Pine island coast florid.., p.23
Pine Island Coast Florida Box Set, page 23
part #1 of Pine Island Coast Florida Series
The photo was grainy and the lighting poor, but the image of her father’s face was unmistakable.
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A lizard, a pelican, a seagull, a stray cat, all sat along various points of the Norma Jean pier. The darkness was warm and quiet. A low hum hung in the atmosphere of the dark, early morning hours and steadily grew louder. The lizard scattered, the pelican stared, the seagull darted off, and the cat hissed as the airplane pitched toward the ocean-end of the pier and slammed into it, hurling fiberglass, pilings, fire, diesel, a cat, and one ton of Colombian-picked, Mexican-processed cocaine across a two-hundred-yard radius, all of it spraying into the sky, riding on flame.
Black packages filled with white powder bobbed along the settling wreckage, and a battered and unbreathing body floated among them.
Shallow Breeze
BOOK 2
Chapter One
The best way to find out if you can trust
somebody is to trust them.
— Anonymous
Ellie O’Conner stood near the end of the Norma Jean pier, her belly button nuzzled against the yellow crime scene tape that prevented curious onlookers from proceeding any further. She ducked beneath it for the third time that morning and took a few steps toward the end of the charred and fractured wood, all that remained of the last thirty feet of the pier. Three strong pilings stood almost naked out of the southern waters of Pine Island Sound, and splintered wood jutted out like broken bones. The last of the Coast Guard’s 32-foot Transportable Port Security Boats were moving away in the distance, leaving the DEA and the Lee County Sheriff's Office to handle the investigation.
Late last evening, as Ellie was trying to drift into sleep, a heavy sound popped through the still evening air, the vibrations of which were felt two miles up Pine Island. She had slipped on a tank top and a pair of shorts and had run a half mile to the southernmost point of the island. Gloria and Fu Wang were already there, gathered up with a handful of locals who lived a couple streets closer to the pier than Ellie did. As it turned out, an amphibian aircraft carrying a large load of cocaine had crashed into the pier and splintered into thousands of pieces. Its cargo had hurled out to every direction on the compass. One of the plane’s wings had ended up in the bottom floor of the Berensons’ home, the home closest to the pier. Other than that, the debris seemed to be contained to the water. Government boats had trolled the waters for the last seven hours, searching the fringes of the mangroves and shoreline for rogue kilos of cocaine. The pilot’s body was found lying upside down in the water, washed up under the front half of the pier. So far, no identification had been made. No one was optimistic that it would be.
Ellie set her hands on her hips and scanned the water twenty feet below. Mark Palfrey, her partner with the DEA, drew his twenty-foot Angler close and shouted up. “See anything else?”
Ellie kept her eyes on the water beyond him. “No. I think we got everything that stuck around here. Anything else would be carried out by the current by now.”
“I’m going to check the perimeter of Cresent Island again,” he said. The Angler’s outboard revved up and carved a wide arc through the water away from the damaged pilings before shooting out through the channel markers.
“Hello, ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you to step back behind the tape, please.” The heavy Texas accent gave him away. Ellie turned to see Tyler Borland grinning at her and holding two cups of coffee. In the last eight months since Ellie had left her role as a case officer for the CIA, Tyler had become a close friend, with tiny sensations occurring every so often that Ellie thought could be the harbingers of something more. He owned Reticle, a shooting range in North Cape Coral and could generally be expected to make Ellie laugh. After a night of no sleep, his face was a welcome reprieve. She walked toward him and ducked back under the tape.
“This one’s for you. Straight up,” he said.
Ellie reached out and took the paper cup. “Thanks, Tyler.”
“I guess you’ve been out here all night?” he asked.
She nodded and took a sip. “Yeah. We’re about wrapped up. We have the side of the plane and the engine, so we’ll see if the serial numbers show anything.”
“Think they will?” he asked.
