A Viable Threat (A Martin Billings Story Book 4)
Page 17
If she was worried, I figured I should be too.
25
I spent some time outside, making sure that I wasn't being conned by all the quiet. If anyone knew we were there, they didn't much care.
I went in the front room of the villa and sat in a comfy leather recliner to wait on Amy. A few minutes later she came in, looking somber and drawn.
“What's the matter? Didn't you find what you needed?”
“I found so much more than I wanted to find. Sometimes I hate being right.”
“What does that mean?”
She sat on the couch in front of me. There was a decanter of something that looked like whisky there. She opened it and sniffed it. “Irish,” she said. She turned over two glasses and poured stiff drinks.
“So what's the bad news?”
“Hank and his people are part of this.” She waved a hand. “He's part of Vermeer's operation.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “If he is part of it, why call in a strike?”
“From what I've found, I'm sure it's a hostile takeover,” she said. “He's been providing Brad's shipping company with intel and protection for a fee. I think his response to being recalled to DC is to retire and take on running Vermeer's operation without him. Now that it's set up and Vermeer has made all the contacts, Hank can run it fine.”
Somehow, I didn't find that hard to believe at all. “Naturally, he can't allow Brad to talk to anyone. The guy could throw him under the bus.”
“And would in a heartbeat.” She held up a thumb drive. “He won't want us getting off the island with the details of Brad's payments to him, along with detailed records of what the payments were for going anywhere.”
“Wow! And that brings us back to the obvious conclusion that Hank sent us here to be killed.”
She nodded. “Reinforcing our plan to leave early, avoid his people, and skip the rendezvous.”
“And go where? We can't exactly drag Vermeer around Exuma trying to hail a taxi.”
She licked her lips. “I can arrange another way out.”
I smiled. “You've got a Plan B.”
“A plan Zebra, actually. Based on my reports, my boss thought we might need a backup plan that Hank didn't know about. We have people on alert.”
“Why didn't you just open with that?”
“It's something of a last resort. Contacting them to arrange an extraction will involve assets we don't totally control. They'll do it, but some have connections to Homeland Security, which hasn't always been our best friend in times of trouble.”
“So we might get compromised?”
“It's a possibility. The good news is that I doubt Hank has any connections with them. His focus is down here and on drugs.”
“So with this new and improved plan, what happens?”
“You text Bill with an update while make a call and arrange for a car to be waiting for us in Georgetown, at the dock, and a plane at the airport. We'll take Brad straight to the US.”
“We?”
“Bill drops us off in Georgetown and gets the hell out of The Bahamas. We have him arrange a pickup somewhere. He scuttles the boat, and that severs his connection to this caper. That should keep him safe.”
I looked at her and saw a hard, mad glint in her eyes. “Do it.”
She took out her phone. “Agent 43796. I'm executing a switch to Plan Zebra. Repeat, switch to Plan Zebra. Alert the duty honcho that the shit has hit the fan and we are executing an extraction.”
“I love the technical lingo you agents come up with,” I told her.
26
It was easier to carry Brad across the island than I'd expected. Of course, I hadn't known he'd be a smallish man. That allowed us to make good time and still move quietly.
Again, we traveled the road. Amy kept an eye out for patrols while I focused on not tripping over hungry boa constrictors. Halfway back to the barge ramp, we heard people talking. We ducked into the brush and watched two of Vermeer's rent-a-cops walking along listlessly. I inhaled the acrid smell of the joint they were passing back and forth as they perfunctorily flashed a halogen light around. They didn't expect to see anything, so that's exactly what they saw.
Unfortunately for them, stopping in front of us to enjoy a few tokes made Amy grow impatient. As they laughed about something, she stepped from the shadows and sent two darts whizzing into their targets.
With Brad over my shoulders in a fireman's carry, I wasn't in a position to help.
“The flex cuffs are in my pocket,” I said.
She shook her head. “No one will find them here before we are long gone.”
“The snake might.”
She considered that. “That's their lookout. Besides, cuffing them might mean the snake got indigestion from the heavy plastic.”
She had a point, and we headed back down the dirt road, walking through the shadows that had begun to stretch across the road as the sun began its slow creep up into the eastern sky. We'd spent more time than I'd thought doing our surveillance and data collection around the island, and Amy's twenty minutes to download the data had gotten extended as well. Still, we were hours ahead of Hank's arrival. He expected to arrive at nine, assuming the authorities were on time and sunrise was right around 0530. We'd be far away by the time he even got there.
I shifted Brad into a more comfortable position (for me, not him) and we set off again. A short time later, we arrived by the abandoned buildings next to the ramp. I put Brad down and propped him up against the wall, then bent and listened to his breathing.
“Still alive?” Amy asked.
“Afraid so. Sounds like he's sleeping like a baby.”
“Good. I'd hate to get him all the way back and find we'd been dragging a corpse around.”
“And you haven't been doing the dragging.”
