Collateral Damage (38 page)

Jock ran his hands over the wet suit. “Nothing but a cell phone in a waterproof bag.”

“Let me see that,” said J.D. Jock handed it to her. She opened the
phone and pushed a couple of buttons, looked closely and said, “This is probably a disposable phone. There's only one number programmed into it and that's on speed dial.”

The intruder was stirring on the sofa, his eyes open and trying to focus. Jock slapped him gently in the face, once, twice. The man shook his head and then his eyes focused on the armed men in the room.

“Who are you?” asked Jock.

The man just stared, lips pressed tightly together, and shook his head.

“Do you speak English?” Jock asked.

The man shook his head again.

Jock turned to Doc. “Take this piece of shit out back and shoot him. He can't help us.”

Doc reached for the intruder's arm. The man shook him off, sat up. “Wait,” he said. “I speak English.” There was a slight hint of the islands in his voice, the way that many of the white Bahamians speak, more American than Caribbean, but distinctive.

“What are you doing crawling around on my island in the dark?” asked Doc.

“Can't tell you that,” the man said.

Jock put a nine-millimeter pistol to the guy's forehead, right in the middle, just inches above the bridge of his nose. “I'm going to ask you some questions, dipshit, and you're going to answer them or I'm going to kill you where you sit.”

“That wouldn't be very smart,” said the intruder.

Jock laughed. “Smart or dumb, you're still dead.”

“I'm an officer in the Bahamian Defense Force,” he said. “My people are waiting for me to call,” he said. “If they don't hear from me,” he paused, looked at the large chronometer on his wrist, “in ten minutes, they're going to storm this island with heavy weapons. One of our boats is just offshore.”

“Yeah,” said Jock, “and I'm Captain Kirk of the
Starship Enterprise
.”

The man on the sofa stared at Jock. He wasn't afraid, or if he was, he didn't show it. “You guys don't want to get into this. Running drugs is one thing. Killing a Bahamian military officer is a much bigger deal. You won't leave this island alive.”

Jock removed the pistol from the man's forehead. “Drugs?” he asked. “You think we're running drugs?”

J.D. stepped in front of the man, holding her ID case so that he could see. “I'm a detective in Longboat Key, Florida. What makes you think we're running drugs?”

“A boatload of men comes into our country without clearing customs and ends up on this island. A couple of days later a private jet lands at our airport and clears customs. But they don't declare a large duffel bag that could hold weapons. An airport worker sees them sneaking the duffel off the plane. They rent a boat and come to the same island where the people on the boat landed. What would you think, Detective?”

“A fair assumption,” J.D. said. “How do we verify your identity?”

“Call Chief Constable Bram Gilmore at the Marsh Harbour police station. He's aware of our operation.”

Doc went to the phone, looked up a number in the book, dialed it, and asked to speak to Gilmore. The conversation was short. Doc hung up, turned to the intruder. “What's your name?”

“Lieutenant Thomas Llewellyn.” He pronounced it “leftenant,” in the British fashion.

“He's legit,” said Doc. “Can I get you a drink, leftenant?”

Llewellyn looked at his watch. “You've got five minutes to convince me that I shouldn't have my men blow this place off the map.”

Jock said, “Call your men. Tell them to back off for another fifteen minutes. That'll give us time to explain what's going on.”

“It'll also give you time to get ready to kill my people.”

“We're already on alert, Lieutenant,” said Jock. “Look around you. These might be middle-aged men, but they were the most capable soldiers of their generation. They can still take out your men. Our position is fortified and you will have to stage an amphibious landing. That didn't work out too well for you alone. It's not going to work out for your men. If they come in now, they're dead. If they come in later, they're dead. But if we're legitimate, everybody goes home alive.”

Llewellyn thought for a beat, nodded, picked up his phone, and punched a button. “Stand down. I'm in the house with the people here. I need about another half hour to verify some stuff. If you don't hear from me by then, or if you hear gunfire, light this place up.”

