Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7) (7 page)

A
fter lunch, Rusty and I sat at a table and caught up on what was going on around the islands. Lately, I didn’t even come into town on Friday, as I had before Linda went up north, preferring to stay on the island. It’d been over two weeks since I was last here.

Sometimes, I’d take the
Revenge
out and anchor in a secluded cove for a day or two. Just swim in the gin-clear water, fish and explore the shallows in the kayak. I hadn’t had a charter in over a month, preferring to just enjoy life and the solitude for a while.

Two fishing guides came in from the deck, one of them taking the second man’s empty bottle, along with his own, and going behind the bar. The second man nodded at me and said to Rusty, “Add a coupla more and two fish sandwich baskets to my tab, Rusty?”

My old friend nodded. “Sure, Dink. How’s the fishin’?”

Brian “Dink” Wilcox had been a fishing guide in Marathon since arriving here ten years ago as a high school dropout. Tall, gangly, and stumbling, he was accident-prone most of the time. He seemed to have perpetual sea legs. On a boat, he was fine. More than fine, in fact. Able to pole his skiff and maneuver into and out of some of the skinniest patches in the backcountry, Dink was well known for his ability to find fish.

“Tarpon migration was great, but they’re about gone. Just gettin’ by till snook season opens, now.”

The other guide, a man I’d seen around a few times but had never met, brought two beers from the cooler and joined Dink two tables down from Rusty and me. The
Rusty Anchor
is that kind of place. Off the beaten path, not in any tourist brochures, a place that still had an old Florida style, like a few places I remembered visiting down here as a kid. Pap may even have brought me here way back when. Rusty pulled a small notepad from his shirt pocket and noted the men’s orders, without bothering to ask if they’d told Rufus.

“I’m telling ya,” Rusty said, putting the pad and pencil back in his pocket and turning to me, “there’s no way Deuce would be involved in that kind of thing.”

Rusty’s son-in-law had pulled a fast one, just before taking his new position in DC. At least it looked that way to me. One of his team members was Charity Styles, a young woman that had been through a lot in her short life. She could fly a chopper like nobody’s business, but a few years back, while she’d been an Army medivac pilot in Afghanistan, she’d been shot down and captured, then tortured, raped and sodomized repeatedly at the hands of the Taliban.

Charity had accompanied me on a manhunt last year. The former head of the CCC turned out to be dirty. Real dirty. Jason Smith had murdered his wife for her inheritance years before and tried to kill both Deuce and myself when we got too close. The bomb he’d meant for us had killed a young Marine we’d been trying to help. He and Charity had formed some kind of connection, or bond. When we finally found Smith down in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Charity killed him with her bare hands.

During the trip, which covered half the western Caribbean, she opened up to me a little, especially on the return trip. Killing Smith seemed to give her some closure, but left her feeling cold and empty. She told me that Jared was the only one she’d felt close to since her days in Afghanistan. I never did think she was all there emotionally, but I never would have thought she’d do what everyone believed she did.

“At worst he let it happen,” I said. “I don’t buy for one minute that she stole the chopper and disappeared.”

Leaning in closer, Rusty dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And what do you base that on? Running all over the Caribbean with Charity stashed in the cabin, till you caught Smith last year?”

“Neither story rings true, Rusty. Think about it. If I’m right, then Deuce is covering for her and she’s on some sort of secret assignment for the DHS. If I’m wrong, why hasn’t he found her? Stealing a government chopper isn’t something the DHS secretary would allow to happen without a full investigation. He knows and he’s keeping it under his hat.”

Just then, the door opened. A big, bald black man was silhouetted by the blinding light from outside. He stepped in and another large black man followed him through the door. The second man let the door close and the two stood there waiting for their eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the bar. After a moment, the two men, both wearing sports jackets, headed toward the bar.

Definitely not from around here
, I thought as Rusty got up from the table and went around behind the bar. Not because of their skin color, but nobody in their right mind wears a jacket when both the temperature and humidity are near triple digits. Unless they’re hiding something under the jacket.

