Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6) (4 page)

“Then let’s go watch the sun set while we wait,” I said.

Sitting on the dock to watch the sun go down is something that Pescador and I have been doing for over a year. I found him stranded on little more than a sandbar just after Hurricane Wilma over a year ago. Not really stranded, because he’s a strong enough swimmer that he could easily make it to any nearby island and he was more than capable of fending for himself. Since Kim had come to live with me and with Linda now staying on the weekends, the dock was getting crowded around sunset.

“Give me just a sec,” Linda said. “I want to drop my bag and grab a blanket.”

“I’ll go with you,” Kim said. “I want one too.”

A minute later, we were sitting on the floating dock off the north part of the island, watching the daily art show provided by Sol and Mother Ocean. It was the kind of evening perfect for a green flash and as I explained the phenomenon, we watched the sun sink lower and lower toward the horizon. I could see Carl and his family watching it from out on the sandbar on the west side of the island. All over the Keys, locals were setting aside their various chores and diversions to watch the sun go down. It’s an island thing.

“Watch,” I whispered reverently. “As clear as the sky is, it’ll look like the sea just reaches up and grabs the sun.”

Slowly, the big red orb dropped lower and lower, until the water seemed to just reach right up and snatch it, pulling and elongating it into an oval, pointed at the bottom where the water had it in its grasp. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere in sight, just the water and the sun, dancing together as they have since time began.

Kim was sitting to my right, with Pescador just beyond her and Linda on my left. Without asking, Linda reached around my shoulder with her blanket. I pulled it down around me as she leaned against my shoulder. Slowly, the sun flattened out into a horizontal oval shape.

“What’s that bright star up above the sun?”

“The light purple one?” I said, pointing about thirty degrees above and to the north of the sun. She nodded. “It’s not a star, that’s the planet Neptune. King of the Seven Seas.”

Linda whispered. “Hey, where’d you learn all this?”

“Rusty taught me. He says the stars and planets are ‘timeless and predictable.’ He showed me how to figure out where I am using only a sextant and chart, by triangulating the position of the moon, stars, planets and the sun at a certain hour. Ask him to show you tomorrow night. He loves talking about the heavens.”

The top of the sun was just about to drop below the horizon, creating a mirage where it looked like a portion of the sun appeared to elongate up away from the main body, like a drop of water in a pond slowly splashing back upwards.

“Watch closely,” I whispered to Linda. “As the last of the sun disappears, that little dew-drop-looking part above it might flash green for just a second.”

It didn’t happen. The green flash is so rare a phenomenon, I’ve only seen it a few times, and I watch the sun set just about every night. As darkness surrounded us, we left the pier and went back to the others.

Carl was cooking over the large stone grill I’d built. Charlie had the table set, and the Tiki torches that surrounded the table flickered, casting an orange light over everything and giving the appearance of warmth, though it was already down in the sixties.

After eating, Carl and Charlie took the kids to their house, while the three of us cleaned the dishes and started a small fire in the fire pit on the northeast side of the island. We sat around the fire as it grew colder, talking about our trip to Cape Sable in the morning.

I woke before dawn. It was colder and I immediately stoked the fire in the old potbellied stove, even before pouring my first cup of coffee. Looking out the window to the southeast, the first faint light had yet to purple the sky. Always an early riser, I’d wondered about the need for it anymore. Particularly in winter. It’d be an hour before any work could be done and two hours before it was light enough to head back down to Marathon, where I kept my plane at the
Anchor
.

My plane is a deHavilland Beaver built in 1953 and fitted with a pair of Wipaire floats with wheels that retracted into them. I bought it last September from a friend who was moving back to his home state of Kentucky. With its big Pratt and Whitney radial engine and wide wingspan, it was perfect for the islands, able to land and take off in a very short distance, whether on land or sea.

Filling a thermos, I went down below the house to the dock area, which fills the whole area under both the house and the wraparound deck. Although it’s a tight squeeze, we keep six boats down here, including the
Revenge
. There’s a narrow walkway all the way around three sides, and two sets of doors facing south. Down the middle is another narrow dock, connecting the rear dock to the piling between the two sets of huge double doors. Stepping down into the cockpit of the
Revenge
, I unlocked the hatch and turned off the alarm.

Sitting down on the settee in the salon, I powered up my laptop computer. Jimmy had set up a satellite-based Internet account for me and installed a wireless modem in the cabinet next to the flat panel TV in my old boat.

