by Cap Daniels
Porter didn’t let him finish. He jammed the toe of his boot in Micky’s mouth, breaking at least two teeth. “I think you were about to say something nasty, and there’s a lady present. I can’t let you talk nasty in front of a lady. That’d be plain rude, and we don’t take kindly to rudeness around here.”
Micky spat out several pieces of bloody, broken teeth.
Porter turned to his men. “Let’s give this gentleman a lesson in manners and a good core workout, shall we?”
The two men grabbed Micky by the shoulders and dragged him forward until the upper half of his body was hanging over the edge of the pool deck. Each man then placed a knee under Micky’s butt to keep him from falling into the pool. The exercise was designed to make a man hold his upper body erect to keep his head out of the pool, building a strong core.
I followed Porter’s gaze through the glass door to see a man in his late twenties jogging down the hallway toward the pool. He had a black medical bag hanging over his shoulder.
“Here’s our corpsman,” Porter said. “He’ll get the two of you fixed up, and then he’ll stick around just in case . . . well, you never know what accidents your friend here might have in the next couple of hours.”
We left the pool deck and met the corpsman in the hallway.
“I’m Chase, and this is Ana. We stumbled into a little trouble tonight.”
“Nice to meet you both. I’m Doc. Let’s step into the office over here and I’ll take a look at the two of you. Then we’ll decide if you need a real doctor. Sit down, please, sir.”
I pointed at Anya. “Look at her first. I’m okay for now.”
The corpsman looked at Anya, but she shook her head and pointed back at me. “No, him first. I am fine.”
The corpsman was smart enough to listen to her instead of me, so he went to work poking around on my face. “Brass knuckles?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
He huffed. “I’ve been a navy corpsman for sixteen years, assigned to a SEAL team for five of those, and now I’m attached to these Green Berets. Folks like SEALs and Green Berets tend to get in more fights than the average grunt, so I’ve seen about everything that can happen to a man in a fight.”
I winced as he pressed his fingertips against my cheekbone. He turned to his bag and pulled out a portable ultrasound machine and fired it up. He pressed the wand against my face and stared intently at the small screen.
“I don’t think it’s broken,” he said, “but you’ll have a nasty shiner, and you’ll need a few stitches to close these cuts. Do you want me to do it, or would you prefer a real doctor?”
“I hate doctors,” I said coldly.
Before I knew it, he was injecting me with a local anesthetic and stitching my face. Sitting silently wasn’t easy. The anesthetic wasn’t doing its job.
When he finished sewing, he said, “Now stand up and let’s see about those ribs.”
“My ribs are fine,” I said. “They liked hitting me in the face, but they stayed away from my ribs. I have no idea why.”
The corpsman lifted my shirt. “Well, your ribs are already bruising, so something happened to them.” He ran his hand down my left side, and I drew back when he touched the last two ribs.
“I don’t remember them hitting me in the ribs.”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t look like you’ve been hit down here. This is from something else. Were you tied up?”
“Yeah, they tied us to chairs.”
“Ah! That’s it. You broke this bottom rib while you were struggling against the restraints. All we can do is tape them up and give you some pain meds, but it’s going to hurt for a while.”
Great. I got my ass kicked and did most of the damage to myself. Just my luck.
“Thanks, but I’ll tough it out. I appreciate you sewing me up, Doc.”
He chuckled as if he knew something I didn’t. He changed his gloves and knelt in front of Anya. “Hey. My name’s Jimmy, but everybody calls me Doc. Here’s a bottle of pain pills for Mr. Tough Guy over there when he starts crying like a little girl tomorrow.”
Anya took the bottle from his gloved hand. “I am Anya . . . I mean Ana, and I am not hurt.”
“You may be more stubborn than him. How about I take a look just to make sure? I don’t want Porter trying to drown me because I didn’t check you out.”
Anya relented and let him examine her face. He cleaned a few scrapes, but she wasn’t cut bad enough to require any stitches. Her hands were another story altogether.
