“Go below if you would and open a couple of beers and empty the cans in the sink. Fill them with Coke or iced tea. From this point on, we’re only going to make a show of drinking beer.”
FORTY-SIX
They got their hats, sunglasses, and phones from the SUV and, Taio shouldering the umbrella bag that held the loaded AR-15 and two spare magazines, walked back to the pair of Jet Skis tethered to the beach.
The party on the island was getting into full swing now, and no one paid much attention to them as they untied the machines, turned them around so that they faced deeper water, and climbed aboard.
“I’ll go out into the Gulf with you a little ways until we get the hang of these things,” Taio said. “When we’re ready, you’ll head up the island, and I’ll take the ICW.”
“Call me,” Li said, her voice tight in her throat as it usually was at the beginning of an operation.
Once they were into it, she always settled down beautifully, and Taio thought then as he had before, that she made not only the perfect wife but she was the perfect partner.
He reached across and touched her hand. “This will be done in an hour or two, and we’ll be on our way home, where we can plan our vacation.”
Li smiled. “And our retirement.”
“That, too,” Taio said. “Let’s go.”
They started their machines and Taio headed out first, careful with the touchy throttle. The machine was even more powerful than he’d thought it would be, but it was more or less like driving a motorcycle except that he couldn’t do a wheelie.
He looked back as Li eased up along his left side, a big grin on her pretty face. She loved the Augustas, and it was obvious she was liking this ride.
A few of the people on the jetties waved as they headed out, and once in the Gulf, Taio hit the throttle, and the big machine responded like a rocket ship. About a hundred meters offshore, he turned hard to the right, and the Jet Ski heeled over almost like a motorcycle but raising a huge white wake.
Glancing over his shoulder, he was in time to see Li cutting a wider circle around him. He turned toward her, and she turned inward toward him. They both made a couple of more turns, then throttled down and approached each other, easing close enough so that they could talk.
“Fun?” he asked.
She nodded enthusiastically. “We’re buying a pair of these when we get home.”
“We’ll be the terrors of Hong Kong’s harbor,” Taio said, and they laughed. Incongruous just now, he thought. “I’m going inside. Once you reach the house, make a couple of passes, and let me know when you’re ready.”
She was suddenly serious. “Be careful, Taio. I want the vacation and especially our retirement.”
“So do I,” Taio said, and for the first time in their careers, he meant it. It was time to get out before the odds of being killed—or worse yet, being captured alive and sent separately to prison for the rest of their lives—reached 100 percent.
“Zai jian, Taio.” See you later.
“Hao ba.” Okay.
* * *
Hammond had a lousy night, scarcely able to get more than a couple of hours of sleep, and he’d spent most of the day working on projects, waiting for word that McGarvey had been taken care of, and now in the early evening, he was totally exhausted.
Sitting now on the patio picking at his dinner of lobster and truffled new potatoes, he was at sixes and sevens with himself over just about everything that had happened over the past month or so.
Susan had taken the shuttle down to see her European theater manager to work on a deal that would allow her to buy 350 screens, mostly in Italy but several in France and Germany. Her idea was to market showings of films made in places like Syria, Lebanon, and several other troubled Middle Eastern countries that would appeal mostly to the vast hordes of immigrants pouring in.
“A little touch of home,” she’d explained cynically to Hammond.
“No money in it,” he’d told her.
“If they can come up with five grand to have a smuggler take them here, then they’ll have a few euros to see a flick. I want whatever they have left over, and in return, I’ll give them a couple of hours of relief. Cheaper than seeing a shrink.”
He’d been labeled as a raider without a heart for pretty much his entire career. But he’d merely taken money from people who were already rich and could afford to lose a few tens of millions. And it had been nothing more than a game to him.
But in his opinion, Susan had crossed over the line, and he’d told her so this morning before she’d left.
“You have to be kidding,” she’d laughed.
“You’re fleecing poor bastards who have nothing.”
“This coming from a man who is willing to spend millions merely for a game? Of killing people for sport?”
“Hardly innocents.”
“Come off it, Thomas, you got screwed over because of a bitcoin deal that was probably bogus to begin with. So you wanted to do something to McGarvey and his wife, but you didn’t want to get your hands dirty, so you asked your Russian pal to take care of it.” The disdain in her wide eyes and the downturn of her pretty lips was palpable. “That’s so fucking typical of you.”
“The pot calling the kettle black?”
“I do my own dirty deals. And I don’t have to sign away anything to do them.”
“I would have backed the pipeline deal anyway.”
“Something like that has never been on your radar, and you know it,” Susan had said before she’d gone to the door. But then she’d turned back. “Be careful, Thomas, that this doesn’t bite you in the ass. That could be a wound so deep you’d never be able to recover from it.”
She was supposed to be back sometime this evening, but Hammond was beginning to wonder if he really gave a damn. She and her prima donna tantrums were beginning to wear thin for him.
He picked up his phone and called his Strategic Liaison Group office in Washington. One of the secretaries answered, but not until after five rings.