Deuce had upgraded my system on the new boat so it could be used whenever I was transporting his team to or from a mission and had switched the satellite feed over to a government satellite. It was much faster and more reliable than the company Jimmy had used and provided access to a few other things the old service couldn’t.

I ran a couple of Google searches to see if there was any public news about the people blowing up reefs, but didn’t find anything I didn’t already know. In fact, I already knew more than I was able to find on the Internet.

Knowing that whatever Deuce’s team was doing, Chyrel would be in her comm shack up in Homestead, I clicked the Soft Jazz icon on the computer’s desktop, which opened a direct video feed to wherever she was. After a couple of seconds the window expanded and her face appeared, a completely blank white wall behind her. I recognized by the starkness of the background that she was in her little office. The other walls are decorated, but not the one facing the camera.

“Hey, Jesse,” she said. Then giggling, she asked, “How’s it hanging?” The joke was getting old. When we were on Elbow Cay last September a woman had drugged me with some kind of homemade aphrodisiac that left me with an eighteen-hour erection.

“Hardy-har,” I said. “Hey, we’re flying up to Cape Sable in a little while. Just wanted to check in and see if you guys needed anything.” Deuce and his entire team were in training with a newly-formed second team that would operate out of Key Largo in pretty much the same fashion as the original team did here.

“I can check with Deuce,” she said. “But I think we have everything covered. Why’d you really call?”

“What? A guy can’t touch base with his friends?”

“You’re a real crappy liar, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told. Look, have you heard anything about a Miami gang called Zoe Pound that’s expanding down here? Anything to link them to blowing up reefs with grenades?”

Her face turned serious for a second and her eyes glanced down and to the left. “Zoe Pound? Never heard of them.”

I bent toward the screen, raising my left eyebrow. “And you call me a bad liar?”

She leaned a little closer to the screen. “Deuce said since Kim was down there, we shouldn’t pass on anything about it. Julie told Rusty and told him to tell everyone else down there.”

“Why?” I asked, realizing now why Rusty and Jimmy had been attempting to be vague.

“You have a reputation for getting involved in things you shouldn’t, Jesse. We just don’t want anything to happen between you and Kim.”

“I’ll find out what I want to know one way or another. So far, all I know is that two people were robbed and set adrift and another couple were injured while diving.”

Chyrel should never play poker. I could read the surprise in her face as easy as a card shark can read a rookie who just got dealt an inside straight.

Realizing her face had given her away, she tried to become official. “Where’d you hear that, Jesse? It hasn’t been released to the media.”

“Heard it on the Coconut Telegraph,” I said, which made her laugh.

“Are you sure you’re not a Parrot Head?” she asked.

“What is it with you and parrots?” I asked, confused. Talking to Chyrel almost always left me confused. She has a mind like a steel trap and could run circles around the best computer hackers, but at times goes off on some weird tangent, often involving parrots for some reason. A pretty girl in her late twenties, she has short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Before she came to work for Deuce, she was a computer analyst and programmer with the CIA. Apparently, her skills were the stuff of legend. Lately, she’d been staying on the island and even bought her own skiff.

“Look,” I said, “if things are happening around me, I want to know. One of these incidents was only a few miles from my house.”

She stared blankly at the screen for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “They came up on the DHS radar when message traffic indicated they were bringing arms in from Haiti. Up to then, it was strictly a DEA thing. We haven’t gotten enough actionable intel yet, but we’re working on it. The leader of the gang, Jean-Claude Lavolier, disappeared for over a week earlier this month. When he reappeared, he gave the news to his seconds that the gang was going to move in a different direction. The word on the street is that he’s personally responsible for sending gang members out into Florida Bay and the Gulf to drop grenades on the reefs and collect fish. When one of his men challenged the wisdom of that, Lavolier beheaded him. Put his head on a spike in the backyard of his house in the Grove, pulled the tongue down from the severed throat and nailed it to the post. At least that’s what we’re hearing up here.”

“Damn, that’s a harsh way to make a point,” I said. “But it probably works to keep others from wagging their tongues.” I rubbed my face. “It makes no sense at all, though. From what I hear, they move a lot of drugs. Fish just aren’t profitable. Not like drugs, anyway.”

“You’re right. No sense whatsoever. Which is why we haven’t gotten a handle on it. When Lavolier reappeared, all telephone, Internet, and text chatter within the gang ceased within a day of the beheading. We’re not getting anything. Only what the cops are hearing on the streets and they’re reluctant to share, so I just take it from their computers. Apparently, all communication within the gang is done in person now. Deuce thinks something big is coming up pretty soon.”

