Mortal Dilemma (42 page)

Jock called and said he was going to have lunch with Chief Lester and Deputy Chief Sharkey and would stop by later. He'd checked in with Dave Kendall who insisted that he take some time off before coming back to work. I asked if he wanted to stick around on Longboat for a time and he said we'd talk about it.

“How is this whole thing going to affect you, Matt?” J.D. asked, her voice tinged with concern.

“I don't know, but I think I'll be okay. I've had worse days.”

“I can't believe anything can be worse that what you went through.”

“Combat is worse. People shooting at you, mortar and artillery shells coming into your position, watching the teenaged soldiers who looked to me for leadership die before they'd really had time to live.
Getting a gut full of shrapnel and thinking I was about to check out. All that in a single day. That's worse than what I went through today. Today, I knew that you and Jock would come to the rescue, but if you didn't, I'd die and find out what's on the other side. I'd come to terms with that. In the minutes when I thought death was inevitable, I focused on you sitting on the beach at Egmont Key, looking at me, somehow silently letting me know that you loved me. That was the vision I wanted to go out with.”

She hugged me, not tightly, but just enough to satisfy my need without adding more pain to my beat-up body. “I love you,” she said, and held on some more.

She sat back and looked at me, her green eyes unwavering. It was like she was trying to memorize my face. It unsettled me. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“I don't know, Matt. This last week has changed me in ways that I don't think I like.”

“How so?”

“I've always believed in the law, the procedures that hold it all together, the nobility of it. I grew up with a dad who was an honest cop, who taught me to live by a code that encompassed all those beliefs. This past week showed me a side of myself that I didn't know existed. I would have gladly killed Charlie Bates, gutted him with that big knife of his. Today, I used a shotgun to kill a man. I didn't give him a chance to surrender. He wasn't armed. He was just standing there by the sofa, probably trying to figure out what was going on. I hated his guts. He was one of the men holding you, threatening to kill you, and there was no question in my mind that he would have gladly cut off your head. And at that point, I hadn't even seen what they'd actually done to you. I killed the rat bastard in cold blood, and I don't even feel bad about it. Have I become one of them?”

“No, sweetie, you're still you. You were put into a position today
that you could not have foreseen. It's different when your loved ones are in danger. You react differently. You weren't there today as a cop, you were there as a woman trying to save someone she loved, and not at all sure he wasn't already dead. You're human and you reacted like most every human being would have under the same circumstances.”

“That's not quite true,” she said. “I knew there were two men in that house with you. I had time to see that Saif wasn't armed. I knew that you were probably in the room where we found you. I killed Saif because I wanted to. I wanted the people who would take you away from me to die. And I made sure that happened.”

“You did what had to be done,” I said.

“Maybe,” she said.

“You made sure that Saif would never harm another innocent person,” I said. “Come here.”

And she did, enfolding me in her arms and holding me as tight as she dared. There'd be more talking, more analyzing, more second thoughts, more hugging, and just plain old more living. I was satisfied with that. I was alive and wrapped in the arms of the woman I loved. Everything was going to be okay.

S
ATURDAY
, D
ECEMBER
20

T
HE ISLAND FAIRLY
jingled with Christmas spirit, a unique joie de vivre that seemed to infect everybody. Visitors from the north basked in seventy-degree weather and took pictures to text back to their snowbound friends who spent the holidays in more frigid climes.

It was a nice counterpoint to the November week that began with Skeeter trying to kill J.D. and ended with my capture and rescue. That terrible week was a time of cognitive dissonance for us, a time when our little world went cockeyed, as if the earth was wobbling on its axis and creating a strange universe in which we could not find our place.

I had recovered from what J.D. insisted on calling my recent unpleasantness, but there were some lingering memories that showed up occasionally in my nightmares. The bad dreams were getting fewer and farther between, and I didn't think J.D. needed to know about them. Maybe I was just afraid of appearing a wimp in her eyes. After all, macho men should not be having nightmares about a few unpleasant hours spent in the presence of idiots, even murderous ones.

Jock was still with us, enjoying his time in the sun, but after New Year's Day he'd be going back to the agency and the wars he fought in the shadows. Dave Kendall had sent an agency psychologist down to spend some time with him, and it seemed to be working. The first two weeks were intensive, sessions every day, some lasting two or three
hours. From then on, the shrink flew down once a week to meet with him and they talked regularly by phone. Slowly the old Jock, a man full of confidence and resolution and courage, began to emerge from the husk of himself that he had inhabited during those terrible late autumn days.

Dave Kendall and his wife Peggy had flown down to spend the holidays on Longboat Key and to bring us current with the end game, as he called it, the final chapter of our story. Jock, J.D., the Kendalls, and I were having lunch under the trees at Mar Vista, enjoying the warmth of the December day and the view of the boats cruising over the flat bay. I could see Jewfish Key from our table and it didn't bring on a shudder. Progress, I guess.

Dave was running through the
dramatis personae
that comprised the end of our sordid tale. None of the actors in the final scene ended up well, although their fates were deserved.

D. Wesley Gilbert had stared into his future and made the best deal he could under the circumstances. He pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting terrorism and was sentenced to fifteen years in a federal prison located in Coleman, Florida, about forty miles northwest of Orlando. It beat the hell out of a supermax lockup in Colorado. Given his age, it was a pretty sure bet that he'd never see freedom again.

Skeeter Evans was back at the Glades Correctional Unit serving a twenty-five year sentence for the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. He thought that was a better result than a one-way trip to the middle of Lake Monroe.

