Fallen Hunter (Jesse McDermitt Series)

by Wayne Stinnett

  Our suites were right next to each other. When we got off the elevator I told Deuce, “I brought the laptop up, let’s check in before we call it a night.”

  “You saved me a walk,” he said. “I was going to go down to the boat.”

  We went into our room and I powered up the laptop, while Tina made drinks from the bar. Charity’s face appeared on the video feed, “Hi, Deuce,” she said. “Hey Jesse. The team just started moving an hour ago. We’re looking down from the satellite, but only for a few minutes at a time for right now. For the first half hour, they moved pretty fast. Covered just over a hundred meters. In the last half hour, they’ve only moved twenty-five meters. Tony reported in about ten minutes ago and expects he can be inside in another two hours. Art will stand by twenty meters outside. They have good cover until the last eight or ten meters.”

  “Roger that,” Deuce said. “Glad to see Chyrel is getting some sleep.”

  “I had to force her, Deuce,” Charity said. “She’s a very stubborn woman.”

  “Call Jesse and me both, just before they go in,” he said.

  “Roger that, Alpha Base out.” The screen went blank.

  “An hour to go 125 meters?” Tina asked.

  “In our business that’s a sprint,” Deuce said. “To stay invisible a man in a ghillie suit has to look like a clump of grass. If someone looks at him and he’s moved more than a few inches from the last time that person looked at him, he’ll be discovered. Tony and Art are the best at avoiding that. Tony was a cover and concealment instructor in the SEAL’s. I have a twenty minute video of him crawling toward the camera and you never see him until he stands up.”

  “Let’s get some sleep,” I said. “If we’re going to be up half the night and still be able to dive tomorrow, we’ll need the rest.”

  Deuce and Julie left for their room and Tina said she was exhausted and wanted to go to bed. I was restless or I would have joined her. Instead, I told her I wanted to check the boat and would be back in a few minutes. I took the elevator to the lobby, went outside and over to the private docks. I saw the Cuban woman walking toward me from the dock. I kept walking, but stopped when I was just a few feet away from her.

  “I know you,” I said. “Senorita Espinosa?”

  “Si,” she said. “You are Capitan McDermitt, yes? I thought I recognized that boat. I walked out to see the name.”

  She looked even more beautiful in the light of the setting moon. She was wearing tailored black jeans, with a high waist and a long sleeved black sweater that looked like, and probably was, cashmere. With her raven hair it gave her a very seductive and sexy look. It also made her nearly invisible in the darkness. Had she been aboard the Revenge?

  “What are you doing in Cozumel?” I asked, smiling.

  “I have a villa here,” she said. “A, how do you say? A cold front was coming to Miami. So, I flew down here. I do not like the cold so much. You brought a charter down here?”

  “A villa, of course,” I said. “I assumed you lived in Miami. Yeah, I’m here with a charter, but it’s become a little more than that.”

  “I have a home in Miami also,” she said. Then she took a step closer so that she had to tilt her head up to look at me and said, “Will you be on the island for long? Perhaps we can have dinner together?”

  “Only for another day or two,” I said. “I’m sorry, I assumed you and Senor Santiago were a couple.”

  “Si, but he is always so busy,” she said as she reached out and stroked her long fingernails along my arm and the fragrance of her jasmine scented perfume filled my nostrils. “Una mujer tiene necesidades. Please, call me Isabella.”

  She’d taken the bait though. “Most women do, Senorita. But, I work for Senor Santiago now. Like him, I put a high price on loyalty.” As I stepped around her, I turned and said, “Buenos noches, Senorita Espinosa.”

  I continued to the boat and vaulted aboard. I made a show of checking the tanks, strapped to the bench and pulled a pressure gauge from a cabinet to check each one. As I connected the second one she walked up to the side of the cockpit and said, “I trust that you will not say anything about this to Carlos?”

  “What and who you do is your business, Senorita,” I said. “But, if he should ask, I won’t lie. You might want to keep that in mind, should you try to take another of his employees into your bed.”

