Once outside, Darius looked around. The building they’d been held in was a very low structure, the floor a couple of feet below ground level. It was surrounded by scraggly low brush, with palm branches hanging haphazardly from the roof.
In the distance, Darius could hear the soft rush of waves breaking on a shoreline not far away. Ilya turned away from the sound of the surf and led them across a rock-strewn landscape. Trees and shrubs were bent and twisted by years of wind, none more than ten feet tall. Darius had no idea where they were. He’d never seen such a landscape.
Ilya led them along a little-used trail that sloped upward slightly. After less than a hundred yards, they reached a low cliff that dropped down to shallow, still water, which extended as far as the eye could see.
The cliff curved in both directions, creating a small cove. From the high vantage point, Darius saw that they were on a long and obviously very narrow island, which stretched away to the north for quite a distance.
In the center of the cove, an old boat sat at anchor. It was large, nearly as big as the Obsession, with a raised pilothouse. A two-story cabin below the pilothouse extended from near the stern to nearly amidships and an open deck forward of that. Huge truck tires hung from the railing as fenders, and a tarp stretched across the foredeck, probably to provide shade, Darius figured.
As they descended a narrow path down the twenty-foot-high cliff, Darius could see that the water was very shallow and the boat was in danger of being stranded if the tide was falling.
Ilya waded out into the water, leading the way. Celia stumbled, but Darius caught her, putting her arm around his shoulder to help her wade through the shallow water. She hadn’t said anything since Oleg had threatened her with the chain saw. He thought she might be in shock from the ordeal.
When they reached the boat, Ilya began climbing up a rickety-looking ladder leaning against the hull. Darius had been wrong—the vessel was already resting on the bottom, the water barely reaching his waist. He waited until the man reached the top, a good ten feet above him, before urging Celia to climb.
Faltering at first, Celia finally figured out what Darius wanted her to do and climbed up the old wooden ladder. Darius waited until she was near the top before he started up. He doubted the ladder would hold them both.
“Welcome aboard, Missus Minnich,” Ilya said, helping Celia over the low wooden railing at the top.
Darius hurried up the ladder, and once he was on the deck of the boat, he looked around. It was a fishing boat, old but sturdy looking. Under the covering tarp was a large sliding hatch forward with a large red equipment box between the hatch and the cabin. He assumed the hatch covered the boat’s hold.
“Follow me,” Ilya instructed.
Going aft, Ilya opened a door at the back of the cabins, and Darius followed him down several steps into a large room, a table and chairs taking up most of it.
At the table sat two men, who rose as Darius helped Celia down the steps. One of the men said something to Ilya in a language Darius didn’t recognize. Ilya snapped back at him, apparently giving orders. Instantly, the two men busied themselves, getting plates and utensils from a cabinet and placing them in front of two adjacent chairs.
Waving a hand toward the table, Ilya said, “Please, have a seat. My men will prepare you food.”
As Darius helped his wife into a chair, one of the men placed two bottles of water in front of them. Darius quickly removed the cap on one and started to move it to Celia’s lips. He stopped halfway and looked at Ilya.
“You do not trust me?” Ilya asked. He took a mug from a hook and then took the bottle from Darius’s hand. He poured a little water in the mug and drank it. Placing the mug on the table and handing the bottle back to Darius, he said, “We’re partners now, Mister Minnich.”
Darius held the bottle to Celia’s mouth, and she tilted it up, drinking thirstily. “Drink slowly, dear,” he cautioned her.
Picking up the other bottle, Darius twisted the cap off and took a couple of swallows, then sat down next to Celia as Ilya pulled a chair out on the opposite side of the table and sat down.
A moment later, one of the men placed a bowl of whole and sliced fruit on the table in front of them. “Eat,” Ilya said. “There is fish as well. Left over from last night, but still good.”
Celia needed no coaxing, taking a large mango slice from the bowl and wolfing it down. Darius picked up a banana and peeled it, also eating it quickly.
