Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9) (12 page)

“I was supposed to. But I don’t like loose ends. A case I thought was all wrapped up came unraveled, so the Army let me extend for six months to see it through. This is Customs Agent Timmons.”

I took the other man’s hand, and reaching into my back pocket, I handed him everyone’s passports. “I’m Captain McDermitt, Agent Timmons. I think you’ll find everything in order.”

“Yes, sir,” Timmons replied. “We received word from on high that you were in a hurry, so this is just a formality.” He quickly stamped all five of our passports in the appropriate places and handed them back. “Do you have anything to declare?”

“Nothing at all,” I replied, stuffing the passports back into my pocket.

“Have a safe trip, then,” the Customs man said and started toward a small building set back from the fuel dock.

“Word from on high?” I asked Andrew, thinking Deuce might have pulled some strings.

“That would be my doing,” Parsons said. “I have friends at ICE.”

“Definitely appreciate it,” I said. “And for your coming out here.”

“My last official act,” Parsons said with a smile. “Retirement is tomorrow.”

“So you’ll be staying on here in the Melbourne area?”

“Nope,” he replied, still grinning. “You remember that operations officer at CephaloTech? We’re sort of moving in together. I already have the townhouse sold and everything packed. I’ll be in Miami before the sun goes down.”

I did remember Delores Juarez. A no-nonsense business woman, she’d been very helpful in finding out the whereabouts of her employers. “Nice lady. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Parsons said. “And if you don’t need me for anything more, I’ll just head on back home.”

Tony was reeling in the hose, both tanks and both bladders full once more. “Doesn’t look like it, Dave. Thanks again.”

Twenty minutes later, we were accelerating out of the inlet and turning northeast, the bow of the
Revenge
seeking out the Gulf Stream like a hound on a deer trail.

Tony and Art took over again once we were in deep water and headed to the Stream. I managed to sleep until just before sunrise. A change in the pitch of the engines woke me only minutes before my alarm would go off.

I quickly slipped on my boat shoes, leaving Chyrel to sleep a little longer in the Pullman. In the galley, I flipped the switch for the intercom and leaned in close to it, so as not to wake the others. “Why are we slowing?”

“Better get up here, Jesse,” Andrew replied. “There’s foul weather ahead.”

“Gimme a minute to secure things down here,” I replied. “How bad’s it look?”

“Probably ought to get all hands on deck.”

I quickly woke Tony and Art and had them get busy readying the boat for rough seas, then went forward and got Chyrel up, asking her to wake the girl and bring her up to the bridge. The coffeemaker was full once more, so I emptied it, refilling the empty thermoses. Grabbing my mug, I made my way out into the cockpit.

Seas were a little high, three to five feet maybe, but the well-spaced rollers were barely noticeable as we climbed the back of each, then rolled slightly to port as we went down the other side. I handed the thermoses to Pat and climbed up. Andrew vacated the helm and moved forward to roll down the clear curtains that surround three sides of the bridge. I switched the NOAA offshore radio report to broadcast boatwide so the others would know what lay ahead.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Pat asked.

“Thanks,” I replied. “Tony and Art are taking care of things below and Andrew has everything in hand here. The ride’s gonna get a little bumpy, though. Under that bench, you’ll find a stack of life vests. Will you get seven of them out, please?”

“Really?” she asked, a worried look on her face.

“Just a precaution, nothing to worry about.”

She rose and lifted the seat cushion. “These don’t look like the Mae Wests I’m familiar with.”

“Those are for worst case,” I said, watching the sky ahead. Heat lightning was building over the mainland to port, and long, arcing flashes illuminated the storm clouds ahead. “They’re designed to keep an unconscious person’s face out of the water. Not worth a nickel for swimming in, though.”

Pat handed me one and I stood to put it on, letting out the side straps a little first. Once Pat had her own on, she sat back down on the bench, watching Andrew for a moment, then got up to help him with the final curtain.

