Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9) (5 page)

“Hi,” she barely whispered.

“If you’re with the government, I assume you have some ID?” Pat asked me.

“Just a Florida driver’s license,” I said. “And a boat captain’s license. I’m just the transportation contractor. Andrew’s the agent in charge.”

With that, Bourke dug out his ID case and passed it over to me. Switching the overhead light from red to white, so she could see, I passed the case to Pat.

“We’re with the Department of Homeland Security,” Bourke said as Pat studied his badge and identification card.

Pat’s eyes were cold and distant when she handed Bourke his credentials. And something else there. Fear, maybe?

“You might as well turn around and take us back,” Pat said, surprising both Bourke and myself.

“No, Grandma!” Chrissy said, alarmed. “You’re wrong about Dad.”

The girl stood and nearly tripped over Bourke’s feet as she moved unsteadily toward the ladder. I caught a glimpse of her face as she descended quickly. She was crying.

“Forgive her,” Pat said and pointed toward shore. “You could drop us off on that island. Anywhere would be better than going home. My son-in-law, Chrissy’s father, is the one that arranged the abduction. But it was supposed to be a murder for hire, with Chrissy’s body never found.”

I looked at Bourke and he looked back at me, both of us equally confused. A father who hires someone to kill his very own daughter? That’s just not possible.

“Can you elaborate on that?” I asked incredulously.

Pat looked at me and then at Bourke. “If you’re in charge, Andrew, why does it seem that Captain McDermitt is calling the shots?”

“I’m the
agent
in charge,” Bourke replied. “Jesse has so far refused to accept a permanent position with our team, so he doesn’t carry a badge. Even without one, I’d defer to him in a fight, and this being his boat, well, he’s definitely in charge of things on the water.”

“I see,” she replied and looked me over more appraisingly. I probably looked like a degenerate boat bum. I hadn’t shaved in over a week, nor had a haircut in months. The clothes I had on were threadbare, and I’d been wearing them for more than a day.

“Chrissy’s mother was
my
only child,” she began. “Our family has a long history of producing only a single heir. She was killed in a car wreck two years ago. It devastated the child, obviously. Her father is a wealthy man, a South Carolina politician. My daughter and Chrissy were mere arm candy to help his political aspirations, nothing more. He was behind in the polls just before the accident, but her death got him the sympathy vote. Now he’s up for reelection and trailing in the polls again. He must have figured that if it worked once, it should work again. I learned of his plan to have Chrissy murdered and was trying to get her away from him, but only succeeded in getting both of us kidnapped. Those Jamaicans will do just about anything for money, and I convinced them that they could get more for a ransom than a murder. Particularly if it meant their silence on what he hired them to do. It was all I could think of at the time, and it bought us a few extra days. I didn’t think he’d pull strings to get the federal government to rescue us, so he could try it again.”

B
ringing the
Revenge
down off plane, I searched the shoreline for the entrance to Henry’s little hole in the wall. Finding it, I idled the big boat through the narrow mangrove-lined opening, turning left and then right, finally emerging into a large deepwater lagoon. There were two aging Bertram sportfishing boats and a number of smaller boats and skiffs of varying sizes and makes. They all looked clean and well maintained, as did the dock and piers.

Idling slowly toward the covered fuel dock, with two huge tanks set back on the property beyond it, I saw Henry come out of the small ship’s store. He angled toward the dock we were heading to, not seeming to be in any hurry to get there. Living for years on island time will do that to you.

“Help ya?” he called up as I maneuvered the
Revenge
to the dock. Tony and Art were both ready to jump down with lines, fore and aft.

“Did you get my email, Henry?” I shouted back, then cut the engines as both men stepped off onto the dock and made us fast.

“Jesse?” the old man asked, squinting up. “Jesse McDermitt? What the hell are you doing so far from home?”

“Guess he didn’t get your email,” Bourke said, standing and looking around the lagoon. “Does he even have Internet here?”

