by Hamric, Zack
Now I could finally relax for a few minutes. The boat was sailing steady at around eight knots and we had at least a couple of hours before adjusting course again. Tasha had already located a paperback in the rack below decks and had a couple of cold beers waiting when I got back to the cockpit. “Life is sweet!” I said as I clinked my beer against hers.
“Actually, you’re almost right,” she laughed as she showed me the life ring she had been propped against. Embroidered on the canvas-covered ring was the name of the sailboat Dolce Vita. Sweet Life indeed…
CHAPTER 15
Life was not nearly so sweet in the penthouse on Fisher Island. There were five men around the low marble coffee table sitting on an expansive circular leather sectional that cost more than most people’s cars. Cigar smoke wafted languorously through the air and was quickly captured and recirculated by the condo’s state of the art environmental system. The fear that hung like an invisible cloaking fog throughout the room was not as easily removed.
General Popov dominated the room as he sat in the middle of the sectional almost like a feudal prince in his court. Dimitri, who was also present, sat beside Popov, being careful to cradle his bandaged left hand out of range of any further damage. Escobado, the head of the cartel for Miami was less successful in controlling his anger than Popov. His bodyguards were impassive, impossible to tell what they might have been thinking, hidden behind their dark sunglasses.
“This is bullshit,” sputtered Escabado. “I have fifty guys in this town looking for this fed and absolutely nothing. Don’t forget what’s at stake-we have one hundred forty million in coke coming in the next few weeks. Anything happens to that, I’m out of business.”
“Not to worry my friend,” said Popov. “We are all completely focused on the solving the problem. Isn’t that right Dimitri?”
Dimitri turned a little pale as he shook his head in agreement and tried not to think about the throbbing pain in his left hand. The conversation was interrupted as Popov’s throwaway cell phone rang.
“Yeah-you got something for me?” he rumbled to the party on the other line.
“I do,” said the unidentified caller on the other end. “The credit card that turned up missing the other night has apparently just been used at a supermarket off Las Olas in Fort Lauderdale.”
“So how does that help me?”
“Almost six hundred bucks in groceries tells me that our friend is either buying food for a picnic for forty of his closest friends or he may be taking a little trip. Maybe you should check the marinas that are in the area?”
“Done. Keep me posted if anything else changes. Nice job, I’ll send you a little something for your kid’s college fund.” Popov hung up the phone and smiled for the first time that day as he leaned back with a satisfied expression and took a long draw on his cigar.
Within minutes, Dimitri was pulling up to the marina closest to the supermarket in a black Mercedes with three of his men inside. They cruised up and down the parking lots at the end of the docks and were rewarded for their efforts within minutes as they spotted the black BMW parked at head of G Dock. The entire group spilled out of the car and fanned out to check every vessel down the length of the dock.
“Dimitri, how are we supposed to know which boat these guys are on?” asked Andros the youngest member of the crew.
“Do I look like a fucking mind reader,” snarled Dimitri. “Just keep your eyes open.” Dimitri was thinking this was looking like an impossible job-there was no way they could forcibly get on board one of these floating palaces without attracting undue attention and being swarmed by the cops within minutes. He knew one thing for sure-he wasn’t going to be the one to lose any more fingers.
Near the very end of the dock, was an empty slip with a couple of dock lines still in place. A wizened old Cuban wearing a shirt with the marina logo on the pocket was going through the unlocked dockbox.
“You know the people that were docked here?” asked Dimitri.
“Si, a man and pretty woman-they leave about thirty minutes ago.”
“What kind of boat?”
“Big sailboat, they go out Everglades Inlet heading east.”
Dimitri threw a wad of cash at the old man. He and his crew ran back to the car, jumped in and tore off in the direction of the inlet leading to the Atlantic. Within minutes, they dead-ended on Ocean and ran through the loose sand on the beach trying to get a better view of the boat traffic headed east out to sea. Dimitri reached the water’s edge just as the Dolce Vita cleared the mouth of the inlet and began to raise her sails.
