“This isn’t up for debate,” Crocker said. “A young woman’s life is at stake.”
“They’ve got our passports,” the man said, pointing outside. “They monitor everything.”
“Who?”
“The guardias and dockmaster. They’re nice guys, but all business.”
“Don’t worry about your passports. I’ll get you new ones,” said Crocker. “What’s your name?”
“Darrell,” the man answered.
“Okay, Darrell,” Crocker offered. “You’re gonna start the engine and act like you and your wife are taking a little excursion down the coast.”
The red light on Crocker’s radio flashed. He answered it. “What?”
It was Mancini asking him if he was okay.
Crocker said, “I’ve got a boat. We’re gonna pull out of the marina in a couple minutes and head west. It’s a white cabin cruiser named Seas the Day.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Follow us along the coast while we look for a place to load you.”
Crocker put the radio down and turned to Darrell, whom he was still holding by the shirt. “If we cruise up the coast, will that raise suspicion?”
Darrell looked at his wife, who shook her head. “We’ve got a fishing permit. Probably not.”
“Good,” Crocker said. “Let’s go.”
As he let go of Darrell, his wife said, “I don’t like this.”
“You’ll be doing a good thing.”
“Darrell,” she started, stepping into the doorway to block him. “Don’t.”
Her husband pushed by her and climbed the steps to the cockpit, where he started the engine and flicked on the transmitter.
“Tell me what you’re doing,” Crocker said as he knelt on the steps out of sight.
“I’m going to inform the dockmaster we’re leaving. You can listen if you want. He’s on channel sixteen.”
Turning back to the cabin, Crocker saw the wife reach for something in a drawer by the sink. “You want to die?” he asked, aiming the.45 at her. He pointed to a red-leather-covered bench on the wall opposite him. “Sit over there with your hands on your lap and keep quiet.”
She complied. Meanwhile, Darrell had steered the boat into the main channel. As they passed the dockmaster’s station, a man emerged waving a red flag.
Crocker asked, “What’s he want?”
“He wants me to pull over.”
At that same approximate moment, Crocker’s handheld flashed. “What?” he asked in a low voice.
“The girl threw up!” Akil exclaimed. “She’s choking.”
“Reach in her mouth and remove the breathing device. Then sit her up and clear her throat.”
Darrell steered the boat alongside the dockmaster’s station and idled the engine. A burly mustached man in a white shirt and blue shorts pointed to the ocean and shouted something in Spanish as seagulls circled over his head.
“Okay, boss. She’s better,” Akil said over the radio. “But she seems disoriented and is asking for her mother.”
“Calm her down,” Crocker whispered. “Tell her she’ll see her mother soon.”
Crocker watched from the steps as Darrell shouted back to the dockmaster, waved, and shifted out of idle. The boat puttered out of the channel.
Seeing the bay in front of them, Crocker asked, “What was that all about?”
“He was telling me that fish are biting farther west near Mariel,” Darrell answered, donning a pair of sunglasses and a white captain’s hat.
“West is good, but hug the coast.”
A mile or so later, he spotted a pier at the end of a stretch of beach and instructed Darrell to pull over. The SEALs loaded Olivia Clark aboard as some local fishermen watched. Then Darrell set a course north toward Key West.
Shortly after midnight Sunday morning, the C-12 Huron that Crocker flew on landed in Virginia Beach. Relieved, exhausted, and sunburned, he drove himself home and pulled into the garage. The light in the kitchen, which Holly usually left on at night, was off. He figured that she and Jenny were still in Charlottesville attending the high school state finals soccer tournament and the bulb had burned out.
So he hit the button that activated the device that automatically closed the garage door and climbed the wooden steps to his office. As he entered, he was confronted by a familiar thick, sweet smell, which reminded him of death and caused the little hairs on the back of his neck to stand up.
He had returned the.47 and MP7A1 to the CIA officials who had greeted them in Miami, so he was unarmed except for the Leatherman knife he carried in his bug-out bag. In the dark, he set the bag on the office floor, then crossed to his desk and opened the bottom right-hand drawer, where he kept a 9mm automatic and six-inch suppressor.
Something told him not to open the door to the kitchen. So he quickly screwed on the suppressor and retraced his steps down to the garage and out the side door. The three-quarters moon had turned the sky a dull shade of blue, and frogs croaked from the marsh behind his house.
At the rear left corner, he checked to see if the small backyard was clear, then peered through the glass patio door. The moon that shone over his shoulder illuminated the gray-tiled kitchen floor. On the right, between the island and the stove, he saw something dark, which he made out to be the head of his dog, Brando.
He tapped the glass, but Brando didn’t move, causing Crocker’s sense of urgency to rocket from zero to a thousand. He’d been trained and selected for his ability to remain calm in the face of danger, but this was different. It was his dog, his house, and his fucking family!
He couldn’t remember when Holly had told him she and Jenny were scheduled to return, or even if she had related that information.
Trying to contain his rage and figure out what was going on, he circled to the other end of the house, then crossed the eight feet of lawn into the woods. He crouched behind a tall oak tree and looked over his shoulder to the other side of the house and the driveway to see if Holly’s Subaru was parked there and he had missed it when he drove in. That was when the cell phone in his back pocket sounded, playing the opening of “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Stones.
He quickly pushed the silence button. The call was from Mancini, so he let it go to voice mail.
Instead of wondering why Mancini had called, he was relieved that the Subaru wasn’t there, which meant that Holly and Jenny weren’t home yet.
He waited a minute and listened, in case someone in the vicinity had heard the phone. But nothing moved or sounded, except for the leaves of the trees gently rattling overhead.
He moved stealthily from tree to tree until he neared Cherry Oak Lane. A silver Toyota SUV sat parked to his left in front of one of the houses being built on the cul-de-sac. He studied it from twenty yards away. Through the windshield he made out the dark shadow of someone in the front seat.
Remembering what Sheriff Higgins had told him in Guadalajara about the viciousness and reach of the Mexican cartel leaders, he thought he knew who it might be. It could also be a cop from Fairfax, or another foreign enemy. That didn’t matter now.
Calmly, he circled left through the woods, over an old fence, around the bare wood skeleton of the half-finished house, to a Porta Potti standing near the curb. From that vantage, he was three yards from the back of the SUV.
The man in the driver’s seat was smoking a cigarette. Crocker saw white smoke waft out the side window and closed the gap quickly with the pistol ready, safety off. When he was halfway there, headlights climbed the hill at the other end of the lane and lit up the street. He recognized the shape of Holly’s Subaru as it braked and turned left into the driveway.
The man in the SUV flicked the cigarette out the window and opened the door. As sparks skipped off the asphalt, Crocker grabbed him by the back of his collar, spun him around, and squeezed him so tightly around the neck that the young man’s eyes started to pop out of his head.