A moment later, I was on the dock and shaking Henry’s hand. “Sorry,” he said. “We’ve been having trouble with the phone lines for months. That’s what the computer’s connected to, you know. I just gave up checking it.”

“We need fuel,” I said. “Probably five or six hundred gallons?”

“No problem there,” the old man replied, pulling the nozzle from the diesel pump and handing it to Bourke in the cockpit before unrolling enough hose to reach the port side. “With the Internet down, I haven’t had a lot of charters. That’s where I get most business these days. So, fuel I got plenty of.”

“I’d also like to ask you a favor,” I said, taking a step toward the shore end of the dock and nodding my head. Henry fell into step and I explained the situation.

Our plans had changed somewhat. After Pat’s revelation, I’d relayed the information to Deuce and he’d put his tech wizard, Chyrel Koshinski, to work digging up the facts. Just before we’d arrived, Deuce had reported that Chyrel’s digging had uncovered something that seemed to corroborate Pat’s story.

“So, let me get this straight,” Henry said after I told him what was going on. “You’re back to working for the government, rescued these two girls from kidnappers that were supposed to kill the teenager, and they somehow convinced these Jamaicans to hold them for ransom instead? And the kidnappers were hired by her daddy?”

“Sick as that sounds,” I replied, “it checks out. The group we took them from, Jamaican criminals holed up on Cat Island, received a hundred thousand bucks from the girl’s father a week ago. The grandmother was kidnapped with her. She’d found out about the plot and managed to convince the Jamaicans to renege on the deal and ask for more money as ransom and to keep silent.”

“Sick ain’t the word I’d use,” Henry said, looking back toward the
Revenge
, where Pat and Chrissy now stood in the cockpit. “That must be one tough lady.”

I followed his gaze. “Pretty much my first impression. Pap would have called her a
stalwart lady
.”

“Whatcha need from me, then?”

“We need a place to hide out for a day or so, till we sort this out,” I replied. “When we do take them back to the States, we’ll need to leave them here for a few hours so we can clear customs out of the Bahamas in Nicholls Town, since they never cleared in.”

“No problem,” he replied. “I have a string of guest cottages, nearly all of ’em empty.”

Peeling off thirty hundred-dollar bills from a roll in my pocket, I handed them to Henry. “We’ll take all of them for two days. Will that cover it?”

Shoving the bills in his pocket, he extended his hand. “
Mi casa es tu casa, hijo
.”

I took his hand and felt the dry, firm grip of a man I’ve known and trusted my whole life. “They have nothing but what they’re wearing.”

“There’s a colored girl lives in number two,” Henry said. “She does the housekeeping for me and works the computer stuff. I’ll send her to town and get them some clothes and anything else they need.”

Just then, the door to the second cottage opened and a woman stepped out onto the gaudily painted porch. She had a watering can in one hand and pruning shears in the other. When she saw me and Henry talking, she put both down and walked toward us.

“Jesse, this is Angelique,” Henry said. “Angelique, this is Jesse McDermitt. Me and his grandpa served in the Marines together.”

The woman extended her hand and I took it. She was very light-skinned, with pale blue eyes and long black hair past her shoulders. Colored is the accepted island expression, meaning a person of mixed race. She looked to be in her early to mid-twenties, but as I said, I’m a terrible judge of such things.

“Pleased to meet yuh, Cap’n,” she said in a beautiful singsong island voice, typical of the people of Andros.

“Jesse and his friends will be staying for a coupla days,” Henry said. “They rented all the remaining cottages and nobody’s to know they’re here.” Nodding toward the
Revenge
, he added, “Those two women need a stake.”

“Yuh privacy will be honored, Cap’n,” Angelique said. “I be happy to go inna town and get anyting dey need. Long as yuh heah, I or me usband will take care of all dat yuh need.”

With that, Angelique started walking toward the boat.

