Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7)

by Wayne Stinnett

  The same old guy was at the desk when Byers stepped inside, dripping wet. Rising up on his toes to the holes in the glass, he said, “Lost my key, man. Do you have another one?”

  The old man looked at him, clearly irritated. “That’ll be ten bucks for a duplicate key.”

  Peeling one of the twenties off the roll of bills he held below the counter, Byers slipped it under the glass. A moment later, the man shoved a ten and another key back to him. “Lose that one and there ain’t no more.”

  In his room minutes later, Byers took his stash from under the mattress and fired up a decent-sized rock, then sat down on the edge of the bed. The crack seemed to settle his nerves enough that he was able to get the big gun out of his pants without shooting himself. He admired the shiny gun, which looked even larger in his small hands. Along the side of the barrel was engraved Colt Python .357 Magnum Ctg.

  Guns were foreign to Byers, but he knew what the .357 meant. The barrel was long, he guessed it to be six inches at least, with a rail on the top that ran the length of it. He figured out how to release the cylinder and turned it, noting that two of the cartridges had tiny dimples in the center.

  He pulled them out and saw there was no bullet in either. He dropped the empty cases in the trash can and pulled one of the others out, marveling at its size and weight. Over an inch and a half long, it was much larger than he’d expected. He slid the cartridge back in and closed the cylinder. Looking closer, he saw that each cartridge housing in the cylinder had a small picture engraved in it. Horses, cows, cowboy hats and other redneck stuff.

  Placing the gun on the table, Byers took the wad of cash out of his pocket and counted it, his grin growing broader with each bill. He now had a little over two thousand dollars in cash, plus his coke stash that he was sure he could sell. Somewhere. Anywhere other than here.

  Figuring he was at least safe in the motel room, he decided to take a nap, then catch a bus north, away from Key West.

  The rain came down in sheets as the ambulance crews loaded the bodies of the five dead men. One ambulance had already left with a middle-aged couple from Indiana. They weren’t badly hurt, a flesh wound in the woman’s arm, and a shoulder wound that went through cleanly for her husband.

  Welcome to Key Weird, I thought. Remember to send a post card home.

  “He’ll come up with something,” Scott said, standing next to me and Pescador. Travis was still talking to one of the sheriff’s investigators, who’d arrived ten minutes after the first patrol cars.

  “Yeah,” Germ said, standing next to Scott in the driving rain. “Travis is a good man. Pissed me off, when I first heard about that whole Charity thing, but I’m betting it came from higher up.”

  So we stood waiting, as the rain poured down on us and the wind whipped at our clothes. Three Marines and a water dog. We could easily have taken a few steps to the left to stand under the palm tree, shielding ourselves from some of the rain. But clothes dry and the human body is waterproof, so we waited in the rain.

  Finally, Travis and the investigator, clad in a rain slicker, walked over toward us. “This is Lieutenant Morgan, from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. He has a couple of questions, but I’ve already explained that he’ll get only one of your names.”

  Travis winked as the investigator stepped forward. “Which of you is the DEA agent?”

  Scott stepped forward and produced a sealed plastic bag from his front pocket. Inside it, there was an open wallet with his credentials. “Special Agent Scott Grayson, Lieutenant. Drug Enforcement.”

  The lieutenant looked closely at the ID and at Scott’s face. “You’re operating here without notifying the sheriff, Agent Grayson.”

  “Special Agent Grayson,” Scott corrected him. “Nothing to notify. Simple joint surveillance between two federal agencies. The dead guys obviously wanted it to be something more.”

  The lieutenant glared menacingly at Scott. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, balding, and already losing the battle of the bulge. Under normal circumstances, he might have pulled off the threatening cop look, but with his hair drenched and hanging over his forehead, he just looked tired.

  “Did you identify yourselves to the suspects?”

  Scott took a slow step toward the investigator, his broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms a sharp contrast to the lieutenant, though they were about the same age.

  “Lieutenant, I’ve been in law enforcement as long as you, probably longer. Of course, I did. Idiots like these don’t react like law-abiding citizens and because of that, they’re dead. No sweat off my balls.”