As the others came up, Pat handed them each a life vest. Andrew directed Pat and Chrissy to the forward-facing bench seat, explaining that it had grab rails on either side. “When it gets rough,” he told them, “just hang on to the grab rails. This boat can take a lot more than what we’ll be going through, but it might be kinda scary if you’re not used to it. Art will be right next to you on the other bench, okay?” Chrissy nodded, hanging tightly to the grab rail as Art sat down just across the narrow gap and Andrew came around behind me to the second seat.

We were still sixty miles from the outer markers of Port Royal Sound, and the sky to the southeast was just starting to purple, signaling the coming of a new day. The storm looked like it was half that distance.

Chyrel sat next to Art and pulled up the weather radar loop out of Savannah, which was just off to port, lost in the gray storm clouds. She turned it to me and said, “It’s moving away from us at about fifteen knots. By the time we catch up to the trailing edge, we should just be entering the main shipping channel.”

“Good,” I shouted above the now growing storm, rain beginning to pelt the overhead and plastic windscreens. The powerful spotlight mounted on the roof seemed to do very little to light the way. “We’ll only be in the worst of it for fifteen or twenty minutes. Switching to subdued lighting.”

Chrissy gasped when the overhead lights went out, replaced with low-level red lighting. I left the autopilot on, which would take us to a waypoint half a mile from the first set of markers.

The wind began to build and the rain fell in torrents. I adjusted the spotlight so that little of the light spilled onto the foredeck. Pointed above the horizon, it wouldn’t help us to see our way, but it would allow anyone else crazy enough to be out in the storm to see us. The reduced glare from the foredeck allowed me to search for the flashing lights of the channel markers. Just a few degrees off the port bow, I saw the first red and green markers, indicating the entrance to the shipping channel.

The
Revenge
doesn’t need deep water, at least not as deep as the main channel, where it’s more than twenty-five feet deep. She only draws four feet, but the rollers rising up on the ten to twenty feet of water outside the channel would cause the waves to slow and build in height. I remembered fishing near the mouth of the sound, with waves breaking along the shallows on the north side of the channel, but only a slight swell where we were anchored.

Within minutes, we were in the full fury of the storm, and I brought the throttles back to thirty knots as we approached the waypoint. Sighting the second set of markers a mile north of the first, I switched off the autopilot and lined them up, aiming the bow between them. The seas grew, the waves rising above the shallower bottom now. Fortunately, the seas were directly astern, so we crested each one perpendicularly before diving deep into the trough.

Andrew calmly read out the forward depth readings, his voice at a constant soothing tone and pace. I made minor corrections, trying to follow the deepest water in the channel and thus the smaller waves.

We passed the first set of markers just as the third came into sight. Without a seat, Tony stood alongside the forward bench, holding the grab rail with one hand, his legs slightly bent to absorb the sudden changes in the pitching deck. We began to encounter choppy waves seeming to come from all points of the compass, and I did my best to keep the
Revenge
aimed at the openings between the markers. Tony resembled a bull rider, hanging on with one hand and using the other to maintain his balance.

It was a heart-pounding twenty-minute ride, but we eventually sighted lights to the west, early risers on Hilton Head preparing for another day. Slowly, the wave action decreased as we entered the mouth of Port Royal Sound. A few miles later, I followed the channel markers, steering the
Revenge
into Beaufort River, the southern tip of Parris Island appearing as a dark outline to port in the gathering gray light of dawn.

I slowed to twenty-five knots as we passed the old Spanish-American War fort on the starboard side, the beach and sandbar just past it appearing as a low fog on the water.

“Oh my God!” Chrissy yelled from the forward bench, getting everyone’s attention. She was grinning. “That was off the hook! It was like a twenty-minute roller-coaster ride in the dark.”

I glanced at Andrew next to me. He was grinning at Chrissy’s first display of any emotion other than hurt and anger. He looked at me and nodded, saying in a quiet voice that only I could hear, “I think she’s gonna be alright now.”