He closed the phone and looked at Jock. “Okay. Convince me.”

“I'm a U.S. intelligence agent,” said Jock. “Detective Duncan is with the police. These other men are businessmen from the States. We're here hiding out for a few days. We're not on an operation. These men are my friends and I'm lending a hand, unofficially.”

“Who are you hiding from?”

“We don't know. But somebody's trying to kill us. They've already killed three grown children of some of the men in this room.”

Llewellyn looked around him. “These aren't your everyday civilians,” he said. “Not the way they handle those weapons.”

Jock nodded. “They're all former Special Operations soldiers. From the Vietnam war.”

“What's going on?”

“I'd rather not get into that,” said Jock, “but I think I can prove myself to you so that you'll accept my word that the only thing any of us has done wrong is ignore Bahamian immigration laws.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Call your commanding officer. Have him get in touch with the Bahamian ambassador to Washington. Tell him to ask the ambassador if you can trust the word of Jock Algren.” He handed his ID to Llewellyn.

“It's late,” said Llewellyn. “The ambassador might be asleep.”

“He'll get up for me,” said Jock.

Llewellyn walked out onto the patio and made his call. He was only gone for a few minutes before he returned to the room, a big smile on his face. “The ambassador remembers you well and sends his regards. He said we could trust you with anything.”

The movement was quicker than lightning. One nanosecond Jock's right hand was hanging loosely by his side and the next it was a fist plunging powerfully into Llewellyn's gut. I was standing a few feet from Jock and Llewellyn, the other men spaced about the room in no particular order. I sensed confused movement, a murmuring. One of the men said loudly, “What the hell?”

“Stand down,” I ordered. “Jock knows what he's doing.”

“You heard the L.T.,” said Doc. “Stay tight.”

Jock had Llewellyn by the throat, his palm pushing on the man's chin. Llewellyn was sitting on the floor, his back against a sofa, Jock on top of him. Llewellyn was trying to catch his breath, breathing in short gasps.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jock said, his voice low, full of menace.

“I told you,” said Llewellyn, making a mighty effort to breathe. “I'm with the Bahamian Defense Force.”

Jock grinned. “You stupid bastard. I have no idea who the Bahamian ambassador to the U.S. is, but I know he never heard of me. You're CIA. And this is not a sanctioned mission.”

I could see resignation on Llewellyn's face. He'd been had and he could see no way out. I watched him work it out, his brain functioning, sorting all the possibilities. There was only one. Give it up. Jock saw it too, and released him.

“You're right,” he said, all trace of the Bahamas gone from his voice. “I'm CIA and I report to some very senior people. You work for the government. You don't want to mess with this. You ass is about to be grass.”

“Son,” said Jock, a genuine smile on his face, “nobody in government is senior to me, except for the president of the United States. And I can have him on the phone inside a minute, no matter where in the world he happens to be. Your superiors are finished. They're going to end up under lock and key in some godforsaken outpost where nobody will find them. You need to call your men off. Tell them the mission is aborted and they're to go back to wherever the hell they came from.”

Llewellyn looked at his watch. Laughed. “You're full of shit. In about five minutes those men are coming ashore. You're going to be dead in ten minutes.”

“And you'll be dead the minute they come into our perimeter. Your guys don't stand a chance, son, and I'll kill you the minute we hear them coming ashore.”

Llewellyn stared at Jock and perhaps at his own mortality. He understood that it didn't matter if anything else Jock had told him was true. The real truth was that Jock would kill him. That fact alone took precedence over everything else.

“Okay,” he said. He picked the phone up from the floor where it had dropped when Jock punched him. He opened it, pushed a button, and said, “It's over. Stay where you are for now. I'll get back to you.” He closed the phone.

“Good show,” said Jock. “You're a gutsy guy. Now, tell me who you really are.”

“If I don't?”

