Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  Ian was aware that Phoebe was listening to him, too, quite possibly with even more intensity than the Dutchman.

  “That night, there was one nurse in the ER who saw through my charade,” he continued. “She was the only person who cared enough to sit down and really talk to me. I remember she brought in sandwiches and cookies, and when she saw me starting to wrap them up, so that I’d have something to give Aaron later, she brought me more, and made me eat some of it myself. She told me that there was a rule when you’re flying on a plane, that if something bad happens and you need oxygen, and the masks drop down from the bulkhead, you’re supposed to put the mask on yourself first, and only then tend to the other people around you. Because if you don’t take care of yourself, then you can’t take care of anyone else. I don’t know—that doesn’t really have anything to do with this story, but I’ve just always remembered that. It made sense to me, and I remember because of that, I liked her. I didn’t like a lot of people when I was a kid, but I liked her. A lot. Her name was Susan”—he glanced at Phoebe, and he knew she recognized the name as belonging to the woman Aaron had lived with when Ian first joined the Navy—“and she tried to talk me into meeting with someone from child services, but I wouldn’t. I was afraid they’d split me and Aaron up, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. I pretended that my father’s condition was a fluke, a rare occurrence, and I’m sure she didn’t believe me, but … she let me have that. She told me her work schedule—she mostly worked nights—and she said if I ever needed someone to talk to, or something to eat, that I should come by, because the sandwiches were free. She was lying, but I was twelve. What did I know? I took her up on it, a lot, over the next few years. And sometimes when I went over to the hospital, I brought Aaron with me.

  “And one day we were in the cafeteria with Susan, and Aaron went back up to the line to get an apple, and she looks at me and goes, Did you know that sometimes boys fall in love with other boys, and that that’s okay? And I didn’t know it at the time, I didn’t put it together, but she was talking about Aaron. She knew, even back then. She saw him. And one day, maybe a few years later, when I looked at him, I saw him that clearly, too. And I knew she was right. Aaron was who Aaron was—and how could that be wrong?”

  Vanderzee opened his mouth to tell him, no doubt in detail, but Ian stopped him by raising his hand.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he told the man. “You believe what you believe, and your idea of truth is not going to change my mind. But here’s something that might help you understand where I’m coming from: He’s my brother. I have always protected him, and I always will. Likewise, as I said before, I would trust him with my life. And with Phoebe’s life. And you probably know me well enough to recognize that I do not say or take that lightly.”

  Vanderzee looked from Ian to Phoebe and back, and he said, “You’re a man of strong convictions.”

  “He is,” Phoebe said, reaching over again to take Ian’s hand.

  And then Vandezee said what Ian hoped he would say. “I like that about you.”

  * * *

  The second dock could’ve been Cuba.

  Especially in the dark.

  Nestled in a remote cove, way south of Miami, it was a little worn out, a little run down, and a whole lotta overgrown.

  Martell had changed into his richie-rich expat partner clothes—a very nice green-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt worn open over a snug-fitting beater and a leather-holstered Browning. He wore another nine millimeter, a Colt—more ornate—at the waist of his cargo shorts, which he was grateful to be wearing with action-treaded sandals after the long-pants sweat-fest in the warehouse.

  Especially considering that the humidity was now hovering at about a billion percent.

  Francine and Yashi were dressed as his minions, and okay. Color him a graphic-novel-reading, sci-fi/fantasy-loving geek, but he was enjoying having minions. Especially one wearing what Francine had on, which was kind of a cross between Lt. Starbuck and Buffy from season eight, when what was left of the Scooby Gang went paramilitary high-tech.

  She was a walking armory with handguns holstered everywhere—not to mention her sharply muscular arms, which looked like they should’ve been registered as weapons, too. She wore jungle-print cammie cargo pants stacked over masculine boots, and the mix of that with her blond cheerleader’s ponytail, her womanly bosom accentuated by her no-frills olive tank, and a mouth that looked soft and inviting, regardless of how tightly she clenched her teeth …

  Yeah, it pushed all the right buttons for Martell, and he found himself revisiting last night’s bathroom encounter and imagining a different scenario and outcome.