  The lieutenant held Scott’s gaze for a moment, then looked at me and Germ. Finally he turned to Travis. “Director Stockwell, y’all are free to go. The sheriff’s office would like to get a heads-up any time another agency is investigating something here in Monroe County. Just as a professional courtesy.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Lieutenant Morgan stomped off toward the growing throng of people, now joined by the lights and camera of a news crew.

  Travis looked at Scott and said, “Good job. Can we get in out of the rain?”

  Pescador rose and shook the water out of his fur, then leaped across the gunwale into the cockpit. Germ and Travis boarded and, looking over my shoulder at Scott as I stepped down to the deck, I said, “DEA?”

  “Or FBI, CIA, FDLE, hell, I carry a whole damned Scrabble board in my pockets now.”

  Inside, Travis switched on the salon lights. “At least one person on any mission now carries multiple IDs, courtesy of Homeland Security. Makes it easier to smooth things over with the local law enforcement.”

  “Two got away,” I said after grabbing some towels from the head and passing them around. I began setting up the coffeemaker.

  “Not for long,” Travis responded. “Only one way on or off the island. Local and county law enforcement will be checking anyone leaving.”

  “Unless they steal a boat,” Germ said, echoing my thoughts.

  “A cowboy and a Pittsburgh drug dealer? Doubtful. At any rate, I think our new friend doesn’t have anything to worry about as far as GT Bradley is concerned. If he does get away, he’ll head home as fast as he can and be picked up there.”

  “Then we’re done here?” I asked.

  “I’d say so.”

  “Then let’s get the hell outta here. You want to catch a cab home or ride back and spend the night on the island?”

  “I’ll get the dock lines,” Travis said, looking at his watch. “We’ll be there before sunrise.”

  Up on the bridge, I watched while Travis and Germ untied the lines. Scott sat on the port bench, watching me. “You’re wanting to stay gone, aren’t you?”

  The rain had quit and as I watched the moon come out from behind the scudding clouds, I thought about it for just a moment.

  “It used to be nice here, back when I was a kid. It’s still mostly nice up in Big Pine and Marathon. But it’s getting worse, Scott. I find myself wanting more and more to do nothing but fish, dive, eat good food with good friends and, well, just live.”

  “I hear ya, Gunny,” Scott said with a low sigh. “Sometimes, I’m just tired of it all, man. And you’ve been doing this for what? Almost thirty years?”

  “Twenty-eight years, a month, and twenty-two days.”

  “You deserve a rest,” he said with another sigh.

  I did deserve a rest. When I came down here after retiring from the Corps, all I wanted to do was get drunk, chase women, fish and dive, and eat and sleep. Not necessarily in that order. Things happened that I couldn’t ignore, things that spiraled out of control. Friends got hurt, terrorists changed our way of life, and I lost my wife. Somewhere along the line, I’d also lost my direction.

  I’d grasped onto Deuce’s team like it was a lifeline. I found friends among their tight-knit community, the camaraderie of warriors. More bad things happened and more friends were hurt. It just didn’t seem to make much difference what I did about it. Now, I had my daughter
s back in my life, a good woman that I loved, and my little island to escape to.

  To hell with the rest of the world, I thought and started the engines.

  Minutes later, the Revenge slowly idled away from the dock in the moonlight, once more leaving carnage in my wake. In the channel, I checked the radar and turned north, bringing the big boat up on plane, going through the process like an automaton.

  The clouds were nearly gone and stars now filled the sky as we made the turn to the northeast and home, but it didn’t have the same effect it usually does. Still, it was beautiful, and in the back of my mind the same three words scrambled for purchase, trying to fight the oncoming rush of island time. No loose ends.

  Pescador’s barking woke me. From the angle of the sunlight streaming through the open window, I could tell it was already midmorning. Knowing that Michal and Coral would be in my little house, the four of us had gone straight to the eastern bunkhouse when we returned last night. The rain had cooled things off a lot and I slept comfortably, not losing a single wink for the events of the night before.