The back door opened and Rufus casually walked in, carrying two plates of food for the guides, sitting by an open window. I watched the two men carefully, some sixth sense alerting me to trouble. They looked close enough alike to be twins, but one was maybe an inch taller and ten pounds lighter than the other. The shorter, heavier guy seemed to be the leader. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

As I watched, I saw him push something across the bar to Rusty, saying something in a tone so low I couldn’t hear his words. From the look on Rusty’s face, whatever the guy said definitely meant trouble. I slowly and quietly stood up from the table and nonchalantly made my way to the far end of the bar.

Jimmy was sitting two stools over from the leader, who was now leaning across the bar. The second guy was standing behind his boss. From the look on Jimmy’s face, I knew there was about to be an altercation. Jimmy was as laid-back as any islander, but always seemed to be able to sense trouble.

Rufus stepped up beside the big black man and looked at him, with a quizzical expression. Kind of like a snake might look at a third mouse after eating the first two and having his appetite sated.

“Di cosmic grouper told I and I just last week dat you be here very soon,” Rufus said to the man leaning on the bar. “But yuh won’t find what yuh seek in dis place.”

The big man glared sideways at Rufus, slowly straightening to his full height and turning toward him. “I ain’t talking to you,” he said through clenched teeth.

Standing at the end of the bar I was shielded from the two men’s sight and slowly reached back and put my right hand on the grip of the Sig under my shirt. I naturally assumed what they were hiding under their jackets were guns. Hopefully not guns and badges.

“You’re not in the big city anymore, friend,” I said, pulling the Sig from the holster and holding it just below the bar top.

The first man stepped back from the bar, his partner retreating a step to give him room. The leader of the two turned so he could see me, Rufus, and Rusty together.

Behind him, chair legs scraped the floor as Dink and the other guide stood up. The feeling in the air was electric and the two guides had picked up on it. Islanders are a tight-knit bunch. If you step on one of our toes we’ll all say, “Ouch.”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean, tough guy?” the leader asked me.

I slowly pulled the Sig up and rested it on the bar. I didn’t have to check to see if there was a round chambered. I heard the distinct sound of two hammers being thumbed, cocking pistols, one coming from the guides by the window and the other from under the bar in front of Jimmy. These sounds hadn’t escaped the attention of the two men, either.

The sound of a shotgun chambering a shell got the first man’s full attention. I kept my eyes on his as Rusty slowly drew his twelve-gauge sawed-off deck sweeper from its holster beneath the bar and brought it up across his chest.

“What he means is,” Rusty began in an even tone, “everyone down here has guns. Now, real slowly, using just your left hands, pull those pistols out from under those coats and slide ’em down to the end of bar.”

The first man looked slowly around the bar, noting that there were now at least four guns already drawn and both he and his partner still had their jackets buttoned.

“Do what he says, Erik,” the first man said as he slowly unbuttoned his coat with his left hand and lifted his stainless .45 from its holster.

The two men slid their guns down the bar past where Jimmy sat. Jimmy studied the leader’s face a moment and said, “I know you, man. Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker, late nineties, right? Gerald Tremont Bradley. You blew your knee out in a game against Miami in ninety-nine.”

“GT,” the man corrected Jimmy. Looking back at Rusty, he said, “We don’t want no trouble, mister, just looking for someone that owes me money. He bought lunch here about an hour and a half ago.”

“He was charged with trafficking a couple times, Rusty,” Jimmy continued, ignoring GT Bradley’s comment. “A few years back, man. Up in Pittsburgh.”

Rufus stepped in front of the two much larger men. “Like I and I say, yuh won’t find what yuh seek here. Di stars aren’t aligned for you yet.” Looking back over his shoulder at Rusty and me, Rufus said, “Put away di guns, mon. Dere will be no trouble from dese two men.”

