Fallen Pride (Jesse McDermitt Series)

by Wayne Stinnett

  I pulled back on the throttle and we dropped down off plane, idling toward the weed line, where the Gulf Stream starts. I checked the radar and there were no other boats within ten miles.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Parker asked.

  “Shut up,” I replied. “Or I’ll feed you to the sharks.”

  “I can pay you. I have lots of money.”

  “Not anymore, you don’t,” Deuce said. “It’s been seized by the government. Now shut up.”

  A blip appeared on the radar, moving fast straight toward us. A minute later we could hear the approaching helicopter. I could tell from the sound that it was slowing down, without having to look at the radar. Stockwell had given Deuce the UHF radio frequency and he switched the radio on and adjusted it. Then he spoke into the mic, “Seahawk, this is motor vessel Cazador. We have you approaching two miles out.”

  “Cazador, we have you in sight. We understand you have a guest that will be staying with us for the unforeseeable future?”

  “Affirmative, compliments of Homeland Security.”

  “We’ll come in and hover to lower a man down. Have your passenger ready.”

  I shifted to neutral and shut off the engine as the big chopper approached, getting lower and lower. “Where are they going to take me?” Parker shouted. “I’m an American citizen. I have rights. You haven’t read me my rights.”

  Deuce moved forward and knelt beside the man, “No, you don’t have any rights. You and Stolski plotted to kill the President of the United States and you were captured attacking federal agents with the intent to kill. You don’t have the right to an attorney and you don’t have the right to a speedy trail. Now if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll break your jaw and ensure that you do, in fact, remain silent. You’re a terrorist and you’re going to Gitmo.”

  By now, the chopper had come in and was hovering about forty feet above us. The side door opened and a man leaned out and grabbed the lowering cable and attached it to his harness. A few minutes later, he was standing in the forward cockpit. I went forward and he shook hands with the three of us. He had a second harness already attached to his and we helped him get it on Parker, who was babbling about not knowing anything about an attack on the President.

  Once the harness was on him, the Petty Officer clipped it to the cable and signaled the chopper to lift them. He saluted Deuce and up the two men went. The chopper didn’t even wait until they were inside, but turned southeast and started moving away. We watched until both men were inside and closed the door, then the chopper began to climb and increase speed.

  “Only one person left to send down there,” I said.

  “Kumar should be landing in Yemen about now,” Deuce said. “By the time we get back, he’ll be in Djibouti.”

  “Then we better get going.”

  Chapter 11: Gone Like A Puff Of Smoke

  It was nearly noon before we got back to the island. After docking the boat, we hurried up to the deck, down the back steps and across the clearing to the bunkhouses. Tony and Trent were sitting at one of the tables.

  “Any word from Kumar and Art?” Deuce asked.

  “Nothing, yet,” Tony replied. “But they should be landing any minute. How’d it go with Parker?”

  “He whined and cried, but by now he’s meeting some of Jesse’s buddies in Gitmo,” Deuce replied as he headed into the bunkhouse.

  Tony had the hunting rifle that Parker had been carrying on the table, disassembled and was cleaning it. “What ya got there, Tony,” I asked.

  “Nice of him to leave it, huh? It’s not in bad shape, but really needed cleaning and could use a few things that’re worn out. Winchester model 70, chambered for .308. Same rifle White Feather used, wasn’t it?”

  He was referring to one of the greatest Marine snipers of all time, Carlos Hathcock. “Yeah, it is. A little outdated compared to what we can get our hands on today. What were you planning to do with it?”

  “I have one exactly like it, back home on the farm. Same scope and everything. Called my dad this morning and asked him to ship it to me. I was thinking the pair would make a pretty cool wedding present for Deuce and Julie.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’d like that. A couple that plays together, stays together, huh?”

  “Thank you! She’s been doing some shooting on the range up at Homestead. The lady’s got skills. Hey, is there a good gun shop around here?”

  “Jig’s Bait and Tackle, down on Big Pine. It’s on US-1, easy to find.”

  “A bait shop? Really?”

