Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6)

by James W. Hall

  It had to go something like that, a close-quarters ambush. Anything else and Pepper might bolt before Greta could even use the weapon. Duck away behind the cabin door, get back up to the top deck, radio for reinforcements. Once Pepper had eluded her, there was no way Greta could chase her around the yacht. No, it had to be done at close range.

  Greta tucked the pistol out of sight beneath her hip. She was running the scenario another time, checking it for flaws, when she felt their weight settle on the stern of the yacht and heard their voices arguing. Bean, Echeverria, another man she didn't recognize, and Pepper, all coming aboard together.

  ***

  "Three people, Echeverria. Jesus Christ. Two old women. A dog, for christsakes. A goddamn dog. What the hell were you thinking about?"

  "Hey, you told us to plug the leak. I never heard anything about having a quota. Two, three, four, what the fuck difference does it make at this point?"

  "And you, Pepper. That ridiculous fucking car."

  "The car?"

  "You know what I'm talking about. All that preposterous bullshit you've been doing to the hearse."

  "Oh."

  "That goddamn car almost broke my back yesterday."

  Tran van Hung said something to Pepper in Vietnamese. Probably another plea of love like he'd been making for days.

  They were on the stern deck, Pepper in nice black walking shorts, a yellow sleeveless top. Trying out some new makeup she'd bought yesterday. Plum lip gloss, a white silvery eyeshadow, Pro-glide mascara that separated and defined each lash. She'd even torn out a perfume strip from her latest copy of Cosmo and dabbed it on her wrists and throat. Seventy-five dollars a bottle stuff.

  Dr. Bean Wilson was wearing a handsome pair of gray linen trousers and a burgundy long-sleeve polo shirt and his heavy white tennis shoes. His hair was perfect and his eyes were dense with excitement.

  Pepper could feel her heart working. Knowing she looked especially alluring today, thinking this was the day, if things went the way she hoped, it was time to say something personal to Bean, some nudge or enticing look that would get things tilted in the right direction.

  But then all the way out on the Zodiac, Bean had been giving Echeverria a load of shit, and her too, in a roundabout way. Complaining about the mess they'd made in Key Largo, three dead. The police in an uproar, the Miami papers and TV stations sending their best people down to cover it. Three dead.

  "So fire me," Echeverria said. "Try that, why don't you? Or pull out your six-gun and take me down."

  "Don't fucking tempt me."

  "This is all wrong," Tran van Hung said. "Arguing like thieves. This is not good. Big day like this, it's a bad omen to bitch and moan like bunch of ridiculous weenies."

  "He's right," Pepper said. "We should all just back off a little, take a few deep breaths of this nice fresh ocean air."

  Bean stared at her, standing in the passageway down to the cabins, giving her a twisted, ugly look like his mouth was melting in the heat.

  "I've surrounded myself with morons. An enterprise as momentous as this and I've got idiots and rednecks working for me. What the hell was I thinking?"

  He turned and stumped down the stairs, waited for Pepper to join him in the narrow corridor.

  "And that other thing," he snarled at her. "My father's office. Tell me, at least, you did that the way I asked."

  Something gassy bubbled in her belly. Pepper was about to lie, give him a slick story, how she had completed the task exactly as he'd instructed, how everything had gone smoothly, make up some funny incident that happened going into his father's office or back out. But Bean read the lie in her eyes before she had the chance to mouth the words.

  "You moron. You forgot! You forgot to do it!"

  "In all the excitement, I knew there was something else, but I couldn't remember what."

  Bean struck her hard across the face, knocked her to the floor, blurred her vision, stung her cheek and jaw. Stung it all the way down to the bone. Deeper even than that. She sat up, opened her mouth, heard a click in the bone. Something out of line, the smooth hinge warped.

  "All right, it's Sunday," Bean said. "The old man's not in the office today, so you're going back ashore. Echeverria will take you in. Then you and you alone will drive that idiotic hearse up to Key Largo and you'll do what I told you to do last night. No fuckups, no embellishments, just do it. Get it done. Is that understood?"

