Diego nodded and he and Mateo fled.
Puller shouted at the others in every language he knew to follow the boys to safety.
All the prisoners still alive were free now and escaping the room through the door.
Meanwhile, Mecho gutted one guard while he shot another. A pistol round tore through his left forearm, but he kept fighting with his right.
Puller was slashed on the leg by another guard’s knife an instant before he put a bullet in the man’s head.
The two men looked around and saw no more opponents.
Mecho grabbed blankets and attempted to beat the flames down. Puller snagged a fire extinguisher off the wall and hit it from the other side. Smoke poured out of the now dying fire.
Puller dropped the empty extinguisher, turned, and stopped.
Landry stood there with smoke misting around her. She looked like the sole survivor appearing from an apocalypse.
Puller noted that her gun was pointed directly at him.
He said, “I wondered where you had gotten to.”
“Sorry about this,” she said.
“Like hell,” said Puller.
She pulled the trigger two quick times.
The gun fired just as it was supposed to.
Yet Puller still stood there, unharmed.
She pulled the trigger two more times.
Again, her pistol fired twice.
And again Puller simply stood there.
“No body armor,” he said. “You can take a head shot if you want.”
She did, right between the eyes.
Nothing.
She turned when she sensed him behind her. Mecho ripped the gun from her hand and bent her arm behind her back. She cried out in pain as he drove her elbow to an angle it was not designed to go.
Puller took the gun from Mecho and slid out the clip.
“I carry blanks in my duffel, as a means to fire warning shots without doing any damage. I substituted them for your live rounds when I was getting the weapons ready. And if you got your hands on another gun and tried to kill us, Diaz up there had orders to take you out. It was probably why she was nervous, killing a cop and all. Goes against her instincts, I guess. Even when the cop is dirty.”
They all looked up to see Diaz pointing her weapon directly at Landry’s head with a determined look on her features.
Landry gasped, “If you knew, why did you ask me to come out here?”
“Simple. Friends close and enemies closer.”
“I don’t understand how you could have known.”
“It’s all a matter of timing, really, Cheryl. Just timing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d explain now, but we’ve got a few more things on our to-do list. And you’re going to help us cross them off.”
“I’m not helping you.”
“Yes you are.”
“Go to hell.”
It only took a second, but Landry whipped her body around and slammed a knee into Mecho’s crotch. He doubled over. She grabbed the knife from his belt and was about to deliver a killing strike to the back of his neck when the blade was knocked from her hand.
She turned in time to see Puller’s fist coming at her.
That was the last thought she had before Puller slammed his fist into her jaw.
She fell to the floor, unconscious.
Puller stood over her.
“Yes you are,” he said quietly.
CHAPTER 90
They had refueled the boat and were racing back to land.
The freed captives were still on the oil platform, but a Coast Guard cutter was—despite the storm—powering toward them as fast as it could. It had enough space to take them all on board and to safety on the mainland.
Diego and Mateo had wanted to come back on the boat with them, but Puller had refused. “You’ll be much safer on a Coast Guard cutter,” he explained. “I’m not even sure we can get this tub back to Florida.”
However, the tropical storm had made landfall and quickly lost much of its energy. The ride back was bad, but not nearly as bad as the ride out had been.
On the way Puller had gotten a cell signal and managed to make one more call. Carson had gotten on the phone when the conversation started to go downhill. Puller had watched in admiration as the one-star didn’t ask the man on the other end of the line what she would like him to do. She told him what he was going to do.
“This is a national security issue, Lieutenant. And the United States Army takes those very seriously. You have your orders and I expect they will be carried out with all the dispatch and professionalism that the uniform demands. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” came the immediate reply from the lieutenant, who was probably trying hard not to allow his voice to crack.
Carson clicked off and handed the phone back to Puller.
He smiled.
She said, “What’s so funny?”
“I guess I just like seeing you being a general.”
Halfway to shore, Landry had regained consciousness. Carson piloted the boat while Puller and Mecho focused on their new prisoner. Landry’s face was bruised by Puller’s blow and she looked angry and unrepentant.
“How?” she demanded of Puller.
“Like I said, timing.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“Lampert’s car blew up.”
“So what? I didn’t do it.”
