Mortal Dilemma Read online

  I had no idea what time it was. I knew I’d been awake for at least a few hours, but I hadn’t been able to keep up with how much time had actually elapsed. My headache had eased some and was now more of a dull pain than the pulsing, raging agony it had been when I first awoke. My shoulders were cramping from the way they were bound around the back of the chair. I was dehydrated and my body was demanding fluids. I called out to my captors. “Are you guys out there?”

  Saif opened the door. “What do you want?” His English was heavily accented.

  “Water.”

  “No.” He started to close the door.

  “Saif,” I said.

  He came back into the room. “How do you know my name?”

  “Saif Jabbar.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Saif, I know your name and I know you have a family.” I was taking a shot in the dark on this one. If he had a family, maybe I could gain some leverage. If he didn’t, he’d just laugh at me and walk out. I had nothing to lose.”

  “You know nothing about my family,” he said. “You’re lying.”

  “I didn’t say I knew anything about your family. I just know that you have one.”

  “Everybody has a family.”

  “I don’t. Jock Algren doesn’t. Youssef doesn’t.”

  “If you don’t know anything about my family, why should I care?”

  “Because some very bad men who work for my government know all about your family. Right now, they’re probably moving in to capture them, maybe kill them. They know who you are and where your family lives.”

  “You Americans would never be able to get to them.”

  “That’s what bin Laden thought. If you kill me, our intelligence agencies will track you to the end of the earth and kill you.”

  “Then I’ll be a martyr and go straight to paradise.”

  “Your family will be dead by tomorrow if I’m not released. Do you want that?”

  “My brothers and sisters are very young. Even you Americans would not kill them just because we kill you.”

  “Did you ever see the results of a drone strike, Saif? It’s nasty and indiscriminate. It’ll kill anybody nearby. Including women and small children. They’re in our sights and if you try to call them on one of your cheap cell phones our National Security Agency will be all over you. Your family will be dead before they can move.”

  Saif stood for a moment, as if pondering the information I’d just given him. Then he turned toward the door.

  “One more thing, Saif,” I said. “You bring me some water and when I’m out of here and you’re dead or in prison, I’ll make sure that nobody bothers your family.”

  “You have that power?”

  “If I wasn’t important to our government, do you think Youssef would have gone to all this trouble to kill me and J. D. Duncan?”

  Saif left the room and quickly returned with a bottle of water. He put it to my mouth and turned it up. I don’t think I’d ever tasted anything so delicious. I got two or three swallows before he snatched it away. He put the cap back on and slugged me in the face with his fist. Hard. I felt my broken nose flatten some more and the pain was so intense I wanted to scream. Not a chance. Never let the bastards see your pain. Blood started to flow from my nose again, running down my chin and onto my chest. I had no way to stop it. I bowed my head and let it flow. Saif left the room without another word. A small victory, nonetheless. I got my water and Saif was rattled.

  As he left the room, I heard a helicopter overhead. Probably the Coast Guard.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7

  “I THINK WE’VE got them,” Steve Carey said, putting his phone back in his pocket. “Only one of the houses has a heat signature. It shows three people in the one on the northwest tip of the island.”

  “That’s right next to the sandbar, right?” J.D. asked.

  “Yeah. The one with all the rowdy folks on weekends.”

  “There’re usually boats out there during the week, too,” Jock said.

  “Any day that the weather’s decent,” Carey said.

  “We’ve got to take the chance,” Jock said. “Go in now.”

  The Longboat Key deputy chief of police, Martin Sharkey, had joined the little group in Matt’s living room. “I’ll alert the Manatee County SWAT team,” he said.

  “I don’t think that’ll work, Martin,” Jock said. “I know the SWAT guys are good, but we’ve got to surprise the terrorists. I doubt more than two men are involved. Matt killed the rest of Youssef’s team, and they haven’t had time to bring in any replacements. I don’t think they’ll be watching the island, but they’ll be on alert in the house. I just need one more man. The two of us ought to be able to handle it.”

  “One more woman,” J.D. said. “I’m going, Jock.”

  Jock smiled. “That’s what I meant. J.D. and I can handle it.”

  * * *

  Jewfish Key is a thirty-eight acre island that hunkers near the northern end of Sarasota Bay and is accessible only by boat. There are six widely spaced waterfront houses surrounding a seventeen-acre preserve that has been left in its natural state. The island is bordered on the north by Longboat Pass and on the east by the Intracoastal Waterway. Longboat Key lies a few hundred yards to the west across a channel of open water. Some of the houses have their own docks and there is a larger common dock at mid-key on the eastern side. In early November, the owners of the homes are still somewhere up north, waiting out the holidays before flying south.

  Jock and J.D. borrowed a boat from one of Matt’s neighbors, a twenty-four foot Sailfish center console. They boarded it with a cooler and a beach bag full of towels and pistols. They were dressed in shorts, t-shirts, and athletic shoes. Jock had a ball cap pulled low on his forehead, hiding his baldpate. Dark sunglasses hid part of his face. J.D. wore a large straw hat with a wide brim and big sunglasses. Her hair was tucked up under the hat. If they were spotted, they’d just be another couple out for a day on the water.

