by Jack Hardin
A rat had squealed.
Considering there was no insurance in the drug trade, Fagan quickly found himself out of a great deal of money—millions, in fact. Soon after, the crew he most relied upon was gunned down in a Prague warehouse during a meeting with a potential buyer. His crew had walked right into a trap. And just like that, he was deep in the hole with the added benefit of losing trusted relationships he had once enjoyed. After that it was a string of bad luck after another; losing bids to newer players, existing alliances dissolved by leadership turnover in foreign countries, and due to his newfound debts, an inability to pay back his suppliers.
Soon enough, Fagan found himself struggling to keep his head above water and his long-term clients happy.
And then came the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back: Roman Baxter entrusted Fagan to move over one thousand small arms—assault rifles, pistols, and submachine guns—through one of Fagan’s Mediterranean shipping channels.
If there was one thing Fagan had left, it was his connections into black market routes that extended from Senegal to Buenos Aires, Amsterdam to Caracas, Beirut to Barcelona. Baxter had paid handsomely to gain access to the discrete service.
But at the time, Fagan, still in a great deal of personal debt, made a mistake that would have him working the next thirteen months to make up.
He found a much cheaper route.
Rather than using his trusted routes to get Baxter’s arms shipment safely to Tripoli, Fagan decided to use another route that came recommended by a trusted associate. That would allow him to pocket more of the profits and to help him regain his financial footing.
But then the inevitable moment of financial crisis came when the container ship, laden with Baxter’s weaponry, was besieged by Algerian pirates. The crew was slaughtered; the weapons vanished without a trace.
Roman Baxter had not been happy. In fact, in an explosion of rage—pure and unadulterated rage—Fagan had thought that the vein on the man’s forehead might actually burst.
Fagan was given twelve months to pay Baxter back for the one million dollars’ worth of weapons that went missing. Plus interest, of course.
Fagan knew he could run and disappear. He had hidden successfully from the American government for nearly twenty years. But that option was less than satisfactory when he factored in that he would essentially be done as a businessman. Even if he relocated to another part of the world and started over offering new services to new buyers, Baxter would hear of it, and he would move to swiftly destroy both Fagan and his enterprise.
So he decided to pay the man back.
And then it was as if the gods decided to smile on him again. While on a trip to Mexico City to meet with an old contact, he heard a side conversation from across the room about illegal gold mining in Costa Rica. Not five minutes later, his contact started to gripe about the immigrant problem, waxing passionately about tens of thousands fleeing Central America for Mexico and the U.S.
And just like that, Fagan’s iniquitous brain connected the dots and conceived a plan right on the spot. He had simply done what any good entrepreneur would have done; he connected the dots and started in on a business plan.
It all came together like an incoming tide slipping quietly up the beach.
Fagan took another long sip of his scotch. All in all, everything was all right now. No one ever rocketed to the top without a few dips and valleys, without treading the bottom for a while. That’s all that was happening right now; he was just treading the bottom, swimming along until he could locate his climbing gear again and get back on that old granite face on the way to the summit.
It was the events of the last twenty-four hours, however, that put a damper on his newfound confidence in life. He still had not heard back from Harry Holt. He and Holt went back a long way, and it was Holt whom Fagan had contracted to get rid of Mike Reddick and retrieve the stolen files. And since Fort Lauderdale happened to be so close to Key Largo, Fagan, in a rush of retribution, told Holt to send his boys down to Key Largo and take care of Ryan Savage.
Fagan hated Savage. He was the reason the operation in Costa Rica didn’t get to finish its last lap—Fagan had been socking away a little extra for himself. And Savage was the reason Fagan had spent the last three months doing Baxter’s dirty work, paying Baxter back for getting him out of jail and keeping Fagan from being extradited to the U.S.
But something had gone wrong with the job in South Florida. The Miami Herald had kept out the details of the person who had killed the two thugs at Savage’s marina. Most likely out of a desire for the shooter to keep his anonymity. But Fagan knew who had done it, and he had either underestimated Savage or the two thugs Holt sent to kill him were a couple of dimwits.