“Okay, thanks. If I hear anything down here, I’ll let you know. Like I said, we’ll be up on Cape Sable, so only the sat-phone or laptop will work.”

“Just don’t tell Deuce I told you, okay?”

“Mum’s the word, kid. Bye.”

I thought about what I’d learned. This Lavolier had to have some motivation for doing something as stupid as blowing up coral reefs for the food fish. But what was it? A single pound of coke meant way more profit than a ton of fish, no matter how quickly they were caught.

I found the idea of fragging a reef for fish not only ludicrous, but unconscionable. The damage done to the reef would take dozens or even hundreds of years to recover. If it ever did at all. Grenades are totally indiscriminate. On land, a grenade can kill nearly everyone within a twenty-foot circle with shrapnel, tiny shards of the metal casing. Underwater, the shrapnel is rendered harmless except for a couple of feet near the point of the explosion, but the concussion wave is compounded through the density of the water. Man’s ability to create things really knows no bounds and is second only to his ability to destroy.

I Googled Lavolier and found a few news stories and some pictures, but nothing that steered me even remotely toward a possible motivation. A friend told me once that it was hard for law-abiding people to understand the criminal mind and nearly as hard for the criminal to understand a law-abiding person’s motivation. After twenty minutes I gave up, powered down the laptop, then went back topside.

An hour later, with the sun still below the southeastern horizon but casting enough gray light to see by, I started the outboard on the skiff. Pressing the button on the key fob, I released the latch, and the big doors in front of the east half of the docks slowly began to open on spring-loaded hinges. Linda stepped aboard and put her bag in the port-side fish box up in the bow, then sat down beside me at the helm. Kim cast off the lines and stepped aboard with Pescador. After stowing her bag, she took a seat on the bench in front of the center console, with a blanket wrapped around her, her long-billed fishing hat pulled low. Pescador took his usual spot, standing in the bow.

Once clear of the doors, I clicked the other button on the fob, and the twelve-volt-powered electric motors pulled the doors closed as we idled down the short channel to Harbor Channel.

We were dressed for the weather, in jeans and long-sleeved shirts, Kim and I in denim and Linda wearing a blue flannel shirt that brought out colors in her hair. Even dressed against the cold air, it was a chilly ride once we got up on plane. I cut the distance and time shorter by taking the narrow, winding channel through Cutoe Banks. At high tide, it had just enough water for my skiff, with maybe six inches to spare. Coming out into Big Spanish Channel, I followed it south-southeast for a few minutes, then turned due east into another “smugglers cut” and then southeast again until we were clear of Johnson Keys.

Making a beeline for the eastern side of the Seven Mile Bridge from there, I pushed the throttle to the stop and we crossed the skinny water south of Teakettle Key into deeper water. Linda leaned closer behind the windscreen, shivering slightly. I couldn’t help but turn my nose toward her to breathe in the smell of her hair. It was a clean, fresh scent that reminded me of the night-blooming jasmine up on the island in summer. The wind and waves were calm and we made it to the
Anchor
just ten minutes later.

Idling up the canal, I saw that Rusty had indeed strapped his two twelve-foot canoes to the pontoon braces on the
Island Hopper
and there were two small stacks of camping gear next to the plane.

Being a Saturday, the Trents had slept in, so I was looking forward to Rufus’s Caribbean breakfast buffet. We tied off the skiff and grabbed our gear before heading across the lawn to the bar.

While eating breakfast in a bar might seem strange on the mainland, down here certain bars are more than just drinking establishments. Some are a gathering place for locals at all hours. A place to eat, share stories, news, and gossip, or make deals. The
Anchor
is just such a bar, where locals gather and everyone knows everyone else. There just aren’t many places like this left in the Keys, most proprietors preferring to target the tourist dollars.

Rufus’s breakfast didn’t disappoint. After catching up with a couple of the liveaboards, we ate quickly and were in the air less than an hour later. Jimmy and Angie would run the bar while Rusty was gone.

Setting a course just a couple of points west of due north, I let Kim take over the controls at one thousand feet.

“Shouldn’t we be higher?” Kim asked over the headphones we all were wearing to be able to hear one another over the roar of the big radial engine.

“It’s only thirty miles,” I replied. “We’re almost halfway there already. Think you’re ready for your first water landing?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I’ve only made a few on land so far.”