She stared out toward the barge ramp. “There's enough light that we should be able to see Bill coming in from here. Give him the signal.”
I grabbed my phone and sent the text. “Hell, we'll hear him coming long before we see him. It's good that Vermeer doesn't have more roving patrols, or they'd hear him too.”
“I'm not worried about his people,” she said.
I wasn't either. We didn't know how much effort Hank had put into anticipating what we'd do if this or that happened. But we had to assume that Roberts might be smart enough to have spent the night using radar to locate Bill. Now he'd track him.
“As soon as we hear those motors, we make for the ramp,” I said.
She patted my arm. “I do hate to keep people waiting, especially when they are coming to rescue me.”
“No shit,” I said. “Hank's men will probably decide that our boarding is a good time to pounce, so the moment he hits the ramp, we toss our supercargo in and jump on board. I want to get clear of the island as fast as possible.”
She pointed. “From here we need to pass those sensors again,” she said. “So we need to wait until the last moment. We won't want to be standing at the bus stop too long.”
I shrugged. “Those have to be Vermeer's sensors. I think we can safely just blow through them when the time comes. The only boats they have are over at the ops center. Even if they considered that a serious thing, there is no way they can get here fast enough to be a worry.”
She nodded. “That's true. But Hank's people will come in shooting to kill.”
“I vote for disappointing them.”
“I like your way of thinking.”
I turned to look at her. A gentle morning breeze pushed her short hair across her ear. A soft feeling, gentle as a sigh, swept through me. “Amy, when this is over, how about—”
“Will it be over?”
“Sure. Bill will pick us up, we'll take Vermeer back, and Hank will fry in hell.”
“Okay. I like the sound of that.”
“When that's done, how about going for a sail?”
“A sail?”
“Sail to Panama?”
“You and me. We can take our time. Make it a slow drift if we want.”
“I don't know, Marty. First, we have to get out of here, preferably alive, and then—”
“What?”
“Well, you know how things are.”
“Insane?”
“Exactly. Your sailing adventure sounds lovely, but I don't have time for lovely.”
“Why not?”
She laughed. “You know what I'm talking about. If I went sailing like that, the entire time I'd be thinking about the things, the bad guys, that need my attention. You are the same.”
“I can think of something other than bad guys, at least long enough to take a break.”
“I can't. The point is, my life is about taking them down. And the truth is there are so many bad guys and so little time.”
There was something in her voice that dared me to challenge her creed.
“Can we talk about it later?”
“If there is a later, sure.”
I wasn't sure how to take that, but I had to let it go.
“You know, Hank's involvement with Vermeer explains a lot.”
“It does?”
“In the last year, we've had some intelligence failures and a number of them had to do with Vermeer's growing operation. I hadn't exactly associated them with Hank, even though he had Vermeer in his sights. Honestly, I just thought the man might be far less competent than his record suggests.”
“Which is why your boss actually supported you joining this mission?”
She grinned. “Yup. I can't claim that I thought Hank would be an actual threat, just a complication. I fibbed a little about why I let him change the plan. I wanted him to have ample chance to show his hand.”
“Which he has done, in spades.”
She cocked her head. “Life's funny like that sometimes.”
I laughed. “I've noticed.”
“I bet you have, Martin. I just bet you've seen this sort of thing before.”
It took a moment, but I saw she was serious.
“Betrayals, you mean?”
She stared out to sea for a moment. “You've been in situations where it proved difficult to distinguish betrayal from incompetence.”
After that I knew I had to assume that Amy knew even more about me and my career than I'd thought—things that weren't in any official record. Things more than a civilian, even a government agent, should be able to find out. With this deepening knowledge of her, I couldn't decide if I was growing afraid of her or falling in love.
They often feel the same to me.
27
We heard the soft purring of the engines as Bill brought the bow of the boat up the barge landing. We waited, standing knee deep in the water. The moment the fiberglass hull began to scrape against the concrete, I chucked Brad into the boat. With Amy on the other side, we pushed the boat back into deeper water and jumped in as she floated free.
Bill lowered the engines and backed her out into deeper water. I touched his arm. “Go like stink. We've been set up,” I said.
He nodded. “A boat's been shadowing me. I assumed Hank was running a game.”
“A dangerous one.”
“Then we are running from both Vermeer's people and Hank's too?” Bill asked.
It was a fair question. “As far as we can tell, Vermeer doesn't have anyone to run from.”
“Just Hank's idiots then.”
“Skilled idiots. With boats and lots of guns and orders to shoot us on sight.”
“Gee, then I assume we aren't going to Hank's place as we promised?” Bill asked as he slammed the throttles forward.
I clutched a rail as the boat shot ahead. Coming up to speed, she rose up on a plane. Bill’s steady hands guided her as she hurtled through the cut, moving away from the Atlantic and toward the shallow waters separating the islands.
“No. We decided that wasn't a good idea. Amy is calling an audible.”
