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

As Claude approached with his three men, I could tell that they were all carrying handguns tucked into their pants under their shirts. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tony reach up and scratch his cheek with two fingers, while looking out over the marina entrance.

“Which one a yuh is McDermitt?” Claude asked as he approached. His three men spread out and stopped short behind him.

Slowly, I looked up from the menu I was pretending to read. “I told you four men, Claude. And here you show up with you and five others. Is that any way to start a successful business relationship?”

He started to say something, but Andrew slid his chair back suddenly, causing all four Jamaicans to reach for their shirtfronts. They froze as Andrew’s windbreaker discreetly fell open, revealing his hand on the grip of the ugly-looking machine pistol under it. These guys were amateurs. It’s a wonder Pat didn’t take them all out herself.

“Tell one of your men to leave now and to take one of the lookouts with him. He can tell the other lookout to join us. Do it now, or the deal’s off and my man here might decide to just open you up from crotch to Adam’s apple, just for the hell of it.”

Andrew’s MP5K wasn’t up, but it was right there in plain view of all four men and pointed loosely at Claude’s feet. The gang leader must have remembered the devastating firepower from the previous day. He slowly turned and nodded to the man on his right, who then turned and left the deck.

“Sit down,” I said. “You look like someone trying to sell dope or pick a fight.” I picked up one of the reel cases and slid it partway across the table, along with my sat phone.

Another of Claude’s men approached the table, looking all around the deck area. The waitress serving Tony had sat down next to him and they were both laughing about something. Of all of Deuce’s team, Tony’s probably the best at improvising and making himself look like something he’s not. Claude’s man’s eyes passed right over Tony and looked out over the boats in the marina, discounting Tony and the group on the other side of the steps from him as no danger.

With my foot, I shoved a chair out across the table from me. “Sit or we walk.”

Reluctantly, Claude sat down, his eyes never leaving mine. I expected him to have the dreadlocks most of his type did. His men all wore them in various lengths. Cautiously, they too sat down around the table. Claude’s hair was cropped short and he sported a thin mustache, with a soul patch below his lower lip. His eyes were a very light shade of brown and his skin the color of cinnamon, indicating mixed ancestry.

“Open the box,” I told him.

With his left hand, Claude slowly slid the box closer and opened the lid. Reaching in, he thumbed the bundles, counting them. When he looked up, there was a grin on his face.

“All I and I do is make dis phone call? Blood clot, mon, I go up dere and kill dis man for dat much.”

“I don’t want him dead,” I said. “Not yet, anyway. You have to make it believable, though. He has to think me and my men are dead, you’re pissed, and you still have the women and will turn them over to the authorities if he doesn’t pay up double. It has to be in person, just him and you. And it has to be in Beaufort. Tell him Waterfront Park at noon in two days. His private cell number is in the phone’s memory—just hit redial.”

“Tot you say I only ha to make dis call, mon. Now you want I go all di way to bumbaclot ’Merica.”

“You won’t have to go,” I said. “Unless he knows what you look like.”

“Neva met di mon.”

“Good, you just tell him what I told you to say. Make it believable and you’re three hundred grand richer.”

“Lemme see di rest of di money.”

I reached down to the deck, not taking my eyes off his, and picked up the second reel case. I opened the lid and tilted it toward Claude so he could see inside.

“Called di mon yestuhday and left a message. He already know you got di womens.”

“No,” I said quietly. “I had the message erased from his voice mail before he was able to retrieve it. He’s been trying to call you all day, but I’ve had that blocked as well.”

Slowly, Claude reached for my sat phone and opened it. “Who di blood clot are yuh, Jesse McDermitt?”

“S
o, you’ve known Jesse since he was little?” Chyrel asked Henry as she sat cross-legged on the floor, connecting cables to a new computer.

“Ha! Way before that, young lady.”

“Like when he was a baby?”