“The shallows at the Cape extend out for miles,” Rusty said from the back seat, next to Linda. “With the water as calm down in Marathon as it was, there won’t even be a ripple at the Cape. It’ll be like a mile-long runway that’s ten miles wide.”

Kim looked at me and I nodded.

“Okay, take me through it,” Kim said.

“It’s no different than landing on a runway,” I said. “Except that we’ll slow down a little faster, due to the friction on the water, and you don’t have to lower the landing gear. Go ahead and start your descent. When you get to a hundred feet, add twenty degrees of flaps and cut your speed down to ninety miles an hour.”

She eased the yoke forward and we began to descend. When we were still three miles off the beach, I said, “See that smoke curling up off to starboard near the point?” She nodded. “That’s someone’s campfire on East Cape Sable. Turn a little more north and we’ll set down a few miles from them, between East Cape and Middle Cape.”

At a hundred feet, she added flaps and reduced power. The plane slowed to a hundred, then ninety miles an hour after another slight throttle adjustment.

“You’re doing fine,” I said. “See that cluster of tall palm trees straight ahead about halfway between the two points of land?” She nodded again. “Line up just to the left of them and once we’re down, you can turn directly toward them. That’s where we’ll pitch camp.”

Kim gently turned the wheel, changing course slightly away from our campsite. The tide was low and we’d have to anchor in shallow water a hundred yards from shore.

“Add another ten degrees of flaps and bring her down to just above stall speed.”

She did as I instructed and we were now just barely flying at seventy miles an hour, descending at about a foot every second. With its broad wingspan, the Beaver has a stall speed of sixty.

“Nice and easy,” I said, looking ahead to see if anything was in the water. A sudden collision with a floating log could spell disaster in really shallow water. “Keep looking straight ahead for anything in the water and I’ll watch your altimeter.”

At thirty feet, I started giving her five foot readings, until we were just ten feet off the water. At five feet, I said, “Ease back gently and reduce power.”

Kim flared the plane perfectly, the middle and rear of the pontoons making smooth contact with the water simultaneously.

“Come up on the throttle a little as the water slows us down,” I said calmly. Truth is, the girl’s a natural flyer and needed no reassurance at all. But she was still a young girl. Wise beyond her years, maybe, but still young.

“No more wheel steering,” I said as we slowed to just above planing speed. “Use your pedals to steer us gently straight toward shore. When we’re a couple hundred yards out, bring her down to an idle and wait for the feel of the pontoons on the bottom.”

A few minutes later, after we’d all congratulated Kim on a picture-perfect water landing, she shut down the engine and started a quick post flight check. Rusty and I climbed out over the canoes and splashed down into the knee-deep water. We each carried two small Danforth anchors and tied the lines fore and aft on the pontoons before walking them out fifty feet and burying them in the soft sand. The
Island Hopper
was as secure as we could make her. Unstrapping the canoes, we floated them on either side of the plane while the girls handed all the gear down to us. Pescador leaped into the water and was already bounding his way toward the beach to explore.

“How cold’s the water?” Linda asked.

“Much warmer than the air,” I replied.

“Feels downright balmy,” Rusty said. “We’ll have to wade ashore and pull the canoes.”

After Kim and Linda stepped down into the water, I locked up the plane and the four of us sloshed ashore, pulling the heavily laden canoes behind us.

We quickly unloaded the supplies and pitched our tents in a circle above the high tide line, facing a fire pit. It only took a few minutes to gather enough dry driftwood and deadfalls to keep a fire going all night.

“So what’s on the menu for lunch?” Rusty asked.

“I saw a small school of redfish,” Kim said.

“Sounds good to me,” I added. “We have steaks in the cooler for supper.”

“I don’t suppose you have a good red wine to go with it,” Linda asked as she put her fly rod together.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.”

“Do we need to leave someone here to watch over the camp?”

“No, we can see for miles up and down the coast,” I replied to Linda. “Let’s split up into twos. Remember, over eighteen inches but less than twenty-seven and only one per person.”

“Come on with me, Kim,” Rusty said. “I’m not real good with a fly rod. Maybe you can give me some pointers.”

Linda and I started down the beach to the south with Pescador running ahead of us, while Rusty and Kim went north. It didn’t take long at all before we came up to Pescador standing in the water at the shoreline, looking out at a small school of reds. They were scouring the sandy bottom less than fifty feet from shore. The tide was rising and the water was warm as we moved slowly toward the school in the calf-deep water, approaching from different angles. Pescador walked through the shallow water around to the other side of the school, taking cues from me, but watching the schooling fish carefully.

