Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7) (23 page)

“Travis?” Chyrel asked, unsure. “Where’s Jesse?”

Leaning over closer, I said, “Hi, Chyrel. Director Stockwell and I need your help.” Travis glared at me.

Chyrel looked puzzled. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

“We need you to create another fake identity for someone,” Travis said. “A deep one, that’ll withstand any scrutiny. Permanent. Before you start, call Deuce and tell him what I’m asking for. Tell him I said
green mushroom
, then call me back on vid-comm.”

“Green mushroom?”

“He’ll know what you mean. Call me right back.”

Without waiting, he closed the video feed and pushed the laptop aside. Looking at the young couple sitting on the sofa, Travis said, “What I’m going to tell you doesn’t leave this boat. The only reason you’re here is your dad, Michal. I work for the federal government, and right now that’s all you need to know. You’ll have a new identity before morning. It’ll be so complete and in-depth that even the CIA wouldn’t be able to find out who you really are. Michal Grabowski Junior dies today. You can stick with Cavanaugh, or any name you like.”

“Robert Trebor,” Michal said. He looked at Coral and she smiled.

“Trebor?” I asked, remembering he’d used it earlier. “That have some kind of meaning?”

“Just to the two of us,” Coral replied.

“You got a notepad and a pencil?” Travis asked me.

I got both from a drawer in the galley and knowing what he wanted it for, I handed them to Michal.

“Write down everything about you physically,” Travis said. “Height, weight, hair and eye color, scars, tattoos, anything that would identify you. Do you have a criminal record, or ever served in the military?”

“No, I never served,” Michal replied. “Got some traffic tickets, nothing more than that.”

“He’s meaning fingerprints,” I interjected. “Total honesty time. Your new identity is going to be placed over your old one wherever there’s a fingerprint or DNA record on you.”

“You can do that?” Travis nodded and Michal thought for a while. “No, I’ve never been fingerprinted in my life.”

“Good,” Travis responded. “That’ll make it easier.”

As Michal began to write down the information, I sat back down at the settee. “Green mushroom?” I whispered.

“Means the charade is over, Jesse,” Travis replied in a low tone, glancing at the two younger people, who were talking quietly between themselves. “When Chyrel tells Deuce I said those words, he’ll open a file on a secure server, located in Quantico. In that file will be a document from me outlining what he can divulge going forward. It means the truth about what Charity and I have been doing can be talked about within the community of the team. It was known from the start that the cover wouldn’t last forever, but it needed to be sold that way to get her in place. Steps were taken early on to release the information when the time was right. You just pushed up the schedule a little.”

A ping came from the laptop as Michal walked across the salon deck and slid the notepad to Travis, who picked it up and scanned what Michal had written. Turning the laptop back around, he clicked the blinking video icon and Chyrel’s face again appeared. She was smiling now.

“What can I do for you, Director Stockwell?”

Over the next hour, Travis gave Chyrel the physical information and the five of us came up with dozens of small details to complete the background for Robert “Bob” Trebor. Some facts were real, some exaggerated, and some completely made up.

When we were finally finished, Chyrel said, “I’ll have a Florida driver’s license, Social Security card, birth certificate, and debit and credit cards sent down by courier in the morning. How much money in the accounts?”

Travis looked at Michal. “Do you have any money, son?”

“Not a lot,” Michal replied. “My credit cards were in the wallet that was stolen. But they were maxed out and I only have a few thousand in cash.”

Turning back to the laptop, Travis said, “Set up the bank statement with an odd balance around fifty thousand in savings and a couple grand in checking, Chyrel. Show six years of regular mortgage and utility payments, plus the sale of a house with a profit to bring it to that balance. Give him a fairly decent credit rating and show activity that would be consistent with the score.”

“Will do, Director. It’s good to have you back, sir.”

When Travis closed the laptop, Michal looked at him with an expression that could only be described as shock. “Fifty thousand dollars?”

“Did your dad ever tell you about Mogadishu, son?”

“I know he was there,” Michal replied. “He was with Special Forces then.”

Travis looked out the port-side porthole for a moment, thinking. When he looked back at the young man, his face appeared calm. “Bravo Company, Third Battalion, Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, to be precise. Your dad was my platoon sergeant, I was his CO. Long story short, he saved my life. I guess that’s worth fifty grand, don’t you, Jesse?”

I grinned. “Absolutely, Colonel. I’m sure there’s strings attached that you haven’t mentioned, though.”

“Strings?” Coral asked.

“Yeah, strings,” Travis replied. “From now on, you’re Robert Trebor, resident of Key West. You’ll go about whatever life you chose to make here, but anytime you hear of anything, no matter how small or insignificant, that has to do with arms smuggling, terrorism, anything like that, you’ll have a number to call and report it.”

“A snitch?” Michal asked.

“More like a concerned, patriotic citizen. The part of the government I work for is tasked to investigate and deter terrorist activity in South Florida and the Caribbean. We don’t care about petty crimes or drug trafficking, at least not as it pertains to our mission. That’s the job of other agencies, like DEA. We’re interested in possible terrorist activities only.”

“I can do that,” Michal said.

“It also means you can’t be involved in anything illegal, son. If you get yourself picked up for trafficking, I never heard of you and you become useless to me. Think you can do that?”

Michal and Coral looked at one another, smiling. “Yeah,” he said, “we can do that.”

“Alright, Robert,” Travis said. “Or do you prefer Bob?”