When Doc saw her bloody knuckles, he made a guttural sound. “What did they do to your hands?”
“They did nothing to my hands. Is . . . ah, nastupatel’nyye rany.”
“Offensive wounds?” said Doc.
“Yes,” Anya said. “You speak Russian?”
“A little,” he said, humbly.
He cleaned her hands and continued the exam but didn’t say another word in English. His Russian was far better than mine. Seeing that she was in capable hands, I left the two of them alone to speak their rapid-fire Russian.
Porter’s men were pulling Micky out of the pool again. They threw him to the pool deck and he coughed up more water and blood for several minutes.
I lay down beside him. “You don’t look like you’re enjoying this, Micky, but we certainly are. In fact, I’m pretty sure we could do this all night. I think it’s time for you to tell me everything you know about the girl and exactly where I can find her. After that, we’ll stop, and you can go home.”
Micky cried. Sooner or later, all detainees cry. It’s the Holy Grail of interrogation. Once they start, they’re minutes away from spilling their guts.
Through coughing, gagging, and spitting, Micky said, “If I tell you, they’ll kill me.”
Sometimes during an interrogation, it’s best to remain silent and let the detainee talk himself into confessing. I stared into his eyes. I didn’t speak, and I didn’t blink. He was imploding—as they all do sooner or later. His mind and body had reached their limits.
“Okay, Micky. Tell me about these people you’re afraid of. Who are they?”
He shook his head. To help me push his talk button, Porter’s men grabbed Micky by the feet and dragged him back toward the pool. It worked.
“Okay! Okay! It’s the Russians. They’re Russian mafia, and they’ll fucking kill me.”
Porter’s men looked at me for direction. I held up one finger, signaling them to stop.
I leaned down to within a few inches of Micky’s face. “So, it’s the Russians you’re afraid of. That makes a lot of sense, actually. Wait right here. Don’t go anywhere. I have someone you might like to meet.”
Clark was standing with Porter as I walked past and whispered, “Blindfold him and hang him upside down from whatever you can find. I’ll be right back.”
I left the pool deck and found Doc finishing Anya’s exam.
“Doc, come with me,” I said. “I’ll explain later, but right now, I need your voice. Grab somebody’s cell phone and yell into it in your angriest Russian. It doesn’t matter what you say. Just sound pissed off. You’re going to see a very unhappy guy in there blindfolded and hanging upside down. When I give you the signal, tell that man that we’re holding your father hostage, and that we’re going to kill the old man if he doesn’t tell us what we want to know. I need you to do it in English with a nasty Russian accent.”
Doc agreed. His time spent with SEALS and Special Forces had evidently made it impossible for him to be shocked by any crazy plan.
“That’s not all,” I said. “After you tell him, a couple of pretty big guys are going to drag you out of there. Are you okay with that?”
“Sounds like fun,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
We went through the door and onto the pool deck with Doc yelling into his phone. Micky was hanging from a rack with his head covered by a black cloth bag. He was squirming and begging for us to get him down. When he heard Doc yelling in Russian, he became silent.
I pointed to Doc and then at Micky, and the gambit was on.
I grabbed Porter. “As soon as I tell you, I want you to grab Doc and drag him out of here like you’re ready to kill him. He’s in on the game.”
Porter nodded. I was really beginning to like those Special Forces guys.
Doc grabbed Micky and yanked the bag from his face. I didn’t want him to take the bag off, but if Micky was scared and disoriented enough, my plan might still work. Doc put on an Oscar-worthy performance.
He yelled, “Tell these people whatever the fuck they want to know. If you do not, they will kill father, and if you let that happen, I swear you will follow him into grave.”
Micky’s eyes went wide, and panic overtook his face. Porter bolted into action and yanked Doc off his feet, dragging him violently out the door.
I reached above Micky’s feet, cut the rope, and he fell to the deck like a sack of lead.
