Operation Caribe (7 page)

The fisherman gave him an enthusiastic fist bump.

“Deal,” he said.

Off Thomas Cay
Six Hours Later

THE BANKER WAS sitting on the stern of his rented yacht. The girl was up on the bow, at the opposite end of the boat, as far away from him as possible.

Night had come. The last of the sun’s rays were disappearing over the horizon and the stars were coming out above. A half moon was rising in the east.

The banker took a long, sad sip of his scotch. “This was a big mistake,” he thought out loud. Just as he had feared, his performance so far had been underwhelming.

Then he heard a noise off in the distance. He looked up and saw a light approaching from the west.

“Damn,” he whispered. “Could this be the cavalry?”

He watched the light as it flew overhead and started a long slow turn down toward the isolated bay where the chartered yacht was anchored.

The banker was on his feet as the Ar-95W floatplane came down and skipped along the water. The girl was suddenly at his side.

The plane taxied up next to the yacht, so close the banker was concerned its long wings might actually clip the leased boat. But at that moment, he would gladly have paid for the damage. If the wacky pilot was carrying what he’d promised, it might just turn around this disaster yet.

The pilot skillfully maneuvered the plane so its rear hatch was nearly flush with the yacht’s stern. The banker threw out a short gangplank; it just reached the rear door of the odd airplane. The hatch opened and the banker expected to see the bearded pilot walking out, hopefully carrying a bag of the good stuff.

What he saw instead were four men in ragged clothes pointing assault rifles at him.

The banker froze. The girl screamed. The first two men came across the gangplank and hit the banker hard, knocking him to the deck. Terrified, the girl ran through the cabin—two of the men chased after her. The banker tried to get to his feet but was knocked down again. This time, his assailant kept his bare foot on the banker’s throat, not allowing him to move. The banker could see that, in addition to his rifle, the man was carrying a huge machete in his belt.

These guys aren’t the police,
he thought.

The next thing he knew, the banker was looking up at Colonel Cat. In the panic and confusion, the banker thought that somehow these armed men had hijacked the pilot and his plane. But then he saw Cat looking down at him and grinning darkly.

“How’s your vacation so far?” Cat asked him snidely.

“I
trusted
you!” the banker screamed back at him.

“Sorry, dude,” Cat replied. “I really am … but I got needs.”

For the first time, the banker saw Cat was holding a small copper pipe with a silver bowl—a crack pipe.

“You’re a fucking crackhead,” the banker cursed at him. “Doesn’t that figure.”

Cat shrugged. “And I got a bad gambling habit, too. But you’re a lame dick pothead. So what’s worse?”

The banker was yanked to his feet and brought into the yacht’s cabin. By this time, the other intruders had captured the girl and were holding her on the deck face up. One was forcing her to drink saltwater.

“What are you doing to her?” the banker screamed at him. “
Who are you people?”

One of the intruders hit him hard with his open hand, sending him to the deck yet again. That’s when the banker realized that all of the intruders, including the pilot, were wearing clear surgical gloves.

They don’t want to leave fingerprints,
he thought.

The girl was pulled up to her knees. The saltwater caused her to vomit heavily, expelling her large diamond ring, swallowed just moments before.

Two intruders then ransacked the yacht, going through the couple’s luggage and finding money, BlackBerrys and more jewelry, all while the two others held the banker and the girl down on the deck with their bare feet.

The girl was looking over at the banker, absolutely terrified.

“Don’t worry,” he managed to tell her. “It will be OK.”

*   *   *

THE GUNMEN TOOK just five minutes to go through the sixty-five-foot yacht.

They not only stole all the couple’s valuables, they also took the yacht’s GPS system, its satellite radio and its flat-screen TVs.

They were incredibly efficient, despite their ragged appearance. Through it all, Colonel Cat sat on the stern, taking tokes from his crack pipe.

The ransacking over, the gunmen prepared to leave. Two carried their booty onto the airplane; Colonel Cat returned to the cockpit and started the engine. The banker and the girl were pulled to their feet. Both were praying the pirates would just leave. But that wasn’t the plan.

