The Gift of the Dragon (21 page)

“It does not look like a Sugarloaf,” Pigpen said.
 

“The name comes from a kind of pineapple: tastes very sweet—rots quickly,” Thorn said.

Marsdale spoke up again. “Just to be sure I get it, Michel, the plan is we land, get on a boat of our own, head over to where the track ends. Then, we locate our targets and bring them in.”

“Exactly, Mr. Marsdale! The resolution of these images from the tracking drone is not detailed enough to be certain, but it looks as if they are headed for this house on Sugarloaf Key.” Thorn pointed at the map, his finger mashing the end of the blue line. “Big surprise, that house is owned by the sister of the man who worked for Tomas Guzman.”
 

Almaribe spoke up, “You heard the one about the guy who was not afraid of Satan? Satan asks him why, and the guy says, ‘I was married to your sister for twenty-five years.’”

“Hey, I resemble that remark!” Marsdale yelled.

“Very funny. Now at ease that shit, and listen up!” Thorn glared at the men.

“We’ll try to be really quiet down here. It’s too close to the mother ship. However, these are high-value targets, personally wanted by Mister Northwin. That means that we get them. If we have to make some noise, we will clean up the mess later. Any questions, girls?”

“No questions here, Mr. Thorn,” said Sanchez.

Thorn nodded and looked around. Then he said, “Pigpen! What is the mission?”

Pigpen swallowed. He had been dozing off a bit. “Uh, find the catamaran. Find the targets. Bring them in. Make noise if we have to. Sir.”

Everyone but Thorn laughed. “Fan-fucking-tastic! Remember though:
no
making noise unless I do it first. Got it?” He glared at Pigpen, whose Adam’s apple looked as if it would burst from his neck and roll across the floor.
 

Marsdale broke the silence. “We got it, Thorn. Now, these spazmos may be just visiting that house. They may be getting ready to move on. We should too.”

Thorn’s glare grew darker. Then he roared, “Right, enough wasting time!” He got up and turned toward the cockpit, yelling, “We’re all set. Let’s get this bitch in the air!”

The pilot nodded. “Aye, boss, if you would take your seat?”

“Oh aye, ca-pi-tan, I will take my seat gladly if that will help you get off the ground. Should I turn off my cell phone, also?”

“No need for that, boss. We won’t be troubled by your little eye-Droid.” The plane shook as the pilot hit the throttles, and Michel stumbled. “Oops,” said the pilot.

Thorn grunted and settled into his seat. He sat silently, looking out the window as the team joshed with each other during the takeoff, and soon the jet hit its cruising speed on the eighty-mile flight to Marathon Key.
 

Alice

Jacob pointed toward a long, wooden dock emerging from beneath a three-story house that seemed lost among the mangroves, palms, and pines on the shore.
 

“That’s Nanette’s house.”

The clear sea looked very shallow here. Jacob backed off the throttle, and the boat settled into the water as it slowed down. Slowly, with the motors coughing softly, Jacob began a series of maneuvers around coral heads that blossomed between the channel and Nanette’s pier. Looking down, she was amazed by the variety of colors she could see: brick-red corals, bright-purple sea fans, and schools of blue-and-yellow fish, all above snow-white sand in water so clear it seemed the boat floated on air.

“This place is lovely!” Alice shouted.

“It is. Nanette’s done well for herself since she left government service. The land here has been in our family for a few generations. It only held a half-ruined cabin before Nanette built this a few years ago. As a private contractor, she commands top dollar.”

“What does she do?”

 
“She’s an expert at reverse engineering. At the National Security Agency, she specialized at figuring out how our enemies made weapons. For example, improvised explosive devices.” Alice raised her eyebrows at the unfamiliar term. Jacob went on, “Homemade bombs. Bring one to Nanette, and she will tell you how it was made. The NSA would use that to track sales of the stuff the bad guys used, find out who was making the bombs.”

“Wow!”
 

“Yeah. She did the same thing with captured Russian or Chinese military hardware. Now that she works for herself, she mainly helps companies figure out how their competitors make products.”

“Why do they pay for that?”

“Well, they find out if patents are being infringed or if they can buy up the raw materials a competitor needs, things like that. They pay well for her advice.”

