“What’s an M240?”
“It’s a crew-served machine gun,” I replied. “It weighs about twenty-five pounds, unloaded.”
“You kinda stood out, too,” Tank said with a chuckle.
“How so, Dad?”
“He was a corporal then, at the end of his first enlistment,” Tank replied. “Your dad stood up right beside me on that wall.”
Florence’s eyes went wide.
“The group below us didn’t know what the blue ribbon on the top of Tank’s rack meant,” I explained to Florence. “But every single man on that rooftop knew the Medal of Honor. I stood up next to Tank because it was the right thing to do. Immediately, every Marine there rose and exposed themselves. All of us aiming at the leader of the group. What was it the guy said, Tank?”
“Said he was sorry. That he’d made a mistake. Hey, what’s with the weird-colored flames?”
“It’s driftwood,” Savannah replied. “It absorbs sea water and when it dries out, the salt and other minerals remain. Festive, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Tank said, stretching his legs out and staring into the red and green flames. “I really appreciate you having me as your guest for the holidays.”
“You don’t have any family?” Florence asked innocently.
“No,” Tank replied, a bit of melancholy in his voice. “I had two older brothers. One was killed in Vietnam and the other died of a stroke a few years back. I never had any kids, so it’s just me.”
“We’re glad to have you,” Savannah said, just as my phone chirped.
I pulled it out and checked the screen. “It’s Chyrel,” I said, standing. “I need to take this.”
Pushing the Accept button, I strolled toward the tree line on the eastern shore.
“Hey, Chyrel,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I just emailed you a list of numbers and names,” she said. “The burner phone Ty Sampson called in Miami made a call within minutes of the time you had me watching. About the same time, another phone awfully close by the burner made a call. The unknown burner and the other phone remained close together for several minutes. It belongs to a woman named Vanessa Ramos. She’s been arrested twice for prostitution.”
“How’s that help?”
“It doesn’t, in and of itself,” Chyrel said. “The number she called belongs to another woman, Pilar Fuentes, also a known prostitute.”
“Okay, but hookers are a dime a dozen in Miami. Who did the Miami unknown call?”
“The burner called a number in the 239 area code a few minutes after Sampson called it.”
“That’s Fort Myers,” I said.
“In this case, the call was placed to a cell phone that pinged a tower on Marco Island.”
“No name to go with that one?”
“No,” she replied. “But it was a GPS phone and at the time of the call, it was moving at highway speed near Goodland. That phone then made two more calls, also to unregistered numbers, one in North Miami and the other in Fort Lauderdale.”
“Monitor the Marco Island number, as well as the one in Miami that called it. Whoever that guy is, he was the first person Sampson called after I shook him up. If any of those three talk again, will you record the call for me?”
“You only gotta ask,” she replied. “And buy me a cheeseburger next time you’re up this way.”
“Deal,” I said and ended the call.
“What was that all about?” Savannah asked, as I sat back down beside her at the fire.
“Not real sure yet,” I replied. “But I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tank asked.
I sat forward with my elbows on my knees. “Remember when we were at Sampson’s workshop and I had Chyrel watch for an outgoing call from nearby?”
“Yeah. And I asked you about that technology.”
“Most phones have GPS software built in,” I said. “Even most burner phones. I made sure to buy one that didn’t when I went down to the store earlier. Chyrel can enter a phone number into a computer program and it will track that number’s physical location and identify other phones that it spends more than a few minutes in close proximity with. It was designed to identify bad guys by matching the burner phone in one pocket with the registered phone in the other. But we found that it worked on identifying cohorts too. When it finds one close, it tracks that phone as well, and does the same to it while also recording the phone numbers of any incoming or outgoing calls that anyone in this network of people makes. Chyrel says that it can conceivably track and record the connections of up to a million people.”
“Six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” Tank said with a grin.
“Something like that,” I said. “Anyway, Sampson called someone in Miami’s Upper East Side—an area known for adult nightclubs and prostitution. It was a burner phone and whoever it was, they were with a prostitute by the name of Vanessa Ramos, whose phone is registered. Within minutes of the call from Sampson, Ramos called another known prostitute and whoever she was with called another burner near Marco Island, over on the west coast. Then later, the unknown phone near Marco made more calls to other burners in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.”
Tank also sat forward, nodding his head. “That’s what you wanted, when you told your girl to watch his phone, huh?”
“Pretty much,” I replied. “I was hoping for names, though. But all these unregistered phones is a good indication of illegal activity.”
“And you knew if you shook him up a little, he’d make a call to some cohort?”
“Yeah, but there’s no way to know who it was or who the person on the west coast was.” Savannah and I shared a glance. “At least, not yet.”
Tank raised his bushy eyebrows questioningly. “So, what’s the coincidence?”
“The Blancs?” Savannah asked, putting all the clues together.
I nodded at her and turned back to Tank. “The Blanc family is probably the biggest cocaine and methamphetamine importer in South Florida.”
“I thought they were all arrested,” Savannah said.
