Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7) (36 page)

Travis had assigned a second takedown team that would raid the gun shop at the same time the chopper landed on upper Shark River and apprehend the remainder of Bradley’s crew.

When I’d walked Nick to the
Revenge
, I’d retrieved my go-bag before taking the short nap. I went back to the dock and grabbed my wetsuit, my Drager rebreather, and the rest of my dive gear from the storage locker near the bow, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Sitting at the table with Travis, both of us drinking another cup of Rusty’s special Costa Rican coffee, he and I had our first real chance to have a long talk about Charity Styles.

“She’s damaged goods,” I said finally. “She might do well at not showing it, but she could have some sort of flashback to her time in the hands of the Taliban.”

“Everyone on the team undergoes a lot of psychological testing, Jesse. Charity went through even more after I submitted her name to the secretary. All the shrinks say she’s okay in the head. Maybe not perfect, but well enough for the duties she was chosen for.”

“How does she get around from target to target?”

Travis looked at me over the rim of his mug. Finally, he set it down and said, “Only three others have that information. Deuce, the secretary and the president. I know you well enough to know you can be trusted with it. She’s on a forty-two-foot Alden sloop, equipped with the latest nav and comm equipment and anything else she might need for a mission. I’m the only one that has contact with her. I fly to where she is and deliver a target assignment and any specialized gear she’ll need. She can choose to decline any target she wants, but so far she’s three for three, without a single hiccup.”

“An Alden sloop?”

“Her own choice. She only agreed to take the assignment if that’s how she would travel. It was originally built eighty years ago, but underwent a two-month refit, sparing no cost. Her assignment area is the whole Caribbean Basin, so she can usually get to where she needs to in less than a week. During that time, she makes her own plan as to when, where, and how to eliminate the target.”

“Did the shrinks take into account that she’d be alone at sea? Just her and her thoughts?”

The door to the office opened, just as I heard the heavy thump-thump of a chopper inbound and flying low over the water. Scott and Germ came out and split up, heading to the four corners of the clearing, where they placed strobes on the ground and activated them. Both men were already wearing black wetsuits and jump boots.

I began pulling my own wetsuit on and checking my rebreather. “I don’t like it, Travis. Not even a little bit. Probably because I know her better than most. While she and I were on the
Revenge
last year, she opened up to me. Took her a week, but she finally talked about what happened to her in Afghanistan and how devastated she was when Jared was killed.”

Scott was on the far side of the clearing, two flashlights with red cones over the lights in his hands, ready to direct the chopper down.

“But she took care of the problem then,” Travis said. “Just as she’s doing now.”

“You weren’t there, Colonel. You didn’t see the look in her eyes when she did it.”

The chopper flared as it approached the island, bleeding off speed. The pilot noted the illuminated flagpole, the colors hanging limp below the solar-powered light on the top of the pole. He made a straight-in approach and seconds later, the bird was on the ground. I grabbed my gear and trotted toward it, Germ and Scott joining me at the open door.

“Good to see you again, Gunny,” Scott Bond shouted, offering a hand. Bond had been a SEAL lieutenant and a supervisor at their dive school. I’d always found him to be cool and level-headed.

“Good to be seen, Eltee,” I replied, handing him my fly rod case.

The chopper was a UH-1, commonly called a Huey, solid black with no markings. In back were seats for up to eight men. I took an empty seat and looked at the others on board. The only one I recognized was Bill Guthrie seated across from us and I nodded to him.

As Scott and Germ sat down, two of the men across from us handed them rebreather cases, and then the chopper lifted off, spinning slowly until it faced north. Looking out the open door, the moon illuminated my little island and I saw Michal and Coral at the deck rail of my house. He was wearing only boxers and she had a sheet wrapped around her, whipping in the turbulence caused by the chopper’s blades. Nick and Eve came running up the steps from the dock area and joined them.

I switched on the tiny comm unit in my ear and as Eve broke apart from the others and started running down the rear steps, I said, “Colonel?”

