Rising Storm: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 11)

by Wayne Stinnett

  I eased my posture a little, took a step closer, and put an arm around her shoulders, gently urging her to walk with me to the Hopper. Now wasn’t the time to tell her that one of the men she’d killed on that mountain in Mexico was a deep-cover CIA asset.

  “I’m not saying I would have done it any differently had I been in your shoes. If you want, we can talk about it over dinner—dissect it any way you feel like.”

  I felt the tension drain from her body.

  “Yeah,” she said. “We can do that.”

  “And anything else you want to get off your chest.”

  “Which you got a good look at last night,” she said, playfully jabbing an elbow in my ribs. “Like what you saw?”

  I stopped, and Charity skipped ahead of me to untie the forward dock line from the pontoon. I could only shake my head and wonder what the hell this next night would bring.

  While Charity held the stern dock line, still looped around the pontoon cleat and tied to the one on the dock, I climbed in and went through the pre-flight, walked the props, and then started the big radial engine. As soon as it caught, Charity shoved the forward pontoon away from the dock and flicked the stern line over the pontoon cleat, releasing it.

  Idling Island Hopper away from the pier, I tuned the radio to the automated information service to check weather, before advising my intent to make a water takeoff and giving my position over the Unicom frequency. Hearing no response from traffic in the area, I pushed the throttle forward. Island Hopper climbed up on top of the water, skimming the glassy surface smoothly, then her wings gained sufficient lift and she climbed effortlessly into the sky.

  Leveling off at fifteen hundred feet, I angled southeast then followed the long black ribbon of the Overseas Highway. A straight line would be faster, but if I’m not in a hurry, I just like to take the scenic route.

  I grinned. The journey is the destination, Charity’d said.

  I can get a decent read on most men from the get-go, but it’s not the same with women. They’ve confused me since puberty and to this day, I continue to get crossed signals.

  It was probably more so with Charity. She’d been through a lot in her thirty-some years and those things had left a mark.

  During our time aboard the Revenge, she’d confided in me about her past. Her mother had abandoned her and her father when Charity was young. Then her father and uncle had both passed away, leaving her without family when she was still in her twenties. She’d had more than one toxic relationship with men, one of whom had been physically abusive. Held prisoner by the Taliban, she’d been tortured, raped, and sodomized. The fact that she’d lived through it was a miracle.

  As an operator, she was very capable—even intimidating at times. She was superbly fit and had no bad habits or vices that I knew of. Having studied several kinds of martial arts since she was a girl, she was a great hand-to-hand fighter, and she’d later trained with the Israeli Defense Force in their combat fighting technique, Krav Maga. She’d gone on to teach the technique to Deuce’s team, including myself.

  I held no illusions as to the outcome of a full-on fight between the two of us: she’d mop the floor with my ass. I also had no doubt about her abilities with a handgun or rifle; I’d helped train her.

  In the past, I’d found her to be a little aloof, always on the job, and dead serious about everything. This new Charity was different, though. She seemed much more casual and self-aware, and then suddenly broody. She could even be innocent and flirty at times, and unashamedly provocative at others.

  But I had to always keep in mind that she was emotionally damaged. I would have to be very careful around her. A repeat of last night could lead to disaster.

  I hung up the headset for a minute to use the phone. I knew Stockwell was still in DC, and he answered immediately.

  “Hey, Colonel,” I shouted into the phone. “I’m flying up to Miami to see someone, and I just saw a boat that looks a lot like what you described Charity was sailing. Alden design with a cutter rig, dark blue hull and sails?”

  “Yeah, that fits,” he replied. “Decks are all teak, if that helps. Where is she?”

  “Well, I couldn’t tell what kind of wood, but it was a planked deck. I’m over the Atlantic side of Long Key. Any idea if it might be her?”

  “It’s possible,” Stockwell answered. I could hear the excitement in his voice. “If she left when she said, I’d think she’d be here by now. But she might have stopped a few nights along the way for weather.”