Probably both.
To make matters worse, Holt wouldn't answer his phone and wasn’t responding to texts. A few hours ago he had emailed Fagan a picture of what looked like several computer parts on fire at the top of a burn barrel. But there was something about the photo that didn’t seem right, and as soon as he got Holt to answer his phone, Fagan was going to tear him a new one.
Fagan stood up and returned to the hutch, trying to shake off the renewed sense of unease he felt. He picked up the decanter again. After pouring himself another serving, his eyes drifted to the tiny marble sink set into the hutch’s counter. His gaze returned to the glass container, then to the sink again.
He smiled to himself.
It didn’t take much. Just a simple extension of the arm and a downturn of his wrist. And just like that, within ten seconds twenty-thousand dollars of Roman Baxter’s money literally went down the drain.
That little action felt far better than Fagan had anticipated.
He looked back to the open shelf, to the other three decanters sitting in front of him, each filled with a spirit at least as luxurious as the Highland Park. Fagan thought about it long and hard, his tongue running along the outside of his lower teeth, his eyes squinting.
In the end, he thought it best not to push his luck. He shut the cabinet and returned to his seat.
His face felt like coarse sandpaper as he rubbed it with the flat of his hand, his jaw sporting a two-day growth of graying stubble. His brown hair hung down to his neck in greasy tendrils.
Fagan looked out the window as he tried to put the entire Baxter, Holt, and Savage ordeal behind him. In the distance, a luggage cart was making its way across the dark tarmac, heading for a passenger jet that had just pulled up to a gate.
The pilot’s voice came from a speaker mounted above his head. “We’re next on the runway, sir. We’ll have you airborne in a few minutes. We’ll be in the air just a little over five hours.”
Fagan’s thoughts turned to the future and the plans he had been slowly laying since he left Costa Rica. Baxter might have had Fagan bouncing all over Europe, Asia, and North Africa these last three months, tying up loose ends and reinforcing allegiances with good old fashioned violence and threat of force, but that didn’t mean that Fagan hadn’t been working on his own agenda.
He had been. Quite diligently, in fact.
Everything was finally coming together. Meetings had been conducted, new allegiances forged, and orders placed. In no time at all, he would be back on top.
But as it stood, one very important piece was missing, one very specific skill that he needed help with.
He needed someone highly adept in a field that he knew nothing about.
And he had just the person in mind.
Chapter Eleven
The Key Largo morning dawned with high thunderheads that rolled off the Atlantic, thundering across the islands before moving out across the Gulf and finally dispersing over the horizon by the time I had finished breakfast. The brisk deluge briefly dropped the temperature a good ten degrees, but as the morning grew on and the sun rose higher, the thermometer quickly reversed course, leaving only a thick, invisible cloud of humidity.
I spent the morning at Brad’s kitchen table with my laptop op
en, reviewing the notes from the Homeland team charged with tracking down Joel Fagan since his escape from Costa Rica. The CIA had also been looking for him, and Kathleen made certain those notes were opened to me as well. Hundreds of hours had been spent trying to locate him, but outside of the video Amy Jensen had discovered of Fagan leaving the skyscraper in Rotterdam, he hadn’t been seen since his disappearance.
When I was finished reviewing the information, I tossed my laptop in a backpack and drove over to the Cozy Crawfish Marina. The MacGyver was still mummified in crime scene tape. I tried not to look at her as I made my way to the opposite end of the marina and boarded my Boston Whaler.
The Whaler was a beauty. It included a helm station with an integrated hardtop and a 30-gallon livewell, a fold-down swim patio on the side of the hull, and fore and aft casting decks. It boasted twin 225 Verado engines that, when opened all the way up on calm water, got her up to a steady 50 knots. All said, it was twenty-seven feet of pure fisherman's dream.