  She looked up at him. She climbed slowly to her feet, staying out of range.

  "I can't stay just a little while longer, see how this turns out with Greta? Just a few minutes? We're so close."

  He stepped forward, his right hand closing into a fist.

  "All right, all right," she said. "I'm on my way. I'll do it. I promise. I'll do it right,"

  CHAPTER 24

  Greta tucked the pistol farther below her hip, rearranged her blue scrub over it. Against four of them the odds clearly weren't in her favor for any kind of full-fledged shoot-out, even with the element of surprise and her excellent aim.

  She listened to them talking in the passageway. As she was wedging her arm beneath the strap she heard the outboard roaring off. And before she could get to the pistol again, her cabin door swung open.

  Bean had a mock smile ready for her as he came into the cabin. Following him was a small Asian man in shiny silver shorts and a matching shirt. The man glanced at her, then took a seat on a plastic chair across from the bunk. Sitting primly, hands on his thighs, mouth pursed in a wrinkled frown,

  Bean set his leather medical bag on the bedside table and drew back the blue plaid curtains from both portholes.

  "You've been sweating," he said. "Are you all right? Any kind of fever?"

  She remained silent.

  "I need to know if you've been having side effects with the morphine. Pepper said no, just drowsiness, which is normal enough, of course, but look at you, you're soaking."

  Greta stared into his eyes and said nothing.

  "Now, now," he said. "I know you're very angry with me, Greta. I know you feel deceived and ill-used. And I'm sorry for that, I truly am. But you must realize this is for your own good. It doesn't matter that you're a DEA agent, that you were investigating me. None of that's relevant to our common interest. Getting rid of your pain supersedes everything, your role in law enforcement, your temporary discomfort here, don't you agree?"

  "Enough talk," the Asian man said. "Give her the shot, get on with it."

  Bean turned to the small man in silver foil.

  "Greta, I'd like you to meet Tran van Hung. Tran is an old war buddy from my Vietnam days. He's representing a group of investors over there who are looking for a marketable painkiller that they might make a few billion dollars from. Tran, the money man, as Pepper likes to refer to him."

  "This is taking too long. All this talk is not necessary. Give her the shot, we'll see if you fucked up again."

  Bean turned back to Greta and smiled.

  "Tran doesn't fully appreciate the medical formalities I must complete before I can refill your pump. I need to know a few things from you, Greta, otherwise our data isn't complete. And our experiment doesn't have the scientific credibility it requires. Sooner or later we will have to run our trials in the light of day. Face the scrutiny of the FDA, the AMA, all that. So it behooves us to stay within strict medical guidelines as closely as we can even at this early stage."

  Tran huffed and crossed his legs. He reached in his shirt pocket for a box of cigarettes and shook one out, set it in his mouth and was clicking a small gold lighter when Bean wheeled and snatched the cigarette away, dropped it to the deck and crushed it with his shoe.

  Greta inched her right hand to her hip, touched a finger to the steel.

  Tran protested in a burst of Vietnamese and Bean spewed something back that sounded like the man's native tongue. Tran closed his eyes and took a breath, then opened them and gave Bean an owlish look. He reached into his shirt pocket and this time drew out a tiny green chili
pepper.

  "Is this okay, Doctor? Is it okay if I munch a hot pepper?"

  "Help yourself, little man."

  When Bean turned back around, Greta had the pistol out. She cocked the hammer and kept the aim steady on Bean's midsection. Tran van Hung spit out the green pepper and stood up.

  "Oh, shit," he said. "You fucking weenie. Where'd she get a gun?"

  Bean's eyes were calm. He canted his head to the side, looking past the pistol at Greta's face.

  "Come now, Agent Masterson," he said. "This isn't necessary."

  "Put your hands up, both of you."

  "What're you going to do, Greta? Shoot us, take the boat in to shore yourself? Is that what you think?"

  "In the air," she said. "Your hands where I can see them."

