Tampa Star (Blackfox Chronicles Book 1) (23 page)

“Let him go,” Char shouted.

“We need to get out of here,”
said Michael as he watched a bright cluster rocket into the sky from the east.

“We have company,” said Triple G.  They had planted several pop-up flares along the main entrance road in order to be warned should someone—presumably police, enter the park.  The men

scrambled
aboard the Amphibian, Mitch pointed her towards the shoreline, stared into the darkness with his NVGs and noticed that a storm surge was driving tall white capped waves onto shore.

“The waves are pretty high,” he said.

“No choice, we don’t hit the water now, we’ll have the Sheriff’s Department’s SWAT team up our ass in about half a heartbeat,” replied Michael.  

“Well, they know we are here” said Eddie as he watched the star cluster ascend in a shower of minute rocket thrust.

Thanks Detective Obvious
, thought Trevino, but he just acknowledged the transmission, stopped the vehicle and ordered his men to dismount. Trevino wasn’t about to risk getting ambushed by some asshole with a high powered rifle or tripping a wire tied to a Claymore mine.  Eddie got out of his vehicle and joined him.

“We go on foot from here,” ordered Trevino. The men took up a tactical column—it was not something they normally practiced, but most of the team was ex-military of the shooter variety, so it came naturally to them. The flare had the desired effect—it slowed the cops advance to a crawl. 

Trevino dispatched the sniper team to observe and report back and they took off at a jog, cutting away on a side trail as they were all accustomed to the trails, both because they trained here on occasion, but also because it was one of the best beaches in Florida and they often brought their families here. 

The sniper team radioed about ten minutes later that they are conducting a visual sweep of the main cantonment area. A few minutes later, came a call that they had spotted what appeared to be five bodies scattered around the parking lot.

“One of them is moving—I think it’s a woman,” said the spotter. Eddie heard the transmission and was overcome with dread.

“Call the Paramedics and the M.E.” ordered Trevino.  The rest of the team arrived at the bunker complex about five minutes later.  They stared at disbelief at the carnage.  It reminded Trevino of a lopsided firefight he had been involved in when his Ranger Company ambushed a group of Taliban in some God forsaken village in
Helmand Province. One of his platoons humped a steep hillside, hit the summit and found a file of a dozen Taliban walking down a dry creek bed a few hundred feet below. It was after this that his Rangers coined the phrase “as easy as shooting Taliban in a dry creek bed.” Such was the black humor of his merry band of warriors.

The Special Weapons & Tactics Team swept into the crime scene in a modified wedge formation and secured the perimeter, lest
some bad guys still be around. The team medic quickly verified the casualties and found Eddie kneeling over a prostate woman in a wetsuit and lightly slapping her face.

“Let me in here,” ordered the medic. He sat her up and began to dress the cut on the back of Marilyn’s head as Eddie kneeled next to her holding her hand and whispering quietly.

“Chill out, Eddie, I’m fine,” she protested.

“Not, exactly, said the SWAT Medic, you’re going to need at least seven stiches to close the gash on your head—try not to talk, you probably have a concussion.” 

“Eddie, Handley was here, she whispered, I couldn’t tell if he was here with them or trying to get the gold—either way, he’s dirty.” Eddie nodded, too flabbergasted to reply.  He started to say something, but the medic shooed him away as he radioed for the stretcher they carried in the back of the team vehicle. 

Eddie snapped out of the daze and realized he was not doing his job—he sought out Lieutenant Trevino and found him standing on the sand berm, peering down into the ruined remains of the steel airshaft with
an aluminum flashlight.

“Apparently, they found what they were looking for,” said Trevino, offhandedly.  He looked at Eddie with a quizzical expression and said “Gold?”

“Maybe Fool’s Gold,” Eddie replied.  “I need your men to secure the crime scene until we can make a thorough examination.”

  “Sorry, Eddie, but you need to order in a few patrols so we can get out of here—no one knows what additional havoc these madmen are going to wreak.”

“How do you think they got out of here?”

“It was in one of those amphibious vehicles,” shouted Marilyn from the pavement below, still being treated by the Paramedic.  “You know a goose or something, except it was blue and had a dolphin and manatee painted on the side.” 

“She must be delirious,” said Trevino. 

“You mean a Duck? A six-wheel-drive amphibious truck manufactured by General Motors Corporation during World

War II, used for transporting goods and troops over water and for crossing beaches during amphibious assaults?” he asked. 

“Yes, Eddie, one of those—now, please shut the fuck up—you’re giving me a headache!”

Trevino looked at Eddie, drew his handheld radio and called dispatch.

“Ask the Chief- call me on my Blackberry.” He then turned to Eddie, “he doesn’t order the Maritime unit out, we lose those cocksuckers;  they get out of the water, switch vehicles for something with a lower profile and they are gone like….….” Trevino paused, unsure of an analogy.

