by Matt Lincoln
Key Raiders
Coastal Fury book 11
Matt Lincoln
Contents
Prologue
1. Birn
2. Ethan
3. Ethan
4. Ethan
5. Ethan
6. Ethan
7. Ethan
8. Ethan
9. Ethan
10. Penny
11. Ethan
12. Ethan
13. Ethan
14. Ethan
15. Ethan
16. Ethan
17. Ethan
18. Ethan
19. Ethan
20. Ethan
21. Ethan
22. Ethan
23. Ethan
24. Ethan
25. Ethan
26. Penny
27. Ethan
28. Ethan
29. Ethan
30. Penny
31. Ethan
32. Ethan
33. Ethan
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Prologue
I stifled a yawn as I wiped down the bar on a particularly lazy afternoon under the Florida sun. There had only been one guy in the bar all day long, and for some reason, he had decided to stay all day long. He’d been sitting there in a stool on the far right corner of the bar since we’d opened that morning and didn’t show any sign of getting up to leave even though it was now late into the afternoon, almost early evening. He’d been nursing the same drink since half past noon.
I didn’t mind, really, considering how slow things were in the middle of a Wednesday, but it was kind of odd.
“How are you doing down there?” I called to him. I’d left him alone most of the afternoon, but at this point, I was just curious.
“Oh, I’m alright,” the guy said gruffly, and his voice cracked from lack of use.
He didn’t seem all that unfriendly, and I was bored, so I slung my bar rag over my shoulder and walked on down to him, leaning my elbows against the bar a couple of feet to his left.
“You from around here?” I asked. “Don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
“I guess I am now,” the guy laughed. Then, holding out his hand to me, “I’m Mark.”
“Ethan,” I said, shaking his hand firmly. “It’s good to meet you. Just move down here?”
He was old, probably around his early to mid-seventies. He could have been another one of the slew of retired folks who made their way down to the Miami area after a certain age.
“Oh, about a year ago,” the guy, Mark, said, scrunching up his face as if he had to think about this pretty hard. “Haven’t gotten out much since I retired and my kids sent me down here.”
I’d called it. Not that that made me a genius in these parts, but still, I’ll admit I was a little pleased with myself.
“Kids sent you down here?” I repeated. “Where did they put you?”
“Ah, just one of those darn nursing homes,” he said, waving a hand in the air dismissively. “I get it. Nobody wants Dad to move in when you’ve got a life of your own.”
“I don’t know about that,” I chuckled. “But if it’s the place down the road I’m thinking of, it doesn’t look half bad. Pretty fancy, actually.”
“It’s alright,” Mark shrugged.
Right then, my bar girl, Rhoda, came out of the back where she’d been finishing up the dishes left over from the night before and heaved a sigh at me.
“Do you mind if I take off early?” she asked. “It’s slow as bones around here.”
“Sure, no problem,” I said, nodding to her. “No reason keeping two of us tied up here for just one customer, demanding as that customer may be.”
I winked at Mark and flashed him a half-grin as Rhoda disappeared again in the back to take off her apron.
But just as Rhoda was getting ready to leave, several more than familiar customers came careening through the front doors, laughing and hanging on to each other as they did so. It was my gaggle of fans, as Mike sometimes liked to call them, come back already after only a weekend away.
“Back so soon?” I called to them, arching an eyebrow in their direction as the young military recruits Charlie, Ty, Jeff, and Mac made their way over to Mark and me at the bar.
They looked less hungover than they had the last couple of times, at least. They’d been enjoying chasing after the college spring breakers that were all vacationing in Miami as of late. I chuckled under my breath as I remembered those days with some fondness.
“We couldn’t wait to hear what happened next,” Charlie, an over-eager All-American kid who I could always count on to hang onto my every word, said excitedly as he took a seat two stools down from Mark at the bar.
“Hiya, old-timer,” his friend Jeff, a young aspiring pilot with sharp green eyes, said to Mark, holding out his hand to the old man as he sat down next to him. “I haven’t seen you in here before.”
Mark chuckled, taking this all in good fun as he shook Jeff’s hand.
“Let me guess,” he said dryly. “You’re all here on shore leave.”
“How could you tell?” Jeff asked, flashing him a grin as Ty, a shorter guy with a hot head, sat down between Jeff and Charlie, and Mac, a young blonde woman who always hung around these guys, took a seat on Charlie’s other side.
“Ah, you’ve just got that glint in your eye,” Mark grinned. “I remember it well.”
“You served?” I asked him, not all that surprised.
He nodded and took another sip from his drink, which was just about empty by then.
“Long time ago,” he said. “Couple tours with the Navy.”
“Ha! Me too,” I chuckled. “Small world.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Mark laughed. “So what’s this these kids are saying about some story you’ve been telling them?”
“Oh, wait ‘till you hear it,” Ty grinned, leaning across the bar so he could look over at Mark. “It’s nothing like anything you’ve ever heard before. There were even zombies in the last one!”