He cursed his bad fortune, surveyed his ruined alligator shoes and felt a distant ache in his bandaged pinkie as he speed dialed his cell phone. He called the captain of one of the yachts that Popov owned through a shell company. Dimitri would often go on the boat-especially when it was filled with strippers, booze, and high rollers going out for a little offshore entertainment. Today, he had something very different in mind.
“Wallace, bring the boat down the Intercoastal-meet me at the seawall at the Fort Lauderdale Marina on 17th,” Dimitri barked into the phone.
“OK, if we’re lucky, we can be underway in five minutes or so, but it’s at least five miles to the inlet and a No Wake Zone the whole way. Even pushing, it’s going to take us at least thirty minutes.”
“Fuck that! Would you rather be a dead man with a clean Captain’s license or haul your ass here in ten minutes and take your chances with the Coast Guard?”
“I’ll see you in ten minutes,” said the Captain as he hung up and leaned out of the pilothouse to scream at the deckhand to cut the lines loose. As soon as the one hundred foot Azimut cleared the dock, the Captain slammed the throttles forward. The twin twenty-two hundred horsepower engines screamed as they wound up to full pitch within seconds. Within the first mile, the one hundred ton yacht had already reached its maximum speed of thirty-two knots.
From the flybridge, the Captain could only cringe at the destruction he was leaving behind in his wake. The five-foot high wake behind the boat was like a tidal wave marching relentlessly down the Intercoastal. Boats that were loosely secured in their slips for the calm conditions were lifted by the wave and came crashing down on docks and other boats in the marinas. They sped by several smaller runabouts leaving them completely swamped by the massive wake. He thought he could almost hear the people screaming at him over the din of the engines as he roared up the Intercoastal.
Within ten minutes, he spotted Dimitri and his crew standing on the seawall anxiously waiting for him. He succeeded in killing most of the yacht’s forward momentum in the last few yards, but the boat still hit the seawall with a sickening sound as the fiberglass ground on the rough concrete. They scrambled aboard without pause and the Captain used the bow thruster to maneuver the yacht back into the channel.
Capt. Wallace pushed the throttles forward again and the Azimut blasted out through the turbulent water of the inlet narrowly missing another large yacht coming in from the Atlantic. Dimitri was scanning the horizon with a high-powered pair of binoculars looking for any telltale sign of the fleeing sailboat. It was almost hopeless in the low light left by the setting sun. He caught a glimpse of a white smudge about five miles offshore that looked like the only possibility. A quick check of the ship’s radar didn’t reveal any other targets within the range that a sailboat could have reached in the past half hour.
Dimitri took a long look through the binoculars and pounded the console with savage glee. “That’s the one we’re looking for-let’s go!”
The captain adjusted his course slightly to starboard and pushed the throttles forward to their stops. He did a few mental calculations-figuring an eight or nine knot cruise on the sailboat and thirty-two knots on the Azimut, he thought he could close the five mile gap in around twelve minutes.
The Azimut pounded hard through the six-foot swells and within a few minutes they could clearly see the sleek sailboat cutting through the waves. Dimitri cursed their luck
at not having any heavy weapons-only their pistols and the 12-gauge shotgun he always kept in the trunk. Shouldn’t be a problem though-he could sweep the deck with the shotgun and let the guys with pistols board the sailboat to kill anyone still breathing. Depending on how things went down, he wouldn’t mind taking the girl alive to let the guys blow off a little steam after they finished with Jackle. When they had their fun, kill her, pour a few gallons of diesel on the boat, toss a torch on board and they would have a regular Viking funeral to send these guys off.
I had almost dozed off with the smooth motion of the sailboat as the bow cut through the rising swell with only an occasional burst of spray coming on deck as we encountered the larger waves. Tasha looked up from reading her book and smiled as I winked at her. She was distracted and suddenly directed her gaze at something behind me. I turned to look- that looked a little odd.