Jacob pointed at Alice’s throat. “If anyone can tell you what that thing is, she can.”

Alice held up her necklace, looking at it. She looked up in surprise as Jacob executed a sudden turn to the right, cursing.

“I don’t think these coral heads move much, but everything around them does. The sand, the sea grass, they all change, which makes it hard to remember the right channel. We’re coming in at dead low tide. It is much easier at high tide. We would have at least of foot of water over even the taller coral heads here.”

Alice nodded. “Well, it’s near enough to swim if you hit something now and this thing falls apart.”

Jacob didn’t smile.

She let him concentrate as she eyed the house they were approaching. The dock extended about one hundred fifty feet from the base of the house, crossing a sandy beach and a breaker line of coral, which probably lay just under the water at high tide. The house itself stood three stories tall, with a pool on the right side and then a second-story deck. As they got closer, she saw that the first floor consisted mostly of concrete pilings, presumably to elevate the building above the highwater point, with some walled-in areas like sheds between them. The house appeared to be surrounded by low bushes. In several places, a front yard peeked from beneath the bushes, looking as sandy as the beach but with a few scattered flower beds. On either side of the house, mangroves gave way to palms and pines. It sat under a metal roof that shone too brightly to look at in the morning sun.
 

 
Jacob managed to maneuver around the coral heads without hitting any, and he brought the boat up alongside the dock. He expertly leaped off the deck up to the dock, wrapped the bowline around a cleat, and then tied the stern line. Alice saw that the seaward pilings of the dock were heavily padded with what looked like old fire-hose, and the rub rail of the boat bounced against this softly.
 

Up close, many boards of the dock were dark and worn-looking. Some had big cracks or warped-up ends. Here and there were lighter-colored boards that must have been recently replaced. The clear water added an impressionistic blur to the bright colors beneath it. Silver flashes of schooling fish frequently punctuated the underwater scene.
 

Jacob made a “lead the way” gesture, but Alice preferred to follow him into this new situation, so she deferred. He smiled, inclined his head slightly, and turned and walked up the dock toward the house.

Alice tensed as a door banged from the other side of Jacob’s broad back. She leaned to the left to see around him, and then a figure of all brown skin and pink bikini burst from the house and ran toward them. “Uncle Jacob!” the figure yelled, and as she drew closer, Alice saw a girl of perhaps ten. Jacob yelled back, “Niece Anna,” laughing. The girl shrieked with joy and leaped into Jacob’s arms.

Jacob spun her around on the dock and then put her down. “Anna, this is Miss Alice Sangerman.”
 

Looking more closely at the girl, Alice saw she was thin with very short, dark hair. Big brown eyes looked up at her as the girl formally extended her hand. Brown eyes like Sara Moore.
 

“Pleased to meet you, Miss San-ger-man,” Anna said, pronouncing each syllable with care.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, Alice smiled and took the offered hand. “Call me Alice. It’s nice to meet you also, Anna…?”
 

“Castellan!” Anna said firmly.
 

Jacob laughed over Anna’s head.
 

“My sister didn’t like her ex-husband’s name. And just as well—he didn’t last long.”

Alice kept her smile but inwardly cringed.
Not a good thing to say in front of the man’s daughter
. Anna didn’t seem to notice, though, as she took Alice’s hand and said, “Come on, Mom has just finished making some breakfast, and yesterday we got some ice cream!”

The trio walked the rest of the way to the house. A cement seawall rose about four feet from the sand at the shoreline, and the dock ended there. Once they reached land, the wooden planks changed to a well-worn path that crunched beneath their feet. The sound made her look down, and she saw they walked on a thick layer of tiny shells, breaking them as they went. The path wound through dense green bushes trimmed to about six feet tall. It felt like a maze, and it made Alice claustrophobic after the open boat and dock.
 

“Why do you have these hedges here?” Alice asked.

Anna laughed. “Mom calls it the Mirkwood. They are mangroves. They help protect the house when it gets stormy.”

As they walked up to the door, she heard Anna tell Jacob how she would catch lobsters for her mother to cook for him. As Anna reached for the handle, the door opened from within.