  “Just about every business down here sells bait and just about every bait shop does something else on the side. What is it you need?” I asked as I sat down.

  He picked up a long, thin spring. “This firing pin spring is pretty worn, I’d like to replace it and the pin. Might as well replace the trigger spring too.”

  “The trigger spring Jigs might have in stock. Anything he doesn’t have in stock, he can get in two days. I get all my parts through there.” I picked up the barrel and examined it, then set it down and picked up the trigger assembly. “This trigger assembly and guard is aftermarket. If yours is still original, I’d replace this too. Picking up another part I looked closely at it. “There’s been a lot of rounds through that barrel. Might as well replace this extractor too.”

  “Thanks Gunny. Maybe I can borrow a boat and go into town in the morning.”

  “We’re going to pick up some appliances and materials at the Home Depot in the morning, ride with us and you can run over to Jig’s while we’re loading their delivery truck and meet us back at the dock.”

  The three of us looked up, at the sound of an outboard approaching from the south. “That’ll be Charlie,” Trent said. “with the baby crawfish and supplies. We don’t have to tell her what happened this morning, do we?”

  “A lie of omission, Carl?”

  He looked at me and grinned. “Yeah, I know. Look, what happened this morning rattled me a little. You guys are used to it, but I don’t mind tellin’ you, I was scared shitless when the shooting started. I know you and the other guys can handle things like that, but how about keeping me in the loop, okay? Then I can decide whether to take Charlie and the kids away. But, this once, I don’t think it’ll hurt anything if she doesn’t know.”

  As we got up and left Tony to his cleaning, I said, “That’s a deal, Carl.”

  When we opened the door to the dock area, Charlie had already swung the Grady around and was backing up to the dock in front of my skiff.

  “Hey Jesse,” she said with a smile. “The crawfish arrived this morning. They’re up in the bow with some groceries. Kids, give Jesse and Daddy a hand, ya hear.”

  Little Carl and Patty scrambled to do Charlie’s bidding. Mostly Carl. He lifted the boxes of groceries up to the dock and Trent stepped down to help him with the heavier sealed coolers with the crawfish. “Crawfish have an exoskeleton. They shed it, like a locust. I learned that at the library.”

  It suddenly dawned on me. In a couple of months Carl was going to be starting kindergarten. “Where are you going to go to school this fall, Carl?”

  “I dunno,” he answered.

  “We really haven’t thought about that,” Charlie said as she climbed up to the dock and handed me the keys to the Grady.

  I didn’t even give it a second thought and handed them back to her. “She’s yours. You’ll need something reliable to ferry him ashore in the mornings and pick him up.”

  “We can’t accept that, Jesse. You’ve done so much already.”

  I picked up the two coolers and said, “Nonsense. You two have done a lot more for me. You deserve it. Next time you go down to Big Pine, stop and see Skeeter and tell him to order a wraparound screen for the Bimini top. Can’t have little Carl going to school all wet when it rains.”

  Before she or Trent could say anything, I turned and walked around the dock to the door. I carried the crawfish containers over to the aquaculture system and set them down in t
he shade of a sea grape bush. As I passed Charlie on the way back down the front steps to the docks she quietly said, “Thank you, Jesse.” Then after she’d gone a few steps further up she stopped and said, “Oh Jesse, I almost forgot. While I was at the Rusty Anchor a woman came in asking for you. She said she was a friend of Alex’s, her name is Cindy Saturday. I told her I’d probably be seeing you and would let you know.”

  “Thanks, Charlie,” I said heading on down to the docks. Several months ago, the lawyer that came all the way from Oregon to transfer Alex’s estate told me about Ms. Saturday. She was a partner in a school Alex had started to teach troubled teens how to fly fish. I’d donated a good portion of Alex’s estate to the school and agreed to help fund a similar school here in the Keys.

