Long Way Down (18 page)

Chapter 18

V
ISIBILITY DIMMED as they drove away from the airport, and Sam snapped on the parking lights. Following Candi’s directions, he turned onto the dirt road to the lagoon, still thinking about Jack Craft. Jack had said he put La Salle in touch with a broker to purchase some land, maybe this island. But why would he be here now, months later, unless he had more involvement in this mess than he had said? Sam wished he’d pressed Jack a little harder, and maybe he, J.T. and Candi wouldn’t be in the middle of nowhere planning to rob gold from crooks.

“It can’t be far from here,” Candi said.

The road, paved with sand and shell and wide enough only for one vehicle, meandered like an old creek bed. Sam drove slowly and looked for a place to park where the car would be hidden. He saw a spot a couple of minutes later, turned off the road into a clearing, and eased in behind a stand of trees.

They got out and ambled along the curvy road for about fifty feet before seeing the reflection of light across water. An area half the size of a football field had been cleared, and on the far side a wooden dock jutted out into the edge of the lagoon. A yellow light cast a jaundiced glow over the boards, and an old gas pump stood next to the light like a loyal friend awaiting the return of the ship.

In a graveled area near the dock sat a business van.

“Walk in the edge of the trees,” Sam said. “I’ll check the van first, in case someone is asleep inside.”

They eased through the brush until even with the vehicle, and Sam crept to the window and peered inside. Empty. Keys hung from the ignition, ready for a quick departure.

Sam glanced at the dock. Small bugs swarmed the light and dropped on a pile underneath when they flew too close to the globe. Maybe they wanted something they thought lay inside the brilliance, something like the gold the people on this island were chasing. Sam wondered if the bugs’ demise could be a message for him.

This fiasco had started with Sam trying to protect Candi Moran. He didn’t
want
the gold. There would be problems with it as long as La Salle or Danilov lived, and he certainly wouldn't kill them for it. He had gone along only because Candi wouldn’t leave the island. Now he wished he had just told her to get on the plane or forget about any help from him. J.T. would have stayed with her, but Sam knew his interest, and his first priority probably wouldn’t be to protect Candi. That might be just what Candi deserved. She wanted protection, but she also wanted her father’s money back, and even more. There had been no question about her staying once she knew J.T. would help with the gold.

J.T. punched Sam on the shoulder. “What’s the plan?”

“We take them by surprise when they come in, and nobody dies. Then we get Danilov to fly us out of here on that plane.”

J.T. hesitated. “Why should we worry about keeping these guys alive? I can fly the plane.”

“Yeah, I know you can.”

J.T. raised an eyebrow and stared at Sam for a couple of seconds. “Okay, you’re the boss.”

Candi stepped in front of Sam and looked him in the eye. “Hey, don’t I have anything to say about this?”

“Like what?”

“Like, I think we should take the gold from the plane and stay and get what they have in the safe. We could be missing out on millions if we don’t. La Salle will be in Miami, and we’ll have Danilov’s full attention. Gino’s probably the last of La Salle’s henchmen left on the island, and I don’t think he’s going to be in any shape to do much of anything.”

Sam considered that for a moment and said, “Okay, you can stay if you want, but Danilov is going to fly the plane to Miami and I’m going to be on it.”

J.T. glanced at Candi and nodded. “Fair enough.”

Candi remained silent.

An airplane flew over, heading west.

“There goes La Salle,” J.T. said, watching the running lights trailing away in the sky. He turned and looked at Sam. “You leave the keys in the ignition?”

“Yeah, I did.”

J.T. nodded and Sam knew he wouldn’t be leaving the island until he had a look into the safe.

They got inside the van, Sam and Candi in front and J.T. in back, and waited.

“The part that’s mystifying about all this,” Sam said, “is how La Salle could amass so much money in such a short time.”

“He told me a man came to him with a proposal to build this place,” Candi said, “and he had investors who wanted to buy in. La Salle had been planning to do it anyway, just not so soon, and out of the blue this guy shows up.”

“Did he tell you the man’s name?”

“No, but I know La Salle took the offer and set up the company. He said he would buy them out, at least enough to gain control of everything, when his other investments came in. I assume now he was talking about this salvage operation.”

