Fallen Palm (Jesse McDermitt Series) (21 page)

Sunday afternoon, October 30, 2005

Deuce made it to Jesse’s house with no problem. Still a half mile out, he knew where it was, because of the barge and backhoe anchored beside the channel. Several pelicans were perched on the barge and took to flight as he motored up the narrow channel. The deck and roof were visible from about four hundred yards out, just as Jesse had said, but completely disappeared once he got closer and the trees blocked the house out. He slowly motored through the overhanging mangroves and saw that the canal was dug into the island itself and the house was on large concrete piers, imbedded into dry land. Just before he went underneath the house, he noticed a larger area had been dredged to turn a boat around. He went ahead and turned Rusty’s skiff around there and backed up under the house, in case he needed to leave in a hurry. Jesse had said that he dug the channel, turning basin and the area under the house by hand, with nothing more than a large pole, a pick and a shovel. Quite a feat, Deuce thought.

He tied off the skiff, opened the fish box with the key on the key ring and removed the long fly rod case. Then he put the key back into the ignition again, just in case he needed to move fast. Climbing the steps to the deck, he was impressed with the workmanship that went into building the house. The docks, steps, deck and everything looked and felt extremely sturdy. Once on the deck, he used a key that Jesse had given him and let himself inside. It was obviously a single man’s home, but here and there, he could see that Jesse had taken pains to make a woman feel at ease in it, too. He got a bottle of water from the fridge and went back out to the deck. He set the case on the south facing part of the deck, went back around the side, retrieved one of the patio chairs and a small table, and placed them in the center of the deck, facing the direction Jesse and Lester would come. He placed the case on the little table and opened it.

Jesse was meticulous about his weaponry, that was obvious. The rifle was completely free of any dirt or rust, but was well worn. Obviously, many rounds had passed through the barrel. He removed the rifle and closed the case. He’d have preferred to have a sandbag to rest the forward stock on, but settled on placing his left arm on the rail and set the forward stock in the crook of his elbow. Removing the covers from the front and rear of the scope, he looked through it and sighted in on a small island about five hundred yards away. The scope brought the northern shore of the island into clear focus and he could easily make out several shells, a coconut, and two crab trap floats. He really needed to try it out, before taking a shot through a cold barrel at something as small as an oar close to Jesse’s head. But, they were probably too close. He knew that sound carried further and better over water than on land and the report of a rifle would be heard five miles away, or further.

He wasn’t real crazy about the MST-100 scope. Zeroing the damn thing requires adjusting the elevation knob with an allen wrench. But, once it’s zeroed, elevation changes can be made simply by turning the elevation knob. He was at least familiar with it. Marines seemed to love the damn thing. He adjusted the elevation for a four hundred meter shot and sighted in on the little island again. He checked the wispy grass close to the water’s edge, and then checked the fronds on a palm tree in the center of the island. Fortunately, there was no wind blowing on either the grass or the higher palm tree. Looking further past the east side of the island, he couldn’t see any ripples in the water. Looking at the water, between him and the island, again, there were no ripples. He was satisfied that at the moment the air on the surface of the water, all the way up to the twenty-five foot tall palm tree was still. Now all he had to do was wait.

After twenty minutes had gone by, he was starting to worry. Maybe Jesse was just taking it slow, to give him more time to set up. Maybe Jesse thought he might get lost. Without the GPS, that would have been a good assumption. The islands all around him looked identical, except for size. He let another ten minutes tick by, scouring the water to the south. That’s when he saw a man walking in knee-deep water. More of a slow jog, than a walk and a dog was half swimming and half leaping along beside him. Jesse.

Deuce put the rifle back into its case and started down the steps to the skiff, when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He looked and saw that it was Tony. “Yeah,” he said.

“Deuce,” Tony said, “Alex was kidnapped twenty minutes ago. It was Walter O’Hara and the other two.”

“Oh shit,” Deuce said. “That’s bad. Lester must have gotten the drop on Jesse. I just spotted him wading through the water, headed this way. I was just about to go pick him up. What’s the status there?”

“They left Boot Key Harbor in the Carver,” Tony said. “Art just went up in a Sheriff’s Department chopper and the Sheriff’s patrol boat is already heading out to search. But, it doesn’t look good. According to Rusty, there’ll be hundreds of boats moving along the reef tonight, leaving Fantasy Fest in Key West. Art’s already confirmed dozens in the area and with reduced light, he’s having to go boat to boat.”

“Double bad,” Deuce said. “I’ll let Jesse know. You might want to evacuate Marathon. He’s gonna go off like a nuclear bomb.”

Deuce untied the skiff, jumped aboard and started it up, after securing the fly rod case in the fish box. Then he idled out the channel and brought the skiff up on plane, headed due south, to where Jesse was slogging through the shallows nearly a mile away.

