Caribbean's Keeper (20 page)

By the time nighttime hit, Cole was already at full speed direct to the rendezvous point. He looked at his GPS again and realized he had never recharged it. He’d never made a second run, so the thought had never crossed his mind. He had less than half a charge and was still close to 200 miles from the bay. The plane was still in an orbit over him, and this time they didn’t drop down to make low passes. To Cole, this was an ominous sign since it likely meant the pilots were busy talking to other players. He was uneasy and mad at himself as he screamed southward.

Several hours passed, but eventually Cole saw a dreaded silhouette in the distance. His crew saw it as well and pointed, but he was already focused entirely on what it was. A second later, flashing blue lights illuminated on the silhouette and Cole knew immediately it was the Coast Guard. He saw light reflect on the distinctive orange hull as it drove on an intercept course for Cole, closing in from the east. They had likely been tracking him for some time and now the only question was whether or not he could outrun them. Cole had been in a few chases on the right end of the law and knew that the initial intercept could make or break a drug bust. If the coxswain driving knew what he was doing, Cole was evenly matched against him. The cutter was likely also close by, but stood no chance of catching Cole with his panga making 32 knots.

Cole also knew that some cutters had upgraded to newer and faster small boats that could outrun him. It was all up to chance at this point. Making things more complicated, there were some specially trained boat crews who were authorized to use disabling fire against the engines of drug runners. As the intercept tightened, Cole turned 30 degrees to the right to buy himself some time. The Coast Guard small boat adjusted its course as well and Cole spent more time looking at the small boat than he did his own course. In reality it was only a matter of minutes, but each second was excruciatingly slow for Cole. His crew sat forward on the bow and could do nothing but watch and hope for the best.
      

Cole remembered his first chase and how he ran the reef line off Key West to shake his pursuers, but knew he would not be so lucky tonight on the open sea. As the small boat’s intercept crept closer, Cole caught a good look at it under the moonlight and it looked too large to be the same small boat he’d ridden in. A few seconds later, he caught another glance and confirmed his fears. It was a newer boat, capable of “Over The Horizon” pursuit and Cole remembered listening to all the speculation about its new capabilities. This also raised the likelihood that the crew onboard the OTH was planning to shoot out his engines.

With his pursuer now barely 50 yards off his port quarter, Cole realized the OTH was matching his speed. There would be a lengthy dialogue between the small boat and the cutter to authorize warning shots and then disabling fire. There was a chance that the commanding officer would not authorize it, but that was too slim of a margin for Cole to count on. As his panga sped south through the calm Caribbean Sea, Cole weighed his options and knew they were quickly running out.

He looked back once or twice more then up at his two crew members who were looking at Cole for any sign of hope. Above the noise of the engines and the wind, Cole heard himself take a deep breath and he settled his mind on what seemed like a long shot. With his left hand still on the wheel, Cole reached for the holster on the small of his back with his right hand and pulled out the Glock. He kept his finger off the trigger guard and looked back again at the OTH chasing him. He knew they were Coasties, just like he had been. He knew they’d been after him for some time, but also that they were probably just kids, no different than the boatswains’ mates and machinists’ mates he’d known on
Delaney
.

He braced his legs on the deck and turned back towards them, pointing the gun a good 45 degrees left of the OTH and a good 30 degrees above the horizon, making sure to aim so wide and high that he stood no chance of hitting a thing and pulled the trigger. The gun recoiled in his hand and an orange flash shot forward for a split second. He pulled the trigger again. He fired yet again and followed it with eleven more rapid fire shots into the night sky. Each time his wrist snapped back in his hand and the muzzle lit up as the burning gunpowder exited the barrel.