  She wheeled around and stomped off toward shore. Halfway there I heard her say, “Diviertete con tu puta, culo!” I laughed loud enough for her to hear and watched as she strode across the beach.

  I climbed up to the bridge and looked around. I was certain she’d been aboard, because I could faintly smell her perfume up here. The thing about bugs, as I’d recently learned, if you have enough money they can be very innocuous. This wasn’t good. If she’d bugged my boat, we might never find it. I went back down to the cockpit, got a flashlight from one of the drawers and examined the hatch to the salon. I didn’t see anything that would indicate the lock had been picked. Even a good burglar will leave minute scratch marks on the face of a polished brass lock. Maybe I surprised her before she could finish.

  I stepped over to the dock and walked back over to the hotel. When I was on the elevator, I pulled my cell phone out and called Deuce. He picked up on the third ring, meaning I was probably interrupting him. “This better be important, Jesse,” he said.

  “She was on my boat,” I said.

  “Who? Wait, the Cuban woman?”

  “Come to my room,” I said. “We have a problem.”

  “Oh great,” he said. “Please tell me you didn’t kill her, man.”

  “Just come to my room,” I said as I stepped off the elevator. I swiped the card in the door and opened it. There were candles lit in the bedroom and when I walked in, Tina was sitting up seductively in the bed, wearing the sheer white nightie she’d bought in Marathon.

  “Get dressed,” I said. “I appreciate it, but Deuce and Julie will be here in a second.”

  She jumped out of the bed and pulled on her jeans, which were folded and sitting on a chair. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Just get dressed,” I said. “I’ll tell you when Deuce and Julie get here.” Just then there was a knock on the door. I closed the bedroom door and went to let Deuce and Julie in.

  “Did you kill her?” Deuce asked. “Because if you did, we’re in a real jam here.”

  Tina came out of the bedroom and we all walked into the living room. “I’m pretty sure she bugged the boat,” I said.

  “Who?” Tina asked.

  “Remember the woman on Santiago’s boat?” I said. “She’s here on Cozumel. I just met her out on the dock.”

  “The woman that was going to seduce you?” she asked with a pissed look on her face.

  “Yeah,” I said. “And she tried, just now. I blew her off, but when I went aboard I could smell her perfume on the bridge. I know she’s been aboard.”

  “Just on the bridge?” Deuce asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “I didn’t see anything to indicate she’d tried to pick the lock on the salon hatch. She probably saw me coming, while she was on the bridge.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “If it’s bugged, I can find it.”

  “How?” Julie asked.

  “I have an RF detector in my bag, on board,” Deuce said. “We can find it and either destroy it, or use it.”

  “Use it?” I asked.

  “Misinformation,” Tina said with a smile.

  “She’s good,” Deuce said. “I wonder what Santiago would do if he thought I was his competition and was trying to hire you.”

  I grinned and said, “Yeah, I like that. Let’s sweep it in the morning while we’re heading to the first dive.”

  “Get your laptop,” Deuce said. “We need to let the others know, so that they won’t call us at a bad time.”

  I powered up the laptop and opened the video communications program. Chyrel turned toward the screen and said, “Hey Jesse. What’s up, Bos
s?”

  Deuce sat down next to me and said, “The boat’s been bugged. We plan to use it and give some misinformation. Until further notice, if you have to reach us call only Jesse. The rest of us are his charter clients.”

  “Roger, Boss,” she said. “Tony and Art are in position. Tony will be going in, in just a few minutes. I was about to call you.”

  “Give me a satellite feed,” he said. Within seconds, the screen switched to an infrared image from space, with a small screen at the top corner with Chyrel in it. She tapped a few keys and words appeared, identifying Tony, Art, two guards and the camp. Both Tony and Art barely showed up, as their ghillie suits provided insulation making their heat signature harder to see with the infrared camera. Both men were inside the camp perimeter, with the guards between them and the bay. Art was stationary, but Tony was moving slightly, inching his way toward what appeared to be a structure. He appeared to be less than twenty feet from it, with Art another ten feet behind and to his north.

