Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes) (34 page)

I ignored him. “If you’re coming along, now’s the moment. I’ve got a Glock as well as my Lady Smith in my car. Or is that against Interpol rules?” I even had my
bolas
.

“
It’s against the rules, but after what I just saw, I don’t give a bloody damn,” Rhys responded grimly.

I told the Gerries to fall back to the strip mall and wait for orders. Frankly, I was afraid they’d be swept up in the overlapping tangle of local cops, FBI, FHP, and who knew what else. Except for rounding up the young wiseguy wannabes, it looked like the action was going to be waterborne. Best to keep Jordan’s Geriatrics in reserve.

We crept out of the parking lot with extreme care, making our way through the maze of law enforcement vehicles, with Rhys holding his Interpol ID out the open window. After dropping our two Gerries at the strip mall, I zoomed the Lexus onto the Tamiami Trail and headed for the low bridge over the canal. We were in luck. There was a convenient motel parking lot, with a low canal bank and no underbrush. The gate in the motel’s anti-alligator chain link fence gaped open. I parked, jumped out, and searched the sky to the west for Flint and Jeff in the county chopper. And
Yes!
there they were. Closer than I’d expected. I hit the Talk button. “Jeff, what have we got?”

“
They off-loaded to a bigger boat about a half-mile down the canal. Powerful. Sea-going.”

“
Is Marina with them?”

“
Girl in a poofy white gown?”

“
Right.” I groaned. “Don’t lose them.” I winced as I clicked off. Telling Flint to do his job was clearly a sign that my nerves were rattled.

“
Hostage?” Rhys asked.

“
As far as we’re concerned, yes, but I think Viktor really wants to keep her. He has good taste in women.” Bile rose in my throat as I thought of all the times Viktor had looked me over.

“
Hey!” Doug yelled from the canal below. “You coming or not?”

Airboats, designed to function in the swampy grass of the everglades, have almost no draft, so Doug had no difficulty bringing the Halliday family airboat up tight to the shallow bank. The boat’s power was enough that I didn’t worry about catching up with Viktor. When my miserable Russian bear opted for a water escape, he must have thought he’d have plenty of time to clear the 776 bridge over the Calusa River, some seven miles south—the last obstacle before the river flowed into the massive Charlotte Harbor, where finding any one boat would be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Viktor was wrong.

The Halliday airboat was small, with just three seats, a high platform for the driver right in front of the raised engine cage and a double bucket seat set into the well of the boat. Rhys and I jumped aboard the airboat and slid into the bucket seats.

“
A fifteen-foot Whaler, twelve minutes ago,” Doug reported. “Overloaded. Seven guys and the bride. Can’t get far in that, must be planning a switch.” When I told him what Jeff said, he nodded, then thrust the airplane engine from idle to a moderate roar.

Airboats are flat-bottomed for skimming over the water rather than ploughing through it. They’re propelled by an airplane engine that rises from the stern, like some great roaring monster, enclosed in a protective cage of iron bars. The ugly, ungainly boat can skim over the water like a thundering tornado, and tip over just as fast. They’re great for swamps and quiet shallow water, a disaster in open water with any kind of waves. Fortunately, the canal was glassy calm. Hopefully, on this beautiful sunny day, the river was too.

Doug shoved the motor to full-throttle, and we rose right out of the water and flew. The Sheriff’s Department was going to get a lot of complaints from irate home owners. Airboats are tolerated as a necessity in the everglades, but highly frowned on in quiet Calusa County. Which was one of the reasons my brothers had so enjoyed having one. Born for trouble, that was the Halliday kids. And not just the brothers.

For this operation Doug was mine to command. A unique moment I’d never thought to see. Me, giving orders to Doug. Wow! As for Jeff and Flint . . . well, let’s just say the Sheriff was tolerant of Halliday eccentricities and well aware that I was the person in the midst of the action, the eyes and ears of today’s “training exercise.” I hadn’t, however, told Charlie Purvis about Doug and the airboat, not wanting to give him an opportunity to veto our bit of private enterprise. I hadn’t even told Dad. Flint and Jeff, of course, had to know. Had to be willing to juggle the fine line between duty and friendship.