“Shit through a Duck?”      

***

Handley had run down the beach to the park’s two hundred foot long wharf that jutted out into Mullet Sound. Sally sat on the bridge of his yacht about two miles offshore, his yacht rocking in heavy seas. 

The Hatteras was built on a rugged Deep V hull and wide beam giving her superb sea handling ability even in the midst of
twelve foot seas.  The radar drew what appeared to be an unbroken squall line blanketing the shore from fifty miles out in the Gulf.  His captain used to run drugs between the Yucatan and the Florida Keys in a Cigarette boat before U.S. Customs and the Coast Guard got really good at interdiction.  The Guard put snipers armed with a .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifle in a Seahawk helicopter to put an end to such activities. One shot in the engine block would usually stop the boat. If not, then an incendiary round to the fuel tanks certainly would.   

One of the additional features that came with the yacht Sally had taken as collateral was a partially enclosed lifeboat with a double shell design that looked like a sideways teardrop.  Even in the unlikely case of complete flooding, the lifeboat was still able to stay afloat. The boat bobbed out past where the sea was breaking and Handley signaled the boat’s driver with his flashlight to come in and pick him up.  

Handley had to jump several feet on top the open stern of the boat lest the mate risk colliding with the dock. He landed heavily, banging his elbow against the door to the enclosed passenger compartment. He was too old for this shit.

“Where are the rest of them” asked the mate.

“Don’t ask, just get me to the yacht,” Handley replied angrily.“What the fuck, Sally!” Handley exclaimed in pain and surprise after the old man struck him across the face.

“I warned you not to fuck up, you stupid cocksucker,” replied the old gangster, fighting the temptation to shoot the corrupt cop.

“We can still find them,” said Handley anxious to calm the situation, lest he have to beat the old man to death on the bridge of his own boat.  Handley pulled out the tracking device and held the screen up to the old man’s face. “They are less than three miles away, traveling east along the southern side of Tampa Bay, we can easily catch them.” 

***

“Fort Lonesome, ever heard of it?” Char asked Mitch over the roar of the engine.

  “Yeah, sure,” replied Mitch.

“There is a boat launch about a half mile past these mangroves,” said Char, indicating the marine preserve they were passing on their starboard side, “exit at the launch and follow the road south, I’ll direct you from there.”

Located around the intersection of State Road 39 and State Road 674 in the Southeastern corner of the county was little more than a crossroad across Tampa Bay from St. Pete. It was said to have gotten its name in 1929 when an inspection station was located there to inspect all fruit coming up from South Florida during the Mediterranean fruit fly outbreak. The place was so desolate; they posted a sign designating the place Fort Lonesome. It was still nothing but fruit orchards and a few factories and Char figured out it would be a good place to land and off load their precious cargo.

“Something’s coming up fast from behind us!” Michael shouted over the ro
ar of the Duck’s diesel engine. He was wearing the NVGs and could hear more than see the shadow of something dark displacing the water through the sheets of rain pelting his face.  He and Triple G brought their weapons to the ready, but whatever was behind them broke wide to starboard and seemed to pass by.

A few moments later the hood of the Duck exploded in a flurry of sparks, smoke and fragmented steal as impacting rounds shredded it.
Spotlights illuminated and blinded the occupants of the suddenly disabled amphibian.

“Hello assholes,” said the unmistakable voice of Guy Handley. The yacht sat high in the water, at least
six feet above the Duck, bow first—whoever was at the helm knew enough to limit the amount of silhouette exposed as a target.   

“Say hello to my little friend” yelled Handley in a mock Cuban accent as the water to the starboard side of the boat erupted from the impact of automatic weapons fire.  Whatever Handley was armed with was more powerful than an assault rifle, of that Michael was sure. 

It made the unmistakable sound of a M240B, the 7.62 machine gun, something that had replaced the M60 and would be easy to obtain, especially for a gangster like Sally.

Jeez, this guy and his movie lines,
thought Char,
the only one he wanted to hear Handley utter was the gurgling sound Luci Brasi made while being garroted in the Godfather. 

Michael tapped Triple G on the arm, “follow me” he said as he slipped over the port side of the crippled Duck, with AR
-15 in hand. Triple G rolled off the stern, cursing as he hit the water because he had forgotten his assault rifle on board. 

Handley fired at the stern and then into the water, but both of the marines had remembered their training and gone deep to avoid the impacting rounds. Someone on board shifted the spotlight around, trying to locate the overboard marines, but the black, churned up water left few clues.

“Looks like your marines abandoned you Char!” shouted Handley. “Throw me the mooring line and then you and the rest of

them
can begin offloading the gold before that old relic sinks,” he ordered.