Xavier Duhns was still in the Seminole County jail awaiting transport to a state prison, where he would spend the next five years. After having ascertained to his satisfaction that Xavier was plain stupid, the prosecutor had decided that the idiot had not intended for the car he stole to be used in the murder of a police officer.

Shaheed Mustafa, also known as Tariq Gajani, was interrogated at length and Jock's agency was able to roll up a growing conspiracy to blow up the Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens during the Orange Bowl game on New Year's Day. Shaheed and his friends disappeared into a supermax federal prison and will never be heard from again.

Buddy Murphy, the young man who stole the boat from Cannons Marina, pleaded no contest to the boat theft. Since he had no prior criminal record of any kind, the judge withheld adjudication, meaning that he would do no jail time, and if he satisfactorily completed three years of probation, he would have no felony record.

“In many ways,” Dave said, “Wally Delmer was the most knowledgeable of those we interviewed. He was dying of cancer and told us everything he knew, including some things we didn't know enough about even to ask the questions.”

“Was he the one who set up J.D. for the murder attempt?” I asked.

“Yes,” Dave said. “Wally had taken on a lot of things that normally would have been controlled by Frank Thomason. He was in direct contact with his Arab masters and was being placed in a position to take over the entire operation in case of Thomason's death.”

“I take it Thomason's death was fairly imminent,” J.D. said.

“Very much so.”

“And that didn't seem to bother Wally?” I asked. “Taking his friend out?”

“I don't think Wally even thought about it,” Dave said. “He'd started out on the right path. He was a Ft. Lauderdale cop, but a corrupt cop, and some very bad mob guys sidetracked all his good intentions. I think those events stole his humanity. By his own admission, he killed with impunity, without compassion or remorse.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“The cancer killed Wally three days after we picked him up, but he spent the entire time sucking up morphine for the pain and talking a
blue streak. He told us all about Nazari and that was worth the cost of the morphine we provided.”

Ibrahim Nazari, the man who ran Ishmael's Children, ordered his men in America back to Syria because he was afraid that after the disappearance of Thomason and Delmer, the CIA or FBI or somebody was closing in. Rahima, the Syrian-American butcher's daughter from Brooklyn who had lived for a time with Frank Thomason, had become one of Nazari's lovers and was living with him in his home, which Wally described as a small palace, in a quiet corner of Syria. Nazari was pretty sure that nobody in the American intelligence agencies knew much about him and were ignorant of the location of his house. He called his entire team to his home for a conference. They needed to regroup and reconstruct their American operations.

“Wally had visited Nazari a month before I sent Jock to Aleppo,” Dave said. “He used a false passport and other IDs, so our intelligence agencies weren't aware that he'd left the country. He spent a week there and was briefed on the American operation. Nazari was preparing him to take over.”

As it turned out, Rahima had been an unwilling participant in turning Thomason into a recalcitrant partner of Ishmael's Children. She did what she'd been hired to do, seduced the man and made him fall in love with her. Much to her surprise, she fell in love with Frank, and was shattered by the necessity of leaving him. She knew if she didn't, both she and Frank would be killed. So Rahima left America and moved into what she thought of as Nazari's harem. She could never go back to the United States or any other place in the world for that matter. If she left him, she would be hunted down and killed. Her death would be messy and painful.

While Wally was at Nazari's home, Rahima approached him and asked if there was any way to get her back to America when he took over the operation. She told him that she'd truly loved Thomason,
but she wouldn't try to contact him if she returned. She just wanted to go home.

“Wally told us where Nazari lived and that Rahima wasn't happy and wanted to leave,” Dave said. “We inserted an agent into the area and he contacted Rahima one day when she was in the market in the little village near Nazari's home. She was willing to help. She also told us about the upcoming conference with Nazari's top people.”

Over the next few days, the agent determined the exact GPS coordinates for Nazari's house, and then arranged for Rahima to meet him in the market. He had a new passport for her and a new identity. He also had a Land Rover ready to leave the area. At the appointed time an American drone appeared and, using a laser-guided bomb, obliterated the Nazari home and all who were in it. The agent and Rahima left the area.

“Where is Rahima now?” J.D. asked.

“She's in a safe house giving us everything she knows about the Ishmael's Children's operation,” Dave said. “We think we've got that bunch completely neutralized, but the information will help us with some of the others we're looking at.”

“And Frank Thomason?” J.D. asked.

“Unfortunately,” Dave said with a grin, “Frank completely disappeared from the face of the earth. I'm pretty sure he won't be seen again. There are consequences when one messes with one of my agents.”

“Okay,” Peggy Kendall said. “That's enough shop talk. How're you doing, Jock?”

Jock had sat quietly during our entire conversation, listening, but not engaging. Now he smiled. “I'm fine, Peggy. I know I was doing my job when I killed al Bashar, and it wasn't my fault that I was pointed at the wrong guy. I've come to terms with that. Still, those little boys are going to haunt me for the rest of my life. I'm not sorry I killed
the men they became, but I'll never erase the mental image of them standing there pleading for me not to kill their father.”

The conversation turned to more pleasant subjects and we finished our meal and climbed aboard my boat for a cruise on the bay. It was a salubrious day, a time of renewal, of putting horror and death behind us, of looking forward to the days to come when life would once again be good.

The world wobbled no more. It had settled on its axis and brought a measure of equanimity to our island, reaffirming our place on the sun-washed speck of land surrounded by a turquoise sea. My best friend, with a little help from the agency shrink, had restored himself and rejoined reality. The wondrous Jennifer Diane Duncan truly loved me and made my life bright with anticipation of the years that would define our lives. As that old lawyer David Parrish once said in his measured Georgia drawl, “It just don't get no better than this.”