“Zombies,” the old man chuckled, giving the kid a skeptical looked. “Now, I don’t know about that.”
“Come on, tell him!” Ty cried, gesturing in my direction.
“Now, I thought you came in to hear the next part of the story, not the last part all over again,” I said, setting my bar rag down on the bar and placing my hands on my hips.
“Alright, alright, then tell the next part,” Jeff said, his tone eager and his eyes wide.
“Suit yourself,” I laughed. Then, calling to the bar girl still in the back, “Rhoda, how about you get these kids some drinks, and then you can head out.”
To my surprise, Rhoda was already right behind me, having snuck out of the back when she heard the kids come inside.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stick around,” she said, clearing her throat as if trying to cover up her interest in my story.
“I don’t mind at all,” I chuckled, not giving her any indication that I saw right through her facade.
“Drinks, coming right up,” she said cheerily, spinning around on her heels to grab beers for all our guests.
I took Mark’s glass and refilled it, pouring myself a drink as well while I was at it.
“This must be some story,” the old man mused, clearly having noticed Rhoda’s one-eighty once I committed to telling it.
“Oh, it is,” Ty assured him, grinning ear to ear. Then, turning his attention back to me, “So what happened with Lafitte’s ship?”
“Lafitte?” Mark repeated, nearly spitting out his drink. “You mean that old pirate from the bayou?”
“That’s where I left off the last time,” I chuckled. “I was working for the Military Border Liaison Investigative Services at the time—M
BLIS for short—and a gang somehow got their hands on Lafitte’s long lost ship and treasure and refurbished it, tried to use it as a bargaining chip in a drug deal.”
“You can’t be serious,” Mark said, his mouth just about hanging open now.
“I’m always serious,” I assured him. “Anyway, I was just about to tell these kids the story of what happened right after all that.”
“Right, the story behind that ship up there,” Jeff said, pointing up to a wide, intricate little wooden ship trapped in a bottle hanging on my wall right above an old ship’s plank and next to a tattered little voodoo doll that had been given to me by the mysterious Creole woman, Madame Rosaline, on my trip to New Orleans.
“You’ve got a lot of knick-knacks hanging around here, huh?” Mark asked, surveying the walls of the bar, which were all pretty much covered in similar items.
“I prefer to consider them souvenirs,” I said pleasantly. “One for each of my missions with MBLIS just about, and a few for little… uh, side projects I fit in here and there before I retired.”
“Side projects, huh?” Mark asked, taking a small sip from his fresh drink. “That sounds like a story, alright.”
“More than one,” I laughed, winking at Ty, who looked eager to jump in with a retelling of one of my many old stories he already knew. But I was interested in telling a fresher one that afternoon. “But this one isn’t about a side project, though I have a few of those coming up soon enough. This was another mission that my partner at MBLIS and I got sent on shortly after we got home from New Orleans, to the Florida Keys.”
“The Keys?” Mark repeated, an almost wistful expression on his face. “Now, that would’ve been a nice place to retire. My kids weren’t having any of that, though.”
“You could say that again,” I chuckled, sipping from my own drink, letting the alcohol warm my stomach and bring me back to a time long past. “It was a mission to remember, though I can’t say there were any actual zombies running around on this one.”
Ty looked almost disappointed at this, and I gave him a smile.
“You can’t expect every one of my stories to be quite that off the wall, now, can you?” I asked with another laugh.
“They’re all pretty crazy,” Mac pointed out, breaking her characteristic silence for once.
“Yes, I suppose you could say that, though not all quite that crazy,” I agreed.
“The Keys is where Lafitte’s ship came from, isn’t it?” Ty asked all of a sudden, his tone full of wonder.
“That’s what Clifton Beck led me to believe,” I confirmed with a nod. Then, seeing Mark’s questioning look, “That’s the leader of the New Orleans gang I was telling you about. He died before he could give me any definitive answers, however.”
“Funny how that works out sometimes,” Mark said with a chuckle. “Right when you think you’ve reached the end, something else comes spinning out of control. Yet another fire to put out.”
“You really are a military man,” I said with some amusement. “Law enforcement afterward?”
“Yeah, nothing fancy like you, though,” he confirmed with a small smile. “Just a beat cop.”
“No such thing,” I said, shaking my head at him. “That’s good, honorable work.”
“Hear hear to that,” Mark said, raising his glass in the air. I clinked mine against his.
“What about this story?” Ty asked impatiently, his foot tapping against the stool as he waited with bated breath for the next installment of what had really become my saga. “Did you find out how they got the ship? What about all that treasure? Did it have anything to do with the Dragon’s Rogue?”
Mark raised his eyebrows questioningly at the mention of yet another old pirate ship, and I held up my hands to slow the younger man down.
“Hold up, hold up,” I laughed, shaking my head at Ty. “One thing at a time. I’ll get to all your questions, some of them today, some of them some other time. I promise.”
