Rum Runner eBook_for Epub_Revised
Page 11
“I mean, these two on the other boat, they looked like a typical country club-going, tennis-playing, martini-sipping yuppie couple. The bundle they were receiving looked like a bunch of plastic bags wrapped together by duct tape, obviously drugs—a lot of drugs.”
“Oh, my gosh, Max,” Isobel said. She looked terrified by his account.
“The boss of the two men on the first boat must of been Cuban or Puerto Rican. And he had oily black hair that was white on both sides, pure white. I mean, it was one of the weirdest-looking hair styles I’ve ever seen. This guy got one look at us and didn’t think twice. He grabbed the Heckler & Koch MP5 slung over his shoulder, and he opened fire on me and my family.”
Isobel broke down in sobs. But rather than comfort her, Max continued.
“There is no other more sickly feeling one can have than seeing a bullet pierce his toddler’s forehead, and blow out the back of his skull. To see his daughter grab her stomach where a 9mm bullet had just ripped into her abdomen, before a second pierced her heart, then her neck, then her face.
“My wife received the worst of it, though: a punctured lung, a perforated bowel, a punctured spleen. It took her three days to die, after knowing that her kids had just been murdered.”
“In all, my son was shot five times, my daughter four times, and my wife three times.”
“What about you?” Isobel asked dryly.
“I was shot in the shoulder, in my left forearm, in my hip, and in my left thigh. I don’t know why my family received all fatal wounds and I was barely touched.” Max wiped his eye before his tear fell.
“Barely touched?” Isobel sounded mortified. “You are lucky to be alive.”
“I don’t know if I would consider it luck,” Max said, sounding as if he was speaking to Isobel from some chilly isolated planet.
“Is that why you’re so protective of women?” Isobel asked, grabbing a pocket pack of tissues out of her huge purse to wipe her eyes. “Because you weren’t able to protect your family, your wife?”
“Probably,” Max said, looking off toward the ocean.
“I am a dangerous man,” Max said, “for a lot of reasons. Ask Angelique’s ex-boyfriend. But I’m also dangerous because trouble finds me, Isobel. And if you are around me, it is likely that trouble will find you as well.”
“What about the men who killed your family?” Isobel asked. “Do you know who they are?”
Max nodded.
“This was what, six years ago? What has happened to them? Did you go after them?”
“No, Isobel,” Max said, taking another drink from his second Ti’ Punch. “When the time is right, they are going to find me.”
“You have a plan?” Isobel asked. “To…kill them?”
Max did not reply.
“Are you planning revenge against the men who killed your family?” she asked. “Because if I were in your shoes, I suppose I would be thinking about doing exactly the same thing.”
“I don’t know how long until they will find me, Isobel,” Max said, twirling the ice in his glass, “but they will find me. I’ve made sure of that. And when they do, anyone I am close to will be at risk. I can’t put you in that position. You are the first woman since my wife who I’ve had feelings for. A part of me felt like it was dead. And then you came into my life and put the paddles on my chest, and shocked me back into life. But I can’t put you at risk, Isobel. So, this has to be goodbye.”
Max stood up from the table.
“Seriously? Goodbye. Just like that?” Isobel protested. “Max, it sounds like we might have something that’s worth fighting for, worth putting a little effort into. I’m sorry if you think it won’t work. I thought meeting you might be a chance for me to finally get away from—”
Isobel stopped herself, mid-sentence.
“Get away from what?” Max asked, looking down at the Scottish substitute teacher. “Another dangerous man?”
“I…I don’t know what to say, Max,” Isobel said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.
Max’s eye caught an odd sight on the horizon. “Do you see that?” he asked Isobel. Max pulled down his sunglasses and gestured out toward the bright turquoise waters of the Atlantic.
“Looks like a yacht,” Isobel said, lowering her own sunglasses as well and squinting. “Looks like a big yacht. What do they call that…a mega yacht, or somethin’ like that?”
“I’m sorry, Isobel,” Max said, dropping two twenty Euro notes on the table to pay for lunch and drinks. “But I’ve got to go.”