Tony was on the phone with ADD Smith again. “Since it’s a kidnapping,” Smith said, “the FBI had to be contacted. An agent should be arriving there shortly, from Key West. Director Goss has already informed Director Mueller that Captain McDermitt is one of our contractors and we have the lead in the investigation.”

“Just one agent?” Tony asked.

“I’m sure there’ll be more. Besides Key West, the nearest field office is in Homestead. Jim Franklin’s on his way down, too. Should be there in two hours. Our takedown team is being split up. Half are on their way down to you in a Gulfstream and the other half will stay in Miami. They will put together the take down plans, when Beech’s boat returns from Brown’s Cay. The government there won’t allow us to come in, on such short notice. How long before Commander Livingston and Captain McDermitt get there?”

“About thirty minutes, sir,” Tony replied.

“The Gulfstream will touch down in ten minutes,” Smith said. “The agent from the Bureau will be there in twenty and Franklin in two hours. Until Commander Livingston gets there, you’re in charge.”

“Yes sir,” Tony said. “If I may, sir?”

“Please do,” Smith replied.

“I think it might be prudent to keep Franklin on Beech, sir. We don’t know if O’Hara is taking Mrs. McDermitt up there, or where. He could pick something up. Besides, he’s kinda gruff and he and Captain McDermitt together would be like a flame to a gas can.”

“Yes, two very good points, Mister Jacobs. I’ll pull him off and keep him surveilling Beech. Contact me if anything develops and have Commander Livingston call me when he arrives.”

Sunday evening, October 30, 2005

I only had a couple of hours until it got dark, but I was certain that once I got around the southern tip of Water Keys, Deuce would see me, even at two miles. I probably could have gone ashore on Big Torch Key and made my way to one of the many houses there, but most were vacation homes and probably boarded up.

Lester and I had struggled when he feigned being sea sick and both of us went overboard, into the deep channel at the stern of my skiff. We’d wrestled underwater in the channel and I’d barely broken free, after he’d caught me with both an elbow and a fist. The man was freakishly strong and I considered myself lucky. When I reached for my Sig and it wasn’t there, I dove deep in the channel and swam with the current until my lungs burned.

Turning out of the deep channel into a small side cut, I finally poked just my head above the surface, when I was sure I was between Lester and a little mangrove island. I was hoping that he wouldn’t see me with the island behind me. Even if he did, I was nearly a hundred yards away, much too far for a handgun, which I was sure he was carrying. He might even have my Sig; I wasn’t sure when it had fallen out.

I’d watched Lester climb back onto the skiff, pull a gun from his waistband and look around. Then the dog lunged, sunk his teeth into the back of Lester’s calf and started shaking his big head. Lester hit him with the barrel of the gun and the dog let go, but stood defiantly, barking at him from the casting deck. With Lester’s back to me, I stood up in knee-deep water and waved both my hands over my head, hoping the dog’s sharp eyes would see me. I was very relieved when the dog leapt out of the skiff and swam quickly in the current toward me.

I went under and swam further west in the shallow water until it was too shallow to swim, then lifted my head up. I now had another smaller island between Lester and me and the dog was still swimming in the channel to my right. I rose up on one knee and waved to the dog, which turned and swam up to me. Together we sloshed toward the tiny island and I could hear Lester talking. I guessed he was on a cell phone, either his or mine, I didn’t know. After a brief conversation, I heard him start the skiff and back it off the sandbar on Howe Key, that I’d beached us on. If he continued to follow the channel, Deuce would see him within minutes. To my surprise, he headed northwest, between Big Torch and Water Keys. Good luck, I thought, nothing but shallows and mangroves that way.

Once Lester was out of sight, I jogged in the shallow water to the northern tip of Big Torch Key and then swam across the narrow channel to Water Keys. We sloshed along the eastern shallows for about a half mile and I could see the barge and backhoe now, so Deuce should be able to see me. After sloshing along another fifty yards, I heard Rusty’s big Evinrude start up and a few minutes later, saw Deuce coming out of the channel toward me. As he slowed down and came off plane, I could see a concerned look on his face.

“We’re okay,” I said, when Deuce shut the engine off and drifted up to me. “Lester surprised me and he got away in my skiff. He headed up into the flats, between the Water Keys and Raccoon Key. We can catch him, but we gotta move fast, it’s getting dark.”

I climbed into the skiff, with the dog right behind me. I expected Deuce to move over to the second seat, since I knew the water better, but he remained seated at the helm.

“Sit down, Jesse,” he said, flatly. I didn’t like the sound of his voice, so I sat down in the second seat. He looked at me and said, “O’Hara got Alex. Tony and Art, with help from the Sheriff’s Office, are looking for them. They took off in the Carver.”

“Alex?” I asked, unwilling to believe what he was saying. “What do you mean, he got her?”