Suddenly, a flurry of shots rang out from the back of the Duck—Jimmy had Triple G’s assault rifle and fired blindly at Handley—the rounds impacting harmlessly against the yacht’s bulkhead. Handley, expertly pointed the M240B at Jimmy and fired a short burst, hitting him squarely in the chest and stitching a line of bullets down his right side—nearly cutting the convict in half.  What was left of Jimmy slumped down behind the
seat.

“Been waiting to do that for over thirty years!
   I enjoyed that more than I did killing his little cousin!” He shouted at Char.

“Now throw me a line or I’ll kill the rest of you right n
ow and load the gold myself.”

Char was too shocked and disgusted to do anything but comply with Handley’s instructions.  Once the line was secured, someone obscured by the searchlight pulled the crippled Duck as close as the surging water would allow. 

Michael found Groves under the Duck and pulled him to the bottom, about eight feet below, nearly panicking the EOD Marine. Michael was trained to confidently operate in zero visibility conditions, with or without underwater breathing apparatus, but the EOD Marine’s training in the water was extensively less. Michael grabbed his companion’s arm and pushed off from the sea floor toward the yacht. Groves’ lungs felt as if they were ready to explode and he had to consciously fight the urge to open his mouth and inhale, he kicked as hard as he could to keep up with Michael. They surfaced on the port side of the boat— just as Triple G could no longer fight the urge to open his mouth and he surfaced with a mouthful of water. He began to cough, but stifled it to a muffle.

The deck stood about five feet above them—out of reach for most people, but Michael was a Recon Marine who had acquired all sorts of little used knowledge about boarding boats.

He remembered that the Hatteras 80 had a swim up deck on the stern and they slowly swam in that direction. The stern was left unguarded—the marines quickly boarded, assumed a tactical crouch, opened the stern door to the main salon and burst forward towards the bridge, intending to kill or beat whoever they encountered and then neutralize Handley’s M240B.

As far as Michael was concerned, the gloves were off. They moved through the main salon at a fast tactical rush with weapons at the ready. The bridge was up a short staircase at the end of the large, well equipped galley.

Michael bounded up the stairs, burst through the opening and surprised the two men at the helm—a skinny surfer with a blond beard and a crew cut in a Rip Curl wife-beater and board shorts and an ancient looking fat man with a bull neck, doing his best to look rakish in a yachting jacket and Captain’s Hat.

Sally sat in a white leather captain’s chair seeming to supervise whatever the mate was doing. Michael fell upon
Sally Boots with focused fury. The gangster might have been considered a tough guy when Kennedy was President, but now he was just a geriatric sack of something that needed a beating.  Michael hit him with a half butt stroke in the solar plexus knocking him out of the elevated chair and the old man fell heavily unto the deck.

The mate had been occupied with operating the searchlight from a joy stick on a remote control panel. He moved to intercede, but Michael moved fluidly from where he had struck Sally and slapped the mate across the chin with another butt stroke—apparently, bayonet training in boot camp had not been lost on him.

The impact of the blow caused the mate to pull the joy stick down and Handley watched the beam fall off the men in the Duck to a spot in the water—he knew immediately that something was amiss on the bridge. Sally looked up from the floor, his mouth full of blood, looked at Michael and then to Triple G and mouth one word.

“Well” said the gangster.

Groves sighed audibly and held the barrel of the Sig Saur at Michael’s chest; “Drop the weapon Mike.”

“What the fuck, G!”

“Sorry, man, Sally Boots was one of my best customers for C4. My place is in trouble and he bailed me out, I am into him for over 200K.”

“Shit man, you would have earned more than that on this job,” said Michael angrily.

“He offered me a better deal—forgiveness of the loan and a quarter of the haul. Hey, don’t feel bad, it’s just business—the better offer won!”

Michael dropped the weapon.
He had badly miscalculated. Unfortunately, it was too late for Monday morning quarterbacking. Handley turned and leveled the machine gun at the bow looked at Michael and then laughed when he realized Groves had a gun on him.

“Hit him, like he hit me!” Sally Boots ordered.  Triple G didn’t hesitate; smacking Michael across the chin with the Sig.  Michael was stunned, but remained on his feet.

“Hit him again,” commanded Sally and Groves did so.  This time Michael seemed to lose his balance falling to the deck and moaning. His hand slid down his ankle to where he kept a Tarsus five shot revolver, tucked into a nylon and Velcro ankle holster.

“Get up”, ordered Sally. 

Michael leaped to his feet, leveled the barrel of the snub nose at the immediate threat and fired two shots into Groves’ chest. He pointed the gun at Sally and then the First Mate as he made a sudden lunge for the AR-15 on the deck. Michael fired twice more, striking the man in the face. He screamed and then slumped to the floor. 