“It blew up, according to Diaz, at one-fifteen. At one-sixteen you got a phone call while I was with you on the beach. You said it was from Bullock. But there was no way it could have been. Lampert would have had to find out what the hell was going on, call the police, and track Bullock down. He’d have to hear what happened and then Bullock might start phoning people. But you weren’t on duty. You wouldn’t have been the first person he’d call. All of that would take a lot longer than a minute. And just to be sure, I checked with Bullock by phone last night. He said you’d called him that night on the drive over to Lampert’s. Not the other way around. He said you’d heard something on the news about an explosion. The call you got was from Lampert.”
Landry shook her head. “That’s not enough, Puller. There’s no way you’d make a decision like this on something so skimpy.”
“I didn’t. I started to connect the dots. Lampert is from Miami. So are you. You both arrived here around the same time. After I started thinking about the timing of the call you got, I went into detective mode and started making a lot of phone calls. Your father. You said a guy on PCP shot him down at a bar.”
“That’s what happened.”
“I know. But I talked to your former police sergeant. What I found out was from that moment forward you were a changed person. You didn’t seem to care so much about doing the right thing. It seems that instead of wanting to get the scum even more badly after your father was killed, you went the other way. You ended up just not giving a shit. And then you got into business with Lampert and things really took off.” He paused. “I also checked on your condo.
Four hundred thousand. And your mortgage is less than fifty thousand. Cops don’t make that kind of money. At least honest ones. Maybe that’s why you wanted to live in Destin. I take it you never had anybody from the police force over for drinks. It was stupid of you to have me over, Landry. It made me start thinking.”
He looked at Mecho. “The Storrows were killed by someone on the beach. Mecho was there. He saw it. More to the point, he saw you. You pumped rounds into their heads and dragged them out to the surf. You’re plenty strong enough to do that, Cheryl. All that paddle- boarding you do, it would have been easy. Two old people, they weighed nothing to you.”
Landry said nothing but she looked at Mecho with hatred.
Puller continued, “And that’s why no one answered when you called Bullock and Hooper. They were under orders from me not to. I didn’t want you to think I was suspicious about you. Just them. Bullock didn’t want to believe that you were a bad cop, but
when I told him what I’d found out, he really couldn’t defend you.”
“So you say.”
Puller kept looking at her. “That stretch of beach with the sulfur. It is part of Paradise. I checked with Bullock on that too. It’s not regularly patrolled because nothing ever happens there. But he did tell me that one of his officers volunteered to check on it from time to time. Care to guess who that volunteer was?”
Landry still remained silent.
Puller drew closer to her. “And on that ‘patrol’ one night when you were really checking on the flow of slaves, you saw my aunt sitting in her Camry with a journal, observing and writing notes. She could barely walk anymore but she still wanted her independence. And she got it by driving in her specially equipped car late at night when it wasn’t so hot and humid. And she saw something one night. And she told her friends, the Storrows. They probably drove out there too and saw what my aunt had. And they came to you, Officer Landry. You patrolled their neighborhoods. They respected you. They told you what they had seen. And you pretended to take a report and then you shit-canned it.”
He drew even closer to Landry and slipped his Ka-Bar knife out of its sheath. “So you went down to the beach where you knew the Storrows liked to take late-night walks and you popped them in the head and dragged their bodies out into the water so the tide would carry them away.”
He drew still closer and held his knife up so the point was an inch from Landry’s throat. Diaz looked on nervously while Carson drove the boat but kept glancing over her shoulder while this scene played out.
Mecho sat there stoically holding his injured forearm and staring at Landry.
“But I think my aunt suspected you. You know, ‘people not being who they seemed’? She was very good at seeing through bullshit. And maybe you realized she suspected you. And so you went to my aunt’s house, stole her journal, and then took her outside and stuck her head in that pool of water until she was dead.”
“You can’t prove any of that,” snapped Landry.
Puller eased the knife blade forward at the same time he snagged her hair and jerked her head back. The big veins riding up her neck were fully revealed. He pressed the tip of the Ka-Bar directly against one of them.
“With the seas as bad as they are and how we’re pitching all over the place I could easily lose control of this blade. And it could easily sever all the blood vessels going to your brain.”
“That’s not exactly the way to get proof in a court,” Landry said. But she stared at Puller, obviously trying to read the intent on his features.