  Art’s voice came over the com in a whisper, “Tangos are looking away.”

  Tony got up from his prone position and walked quickly to the structure and disappeared inside. “I’m inside,” he said.

  “Negative reaction from the tangos,” Art said.

  Another box opened in the opposite corner from Chyrel. It was a video feed from Tony. “You getting this?” Tony asked.

  “Roger,” Chyrel said as the infrared camera scanned the inside of what looked to be an Army surplus tent. There were boxes of many shapes and sizes stacked along two sides. Tony moved toward the first stack and the lettering came into focus, Mk777.

  “Quantity?” Deuce said.

  Tony’s camera panned down, counting three crates, then right counting three stacks. Nine crates of Mk777 anti-tank grenade launchers.

  “What else?” Deuce asked.

  The camera panned quickly to the opposite side, where a lot more smaller crates were stacked. He zoomed in on one until the letters came into focus, OG-7V. He panned down counting five crates and then panned left to another stack of five with the same lettering. Panning further left was a third stack of the same, then two stacks of five crates with the lettering PG-7VR.

  “Okay,” Deuce said. “Get out of there.”

  “Wait one,” Tony whispered.

  The camera panned quickly to the door. There was a clipboard hanging on it, with a list of nine entries made in handwritten Arabic.

  “Freeze that,” Deuce said. “Get it translated.”

  “Roger,” said Chyrel.

  “Get out, now,” Deuce said.

  “Wait one,” said Art. Then he said, “Clear.”

  Tony’s screen went blank and disappeared. We could see him leave the tent and move quickly toward Art. After twenty-five feet he went prone and became still. Slowly, he started moving parallel to Art, who was motionless. We watched for ten minutes until the both started moving toward a group of trees ten yards or so away. It took them another twenty minutes to reach the trees, then they stopped.

  “Beef jerky time,” said Tony, impersonating a movie character.

  We heard several people laugh from my living room and then Deuce said, “Okay, when you finish your supper get back to where you were, while Sayef translates that list.”

  “Already got it,” came Sayef’s voice over the laptop speakers. “It’s a list of shipments, with descriptions, quantities and dates. The first three are for the MK’s and the next four are the ammo.”

  “I saw nine entries,” Deuce said.

  “A shipment of twenty-five AK-47’s and twenty-five AK-74’s is scheduled for tomorrow,” Sayef said. “Another shipment of thirty-five thousand rounds of ammo for each is scheduled for next weekend. It was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but that was scratched out and Saturday’s date penciled in.”

  “Roger,” Deuce said. “Alpha One out.”

  I closed the laptop and looked at Deuce. He ran his fingers through his hair and let out a low whistle. “This is bad,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “What were those boxes?” Tina asked.

  “I recognized the larger ones,” Julie said. “RPG launchers, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The smaller ones are the grenades for the launchers. Fifteen cases of anti-personnel fragmentation and ten cases of armor piercing anti-tank rounds. It’s the frags that scare me most. Terrorists having those means only one thing.”

  “Soft targets,” Deuce said. “Civilian targets, malls, sports stadiums. Sayef said the next shipment is tomorrow and the last one was scheduled for Wednesday, but changed to Saturday. That fits with the conversation they picked up earlier and is probably the one he wants you to make. Seventy thousand rounds would weigh just over a ton and the rifles would be just under 400 pounds. His other gunrunner must have a smaller boat.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The launchers are bulky, but light and the grenades are small, but heavy. The other boat would have to be big enough to carry nine large, lightweight crates, but a weight limit of less than a thousand pounds. That Winter fit the bill easy enough and could probably do the ton of ammo. Since he doesn’t have that anymore, he’s using something smaller, maybe a twenty-five footer, but needs the Revenge to fill the last part of the order. I doubt he’s using that Riva, though.”

  “That’s some good intel,” Deuce said. “We’re looking at a force armed with fifty automatic rifles and nine rocket launchers. At least sixty men. Get Chyrel back.”

  I powered up the laptop and got her back on video. Deuce said, “Chyrel, were you able to get an idea on how many people are in that camp?”