My phone squawked. “They’re in the river, turning south, heading toward the bridge,” Jeff said.

We’d done it! Fooled Viktor, hopefully more thoroughly than he’d fooled me. Not only did he think he’d have time to clear the 776 bridge, but he hadn’t expected a fast pursuit, knowing most of the county’s meager patrol fleet was distributed along the gulf and the Intracoastal Waterway—a very long way from the mouth of the Calusa River. He did not, in fact, expect anyone to follow him by water at all. He’d thought the wedding guests, as well as the silly little wedding planner, would be too horrified to notice which way he and his men went. He expected the police to arrive too late to see his small boat glide away, particularly since the banks on both side of the canal were so densely covered by underbrush. Viktor thought he’d be under the 776 bridge and into Charlotte Harbor before anyone even thought to consider a water getaway.

And that’s where we had him.

I pushed the Talk button again. “Jeff, time to block the 776 bridge. Men above and below ”

“
You got it.”

As I lowered my phone, Rhys leaned across the bucket seat to shout in my ear. “You
do
realize you’re giving orders to the Sheriff’s Department and the FBI?”

I kept my eyes front, the wind tearing the combs from my hair, bronze curls whipping back from my face. “I was giving orders to Jeff. He’ll make like a diplomat, convince the big guys it was all their idea.”

“
And what do we do when we catch up?” Rhys asked. “You’re a civilian, Laine. Shoot somebody and you’ll likely be the one who ends up in jail.”

I couldn’t believe he said that.

Rhys was still standing there, glaring at me. What could I say to a police officer who couldn’t make an arrest? Who wasn’t supposed to carry a gun? How to explain, it never occurred to me
not
to be out here chasing Viktor down?

“
Not in Florida,” I snapped, adding a look designed to shrivel his manhood.

Doug poked me in the back. Still clinging to the seat back, I raised my ear as close to his mouth as I could. “What if they go upriver?” he asked.

“
In a cruiser? No way!” I paused, thought about it. Frowned. Just a bit south of the canal we were on, the several streams that gave Three Rivers its name, plus a whole bunch of canals dug by developers, poured into the Calusa, transforming it from a narrow jungle river overhung by branches and teeming with wildlife into a local Mississippi, almost three quarters of a mile wide. Surely Viktor needed open water, not a cul-de-sac that became unnavigable not far north of Halliday House. “Why?” I demanded.

“
Contingency. They spot the chopper, know they can’t get to Charlotte Harbor. Lots of wilderness along the upper Calusa. Maybe they have a car waiting. Or they’re bringing one in. Fast.”

Oh, shit!
It was possible. No one ever said Viktor was stupid. To the south was a long bridge whose cement arches were blocked by posts to make certain boats stuck to the two open arches of the channel, dead center. The arches that would be thoroughly blocked by the time Viktor’s boat got there. With county cops, FBI, and FHP, all armed to the teeth, aiming guns at them from above.

But to the north, there was almost nothing. Both sides of the narrow river were owned by a vast cattle ranch. It had just been sold and was about to be swallowed up in the Florida development boom, but at the moment it was still twenty thousand acres of old Florida—except for dirt ranch roads or hunting trails cut by men out for deer or wild pig. Easy enough to make a back-up plan to transfer to a 4x4 under cover of overhanging trees and bushes.

I lifted my cell phone. “Jeff, are they still heading south?”

“
Absolutely. Tell Doug to get a move on.”

“
What if they do a U-ey and head upriver?”

“
No way. There’s a bottleneck directly upriver from the canal—shallow water and a tight turn. Even if the cruiser makes it through, where could it go? Nuts to go north.”

I gave Doug a look almost as annihilating as the one I’d given Rhys. He shrugged, but didn’t smile. He still had his doubts. So Viktor hadn’t yet realized the chopper was a spotter for the police. Or that there was no way he could get past the 776 bridge.

Once again, Rhys leaned over to shout in my ear. “They’ve got automatic rifles, Laine. We can’t take them on with a couple of hand guns.”