“SLG,” she said, a touch of what sounded like hysteria in her voice.
Hammond knew what might have happened, and he realized that he really didn’t give a damn about it either. “This is Tom Hammond. What’s going on?”
“Oh, sir, it’s Mr. Rodriguez.”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead,” the woman blubbered.
“What the hell are you talking about? Dead, how?”
“He was getting out of a cab a couple of hours ago out front, and a truck or something ran into him. He never had a chance.”
“Was the truck driver arrested?”
“We don’t know.”
“What the fuck do you know?” Hammond shouted.
“I don’t know,” the poor woman said.
Hammond broke the connection and slammed the phone down on the table, upsetting his wineglass.
The sommelier came out, but Susan was right there and sent him away. “I’ll take care of it,” she told him.
Hammond looked over his shoulder. “I’m in no mood for your shit.”
She came out to him, pecked him on the cheek, then righted his glass, refilled it with the Marchesi Antinori Tignanello pinot grigio in the ice bucket, and used his napkin to sop up the spill.
“I’m here,” she said. “Tell me everything so that we can figure out what to do.”
FORTY-SEVEN
About twenty minutes north of the Venice Inlet, traffic had increased dramatically. Everything from small- and medium-size sailboats to small and large motor yachts, plus canoes and kayaks singly and in groups, and literally dozens of Jet Skis, most of them driven by young people, some McGarvey figured not even teenagers yet, crowded the waterway that in some places was less than fifty or sixty feet wide.
“Could be our guy in any of those boats,” Pete said at one point.
McGarvey kept a sharp eye out ahead as well as behind to make sure they stayed in the channel. “A drive-by shooting?”
“Could be that simple.”
“But not elegant.”
“Could be if he’s thought of an escape route. These kinds of people don’t take a crap without figuring all the alternatives.”
And that was the one thing he’d always kept at the front of his mind. What if the obvious wasn’t so obvious? One bit or piece he hadn’t thought of, but that the opposition had.
A bright green Jet Ski coming up from the south cruised past at a reasonable speed for the traffic and the narrowness of the channel. By habit Mac glanced at the registration number and then at the driver, who had what looked like a beach umbrella bag over his shoulder. The man wore a swimming suit, a light shirt, and a baseball cap.
Ordinary, McGarvey thought. Too ordinary?
He looked over his shoulder until the Jet Ski disappeared from view.
Pete had been watching. “Something?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Mac said. He got his phone from the starboard-side cockpit locker and speed-dialed Otto.
“You have something?”
“A green Jet Ski just passed us headed north,” McGarvey said. He gave Otto the Florida registration number.
“Just a mo,” Otto said. He was back in a few seconds. “It’s a rental from a place called Sporty’s just above the Venice north jetty.”
“Who rented it?”
“I’ll check our records,” Otto said.
“What’d you see that’s bothering you?” Pete asked.
“He had what looked like a beach umbrella bag over his shoulder.”
“So?”
“It wasn’t full. The top half was flapping in the breeze. He wasn’t carrying an umbrella.”
“A long gun,” Pete said. She grabbed the binoculars and looked aft.
Otto came back. “Probably not our guy. Name on the Amex card is George Schilling. An address in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Do you want me to do a background check?”
“Go ahead.”
“Was he alone?”
“The only one on the machine.”
“I mean was there another Jet Ski with him? He rented two of them; the second was to a woman named Carolyn Schilling, same address. Presumably, his wife.”
“Only the one,” McGarvey said. “But check them out anyway.”
* * *
Taio went out of the navigable channel into knee-deep water and powered down to dead idle. The sailboat headed south that he’d passed was a Whitby center cockpit ketch, and the man at the wheel was McGarvey. The woman with the binoculars his wife. He recognized them from the file photos he’d dug up.
The problem was threefold: Where the hell were they going, why were they suddenly on the move, and what to do about it?
He had the answers almost immediately. It didn’t matter where they were going or why they were on the move, because he was going to lure them back to their house, and they would have to pass him.
The boat was made of a lot of laminations of strong fiberglass that was designed to stand up to big waves out on the ocean, but not metal-jacketed bullets.
He got on his cell phone and called Li, who answered after three rings. “Shi de.”
“I just passed the McGarveys headed south in their sailboat.”
“Is there a lot of traffic?”
“Yes, but I have a change of plans.”
“Wait, do you think that they paid you any special attention?”
“They watched me pass them, and the woman looked at me through binoculars.”
Li took only a moment to respond. “They probably got our registration numbers.”
“Almost certainly, but even if they checked at the marina, all they would get is our Schiller IDs.”
“That’s not the point, husband. They would have found out that Mr. and Mrs. Schiller rented separate machines. You passed them, but what about me?”
“But that’s going to work to our advantage.”
“How?”
“Get up to their house, pull up onto the beach, cross the road, and get inside as quickly as you can.”