  Rising from my bunk, I saw Travis just starting to stir, but Scott and Germ were already up and gone. “I think we’re getting old, Colonel.”

  Travis pulled on a clean shirt from his go-bag and stood up. “Speak for yourself, Jarhead. My rank allows me to start the day later.” He stretched and, hearing more than one vertebrae pop, we both laughed. “I’ll go to the other bunkhouse and get Chyrel on vid-comm to find out the latest news.”

  I rose and went bare-chested to the pier out back. The sudden shock of the cool Gulf water after last night’s storm broke through the fog in my brain in half a heartbeat and I soon lost myself in the rhythm of the swim for the next thirty minutes.

  When I finally got back to the pier, Coral was waiting with a towel. “Your friends said to talk to you or your first mate, but I can’t find him. What happened last night?”

  I took the towel from her and rubbed my face and hair vigorously. “Have you talked to your aunt?”

  “Yeah, Charlie let me use her phone and showed me where I could get a signal. Aunt Dawn said there was a shooting last night in Key West. The news hasn’t confirmed anything, but the coconut telegraph says that four men were killed.”

  “Five,” I replied. “Bradley’s bodyguard, and four of five redneck wannabe-mercenaries Bradley hired. He, the little man, and one of the cowboys got away.”

  “Little man?”

  “The guy who stole Michal’s wallet in Miami. Somehow, Bradley was tracking Michal’s credit card usage, but it was the pickpocket they were following. He and Michal both just happened to end up in Key West and now the pickpocket’s joined up with Bradley.”

  “So what happens now?”

  I turned, leaned on the rail and watched as a flock of pelicans flew in a tight formation out over the Contents, peeling off and diving one by one on the baitfish in a narrow channel between two islands. Coral leaned on the rail next to me and waited.

  “Now, I suppose you two go on with whatever life it is you choose,” I said. “Bradley will be caught either trying to get out of Key West, or when he gets to Pittsburgh.”

  She stared off to the far horizon for a moment, then looked down into the water below the pier. “Five men dead. That’s not what we wanted to happen.”

  Taking her by the shoulders, I turned her toward me. “None of that’s on you, kid. Those men made a conscious decision to follow the life that they chose. If people like that are lucky, they spend half their life in prison. If not, they spend the rest of it just being dead. What you need to ask yourself is this. Is that young man worth it?”

  She smiled a little, but there was moisture in her eyes. “Aunt Dawn was right about you. She said you had a reputation for ending problems before they started, then rationalizing what happened in a way that makes perfect sense.”

  “I barely even know your aunt.”

  “Yeah, she said that too. But down island, you’re pretty well known as a problem solver.” We both turned toward the island and could see Michal and the Trents’ kids throwing a ball to one another in the clearing, Pescador bounding after it when little Patty dropped it. “I think Michal’s worth it. Deep down, he’s a good man. Aunt Dawn told me weeks ago that he would arrive in my life soon and she thinks he’s worthy, too.”

  “If he keeps on the right side of the line,” I said.

  She turned to me, eyes now blazing defiantly. “Because of the drugs? We threw the coke into the bight. He’s done with that.”

  “And the pot?”

  “Everyone smokes weed, even Aunt Dawn on occasion. That’s no big deal.”

  I looked at her, surprised. I’d known only a handful of people who ever smoked marijuana and they were all young people, like Michal, Coral, and Jimmy. “Your aunt does?”

  “That surprises you?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Not often and don’t tell her I told you.”

  Travis stepped out of the shade of the gumbo limbo next to the western bunkhouse and motioned to me. “Excuse me,” I said. “Make yourself at home here until we’re sure it’s safe to go back down island. We’re having a sort of party here later. Y’all are welcome to stay.”

  I trotted after Travis and followed him around to the far side of the west bunkhouse and into Chyrel’s little field office there. The two bunkhouses had originally been built identical, but Carl remodeled this one. It now has a desk to accommodate Chyrel’s computers and bunks for up to four women, separated from the rest of the bunkhouse, where the men from Deuce’s team stay from time to time, as needed.