“His grandpa and I were pretty tight after the war, and we’d known each other since school. I knew Jesse’s dad when
he
was little and remember how proud he was when he told everyone that they were expecting. My wife and I had been having Sunday dinners with them for years, like one big family.”

“What was he like as a kid?” Chyrel asked, rising to fish a bundled cable from her bag. “Was he always so serious?”

Henry thought back, his mind drifting more than four decades into the past. Chyrel watched as a cloud of pain seemed to fall over the old man’s face for just a moment.

“No,” Henry said. “No, Jesse was like most kids when he was little, I guess. My wife and I never had any. Jesse’s been shaped by the events in his life. He lost both his parents at an early age. Did you know that?”

Chyrel slowly sat down in a chair. “Yeah, I did. How did they die?”

Henry’s face turned down a moment, the look of pain returning to his features.

“I’m sorry,” Chyrel said. “I shouldn’t ask.”

“No, it’s alright. He’d tell you himself if you asked him.” Slowly, Henry gathered his thoughts and sighed. “We were all Marines. Frank and I, that’s Jesse’s grandpa, we served in the South Pacific together, fought the Japs on Iwo. You know where that is?”

Chyrel nodded and Henry continued. “Jesse’s daddy followed in Frank’s footsteps. He was a Marine in Vietnam. It was at one of our regular Sunday dinners, back in the winter of sixty-eight. A blue sedan pulled into Frank’s driveway and two Marines got out. Me and Frank both knew what they’d come for, and Frank immediately called his pastor. He came over a few minutes later. We were all devastated to learn that Bo had been killed in action in Vietnam. Bo is what we called Frank’s boy. Helen, that was Bo’s young wife, she completely lost it. Those two kids were so much in love and had been best friends since grade school. She took her own life a few days later and Jesse went to live with Frank and Norma. From that Sunday on, the boy was serious as a heart attack most times. He studied hard in school, got real good grades, excelled in sports, and learned all he could about good and evil and right and wrong from Frank and Norma. Me too, I guess. We were that tight.”

“Nineteen sixty-eight?” Chyrel asked. “So Jesse was only eight?”

Henry nodded. “Yep, that boy went straight from eight to eighteen that week. There were times when he’d unwind and be a kid. Mostly it was when we’d go out on one of Frank’s boats. But, even then, there was always a serious depth to his eyes and a hard set to his jaw. Under the conditions, I think he developed into a pretty well-adjusted young man. He was offered several academic college scholarships, full-ride scholarships, too. You won’t find many smarter men than Jesse.” Henry chuckled a little. “Nor many as boneheaded. He wound up marching to the same drum his daddy and pappy did. You known him long?”

“Just a couple of years. I met him just after his wife died.”

“There’s that, too,” the old man said, nodding his head. “And the loss of his first marriage to the Corps. Deployments into hostile areas. Serving in the nasty places of the world that you won’t ever find on any tourist brochure. Somalia, Panama, Lebanon. I followed his career, mostly through Frank, until he passed away about twelve years ago. Kept in touch with Jesse by letters since then. Yeah, all those events in his life is what made him the man you know today.”

Somalia
, Chyrel thought. “Others have mentioned a few times about something that happened in Mogadishu.”

Standing and walking to the kitchen, Henry returned with two bottles of water and handed one to Chyrel. “What happened in that hellhole woulda broke most men,” Henry said. “But, that there is something you’ll have to ask Jesse about yourself, Miss Chyrel. And don’t be surprised if he changes the subject to fishing. It’s kinda touchy.”

Just then, Rene Cook opened the door and came in. The front two rooms of Henry’s house facing the lagoon were the business offices, opened up in the middle to make one big room. A small eat-in kitchen was off one side, and a hallway leading off the other side went back to two bedrooms and the single bathroom.

“Hi, Rene,” Henry said, standing to greet the man. “How’d your client make out?”

“Went well,” Rene said, dropping a small duffle in the corner. “I got him on some bones and he boated three. The other two tossed the hooks. He managed to catch two nice snapper for his supper, too. Said he’d like to go out again in a couple of days.”

