Wood's Wreck (16 page)

“That’s called poaching, and I could lose my license if we get caught,” the man responded.

Cayenne brushed against him. “Sometimes you got to stick it out there if you want the reward.” 

Mel sat down on the deck underneath the window and tried to get the vision of Cayenne out of her head, but still process what she had heard. This only further confirmed everything she had suspected. She had the motive, that was for sure,
and
the opportunity; the only thing she needed was an idiot with a boat to do the work … and Trufante fit that bill perfectly. If she could just get her to confess it would clear Mac, but confronting her was not likely to get results. Cayenne thought she was above the law and would laugh at Mel’s accusations. What she needed was proof. All the better if she could ruin the witch and help Mac in the process. 

The house was quiet now, and she crawled onto her knees to look in the window. The room was empty, the only sign of its previous inhabitants Cayenne’s top and bra lying on the floor. She sat back down and started thinking, wanting to kill a few minutes before she entered the house. 

***

Mac hugged the deck of the boat, trying to stay out of sight as the man approached. He could hear footsteps on the dock coming closer, but they stopped and he held his breath. Then he heard movement again, but it seemed like the guy was moving away. 

He breathed, but stayed where he was. The minutes dragged on until he was sure he was alone. Slowly he raised his body to a sitting position and peered over the gunwale. 

A light hit him in the face and he shrunk, but it was too late.

“You think you’re dealing with an amateur?” 

Mac could hear the action of the gun as the man cocked it. 

“Don’t worry. You don’t need to answer now. That will all come in time. Now get on your feet and step onto the dock with your arms over your head. And, for what it’s worth, there is no one within a mile of here, so if you try anything I’ll plug you and leave you in the cove for the crabs.”

Mac looked around the boat for any option, but found none. He raised himself to his full height and stepped over the side of the boat, placing one foot on the wooden dock and then the other. 

“Good. I see you’ve already been swimming. Water’s nice, huh?”

Mac nodded.

“By the way, that’s how I found you. The wet spot on the boat’s side where you climbed over. Now you’re going to meet a friend of mine.” He motioned the gun for Mac to move toward him.

Mac followed along. He knew he would have to endure whatever the man had planned until an opportunity presented itself to escape. He almost took the chance of pushing him off the dock as he passed by, but the man was equal height and weight, and Mac suspected he knew how to use his body. In front of the man now, he walked off the dock and onto the patio. 

“This way.” The man motioned toward an enclosure in the water.

Mac walked to the edge of the patio and looked at what appeared to be an ordinary storage cage that fishermen used to keep live bait overnight, but on a much bigger scale. The enclosure was at least ten feet square, with the wire standing two feet above the water and a single strand of barbed wire on top. The posts were spaced close enough to ensure the wire stayed tight. Once in, Mac knew there would be no easy escape. 

The man walked ahead of him and opened a small gate cut into the side adjacent to the shore. He pointed the gun at Mac and signaled his intent. 

Mac walked slowly toward the opening, looking around for any opportunity to escape, but there was nothing. Desperate now, he pulled an arm forward to elbow the man in the ribs, but a hard kick in the back took him by surprise, forcing him into the water. His head went below and there was an instant of panic before his feet hit the sandy bottom and he pushed up. Just as he recovered, the gate was closed and he heard the hasp of a padlock snap shut. He tried to stand on the bottom, but his mouth remained submerged, forcing him to tread water. The man stood there in front of him with a grin on his face. 

“Don’t worry.” He picked up a long foam swim noodle. “You can have this if you answer some questions for me. And believe me, you’re going to need it. You see there’s something in there that should be introducing itself to you any second now.” He paused.

Mac didn’t know what to make of what he said and continued to tread water. Then out of nowhere, he felt stinging as something circled around and through his legs. 

“Ah, I see by the look on your face that you have met my friend. Now if you want this—” He held out the noodle. “—You can start by telling me where the girls are.”

