one instant of time, Nikki had completely redeemed herself. She’d revealed that everything she’d done over the last few days had been a ruse. Her attempt to get Garcia in a compromising position and bring him to justice.
She wasn’t a traitor after all. She’d tried to do the right thing, and had taken a bullet for it.
I ran out the door just as Juan got Jaime’s arm pinned behind his back and had driven him to the deck.
“Take care of her, amigo!” I shouted.
Garcia was only six or seven seconds ahead of me. He had to either go out on deck and down a similar ladder to the one I’d used to climb up the side or perhaps go below to a lower deck and open a side cargo hatch to reach whatever boat was waiting for him. Either way, I sprinted down the twenty yards of corridor to the open door marked with a graphic symbol of a staircase.
I slid to a stop and dropped to the deck before thrusting my head into the small steep companionway. I could hear footsteps clanging rapidly on metal stairs below me. It had to be Garcia and I leapt to my feet and plunged downward, the cool metal handrail the only thing keeping me from tumbling pooper over nips as the young’ns are all sayin’ these days.
What the hell was I doing this for anyway? Did it really matter if Garcia got away with that map and deed? Was some two-hundred year old parchment worth all of this?
On the surface of it, I didn’t think so. Yet somebody did. Obviously Garcia did. Obviously his brother, the mysterious Antonio Bolivar did. Obviously the FBI felt it was important enough to concoct some harebrained scheme to make Nikki Sloane into a double agent… or was it a triple agent? Something told me it was more about the drugs for them, though. I doubted the FBI, for whom I held a very low opinion, knew the full extent of the Nazi / Garcia / Bolivar thing. Even I didn’t fully comprehend it all and I was up to my sea-blue peepers in it.
I supposed I was doing it for Nikki, at least in part. She’d compromised herself, put herself in grave danger and somebody had to see it through on her behalf… why not good ole Jarvis… again.
I was catching up to Garcia. He was only a deck below me. As I rounded the final landing, I heard a steel door bang closed. He’d exited the stairs again. Not at the bottom, though. As I reached for the door myself, I saw that the steps continued downward. Probably into the engine room and machinery spaces. The label on the door read living quarters / cargo level three.
What was beyond that door? I had to think that the cargo level would be four decks high. One below the waterline and three above. If we were on three, and if they started at one as being the highest, then this level might be the waterline or close to it. Which meant possibly a side loading hatch.
I flung the stairwell door open and saw a corridor similar to the one I’d entered above. I peeked around the jam in time to see the door at the end swinging closed so I bolted down the hallway.
What would greet me when I flung this next door open?
Not really having any choice in the matter if I was bound and determined to collar the Nicaraguan prick, I yanked the door open wide and threw myself in and downward to the left, curling into a ball and tumbling several times before coming to my knees with my 1911 trained before me.
This action served to lead me into two important discoveries. The first of which was that I’d been right. I was on a steel catwalk that connected with several others through a maze of upright and horizontal supports. These supports would normally serve to cradle four stories worth of cargo containers and, except for a few on the lowest level below me, were empty.
The second discovery was that I’d actually forgotten that I was injured from a grazing gunshot wound I’d received a few nights before. My rolling on a grated metal deck and then coming to my knees and fetching up against the horizontal and upright stanchion of the guard rail with my friggin’ back reminded me of this fact most undeniably. Ironically it might have been this fact alone that saved me from yet another bullet hole or two.
As the air was ripped from my lungs in a whoosh drawn out in a pain-induced gasp, I bent forward nearly to the deck just as three rounds whined off the metal bulkhead behind me. I quickly rolled onto my side and extended my gun hand, firing toward where I thought I’d seen muzzle flashes.
The interior of the cargo hold was little better than dim twilight. Garcia’s black clothing helped to conceal him in spite of the relative openness of the two-hundred foot long interior.
I rolled onto my belly and trained my weapon ahead, using my elbows to steady my hands. It took a moment for me to adjust to the low lighting, not to mention for the starbursts of pain flashes behind my eyes to clear. Everything was quiet, except for the low rumble of the ship’s machinery and the sound of engines beginning to whine with increased power. The anchor must have come home and the ship was beginning to gather way.