Obviously a large yacht, maybe thirty meters or so closing on us fast. Big yachts in Fort Lauderdale are the norm, but I couldn’t figure out why he was pounding through the waves. I could just imagine all the fine crystal and decorations crashing around the interior as they powered through the swells.
I grabbed my binoculars and could distinctly see two figures standing on the fly bridge. They were still almost a mile out, but there was no mistaking the hulking mass of the guy I had head butted the night before at the club. This cruise was about to end before we even got started.
“Tasha, we have some company. I’m going down below to get a couple of things-keep an eye on those guys. I’ll be back in thirty seconds.” With that I dove below and came back holding the XM-25 and the H&K. I handed the H&K to Tasha. “Just hang on to this-we probably won’t need it if I can remember how this other toy works.”
“Just let me know what you need,” she said coolly as she flipped off the safety and chambered a round in the H&K without even bothering to glance at it.
Hmm, that was interesting..no time to think about it now…
The XM-25 felt familiar. It was the details I couldn’t remember. The laser designator-found it-powered on. Loaded an airburst round. I raised it to my shoulder and fired at the yacht that by now was no more than five hundred yards off our stern. It flew harmlessly over the fly bridge and landed in the ocean well behind the yacht.
“Shit! What the hell was that?” yelled Dimitri as the round flew overhead. He had heard the muted pop as the round launched from the sailboat and had felt the movement as it passed just over their heads, but he had no idea of what it actually was. The Captain froze and continued his course for another couple of seconds before deciding just a little too late that he would rather take his chances with the Coast Guard back on land.
“OK,” I said to Tasha. “Let’s try that one more time-ya know, maybe I should read the directions next time,” I said as I lased the fly bridge, locked the range plus three feet and fired the round just over the top of the windscreen. This round reached the designated distance and exploded in midair creating a swarm of lethal metal flechettes that shredded both Dimitri and the Captain.
The Captain in his dying spasm had turned the yacht broadside to our vessel and I took advantage of the opportunity. I fired one more AP round into the fuel tanks of the Azimut. The thousands of gallons of diesel on board went up with a satisfying roar and within moments, flames were shooting a hundred feet into the darkening sky.
CHAPTER 16
Rivera walked into his office carrying three cups of coffee. By this point, he would have placed bets on Miller and Davis already being there and making themselves at home.
“Did you remember the milk for my coffee?” asked Davis with an innocent smirk on his face.
“Fuck yourselves, don’t expect this to happen again,” snarled Rivera. “I figure with coffee, you might actually get your brains in gear, we can solve this thing, and my life will get back to normal.”
“Nothing solved, but it was definitely a busy night last night,” Miller said as he slid some reports that he and Davis had been reviewing across the desk. “A couple of very interesting things happened in Las Olas last night. We put out an alert for any activity on the dead Russian’s bank accounts and credit cards and hit paydirt. Apparently someone was using the card to provision a boat with hundreds of dollars in food yesterday afternoon. Shortly after that, we had a report come in from the Coast Guard that a one hundred foot yacht was ripping down the Intercoastal at high speed destroying everything in its path. And the grand finale apparently took place several miles offshore just before sunset. The boat exploded into a fireball you could see from the beach. Some of the tourists probably thought it was amazing to see the sun blazing in the east at sunset.
“I guess the obvious question would be, who’s the owner of the boat?” asked Rivera.
“The actual name on the title is an LLC owned by Joseph Cassiglio, an attorney in West Palm who supposedly leases the boat for luxury charters.” Davis paused for a moment. “It does raise the question how an attorney manages to pay over four million in cash for hundred foot Azimut. Figure another four hundred k a year for expenses, and it’s a healthy nut to crack.”
“Definitely a question worth asking,” said Rivera. “What about bodies? Any IDs yet on the guys who were on the boat?”