  And then, because there was not much else for him to do while in wait mode, he imagined Francine on one side of him, and Deb, in her full goth ensemble on the other, each more capable and kickass than the other …

  “Help me make one more check of the truck.”

  Martell looked up to find Francine standing over him, hands on her hips. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She offered him a hand up, and he took it, not surprised to find that she was strong enough to haul him to his feet with very little help on his end.

  “I thought Yashi was in charge of that,” he added as he followed her back down the dock to the clearing that was barely big enough to hold the beat-up and ancient cargo truck, to which the FBI agent had affixed a Cuban license plate.

  “He is, but you have eyes, too, so let’s use them,” she said.

  “I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” Martell said, as they walked around the truck.

  “Anything thing that says You are not in Cuba.”

  “Yeah,” Martell said, “but if my buddy and his boat drop in regularly from Florida, it stands to reason that the Starbucks cup on the floor came from a care package.” But the truck was clean, at least of trash, both inside and out. The only things on the bench front seat were an unopened box of Cuban cigars and a pile of audiobooks on cassette tape—a nice touch that said, Yes, you’re in the middle of nowhere.

  “The cigars are your gift to Vanderzee,” Francine told him. “Should you choose to give it. Have you come up with a reason for why you’re understaffed?”

  Sheldon was supposed to have been one of Martell’s minions, but thanks to the SNAFU at the warehouse, the Dutchman had already met him. That was one of the limiting parts of running this kind of an operation. When things went south, people got used up at a crazy-fast pace.

  It was why Francine had been so adamant about Martell not pulling that bag off his head at the warehouse. If he had and Dutch had seen him, suddenly Yashi would be playing the part of Dunn’s expat partner, with Francine as his army of one. Unless Martell slapped on a Rastafarian wig and some sunglasses—but that would’ve been risky.

  “Yashi recommended I go simple,” Martell told her now, “and say the bulk of my army’s out protecting the perimeter, making sure none of my neighbors stumble onto us. Plus, I figure I could add that it’s best if the fewest possible of my peeps get a glimpse of Ian and his yacht. This op is trusted eyes only.”

  She was nodding. “That’s good.”

  “This whole thing is kinda like adult cosplay,” he said, and then quickly word-stumbled all over himself to add, “And as that came out of my mouth and I heard it, I realized that there probably is something called adult cosplay, which no doubt means something else entirely, something adult as in triple X, which is not at all what I meant and—”

  “I knew what you meant,” she said with a smile. “It’s okay. You’ve already established yourself as not-a-dick.”

  “Yeah, but I’m fully capable,” Martell confessed. “Of being a dick. I’ve been a dick. And it’s actually kind of weird for me, that you seem convinced that I’m not, so …” He was babbling again, so he changed the subject. “What does it mean for you, that Manny’s dead?”

  Her smile was gone. “It means Davio’s unleashed.”

  “Do you think Berto’s right, that Davio somehow killed Ma
nny in, what did he say? A power grab?”

  Francie sighed. “If Davio found out that Manny and Berto had some kind of alliance going—an agreement that didn’t include him—which they did, because he’s a fucking nutjob … Yeah. It’s possible. And it affects Ian most of all. He may resort to … other means of taking down Davio, like …”

  “Killing him?” Martell suggested.

  She didn’t confirm, but she also didn’t deny. She just kept going. “Like things he couldn’t do before, because Manny would’ve then come after him—after all of us.”

  “Things like … sending Davio to jail for rape?” Martell asked.

  Francine didn’t understand, so he clarified.