“I copy,” I heard Travis say through the earwig.

“Tell my daughter I’ll be back in time for Alfie’s swimming lesson.”

“Roger that,” Travis responded as the chopper’s nose dipped and the pilot added throttle.

Bond tapped me on the arm. “Gunny, meet Bravo Team. To expedite things, we’ll just use numbers for now. There’ll be time for introductions later. You, Scott and Germ are Alpha One, Two, and Three and I’m Bravo One.” Pointing to Guthrie on the end he said, “You already know Bravo Two. Next to him are Bravo, Three, Four, and Five, all from SEAL Team Four.”

I reached across and shook hands with the four men, noting that the one seated next to Guthrie held an MK11 sniper rifle between his legs. Placing my fly rod case on my knees, I started to open it.

“Planning to do some fishing?” the man with the sniper rifle asked.

“Roger that, Bravo Three,” I replied, removing my own M40 and snapping the Unertl scope into place on the Picatinny rail. “I hear illegal arms smugglers are biting.”

As we flew through the darkness, Bond outlined a basic tactical plan, where Guthrie and the SEAL sniper would take cover on the river’s bank if we could find a suitable place during a flyover. Scott and I would do the same in another spot at a ninety-degree angle from them and the island. The rest of the team would surround the clearing on all sides. We’d try to use our rebreathers sparingly at the water’s edge, breathing on the surface if the mosquitoes cooperated. Brown would be coming by airboat, so we’d hear them for miles just before sunrise. The chopper would fly due west and land on a sandbar near the mouth of Shark River and wait there until we had the men in custody.

Using the coordinates Travis got from Nick and verifying the clear spot using satellite imagery, the pilot located the high clearing and had no trouble landing in the middle of it. Everyone fanned out and hugged the water’s edge, until the chopper lifted off and flew west. Then we regrouped in the center of the little island.

“Bravo Two and Three,” Bond said, “Did you see that log on the river bank, two hundred meters southwest?”

“Affirmative,” Guthrie said. “That’ll make a decent hide.”

“Hey, Bill,” I said as the two men turned to go. He stopped and turned around. “Just make sure that log isn’t a gator or python.”

Both men turned and trudged off toward the southwest. Having doused all the lights on the chopper long before we arrived, our eyes had adjusted to the light of the moon and stars. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but all of us had night vision headsets, just in case.

“Jesse, you and Germ move southeast,” Bond said, pointing to a small cypress stand just a hundred yards away. “The rest of you fan out and take cover in the water.”

We didn’t have a long wait. Germ and I lay prone on a sandy spot at the edge of the cypress head, our bodies completely submerged in the dark tannin-filled water. We tried to keep our heads up, but with no wind, the mosquitoes were fierce.

All of us wore full face masks, to enable communication through the use of the bone-conductive mics and earwigs, so we mostly stayed submerged, breathing through the rebreathers and taking turns keeping an ear above the surface.

“I hear an airboat,” one of the men said.

I lifted my head out of the water and listened. Knowing that sound travels better over water, even when the water’s covered with three-foot-tall sawgrass, I could tell the boat was still a long distance away and slipped back below the surface.

“Bravo Three and Four,” I said between breaths, “This is Alpha One. He’ll probably come from your direction. An airboat only needs a couple of inches of water, so stay deep and if he passes over you, you’ll be okay.”

“Roger that,” one of them responded.

A few minutes later, I could hear the roar of the airboat engine under water and knew it was close. Knowing that the stand of cypress behind us would keep the men on the airboat from seeing me, I raised my head up high enough to see over the sawgrass, ignoring the mosquitoes that swarmed every inch of exposed skin.

The sky to the east was already a bright pink, sunrise only minutes away. “This is Alpha One,” I whispered. “I have eyes on them, four hundred meters due east and closing fast.” I raised my rifle and flipped open the front and rear sight covers. Looking through it, I counted two men in the high rear seats and three in the lower front seats. “Five men on the boat. Guess they’re getting here ahead of time. It’s only zero six-thirty.”