  I went aboard the Revenge to look for my cell phone and found it after a brief search. It was in the refrigerator. When I tried to turn it on, it flashed the low batter warning and turned back off. After another few minutes of searching, I found the charger and plugged it in. Once it powered up, I saw that I had fourteen missed calls, three voice messages, and two text messages. The two text messages were from Ms. Saturday and Rusty, both saying the same thing. She was in town and would like to meet with me. Two of the voice messages were from her also. She had a pleasant sounding voice. The third voice message was from Home Depot, saying that my appliances had arrived.

  I called Home Depot and told them I’d arrange to have the appliances picked up in the morning. Then I called Skeeter. He owns a boat sales and repair shop on Big Pine Key. I asked if Trent had talked to him about using his barge and he said he had and we could stop by and pick it up any time. I ended the call and punched in the number Ms. Saturday had left. She answered on the second ring.

  “Hi, Ms. Saturday. This is Jesse McDermitt. Sorry I missed your call. You’re in town?”

  “That’s alright, I sometimes go days without a cell signal when I’m on the river. And please, just call me Cindy. Yes, I arrived yesterday. I had no idea how beautiful it is down here. No wonder Alex loved it so much. You have my deepest condolences, Jesse. She talked about you all the time, when she came back to take care of her brother.”

  “Thanks, Cindy. I suppose you want to get together and talk about the school?”

  “That too, but it can wait. What I’d really like to do is go fishing. Alex would talk for hours about the great fishing down here. I rented a skiff, but need a guide. Think I can hire you for a day?”

  “I’m not really a flats guide,” I said. “And my fly casting is abysmal. I mostly charter offshore. But, I’d be glad to show you around some. Where are you now?”

  She laughed and said, “Yeah, she mentioned that in her last email. I’m staying at a place in Marathon called Blue Water Resort. Do you know it?”

  “I’m only 15 miles by water from there. If I give you GPS coordinates, do you think you can find your way up here? I have some things I’m taking care of and can’t get away for a little while.”

  She hesitated and I added, “I’m on my island with a number of friends. Julie, the daughter of the short round guy you met at the Rusty Anchor, is one of them and her fiancé. She’s probably the best to talk to about flats fishing around here. Plus, Charlie, who gave me the message that you were trying to contact me, her family and a few other friends. We could put two or three boats in the water and make a fishing party. We actually need to restock the freezer anyway.”

  “Okay,” she said without further thought. “I can be there in about an hour.”

  “Perfect. I can get things wrapped up here and turn the rest over to my Caretaker.”

  I gave her the GPS coordinates and told her the easiest way to get here and we said goodbye. I ended the call, stuck the phone in my pocket and went down to the cockpit. The others had already left the dock area, so I went up to the deck. Tony and Trent were at the aquaculture system and I went over to join them.

  “You wanna do the honors,” Trent asked.

  We opened the coolers and looked inside. Each one held about three gallons of water and hundreds of tiny crawfish. “That’s a thousand?” Tony asked. “Man I’d hate to have the job of counting those little things out.”

  “The female carries the eggs under her tail like a lobster,” Trent said. “When they first hatch, they cling to her swimmers for the first week or so. These are about three weeks old.”

  I picked up the first cooler and slowly poured them into the far end of the huge tank. They disappeared instantly. “Go ahead, Carl. Dump the others in.” Trent picked up the second cooler and slowly poured the contents in.

  “Right now they have full run of the tank,” he said. “The mesh between the sections is small enough for them to go anywhere and the cage over the skimmer to the filters is so fine they can’t get sucked in. As they get bigger, they won’t be able to get through to this end. We’ll have to move a few that get stuck on the wrong side so when we have babies later on, they’ll be safe from cannibalism.”

  Julie and Deuce came over and Julie looked into the tank. “I don’t see any.”

  “They’re barely an eighth of an inch long,” I said. “They disappeared as soon as they hit the water. Either of you have plans for the day?”

  “Why?” Deuce asked.

  “That lady from the school Alex started is in town and wants to do some flats fishing. Thought we could have some fun and stock up our fresh fish supply. She’s on her way up here now.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Julie said. “A couple of the guides were talking about how reds and snook were being taken in the flats over around Raccoon Key.”

  “Yeah, it does,” Deuce said. “We probably won’t have any news on Smith until this evening, anyway.”