Even over the roar of the engines, Cole’s ears were ringing when he finally emptied the magazine and the slide locked back. He dropped his hand to his side and looked down at the gun, not bothering to check that it was unloaded. Tossing it down on the deck at his feet, Cole pushed it aside and behind him. Looking back at the blue lights, he saw that they had indeed turned away from him. He hated to do it, but escalation was Cole’s only chance of ending the pursuit. He knew the Coasties had standing orders on a chase and had bet that they were not going to continue to close the distance with him if he was shooting. At night, the OTH would have had no way of knowing if he was firing at them or away from them. The muzzle blast and sound would have been all they could see, and if they were on night vision goggles, it would have been almost blinding at that distance.

Cole waited for some time before looking back again and the blue lights were nowhere to be seen. All Cole could make out was the sharp V shape of his wake as it trailed off in the distance. If the coxswain was smart, he would have turned the lights off to avoid giving an enemy an easy target. The boat crew was out of the fight and it was unlikely they would rejoin that evening. Cole’s crew said nothing as they were smart enough to realize the magnitude of what Cole had done to keep them out of handcuffs. It was a huge risk that had paid off. Alone again under the moon, Cole raced southward for the rest of the night. His GPS had almost no battery left when he spotted a faint glow off the bow and in the distance. It was below the horizon, but it matched up with what his GPS was telling him. He referenced the compass and the lights bore 130 degrees magnetic. He committed the course to his head and turned off the GPS in case he needed it again later.

After another 45 minutes, he could clearly see the lights of Colon and the tankers and freighters at anchor inside the jetty. Relief set in as he throttled back and searched for a break in the jetty. Paralleling the rocks, it wasn’t long before he cut inside the jetty at the main entrance and paralleled it again on the inside. He soon spotted familiar markers and slowed, motoring into the small harbor. Taking the throttles to idle, Cole pulled out the satellite phone and called David.

David was quick to answer and told Cole to stay out a bit until he called again. Cole acknowledged and thought about why he couldn’t just tie up himself. It dawned on him that David would make sure some security was in place first before Cole motored in with tens of millions of dollars in drug money. As he sat on the side of the boat and waited with the engines at idle, he reached down to the Glock, found another magazine in his bag and reloaded before tucking the gun again into the holster on the small of his back. Twenty minutes later, David called and told Cole to come on in. Throttling ahead just a bit, Cole crept around the abandoned hulls in the bay and finally around the large rusted remains of the barge and saw two trucks with the parking lights on and facing the water.

Cole suddenly became concerned. The thought of things going bad on land had not crossed his mind, but he knew this was likely contested turf. He exhaled with force when he heard David’s voice from the beach. The panga dug her bow into the coarse sandy bottom and Cole killed the engines after what had seemed like an eternity. The silence was a welcome relief from the past 11 hours. Having set off well before sunset, it was still nighttime as Cole grabbed his things, waded ashore and rubbed his eyes. Around him were at least four men he could see, each with a rifle close to their chests. They were 20 or so yards back from the beach and evenly spaced to form a good perimeter as Cole’s two crewmen helped offload and carry the two packages to shore. Loading each into a separate truck, David hurried Cole into the back of one of them and the driver made quick work of speeding away, the back tires spinning up dust and rocks as he accelerated.

As they pulled onto one of the main roads, both trucks slowed down a bit to blend back in with the light early morning traffic. In Cole’s truck, there was a driver and one of the men with a rifle sitting shotgun. Cole sat in the middle of the backseat of the truck with David to his right and the other guard to his left. Cole looked down and saw that the guard held some short barreled version of an M4. From the looks of both the gunmen, they seemed to be able to handle themselves. Neither paid any attention to anything inside the truck as they scanned the passing traffic for any signs of trouble.

David wanted to know how the trip had gone.

Cole wasn’t sure where to start. “Well, I got it here. But we ran into a problem about halfway through. I’m pretty sure they were Coast Guard.”

David’s eyes sharpened and he asked, “What happened?”

“I couldn’t shake them, they were faster than me, so I emptied a magazine behind me and they broke off the chase.”

David shuffled in his seat. “You shot at them?” His eyes were bigger now.

“No, not at them, just behind me to give the impression I was. I figured that might shake them and it did. I’m pretty sure they were going to shoot the engines out and that wasn’t gonna work out too well for you or me.”