“I'll kill you.” The statement was flat, toneless. “And if you lie to me, I'll find out and then I'll kill you. And you're going to be in my custody while I check out everything you tell me.”

“Okay. I don't know much. You have my real name. Tom Llewellyn. You're right. I work for the CIA. My boss is Barry Nitzler. He organized the operation. I don't know if it's sanctioned by the higher-ups, but Nitzler did okay it.”

“Tell me about Nitzler,” Jock said.

“Not much to tell. He's been with the agency since Vietnam. Married to a Vietnamese woman he got out just before the fall of Saigon. Lives in Virginia. No children that I'm aware of. He's an assistant deputy director in charge of clandestine operations. I'm not giving anything away. He and his title are listed in public records.”

“What were you supposed to do here?” Jock asked.

“I was told to reconnoiter, see if I could determine if Mr. Desmond was here with some other men. If so, I was to arrest them and bring them back Stateside.”

“Where were you to take them?”

“To one of our safe houses in Miami.”

“Do you know who these gentlemen are?”

“No. I was told they're some sort of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.”

“How did you find us?”

“I'm not entirely sure, but I understood that the agency had most or all of the men under loose surveillance. By late yesterday Nitzler had figured out that all of them had disappeared. He put out an urgent request this morning to all the airports in the U.S. and Bahamas to be on the lookout for Desmond's plane. We got two hits this afternoon. One from Sarasota and the other from Marsh Harbour.”

“How did you get here so quickly?”

“My team and I were flown in from D.C. in an agency jet. Nitzler or somebody cleared us with the chief constable in Marsh Harbour and he knew what to say if the operation went balls up.”

“What did you tell your men when you called from the patio a few minutes ago?”

“Just that I thought we had you all together and I thought I could arrange for them to come in without firing a shot.”

“What did you tell them about me?” asked Jock.

“Nothing. What was I going to say? That some guy with a fake government ID wanted me to call the Bahamian ambassador to Washington?”

“Do you believe me now?”

“I believe you'll kill me.”

“Okay, son. This could go a couple of ways. If I find out you've lied to me, you're dead. If I find out you've been completely truthful, I'll square things with your boss.”

“Nitzler will have my ass for screwing this up.”

“If what you're telling me is the truth, Nitzler will be in jail. I'll talk to the director of the CIA. He and I go way back. He'll listen to me.”

I watched Llewellyn's face. I'm not sure he entirely believed Jock, but I think I saw a bit of hope dance across his features. Maybe he wouldn't die tonight, and maybe he'd salvage his career.

Jock asked, “Llewellyn, how many men do you have out there?”

“Five.”

“Doc,” I said, “can we take five more guests?”

“No problem.”

“Llewellyn, call your men. Tell them to come to the dock at the front of the house, on the south side of the island. Tell them to leave their weapons in the boat and come up the dock unarmed. You'll meet them there.”

Llewellyn made the call and in a few minutes we heard a boat approaching the island at high speed. Doc turned on the outside floodlights that lit up the dock and the surrounding water. We watched as the boat came off plane, settled in the water, and idled toward the other moored boats.

“Llewellyn,” I said, “you go stand at the land end of the dock. Jock will have an M4 trained on you, and if he sees anything suspicious, he'll kill you. These men will cover those on the dock. If I so much as see a gun, they're all dead. If some smart SOB decided to drop a couple of men on the other side of the island, we'll know it as soon as they come ashore. You with me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go.”

Llewellyn stood at the head of the dock and waved his men in. They
all came onto the dock, no weapons in hand. There were five of them and they followed their leader to the grass where several old soldiers showed themselves, armed and ready.

When the CIA team saw the men with the guns, their hands went up. There was some grumbling, but Llewellyn silenced them. They all walked to the house where Doc greeted them.

“Gentlemen,” said Doc, “please come in. You'll be our guests for a couple of days. No harm will come to you, but you will be held incommunicado. We have plenty of good food and enough spirits to make your stay enjoyable. All your questions will be answered in due course.”