Chasing the Son

by Bob Mayer

  “He’s here already,” Thomas said.

  “I can still see,” Mrs. Jenrette said, which she knew wasn’t fair. But today had been a day of revelations and she was feeling her years.

  Thomas ignored her. “And he has soldiers.”

  “Of course. He never intended to negotiate or share.”

  Mrs. Jenrette’s yacht pulled into position on the other side of the old pier from Preston Gregory’s. He held the higher ground from the open bridge of his boat. They were only fifteen feet apart, the width of the pier separating them.

  “Welcome, Mrs. Jenrette,” Preston called out. “It is nice to finally meet face to face. I mean, we have met, but only briefly, and you were always too busy to speak with me.”

  “Does that hurt your feelings?” Mrs. Jenrette called out in a surprisingly clear voice.

  “My feelings don’t get hurt,” Preston said. “I’m a professional.”

  “Professional what?” Mrs. Jenrette asked.

  But Preston was looking past her. “Who is the old man with you?”

  “A friend,” Mrs. Jenrette said.

  “Which do you want first?” Preston called out. “The deal for Sea Breeze or your son’s killer?”

  “That’s not what we agreed on,” Mrs. Jenrettesaid.

  “Things change,” Preston said. He gestured and Pappano and one of his men pushed Doc Cleary and Harry Brannigan out of a hatch and onto the bridge next to him.

  “I believe all we need now is to get the paperwork for Bloody Point—“ he gestured out toward the gold course, which had seen better days. The greens were over-grown with weeds, the sand traps littered with leaves and other debris. Preston checked his watch. “I suspect our visitors who are bringing it will be punctual.”

  “Where is Charles Rigney?” Mrs. Preston asked.

  Preston shrugged. “No idea.” He looked to the right. “Here comes the last piece.”

  * * *

  “I think we’re seeing wealth inequality in action,” Riley said as he steered his zodiac toward the old pier where the two yachts were docked.

  But Chase was looking through binoculars. “Harry.”

  “Keep it together, Chase,” Riley said as he pulled back on the throttle, slowing them down as they came to the end of the pier. “The clock is ticking.”

  * * *

  Gator peered at his watch. Getting to be that time. He reached up and undid the snap link that connected the rope around his legs to a stanchion on the bottom of the six-foot wide swim platform, allowing his feet to swing free into the water. He shook the short piece of rope off, letting it sink down.

  Then he released the snap link attached to the rope around his chest, while keeping a tight grip with his other hand on a stanchion. He lowered himself into the water.

  His body was a bit battered because Preston’s boat’s wake had churned the two-foot gap between the bottom of the teak platform and the water’s surface considerably during the journey from Pinckney Island to the south end of Daufuskie.

  But that simply fit in with Gator’s philosophy that ‘pain is weakness leaving the body’.

  And now Gator was getting ready to do some pain dealing. He opened up the waterproof sack and retrieved his submachinegun.

  * * *

  “We’re docking,” Riley reported over the radio to the team.

  He pulled up to the end of the pier and Chase jumped off, tying off the zodiac. Riley grabbed Sarah Briggs’ leather satchel and took it with him as he joined Chase on the pier.

  “Focus,” Riley said to Chase as they walked down the pier until they were between Preston and his captives and Mrs. Jenrette, who had only Thomas and Tear at her side. Two men with automatic rifles were tracking Riley and Chase from Preston’s boat. One had his gun pointed at Mrs. Jenrette. And another was behind Harry and Doc, holding a gun on them.

  Riley held up the satchel, showing it to both Preston and Mrs. Jenrette. “Bloody Point golf course. The deed is signed by the owner. We just have to fill in the name of the buyer.”

  Chase was staring up at his son. “I’m Horace,” he called out.

  “Your father,” Doc Cleary said to Harry.

  “The family reunion can wait,” Preston said. “Give me the deed and you get your son.” He looked up at Mrs. Jenrette. “Or you can pay for Bloody Point, and then sign over your part of Sea Breeze and Bloody Point to me and I give you your son’s killer.”