At the point of two machetes, the banker and the girl were marched into the floatplane, and soon, the strange aircraft was airborne again.

*   *   *

CAT STEERED THE Arado northeast, heading toward the open ocean.

The pirate named Crabbie was sitting beside him, counting the wad of cash they’d taken from the yacht. Crabbie was the senior man of the group. The rest of the gang was in the passenger compartment holding down the banker and the girl.

“How far out do you want to go?” Cat asked the pirate.

Crabbie looked out the cockpit window; the half moon was glowing off the calm sea below.

“You have two more pigeons to visit tonight?” he asked Cat in heavily accented English.

“Yes—I think good ones, or at least as good as these two,” Cat replied.

“Not too far out then,” Crabbie said.

They flew for another five minutes; by this time they were more than a hundred-fifty miles north of Bimini, over the Atlantic Ocean, with no land in sight.

Finally, Crabbie looked back at the other pirates and nodded.

One opened the plane’s rear door. It was only then that the banker and the girl realized what was about to happen.

The banker started fighting madly, but it was useless. The pirates were strong and it was obvious that they’d done this sort of thing before.

The banker gave it one last struggle, punching two of the pirates, but he was quickly overwhelmed. The pirates threw him out the open door. As he fell they could hear his screams, finally drowned out by the sound of the wind racing by.

The girl was next. She became hysterical, crying, promising the pirates anything, including sex, if they would only spare her life. But they weren’t interested. They were in a hurry.

She began fighting, too, and they had to hit her a few times to subdue her. It took longer than it should have, but finally they shoved her out the door as well. As with the banker, they watched her fall, screaming, to her death.

Two victims, no witnesses. And no bodies to be discovered. The sharks and the deep water would see to that.

Crabbie patted Cat on the shoulder twice.

“OK, let’s turn back,” he told the pilot. “More treasure awaits.”

6

COLONEL CAT WOKE up the next day, worn out and hung over.

He’d bought a large bag of crack after the third flight with the Muy Capaz, joining the pirates in a seedy Bimini bar once their work was done and smoking it all. He’d returned to Florida just before sunrise, flying the sixty miles from Bimini to Fort Lauderdale in a narcotic haze. Landing, putting the plane away, driving to his condo in Cooper City: it was all a blur.

He didn’t mind helping the Muy Capaz—he had no conscience, no qualms when money was involved. But he couldn’t keep falling into the same pattern of behavior that the pirates always did: get a bunch of money and blow it on drugs and booze before the night was through. That’s exactly what happened last night.

His bedroom TV was on. Through bleary eyes, he saw nothing on the news crawl that mentioned any missing persons in the Bahamas. This was usually the way it went. It would take the owners at least a week to locate their chartered yachts; only then would they suspect something was really wrong. And by the time the Bahamian cops realized the Muy Capaz had struck again—well, it was a pretty good bet they wouldn’t be calling a news conference to blab to the world about it. And because Cat never left a paper trail, when it came to who he flew and where, there was little chance anyone would connect him to the disappearances.

So, it had been clean and quick. If he just hadn’t spent all his share …

He finally rolled out of bed only because his phone started ringing and would not stop. A pair of wealthy bachelors was answering his ad. They needed a discreet ride over to an isolated cay used by couples craving privacy.

Cat took the gig for only one reason.

He needed more dope.

*   *   *

AN HOUR LATER he arrived at Fort Lauderdale to find the customers waiting for him.

One man was large and dopey-looking; the other was small and muscular. They had a lot of luggage and were dressed like people who were experiencing the tropics for the first time, sweaty and sunburned. Prime pigeons.

Cat wearily loaded their luggage onto the plane, got the men settled into seats up close to the cockpit and took off.

As always, as soon as he turned east, he started up a conversation. They talked about the weather, the seas, the Bahamas themselves.

Cat gave them his usual spiel about the mysterious islands—but then, thinking they might enjoy a free tour above Via-grass Cay, called over his shoulder: “So, are you two a couple?”

The next thing he knew, cold steel was touching the top of his spine.