  We spent the next thirty minutes getting my two skiffs out and tied off to the pier in front of the house, stocking the coolers with drinks, checking rods and reels, and putting together some lunch. Tony and Dawson said they’d stay and do some more planting. Charley had brought back seeds for a number of different herbs, plus spinach, lettuce, green beans, and broccoli.

  Deuce and I walked to the bunkhouse to check with Chyrel. Along the way, we stopped at the Trent’s. Carl was busy installing windows on the west side of the little house while Charlie was on the porch, watching the kids gather clams in the shallows and getting splashed by Pescador. Those two kids were becoming great little providers.

  “Carl, you and Charlie want to go fishing?” I asked. “Tony, Jeremy and Chyrel are staying, along with Pescador. The kids’ll be fine.”

  Charlie perked up at the idea of going fishing, but Carl looked a little apprehensive so I added, “The kids can help Tony plant, he’ll keep a sharp eye on them.”

  “Okay,” he said. “The freezer’s running low. Who all’s going?”

  “The two of you in one skiff, Deuce and Julie in another and a guest will be arriving shortly and I’ll join her in the third. We should be able to fill the freezer in a few hours.”

  My thinking was that since Deuce and I weren’t very good at fly casting, and Charlie preferred bait casting, that’d put one fly rod and one bait rod in each boat.

  “We’ll shove off in about thirty minutes,” I said. “The boats are loaded and ready.”

  Deuce and I walked over to the bunkhouse to see Chyrel. She said that Kumar had emailed minutes earlier, saying that they were on the ground in Yemen, waiting for the chopper. He said they should be in Djibouti in four hours and would send another email upon arrival. We told her we were going out to catch some fish to stock the freezer and should be back by midafternoon.

  “Make sure to take your satphone,” she told Deuce.

  Walking back across the clearing, we heard an approaching outboard. That reminded me of something, “Hey, how did Parker get here?” I asked.

  “A small inflatable, with an electric trolling motor,” he replied. “I’m sure there’s a powerboat stashed on an island somewhere around here. Probably a rental.”

  We got to the dock, where Julie
was helping Cindy tie off her rental skiff. It was one of Skeeter’s Mavericks. Cindy looked to be in her early thirties, not much older than Julie. She had shoulder length brown hair, streaked by the sun. She was shorter than I thought she’d be somehow. About 5’-4” tall and 130 pounds.

  She stepped to the dock and said, “You must be Jesse,” extending her hand.

  “I am,” I said taking her firm grip. “This is Julie and Deuce. Another couple that live here will be joining us in a few minutes.”

  “Alex emailed me and told me about this place, just before she died. She said she looked forward to showing it to me one day.”

  “We have a few minutes,” I said. “Come on up to the deck and I’ll give you the birds eye tour.”

  We went up to the rear deck and I pointed out all the features that could be seen from there, which was pretty much the whole island.

  “I didn’t expect a whole community,” Cindy said. “Alex said it was very secluded and you lived here alone.”

  “I did. After losing Alex, I needed people around,” I lied.

  The Trents came up the steps, with the kids, Tony, Dawson, and Pescador and I introduced them all to Cindy. Charlie told the kids to be good and help Mister Tony. They started down the back steps, holding hands. As we started to leave Pescador barked once.

  “No,” I said. “You can go next time. Stay here and keep an eye on the kids.” He turned and trotted after the kids.

  “Alex mentioned him in her emails, too. She said he was the smartest dog she’d ever encountered.”

  “Sometimes I think he’s an alien from a far more advanced planet,” I said as we started down the front steps.

  Five minutes later, all three boats idled out the channel and headed south. I led the way, piloting Cindy’s rental and turned west between the Water Keys, with Julie at the helm of Alex’s skiff and Trent following behind in my skiff. Before the north end of Raccoon Key, I turned south to avoid the shallows on the north end of the island and circled around it, into a natural channel and headed northwest. A few minutes later, we approached Crane Key and I slowed down. The channel spread out wide here and just ahead were the shallows known as Crane Key Mangrove.