  “Hard to be precise, Boss,” she said. “The infrared doesn’t pick up the heat signature as well when they’re inside. My best guess, confirmed by analysts up in Quantico is there are more than ten, but less than fifteen.”

  “Thanks, standby.”

  “The main force isn’t there,” I said. “Either they’re coming, or already in the States. My bet is that they’re coming. If they were already in the States, they wouldn’t be shipping the arms to Cuba. Once the main body arrives there and the last shipment arrives, they’ll undergo a couple of weeks of training, then load everything onto a cargo ship. They’re planning an attack on a large group of civilians for early to mid-March, somewhere in south Florida.”

  “Carnaval Miami,” Tina said. “First week of March, on Calle Ocho. The biggest Hispanic celebration in the country. There’ll be hundreds of thousands of people there. In ’88 they set the record for the longest conga line, almost 120,000 people.”

  “I thought Carnival was in November,” I said.

  “That’s Carnival, with an i,” she said. “Carnaval, with an a, is in March.”

  Deuce looked at her and said, “If terrorists attack a large crowd of Hispanic civilians and the government’s unable to protect them, there’d be a huge uprising in the Hispanic community.”

  “Checking terrorist chatter on Carnaval,” Chyrel said. “Yes, increased chatter in the last two months, with Hezbollah.”

  “That’s it then,” Deuce said. “Get some rest, Chyrel. Remember starting tomorrow, any communication goes through Jesse, on normal channels and in code. Improvise.”

  “Roger, Alpha Base out.”

  “Holy shit,” Julie said. “You guys are amazing.”

  “We, babe,” Deuce said. “You’re one of us now. Let’s turn in, it’s late. Chyrel will call if anything comes up.”

  The two of them left the room then. I leered at Tina and said, “You want to slip into something more comfortable?” She smiled and disappeared into the bedroom.

  I was up before sunrise the next morning. Rigorous exercise, long nights and little sleep used to have little effect on me. However, I was tired. I must be getting old, I thought. There was an automatic coffee maker with a timer in the kitchen and I’d set it last night before going down to the boat. The fresh aroma of Columbia’s best filled my nostrils. I poured two cups, when I heard Tina
padding barefoot across the tile floor. “Good morning,” I said.

  “Good night, too” she said with a lecherous grin.

  There was a knock on the door and I said, “That’ll be Deuce and Julie. I saw him look at the coffee maker before they left.”

  “I’ll let them in,” she said. I heard them exchange greetings as they came down the hall.

  “Coffee?” I asked pouring a cup for Deuce.

  “None for me,” Julie said as Deuce took the cup.

  “Are we going to dive the wall today?” Tina asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nothing too deep though. Palancar Gardens is thirty to eighty feet. We’ll stay above fifty. There’s some cool towers, caves, and swim throughs there.”

  “If you’re comfortable with the Gardens, we could do Yucab for a second dive after lunch,” Julie said. “It’s fifty to sixty feet deep.”

  “Yeah,” Deuce said. “Turtles.”

  “I’ve never seen a sea turtle before,” Tina said.

  “Yucab it is, then,” I said. “We’ll start the Gardens at thirty feet and slowly move down to fifty. The current’s pretty strong there, so we’ll anchor on the up current side and pay out a couple of hundred feet of rode. That way when we surface, we can drift back to the boat.”

  An hour later, having had a nice breakfast in the hotel restaurant and not seeing Senorita Espinosa, we boarded the Revenge. Deuce studied the lock on the salon hatch closely. He even pulled a small magnifying glass from his bag. He looked at me and shook his head, letting me know it hadn’t been tampered with. Then he pointed to himself and up to the bridge and pointed at me and made a talking motion with his hand.

  I understood immediately. Most RF bugs are sound activated to conserve battery power. I started talking to Julie and Tina about the two reefs we were going to dive, while Deuce climbed up to the bridge. It only took him a few minutes, before he climbed back down. “Under the first seat,” he whispered. Then in a louder voice he said, “Are we ready to get underway, Captain?”