 “What girls? I just ran out of gas out there,” he played dumb.

“Don’t give me that line. You were prowling around in here with some other guy earlier. I shot at your ass.”

“Just got lost, is all,” Mac pleaded. “A buddy gave me some numbers for a good lobster hole.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences, and seeing you twice in one day is a large one. Now, start talking.”

Mac was getting tired from treading water. Whatever was in the water was still circling him, and a tingling sensation went through his body whenever it touched him. He was just about to reach for the fencing to hold himself when he saw a large mosquito run into the wire. A bright blue light sparked, and with a zap the bug fell into he water. 

The pen was electrified. He moved back toward the center, away from the fence. It must be an eel he thought, the creature must be channeling the current. The man must have caught his look. “I see you know my little secret now. But here’s the thing.” He went toward a table and picked up a box. “I can turn up the voltage as well. Right now it’s probably a little tingling, but another few volts and you’ll be singing.”

Mac thought about his predicament. There was no way out as long as the man was there. “OK. I’m looking for a poacher that set me up. The girls are with my buddy. You let me go and I’ll bring them back.”

“What do you take me for?” The man sat with the box on his lap and turned up the dial. The tingling was now stinging. “I don’t give a crap about the girls. They’re just flesh, and I was getting bored with them anyway. Plenty more where that came from. The thing is, you trespassed on my very private piece of property, and now I’m going to have to get rid of you. But first you’re going to take me to your friend.”

Mac knew he was safe as long as Trufante remained at large. The man had no idea what they knew and had no way of finding Trufante without his help. “OK. I’ll take you to him.” 

“I’m a little tired. Been a long day.” The guy got up and set the box on the chair. “Enjoy yourself overnight.” He tossed the noodle to Mac. “The more you move, the more excited he gets.” And he walked away.

Mac was alone now, his arms hanging over the foam. It kept him afloat and the eel had stopped harassing him as long as he remained still. He looked around for any means of escape, trying desperately to find a way out of the pen. 

Somehow, this man and his island held his get-out-of-jail-free card; he just needed to figure it out. Like the man had said, he didn’t believe in coincidences either, and this guy was some bad stuff, be it women, drugs, or smuggling it didn’t matter. It stood to reason that he had taken whatever those crates were that Commando had on his boat, as well as women, and who knows what else. There had to be an answer here, he just had to escape the pen.

Chapter 18

Mel was up at dawn, knowing that it would probably be several hours before Cayenne made an appearance. She dug the tax returns from her backpack and went to her office, where she ran copies and replaced the originals. Her heart was pounding and she was still not clear on what to do and how to deal with Mac, so she did what worked for her and put on her running shoes, slipped her phone into an armband, placed the earbuds in, and headed out the door. 

Not wanting to miss Cayenne, she decided on a sprint workout. After pacing off one hundred yards on the street, she started a half-effort sprint back to the house. After warming up with some squats and pushups, she started running all-out efforts, walking back to the house to get her heart rate down after each one. Just about to start her ninth round, she heard someone outside the house and ducked behind the truck. Looking up, she saw that Cayenne and the captain were about to leave. 

She crossed to the neighbor’s driveway, staying tight to the hibiscus bushes and hoping they would shield her from the duo. Now only a few feet from them, but hidden by the shrubs, she could hear them clearly.

“You’re sure this is cool?” the man asked.

“Honey, I’m not going to risk all this,” Cayenne said. “We go out like the other days and have a look at the coral, but we make a slight detour and fill a couple of coolers with lobsters. You’ve taken me out there often enough that if anyone is watching, they’ve already seen you and won’t suspect anything. 

“A half-hour, that’s all. And I’m staying on board. You’re going to have to dive yourself.”

Mel heard the doors close and the engine start. She stayed where she was until the truck had pulled out of the driveway. Her phone was out of the elastic armband before they had turned the corner.