“So, now you tell me where the girl is, and I’ll make sure the Russians don’t touch you. If you don’t want to tell me, the old man gets it, and I’ll deliver you right to their door where the Russians can have a field day with you. What’s it going to be?”
“Yes! Yes! I’ll tell you. Just don’t kill the old man. The girl’s in Miami. We sold her to a porn producer named Giovani. I swear that’s all I know. Please let the old man go. They’ll cut me to pieces if you kill him on my account.”
I yelled for Porter to bring Doc back in. When they returned, Micky’s face showed the realization that he’d been played.
“What old man?” I asked. I pointed to the corpsman. “This is Doc. He’s here to patch you up and make sure you’re okay.”
I grabbed Micky’s hand and gave it a nasty yank, pulling him to his feet. The three broken fingers from his back seat interrogation with Anya were already swollen to at least double their original size.
I marched him outside and said, “I seem to remember making you a promise. Do you remember that promise?”
“Yeah,” he said, wiping the blood and sweat from his face. “You promised you’d keep me safe from the Russians if I told you where the girl was.”
“No, not that promise,” I said. “That promise was a lie. I don’t even know the Russians. I’m talking about the promise I made you in the front seat of your Cadillac. I remember promising you I’d come back and kill you if you lied to me about where the girl was. You told me she was at Three Sheets, and that was a lie. Now, Micky, I’m a man of my word. This is for Bobby and Laura Woodley, you piece of shit.”
I put two pistol rounds into his forehead and watched him wilt to the ground where a pool of blood formed around his tortured, lifeless body.
11
Brothers-in-Arms
“Chase, you and Ana take the car to the Sheraton. I’ll take care of this mess and meet you back at the hotel in a couple hours. Your bags from the plane are in the trunk.” Clark handed me his room key and patted my shoulder.
I didn’t know that he, Anya, and Porter were standing behind me when I’d pulled the trigger on Micky seconds earlier.
I took his key and walked silently toward the car with Anya at my side. We drove to the hotel without saying a word. After a shower and a fresh change of clothes, I paid for a room two doors down from Clark and left him a note with our room number.
Anya and I sat on the edge of the bed staring out the window across Smathers Beach toward Havana. She placed her hand on my leg and laid her head on my shoulder.
“I didn’t have to kill him,” I whispered.
As if she didn’t hear me, she said, “How did Clark know where to find us?”
“I don’t know. But I’m glad he showed up.”
She hugged me in silent support of the battle raging inside me. I winced and let out a childish whimper when she squeezed my ribs. I was hurting more than I’d realized in both my body and my mind.
A rap on our door jolted us, and Anya pulled her pistol from the nightstand.
“Relax,” I said. “It’s probably Clark.”
Telling her to relax was like telling the wind not to blow. Through the peephole I saw Clark standing in the hallway. I opened the door and motioned him inside.
“Are you guys okay?” he asked.
“We’re fine,” I said. “How about you?”
“I’m good. So, are you going to tell me what tonight was all about?”
Anya forced her lips into a thin horizontal line and kept quiet.
I poured each of us a drink from the mini bar. “First,” I said, “we need to know how you found us tonight.”
He’d either practiced his answer or he was being honest when he confidently said, “Believe it or not, it was dumb luck. I was closing up the plane and noticed your bags still in the back, so I grabbed them and set out, hoping to find you on Duval Street. I’d given up and decided to head back to the hotel when I saw one of those bicycle cab guys pedaling like a maniac with the two of you in the back. By the time I made it around the block and tried to catch up to you on Truman, the cab was empty and headed back toward Duval. I chased him down and bribed him to tell me where he’d dropped you. When he told me, I knew something was up, so I pulled into the parking lot and checked out the exits from that, uh . . . place.”
Anya set his mind at ease. “It was strip club.”
“Yes, it was. Thank you, Ana. Is it Ana or Anya?”
I started to answer, but she beat me to it.
“I was Anya, but now Ana.”
She had a beautiful way of simplifying things without over explaining.
