Warriors

CHAPTER 25

The rain had let up. The high white moon sailed on through black strips of cirrus cloud. The ambulance carrying Luis Gonzales-Gonzales to Dade Memorial ER had just left the lot on two wheels with a police escort clearing the way on the crowded causeway. The dead Chinese interpreter was still dead in the filthy toilet. Sprawled on the foul floor of the lavatory where the ME guys worked on him and other officers worked the scene, took statements, the entire enchilada.

Harry, looking at his watch in exasperation, had finally flashed his Langley credentials at the ranking Miami Dade officer, took him aside and explained the situation. The CSI guys immediately deferred any further questioning of either him or Stokely until sometime later tomorrow morning.

Stoke, meanwhile, had stepped outside, gotten on his cell, and called Mrs. Gonzales-Gonzales and told her what had happened to her husband. She dropped her phone, already on her way to Miami Dade ER. She’d wanted to know how bad it was. Stoke told her it was bad. He didn’t say how bad.

Sharkey, as had been prearranged earlier that day, had left his pale blue Contender 34 moored just outside the entrance to Marker 9. The boat was tied at the dock, ready to rumble offshore. She was Sharkey’s pride and joy. She had a tuna tower, state-of-the-art GPS and electronics, bow and stern thrusters, and triple Yamaha 300s. Basically, one kick-ass 900-horsepower sportfishing boat. Harry Brock had helped Sharkey acquire it at a DEA auction in Hialeah two months earlier.

The Miss Maria, Shark had called her, after his new wife.

This is a debt I never repay, Señor Brock, Luis had told him at the time, the day he took proud possession of her. What you did for me and my wife today, Mr. Brock.

Yeah, well, you’re paid up now, Harry thought, thinking about Shark’s wife and what she was going through right now. He’d tried to comfort her when he’d called standing behind the ambulance. Told her how brave Sharkey had been. Too brave to know when he was supposed to be afraid. And far too good a man to understand he was incapable of ever doing bad.

Now Brock and Stoke jumped down in the boat. Stoke cranked it while Harry cast off the bow, springs, and stern lines. He shoved them bow out away from the dock and into the channel toward open water. Stoke leaned on the twin throttles. Nine hundred angry horses lifted the bow almost straight up, and Miss Maria shot the hole and roared out into Government Cut, headed southwest to Biscayne Bay.

Stoke flicked on the big new LED spotlight Luis had mounted forward on the bow only this morning. He’d also mounted a siren and a “headache” flasher bar atop the windshield. At night, at high speed, the target would take the blue flashers for Coast Guard.

Stoke used the spot to pick out the channel markers ahead, now flashing by to either side in a blur. At this speed, they were coming up fast and he was correcting his course at the last second as each one flared up in his peripheral vision. It was a tricky business, but no one was better at it than the old swift boat vet. Miss Maria was doing forty-five knots on a black windless night, but only because they were late.

“Tell me some more about Hi Lo,” Stoke said, eyes dead ahead, concentrating. He didn’t even glance at Harry standing beside him at the helm station.

“Like what, Cap?”

Now Stoke looked at him.

“Like how the hell he had a goddamn weapon, Harry. For God’s sake! Like how you didn’t know about it. Start with that.”

“He didn’t, Stoke. I swear. I patted him down. He was clean.”

“You’re sure.”

“I wouldn’t lie about something like that. Cut me a little slack here. Jesus. Shark’s my friend, too.”

“My partner’s down. Maybe dead. Make that probably. Because of a guy you brought along without even talking to me first, seeing if I was okay with it. I’m not in a slack-cutting mood.”

Harry was silent.

A few minutes later, Brock said, “Aw, shit.”

“Aw, shit, what?” Stoke said.

“I didn’t pat him down.”

“What?”

“I didn’t frisk him. I mean, after the Shell station thing.”

“What?”

“He could have had a prearranged piece stashed there, waiting for him inside that goddamn gas station restroom. Somebody on the outside left it waiting for him in the toilet tank. Or inside the paper towel dispenser. Wherever. The station’s just across the road from the county lockup. Would explain why he bolted across the turnpike like he did. All that crap about being sick.”

“Yeah. That would explain it, all right,” Stoke said.

He leaned on the throttles and Miss Maria jumped up a little higher on the plane. Harry watched him a minute. Stoke had that thousand-yard stare. The one he’d picked up in the jungle.

Stokely Jones looked out into the blackness. No boat showed a light. Jade was out there to the south somewhere, steaming north to Biscayne Bay. The plan was to board her down south, near the Keys, where they wouldn’t attract much attention. This was a black op, off the radar intercept, and they didn’t need civilians shooting video with their iPhones.

But what he was really thinking about was Sharkey.

“Harry, go below and set up the equipment. Get your gear on. Weapons check. We’re closing fast. We’ll be on top of them in twenty minutes or less at this rate. I have her lit up on radar now.”

There was a small cuddy cabin forward and Harry went below. All the weapons he’d had delivered to Sharkey at the dock that afternoon were laid out just the way he’d ordered. In addition, there was Tactic’s full complement of assault gear: FN SCAR short-barreled assault rifles with FN40 grenade launchers mounted on the lower rails, Sig P226 navy pistols, web belts with smoke and flash-bang grenades, balaclavas to hide their faces, the whole nine yards plus a couple more.

He got his rig on, zipped up his ceramic-tile-plated assault jumpsuit and got Stoke’s equipment ready. He’d relieve Stoke at the helm in ten minutes; then Stoke would come below and get his shit together.

Three miles out from the rendezvous zone, Stoke would throttle back to dead idle and they’d go through the whole thing one more time. Weapons check, timing, signals. They had the element of surprise going, and whoever was on that boat had no idea anyone suspected a damn thing. But Harry’d learned the hard way that if a black op can go south, it will go south in a heartbeat.

It’s already gone south, Harry, he said to himself and then banished that unhealthy thought from his brain.

“Ready?” Stoke said to Harry. He was still pissed, but they had a job to do. You didn’t carry emotions into battle.

They could see Jade’s running lights approaching them in the blackness. Harry flicked the switch and put the powerful LED spotlight on her. She was big, all right, hundred and forty, hundred and fifty feet maybe.

“Born ready,” Harry shot back.

“Standing up and talking back?”

“Kicking ass and taking names.”

“Awright. Game on.”

Stoke snatched up the VHF radio mike and depressed the send button.

He said: “Vessel located position 38 degrees, 26 north, 129 degrees 131 west, steering course bearing two-eight-zero, speed seven knots, this is United States Coast Guard vessel Vigorous, approximately five nautical miles off your port beam, standing by on channel 16, over.”

“We read you loud and clear, Coast Guard. This is Jade, over.”

“Roger, Jade, this is Coast Guard, request you switch to channel 22, over.”

“Going to 22, over.”

“Jade, Coast Guard, standing by on channel 22, over.”

“Go ahead, Coast Guard…”

“Jade, I am going to send over a boarding team. Maintain your current course and speed, over.”

“Roger that, Coast Guard, maintain course and speed, Jade standing by on 22…”

Stoke smiled.

“You think he bought it?”

“Think? Hook, line, and sinker. Let’s go see what they’re hiding aboard that floating pussy palace.”

Brock said, “The Jade guy on the radio. Sounds like some old redneck from Podunk to me. Didn’t sound hostile.”

“They never do, Harry. On the radio, anyway.”

“Right. I knew that.”

Stoke just looked at him and shook his head.

In his own small way, Harry Brock was the price America had to pay for freedom.