Fallen Out: Jesse McDermitt Series, The Beginning (8 page)

Getting a chart of the western Caribbean from the chart locker, I rolled it out on the table. “This is the Isle of Youth, where they predict it’ll make landfall,” I told the group, pointing at the chart. “If Rusty’s right, and it turns a little northwest here, then northeast when it gets to the Straits, it’ll either pass the southern tip of the state, or cross the upper or middle Keys into
the Gulf. That’ll put it on a straight course for where we are.”

“Yeah, man,” Jimmy said. “But, it won’t get here until at least Friday afternoon. So, we got almost two whole days to get completely ready.”

We prepared supper and everyone ate aboard the
Revenge
, while we made plans for the worsening storm. Later, after the sun had gone down, I occasionally heard music wafting from the old trawler. It seemed they were having a hurricane party.

Josh and his family retired to their boat early. I suggested that if Savannah had room, that Rusty should bunk aboard with her. The four of us set up a
2-1/2 hour watch schedule, Jimmy took the first, then me, Rusty, and Savannah took the last watch. Although it meant getting a little wet, I suggested we use the bridge on the
Revenge
, as it was much higher than the other two boats, providing better visibility. Anchored in the cove as we were, the wind was pretty much blowing over the tops of the thick mangrove canopy.

I checked the anchor lights and generator before I turned in. Even though the wind and rain were heavy, I was asleep in minutes. I’ve slept in much worse places, under much worse conditions.

The alarm on my watch woke me two hours
and twenty minutes later. I went barefoot into the galley, grabbed an apple and a mango, poured a thermos of coffee and donned my rain slicker, before heading up to the bridge. Jimmy was sitting on the port side bench seat and had the stereo turned on, but the volume down low. The singer was lamenting about a rising storm, which seemed appropriate.

“Who’s that?” I asked. “Sounds pretty good.”

“A local guy,” Jimmy replied. “Plays at
Dockside
sometimes and over at
Porky’s
. Name’s Dan Sullivan.”

“Never heard of him.” I sat and listened to the song for a minute.
He sang about battening the hatches, which caused me to grin. “Sullivan, huh? He Irish?”

“Probably his
ancestors. He was born in Alaska, believe it or not. Been down here a few years now. The song’s called
Storm Front
, one of his originals I recorded at the bar.”

“I’ll have to drop by and hear him play some time. Go ahead and get some rest. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long, boring day.”

As he got up he said, “You’d like Dan, he’s into martial arts.”

I spent the next two hours
listening to the rain pouring on the overhead. It would let up at times and the stars would appear, but each band seemed to get more intense as the night wore on. When the easterly wind would let up, I could still hear music and occasional voices from the trawler in the next cove.

Just before 0200, Rusty climbed up with a thermos of coffee. I’d
just poured my last cup, so we sat together as the stars came back out again. We were talking about old times, when we were stationed together in Okinawa, when we both heard a splash.

“Came from over by that trawler,” Rusty said. A moment later, we heard the unmistakable sound of a small outboard start up. “What kind of idiot goes out in a dinghy in this mess at zero dark thirty?”

“It’s headed this way,” I said as I stood up and got a powerful spotlight from under the bench seat. “You armed?”

As he pulled his Sig from under the back of his shirt, he responded, “Monkey got a climbing gear? You?”

I already had my own P-226 in my hand and nodded. “Step over onto Savannah’s boat and get prone in the pulpit.”

He was down the ladder and up to the bow of
Savannah’s boat much quicker than his size would dictate. I went to the pulpit of the
Revenge
and waited. We didn’t have to wait long. About a hundred yards out, the outboard quit and was replaced by the sound of oars slapping the water. I let them get to within fifty feet of the bow, then hit them with the powerful spotlight.

“That’s far enough!” I shouted. “What do you want?”

Baldy was in the bow of the inflatable dinghy and Crooked Nose was rowing. Both men froze in the blinding light. “Hey, cut the light, asshole.”

“I’m only going to ask once more. What do you want?”
I asked as Crooked Nose slowly dipped the oars once more, inching another five feet closer.

“Just wanted to see if y’all wanted to party, mister,” Crooked Nose said as he slowly dipped the oars again and Baldy reached slowly into a bag at his feet.

They were inside my comfort zone and I wanted them to know it. As Baldy leaned forward for whatever was in the bag, I fired one shot through their starboard pontoon.

