Fallen Pride (Jesse McDermitt Series) (21 page)

I caught on instantly to what Deuce was doing. He knew I could hold my breath for almost two full minutes. He wanted me to mimic drowning through waterboarding.

I got up and moved over to the bench next to Parker. Deuce quickly snatched up the towel and put it around my face, pulling my head back on the table, while Tony stepped in front of me and pinned my arms. I’d seen men waterboarded before and knew exactly how they acted.

Slowly he started pouring the water onto the towel. After about thirty seconds, I started making a show of struggling and puffed a little air out. Then I started struggling and puffing harder. At the one minute mark, I was fighting really hard against Tony, but not so hard that I could break free. Finally, Deuce released the towel and Tony let go of my arms. I managed to get a mouthful of water and made a great show of choking, coughing, and spitting up water as I fell to my hands and knees
, gasping for air.

“Anyone can survive this once and not talk,” Deuce said. “Imagine how many times a professional, such as myself, can bring someone that tried to kill me to the very brink of death and not
actually kill them, when I can do it so easily to one of my own men. You’ll tell me what I want to know, Parker. You’ll tell me more than I want to know.”

Cheryl came back and handed Deuce a file folder and two more large water bottles. He set the water on the table just beside Parkers head. By now, it was obvious the man was very afraid.
Around him was an apparent African tribesman who wanted to eat him, a woman that wanted to feed him his own genitalia and a madman that would torture one of his own.

Dawson walked over and stood in front of Parker. He squatted down so that he was eye level with the man and in a calm soothing voice said, “I know you’re scared, Parker. You reek of it. It’s in your eyes and the way your voice cracks. You don’t have to go through this. Just tell the Commander what he wants to know, okay?”

Parker looked up at Tony standing behind Dawson then at me, struggling to get to my feet and finally at Julie, standing at the end of the table with a menacing look on her face. “You c-c-can do anything you w-want. I’m not g-gonna talk!”

Dawson smiled reassuringly at the man and in a lightning fast move, brought his fist up and hammered it down between the man’s thighs, smashing him so hard in the groin, I winced.

Parker howled in pain, but only for a second. Deuce quickly grabbed the wet towel and covered his face, yanking his head back hard on the table. Tony grabbed a bottle, twisted the cap off and slowly started pouring it over the towel. Parker began to struggle immediately and within seconds, he was sucking in water and coughing it back into the towel. It lasted only about fifteen seconds and Deuce released the towel.

Parker’s head tilted forward as he coughed up
huge mouthfuls of water. A few seconds later, Deuce grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back, shouting, “You called Jason Smith yesterday at 1900! The call lasted two minutes! What did you ask him?”

Between racking fits of coughs, Parker managed to get out that he called
Smith to say he lost me, asked if he knew where I was headed, and Smith had told him about this island. It only took another ten minutes and Deuce had every bit of information about Smith that Parker knew.

It was Stolski that was contracted to murder Smith’s wife three years ago. That was his first contract after leaving the Agency.
Stolski brought Parker in and cut him in for a fourth of the contract. In fact it was the reason he left. During the first year, both men received several contracts from the Agency, mostly through Smith. But, when Smith left the Agency himself, to pursue his political ambitions, the contracts nearly dried up. So, both men had jumped on the chance to get a good paying contract from Smith. He’d first contacted Stolski just two weeks after being transferred to Djibouti. Stolski said it would have to be a two man job and wanted more than what Smith had offered. They brought Parker in and they agreed on a price of $200,000, half up front and half when the job was completed. With Stolski out of the picture, Parker saw a chance to increase his pay and contacted Smith to renegotiate. Besides the $50,000 he’d already received, Smith wired another $50,000 to Parker and agreed to pay him that much again, when he finished the contract.

Just after sunrise, we were sitting in what was now Chyrel’s satellite office in the bunkhouse.
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t necessarily mean nobody’s not out to get you,” Deuce said as we waited for Chyrel to get Stockwell on the encrypted video call.

“Let’s hope Kumar is able to
nab Smith,” I said. “Otherwise, we’ll be looking over our shoulder for a while. What time is it in Djibouti?”

“Just after 1500, eight hours
ahead of us,” Chyrel said. “Connection being made.”

Stockwell’s face appeared on the screen. The guy must never sleep. It seemed no matter what time Deuce called, he was in his office. “We captured Parker early this morning, Colonel. He’s confessed to being contracted
by Jason Smith, along with Stolski, to kill both Jess and me. He also admitted to being a part of the murder of Charlotte Downeger Smith and that Jason Smith paid them $100,000 to murder her.”

“I don’t suppose these confessions will hold up in court, will they?”

“No sir, they won’t,” Deuce readily admitted.

“I can probably make the case to the AG that a hired mercenary taking a contract on a Federal Agent could be construed as a
n act of terrorism. Considering that the President was also threatened, I’d say Mister Parker will be enjoying the sunset in Gitmo by the end of the day.”

“Have you heard from Kumar, Colonel?”

“Not yet. His bird isn’t scheduled to land in Yemen for another two hours.”

“What should we do with Parker?”

Stockwell thought for a moment and then said, “Get him ready to be delivered to a Navy chopper at sea. It shouldn’t take me more than an hour to get the paperwork pushed through. I’ll call you with a rendezvous point once I know it’ll go through. Good job, all of you.”

The screen went blank. “I sure wouldn’t want to be Parker,” Chyrel said.

“What do you mean?” Julie asked. “Prisoners in Gitmo live in luxury.”

“Yeah, luxury behind barbed wire fences for the rest of your life. I couldn’t take that.”

“You do have a point,” Julie said. “But, it’s still better than he deserves.”