“They’ll have an active surveillance system,” Li said. “They’ll know I’m there.”
“Exactly what I want to happen. They’ll have to turn around, and when they pass me again, I’ll be ready.”
“I’m not armed.”
“You’ll find something inside the house. A man like McGarvey would keep weapons in easily accessible places, especially if he believes someone is trying for him again.”
“What about afterward?”
“I’ll pick you up, and we’ll get rid of the machines up north somewhere and find a car.”
“Too much room for mistakes,” Li said. “I’m sure the McGarveys’ car is in their garage. We’ll abandon it somewhere between here and the hotel, and from there, we’ll get our things and take a cab to the airport and get the car we drove down from Atlanta.”
“I’ll move closer to the house to minimize the lag time before I can pick you up,” Taio said. “What’s your ETA?”
“I’m about ten minutes out, plus however long it takes for me to find a way in.”
“With care.”
“You, too. I want out of this as quickly as possible.”
“Shi de,” Taio said, and he meant it.
Nothing about this op was setting well with him. Their special ops brigade had adopted a number of Murphy’s laws that the American SEAL Team 6 guys used. The one that came to mind now was: If everything seems to be going well, it probably means that you’re running into an ambush.
* * *
Susan shared dinner with Hammond, and afterward, drinking the last of the pinot, she put a bare foot up on his knee. “When should we hear something?”
“They didn’t say,” Hammond said. Despite himself, his mood had brightened when Susan had arrived, and he was beginning to feel that he might almost be in love with her. She was a prima donna, but they had a history together, and she was his prima donna.
“Assuming they succeed, then what?”
Hammond had thought about that as well. “I pay them, and we move on.”
“Move on as in what?”
“I’ll have Glory loaded aboard a transport ship, taken through the Panama Canal and dropped off in Gibraltar, and we can fly over and do Cannes and Monaco. Have some fun for a change.”
Susan was silent for a moment or two, staring out at the lake. “What aren’t you telling me, Thomas?”
Hammond was a very good liar, but he’d never been good at it with her. “There may have been a couple of complications in Washington.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Still a quarter mile offshore, Li recognized the McGarveys’ house because of the wide overhangs on the second story and the gently sloping brown and light brown slate roof. She debated calling Taio, but he’d given her the last-minute plan, and she would stick with it, but with a slight variation.
Making absolutely sure that no one was on the beach and that no vehicles were on the road, she turned sharply toward the shore as she gunned the Kawasaki’s powerful engine, and the machine shot forward. Moments later, she jogged hard to the right, and then again to the right at high speed, but erratically as if she had lost control, all the while closing in on the beach.
A hundred yards out, she took the wristband off, made an extreme turn, and fell off the machine, which veered off to the left.
For several seconds, she floundered in the water but then straightened out and swam like an amateur afraid of drowning, her arms flailing. It took a full five minutes for her to reach water shallow enough for her to stand, and she staggered ashore.
Still no one was on the road as she made it up the path, then crossed over to the McGarveys’ place, then down the wide driveway to the front door, which was locked.
She was 100 percent sure that she was showing up on the house’s surveillance system, so she lurched as if she were on her last legs, or was drunk, around back to the pool area.
The sliding doors into the kitchen were
locked, so she turned and went down to the gazebo, where she sat down, her elbows on her knees, her head lowered.
“I’m here,” she said to herself when she spotted the handle of a pistol taped to the underside of the bench seat across from her. “Herd them to me, husband. I can help.”
* * *
Taio found an ideal spot on the island side of the waterway. A house with a fairly short marked channel looked as if no one was at home. The pool furniture had been covered, as had the big barbecue grill on the patio. A small powerboat up on a lift and a pontoon boat tied to the dock had also been covered with bright blue canvas.
He powered slowly up the channel and tucked in behind the pontoon boat out of sight from anyone passing in the ICW.
Laying the umbrella bag on the dock, he untied one of the lines holding the pontoon boat in place and tied it around the handles of the Jet Ski, securing it from drifting away.
Next, he undid a corner of the canvas covering the boat and, taking the umbrella bag, climbed aboard. He pulled the AR-15 out of the bag, inserted one of the magazines, jacked a round into the firing chamber, and, making sure the weapon was ready in all respects to fire, he laid it aside.
He loosened a small section of the canvas enough that he had a clear sight line to anything out on the waterway, and then, mindless of the heat, settled down to wait.
* * *
The ICW passed behind an island where a lot of people had pulled up with their boats and were partying just within sight of the Venice Inlet when McGarvey’s cell phone buzzed. He put it on speaker mode. It was Otto.
“I found the wife. She came up about a hundred yards offshore from your house, and it looked as if she lost control of her machine and went into the water.”
“Are you sure it’s the wife?” McGarvey asked, throttling way back.
“I couldn’t catch the registration number, but it looked like the same model green Kawasaki as the husband was driving. Anyway, I thought she was going to drown, and I was going to call 911 when she got control of herself and swam to shore.”
Gambit Page 20