  “I’ve been wondering why Davio is still walking around after what he did to you,” he said. “The statute of limitations on sexual assault takes a very long time to run out—”

  Francine cut him off. “You really think I didn’t try to press charges after it happened?” she asked. “I did. But my mistake was that I didn’t go the police or to the hospital the very same night. I showered, and I waited because I wasn’t thinking—I just wanted to stop hurting, and when I finally went, there was no DNA evidence. There were only my cuts and bruises—and my word. Which wasn’t enough, because Davio got to the police ahead of me. He claimed I’d fallen in with the wrong people, that I’d gotten involved with drugs, that I’d started stealing from him—money and jewelry and alcohol. The necklace I always wore, it was my mother’s … The police detective, she actually took it from me, to return to him. Then she told me to walk out of there, because Davio apparently wasn’t willing to press charges, but if I persisted with this nonsense, he probably would.”

  Dear God. Martell did the only thing he could do. He put his arms around her. “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” he told her. She was stiff and unyielding, until he dropped a kiss on the top of her head and said, “It’s unjust and unfair and … You deserved better.” That seemed to wake her up, and she hugged him back, almost fiercely, as if no one had put their arms around her like that in a good long time.

  “Hey, guys?”

  They both looked up to see Yashi, heading toward them from the surveillance van—now blue—that was down at the end of the driveway, parked so that the dirt and pebble path was blocked off from any traffic.

  “Sorry, but I need you in the van,” Yashi said. “The storm that’s coming in is bigger than we thought. There’s going to be a delay before the yacht can make its return trip, which could be trouble. We’ve got Ian on a scrambled signal—he wants to brainstorm possible Plan Bs.”

  * * *

  “There are plenty of very good reasons why an American couple and their guests should not go wandering about Cuba in the middle of a stormy night,” Aaron pointed out testily from the surveillance van back on shore. “Arrest by the government for illegal entry into the country being a biggie.”

  Phoebe was on board the yacht, sitting on the bed in the cabin she shared with Ian. He was pacing as they spoke to the other team-members via secure connection. Deb was in there with them, sitting in the room’s only chair.

  Instead of putting the call on speaker, they were all tied in via their headsets and mics—so that they could hear over the sound of the yacht’s engine, and speak relatively quietly.

  Vanderzee’s cabin was not that far away. And Hamori was even closer, sitting in the passageway outside his boss’s closed door, constantly on guard.

  “But when night turns into daylight?” Deb asked. She looked tired. “It’s going to get harder to keep Vanderzee confined to the yacht. He’s not exactly a rule-follower.”

  “Nuh-nuh-no,” Ian said. “No way can we delay our return trip for nearly twenty-four hours, until tomorrow night. That’s not an option. If we’re that late, he’d need to call to let his people know, and how do we do that? No. We have to leave as soon as we can.”

  And yet, at the same time, they couldn’t depart from Faux-Cuba after daylight, since it would be obvious that they weren’t heading north, simply from the position of the sun.

  And if you didn’t set a northern course to the open sea when departing from the north coast of Cuba, well, then you were obviously not in Cuba. It wouldn’t take the Dutchman long to figure that out.

  Shelly was crunching the numbers to figure out the dead-last split-second they could leave—not just by sunrise, but before that ghostly predawn twilight time when the soon-to-be-rising sun first lit the horizon. It was like one of those horrid math equations that Phoebe remembered from school. If a yacht sailed at its top speed of thirty-seven knots, and the total travel time of its journey was to be no less than four hours …

  “So we’ll have to distract him,” Francine’s voice cut through, clear and calm. “Keep him in his cabin.”

  “Make sure he’s sleeping,” Phoebe suggested, because it stood to reason that if Vanderzee’s eyes were closed, he wouldn’t be able to see the sun. And if he were in his cabin, Hamori would be planted, absolutely, outside it in the porthole-free passageway, too. “Is there something we can give him? Slip an Ambien, or shoot, even just a heavy antihistamine in his drink? We can open a bottle of wine to celebrate our departure …?”

  “He’ll know it,” Ian said. “If not in the moment, then the next morning. I’d know it, if I’d been drugged.”

  “Me, too.” Deb and Francine both said it at once.

  “He’ll wake up and wonder what we’re hiding,” Ian told her. “We don’t want that.”