“Let me and Linda catch one, boy,” I whispered. He seemed to understand and held back a few feet behind me. “You can get your turn once we catch ours.”

When Linda was in casting range, she waited until I was in position on the school’s flank. We both started stripping line, our casts snaking out at about the same time. Each of us knew that once one of us hooked up, the rest of the fish would scatter. They were in a loose school, and it was easy to pick out the ones that were legal size. I’d improved my casting ability over the years and Linda picked it up even faster. My late wife said once that most men lacked grace, an essential element of fly casting.

At nearly the same time, our flies touched the water and were instantly attacked by the two reds we’d chosen. The fight was exciting, but all too short as we began working them towards shore. Both were legal size, Linda’s just a bit larger than mine, and we had them landed in just a few minutes. Pescador went quickly after a really big redfish that darted the wrong way, trying to go around me toward open water. I could see at a glance the fish wasn’t just over the legal size, but way over. I called Pescador off.

He splashed his way over to me as I lifted my catch from the water. “Sorry, bud. He was way too big.”

“That didn’t take long,” Linda said as she walked toward me carrying her own catch.

“We’re probably the first humans they’d ever seen.”

Looking around the flats and the beach, and over the dune to Micmac Lagoon, she said, “Probably the first dog they’ve ever seen as well. Rusty was right, this is probably what most of south Florida looked like five hundred years ago. How far away did you say the nearest town is?”

I pointed east, across the dunes. “Flamingo’s about fifteen miles that way. Nice little drinking village with a fishing problem. We should visit there some time.” I could see Rusty and Kim in the distance as we neared the camp. Kim was carrying a nice-sized redfish, but Rusty’s hand was empty.

“You shoulda seen the one that got away,” Rusty said as they approached the camp.

“Fisherman’s rule,” I said, with a grin. “Whoever gets skunked cleans the fish.” I knew that Rusty would insist on it anyway. He was an artist with a filet knife.

While Rusty prepared the fish on the other side of the dune, I got the fire going and opened the kitchen crate, unloading what we’d need. Rufus had given Rusty a couple of his recipes and a small box with assorted herbs and spices. An hour later we were enjoying Rufus’s blackened redfish sandwiches and fire-roasted corn on the cob. Rufus had included a rub for the corn, telling Rusty, “Pull di husks down and rub it in good, mon. Den pull up di husks and put dem neah di fiah.” It was delicious, whatever he put in it, as was the fish.

The sky was as crisp and clear as I’d ever seen. It wasn’t quite as cold as the day before, when the front first pushed through, but it was still pretty cool. As we were cleaning up, Pescador got up from where he’d been lying next to a fallen palm tree, looked south and barked once. I followed his gaze and saw a man and woman approaching from the south. They were walking hand in hand and the man appeared to be carrying something. As they got closer, I saw that it was a bottle.

“Ahoy, the camp!” the man shouted at a fair distance away. In the backcountry, it was customary to announce your approach so as not to surprise others.

I stood up and watched as they approached. “Welcome!” I shouted back. “Come on in!”

The man looked to be a few years older than me, maybe in his early to mid-fifties with dark hair, graying at the temples in a very distinguished fashion. Tall, fit and tan, he had the look of success.

The woman at first appeared to be much younger. As they got closer, I could tell she was about the same age, though. She had blond hair to her shoulders, without a hint of gray, and the tiniest of lines at the corners of her green eyes. Shorter than the man by almost a foot, she too was tan and healthy looking. Both were wearing jeans and crewneck sweaters over tee shirts.

“Name’s Toliver,” the man said. “Eugene and Nancy.”

I stepped toward him and offered my hand. “Jesse McDermitt.” Nodding to the others, I added, “Rusty Thurman, Linda Rosales and my daughter, Kim.”

He took my hand in a firm, dry grip. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Gene said he had to see your plane close up,” Nancy said. “He’s a pilot as well. I hope we’re not intruding.”

The man looked out to where the
Hopper
sat at anchor and said, “I used to fly a Beaver up in Canada. A long time ago. Paid my way through college as a bush pilot during the summer.” Holding out the bottle, he added, “Thought you might like a welcome gift. We’ve been here two days and you’re the first people we’ve seen in four.”