Chapter 31 I Didn’t Know

Chapter 31

I Didn’t Know

My collision with the console felt like I’d been hit by a train, but my world didn’t turn black. Everything in front of me faded out of focus and slowly back into crystal-clear reality. At the center of my temporary new reality was the 9mm muzzle of Cecilia’s pistol trained on my face.

I blinked away the pain and raised both hands between her and me. “Take it easy.”

Shawn’s words dripped from his mouth with an ominous ring. “To hell with easy. Go ahead and flinch. I’ll drop you where you stand.”

My partner’s diversion gave me the fraction of a second I needed. Cecilia spun to redirect her muzzle toward the SEAL, and I ripped my Glock from its holster and centered it on her chest. “You can’t win, Cecilia. Put it down.”

She spun back to me, panic in her eyes. “No! You put it down!”

“Listen to me. If you shoot me, you’ll be dead before the bullet hits me. You can still walk away from this. Just put down your pistol.”

Her breathing quickened, and her eyes darted back and forth between Shawn and me. Terror filled her face, but she made no move to surrender. That concerned me. A terrorized, gun-wielding killer is exactly the opposite of predictable, and I needed something to make sense.

She sidestepped her way down the starboard gunwale with her pistol still raised in an effort to improve her angle on both of us, but Shawn and I weren’t going to let that happen. He had the positional advantage, so I provided the distraction that would make his next move possible. With my head clear and my vision strong, I hopped to my feet, landing in a crouch. The commotion drew Cecilia’s eyes and muzzle, opening Shawn’s window, and he took full advantage of her mistake. The SEAL planted a palm on the deck and swept her feet with an outstretched leg. As she battled to catch herself, Shawn attacked, shoving his shoulder beneath her left arm and driving her pistol hand high into the air above her head.

When a man the size and shape of our SEAL establishes a bear hug, the recipient is powerless to break free. Hurting Cecilia wasn’t our intention, but controlling her was absolutely essential, and we were one move away from establishing that control.

It was my turn to strike. From my crouched position, I thrust forward and ripped the pistol from Cecilia’s hand, rendering her practically harmless—or so I thought.

I believed the fight was over, but she clearly had other ideas. Using Shawn’s forward motion, she let her body fall backward and over the gunwale. Shawn’s bear hug never weakened, and they disappeared into the black water as if welded together.

A thousand thoughts blew through my mind in that instant, but the memory of chopping a Russian assassin to death with a propeller in Havana Harbor took center stage. I grabbed both throttles and shifters and shoved them into idle and neutral to stop the spinning blades of the props. I had no doubt that Shawn would win the aquatic battle, but I didn’t let that confidence pull my eyes from the water. One or both would surface soon, and I would join the fight.

“CIC, Sierra One.”

Skipper said, “Go ahead, One. What’s happening out there?”

“Shawn’s in the water with Cecilia. She pulled a pistol on us, but she’s disarmed now.”

“What about Gator?”

“We don’t know yet, but we’ll question her as soon as Shawn gets her calmed down.”

“Did you say they’re in the water?”

“Affirmative. She pulled Shawn overboard.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Cecilia, all one hundred pounds of her, pulled a two-hundred-fifty-pound SEAL overboard?”

“It happened pretty quickly,” I said. “It’ll be over soon.”

“That explains why I lost his sat-phone.”

“Could that be what happened to Gator’s phone track?”

Before she could answer, a muffled gunshot sounded from just beside the boat, and a shockwave bubbled to the surface. I leapt to the starboard tube and stared into the roiled, murky filth. A discoloration surfaced, but it was almost impossible to tell the difference between the shades of black. I couldn’t imagine what was happening beneath the surface, but everything inside me wanted to dive into the murk and join the fight. Manning the boat in that moment was the priority, but that didn’t stop me from itching to get wet.

“What’s happening?” Skipper asked again with significantly more force than before.

“Stand by.”

She groaned but didn’t ask again.

Just when I thought I might never see either of them again, Cecilia’s head and shoulders popped out of the water at the stern of the RHIB. I instinctively threw out a hand to grab hers, but she didn’t reach up. Instead, she bobbed on the surface like a cork with no sign of her hands or Shawn.

Still unsure how she was capable of floating upright with her head a foot above the water, I slipped two hands beneath her armpits and dragged her over the transom and onto the deck. To my utter disbelief, her hands were flex-cuffed behind her back.

She coughed and spat bayou water from her lungs as I positioned her upright against the back of the seat. “Are you all right?”

She jerked and fought against the restraints. “Untie me! Now!”

“Just calm down and hold still while we sort this out.”

A rustling in the water caused me to turn, expecting to see Shawn climbing from the bayou and into the boat, but instead, I watched an alligator carcass float to the surface with the top of its head bearing a massive exit wound. The next item to surface was, thankfully, Shawn’s head, which bore no exit wounds, but he wore the look of an angry, injured man.

“Are you okay?” I demanded.

“She bit me!”

I glanced between the deceased gator and Cecilia. “Which one?”

“The dead one,” he said. “Now, help me aboard.”

Shawn asking for help was so far outside his typical behavior that I feared he had joined me in the missing limb category. We clasped wrists, and I hauled him aboard. His left calf bore the wounds of a mouthful of alligator teeth.

“That doesn’t look good,” I said.

He motioned toward the water. “Take a look at the other guy. I’d say I won.”

I wrapped a towel around his leg and asked, “Does it need a tourniquet?”

“No, I shot her before she could clamp down. It just needs to be cleaned and sewn up.”

He turned to Cecilia, still flex-cuffed and dripping wet. “Did she bite you?”

She shook her head. “Why are you doing this to me?”