“Okay, then,” he said. “I scoped out the exits from the strip club, and I heard an explosion that sounded almost like a gunshot, but not exactly. That’s when I converted one of the exits into an entrance and heard the commotion coming from the room where you were. I burst in and decided it was a pretty good time to start shooting. I’m glad you’re all right, but I’ve got a lot of questions.”
I considered his story and wanted to believe him, but I was still a little skeptical. “Okay, Clark,” I said. “Since you saved our lives, I guess we at least owe you the truth.”
“My old baseball coach at Georgia has a daughter who’s a few years younger than me, but she was more like a little sister when I was playing ball up there. She got mixed up with the wrong crowd and ended up in some serious trouble down here in the Keys. My old coach and his wife are like family, so when I heard their story, I had to get involved.”
Anya interjected, “We, Chase. Not only you.”
“Yes. We had to get involved. I promised them we’d find her and bring her home. When we left you at the airport, we got lucky with a cabbie who pointed us toward Micky, the guy from tonight . . . the one I shot.” I paused, trying to digest the words. Thinking about what I’d done was bad enough, but saying it out loud plunged daggers into my gut.
I finished my drink and continued the story. “Anyway, the guy Micky turned out to be some kind of pimp, and after some persuasion from us, he sent us to the strip club and told us Skipper was working there as a dancer. It didn’t take long for us to realize we’d been set up. Fortunately, Anya—I mean, Ana—had jimmied Micky’s gun. It blew up in his face when he pulled the trigger, and that gave her an opportunity to fight her way out of the chair she’d been tied to. That’s when you showed up and killed the guy before he could kill us. We owe you one, Clark.”
He shook his head. “That’s quite a story.”
“Yeah, but your involvement makes the story even more unbelievable. What’s your connection with the Special Forces guys at the navy base?”
“Let’s have another drink,” he said. “We’re probably going to need it.”
I poured another round and noticed that Anya’s glass was untouched, and she was still holding her pistol loosely in her right hand against her thigh.
She’s not drinking. Is she really pregnant?
Clark said, “So, unlike you, I didn’t go to college and play ball. I went to the army right out of high school. I was
pretty good at being a soldier, so Ranger school and then Special Forces were the next logical steps for me. Finally, I wound up down here teaching at the Special Forces Under Water Operations School. That’s where we were tonight. I made a lot of great friends and got to see a lot of places most people have never heard of. I thought it might be cool to try out for Delta Force, so I trained up and finally got picked for Delta selection in Virginia. It was the most grueling thing I’d ever done. They made us do some of the craziest stuff you could dream up, but the most bizarre thing about it all was this psychologist. They had this weird little guy there who dressed like a royal jackass and always smelled like French fries. He snatched me and another SF guy from the selection and put us to work for the same people you work for.”
I was amazed by his story and knew exactly who the French fry guy was. It had to be the psychologist I called Fred from my days at The Ranch. His assessment of Fred was dead on. The story sounded plausible, but he looked way too young to have done everything he described.
“How old are you?” I asked.
He chuckled. “I get that a lot. You probably heard Porter call me Baby Face tonight. That’s a moniker I picked up back in Ranger battalion, and it stuck. I’m thirty-four, but I’ve always looked younger. It’s a curse, but I still do pretty well with the college girls.”
I heard Anya moving behind me, and I turned to see what she was doing. She had slipped her pistol back into its holster and placed it on the nightstand. She was buying his story.
Clark smiled at her. “I wondered if you were ever going to put that thing away.”
Instead of responding to Clark, she asked me, “Now we go to Miami and find Giovani, yes?”
Anya didn’t yet understand how our little organization worked. I gave her a glimpse by laying it out for Clark.
“This isn’t your fight, Clark. This isn’t a company gig. We’re doing this one freelance and for free. Nobody’s getting paid. It’s a favor for people I consider to be my family. I’d never ask you to get involved in this any deeper than you already have. It would probably be best if you walked away before you get any of this on you.”