That’d make it harder for Garcia to disembark. Any small boat tied up alongside such as the sport fisherman I came in wouldn’t last long being dragged from vertical lines. As the ship accelerated, her bulk would create a Venturi suction effect that would grow stronger and stronger the faster she moved. Even on a modest sized ship like the Theresa Maxwell, her several thousand tons could drag a small boat down right under her keel.
“Give up, Garcia!” I called out. “It’s too late now!”
“The game has just started, mi amigo!” Garcia said from forward of me. “We have yet to even begin! Soon, my brother and I will control more power and wealth than you can imagine. And do you know what’s really funny, Jarvis?”
I’d spotted him. He was maybe a hundred feet away, crouching behind a heavy support pylon. Not that he needed much cover. Even for a very good shot, which I was, hitting a partial target with a pistol from more than thirty yards was surprisingly difficult.
“I can’t think of a single thing,” I replied. The longer he talked, the faster the ship went. The faster she went, the more likely it was that Garcia’s ride, if manned, would cut free and run.
“None of this would’ve been possible without you, pendejo!” Garcia laughed. “Without your map and without your locating that Nazi submarine none of this would have happened! This is truly divertido, no!?”
“Es divertido, no…” I grumbled angrily.
Somewhere above, a door banged open and footsteps clanked on metal gratings above. Someone had entered the hold and was moving forward toward a series of ladders amidships.
“Scott!” Sharon Nolen’s voice called out. “Are you okay?”
“Just dandy, Sharon!” I hollered back. “How have you been?”
“Garcia raised his arm and fired upward, his pistol barrel sending out a long jet of flame. Three rounds pinged off structures in the hold and ricocheted several times.
“Now that’s not very nice,” Sharon quipped.
“Be careful,” I said. “Garcia has a gun.”
“You don’t fuckin’ say?” She asked back. “I should probably get out of here then. It seems dangerous in here.”
I fired my own gun twice in the Nicaraguan’s direction, hoping to provide cover fire for Sharon as she made her way down the two levels that separated us. A man cursed and I saw a darkly clad figure sprint from behind the pylon and over to the starb
oard bulkhead. There was the sound of an electrical servo motor starting up and then a brilliant rectangle of light began to expand, filling the gloomy forty-thousand cubic square foot cargo hold with dazzling daylight.
“You step one foot into that doorway, Garcia, and I’ll send you through it with a couple of forty-five slugs in your ass!”
I’d been steadily crawling forward for some time, trying to keep obstacles between myself and Garcia. If I could work my way closer and get a clean shot, I could take him down before he could make good his escape.
“Too late, Jarvis!” Garcia shouted and I saw his form silhouetted in the doorway as he ran and leapt through it and out into empty air. “Adios, maricon!”
I squeezed the trigger until the hammer came down on an empty chamber, a mindless shout of rage tearing from my throat as I did so. I jumped up and covered the last seventy feet in seconds just as Sharon met me on the wide thwart ships catwalk that led to the open cargo door. We rushed to it and stared out.
We were maybe six feet above the water and right in front of us, almost close enough to touch, was a new looking thirty-foot center console fishing boat with twin three hundreds. I had just enough time to see Garcia turn and flip us off before the smaller boat’s motors roared and she jumped up onto plane.
I raised my gun, forgetting momentarily that my magazine was spent. Sharon did the same and squeezed her trigger, both of us cringing inwardly as we heard the distinct sound of dry firing.
“Goddammit!” She cursed. “Fuck me sideways!”
“You know you’re supposed to count rounds,” I chastised.
“And swap out your mag when it’s empty?” She poked.
I shrugged and winced, “Well… least nobody was hurt.”
Sharon cocked an eyebrow and gently touched my back, “Looks like somebody was. Your wound is bleeding through the bandages and your nice white shirt.”
Suddenly I remembered and my face drained of blood, “Oh, shit… Nikki was hit, Sharon, come on!”
We scrambled up the ladders to the main deck. I found the effort less than pleasant now that I’d torn off a scab or even ruined a few stitches in my back. The pain was nothing as compared to the worry I felt as we made it up on deck and raced aft to go back inside the superstructure.