“I doubt it. That plane probably came from Cuba, owned by someone far from there.” They started walking down the pier toward The Salty Mangrove bar. “The Coast Guard spotted him on radar coming in from the southwest ten minutes before he crashed. With as much as he was bringing in on that plane, I’m sure he’ll be a ghost where any identification is concerned.”
“Why would his flight plan include crashing into your uncle’s pier? Sounds goofy if you ask me.”
Ellie smiled but ignored him. Something else was bothering her. “The fact is, he was flying around here. Here, Tyler. Not Miami or New Orleans. Seems that our miles and miles of coastline have become favorable to the wrong kind of tourists. Gas being stored near the north end of the island, Pete Wellington gone missing, and now a plane loaded with blow crashing into the pier. Folks are already furious about Adam Stark’s murder. This place is known for being laid back and quiet, not for shipments of illegal drugs by the plane load.”
“Yeah, I can see the brochure now,” Tyler said. “‘Beautiful, iconic pier to crash into. Take advantage of this offer before it’s gone forever.’ How much do you think was on there?”
“So far we’ve recovered around six hundred kilos. That plane could bear a little over ton. Hopefully, we can find the rest before the wrong citizens do. We’ve shut down this entire area of the Sound until we’re satisfied that there isn’t anything else out there. Some of it was burned up in the crash.”
“Bet you didn’t expect all this excitement when you signed up, did you?” he asked.
Six weeks ago Garrett Cage, the head of the Fort Myers division of the Drug Enforcement Agency, had convinced Ellie to come work for him as a part-time contractor to help him find connections to local drug sourcing. Last night one such connection had literally fallen out of the sky.
“I don’t know that I would call it excitement. More like inciting anger.”
“Gloria said Fu had gotten up to use the restroom on their houseboat when the plane hit. Said it literally scared the pee right out of him.” Tyler said.
“Now that’s an image I wanted in my head.”
“Hey, one-legged men have to pee in the middle of the night sometimes, same as anyone else. Don’t be racist.”
“Racist?”
Tyler winked down on her, and Ellie had a sudden urge to nudge him over the edge. “You’re dumb,” she said.
“I thought we agreed that I was detail-oriented.”
“Hey guys. Can you come help with this?” Warren Hall, Ellie’s uncle, was standing near the bar in front of several cases of water. As soon as he had received the call about his pier, Warren had come back up to Pine Island in the dark hours of the early morning from the second marina he owned down on Marco Island, forty-five miles south.
“What’s up?” Tyler asked.
“I want to get all these bottles into the ice chests over there. With all the government agencies coming and going today, I figure they’re going to get mighty thirsty at some point.” Each of them picked up a case of water and headed toward the ice chests that sat nearer to the bar.
“Sorry about your pier, Major,” Ellie said, using her nickname for her uncle.
He shrugged. “It can all be rebuilt. I feel bad for that man in the water, whoever he was. He didn’t look any older than you.” They got to the YETIs and set their burdens down. Major carefully pulled something from his pocket and handed it to Ellie. “You or the Sheriff will want this. I found it floating on a piece of lumber when I went out earlier. Amazing it didn’t get incinerated.”
Ellie took the small piece of paper and turned it over. It was a picture, charred at the edges, soggy with seawater. The image was clear: a young woman and a teenage boy. Both with olive skin and black hair. They were smiling, the boy near to laughter.
Tyler leaned in, giving it a long once over. “Man, that’s awful,” he said. “There’s no way to find the pilot’s family and tell them the news?”
Ellie shook her head. “They don’t typically let these guys do the runs if they’re in the system. That way if they get caught they can’t be traced to any particular drug network. Whoever he worked for will get the news, if they haven’t already. That’s a lot of cocaine he lost. I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever’s in that picture will be made to work it off.” Ellie shuddered.
Major looked at Ellie. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, thanks. Angry, I suppose.” She shook her head. “This kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen around here.”
“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m glad you’re working with the DEA now. If anyone can help find the fools trying to stop all this nonsense, it’s you, Ellie.”