  "Is that what you want, Greta? Are you sure? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in misery? Chronic torment, acute episodes that at any time could send your heart into an arrhythmia. Don't you want a chance at a better life than that, Greta? Doesn't Suzy deserve that? A real mother, a mother who can take care of her, be there for her. Wouldn't Suzy want your pain to go away? If she were here, if you could ask her now?"

  She felt the pistol waver.

  "Oh, yes," Bean said. "We know about Suzy, we know she's staying with your mother. Echeverria is on his way at this moment to pick up your daughter, bring her down here."

  "You're lying."

  "Oh, yes, Greta. He's on his way as we speak. He'll go to the door, flash his badge, tell Granny he's come for her, come to take her to her mother."

  "Bullshit. You had no reason to abduct her. You didn't know I'd give you any trouble."

  "Are you going to risk that?"

  She steadied the pistol.

  "Okay, Bean, turn around, both of you, and walk over to the door. I'm going to follow you upstairs. We're going to go very slowly back to the upper deck, and we're going to take this goddamn boat into Key West. If I have to kill you both, I don't really care at this point."

  Bean moved to his medical bag.

  "Not another step!" Greta shouted.

  He opened the bag and took out a plastic Baggie that contained a syringe and a small vial.

  "Here it is, Greta. Here's the end of your pain. No one has to get hurt. I can give you the injection, fill your pump. You can hold on to your pistol the whole time. I don't care. When it's finished, you decide if you can forgive me for inconveniencing you this way. You can shoot me or you can sing my praises, whatever you think is right. I'll take that chance."

  "Inconveniencing me? Is that what you call this?"

  Tran van Hung had made several small steps toward the passageway. He was a half second from lunging to safety when Greta aimed the pistol at him and ordered him to move the hell back into the cabin. Tran hesitated a moment, staring at the barrel, then he muttered something and stepped back over to his chair.

  "You're going to be sorry for this, Bean Wilson. There's no more money after today. After this fuckup."

  Bean smiled to himself as he filled the syringe from the glass vial.

  "Tran keeps threatening me," he said. "But at this point it hardly matters. If his people don't want to market our drug, Greta, there'll be a long line of others who will."

  "That's enough, Bean. Put it down. Put it down now and turn around and go to the door."

  "You see how confident I am, Greta. I know there are two sides warring in you right now. Greta the DEA agent, and Greta the woman and mother. Should you do your duty and risk serving out your life sentence of excruciating pain, or should you put all that aside for a while and save your own flesh and blood, give your daughter back her mother. Should you destroy me, or should you be part of the medical breakthrough of our age? Those are the options, Greta, and I know you'll agree with me. Your duty is important, yes; I know about duty. But ridding yourself of torment is far and away your more important responsibility."

  "There's no debate going on in my head. Another fucking step and you're dead."

  Bean smiled and took that step.

  She shot him in the leg, shot him a second time in the other leg. The explosions were immense in that tiny cabin. Bean was knocked back against the door. He howled and cursed, but after only a few seconds he was back on his feet, sagging to one side but upright. Tran lay flat on his belly on the floor, low noises coming from his throat as if he were cycling through a chant.

  Greta stared, her heart churning.

  Bean's pants legs were ripped just below both knees, but there was no gore, no wound of any kind. With a groan, he stooped and retrieved the syringe and held it up to the light, and made a long sigh of relief. Greta stared at his legs, her mind whirling with the crazy sight before her, splinters and wire. Two fist size gouges in the gray fabric of his pants. But no blood.

  "Prosthetics," he said, setting the syringe on the table near his bag. Then he swung his head to the side and shouted at the Asian man. "Tran, no, no, don't do it!"

  Greta jerked her aim to the left but the man in silver clothes was still on the floor. Before she could swing back to Bean, he'd lunged for the pistol and had torn it from her grip. He stepped away and held her eye.

  "Now, Greta, we'll have to wait a few minutes till your blood pressure drops back to normal."

  He set the pistol on a shelf across the cabin.

  "And Tran, after you've pulled yourself together sufficiently, do you think you can help me tighten up these straps?"