Over my headset, I heard Travis’s voice. “Alpha One and Bravo One, this is Six Actual. Maggio’s helicopter is twenty minutes out.” He was using the satellite to connect to our comm, beaming instructions from space.

“Roger that,” Bond said. “Everyone stay low and get small. We’re doing this by the book. Six Actual has eyes in the sky and he’s recording everything. We don’t take them down until he confirms that the money and weapons have changed hands.”

The airboat made a direct approach to the island, the engine roaring as it rode its own bow wave up onto dry land before the driver shut the engine down. The five men on board stepped off, one of them carrying a briefcase. All five stayed close to the boat, but two men with bolt-action hunting rifles stepped a little further away than the others. These two would be my and Bravo Three’s targets.

Five minutes later, Donnie’s voice came over the comm as he passed the five-mile mark, about the maximum distance the comm units worked for a direct connection. “This is Air One. I’m five minutes out.”

Bad guys just don’t stand a chance these days
, I thought as I slowly slipped back below the surface and drowned at least a dozen mosquitoes. We waited patiently, Donnie giving a play-by-play as the chopper approached, confirming only five men on the tiny, bare island and nobody hiding on the boat.

“Crikey! Where are you blokes? There ain’t even a strand of grass on that little sandbar.”

“We’re close by,” Bond said. “Underwater.”

“Touching down,” Donnie said. “Going covert.”

I slowly lifted my head until I could just see them through the sawgrass. The chopper had circled and landed facing the airboat. The engine went silent, the only sound was the whisper of the blades as they slowed.

The back door of the Bell commuter chopper opened and a man climbed out, dragging a large case behind him. Another man got out of the far side and came around the front of the bird with Donnie to join the first man. The pilot remained in the chopper.

Watching closely, I recognized Brown by his western-style clothes as he separated from his group and strode toward Donnie.

“Good mornin’, mate,” Donnie said to Brown, his voice coming over my headset. I was too far away to hear Brown’s response, but it didn’t sound pleasant.

“Eight just like the one I showed you last night,” Donnie said. “Feel free to look for yourself.”

The two men with Donnie stood off to the side, each one carrying the rugged AK74s on a sling around his neck and shoulder. The muzzles were pointed at the ground, but in a manner that would enable them to be brought to bear on a target very quickly.

Brown opened the case and lifted out one of the rifles at random. He quickly field-stripped it, using a small penlight to inspect the trigger assembly, chamber, barrel and finally the recoil spring and bolt assembly. Putting the rifle back together, he ratcheted the bolt and, with the muzzle facing down at the ground, pulled the trigger. Both sounds were clearly audible a hundred yards away. Brown put the rifle back in the crate and waved a hand, and I heard him shout, “They look fine.”

The two guys standing off to the side of the boat stepped a little further away, a movement that was then matched by Donnie’s two men. The sporting rifles the two goons carried were a poor match for the automatic Kalashnikovs of Donnie’s men, and far less than the high-powered rifles Bravo Three and I carried.

“Where’s Mister Bradley and Mister Conner?” I heard Donnie ask. Then a moment later, he said, “That’s too bad, I was hoping to see them again.”

Shit
, I thought.
He sent his damned hired muscle.

Travis’s voice came over my comm. “This is Six Actual. Stand by for the exchange, go on my word only.”

Slowly raising my rifle, I silently flipped up the lens covers again and took aim. “Alpha One, I’m covering the tall rifleman on the right.”

Scott, now kneeling beside me, whispered, “Range one hundred and twenty meters, zero windage.”

“Bravo Two. We have the shorter rifleman on the left. Range is two hundred and fifty meters, zero windage.”

The man with the briefcase opened it and turned it toward Donnie, who picked up one bundle of cash and thumbed it, then quickly counted the others.