Rusty fired a single round through the bottom, in front of Baldy’s bag
, causing him to jump backwards between the small bench seats. “The next one goes between your eyes if you move even a fraction of an inch toward that bag!” he shouted. “Your dink’s gonna sink in about two minutes. I suggest you use that time to get your ugly asses back to that garbage scow and stay there.”

Crooked Nose yanked on the pull cord and the little engine sprang to life. He quickly shifted to reverse and gunned it too hard, sending a wave over the transom of the small inflatable. He finally managed to get it turned around and raced back the way they’d come as fast as the sinking dinghy would go.

Jimmy, Josh, and Savannah were on the rear decks all asking what had happened as Rusty and I got back to the cockpit on the
Revenge
. I left Rusty to explain and went into the salon. When I came back out I was carrying my fins, mask, snorkel, a small but powerful underwater pen light, and a Drager LAR V rebreather. It’s similar to scuba equipment, but without the noisy bubbles.

“It’s a long swim, Jesse,” Rusty said as he opened the transom door and then helped me strap on the rebreather.

“Gotta find out what they’re up to,” I said. “You got a better idea?” Everyone started talking at once, while I sat down on the bench seat by the transom door and put on my fins. “I’ll go on the surface most of the way and drop below the surface about a hundred feet from their boat. If they’re below deck, I should be able to pick up on what they’re talking about.”

“Hang on,” Rusty said and disappeared into the salon.
I did positive and negative pressure tests on the system and began the process of pre-breathing the unit to warm up the scrubber. A moment later, he returned with a twenty foot coil of heavy anchor line. “This’ll slow ‘em down if we decide to move and they wanna follow.”

I grinned at his ingenuity. Most trawlers are single engine and a length of rope can fowl a prop real quick, making them
nearly dead in the water.

“Are you insane?” Savannah asked. “You can’t see the end of your arm and the wind is kicking up whitecaps out there.”

“He’ll be fine,” Rusty said, slapping me on the back. As I stepped off the swim platform into the dark water I heard him add, “He went to night school.”

On the surface, I took my bearings and submerged to go under the boat raft. Once clear I surfaced and could just make out the bobbing anchor float a hundred feet ahead. I swam straight for it, kicking hard in the darkness. Savannah was partly right, there were win
d whipped waves outside the creek mouth, but we were between rain bands and as my eyes adjusted to what little light the stars provided, I was able to see pretty well.

I could see the trawler, well lit, about a quarter mile away in the next cove. I had two advantages, stealth with the rebreather, and the fact that with all the lights they had on board, they wouldn’t be able to see anything in the water.

I held the small light underwater and turned it on, illuminating the dial on a wrist mounted compass for a few seconds. The needle and bezel would glow for a good thirty minutes after that. More than enough time to cover a quarter mile. The secret to swimming underwater at night is knowing how many kicks it takes to cover a known distance. We’d done it so many times in the Corps, it was habit.

I extended my right arm straight ahead and put my left hand on my right elbow. This put the compass right in front of my face and I started kicking. I was swimming against the wind and waves, so I allowed a foot less per right kick and ten minutes later stopped pretty close to where I’d wanted to. Replacing my snorkel with the second stage of the
rebreather, I submerged. I stayed just three feet below the surface and followed the compass toward the trawler. Knowing I was close, I dove deeper to get below their hull and continued a few more feet.

I could sense the boat above me and chanced the mini-light for a second to get oriented. I’d overshot it a few feet and was under the port side, near the stern.
I moved forward to amidships and came up under the hull. The sound of the generator in the engine room toward the stern drowned out just about anything I might hear through the hull. This part of most trawlers would be the crew quarters and I didn’t think they’d be there. Just as I was about to move forward I heard a faint sound and a scrape on the hull. I held my breath and put my ear closer to the hull and heard it again. A muted moan and a sob. I listened for another minute but didn’t hear anything else. I moved forward toward where I guessed the galley would be. I began to hear voices through the hull. Fortunately it was an old wood hull. Sound travels through dense wood pretty good. Moving a few feet further toward the bow, the voices grew louder. I stopped and held my breath again, pushing my ear close to the hull.

“I’m tellin’ ya, Earl. It was the same guy that was at the bar the other night,” I heard a voice say. “And I’m pretty sure the boat on the left belonged to that blonde you was playing with.”