“
So why’d you come?”

“
To keep you from getting killed!”

I nodded toward a long canvas case in the well of the boat. “Guess it’s time to break out the reserves.” Might as well let Rhys do it himself. A good lesson in never underestimating a Halliday.

“
Laine?” Rhys was on his knees, staring down into the long unzipped case. “You haven’t . . . you wouldn’t . . . ?”

“
No good now,” I told him, glancing at the RPG launcher with supreme regret. “Can’t blow up Marina. Dig farther. There should be some MP-5s in there. Ever use one?”

“
Believe it or not,” Rhys shouted back, “we have firing ranges in England. In Lyon, too. Paper tigers that we are, we’re still policemen. Even if we have to walk a fine line.”

“
Which you’ve already crossed, so hand me one, will you?”

Rhys checked the weapon, rammed home the long lethal ammunition clip, and handed it to me. I could see him forming an admonition to be sure to let the bad guys fire first, but, fortunately, he had the good sense not to say it. Rhys loaded a second rifle. Doug held out a hand. Wordlessly, Rhys handed him the gun, found a third MP-5 for himself. He pulled the canvas back, checked the number of ammunition clips, then shook his head. “You could start a small war,” he said.

“
Viktor started it. I’m finishing it.”

Just before he looked away, I caught the withdrawal in his eyes. Rhys Tarrant wanted a brave girl, a lively, even daring, girl. But about vengeful, bloodthirsty women he had his doubts.

How to tell him it surprised me too. That I hadn’t really thought to carry it this far . . .

Oh, yes, I had. Or Doug wouldn’t be here. The weapons wouldn’t be here. Not that I’d told him to bring an RPG. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but Doug was Doug, and at times his business led him into very strange shit.

I could live with that. Easier than with a man who was a policeman who never carried a gun.

Time to fight that problem later.

We burst out of the canal, Doug turning the boat in a broad arcing left into the Calusa River, which suddenly spread before us, at this point, three times the width of the canal. When we’d fully rounded the bend, we might be able to see Viktor’s cruiser. I signaled for Doug to pass me his binoculars. MP-5 slung over my back, an incongruous contrast to the pastel silk whipping around my knees, I strained to see past a solid phalanx of trees. Flint and Jeff were no longer that far in front of us. We were catching up.
Come on, come on, come on!

Nothing but mangrove swamp on both sides of us now. We roared around the final part of the broad bend into a mile-long straight stretch of water, the cruiser clearly visible in the distance. And so were we, of course. An airboat slamming hard on the cruiser’s tail would not go ignored. The helicopter would be recognized as the enemy as well.

I took a good look through the binoculars, or as good a look as I could while skimming the surface of a river in an airboat. Viktor’s cruiser was exactly as Jeff had described. Big enough to zip out into the Gulf of Mexico and head . . . anywhere. Cuba, the Caribbean islands, the Yucatan, even a waiting cargo ship. Or he could simply hole up on one of the many islands in Charlotte Harbor, just another boat off on a weekend of fishing or seeking a private spot for a bit of serious partying.

We stopped Viktor now, or not at all.

“
Jeff, how’s the blockade going?”

“
Moving into place. Not to worry. You’re at least six miles out. Plenty of time.”

I relayed the information to Rhys and Doug, tightened my grip on my MP-5. I suspect my face looked as determined as Wyatt Earp heading for the O K corral because Rhys shouted, “We have to take Viktor alive. You know that, Laine. He’s a walking database on the Miami traffickers. If he betrayed them once, he’ll do it again.”

“
He sold out to the New York guy, right?”

Rhys nodded. “To Dmitri Chazov. There’s no other explanation. Viktor was tight with Rufikov and his captains, the perfect choice to set this whole thing up to wipe them out at one time. Making Chazov boss of all operations east of the Mississippi.”

Doug shouted, pointed. We were close enough now that Viktor’s goons were distinguishable in the stern. They’d seen us, were studying us through binoculars. I returned the favor, looking in vain for a glimpse of Marina. Instead, the goons’ AK-47s loomed large, as our MP-5s would to them. Enemy sighted. Identified.