Max was torn. He needed to separate from Isobel so she wouldn’t get wrapped up in his precarious future. He didn’t know what was going on with her, what she was trying to tell him, but he knew that as long as she was close to him, she wouldn’t be safe.
“Will I see you again, Max?” Isobel asked. She took off her sunglasses and looked up at him with her sparkling blue-green eyes.
“I don’t know,” Max said, sounding distant.
Max bolted down the beach, running pell-mell toward the long white pier where his Cobia fishing boat was tied off. He sprinted the length of the dock, jumping down into the stern and firing up the twin outboards as quickly as possible. He cast off the bow and stern lines and pushed the throttle handles forward, and steered the boat out to open ocean, before leaving the helm and unlocking the center console door, grabbing out his big black duffel bag which had been secured inside.
Max dragged it over to the helm and steered the boat while digging through the bag for a pair of Nikon binoculars, which he slung around his neck by their strap. He motored the swift fishing boat toward the end of the Caravelle Peninsula, rounding the craggy easternmost point where he spotted the lighthouse.
Max throttled down to an idle and took off the binoculars’ lens caps. He peered through, focusing on the massive black and white yacht, which seemed to be making a beeline toward the ilets in Le Robert Bay.
Max pulled out his smartphone and called Josue.
“Yes, Boss?”
“Check the cams. Search the horizon. See a yacht coming in, a big one?” Max said urgently into the phone.
“A big yacht, you say?” Josue sounded dumbfounded. Virtually all of the big yachts that came to Martinique moored up on the Caribbean Sea side, near Fort-de-France, Saint-Pierre, Saint-Anne. It was extremely unusual to see a vessel of substantial size on the Atlantic side.
Max lifted his sunglasses and sealed the binoculars over his eyes. He centered his field of vision on the rear of the mega yacht and carefully zoomed out as much as he could. He twisted the focus ring on the binoculars until he could read the bright white letters on the back of the yacht. Snowy Lady.
“Yeah, I’ve got it, Boss,” Josue said, sounding uncharacteristically excited. “You want me to record and start surveillance.”
“Roger that, Josue,” Max said, and his lips formed a satisfied grin, even as something churned in his stomach. It wasn’t fear. It was more like nervous excitement. “It’s time, my friend. They’re here.”
Vivienne pressed her cork-heeled wedge into the gas pedal of her Citroen, driving the aged French car hard down the snaky road that stretched between the palm tree-lined rum plantation’s driveway and the N6 highway. The Citroen’s V6 produced a decent amount of horsepower, and Vivienne used all of it as she powered out of curves, flooring it on most of the long straight stretches of road.
She had taken tactical driving courses back in her days with the Gendarmerie Nationale, and she had enough experience behind the wheel to know that every car had its limits. Her training had also taught her that those limits were easily crossed. She did her best not to lose traction, or to dangerously overdrive the car into the corners. But as she drove, she rode the edge of that fine line between control and disaster.
Vivienne grabbed her phone out of her pocket and fumbled to find Max’s phone number. She knew she had programmed it into her contacts recently, that night she had stayed late, drinking punch with him and Josue. She nearly ran off the r
oad while looking at the bright little screen trying to find it. At last, she found the number and dialed. No service.
Vivienne knew that unless she caught sight of the two La Maison de Verre thugs before they reached the highway, she wouldn’t catch up to them before they set out after Max. She had to either warn him, or somehow stop them.
She shifted down into third and turned the wheel hard to the right. The carefully crated bottle of seventy-year-old rum from La Maison de Verre slid around on the passenger seat beside her with each twist and turn of the road. Vivienne cursed the bottle. That little turd sent me down into the cellars to distract me, so he could send his thugs to go beat the piss out of Max, she fumed to herself.
As she made speed toward the highway, the silver Citroen hurtled like a bullet past pedestrians, other cars, and surprised-looking motorists on motorbikes. She shot past serene villas and peaceful hotels spread out throughout the lush countryside.
