Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) (31 page)

“Yes, sir,” Alfredo said, again speaking for both of them.

“Good,” Stockwell said. “Deuce, Jesse, I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

“Have a good evening, sir,” Deuce said and reached over to end the call.

“We’re going to leave you two to talk about your future,” Deuce said and headed toward the door.

I got up and followed after him. Waiting for the elevator, I turned to Deuce and said, “How’d you arrange that?”

He just shrugged and said, “He likes you.”

“And what was that crap about seeing him tomorrow?”

“Call Kim,” he said. “Tell her to meet us at zero eight hundred where
El Cazador
is docked. And tell her to pack a bag.”

Stockwell met us the next morning at the dock. Kim arrived just minutes after we did and Stockwell gave me the keys to a loaner I could use until I was able to find a replacement for the
Revenge
. It was a forty-six-foot Viking convertible, only a year old. Though not as fast as the
Revenge
, it was very well laid out and handled great.

I contacted the guy that Deuce’s dad and I had gone through many years ago to unload some silver bars we’d found, and arranged to sell the emeralds. After a lot of back and forth, he agreed to pay a nice cool million dollars for them. We knew they were worth at least half again as much, but we also knew we wouldn’t be able to get that in a fast turnaround.

The recovery of the treasure on Elbow Cay would continue for weeks. The people running the operation found more treasure scattered a little further offshore and north of where the main cache was located. Apparently, the survivors were unable to recover all of it after they wrecked and what we’d found was only what they were able to recover. In all, the research team found more than a million pesos, twenty-two hundred pounds of gold, and of course the three twenty-pound chests of emeralds, which were on the manifest. The gold and silver was quite a bit more than was reported and they attributed it to being contraband. In all, our ten percent was going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of six million dollars. But we’d have to wait quite a while to get any of it. Well, except for the cool million we got for the contraband emeralds.

Kim and I spent the following few days boat shopping online. I finally found a 2004 forty-five-foot Rampage convertible, almost like the
Revenge
. It was in Galveston, so we flew over to take a look at it. It had the same monster eighteen-liter Cat engines my old boat had, but the owner had modified them with twin turbo chargers, so they produced nearly twelve hundred horsepower each. On a run out of Galveston Bay, the GPS recorded a top speed of an even fifty knots and the owner said with the twin turbos, forty knots was a good economical speed. The interior and bridge layout are the same, with a few upgrades, and the hull is a deep, midnight blue. It still needs a few more upgrades and those will come later. After a little haggling, we agreed on a price of four hundred thousand dollars and I bought it on the spot.

The stolen Cigarette from Hope Town Harbour was recovered in Fort Lauderdale, adrift in the Intracoastal Waterway. Tena Horvac and her briefcase had disappeared, without a trace.

Bradbury and Conner were both turned over to FDLE, arraigned, and released on their own recognizance. Conner immediately disappeared into thin air.

Linda Rosales was promoted and transferred to a desk job in Miami. She came down to Marathon the weekend Kim and I returned from Galveston and we took her out fishing. Kim was fast becoming a very good First Mate and we started taking out charters again aboard
Gaspar’s Revenge II.
As it turned out, Rosales was a pretty good angler in her own right, loved to swim and ran five miles a day on the beaches of Miami. On her weekends off, she came down and stayed with us on the island, bunking with Chyrel.

Chyrel became a one hundred percent island girl, moving out of her apartment in Homestead and into the little bunkhouse on a permanent basis. Between her and the Trents, they enlarged the aquaculture garden and produced more food than we could eat.

Doc was feeling better and better by the day. After putting together a crew, he and Nikki took to the sea. Carl made him Captain and her the First Mate of the
Miss Charlie
. At least that way, he was sure to be a “home every night” kind of dad, even though home was sometimes out on the Gulf. Everyone agreed that due to the loss of the
Revenge
, the replacement cost should come off the top, so I was off the hook for the half a million he’d fronted me. The other half million from the emeralds was split equally between everyone, including Rosales. She protested, but Nikki insisted. Once the insurance pays up, I’ll split that with everyone as well.

A week after we got back, Deuce was promoted to Commander. There was no official ceremony, since on the books he was no longer in the Navy. Along with his promotion, he was put in charge of both the team that operated from my island and the team that was going through training at Homestead and would operate out of Key Largo.

Me? I’m just enjoying the time I have with Kim, teaching her about the sea, fishing, and scuba diving. She’s taking flying lessons and I’m still looking for a King Air. Maggio’s Bell was never returned. It’s now officially a Department of Homeland Security aircraft. Eve still thinks I’m a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, but Kim is slowly convincing her I have other redeeming qualities. Although she doesn’t understand her husband’s new stance on what cases he and his father are now taking and not taking, she’s happy that they are helping others who need it. She’s due any day now.

I spoke to Stockwell and told him that moving forward, I was going to be more concerned with the welfare of my immediate family and there might be times I’d just tell him a flat no. He didn’t like it, but he went along. We found another boat and Captain in Key Largo, a recently retired, salty, old Navy Master Chief who operates a struggling charter fishing business in Lower Key Largo.

The End

Other books by the author:

Fallen Out: The Beginning

Fallen Palm: Jesse McDermitt Series Vol. 1

Fallen Hunter: Jesse McDermitt Series Vol. 2

Fallen Pride: Jesse McDermitt Series Vol. 3

Fallen Mangrove: Jesse McDermitt Series Vol. 4

Fallen Reef: Jesse McDermitt Series Vol. 5 (Feb, 2015)