  A boat from the Longboat Key Fire Department, manned by firefighter/paramedics, was stationed at Moore’s Stone Crab restaurant just across the lagoon from Jewfish Key, but not in sight of the house. It shared a dock with boats from the Longboat Key police department and the Manatee County sheriff’s office. Both of the law enforcement vessels had a contingent of SWAT team members aboard. A Longboat Key fire department ambulance was parked in Moore’s lot. Everybody was at the ready, awaiting a radio call from Jewfish.

  The neighbor they borrowed the boat from lived on a bayou a block down the street from Matt’s house. His boat was moored to a dock behind his house. Jock and J.D. clambered aboard and idled down the bayou until they reached the bay. Even if one of the terrorists was smart enough to keep an eye on Matt’s house, he would not have seen the boat leave from there.

  When they reached the bay, J.D. put the boat on plane and headed south. She rounded the southern tip of Jewfish and moved into the Intracoastal, running north. When she came to the intersection of the Waterway and the Longboat Pass channel, she turned westward and ran for the drawbridge before changing course back around to the south. She idled onto the sandbar, and dropped anchor just out of sight of the house that was their target.

  During the summer, J.D. and Matt had visited Jewfish with Sammy Lastinger and a young woman whose father had rented one of the houses for a month. The man had been a gracious host and showed them around the island. J.D. remembered a path that ran through the scrub and approached the house in question from the south. The path ended at a small outbuilding built of coquina rock that sat at the edge of the property only a few feet from the house. J.D. told Jock that the local lore was that the man who built the house had lived in the coquina hut during his home’s construction. It would provide good cover, and J.D. was pretty sure they could sneak in that far without being seen.

  They climbed out of the boat and waded across the sandbar until they reached the shore, holding their weapons above
their heads. Each had a belt and holster containing a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. Jock carried an old mint-condition M-1 military rifle that he’d found in Matt’s closet and J.D. had Matt’s twelve-gauge shotgun. Loaded for bear, she thought.

  They came ashore on a small grass beach that was crowded at the landward edge by Australian pine trees, a non-native species that the locals loved and the environmentalists hated because they thought the pines were crowding out the local flora. As they walked the path, Jock and J.D. were shaded by the overhanging trees. The path was brown with fallen pine needles, and wide enough for the golf carts that were the only vehicles allowed on the island. The quiet was broken by the calls of birds and the almost silent crunch of their shoes on the trail.

  They walked carefully, quietly, and at a fast pace. As they neared the coquina outbuilding, they heard what sounded like a man moaning. Jock eased toward the door, which for some reason faced the path rather than the house. He put his ear to the door and listened for a couple of moments. He walked back to J.D. and whispered, “Somebody’s in there and he’s crying or moanng, like he’s in distress. It doesn’t sound like a child. I don’t know if the door is locked, but I’m going to try to open it. You cover me with the shotgun. If it’s one of the terrorists, don’t hesitate. Blow his ass away.”

  She nodded and they moved next to the door. Jock put his finger on the latch, looked at J.D. She nodded again. She was ready. Jock pulled on the latch and pushed the door open, stepping back out of J.D.’s line of fire. Nothing. Jock looked into the one-room hut and saw a young redheaded man lying on a single bed, his arms bound to the bedrails. A piece of gray duct tape covered his mouth. His cheeks were wet with tears. He was looking at them, his eyes wide in horror, the moaning starting again.

  “I know you,” J.D. said. “You work on the fuel dock at Cannons.”

  The man nodded.

  J.D. moved toward him, stood over him. “I’m a police officer. I’m going to remove the tape on your mouth, but if you make any noise whatsoever, my friend here is going to gut you with his big knife. Do you understand me?”

  The man nodded and J.D. jerked the tape from his mouth. He took a couple of deep breaths and said, “They’re going to kill me.”

  “Who?” J.D. asked.

  “The men in the house.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Only two that I know of.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Am I going to be in trouble?”

  “It depends.”

  “I was paid to borrow a boat and bring them out here.”

  “Who paid you?”

  “A man named Charlie.”

  “Charlie who?”

  “I don’t know his last name. He was on a sailboat moored over at the Seafood Shack.”

  “A smelly guy with a beard and dirty clothes?”

  “You know him?”

  “In passing. Was he the one who paid you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred bucks.”

  “How did you meet Charlie?”

  “I clean boats when I’m not working at the fuel dock. I was in the Seafood Shack marina working on one and he came over to talk to me.”

  “And he paid you to borrow a boat and bring these guys out to Jewfish?”

  “Yes. Well, he told me these guys might need to get to Jewfish and he was leaving town.”

  “Charlie said he was leaving town?”

  “Yeah. He paid me and gave me a cell phone. Damn thing wouldn’t work like a regular one, but he told me to hang on to it and if the guys who needed to get to Jewfish needed me, they’d call.”

  “What if they didn’t call?”

  “Then I’d get to keep the two hundred bucks. Charlie said I could throw the phone away.”

  “Where did you borrow the boat?”

  “From Cannons.”

  “David Miller let you have it?”

