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

by Scott Cook

  Manuel Garcia stood beside his brother, Antonio Bolivar. The two men each held a beer and were considering the low concrete building a hundred yards away. The sun had set behind the mountains and although there was still a deep cobalt blue in the sky, the valley was almost entirely bathed in premature night.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that,” Garcia said, indicating the bunker with his beer.

  Bolivar laughed, “I understand, hermano. But it’s necessary. It has granted us all of this, and much more. It is our… security blanket.”

  Garcia chuckled, “I know. Even if we never use it, just the knowledge that we have these canisters… even if only known by a few—“

  “So far,” Bolivar pointed out.

  “—so far,” Garcia went on with a grin. “Grants us enormous power.”

  “Exactly,” Bolivar said, reaching out and clunking his can to his brothers’ own. “I hope we never have to employ them, in truth. But we will if necessary.”

  “And now we have all of this,” Garcia said, waving a hand at the miles of land that surrounded them. “Owned by us. A sovereign country, more or less. No one can touch us. No government agency can tell us what we can or cannot do.”

  Bolivar breathed in the scented night air, “As it was meant, Manny. All those centuries ago. Our ancestors wanted to make sure that someday, their empire would rise again. And it shall, eh?”

  The two men laughed and finished their beers, confident in their plans for the future. Secure in the knowledge that they were now free of any limitations. Totally and blissfully unaware that they were being hunted.

  It was much later on, an hour or so after midnight when one of the four security guards who walked the camp ambled up to a friend of his. The two men leaned against a tree on the southern perimeter. One of the men drew a large hand rolled cigarette from his pocket and lit it. The aroma of the rich sweet smoke filling their nostrils.

  “Ah…” The first man said, inhaling deeply of the quality marijuana. “It’s a good life eh, amigo?”

  The man who’d produced the joint laughed softly, “Si, Jose, si. A little boring, standing around in the darkness… but I’ve had worse work, no?”

  They laughed.

  “Maria says she’s waiting for you,” The first man chuckled lewdly. “Told me to tell you that she’s ready for you, huh?”

  Jose chuckled, “Guess you didn’t satisfy her enough, huh, Carlos? Well, never fret, mi amigo! When I’m done giving her what I’ve got, she’ll be plenty happy!”

  Jose grabbed his crotch and thrust his hips out and both men chortled gleefully, although quietly. Far overhead, a very faint buzzing sound approached, passed and then vanished to the southwest. The men had heard it, of course, but they weren’t worried. Aircraft flew over regularly on their way from various cities along the western half of South America. Most were jets, but a handful of turboprops were nothing unusual.

  It would be this lack of vigilance that would be their undoing. A little less complacency, a bit less marijuana and a lot less concern for their immediate carnal desires would have allowed the men to sound an alarm and perhaps prevent what happened next… or at least have made it slightly more challenging.

  The team was small, only three men and one woman. Three to act as hunters and one to carry special equipment.

  The icy air that filled the cargo area of the C-130 Hercules was bone-chilling even from inside the jump suit. With his shoot, oxygen bottle and equipment pouch, Lieutenant Commander Scott Jarvis found it awkward to make his way to the open cargo loading hatch. Two of his teammates stood in front of him and one behind. All of them in single file and all of them with one eye glued to the red jump light over the open door.

  “Three count before each man goes,” Commander Bryan Turner said from behind Jarvis, his voice low but audible in Jarvis’ left ear.

  In front of him, Chief Hightower shifted his weight and nudged the smallest member of the team. Gunnery Sergeant Jackie Stevvins elbowed him in the ribs, turned and grinned through her face mask.

  “You okay, Two?” Jackie asked Jarvis. Each team member was numbered one through four starting with Turner. “This is your first halo, ain’t it?”

  “I’m dandy, Gunny,” Jarvis replied. “I mean who wouldn’t be? Willingly jumping out of a perfectly good airplane at twenty-five thousand feet, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Over the drop zone now,” The pilot announced into their earwigs. “Standby.”

  The red light turned green and without even a moment’s hesitation, the small form of Jackie Stevvins walked forward onto the extended ramp and simply stepped off, plunging out of sight and into the darkness. Three seconds later, Chief Hightower followed. Jarvis steeled himself as he took several steps forward, counting in his head and then…

  He fell.

  Air roared past his face mask and hood, the high altitude jump suit doing even less to shield him from the freezing cold temperature now that he was actually plummeting through it. He thrust his arms out, steadying himself as he plunged. He could see both of his teammates below him, their dark silhouettes visible in the moonlight. Jackie was probably two hundred feet below and Hightower a hundred. Jarvis marveled at the sensation of falling, of plummeting earthward at an ever-increasing rate.

  And then, suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, terminal velocity was achieved and the sensation of falling ceased. If it weren’t’ for the air howling around him, Jarvis could almost believe he was weightless. Floating free in space. He concentrated on controlling his breathing and getting his heart rate down.

  He only had a few minutes of oxygen in the small bottle. It was all he’d need to reach the breathable air below fifteen thousand feet. Yet he had to focus, to concentrate on his procedures and the ring of the ripcord that was looped loosely around his right thumb.

  “Two, One, how you doin’ down there?” Turner asked, amusement evident in his tone.

  “Swell, One… this is great.”

  “Don’t worry, Two!” Jackie called out over the channel. “We’ll be hitting the ground in three minutes!”

  Hightower roared with laughter, “Nice choice of words, Four.”

  “You guys think this is pretty funny, huh?” Jarvis asked.

  They all agreed that it was and that he’d have to put up with their ribbing on account of it was his first high altitude, low open jump.