  “No word from her?” I asked, still shouting. “You’re tracking her boat, right?”

  “She never turns her phone on, and hasn’t updated our email portal since that last contact. Her sat-phone and laptop are the only way we have of tracking her location. Neither has been activated since our last contact.”

  I told him it was worth a shot, and I’d tell Rusty and a few others to keep their eyes open, then said goodbye and powered the phone off. I waited a few minutes, then dug my new phone out and called the only number in the contact list. Charity answered after a few rings.

  “I don’t think your boat has any kind of tracking device on board,” I told her. “He did say that he could track you through your phone or laptop, but you rarely turn them on.”

  “How did he sound? Do you think he was being truthful?

  I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I think so. He actually sounded excited that the boat I described might be yours.”

  “Thanks, Jesse. Hope you don’t mind, but I brought Finn out fishing with me. Just to have someone to talk to.”

  “He’s a good listener,” I said, grinning. “Just don’t follow any advice he gives you.”

  She laughed. “I won’t. Be careful up there. Bye.”

  I ended the call, turned the phone off, and donned my headset again. I had no idea what I’d be looking for when I got to Miami. I just wanted to see the guy, and maybe get some idea of what kind of person he was.

  Taking my old phone out, I turned it back on and stuck it in my pocket. I’d resisted, but was now becoming a slave to the little box of electronic wizardry. I flew farther out over the water, and as I approached Key Largo I contacted Miami Approach Control for landing instructions. They put me in the pattern, two miles behind a twin-engine commuter. I banked west on the downwind leg.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, startling me. I fished it out and looked at the screen. I had a text message from Devon.

  Slow day. Want to get lunch?

  Fumbling with the thing one-handed, I managed to type the word Flying, and sent it.

  It vibrated again, almost immediately. Where?

  Miami.

  Call me when you land, came the instant reply.

  I replied with just the letters OK. I don’t see how people can type a message so fast on those things. For that matter, it makes no sense to me why, if a person held a telephone in their hand and wanted to convey an idea to someone, they wouldn’t just call and talk to them. Instead, a hundred billion alphabet streams fly through the airwaves every day.

  Following the Cessna in the pattern was uneventful. I thought about why Charity would be suspicious of Stockwell. There was no doubt that Victor Pitt was a paranoid man, always looking over his shoulder. Whether he had reason to or not, didn’t make him any less suspicious of others. If Charity had been spending time with him, some of his paranoia might have rubbed off, but I had no idea what communications might have gone back and forth between her and Stockwell. She might have picked up something from what he’d said that caused her to not trust him.

  Once I had the Hopper on the ground and had taxied to a parking area, I shut down the engine and went through my post-flight checklist. Walking toward the general aviation terminal, I remembered my promise to call Devon.

  “I thought you hated Miami,” she said, by way of hello.

  “I do,” I replied. “I’m working on a case with Deuce.”

  There was silence on the other end for a second. “Is it danger
ous?”

  “That’s the reason I came up here. To find out.” Then, to change the subject, I asked, “Why are you bored?”

  “The leads we got yesterday didn’t pan out,” she said. “We’re dead in the water again. When will you be home?”

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said, genuinely concerned. Devon took her work very seriously—even personally—at times. “I’m not planning to spend the night and should make it back to the island by dark. I just touched down and I’m heading into the terminal to arrange fuel.”

  “Okay, I’ll let you go.”

  “I’ll give you a call when I get home,” I said, then told her goodbye and ended the call.

  As I walked through the FBO terminal, it suddenly struck me as odd that Devon hadn’t asked anything more about Charity. I went to the Signature Flight Support desk and gave them my debit card to pay for fueling the Hopper. After running it, the girl at the desk handed it back and I continued outside. Like most fixed-base operators, they would take care of the fueling and charge the fuel to my card, along with a small service fee.

  There was a single cab waiting outside the general aviation terminal. I opened the door and got in the back seat. “Courtyard on Bayshore,” I said to the driver, a short, bald, white man.