“We were waiting on you-the Medical Examiner called us from the morgue a few minutes ago. Looks like he has a preliminary ID on one of the bodies. Why don’t we go take a look,” Davis said as he stood and started walking in the direction of the elevator.
Rivera had little to say on their way to the morgue. Even after twenty years with the department, he still was a little squeamish when it came to viewing the endless variety of destruction that the human body could be subjected to. As the elevator doors opened in the basement, the temperature seemed to drop another couple of degrees. Rivera walked down the hallway to the left, scanned his security card at the door and pushed open the swinging metal doors that led directly into the autopsy room.
Teri DeCarlo, the Assistant ME straightened as she noticed their entry and waved them over. Rivera tried to focus his attention on Teri as he avoided looking directly at the badly burned corpse lying on her table. “Teri, as always, you’re looking quite lovely today!”
“Yeah, lovely as always,” muttered Teri. At five-two and one hundred ninety pounds, Teri had long since given up on getting a legitimate compliment from Rivera. “So I can get you guys up to speed and back upstairs to the land of the living, let me give you the short version. The Coast Guard fished out three bodies this morning-well, it’s really more like three and a half bodies. This guy,” she said indicating the severely burned body on her table, “and the one on the other table got a little crispy in the fire and explosion-no way we ID them until we get the results back on DNA and medical records,” said Miller. “We managed to ID the Captain, because he was apparently blown off the flybridge in the initial explosion and avoided most of the fire.”
“That’s three-you said three and a half,” said Rivera.
“Just read the report later-you don’t get to see that one. I know you Rivera-you’ll either pass out or puke in my autopsy room and I’d end up having to write another damn report.”
Teri stepped over to a covered autopsy table and pulled back the cover. The Captain was lying peacefully on his back wearing the soggy remains of a yachty looking Captain’s uniform.
Rivera leaned over to take a closer look. “This guy doesn’t look too bad-no major burns or holes in him that I can see. So, what killed him?”
“Help me turn him and I’ll show you,” said Teri.
They struggled to turn the still waterlogged bulk of the Captain over without rolling him into the floor. Rivera caught his breath after they flopped him over to his stomach. The back of the uniform was shredded in dozens of places where tiny shrapnel had cut through the Captains body.
“What the hell caused this,” Rivera asked as he tried to avoid gagging at the sight.
“I dug out a couple of these out of his wa
llet when I checked for ID,” said Teri as picked a couple of small fragments our of a specimen tray next to the body.
Miller leaned over to take a closer look at the wounds and shrapnel. “No large pieces of shrapnel like I’d expect from a boat explosion-there would be some fiberglass mixed in here. Besides, this looks like flechettes from an antipersonnel round-an airburst by the looks of the wound pattern.”
“What kind of weapon fires that round?” asked Rivera.
“I have no idea, but we’ll be sure to ask Kyle Jackle when we find him.”
CHAPTER 17
As soon we had reached our waypoint twenty miles offshore, I turned Dolce Vita to a course running due south. My over-riding goal was to thread the needle in between Bahamian, Cuban, and US waters. With a sailboat we couldn’t outrun trouble. Our only hope of avoiding authorities or anyone else looking for us was to stay invisible. The weather seemed to be cooperating so far-the wind was holding steady out of the East at around fifteen knots.
“Tasha, I’m going forward. Would you take the helm?”
“Not a problem. Just be careful-I don’t want to have to come back and pick you up in the middle of the ocean,” she said with a smile.
Sailing this shorthanded, I was taking no chances-I clipped my safety harness into the jackline running from the stem to stern and moved forward. I quickly hoisted the cruising spinnaker still in its bag-once it topped out, I pulled the sock covering it and watched the sail flutter and fill in the breeze. Trimmed the sheets and felt Dolce Vita surging through the water with the swell rolling in on her quarter. On returning to the cockpit, checked the chartplotter again. “That helps a little. We’re making a little over nine knots. Doesn’t sound like much, but we’ll pick up an extra twenty miles today.”