“After your hunger and thirst are sated, Oleg will show you to a cabin where you can rest. The tide is falling, and we cannot leave until late this evening at the earliest.”
“Leave?” Darius asked. “For where?”
“Cuba. However, we will probably stay here for another day.”
The other crewman placed reheated snapper fillets on the plates in front of Darius and Celia. They ate hungrily as Darius considered this new information. So far, he hadn’t given Dobrovska anything. If they were taken to Cuba, he might never find a way to escape. Not that escape would be difficult, but getting off the island would be.
“Oleg,” Ilya said after Darius and Celia had satisfied their appetites, “take Mister and Missus Minnich to the lower deck and show them to one of the empty crew cabins.”
Minutes later, the door was closed behind them and Darius heard it lock. The cabin was small, barely the length of the bunk and only a few feet between the bunk and the aft wall. He waited until he heard Oleg’s footsteps retreat down the gangway and then tried the door. It was deadbolted from the outside, needing a key to open it from inside.
“Do you have any idea how we can get away?” Celia asked.
Darius turned to his wife, looking into her eyes in the dim light coming through the small window of the cabin. “You’re feeling better now?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I’ve been pretending to be incoherent.”
Putting his arms around her, he held her close to his chest and whispered, “We’ll find a way out. If not, I’ll give them what they want.”
“I don’t want to live in some foreign country, Darius.”
“The alternative is not living,” he replied, holding her at arm’s length and looking into her eyes again.
Celia turned away and walked across the small cabin to the window. It was nailed shut, but even if it hadn’t been, it looked to be too small for either of them to get through.
Darius moved around the cabin, looking for anything they might use for a weapon. The bed was built in and barely large enough for two people. The small hanging closet was empty, not even a rod for clothes to hang from. Lifting the mattress on the bunk, he found nothing under it. At least it was moderately clean and they could rest.
“Let’s get some sleep,” Darius suggested.
“Sleep?” Celia asked, obviously aggravated with her husband. “We’re on a boat, being held against our will, you’re talking about committing treason, our captors want to take us to Cuba, and you want to go to sleep?”
Taking her by the shoulders again, Darius said, “Celia, calm down. We’ve been through a lot. Neither of us is thinking clearly. There’s no way out of here at the moment, and we’re both beyond exhausted.”
Sighing loudly, she turned and sat down on the edge of the bunk. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right.”
Gently, Darius pushed her back on the bunk and kissed her softly on the forehead before stretching out beside her. Within minutes, they were both sound asleep.
It seemed like only minutes had passed when Darius heard shouting from above. At first he had no idea where they were. As he sat up, full light was streaming in through the window. Rising from the bunk, he nearly lost his balance.
As Celia stood up, she was also confused and nearly fell, Darius catching her at the last moment. “What’s going on?” she asked, a bewildered look on her face.
Looking out the window, Darius realized the boat was leaning several degrees. The tide had fallen completely, leaving the boat stranded on the s
and and listing precariously. Below, he could clearly see the shadow of the boat on the wet sand, but the water had completely receded.
Celia said, “I hear something.”
In the distance, Darius barely detected a low rumbling sound. It grew steadily louder, seeming to draw nearer, and then changed pitch to a deeper growl, growing fainter. The sound had at first seemed to have been coming from the north, but now appeared to be moving east and away from them.
Darius recognized it. “That’s a plane!”
The shouting voices from above couldn’t be made out, even if he could understand the language the men spoke. They were obviously excited, though. Leaning forward, he braced his hands against the hull on either side of the window and had to squat down to look up through the window toward the horizon. The boat was listing that much.
Celia joined him at the window, bending to look upward. The sound became fainter for a moment, then suddenly became louder again. “There!” she whispered urgently and pointed.
About a mile away, an antique-looking seaplane moved west across the island, no more than a hundred feet up. It then banked, turning sharply away from them.