  “No luggage?”

  “Private aircraft,” I replied. “With luck, I’ll just be in town for a couple of hours.”

  He turned on the meter and drove out of the passenger pickup area. Once off airport property, he turned south on 42nd Avenue and then got on Highway 41 east and State Road 9 south into Coconut Grove. Traffic was light, but it was still a lot more people than I was used to seeing in a month or more. I never set out to be a hermit, but it did seem as if leaving my island was the same as visiting another country now.

  When the driver pulled under the portico of the hotel lobby, I still had no plan, other than putting eyeballs on the guy. I got out of the car and took my wallet out to pay the driver. The phone in my pocket began to vibrate against my leg again. I’ve gotten sort of used to the idea of carrying the damned thing around, but when it does that it still startles me. I paid the driver and pulled my phone out. It was Tony.

  “Thought that was you,” he said, when I answered.

  Looking all around, I didn’t see him. “Where are you?”

  “In the bar,” he replied.

  I ended the call and walked into the lobby area. The lounge was just off to the right, and I stepped into the dimly lit room. It was done in dark wood, with rich black and red accents. Indirect lighting above and below the L-shaped bar provided the staff enough light to work and low candlelight illuminated individual tables. With dark wood floors, the tabletops seemed to float. It was a lot more upscale than most bars I’ve been in. I didn’t like it.

  I spotted Tony sitting at the end of the bar and walked over. “Don’t tell me you’ve been here all night,” I said, taking the stool beside him.

  The bartender approached and I asked for a Red Stripe. In seconds the bottle was in front of me, the cap disappearing along with the bottle opener I never saw.

  “Nah,” Tony said, after the bartender retreated to his newspaper at the other end of the bar. “Just got here a little bit ago myself. Deuce said that anything you’re involved in that gets you to fly that old plane up to Miami, we’d better be on top of, too. Your subject’s staying in room nine-twelve.”

  “How the hell did you find that out?”

  “Overheard him talking to the bartender last night,” Tony replied, lifting his glass to his lips.

  I could tell he wasn’t really drinking from the glass, just pretending to. “Where are you dumping the booze?” I asked, in a low voice.

  “Palm tree,” he replied. “The night shift bartender was nice enough to make a phone call for your subject at about twenty-two hundred last night. Half an hour later, two very expensive-looking call girls arrived and went up to his room.”

  “He’s burning through a lot of money,” I said.

  “Carmichael told me that he’d done the same thing in the Caymans and Ecuador, recently. Hired prostitutes through a bartender.”

  “He told you?”

  “Yeah,” Tony replied, deftly slipping his drink below the bar and pouring a little into the pot the palm tree was planted in. “Weird, huh?”

  “Did he to tell you how recently he was in Ecuador?”

  “Said he was in the Caymans just a couple of days ago, and in Ecuador a couple of months ago.”

  “Have you seen him yet today?” I asked, taking a long pull from my bottle. I wasn’t planning to stay long enough for more than one beer, so the palm tree wasn’t going to enjoy a boilermaker.

  “He’s out by the pool,” Tony replied, nodding toward the far end of the bar. Through the windows, I could see a large pool deck. “He’s buying drinks for anyone in a bikini.”

  There were quite a few people outside. “Which one is Carmichael?”

  “The guy that looks out of place,” Tony said. “Ball cap and sunglasses.”

  I spotted him. He was sitting with a group of people, mostly women, and mostly in their twenties. One or two didn’t even appear to be that old, but I’m lousy at estimating a woman’s age.

  Tony was right. The people around Carmichael were young, fit, attractive, and dressed for the pool, making him stick out like a sore thumb. He seemed much older, though I’d have guessed him at mid-thirties. And he wore jeans, a polo-shirt, and the ball cap.