  “I believe you over-estimate yourself,” Mrs. Jenrette said. She gestured at Tear. “My old friend here knows everything that goes on in the Low Country.”

  “I doubt that,” Preston said. But he spotted something in the distance: the Fina racing in toward them. “I told you no interference!”

  “You’re surrounded,” Chase said. “Give up my son and Doc and you’ll live to see the end of this day.”

  “Then your son dies,” Preston said.

  “Action!” Riley ordered over the radio.

  From the sand trap closest to the pier, Sarah Briggs and Kate Westland burst up from beneath the sand. They got to their feet, weapons at the ready, Sarah pointing hers toward Preston’s yacht while Westland went back to back with her, aiming outward.

  Gator swung himself up on the swim deck, then climbed up into the ship, rushing toward the bridge, submachinegun tight to his shoulder.

  Sarah Briggs fired. The round hit Pappano on the side of his head, blowing brains, blood and bone out the other side. He dropped like a stone.

  Preston reacted surprisingly fast. He grabbed Harry, pressing his own pistol into the base of his skull, and backing up into the safety of the small alcove leading to the hatchway behind him.

  “I’ll kill him!”

  * * *

  Hearing the shot fired behind them, the four perimeter guards turned and began running back toward the pier.

  Kate Westland had a ‘heavy’ SCAR (Special Operations Combat Assault Rifle), chambered for 7.62, to her shoulder. She killed the perimeter guard to the west, as she spoke over her phone. “Take the closest.”

  * * *

  The sniper hit the guard to the east, shifting to the next one even before the first had hit the ground. She fired, a head shot, killing the second as Kate Westland took out the last one. Westland whirled about, shoulder to shoulder with Sarah Briggs.

  The sniper leaned into her harness and shifted her target to Briggs. “Ready to Sanction.”

  “Hold,” Westland said.

  * * *

  Riley didn’t believe in the proverbial “Mexican” stand off, but at the moment, with Presto Gregory shielded by the entrance to the hatch, and his gun pressed against the back of Harry Brannigan’s head, everything was in a pause.

  The three guards on the deck of Preston’s ship were trying to regroup, one pointing his weapon toward the sand trap where Westland and Briggs were, another still aiming at Riley and Chase, and the last aiming toward Mrs. Jenrette, Thomas and Tear.

  That didn’t last long.

  Gator came up the stairs onto the main deck, firing, double-tapping. One guard down, two, but then the third wheeled, firing on full automatic, hitting Gator in the chest with two rounds, sending him tumbling back down the stairs.

  * * *

  “Preston!” Chase called out. “You’ve got nowhere to go. You’ve got no one covering your ass any more. Give up. We’ll let you walk away.”

  Preston shoved the gun harder into the back of Harry’s head, causing Chase’s son to cry out in pain.

  “I’ll kill him.”

  Doc Cleary turned toward the two, hands still ziptied behind his back. “I’ll take his place. I can pilot this boat out of here. You’ll be free to go.”

  “Bullshit,” Preston said. “You’re not worth it. Brannigan’s the only collateral I have.” He looked across to the other yacht. “Mrs. Jenrette! Call these people off and you get the man who killed your grandson and I’ll give you Sea Breeze!”

  “I’m not in charge of these people,” Mrs. Jenrette said.


  Kate Westland and Sarah Briggs, sand sliding off their clothes, were walking forward to the pier, weapons at the ready. Riley and Chase had their hands up. Gator was motionless at the base of the stairs.

  Preston’s head was on a swivel, taking in the suddenly changed tableau. He had one man left.

  “Get us out of here,” he ordered the surviving guard.

  “How?” the guy responded. “I—“ and then his head exploded as a round from the sniper’s rifle hit in the right temple and blew most of it to shreds.

  “Fuck you people!” Preston screamed. “My father is a Senator! You can’t touch me. I’ll kill him before I let you win! I have a plan! I will not allow you people to interrupt it.”