“Thanks, Major.”
“I’m going to put up some surveillance cameras around the marina once I’m done rebuilding the pier,” he said. “Maybe it could deter this kind of thing. Of course, the plane crash is a fluke, I know, but who knows what they’re doing right under our noses?”
“Let me know when you do that, and I’ll come help,” Tyler said.
“Will do.”
Ellie sighed and took a sip of her coffee. “I’m going to head back home, you guys.”
“Rest up,” Major said “I’ll be doing the same thing in a little while.”
“You want me to walk you back?” Tyler asked. “You look pretty washed up.”
She tried to smile. “I’m all right. I just need a shower and some sleep.”
“Okay. It’s your loss. I’m a good walking companion. Even better than a dog.”
“Surely that’s debatable.”
“Hey…” Tyler lowered his brows like he was hurt.
Ellie laughed and threw up a goodbye wave as she walked away.
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Ellie took the half mile walk back home slowly and finished the last of her coffee. She wasn’t going to sleep. She knew that. The events of the crash had kept her up all night, and, while her eyes were heavy and her feet tired, her mind still felt sharp. She wouldn’t have slept anyway. Not after what Ryan Wilcox had given her. The previous evening, a few hours before the crash, her former boss at the CIA had given her an envelope that left her mind and heart racing with questions she never imagined she would ask.
Ellie arrived at her front door and unlocked it. It hadn’t moved a foot before her Jack Russell shot through it, out across the yard, and darted down the street. She waited, and like she could set her clock to it, he came blazing back into the yard thirty seconds later and leapt into her arms. She lifted her chin away from his lathering tongue. “Hey Citrus...all right, boy...get down. Come on. Want to go jump in the water?” The dog yipped, then yipped again. Ellie walked through the small living room. She stopped just past the kitchen table and slid the rear door back on its aluminum track. Citrus darted out into the narrow patch of Saint Augustine grass and leapt off into the waters of the canal as might a flying squirrel intent on switching trees.
Ellie set her keys on the table and stared down at the large picture Ryan had left with her. She sat down and focused in on every detail. Just like she had done on and off for an hour last night. She studied every line, every shadow, every hue. The photo left no doubt that she was looking at a recent picture of her father. It had been almost three years since she’d last seen him, and even in the poor quality of the surveillance camera he looked older, his face seamed with deeper lines and set against tired eyes.
Frank O’Conner was supposed to be dead. A gas tanker had crashed into his car two years ago, not three miles east of here, and incinerated everything within forty feet of it. Her sister Katie was so angry with Ellie for missing the funeral that she still wouldn’t speak with her, still wouldn’t respond to Ellie’s emails or voicemails. At the time Ellie was already entrenched as an undercover journalist in Kabul and couldn’t get out without risking the entire operation. That was not something Langley would let her do. The last time Ellie had seen her father was the night he drove her home from Judge Stanton’s home. She had gone there to pick up the Judge for a surprise party to be held in his honor on Sanibel Island. Instead she had come across four goons who had picked that evening, of all evenings, to make the Judge a prisoner in his own home and ransack his belongings. Ellie had spent the next hour strategically subduing them. She had left early the next morning to board a flight for the Middle East where her next, and what ended up being her last, stint with the CIA would begin.
Citrus ran up the small ramp Ellie had built for him and stood in the grass and barked. He chased his tail. He barked again. If Ellie didn’t know better, she would have thought that her dog had found some of that missing cocaine and helped himself to a fair measure. Citrus chased his tail again, spinning like a top, and then ran and made another spread-eagle plunge into the canal’s slow-moving water.
The picture continued to sit there staring at Ellie like an alien. As if a creature had come from another world and was sitting silently at her table. She blinked underneath the unbelief that blanketed her. I went to your grave last week. I’ve seen pictures of them setting the urn into the ground. I have your death certificate filed in my office down the hall. You have a headstone. The perplexity that came with trying to believe he was alive almost made her dizzy. Thinking that all the grief and the emptiness she had felt over the last two years was for naught. That all this time she was grieving a father that had never left this world. He had only left her life.