Rusty nodded to me and slowly lowered the shotgun, putting it back into its hiding spot below the bar, and I holstered my Sig.

Rufus turned back to the two men and spoke evenly, but very quietly. “Mistuh GT, yuh must leave now.”

GT Bradley lowered his head and stared at the small old man in front of him. It was obvious he was unused to being told what to do and much more accustomed to others cowering in front of him.

“Old man, if these others didn’t have me outgunned, I’d break you in half for just thinking you could order me around.”

Rufus’s eyes never left the much bigger man’s. He spoke again with the same calm and quiet voice, but more firmly this time. “No suh, Mistuh GT. Di spirits have left you. Your aura is low, flat and dull blue. Impotent. The guiding light burns bright over my head. It say dat you cannot do dis ting.”

GT’s eyes flashed with the ferocity of a jungle cat, and as quick as a lightning bolt, his right hand shot out at Rufus, his speed surprising me. But it never connected. Rufus was suddenly beside the much larger man and in a blur of movement, he spun and caught GT in the middle of his back with an open hand. The impact and GT’s forward momentum sent him crashing into the bar with a solid thunk as his chest impacted the heavy mahogany armrest of the bar.

Before the second man could move a muscle, old Rufus was on him, literally climbing the man’s tree trunk of a body like a monkey, stabbing him from groin to head with short, soundless punches, then vaulting over the man’s shoulder and landing lightly on the ground behind him.

As GT turned around to face the old island man, Rufus pulled a chair from a table and placed it behind the one called Erik, whose eyes were already closed. Rufus slowly lowered the bigger man into the chair, where he slumped forward.

Rufus stepped around the unconscious man in the chair and faced Bradley, calmly, his shoulders and arms hanging loosely. I’d seen this posture before, when Rufus would begin his stretching exercise. “Like I and I done told you,” he barely whispered, but was clearly heard all over the room. “Di spirits say you cannot do dese tings. What you seek is not here. Go, Mistuh GT, while you are still able to do so.”

Bradley was holding a hand to one of his ribs and looked in astonishment at the little Jamaican man, meanness evident on the bigger man’s face.

Bradley snarled, “I’m gonna kill you!” as he started to take a step forward, blinded by fury.

Again, Rufus moved faster than my eyes could follow. In less than an eye blink, he was standing two feet in front of the larger man and placed a fingertip to Bradley’s forehead, freezing the charging rhino of a man dead in his tracks.

Rufus stood there for a few seconds, his fingertip barely making contact with the big ex-linebacker’s forehead. Suddenly, Bradley collapsed to the ground at Rufus’s feet, like a marionette with its strings cut.

Rufus smiled at Rusty. His voice taking on the more singsong tone of his heritage, he said, “See, mon. No trubba heah. Everting is irie.”

Turning to an empty table, Rufus scooped up two plates and two glasses and headed out the back door toward his kitchen.

I shook my head, trying to make sense of what I’d just witnessed. “What the hell just happened?”

“Dude!” Jimmy exclaimed with an astonished expression. “That was intense!”

“I’m not sure I can even comprehend what I think my eyes just told me,” Rusty agreed, coming quickly around the bar.

Both GT and Erik were out cold, but there wasn’t a mark on either man. I checked for a pulse and found both strong and steady. They just seemed to be sleeping. I glanced toward the door that Rufus had disappeared through, then Rusty and I dragged GT, lifting him into a chair next to the other man. I checked their pockets and did a quick pat down, finding a small .38-caliber Smith and Wesson in an ankle holster on Erik’s left leg and handed it to Jimmy.

Suddenly, both men simply woke up and lifted their big bald heads, looking around very confused. Finally, GT’s eyes settled on me. “What happened?”

“My guess is you got your stars realigned a little,” I replied, still not fully understanding what I’d witnessed. “What do you want here?”

GT blinked, confusion still showing on his face. “A guy was here about an hour ago. Bought something with a credit card. He owes me a lot of money and I been following him all the way from Pittsburgh.”