“Alex and Julie were at the boat ramp at Dockside. I don’t know how, but they must have figured out what was going on and grabbed her. We’ll get her back, Jesse. You have my word on it.”

He started the skiff and backed away from the shallows, into the channel. “Get up,” I said. “I’m driving.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, get up,” I repeated. This was going to be a high speed run in the dark and I didn’t trust anyone’s instincts but mine. Deuce and I switched seats and I shoved the throttle to the stops, dragging the skeg on the outboard in the shallows for a second before the skiff lifted up on plane. I turned due east and took the skiff across the shallows north of Howe Key, then threaded the narrow cut between Cutoe Key and Annette Key and into Big Spanish Channel. I continued threading cuts and channels following milk jug markers between Little Pine Key and the Johnson Keys, then cut sharply east and crossed Friend Key Bank, running wide open. The lights of cars crossing the Seven Mile Bridge were in view and ten miles east, the glow of Marathon could be seen. I trimmed the tabs and got a little more speed out of the old Evinrude, as we shot toward the far end of the Seven Mile Bridge.

“Where are Tony and Art?” I asked, surprising myself with the calmness in my voice.

“Art’s up in the Sheriff’s chopper and Tony is running things at Dockside until we get there.”

I knew Rusty had a UHF radio under the console and gave Deuce the frequency for the chopper. He dialed it in, picked up the mic, and spoke into it. “Art, this is Deuce, do you copy?”

Art’s voice came over the speaker, “Affirmative, Commander. We’re searching boat to boat out here beyond the reef. But, there are a lot of boats. Agent Jacobs has set up command and control at Dockside.”

I realized immediately what he meant. Hundreds of revelers would be heading buck up the Keys in boats from Key West’s Fantasy Fest celebration. I explained this to Deuce. But, why was Art being so formal?

“Tony and Art must have identified themselves as DHS,” Deuce yelled, over the screaming outboard. “To expedite the search. That means one of them, probably Tony, must have contacted the Deputy Director. There’ll be more agents helping soon and the FBI will probably have already been called in. It also means the DHS Director himself has contacted the FBI Director and probably told him you are one of us.”

I continued driving the boat at break neck speed. Much faster than is safe at this time of day. The sun had just slipped below the horizon behind us and nothing but darkness lay ahead. I wasn’t worried about shallows. We had twenty or more feet of water below us, all the way to the harbor entrance. Boats were the big concern, especially pleasure boats, whose owners often neglected to turn on their navigation lights before twilight.

I switched on the big spotlight Rusty had mounted to the bow and it instantly illuminated a party barge anchored right in front of us. I turned the wheel sharply and the skiff responded, skidding to the right on the starboard chine. I brought her back to the left and lined up on the southernmost marker to Moser Channel. I was going to cross the channel and cut under the bridges between it and Pigeon Key. Minutes later, we were south of the bridge and running wide open toward the mouth of Boot Key Harbor. I could just make out three boats with blue flashing lights, moving east on the south side of Boot Key, toward the reef.

I slowed down a little as we came into the harbor, but never came down off plane until I was a hundred yards from the boat ramp. Deuce scrambled forward and grabbing the bow line, tossed it to a Sheriff’s Deputy standing on the dock where I used to moor the
Revenge
. Deuce and I climbed up onto the dock, but the dog took a more direct route, leaping from the bow and swimming to shore, meeting us at the end of the dock. Tony stood waiting with three uniformed officers, one man in a suit, and three men who were obvious door kickers, dressed in black, with large packs slung over their shoulders.

“Sit rep!” Deuce demanded, as he handed the fly rod case from the fish box to one of the door kickers.

“Agent Newman is airborne and has visually checked eleven small craft, headed northeast,” Tony reported. “All negative, sir. There’s dozens more, he says, but it’s getting too dark to see. The Associate Deputy Director has brought the Bureau on board, but we’re lead in the investigation, since Captain McDermitt is one of ours. This is Agent Binkowski, of the Key West field office.” Tony nodded toward the suit and continued, “ADD Smith has also contacted the local LEO’s, who have provided the chopper and a patrol boat. Deputy Sergeant Pollard here contacted the Coasties. They’ve sent two more patrol boats, one out of Islamorada, and another out of Boca Chica, plus a Cutter will be underway out of Windley Key. The ADD has put you in charge of the investigation, sir.” Turning to me, he said, “No sign yet, Jesse. But we’ll get her back.”

Deuce turned to me and asked, “Is the
Revenge
fueled up?”

I knew where he was going and was already a step ahead. “I’m leaving the dock at Rusty’s in five minutes. I can catch that Carver before she makes Key Largo. I need a boarding party.”

Deuce nodded toward the three men to his left and said, “This is part of my team, we’re going with you.” Then he turned to Tony and said, “Agent Jacobs, remain here and coordinate the search. We’re going to take a more unorthodox approach.”