  He didn’t look like a big guy; in fact, he could have stood to lose a few pounds. His arms and face were about half as tan as the hard, flat bellies surrounding him, but when he reached for a beer, his upper arm flashed a dazzling white. His footwear gave him away, though. Worn boat shoes. He was a man who spent a lot of time—and was probably at home—on the water. Not a common trait among career soldiers.

  “I need to get closer, Tony.”

  “Not a chance,” he said, not taking his eyes off a sports talk show on the TV at the far end of the bar. “You’d look even more out of place out there than him. And he already knows me.”

  It crossed my mind that it might have been a good idea to have had Charity come with me. “How late did you stay here last night?”

  “I left after the call girls, about oh-one,” Tony replied. “They were with him for an hour, almost to the minute.”

  “Two hookers?” I asked.

  “Every man’s fantasy,” Tony replied. “I’ve been watching him long enough to know that he likes them young. The one sitting closest to him came out on the pool deck with him.”

  I spotted the girl he was talking about. She and Carmichael leaned in to whisper something whenever one of the bikinis pranced close to them. “I wish I could hear what they’re talking about.”

  “Deuce has Chyrel on the way. She’s got some of her little gizmos, of course.”

  “What’s she supposed to do? Sneak into his room?”

  “You’ll see,” Tony said, his high wattage smile making his skin look even blacker.

  The bartender glanced up from his paper, then set it aside. Smiling, he rose quickly from his stool and moved toward the center of the bar. I glanced to my left and saw a blond woman with big dark sunglasses entering the bar. She wore an orange bikini top with a matching sarong around her waist that opened in front, exposing her left leg with every step. Her lightweight white blouse was completely unbuttoned, and she had a large bag over her right shoulder.

  She smiled at the bartender as she walked toward me. It wasn’t until she stopped at the corner of the bar that I realized it was Chyrel. She ordered a Coke, and when the bartender went to the other end of the bar to get it, she turned toward me.

  “What are you staring at?” she whispered, her Alabama accent dripping with Confederate jasmine.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, after the bartender left her drink and retreated to his newspaper.

  “Relax, Jesse. Deuce said he wanted a listening device close to a redneck han
ging out by the pool.” She looked out over the deck, surveying the people there. “Ball cap and jeans, right?”

  “That’s our man,” Tony said.

  “Ha, those bimbos don’t stand a chance,” she said, sliding a small black case toward me. Then she took her Coke and walked slowly toward the door.

  Chyrel had always seemed the nerdy type, but outgoing and very friendly. Seeing so much of her at one time, I realized there was more to her than first met the eye. She paused at the door to put her sunglasses back on, then pushed it open and strode out into the sunlight, like a supermodel on a catwalk.

  Outside, she moved slowly and seductively around the end of the pool. Nearly every man out there turned to look at her, even an obviously gay couple. She was right; most of the women fawning over Carmichael and his money were younger than Chyrel by eight or ten years, and their inexperience showed in the way they moved and acted.

  Chyrel slowly walked around the pool, pretending to check the direction of the sun, before settling on a chaise lounge that was ten feet from Carmichael and his entourage. Satisfied that the chair provided a direct exposure to the bright sun, she placed her bag next to it, and shrugged out of her shirt.

  Carmichael made no effort to hide the fact that he’d noticed her, and stared as he waved the poolside waiter over. He said something to the young man, who nodded and went over to where Chyrel was removing her wrap.

  I picked up the little box she’d given me and opened it. Inside were two earwigs. I took one and slid the box to Tony, then turned the device on and put in in my ear. The miniature transceivers were very small and flesh-colored, so they were barely noticeable, especially now that my hair was down over my ears.

  “Give the gentleman my thanks,” I heard Chyrel say. “But I already have a Coke, and one is all I allow myself.” With that, she sat on the lounge chair and turned, stretching her legs out slowly as she lay back.

  The waiter went back to Carmichael and said something to him, then continued to the bar to fill other orders. Carmichael pulled his shades down his nose and looked over them at Chyrel, who was ignoring him completely.