A confused, subterranean anger, deep down and hidden, was starting to glow hot down within her.
Ryan Wilcox had given her the picture and assured her that she would have questions. He was right. But this wasn’t something where she could just call him up and expect to get the answers she wanted. No, this was a matter that was fully in Ryan’s hands. He would tell her what she needed to know when he was ready for her to know. As it was, he was probably overstepping protocol just providing her with the picture. So why had he? And what about her father? How in the world did Ryan know anything about him? What was Frank O’Conner doing and whose side was he on?
A thought had occurred to her last night as she lay on top of her bedspread staring at the ceiling. A thought that had never occurred to her before, that her own father might be working for the CIA. That maybe he always had been working for the CIA. All she and Katie had ever known was that their father worked for the Department of Justice. They even knew where his office was in Fort Myers. He had officed there for nearly thirty years. Many employees of the Agency used the DOJ as a career cover.
But then he might not work for Langley at all. The picture showed him in what looked like a subway car, wearing a heavy trench coat and a fur papakhas on his head. Where he was, it was cold in July. He looked tired, a distant look in his unusually dark eyes. He could be on the wrong side, whatever side that was.
The silent testimony of the picture meant the run-in with the gas tanker was staged. It meant that Frank O’Conner had faked his own death and let his daughters and Major, his best friend, grieve it for two years now.
She sighed. The whole scenario was quickly becoming a tragedy of curiosity and truth.
Chapter Two
Ellie had rested that morning, closed her eyes, but sleep would not come. Finally giving up, she took a hot shower and let the water refresh her tired muscles. She got dressed, fed Citrus, and then made the trek off island to the Fort Myers DEA office. Garrett Cage, the Special Agent in Charge, had returned this morning from meetings at headquarters in Virginia. She and Mark were finally able to meet with him to review the results of their recent investigation into the movements of local drug networks.
And to discuss the plane crash.
Garrett was leaning back in his swivel chair, his hands steepled, his black hair, like usual, perfectly combed. Mark and Ellie sat in the two designer armchairs in front of Garrett’s desk. Mark’s long legs stuck out of them, and he shifted uncomfortably.
“Let’s get to it,” Garrett said. “I have a conference call in twenty minutes. Recap what you have so far.”
“Well, it’s pretty straightforward,” Mark started. “So far we have two things going on at Mondongo. The old boat on the tiny key is intermittently laden with gas. Crews drop it off, and a separate bunch gets it quickly thereafter to fuel their boats across the Gulf and back to Mexico. Or Cuba.” He flicked his finger across his iPad, kept reading his notes. “Next, we have one Eric Cardoza working at the private island as a low level security guard, apparently running the cameras from behind the desk. As we mentioned to you before you left for Virginia, Ellie and I saw him at a known stash house at Ridgeside subdivision, and that implicates him enough to keep an eye on him and see where his trail leads. For starters, we both think it’s a safe bet to look at the company that has him on their payroll: Hawkwing Global Security.”
Garrett scribbled a couple notes on a yellow pad sitting on his desk.
“Should we get eyes on the gas stations along the coast?” Ellie asked. “If these guys are filling fifteen to twenty cans of gas all at once, we can review CCTV.”
Garrett tapped his pencil eraser on pad. “That’s not a bad suggestion. I would, but this office doesn’t have the bandwidth to do that. I’d have to partner up with the FBI for something like that, and to be honest I’d rather work this ourselves right now. Let’s get eyes on the little key where the boat is and see if we can grab these guys when they do another gas run.”
“Fair enough.”
A tap came on the glass door to Garrett’s office, and a middle-aged, dark-skinned lady poked her head through. “Sorry to interrupt. Jet just called. They’ve picked up another sixty-eight kilos since this morning. Locals out on a pontoon found twelve of them. And I emailed some info on Hawkwing Global to all three of you.”