A deeper voice responded, “Get the Avon patched and reflated. It’s about 3 miles around this island. We’ll come up from behind ‘em. And put the damn oars in the dinghy.”

“
Come on Earl,” a third voice said. “We got three women already and them guys got guns, too. Why don’t we wait out the storm and get the hell outa here?”

“Cause I said so,” Earl bellowed. “That blonde’ll be worth more than all them other three combined. I ain’t passing up a perfect chance to add ten grand to our haul. That third boat might have women aboard, too. Looked like a family type boat. Sides, I doubt they got guns like we got.”

In the inky darkness I thought to myself,
Sex slavers? Three women?
Maybe that was what I heard in the crew quarters. I made my way to the propeller and uncoiled the anchor line. I tied it loosely around the propeller shaft, between the through hull seal and the propeller mount and released the rest to drop to the bottom. As soon as they put the boat in gear and started moving the line would get sucked up into the prop and with any luck either bend the shaft or break the mount.

It’d take them a while to patch their dinghy and reflate it. I had to get back to the others. I checked my dive watch and saw that it was still a good three hours until sunrise. I dove deep and took a reciprocal heading away from the trawler until I was a good hundred feet away. When I surfaced I switched back to my snorkel and looked back once more, before striking out for home.

Fifteen minutes later, I surfaced at the stern of the
Revenge
, three startled faces looking down at me and Rusty extending his hand. “Learn anything?”

“Yeah,” I said as he helped me onto the swim platform. “We’re in deep shit.”
Savannah wrapped a towel around my shoulders as I removed the rebreather and fins.

“Remember that family that disappeared a
couple weeks ago? Husband was found adrift, but the boat, his wife, and two daughters were never found?”

“Yeah,” Rusty said. “What about them?”

“I’m pretty sure the mother and daughters are aboard that trawler. And those guys are coming back with heavy firepower for more. Unlash the dinghy.”

I went into the salon, drying off as I went. I quickly changed into dry clothes, knelt down by the foot of the bunk and punched in the code to
unlock it. I raised the bunk, opened the chest and removed all four boxes, along with a fly rod case, then closed it back. I carried everything into the salon, where everyone had gathered. Josh had sent his daughters back to their boat. I picked up my Sig from the settee where I’d left it and handed it to Jimmy, then opened three of the boxes and handed Savannah, Tonia, and Josh identical Sigs, extra magazines and ammo.

“Me and Rusty are gonna run an
intercept. Those guys are planning to circle the island and come up on us from the stern. We’ll go up the creek and find a place where we can try to stop them. If they get past us, don’t hesitate to use these.”

“This is crazy!” Tonia said, putting the gun on the table
like it burned her hands.

I turned to
her husband, “Josh, these guys are in the sex slave trade. We don’t have a lot of time. If they get to us, they’ll kill the men and take the women, including your daughters, and sell them. Most likely to Arabs.”

He looked stunned
. Then he quietly picked up the gun Tonia had placed on the table and turned to his wife. “In case Captain McDermitt is right,” he said gently. She looked at him, then to each of us, and finally out the porthole at their boat, where her daughters were.

She took the gun
from her husband and said, “I don’t even know how to use one of these.”

“I do,” Jimmy and Savannah
chorused. Savannah inserted a magazine and quickly chambered a round.

“Go Skipper,” Jimmy said. “We’ll take care of things here.”

I turned as Rusty came through the hatch with a long, nylon rope coiled around his shoulders. “Ready when you are, brother.”

Carrying the fly rod case
and the fourth box, Rusty and I went out to the cockpit with the others following us. My Zodiac was tied off to the stern, its 20 horse Yamaha idling quietly.

“You plan to do some fly fishin’?” Rusty asked with a grin. “
Or did your new toy arrive?”

I just grinned back at him and said, “You drive.”

“Be careful, Skipper,” Jimmy said.

“Get an email off to the Coast Guard, Jimmy. Give them the GPS coordinates of the trawler in the next cove and if you can find the names of the mother and daughters on the internet, tell them they’re aboard.”

“What are you going to do, Jesse?” Savannah asked with genuine concern.

“We’ll try not to hurt them, but I’m not gonna let them get past us. It’s the same four guys from
Dockside
the other night. When we come back, I’ll flash a light three times. Please don’t shoot us.”