  Jackie touched down first, lighting a LED beacon on her backpack as she released her chute harness. Hightower aimed for it and came down within twenty feet of her, lighting his own beacon. Jarvis aimed for them, tucked his legs and rolled, pulling the release for his own harness and activating his own guide light.

  They watched as Turner came down a bit later than they expected. He’d jumped with a longer interval because of his heavy load and bigger chute.

  Hightower and Stevvins excavated a six foot pit in the glade they’d come down in. The pit was cleared of all debris and the team’s parachutes and harnesses were laid into the pit. Hightower checked the wind, saw that it was from the north and nodded. He produced a small bottle of some unidentified liquid, poured it onto the pile of gear and then used a Zippo to light a length of fuse line that led to the pile.

  “Let’s go, this’ll be warm,” he said as he moved away from the pit.

  As the team moved off into the forest to the north, a dark blue flame, almost black, glowed over the gear and within a minute, had entirely consumed the plastics and fibers and reduced it to very innocent-looking ashes.

  The hike to the camp was a short one, the team having touched down only a half mile south. Eliminating the inattentive guards was done quickly, quietly and efficiently. Made even easier by the fact that one of the four wasn’t at his post, but entangled in the arms of a woman in her tent.

  The team didn’t make a sound. No one heard their KA-bars opening the throats of the chloroformed security guards. No one heard one of the team members applying more of the strange liquid they’d used on the pa
rachutes to the contents of the bunker. No one heard the activation of a timer and small plastic explosive set.

  Most of all, they didn’t hear the sound of one of the men slipping into the temporary dwelling of the Bolivar brothers. Not a sound was made, which would perplex them soon enough.

  No sound was made when the four Americans moved along the river to the northwest. Even the low hiss of their raft being inflated wasn’t loud enough to reach the sleeping camp over the sounds of night birds and other nocturnal life.

  It was the sound of the plastic explosive going off thirty minutes later that actually woke the small camp. At first, there was confusion as people ran out into the night, casting about wildly with weapons in hand to see who was attacking them. Yet there was no one to be found. No one alive, that is.

  The three guards were found with their throats cut. Even odder still was the strange and terrifying dark blue glow around the bunker. Its tin roof had already melted and its concrete walls began to glow with the heat of a fire that was burning at nearly two thousand degrees, literally melting the concrete and glass of the canisters and sterilizing their contents once and for all.

  What alarmed the people most was when they found Garcia and Bolivar? The two men had been sought out when they hadn’t appeared to deal with the chaos. Each man was found in his room, in his bed apparently sleeping peacefully. Yet upon closer examination, the ornate handle of a primitive knife protruded from each man’s ribs right over their hearts.

  That such ceremonial killings were to be taken as a message was undeniable.

  Everyone knew that in Mesoamerica, before the arrival of Europeans, the ancient people’s hadn’t completely mastered metallurgy. Although they certainly worked with copper, bronze and gold, many of the ancient tribes still used wood and bone-handled tools even into the time of the Aztecs. Many of these tools and weapons utilized carefully knapped blades of razor-sharp flint. On some ceremonial blades, strong and sharp obsidian glass was also used.

  So the onyx handle and the translucent obsidian blade meant only one thing to the modern yet still superstitious people of the camp. It was time to leave the haunted land. Time to forget what they’d seen and to tell no one of what had happened. Especially when it was learned that the medallion which almost always hung around the neck of Antonio Bolivar was gone.

  The message was loud and clear.

  The untouched and virginal land belonged to the ancient Gods who had once ruled the world so fiercely. It was easy to believe, in that vast and remote wilderness of such beauty, that the Gods had been awakened and would not tolerate any disrespect from their children.

  Author’s Notes

  What begins must inevitably end, my friend… bummer, huh? Fear not, though, I am far from scraping the bottom of the idea barrel. Your good buddy Jarvis and his band of merry folk shall visit with you again shortly…

  Already working on Jarvis #10 – tentatively titled What Lies Beneath - even as I write this!

  Now then, as you’re no doubt aware, this story had a historical timeline as well. Like sins of the Fatherland, this novel featured a historical backstory that tied into Jarvis’ modern day adventure. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope that traveling back to the Age of Sail and fighting alongside the world’s first female ship’s captain was both fun and exciting.

  It may interest you to learn that as a result of this book, as well as sins, I have several ideas for some spin-off series. In truth, I actually have 3 potential spin-offs that I’m considering. First, I’d like to revisit the U.S.S. Bull Shark and her crew… before the events chronicled in Sins, naturally. Follow Captain Arthur Turner, Williams, Rogers, Sparky and the gang as they ply their skill against the Japanese and German Navies during WW2.

  Also, Katie Cook has a great many adventures waiting for her, too. How will she man her new frigate? How shall she pit her skill and her ship against the French? What exciting and history-making adventures will she encounter on the vast open ocean of the Napoleonic War era?

  Finally… or for now… there’s old jack Jarvis, Scott’s retired Navy grandfather. A man who served in Vietnam and the Cold War . He served aboard and commanded modern submarines and more. What deep and silent wars did he fight? He’s already hinted that he’s got some fascinating book-worthy sea stories to tell…

  “Heart of oak are our ships, heart of oak are our men;

  We always are ready, steady, boys, steady!

  We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again.”

  Once again thank you for your attention and I look forward to entertaining you again soon!

  Now it’s that time again… time when I prostrate myself before you and beg for your indulgence… would you be so kind as to rate this book on Amazon and or Audible, depending on how you’ve consumed it? Hey… both are good too! It’s helpful to your fellow readers and actually gives me insight into what I can do to make your reading experiences better.

  Also, please visit my author website and join the crew if you haven’t already. Here you’ll be able to find out news about upcoming books and other fun stuff and get the inside scoop as well:

  www.scottwcook.com

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  Fair winds and following seas!