“Her common law husband’s an ex-pat like me,” Henry said. “He came here about six years back and lived on his boat, before he met her. Good kid, I took to him right off and gave him a job. He’d been making his way from port to port, cleaning boat bottoms in the water. He and Angelique pretty much run things for me now. They’re honest, loyal, and very trustworthy. You came to just the right place at just the right time, son.”

A moment later, Angelique led Pat and her granddaughter, along with Tony and Art, toward the small cottages that lined the lagoon, chattering away and describing all the wonders that their little lagoon held.

Bourke hung up the fuel nozzle and walked toward where Henry and I stood. After introducing him to Henry, Bourke said, “There’s a video call on the laptop for you from Deuce and Director Stockwell.”

“You have Internet?” Henry asked. “How?”

“Come on,” I replied. “I’ll show you. And I might have an answer to your problem as well.”

The three of us stepped down into the cockpit, then up into the salon, Henry moving better than most men his age. “This is quite a boat,” he said, looking over the salon.

Gaspar’s Revenge
turns heads in any port. With a fully-equipped cockpit that’s roomy and all business, her salon is appointed for easy relaxation. Surrounded by dark tinted windows, charter guests can kick back in air-conditioned comfort on the L-shaped couch to port or the forward L-shaped settee to starboard.

“Thanks,” I replied. “Come over here.”

I led him to the settee, where my laptop sat. “We’re connected to the web through a satellite, using a little dome antenna on the roof. If the computer you use has a wireless modem, you can connect to it also.”

“Satellite? Like up in space?”

“It’s a government system, but there are civilian providers, too.”

I sat down at the settee and opened the laptop. When the screen came on, I saw Deuce sitting at one of the large tables near the two bunkhouses on my island. He was eating what appeared to be a fish sandwich. The other half of the screen showed Travis Stockwell at his desk, reading glasses in place, while he studied some documents.

“Find out something?” I asked.

Setting his plate aside, Deuce turned toward the camera on his laptop. “Chyrel blocked communication from the kidnappers, until we get this sorted out. They’d made one call to the congressman’s cell phone, but it went to voicemail. Chyrel managed to save it and then deleted it from his phone before it was delivered. The Jamaicans didn’t sound happy.”

“I apologize for what happened on Cat,” Travis said. “We would have liked to have had more time for recon, but the situation was urgent.”

“No sweat, Colonel,” I told the Associate Director of Homeland Security, Deuce’s boss.

Motioning Henry to sit beside me, I introduced him to the two men, explaining that Henry was a Marine veteran who had fought alongside my grandfather on Iwo Jima, and that I’d known and trusted him all my life.

“So right now,” I said, “the Jamaicans can’t contact the father, and as far as he knows they still have the girl?”

“As far as he knows, yes.” I could tell by the look in Deuce’s eyes that he was thinking pretty much the same thing I was. “I didn’t like this mission from the start,” he continued. “It’s not in our purview. And a hurricane out there didn’t help much. But it is what it is, right?”

“And preventing a father from having his very own daughter murdered?” I asked.

“Also not what we’re trained for,” Travis said. “But I’ll be damned if we’re going to turn them over to him so he can try again. Give me the day to contact the Secretary—he’s on Capitol Hill this morning. What do you have in mind?”

I laid out my plan to them in just a couple of minutes. The twinkle returned to Deuce’s eyes and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “I like it,” he said when I’d finished. “You’ll have to stop in Nassau to pick it up, though. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Henry here has a really nice deepwater lagoon, north of Nicholls Town, at the northern tip of Andros Island. It’s isolated and hard to find, and he’s got a couple of big fuel tanks.”

“How big and how’s his deliveries set up?” Travis asked, already on the same page I was. Stockwell is a retired Army paratrooper and always looking ahead toward logistical support.

I nodded to Henry, who shrugged. “I have ten thousand gallons of diesel and five thousand gallons of regular gas. I get deliveries every week, or whenever I call. It’s all cash on the barrelhead.”