“Only one of them is serving any serious time. I haven’t talked to Bill in over a month, but last time we spoke, he told me that Marley Blanc had suffered a heart attack and died while in custody, and her daughter, Kurt, was sent to prison for five years.”
“Wait,” Tank said. “A daughter named Kurt?”
“These aren’t your run-of-the-mill denizens of the swamp,” I told him. “None of them work, except one, who is a state senator, and they’re always high on something. I learned that Kurt is actually short for Courtney, which in their backwoods lingo was pronounced Curt-nee. She shortened it to Kurt with a K. Within a week of arriving at Raiford, Kurt tried to kill a guard and is now looking at life. They didn’t have enough to hold the others without bail, and they were released. Marley’s husband, Willy Quick, disappeared into the swamp and hasn’t been seen since.”
“And this Bill you talked to?” Tank asked. “He’s another person on your team?”
“Bill Binkowski,” I said. “He’s FBI and we worked together with Homeland Security a few times, but he’s retired now. This all happened last summer.”
“What was this Kurt character arrested for?”
“She took a shot at me and Kim, my middle daughter. Kim and her husband are Fish and Wildlife officers. A few days later, we managed to get most of the family in one place at one time—a place that later turned out to be the burial ground of a serial killer who was Kurt’s grandfather.”
“I’m hearing banjo music,” Tank said.
“I have a friend over in that area who thinks the same thing,” I said. “He says their family tree doesn’t have a lot of forks. They bring in most of the drugs that flow into Miami. But the cops have never been able to catch them.”
“How come?”
“They use a combination of Cigarette boats and airboats to move the drugs to a location deep in the Everglades, where the drugs are then moved by truck t
o the east coast. The police have never been able to pin anything on them, mostly because the leader’s brother was a state senator who knows whose pockets to grease.”
“And this Willy Quick is the leader?”
“His wife was,” I replied. “They figure her heart attack was brought on by decades of drug abuse. Meth monsters aren’t in the best of health. Kurt was next in line, but she’s in prison. Bill thinks Quick is running the show now.”
“And here I thought you were living in a quaint tropical paradise down here,” Tank said. “Sounds a lot more like the Mog.”
In a way, he was right. The drug problem in south Florida was massive. Tons of cocaine, meth, pot, and other controlled substances came into the area by sea every day. There were kidnappings in the street, where young women were snatched up, forced to take drugs until they were addicted, then sold into prostitution.
Florida’s coastline was more than a fourth of the combined 5,000 miles of oceanfront in the lower forty-eight states. Each day, thousands of boats and ships came and went. It was impossible to track them all, let alone search them.
The cartel kingpins were bigger than the mafia dons, wielded more power, and were ten times as ruthless. A lot like the warlords of Somalia were back in the day.
“What’s the next step?” Savannah asked.
“Sampson was scared,” I replied. “I could see it in his eyes when I asked some questions the cops hadn’t. Questions he didn’t have good answers for. The first thing he did after we left was to call someone in Miami. And the first thing that guy did was call someone over on the west coast. Chyrel is going to record the call next time any of them talk to one another.”
“The kid in the street idea?” Tank asked, referring to the illegal wiretap I’d requested.
“It’s a means to an end,” I said. “The cops can’t use it, but I can.”
“You think Cobie’s over there? With the Blancs?” Savannah asked, noticeably shuddering.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But the guy with the burner phone in Miami is likely a drug dealer and the Blancs are importers. It’s just a possible first step.”
We talked a while longer, then Florence said she was tired and was going to bed.
As soon as we heard the door to Kim and Marty’s house close, Savannah looked at me over the dancing fire. “Are you going to Miami?”
“Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve,” I said. “I think we have plenty to keep us busy here. I’m taking Tank flying tomorrow, to show him around.”
We woke early. It was still dark as I gazed out the window to the bunkhouse on the north side. Both it and Florence’s temporary home were dark. I switched on the low-power LED lights in the living room. That way, Tank would know we were up when he looked over.
Then I let the dogs out.
As I was pouring my coffee, I saw Tank pass the window and motioned him to come in. When he did, I expected the dogs to be right behind him, but they weren’t.
“Did you see the dogs?” I asked.
“Waited for them to pass by,” he said. “You sleep late in your old age.”
There’d been no light in the bunkhouse because Tank had already left it. I guess retirement to him didn’t include sleeping in.
“They didn’t notice you?” I asked, as I poured another mug and handed it to him.
“The day I can’t slip past a couple of guard dogs, just bury me, because I’m already dead.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering who Tank was, but I was impressed, nonetheless. Every morning, the dogs went down the back steps and split up, circling the island. Finn had been doing it for years and now the two of them worked together.
“You should teach them vertical recon,” Tank said, as Savannah came out of the bedroom.
She came straight to the coffee pot. “What, pray tell, is vertical recon?”
“The tendency for predators on the ground to hunt for prey on the ground,” I replied. “Tank was on the catwalk around the fish tanks when the dogs went out and they didn’t see him.”
“I’ll have breakfast ready in just—”
“Please,” Tank interrupted, raising a hand, palm out. “Let me do that. You just sit back and relax. I insist.”
