Chapter 5 Demand a Prenup

Chapter 5

Demand a Prenup

During my college years, I spent far more of my waking hours at the home of Coach Bobby Woodley than in the athletes’ dorm at UGA. On the list of reasons I loved being in my coach’s home, Laura Woodley’s lasagna ranked number one, but only slightly behind my favorite meal was their daughter, Elizabeth. She was bratty and loud, but she always seemed to be happy. She danced, hopped, and skipped everywhere she went, so, naturally, I called the teenager I saw as my little sister, Skipper, and the name stuck. Back then, it would’ve been impossible to convince me that I’d become anything other than a professional baseball player and that Skipper would be anything but that giggling girl everybody adored. The old adage says, “Man plans, God laughs.” A dancing career and pro ball weren’t in the cards for Skipper and me, but fate, the universe, or the hand of God tied the two of us together, each dependent on the other and sharing a bond even stronger than genetics. I grew to become the leader of an elite team of operators who were willing and capable of facing any foe, and Skipper became one of the finest intelligence analysts in the game. I’d found myself surrounded, outnumbered, outgunned, and running out of ammo all over the world, but Skipper’s calm, confident voice in my ear never failed to make me believe anything was possible, and so far, she’d never steered me wrong.

For almost a decade, Skipper’s lair had been the operation center on the third floor of our house at Bonaventure. From inside the op center, she had the power of a supercomputer at her fingertips, as well as an array of communication technology second to none. During an operation anywhere in the world, I could contact Skipper and the op center by using any of the thousand methods I had in my environment. Anything stronger than a smoke signal would find its way back to the analyst’s ears. As efficient as our operation was when Skipper was locked away behind the heavy doors of her cave, establishing comms with her from deep within the bayous of South Louisiana was a challenge.

I tried the cell phone, but it looked like some of Kenneth’s spirits were conspiring to block the transmission. Gator drew the satellite phone from his pack and tossed it to me. I snatched it from the air and scrolled through the contact list until Skipper’s name filled the screen. I’ll never understand technology, but the signal from the sat-phone must’ve been faster than the spirits.

Skipper answered on the fourth ring, but the roar of the wind made her almost impossible to hear. “Hey, Chase! You should be here with us. This place is amazing.”

“Are you in a wind tunnel?”

“What?”

I yelled into the phone. “What are you doing? I can barely hear you.”

I think she said, “Hang on a minute. I can’t hear you.” A few seconds later, the roar disappeared, and she said, “Can you hear me now?”

“Much better. How about me?”

She said, “Chase, you’ve got to come down here. This place is awesome. We spent most of the morning exploring a cave with pictographs, and we’re racing dune buggies now. I was winning until you called.”

“It sounds like you’re having quite the vacation. I’m a little envious.”

“Oh, it’s great,” she said. “I really needed this.”

Seven months before that moment in time, Skipper’s husband, Tony Johnson, was murdered by a sniper who was bent on killing every member of my team before finally putting a round in me as his coup de gras. We ended the gunman’s reign of terror, but not before he’d killed three people I cared about and brutally wounded my dear friend and teammate, Stone W. Hunter.

As any young woman would, Skipper spent a great many hours in tears over the loss of the man she loved, but hearing the laughter and joy back in her voice made me feel as though she may have turned a corner and was ready to live again.

She was vacationing on the island of Bonaire with the unlikeliest partner. Anya Burinkova, a former Russian SVR assassin, had once been the woman I thought I loved, but circumstances far beyond my control ended that relationship…or at least the romantic element of the relationship. The Russian defected to the U.S. and worked alongside my team and me on more missions than I can remember. Needless to say, my wife, Penny, wasn’t Anya’s biggest fan, but the Russian’s insistence on whisking Skipper away for an all-girls Caribbean adventure even made Penny smile.

I said, “I’m sorry to interrupt your vacation, but we need a little analyst support. It’s pretty basic stuff, so I can have Ginger or Celeste handle it if you’d prefer to keep playing.”

She said, “Yeah, about that… Celeste is with me, and Ginger is, well, let’s just say she’s unavailable at the moment. I guess that means you’re stuck with me. So what can I do for you?”

“Gator and I are still in Louisiana, and we need the goods on a company called Flambeau Exploration. They’re apparently an oil and natural gas exploration company, but that’s all I know.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“Oh, one of those,” she said. “Is it time sensitive?”

“Isn’t everything?”

“Okay. Give me a couple of hours, and I’ll get back to you with whatever I can find. Is there anything else?”

“Yeah. I’ll send you a license plate from one of Flambeau’s trucks, and I’d like for you to start a deep dive on a woman named Cecilia Lachaussee. I think Gator’s in love, and we need to know if he should demand a prenup.”

“Good for Gator,” she said. “Please tell me she’s cute, ’cause he’s yummy.”

“He’s listening on speaker.”

She laughed. “Good. He knows he’s hot. It’s no secret. Text me the spelling of the chick’s name, and I’ll see what I can find. Oh, and if I can’t find a picture of her, you’ll have to send me one. Celeste, Anya, and I have to approve before this goes too far.”

Gator said, “You’re making me blush, Skipper. Cecilia’s not as beautiful as you, but she can certainly dance.”

“Hey, I can dance.”

I said, “This is getting out of hand. Let’s focus. I’ll send you what we have. Get back to me as soon as you can, and tell Anya I said spasibo .”

Her tone turned stern. “That doesn’t mean anything dirty in Russian, does it?”