  “No. I just borrowed it. Didn’t ask anybody.”

  “You stole it.”

  “No. I was going to bring it back. That’s borrowing, not stealing.”

  “Where were you supposed to pick up the men?”

  “They went with me.”

  “Where did you meet them?”

  “At the Seafood Shack.”

  “How did you get to Cannons?”

  “In my car.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “I left it in the chapel’s parking lot, just down the street from Cannons.”

  “Did you come straight here?”

  “No. It was crazy. First we went to the condos that are around the corner from the marina. They got off the boat and walked around and came back. They were speaking some kind of foreign language, so I don’t know what they were saying.”

  “Then what?”

  “We went to Mr. Royal’s house, and they brought him to the boat. He was out like a light. I didn’t know what they were doing.”

  “You recognized Mr. Royal?”

  “Sure. He’s a good tipper. He brings his boat in to fuel up and he’s a friend of the boss, Mr. Miller.”

  “Weren’t you curious about what they were doing?”

  “Yeah, but they told me to shut up and do what I was told.”

  “What did you do after you got Matt into the boat?”

  “We came here. To Jewfish. They had a map and one of them disappeared for about twenty minutes. The other one stayed with me and Mr. Royal. He had a gun. Then the other guy came back driving a golf cart. They put Mr. Royal in it and we drove to a house. Then they put me in here and tied me up. They said they’d need me to drive the boat back to Longboat, but they’d kill me and drive themselves if I caused any trouble. But they were going to kill me anyway, weren’t they?”

  “I’m sure that was their plan. I’m going to put this tape back on your mouth, but we’ll be back to get you in a few minutes.”

  “Okay. Do you think Mr. Miller will fire me because of this? I just borrowed the boat. I didn’t mean no harm.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Buddy. Buddy Murphy.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about your job for several years, at least.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  J.D. looked at Jock, who’d been standing quietly in the corner of the room as she interrogated Buddy. He nodded and J.D. put the tape back in place.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7

  J.D. AND JOCK had looked at the house on Google Earth. There were no ground-level pictures, but they could see the layout of the surrounding area and the roof of the house. The trees were too thick to give them any sense of what the area surrounding the house looked like. They’d had a pretty good view of the house as they idled onto the sandbar and knew it was, like most waterfront houses built in the past thirty or forty years, on stilts. The first floor of the house was eight to ten feet off the ground.

  They stood behind the coquina hut and Jock peeked around the corner. There was a sweeping stairway, positioned on the east side of the building and leading up to the long veranda that ran the width of the house. The front door opened off the veranda at the top of the stairs. That was going to make it difficult to get inside without being seen.

  Large picture windows fronted on the two sides of the house that overlooked the bay. There was a smaller window that overlooked the little hut. Maybe a kitchen window, Jock thought. Still, if anybody were looking out of it, they’d have a good chance of spotting him and J.D.

  “We need to make a run for it,” Jock said. “We need to get under the house. They won’t be able to see us there.”

  “Got any ideas on how to get up those stairs without being seen?”

  “Not yet. You go first. I’ll cover you.”

  J.D. ran across the twenty feet or so that separated the hut from the house. Nobody seemed to notice. As soon as she got under th
e house, Jock followed.

  “What now?” J.D. asked.

  Jock pointed to a ladder affixed to the underside of the first story of the house. “What’s that?”

  “Let’s go see.”

  The ladder stood straight and had the look of a built-in feature. There was what appeared to be a trapdoor at the top of the ladder. Did that open onto the veranda near the front door, or were they standing directly under the living room, or whatever was just inside the front door? Jock walked off the distance between the foot of the ladder and the edge of the house. He didn’t know how wide the veranda was so his calculations could be off by several feet.

  “I’m going to climb up there,” Jock said. “See if I hear anything. If anybody opens that trapdoor, shoot him.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Jock climbed to the top, stood there for a minute, listening, trying to discern any voices or household noises. A TV was on, the volume turned low, some sort of daytime talk show. He climbed back down. “Somebody’s watching TV, or at least it’s on. I felt cool air coming from around the trapdoor. That means it opens to the inside of the house. It’s still warm outside and that veranda sits right in the late morning sun.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I think we might want to go in that way. I’m going back up. I wish I knew the layout of the house. That trap door might have a table or a sofa sitting on it. If it’s in a hallway or the foyer, it might open. I’m going to try it. If I start shooting, you put some lead through the floorboards.”

  Jock climbed back up and put a hand up to push on the trapdoor. It moved easily. He inched it up until he could see through the crack between the door and the floor. He balanced on the ladder and put his other hand into the crack and pushed something aside. He let the trapdoor down quietly and climbed back down the ladder.

  “It opens into the living room,” he said. “The man who built this place may have put it in as a fire escape. If his front steps were in flames, this would be the only way out. There’s a rug on top of the trapdoor. I had to push it aside, but I saw one man sitting on a sofa watching TV. There’s a closed door just to the right of the opening of the trapdoor and the kitchen is to the left and a little behind. I can see a staircase all the way over on the far side of the living room. I’m thinking the closed door might be the master bedroom. Maybe that’s where they’ve got Matt.”