I’d had dinner at Tank’s house a few times. He was great with meat on a grill, but I had no idea how he was with eggs on a stove.
“Aw, that’s very sweet,” she said. “You’ll find everything in the refrigerator and the iron skillet is in the cabinet to the right of the stove.”
Then she turned to me. “What time are you boys leaving?”
“First light,” I replied.
“Drop me and Flo off at the Rusty Anchor,” she said. “We’re going shopping.”
“On Christmas Eve?” I asked. “It’ll be a madhouse.”
“You get a thrill out of beating bad guys,” she said. “We get ours out of beating other shoppers to the punch.”
Tank laughed. “Yeah, I can see how you two get along.”
An hour later, with the sun just peeking over the horizon, the four of us went down the stairs to the dock area below the house.
“Holy shit!” Tank exclaimed when I switched on the lights. Then he spun around on the steps and looked up at Savannah and Florence in horror. “I am so sorry, ma’am.”
“Don’t be,” Savannah said. “It’s the same reaction most people have when they see what’s under the house.”
Tank continued down the steps, his eyes moving back and forth over Gaspar’s Revenge and El Cazador. Then he noticed the smaller boats in the other half of the dock space.
“I was wondering where your little boat disappeared to when you got back last night.”
“Let’s take Knot L-8,” Florence said. “There’s room for four.”
Tank let out a low whistle as he reached the bottom and saw the name on the stern of my homemade wooden speedboat. “Knot-L-eight, Not Late, very catchy. Is she as fast as the name implies?”
“I built her myself, with help from some friends,” I said, as I took the keys from the box at the bottom of the steps.
I stepped into the little boat’s forward cockpit and settled into the helm seat. After inserting the key and turning it, I pushed the starter button for the port engine, which fired instantly and settled into a low rumble.
“That thing sounds like a motorcycle,” Tank said.
Pushing another button, the aft deck started to slowly open on hydraulic rams. Then I started the starboard engine.
Tank looked down into the engine bay. “Two Harley engines? You gotta be kidding me.”
“V-twin engines, yeah,” I said. “But they’re custom built by a company called S&S. They’re bigger and have a lot more power than just about any motorcycle.”
I pushed the button to close the engine bay, then clicked the key fob to open the outer doors. “Climb aboard.”
“You take the front,” Tank said to Savannah. “I’ll sit back here with Florence, if that’s okay.”
Florence smiled. “Do you like fast cars, Mister Tank?”
“What man doesn’t?”
“Then you’re in for a real treat this morning,” she said, as she untied the lines before stepping aboard.
I put the boat in gear and idled forward until we were clear of the big doors, and then I clicked the fob to close them again. The dogs were sitting on the end of the short pier, watching as we passed.
“We’ll be back in a few hours,” I said to them. “Bewachen!”
Both dogs rose, heads up and on a swivel. After a moment, Woden turned and trotted toward the foot of the pier, splitting up from Finn to better guard the island.
“They speak German?” Tank asked, as we idled down the short channel.
I looked back and Florence grinned. “No,” she said. “They speak dog. But they understand a few German words.”
Tank laughed. “How’d they learn German?”
Savannah turned around in her seat. “Woden was trained for protection duty and
learned certain commands in German. Finn figured out what they meant just from watching him.”
“That’s just like a Lab,” Tank said. “My folks always had one or two and they learned from each other, one generation to the next.”
I turned left into Harbor Channel and slowly brought Knot L-8 up on plane. I continued accelerating until she reached thirty knots. When we got to the cuts just south of Mac’s island, I veered out of the deep channel and weaved through the narrow passes, the boat responding effortlessly. Once in deep water again, I opened the throttles and turned south toward the Seven Mile Bridge.
We reached fifty knots in the sleek, barrel-backed wooden boat and made it to the Anchor in half the time it would take in the Grady.
“That’s an incredible boat,” Tank said, as we tied her off to the barge at the end of Rusty’s canal.
“We’ll be back here about two,” Savannah said. “But I’ll call you. Do you think you’ll be gone that long?”
“Probably not,” I replied. “If I don’t hear from you before we land, we’ll just hang out with Rusty for a while.”
I gave them both a hug, then Tank and I headed toward the end of the dock as the girls turned toward the parking lot and Florence’s Wrangler.
“Nice family,” Tank said, as we walked along the dock.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Fortunately, Florence got her mom’s looks and brains.”
“I don’t know. I see a good bit of you in that girl.” He stopped and looked across the canal toward Savannah’s boat, Sea Biscuit. “Whoa! Is that what I think it is? Looks like an old Grand Banks.”
“It is,” I said. “That’s Savannah’s boat.” I patted Salty Dog’s gunwale. “And this is my ketch.”
“Is that right? How many boats do you own?”
“You’ve seen them all but one. I have a long-range, all steel, pilothouse trawler, too. It’s down in Central America right now.”
“Why there?”
“It’s a long story,” I replied. “Just call it a strategic location.”
“I always wanted to own one of those old trawlers,” he said. “So, where is it we’re flying?”
Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19) Page 7