I
n the back office of a small gun store in South Miami, a black man with weathered skin, a deeply lined face, and a permanent scowl picked up the phone on his desk. Dialing with hands that were scarred and knotted from years of working as a cattleman when he was a younger man, he waited. Though only thirty-seven, he had the appearance of a much older man. Until you looked at his eyes. They were hazel and danced with the light of youth. The color of his eyes looked even lighter when set against his dark ebony skin.

“We got a job,” he muttered into the phone, his South Florida redneck accent belying his African-American heritage.

After a moment, he said, “You, me, and three more oughta do it. Meet me at the gun store in half an hour. Bring your van. We’re going to Key West.”

Without waiting for a reply, Austin Brown hung up the phone, rose quickly from his desk, and went to the counter out front. His only employee, his wife of twenty years, was sitting on a stool, reading another crime novel. There weren’t any customers in the store, located just off US-1 in Naranja, on the southern outskirts of Miami.

Mary-Beth Brown looked over her glasses as her husband entered. “You got that look in your eye, Austin. Where you off to now?”

“None a your business, woman.”

Mary-Beth took off her reading glasses, leaving them dangling on a chain on her ample bosom, and slid off the stool. At just a fraction over five feet tall and more than a fraction over two hundred pounds, Mary-Beth looked up at her husband, her face flushing nearly as bright as her copper-colored hair.

“Ain’t my business? Now, you just hold on, Mister High and Mighty. I’m the one what pays the bills around here. I have a need to know where the money’s comin’ from.”

“Just a job for that guy up in Pittsburgh I tole you about.”

“The drug dealer? What kinda job?”

“He’s down to Key West and needs reinforcements, that’s all. Me and a few of the guys are goin’ down there. He’s payin’ five grand under the table.”

Mary-Beth had met Austin when they were in high school. He was a local high school rodeo star who worked summers and after school as a cow hunter for a big ranch near their hometown of Clewiston, on the shore of Lake Okeechobee. Mary-Beth had been nominated for Homecoming Queen, but when news got out about her unplanned pregnancy, it ruined her chance to win. Her parents became livid that she’d become pregnant by a black boy and threatened to disown her if she didn’t have an abortion. Instead, the two had run off to Fort Myers and married before dropping out of school.

“Five thousand dollars?” she asked. “How much of that do we get to keep?”

“Half. Claude gets a grand and whoever he brings will get five hundred each. He’s bringin’ three other guys.”

“Well, none of ’em better be that no good Billy Ray,” she said as he walked past her behind the counter and looked through the glass top at the different handguns on display.

“Where’s my Python?”

“It’s in the back,” she replied. “You was changing the grips, remember?”

Austin opened the case and took out two matching Colt 1911s and put them on the counter. “Oh, yeah. Would you run and fetch it for me? I just sold these two Colts. Got a grand each for ’em.”

Mary-Beth headed to the back room muttering, “You’d likely forget your dang fool head if I wasn’t around to keep it glued in place under your hat.”

Turning, Austin opened the rifle case and took out two AK-74s and his own Armalite AR-10 and laid them on the counter. “Hey,” he yelled through the open door. “Grab me that green bag under the desk while you’re back there.”

When Mary-Beth returned, Austin took the bag from her, placed it on the counter and put the three rifles in it, along with a pair of Remington pump-action shotguns, two boxes of buckshot and three boxes of Winchester .308 ammo.

“That’s a lot of firepower, Austin. Who the hell you goin’ up against?”

“Erik said it’s just some rival that ripped his boss off up north and ran off to Key West.” Austin looked at his wife’s worried expression. “Now Mary-Beth, you know the hardware’s just for show. We go down there, scare the bejesus outta them boys, get Erik’s boss’s stuff back, collect our pay, and be home before sunrise.”

“You better make sure you do. No playin’ around while you’re down there. I know what goes on in Key West. Here’s your Python.”

Austin took the big .357 Magnum revolver from her, opened the cylinder and spun it. Austin liked guns and was known in South Florida to be one of the best gunsmiths. Ten years ago, he’d been thrown from his horse while hunting cows for his employer and suffered two fractured discs in his back. A cracker who couldn’t sit a horse and crack a whip to move cows, wasn’t much good on a ranch, but his boss liked him. Even paid for his rehab and put him to work fixing the guns for the other cow hunters when he got out of the hospital. The old gunsmith on the ranch was getting on in years and needed an apprentice. Austin was smart and had a natural gift for intricate mechanical things.

Cow hunters were to South Florida what the cowboy was to the Wild West. Florida was one of the leading beef cattle states, raising more beef than Wyoming, North Dakota or New Mexico, but its ranchers had to use different methods to round up the herds than in those big, wide-open states. During roundup, cattle had to be hunted individually and in small groups through the dense palmetto and underbrush common in south central Florida. Sometimes you could hear a cow but not see it, so the original cow hunters used long bullwhips to crack the air above where the cow was hiding to drive it out. Early cow hunters called each other crackers for that reason, and the term is still used today.

Austin reveled in being one of the few black crackers in the state and he was good at his job. Right up until a pygmy rattler had spooked his mount and left him lying across a palmetto root, forever ruining any chance he had of riding the circuit of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

Within minutes, Austin heard the sound of tires crunching on the gravel lot out front and looked up. It was Chet in his Dodge van. The passenger and cargo doors opened as Chet climbed out of the driver’s seat. Ace got out of the front seat and Claude and Billy Ray jumped out of the cargo door.