He stared back at her with deadly calm. He was in another zone right now, even more so than in the killing room back at the oil platform. He was as focused as he had ever been, like he was about to make a kill shot on a Taliban at a thousand meters under a hot sun where the margin of error was nearly zero. The whole world contained just him and Cheryl Landry.
“Who said anything about proof?” he said quietly.
Landry tried to smirk, tried to look like she was still somewhat in control of this situation even though she never had been and never would be. “You’re not going to kill me, not with all these witnesses.”
Mecho said firmly, “We went out with four and we came back with four.”
Diaz shrugged resignedly, and Carson said, “The ocean is a big place, Landry. Things get lost from time to time and never show up again. But scum will eventually sink to the bottom.”
Puller added, “As far as anyone knows you’re still supposed to be on patrol. You didn’t call anybody to say differently and I sure as hell didn’t.” Landry looked back at Puller. Now there were tears in her eyes. “Look, maybe we can cut a deal.”
“Maybe what you can do is shut up and I’ll tell you exactly what you’re going to do.”
“What incentive is in it for me?”
“You either do what I tell you to do or your ass is going into the ocean.”
Landry looked at the raging ocean, the gunwale barely a foot away. “You’re in the military. You can’t just kill me like that.”
“Oh, I kill people like you all the time.”
“I’m a cop.”
“No, you’re the enemy. I judge what you’re doing as a crime against this country and what it stands for. That makes you a terrorist in my book. And in my book terrorists have no rights. You don’t get to remain silent. You don’t get access to a lawyer. And I’m sure as hell not wasting my tax dollars paying for your ass to sit in an American prison. I will dump you right out there and the last image you’ll see before the sharks move in will be me.”
Landry gasped, sniffled, and coughed and was seemingly trying to look as pitiful and helpless as possible.
Puller didn’t respond to any of this.
She was no longer a young, beautiful, sexy woman.
She was repulsive.
She had forfeited her rights when she had helped to enslave others. When she had callously killed three old people who were simply trying to do the right thing. All while wearing the uniform.
Carson added, “You know, if you were in the Army, we’d just shoot you.”
Landry, seeing that Puller was not bluffing,
stammered, “What do you want me to do?”
CHAPTER 91
Lampert was on his yacht contemplating the implosion of his business empire. The operation on the beach had been compromised. There were at least four of them in on it. Puller, the woman with him. The giant.
And Murdoch, who he knew now was not whom she appeared to be.
He’d had a mole in his midst and didn’t even realize it until it was too late.
His associate, Winthrop, had already paid the ultimate price for bringing a spy to them, unaware or not. His dismembered body was sinking into the depths of the Gulf as Lampert sat on his luxury ship.
Lampert didn’t know where Puller and the others were. He had hoped that the giant would have been dead by now, but he’d been tipped off.
Murdoch.
He didn’t know whether she was a member of a rival criminal enterprise or was with the police, but either scenario was equally problematic.
Ironically enough, the Paradise police didn’t concern him. He had aces in the hole there. But he was concerned about Stiven Rojas. The man had given Lampert an ultimatum. And that had been before this enormous screwup.
He had cleared the warehouse and sent the product back out to sea. The storm had interfered with his plan, but only to a limited extent. His intent was to keep the prisoners there until he had located a new landing spot and then he would take up his business once more.
It probably wouldn’t be in Florida. His people were right now looking at the logistics of funnel- ing product through Alabama.
The oil platforms were a godsend right now. Oil companies had a certain amount of time after shutting them down to do something with them. Many were cut off below the waterline and towed to other spots to create artificial reefs. This was the cheaper alternative in many cases. Other firms chose to simply dismantle them completely. Other firms, having run out of money or gone bankrupt, simply abandoned them.
There was safety in numbers, and the number of oil platforms no longer in use in the Gulf was in the thousands. And they were spread all over. There was no way the Coast Guard or anyone else could check on them all.
But he couldn’t keep the product there forever. He would nail down a new landing spot and then start the shipments once more.
His next problem was obvious. Murdoch and the others. How much did they know? What would they do with that information?
Should I leave the country now?
Why wait until I’m arrested or have subpoenas served?
But what could they have on him?
There was no trail back.
Even if any of his men talked they had no proof. And he didn’t think any of his men would talk. Lampert had friends everywhere, including in the judicial and prison systems. This had been made clear to all people coming to work
for him. And if they weren’t sufficiently scared of him, they were of Stiven Rojas.