“Thanks, Skipper. Talk soon.”

I tossed the phone back to Gator, and he said, “That means thank you, right?”

I chuckled. “Your Russian is better than your Cajun.”

He tucked the sat-phone away. “What now, boss?”

I stood. “Let’s take a stroll around the neighborhood.”

“No thanks,” he said. “I’ve seen the neighbors. They’re ten feet long with a mouthful of teeth and a brain the size of a pea.”

“Are you talking about Mongo?” I asked.

“Not hardly. Nobody’s dumb enough to talk about Mongo like that.”

We stepped from the camper and into the morning sun and air so humid it felt like a blanket wrapping around us. We walked a quarter mile to our beached amphibious Cessna Caravan. The plane was tied in three directions to prevent her from taking a leisurely stroll of her own if the bayou water ever decided to flow anywhere.

I tossed the keys to my partner. “You take the big-boy seat. I call shotgun.”

He stopped in his tracks. “I can’t fly that thing.”

“Sure you can. You just don’t know it yet.”

We pumped the pontoons dry and performed the preflight inspection before untying and climbing inside. I walked Gator through the engine-start checklist, and soon, the Pratt & Whitney PT6 was whistling one of my favorite songs. There’s something so elegant about the sound of a turbine engine taking her first breath in the morning.

“Okay, Hotshot. Put the water rudders down and back us out of here.”

He looked at me as if I’d just told him to fly to the moon. “I don’t know how to do either of those things.”

I showed him the water rudder control. “These have to be down for taxiing. Otherwise, we can’t steer very well, especially going backward.”

He lowered the lever. “I’m still not sure about this whole going backward part.”

“It’s simple. Just pull the prop control over the detent and all the way to the aft stop. That’ll cause the blades of the propeller to move to a negative angle and push us backward. Don’t try it on the ground, but it works great in the water.”

After a bit of a wrestling match, he finally had the Caravan pointed into the wind with plenty of open water in front of us.

“All right, Lindbergh. Pull the yoke into your lap and slowly advance the throttle. Just like in the One-Eighty-Two, steer with your feet. When the nose comes up, look around the cowling to make sure we’re not going to hit a pirogue or a gator. Both of those have the right-of-way.”

He followed my instructions, and just as described, the nose climbed upward several degrees and blocked our line of sight. He leaned left, and I kept my toes on the pedals and fingertips on the yoke, just in case.

“Keep that yoke in your lap until the nose comes up a second time. When that happens, gently ease the back pressure and let her pick up some speed.”

As the pontoons came out of the water and onto plane, the nose fell and slowly rose again. I helped with the yoke as our speed quickly increased.

I called out, “Airspeed alive and building. Make us go straight with your feet.”

As we accelerated across the black water, I could see the tension in his hands.

“Just relax and glance at the airspeed. As we pass seventy knots, apply just enough pressure to fly us off the water.”

He gripped the yoke as if he were planning to rip it from the console, and I said, “Relax. This is supposed to be fun. There’s your seventy knots, so give it just enough back pressure to fly.”

He did, and our pontoons left the water.

“Now it’s a normal climb. Take us to five hundred feet, and let’s see if we can find that gator hole of yours.”

Once we were an airplane and not a boat, Gator was right at home. He reduced the power, set the propeller RPM, and settled into a beautiful cruise at five hundred feet above the bayou. He said, “You know, in its own way, it’s kind of pretty from up here. Who knew five hundred feet could make such a difference?”

“Life is all about perspective,” I said. “And I can prove it.”

He turned to me. “I’m probably going to regret this, but how can you prove it?”

He took the bait.

“What did the snail say when he was riding on the turtle’s shell?”

“I’m sorry I asked,” he said.

I laughed. “He said, ‘Slow down, you maniac!’”

He shook his head. “Is this going to happen to me when I get old? Will I start laughing at my own corny jokes and spouting what I believe are words of wisdom?”

I slapped him on the shoulder. “Only if you’re lucky, kid. Only if you’re lucky.”

We toured the seemingly endless bayou at a hundred and ten knots, but every speck of water looked exactly like every other spot until Gator pointed through the windshield. “Is that it?”

I took the controls and rolled us onto our right side so I could examine the slough. “I believe you’re right. You have the controls. Take us down there.”

He reclaimed the controls and began a descent.

I asked, “How low can we legally fly? Just in case the FAA is watching…”

He never faltered. “Five hundred feet AGL, except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In those areas, we can’t fly closer than five hundred feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure unless we’re maneuvering to take off or land.”

“You’ve been studying. I’m impressed. Now, try not to hit those trees.”

He banked around and followed the winding bayou until it led us back to Kenneth’s shack.

I said, “Let’s see where it goes the other way.”

We climbed above the trees and followed the waterway until it intersected a wider body of water that turned south. I watched the world below open up into the massive Gulf of Mexico.

I said, “That’s a handy little waterway to the Gulf.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” he said. “That would make a nice escape route for somebody who wanted to drop off a few body parts and head for open water.”

I studied the route and the maze of bayous intersecting what appeared to be a nearly straight shot to the Gulf. “Take a look out there. There must be a few hundred sloughs and offshoots that would be better for hiding body parts.”

Gator leaned forward and surveyed the wetlands below. “You’re right. It’s a long way to Kenneth’s bayou. Whoever’s dumping the body parts must have some affinity for Kenneth’s corner of the world, or they’re dumping parts in several locations and we only know about one.”