The two brutes from the distillery would need to access Max’s ilet by boat. Vivienne knew the groundskeepers would likely be boarding theirs anywhere between La Vauclin and Le Robert; finding them would be virtually impossible. So the course Vivienne took was the most direct route to the private dock near Le Robert where she had secured her inflatable dinghy.
The drive would normally have taken about twenty minutes. Vivienne arrived at the boat dock twelve minutes later. She fumbled with the car keys to get the Citroen’s trunk open. A beat-up old softball bag filled half the trunk. As a teen Vivienne had used the bag to carry all of her sports gear: softball bats, a mitt, balls, a batting helmet. Now the faded black bag bulged with a lot of the equipment Vivienne used in her sometimes perilous work as a private investigator.
Vivienne threw the bat bag into the bow of her black inflatable and yanked a pull cord to fire up the rubber boat’s 40hp outboard. It took a few tries, but at last the motor growled to life with a small cloud of white smoke and a whiff of gassy exhaust. The determined private investigator untied the boat from the dock, twisted the throttle on the tiller, and headed out across the sparkling bay toward Max’s ilet.
The bow of the twelve-foot dinghy began to porpoise up and down a bit as it skimmed over the rough water of the bay. A windy day made for choppy conditions, but Vivienne threw caution to it and opened the throttle all the way, racing toward the ilet, which loomed ahead of her, looking like a big craggy rock overwhelmed by an overgrowth of lush vegetation.
It was impossible to know whether or not she could head off the ruffians from La Maison de Verre, but Vivienne was determined to make every effort possible. She couldn’t help but feel responsible for these thugs’ pursuit of Max, even if it had been his illicit business practices which had made him a target in the first place.
She tried to raise Max again by phone. Straight to voicemail. “Zut alors,” Vivienne grumbled.
She reached the rocky edge of the ilet, on the northern side of the island, opposite the long pier and boat dock. Vivienne knew she was outnumbered, and she fully intended to stack the deck in her favor, and use the art of surprise as her ally. She pulled the boat as far as she could onto the wet rocks, and then tossed her sports bag onto the shore.
With a quick tug, the bag’s zipper ripped open, and she removed a SWAT-style tactical body armor vest. She threw it over her head, and secured the hook and loop fasteners at her sides, then proceeded to pull on wool socks and hastily laced up a pair of Bates desert combat boots.
Vivienne grabbed out the Mossberg twelve-gauge from inside the bat bag and made sure it was loaded with shells. She liked the 590A1 because the twenty-inch barrel was thicker than Mossberg’s standard barrels—it made a good striking weapon when push came to shove—and the nine-shot capacity gave her an extra measure of comfort. The 590A1 had also passed the U.S. military’s torture tests, which proved it could endure the worst conditions on earth and keep firing shot after shot.
Vivienne retrieved a fifty-shot bandolier from the bag, each loop filled from a variety of different shotgun shells, mostly 00 buckshot for defensive purposes, but also some rifled slugs, and a couple of different sizes of birdshot for other things, like blowing off door hinges.
She slung the bandolier over her shoulder and across her chest like the most deadly pageant sash in the world. Then she nimbly tied her long, curly black hair in a high ponytail, and slipped on a pair of polarized shooting glasses. Vivienne was ready for action, and God help anyone foolish enough to stand against her.
She pumped a round into the chamber and carried the weapon at the low-ready position, with the barrel aiming toward the ground several feet in front of her. She stepped with agility through the dense foliage of the ilet; she’d done it before when she had been surveilling Max and Josue, and it had been pitch dark then.
Now, facing a potential threat, Vivienne kept her eyes moving, side to side as she advanced. After finding the large grassy clearing behind Max’s villa deserted, except for a large piled of crushed sugarcane, she quickly made for the rear corner of the building.
Her adrenaline was jacked, and Vivienne steadied her breathing to keep herself calm. Ever since police training she had loved the feel of the twelve gauge in her hands. It gave her a greater feeling of power than a pistol, and Vivienne felt she had more control and patterning options as well.