The three of us left the bunkhouse and joined Tony and Dawson standing guard over Parker, not that he was going anywhere. He was still tied to the table,
head hanging down, crusted blood on his cheek from where Deuce had clobbered him with a dead branch from a lignum vitae tree. Even a dead branch from one of those trees is as hard as tempered steel. His wrists and ankles were chaffed and bleeding also, from struggling against the coarse ropes and he’d soiled his pants.

“He’s not going on my boat like that,” I said. “Take him up to the deck, strip him down and put him under the shower. In the hanging closet by the front door you’ll find a go bag that has som
e flex cuffs in the side pocket. Should be an old pair of fishing shorts and a tee shirt on the shelf there, too. We’re leaving in about half an hour.”

Tony had put on a shirt and shoes along with a shoulder holster that had a knife sheath on the front. He pulled out his K-bar and sliced the ropes securing Parker to the table with a single swipe
and another pass between his ankles freed his feet. The two men lifted him and half dragged him toward the main house, Pescador leading the way.

Half an hour later, we were idling out into Harbor Channel
in the
Cazador.
I brought her up onto plane headed due south. The coordinates Stockwell had given us were at the edge of the Gulf Stream 30 miles almost due south of Bahia Honda. Since we only had two hours to get there, I decided to take the smaller boat because it only needs three feet of water and we wouldn’t have to go way east to pick up the main channel. We were meeting a Navy MH-60 helicopter that was coming out of NAS Jacksonville on a routine long range training flight to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It would be stopping to refuel in Miami and would meet us at the coordinates Stockwell had provided at exactly 0930 and would only have ten minutes on station at the most.

I
t was just me, Deuce, and Dawson aboard and we had Parker tied up in the little head below the console. Deuce took his phone out, pulled up the text message from Stockwell and punched the coordinates into the Simrad chart plotter. “It’s 28 nautical miles almost due south of the Bahia Honda Channel Bridge. Total distance is about 37 nautical miles and we have 93 minutes to get there.”

I ran the calculation in my head and said, “That’s 25 knots average speed. It’s almost like he knows the most economical speed of this boat.
” I turned hard to port, entering the unmarked narrow channel through Cutoe Banks, slowed down just a little to weave and thread my way through the Banks. Then I headed northeast towards Marker 52, just north of Big Spanish Key. A couple minutes later we were clear of the Banks and I turned south toward Big Spanish Channel and pushed the speed up to 30 knots. “But, I’d rather be early than late.”

“You know these waters well,” Dawson shouted from where he was seated on the port gunwale. “That little cut couldn’t have been mo
re than three or four feet deep and not much wider.”

Deuce was leaning back against the seat, as I was
, deep in thought. We were now in deep water headed southeast between Crawl Key and Annette Key. “What’s on your mind, Deuce?”

“All of it, man. Sometimes, like this morning, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing bringing Julie into all this.”

“She’s a really independent woman,” I said. “I don’t think anyone could get her to do something she didn’t want to do.”

“What if I wasn’t involved in all this? Think she’d want to become involved on her own?”

“No. That I’m sure of. Look, she’s a woman in love and she’s going to go where her heart takes her. And you are involved, there’s no getting around that, unless you want to quit. Quitting’s not in your nature.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “I’m
just not so sure now.”

We passed under the bridge at Bahia Hondo into the open Atlantic
and I switched on the Simrad radar. All the electronics on board were Simrad. Good equipment, but not the best. The more I used this boat, the more I liked it, though. The sweeping Carolina flare of the bow allowed it to run at a good speed, even when seas were a little rough. Today, we had a southeast wind, blowing at about ten knots and the rollers were only a few feet and widely spaced. She rode up the crest, tilted slightly and rolled down the other side with no spray at all. The big 480 horse Cummins diesel engine, which David had tweaked to about 500 horsepower, ran quietly and smoothly.

When we were five miles out, I told Dawson he could bring Parker up on deck. I didn’t want him throwing up in the head. Dawson opened the small hatch and pulled him out, squinting in the bright sunlight.
He was drenched in sweat, not just from the heat down there, but I think fear had a lot to do with it.

It took another 40 minutes to reach the rendezvous point and we were ten minutes early. Parker was sitting on the small bench seat in front of the helm. We hadn’t told him where we were taking him. Neither Deuce, nor I, felt he deserved to be told.

I pulled back on the throttle and we dropped down off plane, idling toward the weed line, where the Gulf Stream starts. I checked the radar and there were no other boats within ten miles.

“What are you going to do to me?” Parker asked.

“Shut up,” I replied. “Or I’ll feed you to the sharks.”

“I can pay you. I have lots of money.”

“Not anymore, you don’t,” Deuce said. “It’s been seized by the government. Now shut up.”

A blip appeared on the radar, moving fast straight toward us. A minute later we could hear the approaching helicopter. I could tell from the sound that it was slowing down, without having to look at the radar. Stockwell had given Deuce the UHF radio frequency and he switched the radio on and adjust
ed it. Then he spoke into the mic, “Seahawk, this is motor vessel
Cazador
. We have you approaching two miles out.”

“
Cazador
, we have you in sight. We understand you have a guest that will be staying with us for the unforeseeable future?”

“Affirmative, compliments of Homeland Security.”

“We’ll come in and hover to lower a man down. Have your passenger ready.”

I shifted to
neutral and shut off the engine as the big chopper approached, getting lower and lower. “Where are they going to take me?” Parker shouted. “I’m an American citizen. I have rights. You haven’t read me my rights.”

Deuce moved forward and knelt beside the man, “No, you don’t have any rights. You and Stolski plotted to kill the President of the United States and you were captured attacking federal agents with the intent to kill. You don’t have the right to an attorney and you don’t have the right to a speedy trail. Now if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll break your jaw and ensure that you do
, in fact, remain silent. You’re a terrorist and you’re going to Gitmo.”