Amy and I hung on tight as the boat gained speed. In his element, Bill nodded. “Given that we are making good time, you might want to let me know where you want to use this speed to go to—seeing as I am the one at the helm and all.”
“Take us to the main dock in Georgetown,” Amy said.
“Not exactly an inconspicuous place to offload your cargo.”
“Time is critical,” she said. “We don't know how long we have before Hank figures out we are on to him, and there are too many ways he could throw a spanner in the works.”
“Which works?” he asked.
“The works that get us out of The Bahamas with our cargo. My people have arranged to have a plane waiting and there will be a car at the dock. It's best we go right for it.”
Bill glanced at me. “What do you say, Junior?”
“As far as I'm concerned, this is officially Amy's mission now,” I said. “Getting this man to the US might still do some good.”
Amy nodded. “After you drop us off, head south. Is there someone you can call to pick you up and give you a less conspicuous ride back to St. Anne?”
“Jackson,” he said. “Fishing boats come and go.”
“Perfect. Scuttle this boat in deep water. Homeland Security might wind up hunting it down.”
“More inter-agency cooperation?” Bill asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Fair enough,” he said. Putting his head down, Bill put the helm hard over. The boat leaned and spray shot out as the boat came to its new heading.
Amy sighed and pointed. “We don't have to wonder if Hank's people are sitting around waiting to see if we are going to show up.” She pointed. “I'm guessing that is a boatload of bad guys at four o'clock.”
A quick look showed me a serious-looking boat, bigger than ours, with several armed men lining the rail and someone on top of the helm station. “The bastards are impatient. They are bringing the rendezvous to us.”
“They've got the advantage,” Amy said, scowling. “That's a high-performance shallow-water intercept boat.”
Bill turned and looked back. “Outfitted with a couple of monster engines, which would explain why the bastards are gaining so fast. I almost hate to mention that we are going flat out, but in the interest of full disclosure—”
“And then there is the bad news,” Amy said. She stood with her ass against the dashboard, facing aft, staring through the binoculars. The rapidly increasing sunlight was letting her see details. “The asshole on the roof of that thing has a sniper rifle.”
“And you had to ruin my morning by telling me that?” Bill asked as I heard the whir of a bullet speeding by my ear, followed by the crack of the shot. I turned to look. Even with my naked eyes I could see the man lying prone on the hard top of the helm station.
“I think this shooter might know what he's doing,” Amy said. “That was a good first shot for finding the range.”
Bill began driving a ripple pattern, swerving from side to side. “That will make it harder to get a shot,” he said.
“On the other hand, now they'll close in on us faster,” I said.
“Criticisms of that sort are not helpful,” Bill said. “However, I'm always open to suggestions.”
“I'm fresh out of them.”
Bill glanced at Amy. “Our alleged DEA person is always full of surprises. You don't happen to have a grenade launcher with you, do you, Amy? Isn't that part of the well-dressed secret agent regalia?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. When I dressed yesterday, I realized that grenades didn't go with this outfit I'm wearing.”
“And we all know how important a well-developed fashion sense is at stressful times like this,” Bill said.
Another shot rang out, this time missing us by a slightly wider margin than the first. “At least that part is working,” Amy sai
d. She held the railing in one hand and her pistol in the other. I could see her weighing it, then staring longingly at the boat in pursuit. It was well out of range.
I grabbed the pair of binoculars from the niche in the dash where she'd stuck it and scanned the boat. “The charming fellow on top is our dear friend, Petty Officer Roberts,” I said. “If you were of a mind to try the shot, I have to admit I’d enjoy seeing you remove the smirk from his face with a 9-mm round. Who knows, you might get lucky?”
She twisted her lips. “I don't like depending on luck. I'll save him a bullet.”
Bill looked at us. “I've got an idea, or at least something that will serve as one until a real idea comes along.”
“Which is?”
“That boat—the skippers of those things get spoiled driving them around. I've seen the cocky bastards. They know their boat like that draws next to no water; they can scoot across the shallows like nobody's business.”
“That sounds depressingly bad, not good,” I said.
“He means that they get careless, not pay as much attention as they might to water depth,” Amy said.
“It does indeed.”
“I don't see that personal shortcoming as useful.”
“You'll have to see it demonstrated then, Junior. But it has to do with their propensity to take shortcuts. These young people love to cut corners.”
Another shot rang out. “Fuck,” Amy muttered. This time she snapped off a shot from her pistol without even bothering to aim. When she saw me looking at her, she made a face. “They were pissing me off. I just wanted them to know we do have some fangs.”
“I'm sure they appreciate knowing that,” I told her. “What does this intermediate idea demand of us, Bill?”
“It means that intend to drive like a maniac.”
“As opposed to what you've been doing?” I looked at Amy. “I think we'd better hold on to something sturdy.”
Bill leaned forward, his attention focused on the color of the water ahead. “Adderley cut is coming up in a bit. If I approach it correctly, the sun will be in their eyes. So if I time things right—”