Presently, she spotted an unfamiliar boat—a beat-up 1930’s era black fishing boat—tied up at the boat dock beside Max’s Cobia fishing boat. Vivienne knew that Max did not like company on his island, and she guessed the visitor who had arrived in the old boat was likely an uninvited guest.
She tried the doorknob on the kitchen door at the rear of the villa. It turned, and she crept inside, crouching low and holding her shotgun at the ready. She cleared the kitchen and moved down the hall, sweeping left and right to clear each room along the way. When she had swept the entire ground floor, finding the place as desolate as the yard, Vivienne slowly made her way upstairs. She cleared every room on the second level before exhaling a sharp breath.
“Where the hell are they?” she whispered to herself.
Vivienne parted the curtains of the second floor master suite and peered out onto the grassy back yard with the dry cane pile. She spotted the craggy opening of Max’s subterranean distillery, the place where his large still and barrels of aging rum were located. The dark hole in the middle of a wide swath of verdant, ankle-high grass looked like a gaping mouth opened up in the earth. She wondered if Max and Josue were down there.
The shadowy cavern entrance suddenly flashed bright white-orange, and Vivienne heard the distinct crack-crack of repeated gunfire. She bolted from the room and down the staircase as fast as she could without tripping.
Vivienne rushed back through the kitchen, kicked open the door, and rushed out into the yard. Her pulse raced as she considered what she might find in the cavern, but she did not hesitate.
She reached the edge of the cavern mouth and shouldered the Mossberg, her finger covering the trigger. It was dark, and Vivienne switched on the light on the shotgun’s foregrip.
From the side of the cave’s opening, Vivienne looked down into the shadowy depths of the underground distillery. She spotted a hulking form lying flat on his back on the cavern floor. As she took in the scene, Vivienne realized the limbs of another person wrapped around the first guy in some sort of martial arts grappling hold.
With a gasp, Vivienne felt something clench around her own throat. With a painful jerk, she felt herself tugged backward. She struggled, throwing elbows into ribs, stomping heels toward insteps. She slipped free from her assailant’s grasp just long enough to see the seven-inch blade of a military-style bayonet stabbing down toward her chest.
Vivienne used her arm to deflect the strike, which sliced across the front of her vest. Another lightning-quick strike of the blade flashed. She blocked again. This one glanced off her side, slicing through the straps of her vest, and cutting her skin over her ribs.
“Aaah!” she shrieked from the shock
of it, more than the pain, which she hardly felt.
The third knife strike was the last straw. Vivienne caught the attacker’s wrist and twisted it, bending the six-foot-tall guy over at the waist, and forcing his face down toward the ground. She followed the defensive move by striking the man hard on the right side of his face with bone-crunching force from her fist. She brought her knee hard up into his chest and stomach over and over again, until he flopped onto the ground, gasping for breath.
Vivienne’s attacker was the younger of the two groundskeepers she had seen at the distillery. It surprised her that he had escalated the violence to lethal force so quickly. She cursed herself for letting her guard down. But the guy was down.
Six thick plastic zip ties hung from her vest, and Vivienne used one to tie the guy’s hands behind his back. She bound the guy’s ankles as his struggled gasps for breaths turned into deep, rhythmic breathing. Then she turned her attention toward the dark cavern, where she had heard the sound of hideous grunting and the gunshots from the darkness below.
Vivienne took a step down the wooden staircase to the cavern floor below and paused. She was almost afraid of what she would find. The lights suddenly flashed on, and the bold private investigator gasped.
“Boat coming, Boss,” Josue shouted, his voice echoing down the main hallway of the villa to Max’s accounting office. Max sat at his desk with a towel laid out across the hodgepodge of papers which normally covered the surface. On the towel lay all the parts of his field stripped Smith & Wesson 6906 pistol, like all the pieces of a very dangerous puzzle. Max used a brass brush to carefully clean the barrel of fouling. “Boat comin’ in hot,” Josue added.
The slight stress in the Haitian’s voice told Max that he took the matter seriously. They did not get visitors on the ilet; not uninvited ones anyhow. And that made Max feel stress as well.