  “Stop, please,” Mrs. Jenrette said. “There’s been too much pain. Too many deaths. This isn’t worth it.”

  Preston looked down at the pier. “You. Daddy. What’s your son worth to you? Will you call off your dogs for his life?”

  Chase took two steps forward, toward the boat, hands raised. “I’ll give you my life for my son’s.”

  Sarah Briggs and Kate Westland halted about ten feet away from Chase and Riley. They had their weapons aimed up toward Preston, but they couldn’t get a clear shot as he was in the alcove of the hatch with Harry in front.

  “Move east, swing around,” Westland said into her phone. “Target the man holding the hostage.”

  “Negative,” the sniper responded. “I have to target the Sanction.”

  “The Sanction has changed,” Westland said.

  Sarah Briggs shifted her gaze to Westland. “Your Cellar support? Aiming at me? Let ‘em shoot. Fuck it. I don’t care any more. Maybe it will confuse the little shithead up there and someone else can get a clear shot.”

  * * *

  On board the chopper, the sniper gave the order and the Little Bird lifted out of the trees on Daufuskie and banked hard, heading out over the water so it could swing around and she could have a shot west, toward the boat and the new target.

  * * *

  Chase took another step forward. “Preston. Let Harry go. I give you my word. My heart for his heart.” He thumped his chest. “Shoot me and it’s over. The slate is clean.” He nodded toward Riley, then Sarah and Westland. “I’m ordering them to stand down if you let Harry go.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Preston said. “You fucked everything up! All my plans!”

  Chase held his hand over his heart. “My heart for his and yours.”

  Preston pulled the gun from the back of Harry’s head and fired, pulling the trigger as fast as he could.

  His first round hit Chase’s shoulder, staggering him back. The second and third into his chest, but then Harry slammed backward into Preston, getting space between the two.

  And Sarah Briggs fired her SCAR, the round hitting Preston in the left eye, blowing his brains out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Horace Chase had been shot before.

  But this was different. In Afghanistan there had been pain, blood, gunfire still going off all around, his medic working over him.

  But this time he felt strangely calm and still. He was lying on his back on the pier.

  No pain. Dave Riley was kneeling over him. “What the hell were you thinking?” Horace could feel Riley ripping open his shirt. Probing. Doing something.

  He didn’t care. Looking past Riley he saw Sarah Briggs staring down at him. And then his son.

  “Harry,” Chase said. But he couldn’t hear his own words, which worried him that his son couldn’t hear them.

  He remembered something though, even as he looked at his son. “Gator? Is Gator all right?”

  “Vest took the rounds,” Riley said, pressing a bandage against Chase’s chest. “Biggest problem the dumb lug has is falling down those stairs and hitting his head. You’re going to be okay, Chase. You’re going to be all right.”

  Chase smiled. “I am all right. A heart for a heart.” He suddenly saw his mother, Lilly. Reading to him each night. Often the same letter now in the bottom of his foot locker. So many times, so much love. Chase lifted his blood-covered right hand. And his son leaned over and took it. “’And, which is more, you’ll be a man, my son’.”

  And then Horace Chase died.

  Epilogue

  A single death does not stop the other lives affected by it. It sends them tumbling, staggering, meandering, marching, searching, in different directions.

  * * *

  Kono leaned over Gator and placed a poultice on his chest. “It will make you better.”

  “Chase is dead?” Gator asked. He was on the deck of the Fina, his chest bruised from where the bullets had hit his armor vest. He also had welts and bruises from his battering from hanging suspended underneath the swim platform of Preston’s boat.

  Pain might be weakness leaving the body, but at the moment, Gator was feeling a smidge beat up.

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck.”

  “He died well,” Kono said.

  Gator looked up at his friend. “There is no dying well. There is just death.”

  “He gave a life for a life,” Kono said. “There is nothing more honorable.”

  * * *

  Cardena watched Senator Gregory leave his mistress’s apartment building.