I slipped the key into the slot and turned it. There isn’t much that beats the sound of a boat engine coming to life behind you. Regardless of the size of the boat or the engine, hearing the motors purr and the rotors churn the water is always a herald of good things to come. It means you’re only moments away from getting out on the water, and I can’t think of a much better place I’d rather be.
After casting off, I stood in front of the double-wide helm seat and backed out of the slip, moving away from the marina and through the no wake zone at idle speed. I brought the Whaler into the channel and kept a southerly bearing as I crossed into the Gulf of Mexico via Tavernier Creek and passed into Florida Bay.
Florida Bay is situated on a shallow shelf lagoon where freshwater from the Everglades mixes with the saltwater of the Gulf. The bay covers a full one-third of Everglades National Park and contains some of the most difficult water in the state to navigate. It’s a large, shallow estuary that has a limited exchange of water due to various shallow mud banks covered with seagrass. The banks separate the bay into basins that have their own unique characteristics.
Since shallow areas are not always marked, safe passage across requires the ability to read the water directly, with the aid of polarized glasses. I approached a narrow channel between two mangrove islands and trimmed up the engine so as not to damage any seagrass or foul my props on a bank. The recent rerouting of freshwater into the bay, coupled with periods of drought, has caused massive seagrass die-offs.
A little over an hour after passing through Tavernier Creek, I came out of the bay just south of Rabbit Key Basin. As I entered deeper water, the wind picked up until it blew steadily out of the west at ten to twelve knots, creating choppy two- and three-foot seas. I drew closer to the coast and hugged it for the remainder of the ride. Along the coast, the wind was no longer an issue, and the twin Verados plowed the boat forward at forty knots.
My route took me past Ten Thousand Islands, Cape Romano, Marco Island, and then the white sandy beaches of Naples. I continued north, finally bearing north-northwest around Sanibel, where I slowed my speed and entered a channel that took me under the Blind Pass Bridge and brought me into the wide open sound.
I cut around several mangrove islands and turned into a narrow channel that led to a marina at the southern tip of the island. Locating an empty, unreserved slip, I brought the engines down to idle speed, tossed out the fenders, and pulled in. I quickly tied off on the dock cleats and cut the engines. Across the dock was an indoor dry dock, and farther down a tiki hut bar sat on the other side of a wide boardwalk. The bar faced the marina, and the back half appeared to be an indoor seating area. It was encircled by a wooden railing with rolled patio curtains that could be lowered when it rained. A long pier, like a long pointy finger, began just south of the bar and jutted fifty or sixty yards into the southern waters of Pine Island Sound.
After more than three hours of running the boat up the coast, I was ready to sit still for a while. I was hungry, and thirsty to boot, ready to find a bar stool and relax for a few minutes. Stepping off the boat, I crossed the boardwalk to the outdoor bar, hooked my leg around a stool, and sat down, placing my backpack at my feet.
“Hi!”
The enlivened greeting originated from a woman two stools down. She was wide, with thick bones and a double chin that looked like it might be entertaining a third. Her only attire was a straw sun hat that seemed redundant underneath the outer shaded edge of the tiki hut and a black one-piece swimsuit that barely contained her heavy, flaccid breasts. Her thick brows hung low over deep-set eyes, and she had an unfortunate nose that hooked sharply toward her daiquiri.
I gave her a friendly nod. “Hello.”
“I’m Gloria.” A small man with oriental features sat beside her. He looked to be no taller than five feet and had a flat face, flat nose, and a neck that seemed too thick for his small frame. “And this is Fu. I can’t remember seeing you here before.”
“Ryan,” I said politely. “First time on the island. Just here for work.”
She made a quick study of me, as though trying to pinpoint what line of work I was in. “Are you a charter captain?”
“No, ma’am.”
“A contractor?”
“No, ma’am.”
My interrogator huffed. “Then… what about a boat salesman?”
“I’m up here on an investigation. I work for the government.”
“Oh… the government.” Her body tensed. She turned toward her husband and lowered her voice. “Did you hear that Fu? He’s with the government.” She said “government” the way someone might have informed Al Capone that the police were at the front door, timidly and with a little fear. Looking back my way, she tried to hide her nerves beneath a plastic smile. “Not like the IRS or anything… are you?”