Crash Stacks leaned forward and pushed his pistol deeper into Cat’s neck.

“A couple of what?” he asked him.

*   *   *

THE ARADO FLOATPLANE appeared over the tiny unnamed cay just after sundown.

The four hung-over pirates waiting on the sandy beach forced themselves to their feet. Shaky as they were, they retrieved their weapons from their Boston Whaler and watched the floatplane come in for a landing.

None of the pirates wanted to go out on another foray; they’d celebrated last night’s crimes all too well, and now were paying heavily for it.

But when Colonel Cat contacted them and said he had another couple of Conchy Joes, real suckers, who appeared to have money, the pirates—now almost penniless again—knew they had to do the gig if just to recoup some of what they’d squandered the night before.

The floatplane taxied up to the deserted beach. The pirates waded out to it as the plane’s rear door opened. The youngest pirate, nicknamed Jumbey, was assigned to carry the team’s ammo. He had the clearest view of what happened next.

The first two pirates reached the open door and suddenly fell backward into the water. And just as suddenly, that water turned blood red.

At first, Jumbey thought his fellow pirates had hit their heads on the plane’s door or something. But then their limp bodies floated past him, and he could see what had happened.

Both had been cracked on the skull.

Jumbey looked up to see two men standing in the plane’s doorway, do-rags hiding most of their faces. They were aiming huge assault rifles at him and the remaining pirate.

Strangely, one of these men had a hook for a hand. The other wore an eye patch. Both were also wielding nightsticks, the weapons that had dispatched his two colleagues. But Jumbey knew these guys weren’t cops. Not typical ones, anyway.

They look more like pirates than we do
, he found himself thinking.

“Come toward us … slowly,” the man with the eye patch told them. “Start fucking around and it will be the last thing you do.”

Jumbey and the remaining pirate, the senior man known as Crabbie, were so stunned they could do nothing but follow the man’s instructions.

As soon as they got within reach, the masked men dragged them into the plane, took their weapons away and began beating them severely. Jumbey was especially cut up by the hook hand, which the man used to hit him about the head and shoulders, slicing him badly with each blow.

The pummeling ended long enough for Jumbey to look up from the floor of the plane to see Colonel Cat sitting in one of the passenger seats, his face also showing the effects of a beating, his hands tied in front of him with duct tape.

That’s when the plane started moving again.

All Jumbey could think was:
Who’s flying this thing?

*   *   *

BATMAN LOVED THE Arado floatplane.

It handled like a well-preserved 1930s sports car—and it looked like one, too. He’d flown jet fighters before his days in Delta Force, and he’d spent a lot of time piloting helicopters since Whiskey went into the pirate-busting business. But nothing moved through the air like the foldable Arado.

He was behind the controls now as the plane slowly climbed past 10,000 feet, heading east toward the open sea. Its human cargo of two pirates and Colonel Cat, all three bound by duct tape, was stretched out in the back, squeamish and squirming, as the plane rose even higher into the night sky.

Many things had happened in the past twenty-four hours, not all of them expected. Thanks to the information give to them by BABE, Whiskey had boned up on the Muy Capaz, and now knew they were indeed smarter than your average pirate band. In addition to their attention to detail whenever they swooped down on a hapless vessel, careful to leave no evidence behind, the pirate gang apparently maintained a hideout so well hidden, the Bahamian cops had long since given up trying to find it. Even with the promise of a large cash reward, no one had ever come forward to reveal where it was. And while the local law enforcement was sure it was situated somewhere among the hundreds of tiny islands along Bahamas’ outer cays, that’s about all they knew.

Whiskey wanted to complete this gig quickly and then maybe relax a little. So, they knew they had to do what the Bahamian cops couldn’t or wouldn’t do. They had to find the Muy Capaz hideout.

But they had to get on the gang’s tail first. As it turned out, the DVDs BABE had given them also proved helpful in doing this. Not the ones containing information from the Bahamian cops’ database; as Jennessa had said, those were practically useless. It was the information BABE had generated on its own—detailed records on past victims of the Muy Capaz—that held the key.