  So predictable. And in the covert world, predictable was a kissing cousin of fatal. For the Senator, he probably thought it was no big deal.

  He was wrong.

  Cardena’s men grabbed the Senator quickly and efficiently, snatching off the street in Alexandria as if the man had stepped into a crack in the pavement to Never-Never land. Cardena followed the van to a black site, ironically one Senator Gregory had voted in secret to fund.

  What goes around, comes around.

  The Senator, once the gag was removed, was screaming threats. It’s what those who thought they were powerful did when suddenly transplanted into an environment where they weren’t.

  “Are you in charge, you fucking asshole?” Gregory demanded of Cardena when he entered the padded cell.

  Cardena wiped the Senator’s spittle off his face. “No. But I’m as in charge as you’re going to meet.”

  “Who do you work for? Get them here right now!”

  “I work for Hannah.”

  That gave the Senator pause. Cardena could almost see the blocks of thoughts tumbling in the Senator’s brain, like dominos heading toward a bad ending. The man, after all, wasn’t stupid.

  “What is going on?” Gregory asked, in a much more civil tone. “Is this about my asking her to back off in South Carolina? One of her people took a shot at my son, damn it.”

  “Yes,” Cardena said. “But that was just a warning shot. Just think. If you were so upset about that, how upset would you be if your son had actually been shot?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It would not be hard to imagine that you might possibly be so upset at losing your only son, you’d take your own life. On top of evidence being uncovered about the impropriety regarding a causeway and Daufuskie? What a scandal.”

  Gregory’s face went pale. “Are you threatening me?”

  “What’s curious,” Cardena said, “is that your first response is to ask if I’m threatening you, without any consideration whether your son has indeed been shot.”

  “I’m a United States Senator and as such—“

  “As such, you serve the people. The problem, Senator, is that your son murdered another cadet at the Military Institute. And since then he’s murdered others. Really. Don’t see how you can stay in office after all that.”

  “You can’t—“

  “You’ll be found hanging in your mistress’s apartment,” Cardena said. “She leaves for work in about twenty minutes. I usually don’t say this, since it’s such a cliché: if you are a God-fearing man, time to pray. But I doubt very much you fear God. But you do fear death.”

  * * *

  “These are yours,” Dillon said, handing the photo and bracelet he’d taken from Brannigan’s r
oom at the Institute to Harry.

  “Thank you.”

  Dillon, Harry, Doc, Riley, Sarah Briggs and Kate Westland were gathered on the end of the dock in Brams Point. Riley had a black box containing Horace Chase’s ashes. Chase’s footlocker was on the planks. Doc’s sailboat was tied up on the outside of the dock, while Riley’s Zodiac was on the inside.

  It was two days after the events on Daufuskie and the Cellar had efficiently policed up the site in just a few hours, leaving behind Kate Westland for the moment.

  Doc was looking shoreward, at the house. “I want to go back to sea. At least for a while.” He glanced at Harry. “Do you want to stay here or come with me?”

  Harry didn’t hesitate. “I want to head back out with you. We didn’t go everywhere we planned. And we need to talk”

  “I can keep an eye on the place,” Riley said. “Stop by every so often.”

  “Thanks,” Doc said. “But I think it needs to be occupied.” He turned to Sarah Briggs. “Do you need a place?”

  Sarah was startled. “What?”

  “A place to stay for a while,” Doc said. “While you sort things out. Dave told me some of your past. Sounds like you need a place of peace for a while.”

  Sarah looked at Westland. “Will I be left in peace?”

  “My mission is over,” Westland said. “Turns out there’s a reason the field agent has the final call on a Sanction. We had the wrong target.”

  “I’d like that very much,” Sarah Briggs said to Doc.

  Riley held out the black box and Harry took it.

  “We’ll spread his ashes along the Intracoastal,” Harry said. “That way, he’ll always be around us.”

  “And this is yours, too,” Riley said, indicating the footlocker.

  “Thank you,” Harry said, but he was eyeing the footlocker with wariness. “Do you know what’s in it?”