“It’s leaving,” Celia said, frowning and dejected.
Listening for a moment, Darius whispered harshly, “No, it’s turning.”
As they listened, they could tell that the plane was getting closer, flying very low and slow. Darius didn’t know anything about old seaplanes, but didn’t think they would be very fast. It seemed to be following the opposite coast, where he’d heard the surf breaking earlier. The plane seemed to pass in front of the boat and then the engine sound diminished, lost in the dense wood of the boat’s hull.
“I think they’re looking for something,” Celia said. “Could it be someone searching for us? Do you think they saw the boat?”
“I don’t know,” Darius replied. “They might be a part of Dobrovska’s crew, looking for a place to land.”
Once more, the pitch of the plane’s engine changed. Darius knew by the sound that it was banking again, perhaps circling once more.
“Those men don’t sound like it’s someone they’re expecting,” Celia said softly.
As the plane seemed to circle across the island, to the south of where the boat lay, the voices from above quieted.
“It’s leaving,” Celia moaned.
Suddenly, the sound of the plane’s engine changed, seeming to roar like a wounded lion at the same time that a loud crack came from above, followed quickly by another.
“That’s a gun!” Darius urgently whispered.
The sound of the plane changed several more times as it moved out past the stern of the boat, invisible from the window in their cabin. Then it settled into a steady but diminishing buzz.
“Now it’s leaving,” Darius said. “And if these guys were shooting at it, they’re definitely not friends of theirs.”
“I hope nobody was hurt,” Celia whispered as she sat back down on the edge of the bunk.
Darius sat next to her and took her hand in his. Kidnapped by God only knew who, she’d been beaten, starved, humiliated, and threatened with a chain saw, but Celia’s concern was for a stranger. Gently, he lifted her hand and kissed the back of it.
Once we arrived back at the Rusty Anchor and had Island Hopper out of the water, Parsons hurried toward the parking lot, where his two MPs waited. He’d been on his satellite phone almost constantly during the trip back, comparing notes with Binkowski and updating his superiors.
Leaving Kim to do the postflight, Deuce and I hurried after Parsons. Linda stayed behind to help Kim, and Waldrup and Meg went inside to use the phone to make arrangements at their hotels.
“The ransom note is a distraction,” Parsons told me and Deuce as we caught up with him, just as he ended another phone call. “I’m sure of it.”
“What did Binkowski come up with?” Deuce asked.
“Only six people working for the company know that the Minniches are missing. Miss Juarez, Captain Waldrup, the Minniches themselves, obviously, and two people in the accounting department. Waldrup was with me at the time the ransom note was dropped in the UPS box in Coconut Grove. Juarez was at the company office since yesterday morning. She never went home last night, and security protocols confirm it.”
“And the two bean counters?” I asked.
“Binkowski is checking their alibis. Both left the office yesterday afternoon. Either of them could have made the drop.”
“Which two in accounting?” Waldrup asked as he and Meg approached.
“Jack Stennis and Marjory Henderson,” Parsons replied. “How’s the leg?”
“Still intact,” Waldrup replied. “I don’t think the bullet did more than ding the titanium. Marjory is a problem.”
“How so?” Deuce asked.
“Mister Minnich’s first wife’s maiden name was Henderson. Darlene Henderson Minnich. Her brother is Marjory’s husband.”
“You mean Minnich kept his ex-wife’s sister-in-law on the payroll after the divorce?” Parsons asked, surprised.
The big man just shrugged. “She’s good at her job. Besides, she despised Darlene.”
Just then, Marty pulled into the parking lot in his pickup, climbed out, and walked to where we were standing. “Hey, Jesse. Where’s Kim?”
“Checking the plane over with Linda,” I replied. “Anything new from the forensics guys or Doc Fredric?”
“Nothing at all came back on the fingerprints. Still waiting on DNA. Doc Fredric confirms Meg’s suspicion that the leg was cut off with a chain saw. He also confirmed the obvious COD of Mister and Missus Albright. Close-contact gunshot wound to the head.”