The bridge’s windscreen exploded as a hail of 7.62 rounds impacted—apparently Handley was aware Michael had turned the tables.  Michael dove to the floor to avoid what surely would be another cascade of high velocity, copper jacketed 7.62 rounds and waited. Nothing happened. He rose cautiously to his feet, looked out through the bullet ventilated wind screen and could not see Handley. A moment later, someone struggled on board the bow from where the Duck sat. Michael watched mesmerized as Mitch climbed aboard while still hefting the Duck’s anchor—apparently having used it as a bat to knock Handley off his feet.  He was on his knees attempting to recover the machine gun as Mitch swung again, this time hitting Handley in the jaw, sending his body sprawling against the port side of the pilothouse. A few seconds later, Char climbed on board carrying one of the sandbags full of gold. 

He poked his head inside the bridge and smiled, “Better help us unload the Duck, she may not be afloat for long.” 

Michael kicked Sally in the stomach, “Get on your feet old man and help them load the gold,” he ordered. 

Trans loading the gold was slow given the choppy seas caused both vessels to undulate up and down while the heavily laden bags had to be swung upward five feet from the low lying deck of the Duck onto the Hatteras. When they were done, Michael took his two captives on a quick tour of the yacht, selected a small head, zip tied them together and locked them inside.  He then dragged the two bodies to the bow and covered them with a canvas tarp he found in the engine room.

Mitch tried to start the engine on the Duck, but it was of little avail—it turned over weakly, but would not start.

“She’s broker than a stripper’s promise,” he said to no one in particular.  Char smiled at the imagery. “She may not be the same one that got me through Korea, but it felt like she was.  It’s going to be sad to see her go,” said Mitch with a sad frown.

“What do we do with Jimmy?” Michael asked from the bow of the yacht.

“I’ll take care of him,” replied Char.

He took a line and lashed it to Jimmy’s legs, attached the Duck’s anchor, eased the body into the water and tied the other end of the line off to a cleat on the deck of the yacht.

“We’ll bury him at sea when we reach deep water, after we dump the other two—least we can do is not bury him with these two cocksuckers.  Jimmy may have been a criminal but he was never a traitor!” said Char with a little emotion.

Michael handed Char the same type of tracking device he had found attached to his pickup truck three weeks ago. “Does this look familiar?” Somewhere along the line, Triple G had sold them out, insuring that Sally and Handley were never too far from the gold.  He didn’t know when, but he didn’t care.  Triple G had been living on borrowed time for longer than Michael knew him—EOD guys always were and being indebted to a gangster like Sally Boots exponentially decreased the odds that he would live a long and healthy life.   

The bags sat in the center of the Hatteras’s main salon They were all tired and sore, but the moment they were waiting for had finally arrived. Char tore open a bag and began examining the Double Eagles one at a time. They looked dull and the weight felt wrong. He shifted through dozens before selecting one and biting it. Satisfied, he placed it in another pile.

“Rumor had it that Simon Block couldn’t quite scrape together the million in gold he wanted to display on the
Star of Tampa”

“You’re shitting me!” exclaimed Michael “They are all fake?”

“I didn’t say that.”  Gold was about $170 dollars an ounce in 1974. Today it is about $645, and I have been told that he was able to buy about two thousand gold coins; he had the rest of them faked.  So, if there 2000 real gold coins here, we are looking at just over $1.2 million.”   

None of them had eaten since the night before, so Michael broke into the food stores in the galley, which were surprisingly well stocked. Char checked out the beer situation, just one would work wonders, given what they had been through.

They sat at the polished African mahogany table and scarfed burgers while drinking Sally’s Peroni Beer. After the three; Char, Mitch and Michael had two burgers a piece, the discussion turned to what to do with their two prisoners.

They tried to convince Mitch to join them, given he had more than once proved his usefulness, but the old man
demurred. He was left off at a pier near a waterside bar in Tierra Shores with more than enough money for a cab and a new boat, for that matter.  

Every fiber of his being told Char that he should shoot Sally Boots and Handley and send them to the briny deep, but he only killed when he had to and it was hard to make an argument that he had to kill the toothless old gangster and a corrupt, washed up cop.

Sally Boots and Guy Handley where brought to the stern—still secured with zip ties and placed in the motorized lifeboat. Michael gave them what he estimated to be enough gas to make it back across the bay, drained the rest, threw a dull dinner knife into the cockpit and launched it into heavy seas.  Char took the helm and headed out the mouth of Tampa Bay. 

They cut Jimmy’s body loose once they had passed under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and headed due south along the coast. If luck was with them, they would reach Naples by
morning, refuel and head for Key West.  After that, the world was their oyster.  

***

Handley was badly banged up—Mitch had used the Duck’s anchor to sweep his legs out from underneath him and then smashed the anchor down on his jaw—luckily the old man had struck only a glancing blow, otherwise he could have crushed Handley’s skull. He sat huddled in the corner of the lifeboat, curled up in a little ball, while Sally piloted the lifeboat back towards his waterside estate.