A tall woman with dark-brown hair stood there in a white sleeveless blouse and blue jean shorts. In her height and hair and the shape of her face, Alice could see her relation to Jacob. Also like Jacob, she appeared to be in her early forties. Unlike Anna, she did not look happy to see Jacob.
 

“Hello, Nanette. I’m sorry to drop in on you like this.”

The woman stared at Jacob and then at Alice. Alice unconsciously put her hands to her hair, which she knew looked a mess after two days with no shower. Then she put her hands down, realizing that she hadn’t shaved in that time either.
It might look as though we were having a party on that boat instead of running for our lives!
 

Anna broke the tension. “Mom! I told Uncle Jacob all about the lobsters. After breakfast, can I go catch them?” Anna stopped to take what seemed like a huge breath and then continued, “This is his friend Alice, and she is nice. When we finish breakfast, can we have some of the coconut ice cream? Alice likes ice cream. I want to show her how to catch lobsters after we have some.”

Alice and Nanette smiled simultaneously at Anna’s exuberance.
 

“Please forgive my breathless daughter, Alice. We are isolated here, and there are no children nearby. Anna’s just recently able to go swimming again after her therapy. Jacob told you why we are here?”
 

Alice nodded and touched her scar. “I understand. I was in a bed most of last month recovering from this. When I was finally able to get out, I was very happy.”
 

Nanette looked concerned. “That looks bad, does it still hurt?”

“Not anymore. Not really.”

Anna kept jumping up and down. “Mom, open the door, let them in for breakfast! And… ice cream!”

“I
am
sorry,” Nanette said. “Welcome to Sugarloaf Key. Please do come in.”

Jacob smiled too, looking relieved.
 

“Thank you, sis. Please meet Alice Sangerman. We just came over from Miami. It’s a long story, but she has something I wanted you to look at.”

Nanette looked worried then. “From Miami? On
that
boat? Oh dear, you must be exhausted,” she said, looking at Alice. “Come on in, I’m sure you need a shower.” Nanette took Alice’s hand and said over her shoulder, “Anna, can you show your uncle to the kitchen? Make sure he washes his hands before he touches anything.”

Martin

Martin Almaribe looked up from the mission briefing as the plane went into its final descent, flaps up and wheels down. Out the window of the jet, Marathon Key Airport looked like a widened part of Highway 1, the single road that links the Keys to the mainland.
 

On his right, Johan Siegert spoke up. “Did you know that, despite the name, there is actually no Marathon Key. Marathon is the name of a Florida city that sprawls over seven small keys.”

“Fascinating, Johan, you read the same part of the briefing that I did.”
 

Siegert continued, “The name came from the grueling pace of work endured by the men building the Florida East Coast Railroad, which gave the rail stop on Vaca Key the name Marathon Station. The main businesses of Marathon are sport fishing and diving and smuggling, so the marinas of Marathon are home to many long-range, fast boats.”

“Well, that should make it a fine place for us to find a boat and some gas. I am glad we are landing here and not Charlie’s Chicken Farm!”

“Why would we go to this Charlie’s Chicken Farm?”

“You tell me, Pigpen, what’d you do?”

Marsdale broke in, “Charlie’s Chicken Farm is a kind of military jail, Johan.”

His brow deeply furrowed, Siegert stopped talking. That made Martin happy. The young German meant well, but his mix of seriousness with a strong personal odor did not sit well with Martin.

When the plane landed, Thorn led the way to a rented van with a driver waiting for them in the bright Florida sun. They herded aboard with their gear and headed south on the Overseas Highway to Boot Key Marina. There, a shiny white thirty-two-foot open boat with twin two hundred and fifty horsepower outboards waited for them, engines running. As the men loaded their gear on board, Thorn spoke with the marina employee, who tried to show him how to use the boat.

“The SeaCraft is a good make, though a bit slow for my liking,” Thorn pontificated to the bored-looking employee. “Too bad you guys don’t have any Contenders or a Fountain. Those are fast boats! This boat with the two fifties hits what, forty-one? Forty-two?”
 

“The boat will do about fifty miles per hour with the throttles wide open, sir.”

“Right, so forty-one
knots
. So this is all you have?”