  Once inside, Travis closed the door. “Chyrel hacked into the local PD and sheriff’s computers. None of the three men who escaped last night have been apprehended. And there was a report of a stolen boat sometime overnight.”

  “What kind of boat?”

  “An eighteen-foot Mako center-console. The owner said it had less than half a tank of gas on board.”

  “They couldn’t make it more than fifteen or twenty miles without stopping for gas somewhere.”

  Travis nodded. “Word went out from the marina the boat was stolen from to every other marina in the Keys. If they buy gas anywhere, it’ll be reported.”

  “Local cops have more roadblocks up, besides the Stock Island Bridge?”

  “Yeah, but not until after the theft was reported.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Always reactive, never proactive. They could be all the way to Daytona by now. All they had to do was get past Stock Island in the boat and then steal a car. What about the five dead guys?”

  Travis went to Chyrel’s desk and picked up a notepad. “Erik Lowery, age thirty, resides in Pittsburgh. Known bagman and bodyguard for Gerald Tremont Bradley. Did a few years in Attica, up in New York. The other four are from the Okeechobee area. Small-time hoods, but well known to the authorities in Hendry, Glades, Palm Beach, and Dade counties.”

  I looked at the list of names, but none were familiar. “Let me call someone I know up there. See if he has any idea who the black cowboy is that these guys were with.”

  Travis tore the page off and handed it to me. “Your daughter and her family are coming down today?”

  “Yeah, I’m picking them up at the Anchor at noon. You staying for the cookout?”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “Unless you prefer the Wooden Spoon.”

  “Sure,” he replied. “Thanks.”

  Aboard the Revenge, I used the sat-phone and called a friend in LaBelle, just west of Lake Okeechobee. He answered on the first ring.

  “Figured you’d be calling, Kemosabe,” Billy Rainwater said by way of answering the phone. Billy and I went to school together, though he was a couple of years behind me, and later served in the Corps together. His dad was one of the last of the Calusa, the original people that had inhabited South Florida. His mom was Seminole. I occasionally buy guns and a few other toys from him.

  “What do you mean you knew I’d
be calling? You don’t even know this number.”

  “You’re looking for a black cracker name of Austin Brown, originally from Clewiston. He called me less than an hour ago for help. I figured you’d find out who his buddies were and call me.”

  “He called you for help?”

  “Said he and the guy he was working for needed guns and off-road transportation. When he mentioned the name of your boat, I cut him off and told him he was on his own and better get shed of the guy he was with, muy pronto.”

  “He say where they were?”

  “Nope, and I didn’t ask. He ain’t a bad guy, Jesse. Just has some redneck, trailer-trash friends. Or had some, anyway. The average IQ in Naranja went up a bit after last night. That’s where Brown lives now, owns a gun shop down there. I could tell he was on a payphone, though, and near water. Heard cars going by on the highway and gulls crying.”

  “He say how many people he was with?”

  “Nope, but the way he talked it sounded like just him and the one guy he was working for. I won’t even ask what happened down there, Kemosabe. His white trash buddies got shot to shit and you’re involved. That’s enough for me to know they probably deserved it.”

  “Anything else you can tell me about him?”

  “He’s smart. Way smarter than he lets on. He knows me and knows if I’m warning him away, the guy he’s working for is like kryptonite to Superman. As soon as the opportunity presents itself, he’ll ditch the guy he’s running with. Odds are he’s traveling solo already. His wife’s name’s Mary-Beth, a white woman. The two of ’em run his gun store on Old Dixie Highway, near Biscayne Drive. Mean woman.”

  “Thanks, Billy. I appreciate it. If he calls you back, see if you can find out where the other guy is. I’m only interested in that guy, so long as your friend keeps his ass up there on the mainland.”

  “Never said he was a friend. Just a business associate.”

  I ended the call and went back out to where Carl, Germ, and Scott were working in the garden. “Shouldn’t you be headed up to get your daughter?” Carl asked.