J.T. spoke up. “Did he know who the investors would be?”

“I don’t think so, but he didn’t care. He stood only to gain by using their money. Besides, who would try to swindle somebody like La Salle?”

“Did the guy require La Salle to buy a percentage of the stock in the company?” Sam said.

“Oh, yeah, but he had it set up so he would have three months to put in his part.”

“Did he say how much?”

“Yeah, a hundred million.”

J.T. whistled. “He must think there’s at least that much gold out there.”

“Maybe twice that,” Sam said, “since Danilov is probably taking half.”

They waited in the van for several hours. It got chilly in the early morning and Sam wished he had a light jacket. Sitting in the driver’s seat, Sam took the first two-hour watch, then leaned his head against the headrest and dozed while J.T. took over. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep when the drone of an airplane woke him.

“There they are,” J.T. said.

Sam stretched and peered at the dock area.

The noise got louder as the plane neared, and running lights flickered in the distance. They got out of the van and crouched behind it. Sam pressed the light on his watch and looked at the time: 4:10 AM.

The plane landed at the edge of the lagoon and taxied on the water toward the dock. It looked like an old Grumman Mallard: no pontoons, just a big floating hull like a boat. Its engines raced a couple of times as the pilot coaxed it into place, and then coughed and went silent. The hatch popped open and a man jumped out onto the dock. Another man threw out two ropes, and the man on the dock knelt and tied them to boat cleats. Sam didn’t recognize either of the men. The noise of a helicopter chattered in the distance and the man on the dock stood and looked up.

“Someone else is joining the party,” Sam said.

Coming in fast, the helicopter swept the lagoon with spotlights and circled. The man on the dock pulled a gun from the pocket of his coveralls and yelled something that was garbled by the helicopter noise. The other man jumped out of the seaplane onto the dock and looked up.

“We’d better go back to the car until we see how this plays out,” Sam yelled over the helicopter prop wash.

J.T. nodded. “Yeah, and we better make it quick. That chopper’s coming this way again.”

They hurried along the van on the side farthest from the dock and raced up the road into the trees to a spot near the car where they could still see the seaplane. The helicopter slowed, hovered above the van, and shone the light on the seaplane. One of the men on the dock shielded his eyes and aimed the gun in the air, but rounds from the helicopter hit him before he could pull the trigger, and he fell back on the dock. The other man dived into the water as bullets ripped through the boards where he had been standing. The pilot set the helicopter down in the clearing and cut the engines, but kept the spotlight on the plane. Three men with rifles got out of the copter and ran to the side of the van.

Dead silence hung in the air, as if the birds, frogs, and other wildlife stopped everything to watch the humans do battle.

One of the men yelled over the hood of the van, “Come out or we will torch the plane.” He had an accent, maybe Spanish, but Sam wasn’t sure.

Nothing happened for awhile, and Sam wondered if Danilov might be considering his options. Had the plane not been tied down, he might have tried to take off again, but he would surely die if he tried to cut the ropes. Maybe he thought help would come from the Cyclops. Finally, he appeared in the open hatch, his hands over his head.

One of the men from the helicopter stepped around the van. “Is there anyone else?”

“No,” Danilov said, “just the three of us.”

The helicopter men rounded the van and stepped onto the dock. One of them kicked the man who had been shot and, satisfied he wouldn't be moving, pointed his rifle at the murky water. “The other one went in right there. Probably half-way to Florida by now.” He turned toward the plane and motioned to Danilov with his hand. “Okay, out.”

Danilov jumped down and one of the men from the helicopter climbed into the seaplane. He came out a few minutes later with a gold figurine in his hand and held it in the air. “This is one of the pieces. A lot more is on the plane, and the rest must be in the hotel.”

These men didn’t seem like run-of-the-mill pirates. They could fly a helicopter and handle weapons, and seemed more like Special Forces than thieves. But they also could be expensive hired hands.

One of the helicopter men held a rifle on Danilov while the other two went onto the seaplane. Danilov kept looking in the direction of the hotel, probably wondering when La Salle would show up. A few minutes later the two men from the helicopter stepped off the seaplane carrying a crate.