  “So maybe we don’t slip it, then.” Phoebe was unwilling to give up on her idea. “Maybe, because of the waves from the storm, it’s going to be rough passage. So we give him something like Dramamine, to keep him from getting seasick. Only we tell him that he’s gotta take it before he gets sick—we tell him it won’t work after he’s nauseous, so he has to take it before we depart? And P.S. it’ll make him feel drowsy?” She looked from Ian to Deb and back, but neither seemed impressed.

  “What if he refuses?” Deb asked. “Besides, do we even have anything to give him?”

  “I can send Aaron and Shelly to the drugstore,” Yashi’s voice came through clearly.

  Ian vetoed that. “No.”

  “Davio’s not a threat if he’s being held—” Aaron started to say, also from the van.

  “Assuming he’s still being held,” Ian pointed out as he continued to pace. “And even if he is in temporary custody, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t got his men on full alert, sweeping Miami for the two of you.”

  “And you,” Aaron countered.

  “But I’m not in Miami, am I?” Ian said, his hand up on the back of his neck as if he had a headache. “And you’re not going to the drugstore.”

  “Then I’ll go,” Yashi volunteered.

  Martell spoke up, his no way heavy in his tone. “And suddenly, if you don’t get back in time, I’m down to Francine as my security force? She’s kickass, but that’s stretching belief.”

  “There might be something like Dramamine already on board,” Deb said. “I can check, but again …” She shook her head. “That’s a pretty risky Plan B. Will Vanderzee take it? Will it affect him? You know, it doesn’t make everyone fall asleep.”

  “Give him three,” Yashi intoned. “It will.”

  “But what if, instead, he’s extremely susceptible?” Deb countered. “And he’s still unconscious when we pull into port? That could be awkward, too.”

  “So we go with distract,” Francine said from the van, in a voice that implied she, for one, had made up her mind. “I’ll come back with you, on the return trip. When we reach the point of no return—right before the sun’s about to rise—I’ll bring a tray with a nightcap to Vanderzee’s room, and I’ll make it clear that I’m a part of the special delivery.”

  “No freaking way.” Martell’s voice was up a full octave in his outrage, expressing exactly what Phoebe was thinking.

  Francine, however, sounded impervious to his disbelief. “I’ll make sure the shades ar
e down and that he doesn’t come out of the room until we’re safely heading back north. We can set up some kind of signal so I don’t have to stay in there longer than I have to.”

  Phoebe looked at Ian, who was silent, but was shaking his head no. Thank God.

  But Deb was watching Ian, too, and she said, “She’s right. That would handle the problem. Easily. But it should be me. I mean, I’m already on board, and … it’s pretty much what I’m dressed for—”

  Yashi cut her off, sounding as if he’d finally gotten his heart rate up. “That was not my intention.”

  “Nor mine,” Ian said.

  “I’m sorry,” Martell said from the van. “But are we actually discussing—”

  “Yeah, well, Vanderzee’s already let me know that he’s a big tipper,” Deb told them, cutting Martell off, “should I care to, how did he put it? Provide service for his personal needs.”

  “Oh, ew, really?” Phoebe said, and as Deb nodded, she added, “This is not okay.”

  “But it might be the only way,” Deb countered. “And I should be the one to do it. I’m who he’d expect to knock on his door. Plus unlike Francine, I’m not in a relationship.”

  “Whoa, wait, what?” Martell’s voice came back as Yashi made noise, too.

  “I still don’t like it,” Ian said, rolling right over all of them. “Phoebe’s right, it’s not okay.”

  “Yeah, like you’ve never used sex to distract,” Francine’s voice was tinged with disgust. “If the weather doesn’t clear, it’s our only viable option, and you know it. Deb offered. She’s a grown-up and she’s willing to do it. I’m pretty sure this is not her first time at the rodeo.”

  Dear God. Phoebe looked at Deb, who was studying the toes of her shoes as she nodded her agreement. This may not have been her first time at the rodeo, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to hate it. Every awful, hideous second.

  “Shelly, what’s our dead-last possible time of departure?” Ian asked.