  ***

  There was something bad wrong with Pepper's jaw. She could open and close her mouth, but when she tried to touch her teeth together, they didn't mesh, and worse than that, they ached, all her teeth at once. Every single one, right down to the roots and below.

  She sobbed for the first twenty miles, then got it down to a whimper by the time she made Bahia Honda and was just sniffling a little as she passed through Marathon. By the time she hit Islamorada her eyes were clear and there was a hornet buzzing in the big vein in her neck. And her teeth were throbbing worse than they had before.

  She knew exactly what was wrong. Bean had broken her jaw. Which meant she would have to get her mouth wired shut for six weeks, and for that month and a half she'd have to drink all her meals, milkshakes with raw eggs, hot soup, which she hated. She wouldn't be able to brush, no yawning, no French kissing, no hot peppers, nothing solid in her mouth at all, animal, vegetable, or human. And worse, she'd have to start carrying a pair of wire clippers in her purse everywhere she went in case she got sick. With your mouth wired shut, you didn't want to be doing a whole lot of vomiting.

  At noon, as she pulled into the gravel drive of Dr. Bean Wilson's office, she didn't have a single drip left in her tear ducts and she could feel the blood in her chest getting sludgy and hot. Nobody'd ever hit her before. Not even her daddy. Not even when she'd called him vile names, spit on him, tried to claw out his eyes. Not once. He'd treated her with respect and kindness even when she'd attempted to bite the end of his dick off that first time he slipped it in her mouth when she was half asleep. Ten years old and clamping down on her daddy's meaty pecker like it was a drumstick, sinking her teeth deep into the blood of it. But not even then did he hit her. And not later, when she badmouthed him in front of his boat bum buddies. Calling him sex names she'd heard her girlfriends use on their boyfriends. Pencil dick, nutless wonder. Embarrassing him, making him angry, but even then he didn't swat her, didn't say an unkind word to her. Just came in later and asked her if she meant those things and she said no, not really, and that was all there was to that. He'd been Pepper's husband from the age of ten till the year she turned twenty-one, when he died. He'd asked for her hand that first year of sex together. One night lying next to her in the dark after they'd finished, asking her if she'd rather be his daughter or his wife. She didn't need to think that one over. His wife, she'd said, of course, his wife. And afterward he'd always been a good husband, showing her how to do things in the bedroom, how to please him and how to please herself. Three or four se
xual things were all he knew to teach her. Nothing like the knowledge Pepper had acquired with other boys since her daddy died.

  Her daddy was always polite, apologetic even. Born on Key West of a mean sponge-fishing father, raised with courtly conch manners and strong family discipline, her daddy would kiss her on the forehead or on the temple, but never on the lips, even when he was riding along above her groaning and sweating. He wouldn't do that and she understood why, because even though Pepper was his wife, he treated her like a lady, because it would've made everything too personal, too intimate if they'd touched tongues, slobbered on each other's faces. Even when she told her guidance counselor at school she was married to her daddy and later that night the sheriff and two of his men came to the boat and woke him up and questioned him and then questioned her too, and took her daddy away to the jail to question him some more. Even after he came back the next morning, let go for lack of evidence, he didn't hit her. He just said he understood she was mad at him and that was all right, 'cause from time to time women got mad at their men, it didn't matter how good the man was to the woman, there'd just necessarily have to come that moment when she couldn't stand the sight or smell of him and she'd get mad. From time to time it was perfectly natural that she should hate him. His only request was that when the next time came, and the terrible anger heated her blood, would she please stay away from the frying pans and the long kitchen knives. His head was still ringing, he said, from a conking Pepper's mother had given him twenty years before.

  In Dr. Bean Wilson's parking lot there was a yellow Coupe de Ville and another car, a little black Japanese convertible parked beside it. She got out, peeked into the convertible, and saw a couple of tennis rackets and a wire basket full of Day-Glo yellow balls.

  She got the key to the office door out of her pocketbook and went over to the front door. She slipped the key in the lock but the door was already open, so she pushed on inside.