I abandoned Shawn’s wounded leg. “What?”

“Why are you doing this? It’s wrong.”

“Why are we doing this?” I said. “We’re not doing anything except trying to get our man back. You shot Gator. We heard you do it. If you tell me exactly where he is, this will go a lot better for you.”

She squinted and shook water from her hair. “Yeah, I shot him because I figured out what you’re doing. I should’ve seen it right from the start, but I believed you were really here to help us.”

I planted a knee between her feet. “What are you talking about? You should’ve seen what from the start?”

Kodiak nestled the RHIB alongside the timber boat and wound a line around the midship cleat. “Is everything all right?”

I placed a hand on Cecilia’s knee so I could look away and still know if she was on the verge of trying something foolish. “Shawn took a nasty gator bite, but he fared better than the gator. As you can see, we’ve got Cecilia trussed up, and we’re having a little conversation. Any word from the CIC?”

Cecilia flinched, and I pinned her knee to the deck with just enough force to get her undivided attention. “Don’t move, and don’t make me hurt you.”

“Why would you hurt me? I didn’t do anything.”

I held up a finger toward Kodiak, and he seemed to fully understand the necessity of my dealing with our prisoner before continuing our chat.

I said, “I’m going to make this real simple. You tell me where Gator is, and you get to live.”

She trembled, and that surprised me. She was genuinely afraid of me. “I don’t know where he is. Yeah, I shot him, but only because you—whoever you are—and the other guys are down here to kill Uncle Kenneth so Kenny can inherit the land and the mineral rights.”

I furrowed my brow and leaned in. “What are you talking about? We’re not here to kill Kenneth. We’re here to find out who’s trying to run him off his land with the body parts.”

“Yeah, that’s the story you tell, but I know it’s not the truth. You’re working for Kenny, and this land isn’t his. It’s not his. Do you hear me?”

She squirmed and struggled against the restraints, so I said, “Calm down. We’ve got a lot to figure out, and we’re starting with Gator. Where is he?”

“I told you I don’t know where he is. I just barely hit his arm when I shot him. I wasn’t trying to kill him. I just needed to get him away from me when I put it all together.”

I shook my head. “All of this has gotten out of hand, and we need to slow down and focus. We’re going to find Gator, and you’d better pray he’s alive. Otherwise, you’re going to prison.”

She bucked even harder. “You can’t send me to prison.”

I pulled my credentials pack from my pocket and flipped it open for her to see. Even though I’d never be a real Secret Service Agent, the Department of Homeland Security would still claim me if anyone called to check the validity of my creds.

I said, “You might be surprised what I can do.”

“You’re a fed? Oh, my God. Did I shoot a fed? Is Gator…?”

I folded and pocketed the badge and ID. “Where is my man?”

The fear she seemed to have of me appeared to deepen for a whole new reason. “I swear I didn’t know. I swear. He never identified himself as a—”

“Listen to me. Tell me exactly where you were when you shot him. If anything other than that comes out of your mouth, the flex-cuffs become stainless-steel cuffs, and you’ll sleep on a federal government cot every night for a very long time.”

Her voice broke. “We were on a sandbar. It doesn’t have a name, but I can take you there. I swear I didn’t—”

“That’s enough.”

I glanced up. “Disco, head back to the sandbar and start an expanding radius search. We’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”

The chopper headed off, and I turned back to my captive. “I’m going to put you in that seat behind you, and you’re going to behave. Right?”

She nodded, and I helped her to her feet. We shuffled around the seat, and I deposited her on the cushion.

“I’ve got one more question. How did you get my RHIB to run the bayou autonomously?”

“It’s a function of that kind of autopilot coupled with the radar. This boat has it, too. You just program it to keep itself centered between the banks and open the throttle. It’ll run until it hits something or runs out of gas.”

I huffed. “I knew that.”

Kodiak turned from RHIB pilot to combat medic and dressed Shawn’s wound after a liberal dousing of iodine and a tetanus shot.

I stepped behind the console and familiarized myself with the controls. My hand landed on the throttles at the same instant Skipper’s voice filled my ear.

“Uh, Sierra One, I’ve got a guy on the phone who says he needs to talk to you. He says his name is Cory Campbell.”

I tried to match the name to my mental Rolodex, but it wasn’t coming to me. “I don’t know anybody by that name. What does he want?”

“He says you took him to the hospital in New Orleans.”

“Oh! I do know him. Patch him through.”

After a collection of clicks, Cory said, “Is this Chase?”

“It is. What’s going on, Cory?”

“I’m sorry to be calling you like this, but, well… Truth is, I didn’t know who else to call.”

“What is it?” I asked. “I’m kind of busy at the moment.”

“Yeah, I figured you were, but me and Billy… You remember my brother Billy, right?”

“Yes, I remember. Now, what is it?”

“Well, me and him found this old Cajun guy talking out of his head and saying all kinds of stuff about his house burning down and a whole bunch of other stuff that didn’t make no sense.”

I cut him off. “Where is he now?”

“Well, he’s with us in the truck.”

“Is he hurt?”

Cory said, “He ain’t exactly in good shape. Somebody done a real number on him, and he kept telling me to call you. Look, I don’t want to get wrapped up in—”

“How far are you from an emergency room?”

“I don’t know. We’re maybe an hour from Houma.”

I was suddenly and violently being tugged in three directions. Finding Gator wasn’t optional, and neither was getting Kenneth LePine to a hospital. The third tether tugging at me was a terrified girl planted on a seat six feet behind me who may have burned down her uncle’s house and tried to kill him. Two of the three tugging lines had to be severed, and I was the only one holding a knife.