Lifting his camera, Deuce said, “I need to use your computer, Jesse.” Then he turned to Parsons and added, “You should join us. The equipment on the boat is a lot better than your phone.”
Once we were aboard the Revenge, Deuce powered up the laptop, removed the memory card from the camera, and stuck it in a slot on the side of the computer. The memory card had over two hundred images, from the time we first saw the little building on South Anguilla until just after I took control of the plane from Kim. Connecting a UHB cable from the computer to the big-screen TV, Deuce displayed the images on the TV so we could all see.
Studying the photos of the small building, Deuce said, “Looks like either it’s a very short structure or part of it is below ground.”
“How can you tell that?” Meg asked. “There isn’t anything to give you scale.”
“See the sides, here?” Deuce said, getting up and pointing to the spot on the TV screen. “You can just make out the seams of the plywood walls. The sheets are square, so I’m guessing that the walls are only as high as these sheets are wide. Four feet.”
“Do you think it belongs to the people on the boat?” Waldrup asked, looking at the TV screen.
“Most likely,” Deuce replied. “Or at least used by them for something. It’s the only building of any kind for miles, and that boat wasn’t there by accident.”
Sitting back down at the settee, Deuce skipped forward until he got to the frames of the boat itself. Parsons leaned in close. “Damn, it is a Nikonov AN94.” Looking up at me, he said, “Sharp eye. Is there only that one hole in your plane?”
“Kim’s checking her over now. Why?”
“Got a pretty clean image of the shooter,” Deuce interrupted.
We all looked toward the big screen on the forward bulkhead of the salon again. The boat was obviously sitting high and dry on the wet sand, listing to port. Deuce zoomed in on the man leaning out of a starboard porthole on the forward part of the upper deck, just behind and below the pilothouse.
A shadow from the antenna mast partly covered his face. Deuce zoomed in more, framing just his face. Then he played with the contrast a little, taking out enough of the shadow to see his left eye. This left the other side of his face nearly whited out. I’d learned a little talking to Chyrel and knew that the clarity of the image wasn’t as important
as a full-frontal image showing both eyes. This allowed Chyrel’s facial recognition software to make distance comparisons to the other features.
Cropping the image, Deuce connected to the email server and attached the picture to an email to Chyrel, in her office up in Homestead. Then he went back to flipping through the images.
“Why did you ask about a second hole?” I asked Parsons.
“When you first said the gas block was in front of the grip and it had a forward-curving magazine, I thought it might be the Nikonov, and that picture confirms it in my mind. It was designed to fire a two-round burst. With the gas block almost at the end of the barrel, there’s almost no felt recoil from the first round before the second is fired, allowing the shooter to get two rounds on target.”
“Is it accurate?”
Parsons grinned at me. “I checked up on you. You were a sniper instructor, huh? Probably nothing you’d be interested in. No more range than the AK, but just as accurate at a comparatively short range.”
“Got a partial on the name of the boat,” Deuce said. “Only part of the first word. Something ending with M-A, and then Esperanza.”
I leaned in closer. There was a shirt dangling off the stern rail, covering most of the first word. “Something Hope?”
“Última Esperanza?” Waldrup suggested, staring at the image on the TV screen, his huge arms crossed over his chest. “Last Hope?”
Deuce was already preparing a second message to Chyrel, asking her to search vessel registries for possible names and owners. He cropped and attached that image as well. Then he clicked on the Soft Jazz icon on the desktop, opening the video conference icon.
A moment later, Chyrel’s face appeared. “Hey, boss. I have facial recognition running, but it’ll probably take a little while.”
“How long until the bird will be over the location?” Deuce asked. He’d texted her the GPS position of the boat on the way home and instructed her to move the surveillance satellite to the position over the southern part of Cay Sal Bank.
Fallen Tide: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 8) Page 14