Chyrel stood up, and Henry introduced them. “Chyrel’s hooking us up to the Internet through a satellite. We ought to be back in the charter business real soon.”

Chyrel studied the man’s face for a moment as they shook hands, then returned to her work. She was sure she’d seen him somewhere, but she’d never been to Andros Island before today.

“What about you, Henry?” Chyrel asked. “You said you and your wife never had kids?”

“Nope. My wife took sick not long after we were married, just after the war. Left her barren. She passed away twenty years ago.”

“And you never remarried?” Chyrel asked, connecting the last cable to the new computer tower.

“A man’s lucky to find the kind of love we had, just once in a lifetime,” Henry said with a sigh. “My Betsy was a strong-willed woman. Don’t think there’s another like her in the world.”

Chyrel stood up from where she’d been sitting on the floor and pushed the tower into position under the desk. “You should be all set,” she said. “The computer is programmed to locate and move the dish to lock onto the satellite automatically. That’ll take a few minutes.”

Rene had been sitting in a chair in the corner watching her. “How does it do that?” he asked.

Again, she studied his face. She was sure they’d met before. “The computer itself is equipped with GPS. It’ll use those satellites to locate itself, then turn the dish toward the general area of the satellite we use in geosynchronous orbit. Once it locates it, the computer will make fine adjustments to the dish to get the strongest signal.”

“A government satellite?”

“Yeah,” Chyrel replied, suddenly remembering where she’d seen the man’s face before. “But once it’s locked on, the GPS will turn off automatically, unless the signal weakens. Like if a storm moves the dish or something.”

Rene picked up on the subtle change in Chyrel’s facial expression. He’d already figured out that she had once worked at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “Can I speak with you outside a moment?” he asked her.

Once the two of them were out on the dock in front of the little house, Rene turned and said, “Captain McDermitt already knows who I am. Now it appears that you do, too.”

It was a statement, delivered flat and without emotion. “No, Victor,” Chyrel said, using the man’s real name. “I have no idea who you are.”

“McDermitt pretty much said that I was safe here, even with his knowing. I don’t suppose I can count on your discretion as well.”

Chyrel stared into the man’s eyes. She knew he was a field agent and his whereabouts were unknown to the Agency. She also knew him to be a very dangerous man.

“I’m not with the Company anymore,” Chyrel lied. The truth was, her paychecks still came from Langley and she was only considered to be temporarily assigned to Homeland Security. “I work for the Caribbean Counterterrorism Command now. Jesse doesn’t, but he’s very close to my boss and is a contractor for us. I respect him. If he says your secret is safe, it is. With him and anyone he associates with.”

Rene stared into her eyes, as if he could see right into her mind. Finally, he turned and just walked away, heading toward the row of cabins beyond Henry’s house.

“It’s working!” Henry shouted from inside. Chyrel watched Rene’s retreating form for a moment. Then, pushing a windblown strand of hair behind her ear, she went back into the house.

“How do you like that?” Henry said, bouncing in his chair like a kid with a shiny new toy. “We have a ton of emails requesting charter dates. Some of ’em have already passed.”

He reached for the phone on the desk and picked up the receiver, holding it to his ear. “Still no phone, but we got Internet.”

Putting her thoughts aside for the moment, Chyrel sat down next to the old man. “I can fix that for you, too, if you like.”

“The telephone? How?”

“There’s a phone port on the back of the tower. Just unplug your phone from the wall and plug it in there,” she said, his excitement becoming contagious. “The computer will automatically take you through several prompts to set up the program for the phone. Once that’s done, you can cancel your landline.”

Moving faster than Chyrel thought a man his age could, Henry rose from the chair and dragged a corner of the desk away from the wall. A moment later, he had the phone line plugged into the computer, and a few minutes after that, the computer told him that his telephone was now connected through the satellite service and activated.