A
s we rounded a wide bend in the river, I spotted marker forty-one and steered toward it. Further up the river, the high bridge connecting Port Royal and Lady’s Island could be seen, the lights of several cars moving both ways on it. I slowly brought the
Revenge
down off plane, turning left toward Battery Creek.

“Downtown is that way,” Pat said, turning in her seat and pointing to the bridge.

“We’re staying at a friend’s place on Battery Creek,” I said.

“You’re taking this boat up a creek?” Chyrel asked.

“The terms creek and river are a misnomer here in the Lowcountry,” Pat said. “It’s all salt water, and the Sea Islands are surrounded by it. With a smaller boat, you could travel all the way around many of the islands, moving from one river to another. It’s more like a large bay, with hundreds of small islands and marshes.”

Entering the mouth of Battery Creek, we slowly idled past Sands Beach, a popular hangout when I was stationed here. We then moved on past the commercial docks, where several shrimp boats were tied up. As we passed under a bridge, the creek narrowed. There were a number of homes set high on the bluff to our left, with floating docks and elegant yachts behind each one. Beyond these homes, the marsh stretched out on both sides.

“How deep is it here?” Tony asked, looking down into the brown water.

“The chart plotter shows more than twenty feet,” I replied, turning the wheel to take the right fork of the creek as it split around a low marsh-covered island. “But the tide’s high right now, and sonar is showing more than thirty.”

“That’s a lot of swing between low and high water,” Andrew said, looking out over the marsh to starboard.

“There’s a submerged island to port,” I said. “At low tide, it’s almost as big as my island. But now, most of it is five feet underwater. Tide swings here are anywhere from six to eight feet, sometimes greater than that.”

More homes appeared just ahead of us as we rounded another bend, the creek widening out to over two hundred feet wide. More than enough room to turn the
Revenge
around.

“Just ahead,” I said to Tony. “Two hundred yards. See that empty dock with the hoisted flats boat? That’s home until tomorrow. A friend lives there, but he’s out of town right now. Said we were welcome to use the dock, house, and even his car, if we need to go anywhere. I’ll turn the boat so she’s facing back the way we came.”

Tony nodded, then he and Art climbed down, just as the rain increased. The trailing edge of the storm was now on us. In seconds, the rain stopped as the two men put fenders over the port side and positioned themselves fore and aft, boat hooks in hand.

I reversed the starboard engine, and the
Revenge
slowly spun to the right as we drifted past the dock. Using the transmissions, I maneuvered the Revenge in sort of a crablike diagonal course, finally stopping just off the dock. I shut the engines down as Tony and Art used the boat hooks to pull us closer before stepping down to the floating dock and tying the
Revenge
off.

“Chyrel, you’re with me,” I said, climbing down the ladder. “Everyone else, grab your gear and head up to the house. There’s a key above the window to the right of the back door. We’ll be up in a minute.”

Chyrel and I sat down at the settee, and she powered up my laptop computer. The others came in, quickly gathered what they needed and left. A moment later, Deuce’s face appeared on the screen, with Travis Stockwell sitting next to him.

“Good morning, Jesse,” Travis said. “I trust the storm didn’t delay you.”

“We’re at a friend’s house now, Colonel. Near Port Royal. Deuce, what have you come up with for a crew?”

Last night, while leaving Port Canaveral, I’d realized that Cross would be expecting Whyte to arrive by boat for the meet. Only Tony fit the bill to play a Jamaican, and then only barely. So, before I’d turned in, I’d called Deuce on the sat phone.

“I have two men, undercover DEA guys, who will be there this afternoon. Cross’s flight arrives at seventeen hundred.”

Flipping through my journal, I read Deuce the address where we were staying. “It’s owned by a retired general. He’s currently on the Mississippi River and won’t be back until fall. These DEA guys—you know them personally?”