“Okay, okay,” Ty said, his shoulders slumping a bit as this meant that not every single question that had been burning inside him would be immediately answered.
“The best stories are worth the wait,” Jeff said, smiling at me.
“Right you are,” I agreed, bowing my head to him. “Now, where were we? The Florida Keys, that’s right. As you might recall, a couple of other MBLIS agents were sent out on assignment there while Holm and I were in New Orleans.”
“That’s Birn and Muñoz, right?” Mac asked, and I gave her a bemused look.
“Someone has an excellent memory,” I chuckled, wagging a finger in her direction. “Yes, it was Birn and Muñoz. And you could say that they had a bit of a time of it while Holm and I were away…”
1
Birn
Agent Birn lay in wait by the small dock off to the eastern side of the Little Torch Key, the small island where he and his partner at MBLIS, Sylvia Muñoz, had been trying to track down some cocaine dealers for a few days by then.
They hadn’t had a lot of luck, but they’d been able to take down one dealer who made a particularly egregious misstep when he’d tried to sell to some underage tourists. They’d been just about to interrogate him when they got a call from an almost panicked female sailor saying that she’d found a bunch of cocaine floating around when she headed into work early that morning.
It was still dark when Birn got there, and the woman greeted him with concern in her eyes.
“I saw a pelican fly off with a packet of cocaine!” she cried. “A pelican! I spent years in the military, and I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Birn gave the woman an appraising look at this. She was fit enough to have a military background, with long dirty blonde hair pulled back in a crisp ponytail. She looked to be maybe in her mid-forties, or her early fifties, though he thought she probably looked younger than her age since she took such good care of herself.
“What brings you to a tiny place like this?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her.
“I was stationed at Key West for a long time,” she shrugged, briefly forgetting why they were there. “When I retired, it just made sense to stick around.”
“Second career as a sailor?” he asked, glancing over at the small building from which she had come sitting right by the water. There was a sign hanging above the front advertising sailing lessons and boat rides for the tourists who frequented the resort on Little Torch Key.
“Better than hanging around doing nothing all day, I figured,” she said with another shrug. “I’m Penny, by the way. Penny Truman.”
She held out her hand to him, and he shook it.
“Lamarr Birn with MBLIS,” he said gruffly, peering back out at the water. He could barely make out the clumps of cocaine packets floating out in the distance. “You said on the phone that this wasn’t here before?”
“No, not when I closed up around five last evening,” she said, shaking her head.
“You always come into work this early?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her. It was barely three in the morning.
“I like to watch the sunrise,” she explained. “Plus, it’s good to get an early start on the day, before all the tourists come crawling around the beach.”
“You didn’t see anyone or anything out around here this morning, or even last night?” he asked, trying to make heads or tails of the whole thing. It didn’t make sense for someone to just abandon a bunch of expensive illegal product like this.
“No, nothing,” the woman said, shaking her head again. “Though I can’t say I looked too closely. I just called that woman I talked to yesterday.”
“My partner, Muñoz,” Birn clarified, and she nodded. He and Muñoz had split up the previous day to interview potential witnesses, and this woman had ended up in Muñoz’s bunch. Good thing, too, otherwise they might not have found out about this so early.
“Well, Penny, thank you for calling this in,” Birn said, clearing his throat slightly. “I think I can take it from here. Would
n’t want anyone getting caught in the crossfire if someone does show up.”
The woman pursed her lips, not seeming to like this idea very much.
“I won’t let anything happen to your shop,” he promised her. “Or your ship.”
Both sets of eyes drifted over to a small sailboat right next to the dock.
“Alright,” she relented with a small huff. “But don’t forget that I’m not just any old civilian. If you and your partner ever need backup, I’m just a phone call away.”
“Noted,” Birn said with a curt nod, not really ever intending to take her up on this.
He and Muñoz worked together like a well-oiled machine at that point. No reason to throw anyone else into the mix, even when his partner was off interrogating someone else while he was stuck staring at the water.
Penny Truman left then, leaving Birn alone on the shore, lying in wait in case anyone showed up to collect what they’d left behind.
He walked out onto the small wooden dock until he was standing in the middle of the shore. The cocaine was a bit further out than that, but he could see it better now in the glistening light of the almost-full moon up above.
The sky was so clear that he almost couldn’t believe it. There were more stars than he’d ever seen before. It really showed him how much light pollution there had to be back home in Miami by comparison. It was peaceful, in a way. Except for the presence of so much of an illicit drug, that was.
Birn placed his hands on his hips and leaned back to crack his back. He was tired. He and Muñoz had been up all night trying to bust this small-time idiot dealer, hoping he would have some useful information for them about who was feeding him his product. That’s why Diane had sent them down there, after all. An influx of cocaine on one of the smaller, more secluded keys wasn’t exactly a usual occurrence.