David sat back and looked ahead. He pulled his phone out and patted Cole on the knee twice saying,“OK, my friend. You did OK.”

Cole couldn’t pick up much of the conversation that David had on the phone, but it seemed like David was answering a lot of questions. Cole didn’t like to think of who was on the other end of David’s phone calls. He hoped that the trucks weren’t taking him somewhere like they’d taken that kid on Cole’s first night. Mad at the situation, Cole did his best to hide it, but he was not happy.

When David hung up, Cole couldn’t hold back anymore and he opened up. “What the fuck, David. You didn’t tell me I couldn’t use the gun. Some ground rules would have been a fucking nice thing to have.”

No one in the truck seemed to notice or care that Cole was pissed.

David stopped him before he could continue and said, “No, no, no, you are OK, Cole. We are all right; you are all right. We take you back to the hotel. You need some rest. Everything is OK.”

He patted Cole again on the knee. Over the next hour, not much was said. As Panama City appeared in the distance, Cole dreaded the next 20 minutes as they drove through the worst parts of town. He wondered if they were going to pull into some empty building and drag him to a room. Shuffling a bit in his seat, Cole realized he still had the Glock tucked under his shirt. It reassured him since if he was on his way to get a bullet in the head, someone probably would have taken the gun from him already.

Nevertheless, Cole was uneasy about his prospects and resigned himself to fight it out with the 13 rounds in the gun if it came down to it. Knowing he wouldn’t win against the guards, Cole sure as shit wasn’t going to let them just walk him into a room, tie his hands behind his back, and watch him squirm.

Fortunately, it never came down to that. Three hours after he’d beached the panga, the trucks pulled up to the Marriott and offloaded Cole. David said he’d be in touch and with that the trucks were gone, leaving Cole by himself in front of the main doors. It was mid-morning by then. Above the buildings and the noise, Cole could see the sun creeping skyward. He took a long breath and exhaled, the stench of the city a welcome relief and much more preferable than the stench he recalled from the room where the kid had been killed. The thought rattled his nerves.

Cole walked inside and up to his room. From the bag, he pulled one more round from another magazine and dropped the magazine out of the gun, loaded his back to capacity and reinserted it, leaving it on the nightstand.
Fourteen rounds now
. It did little to comfort him. Standing by the window for some time, Cole looked down at the city beneath him.
Perhaps I’ve done enough
.
Perhaps I should get out while I still can.
The truth was he didn’t know if he could get out. The thought of quitting anything so soon after
Delaney
gnawed at him, but at the same time he realized his decisions always seemed to leave him in a tight spot. There were no good answers and he had no one to blame but himself. Such was life, and with that he crawled under the blankets of his bed and soon fell asleep.

Chapter 10 – Wheels Up

COLE WOKE LATER in the afternoon and stepped back into his regular routine as best he could. With no messages from David and nothing to do, he worked out then ate at the sports bar downstairs, finishing off a few Panamas with his Cuban sandwich. With the afternoon sun starting to fall, he headed to Habana’s and lit a cigar before taking a prime seat for the nighttime show. Sipping a Dos Equis, he put his feet up on the railing in front of him and crossed his cowboy boots over each other, then pulled the brim of his hat down low.

All things considered, he felt good. The sleep had cleared his mind, but the previous night still hung heavy on his conscience. He had escalated and figured out quickly that David had to answer a lot of questions. The drug trade was a tricky thing, and Cole felt isolated without any information beyond David’s facial expressions. As with anything else, not knowing was gnawing away at him. Taking a long deep drag from his cigar, Cole blew the smoke up and over his head and tried to think of something else. He spent several hours making light conversation with the girls before heading back to the Marriott and falling asleep again.

g

Several days, each the same as the first, passed before David caught up with Cole. They met at the coffee shop across the street early one morning and David explained at length. He spoke with his hands and seemed to use very deliberate words in finding a delicate way to explain Cole’s predicament. “There is an understanding down here among the different families that we like the status quo.”