I chuckled. “No, not taxes. Why, should I have someone look into your tax filings?”
Beside her, Fu mumbled something I couldn’t hear. He reached across the bar, grabbed a bottle of rum, and poured a generous serving into his empty glass. He threw it back and slid the back of his wrist across his lips. Then he mumbled something again. Gloria answered with a short, nervous laugh and then proceeded to give her daiquiri her full attention.
A door swung open in the wall behind the bar, and a stocky man emerged. He was of average height, with broad shoulders and thick forearms. His face was square, eyes set back under low brows, and his graying auburn hair was cut short. His face held the deep, weathered lines that years on the water carved into a man. He wore cargo shorts and a white, short-sleeved, button-down shirt with blue pelicans scattered across it. A yellow writing pad was in one hand, a pen in the other, and a bar rag was hanging over a shoulder. It looked like he was taking inventory.
Seeing me, he set the pen down. “Don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. “Warren Hall.” He reached across the bar and we shook. His handshake was firm and replicated the confidence I saw in his eyes.
“Ryan Savage.”
“You look fresh off the water. What can I get you?”
“A cheeseburger. Hold the fries,” I said.
“And to drink? I’ve got some excellent local rum.” He reached for the bottle Fu had freely poured from a minute earlier. The label said, “Wild Palm,” and near the bottom, it said something about being Lee County's only rum distillery.
“I’ll have to pass,” I said, “but thanks.” I was on duty and so not currently in a position to drink. “By the way...” I tossed a thumb over my shoulder. “Who do I pay for a slip rental? Say, four hours?”
Gloria spoke up. “He’s law enforcement, Warren.”
He looked past me at the small marina. “That's your Whaler?”
“Yes, sir. It’s my personal ride.”
“Pretty boat,” he said. “A Dauntless...270?
“You know your boats. You own the place?”
“Twenty years now.” He motioned to a wooden sign on the back wall. It bore the bar’s logo. “The Salty Mangrove came
first,” Warren said. “And the marina a few years after. And as for your question about payment, no charge for law enforcement. Just have it out before the sun goes down or she’s mine.” He threw me a wink and turned back toward the kitchen. “I’ll get your order in.” He disappeared through the door.
Some of the color had returned to Gloria’s face, and it looked like she was recovering from her imagined run-in with an IRS agent. “So what kind of government business brings you to Pine Island?” she asked.
“I’m meeting with someone. At least, I hope to.”
“Who? We know everyone around here.”
“Yes, yes.” Fu agreed, his face pinched into a tight but well-meaning smile.
“I’ve got an address,” I said. “I think I’ll manage. But thank you.”
“Come on,” she prodded. “Who is it? It’s not Sheriff Gaines, is it? Because he’s still in the hospital after getting some stints put in his heart.” She looked at me expectedly.
Finally conceding, I said, “Her name is Ellie. Ellie O’Conner. Do you know her?”
I had the cheeseburger down five minutes after it was placed in front of me. It was excellent—juicy and perfectly cooked. I’m sure I could have enjoyed it even more had Gloria given me a moment of peace. She talked the entire time, telling me all about Ellie and Pine Island and Fu’s hobby and recent foray into drones. At one point Gloria frowned and said, “You know, come to think of it, I’m not sure what Ellie does.” She looked to Fu. “Is she a detective?” He shook his head and said something that wasn’t in English. Then Gloria shook her head, too. “No, no, she’s not a fireman.” Gloria turned her attention back to me. “Anyway, she gets all the bad guys, that’s all I know.”
As if on cue, a slim, tanned lady came around the corner of the bar. She was pretty and had long, bright blond hair, high cheekbones, and a perky nose that turned up slightly at the end.
“Oh!” Gloria said. “Ellie, hi! This man is here to see you.”
I stood and extended my hand. “Agent O’Conner,” I said. “Ryan Savage.”