Sam heard the whine of an electric motor. He turned and saw a golf cart easing down the road toward the helicopter, the light from the dock reflecting off the driver’s spiky blonde hair and bloody face.
Grimes
.

The cart stopped, far enough away that no one on the dock noticed, and Grimes watched the action below. He reached for an object standing on the floorboard beside his feet, pulled something that made a snapping noise, and put the object onto his shoulder. It looked like the tube of a telescope. He pointed it and pulled the trigger. A second later the helicopter exploded, sending fifty-foot flames into the air and changing the night into day.

Sam felt the heat on his face, and the brilliance of the flames cut into his eyes like a laser.

“Man, what a blast,” J.T, said.

The men from the helicopter yelled at Danilov and at each other for several seconds before all of them scrambled aboard the seaplane. They probably thought no one would blow it up because of the gold it carried.

Sam glanced at Grimes. The cart lurched forward and made a wide arc around one side of the burning helicopter toward the dock.

Sam turned to Candi and said, “Stay here.” Candi crossed her arms in front of her chest and nodded, her eyes wide.

Sam turned to J.T. “You ready?”

J.T. thumbed the hammer on his 9mm and said, “Sure, lead the way.”

They ran toward the golf cart. Grimes heard their footfalls about the time they caught up with him. He stomped on the brake and grabbed an Uzi on the seat beside him. Before he could turn, Sam struck him on the temple with the butt of his handgun, and Grimes dropped the Uzi and fell over on the seat. Sam took the gun and told J.T. to make sure Grimes didn’t have any more rocket launchers in the cart.

The seaplane’s engines started and one of the men aboard threw the tie lines into the water and closed the hatch. The engines raced and the plane moved away from the dock.

“They're getting away,” Sam said to J.T. He noticed the van still sat unharmed. “Back the van down to the water. I'll go for the plane with a rope.”

Sam ran to the dock, laid down his weapons and unwound the now-slack tie lines from the cleats. The ropes seemed strong, but Sam thought they might need both of them. He dragged one end of the ropes to the graveled area next to the dock, slid into the cool water with the other end and swam to the moving seaplane. It had traveled about ten feet by the time he reached the hull. Finding the towing eyelet on the front, he grabbed onto it, ran both ropes through and knotted them.

Within seconds after J.T. tied the lines to the van’s trailer hitch, the plane pulled them taut and stopped dead in the water. J.T. gunned the van’s engine and jerked the seaplane toward the dock while Sam pushed away and swam back. The engines on the seaplane roared, but the truck pulled the plane bit by bit back. Its hull scrubbed a side cleat on the dock, made a sound like sheet metal tearing, and the van kept tugging until the curvature of the hull rode up over the edge of the dirt bank and onto the gravel.

J.T. stopped the van and the plane sat still for several seconds, the propellers still turning, before the pilot finally gave up and shut down the engines. Sam climbed onto the dock, retrieved his weapons, and stepped over to the disabled craft. He grimaced when he saw the rip in the hull, knowing it would have to be repaired before it would float again. J.T. came over with his handgun, and when Sam nodded, he tapped on the hatch with his knuckle.

Chapter 19

S
AM AND J.T. waited several minutes, hugging the side of the beached plane, before J.T. tapped again on the hatch, this time with the butt of his 9mm. The hatch popped open and Danilov fell out, as if pushed from behind. He stood and dusted off his hands.

“Okay, the rest of you, come out one at a time,” Sam said. “Try anything funny and you’ll die.”

Danilov glanced at Sam and J.T. next to the plane and nodded, as if to say,
You have won this round, but it’s not over
. He looked at the tear in the metal on the hull and shook his head. The plane probably belonged to him. He looked back into the open hatch, his eyes became large, and he yelled, “No! You might hit the fuel tanks.”

Sam and J.T. dived away from the hatch to the ground. Bullets ripped through the skin of the aircraft, opening holes the size of dimes. Sam and J.T. lay there for a few moments after the firing stopped, then Sam got to his feet and said, “That was a stupid trick. I’m giving you five seconds to come out.”