“Marvin. Get up. We have to go back there now.” She waited impatiently for him to gain his senses after obviously waking him.

“Sweetie, what time is it?” he murmured.

“It’s time to get moving. Come on. I need you here. She’s with that captain guy and they’re heading back to the casitas. This is my chance to catch her red handed and clear Mac.” She waited for a response, but none came. “Half-hour on the dock.” 

She hung up, crossed back onto Cayenne’s property, and went into the house. A quick change of clothes from what little she had brought from Mac’s and she was out the door and in the truck. Just being in Mac’s truck made her think about him and regret the way she had handled things last night. She had information that could help and she needed to get to him quickly. 

Invigorated from the sprints and ready to take action, she felt better than she had in months. The thought of watching Cayenne fall from whatever status she still had only added to her mood.

As she drove, she tried to plan her strategy for setting up Cayenne and clearing Mac. But as she started to think it through, she realized it wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Calling Fish and Game or the Marine Patrol would only get Cayenne put in jail, and there wouldn’t be any leverage to clear Mac in that case. No reason for her to
further
implicate herself, especially after her father would send a plane load of suits to bully the locals and represent her. 

No, she needed to catch her red-handed and prove that the casitas were located inside her coral lease. Then she could offer some kind of deal to keep her out of jail. She had no idea how that was going to work, but she had a little time to think of something. The key was to catch her in the act. 

The marina was busy when she pulled into the parking lot. Fishermen, divers, snorkelers, and sight seers were congregated on the docks, waiting for their charters. She pushed through a throng of middle-aged tourists and jumped down to the deck of Marvin’s boat, where she pulled out her phone and checked the time of the call to Marvin. It had been forty minutes already, and she was getting anxious when the crowd parted and Marvin appeared.

She had the dock lines off before he was on the boat, and watched him sit on the dock before swinging his legs over and easing onto the deck. His hangover was evident, and after watching his unathletic entrance to the boat, she realized he was going to be of no use if things got ugly out there. 

But he was all she had. 

He went to the helm, inserted the key into the ignition, and clipped the dead man’s key into its slot. The engines roared to life and he pulled out into the channel. 

Mel was happy to let him drive—at least for now—so she could focus on figuring out how to corner Cayenne.

***

The man had spent the night in a small shack on the outskirts of town. He knew it was better to forego comfort and remain unseen. Mariel was a small town, and—typical of many Cuban villages—people neither moved in or out. The chances of running into someone that knew him were too high to risk. He climbed out of the cot and stretched his back. Between the boat ride and the old army cot, which looked like a remnant from the Spanish-American war, his body ached. 

He went to the small kitchen, set a pot of water on the stove to boil for coffee, sat in one of the two older chairs, and waited. There was nothing he could do until his contact arrived but drink coffee. He reached for his pocket, instinctively looking for his cell phone, but realized he had left it in the States. It would be no use to him here. 

Stashed under the shack was a locally purchased pre-paid phone that could access the internet. He would use GuerillaMail to send the message that all was ready for pick up. The anonymous mail server would send the message and within an hour scrub it from the server, so they couldn’t be tracked.

The woman came in a half-hour and two cups of Cuban coffee later, and handed him a thin newspaper and a bag containing a pastry. She avoided his gaze and walked back out. He refilled his coffee and opened the paper. Usually filled with propaganda and sports, something on the front page caught his eye. He read the article with increasing interest and anxiety. The industrial pier he had passed on the way into the sound was scheduled to have Naval exercises starting tomorrow. Castro went all out on these occasions, taking his limited fleet and putting it in one place for the cameras to show the country that he still had power. 

This was bad news, as it would force him to accelerate his extraction. The Cuban Navy, although far from its technologically advanced neighbor, still had enough machinery and manpower to cover the small bay. Once they started to arrive, his odds of getting out unseen were small. And waiting until the operation was over was out of the question. The way they scheduled things here, the Navy could be moving in for the winter.