“You’ll like DJ,” I said. “He was a snake eater in Afghanistan.”
“That where he lost a leg?”
“And received the silver star in doing so,” Tony replied.
Paul stayed below to untie the lines as the rest of us went up to the bridge. Once I had the engines running, he tossed the lines off and stepped down into the cockpit. I put the engines in gear and idled away from the dock as he coiled and stowed the lines.
“So, what’s the plan?” Paul asked, once he joined us.
“Recon,” I said. “Billy has a house staked out. A girl who lives there busted up an attempted kidnapping and MS-13 wants to get back at her.”
“That’s it?”
I looked back toward shore and saw Chyrel’s car pulling out of the driveway. “Alberto’s involved somehow.”
“The kid?” Tony asked. “How could he possibly be connected?”
“I have no idea,” I replied honestly. “He was found on a homemade Cuban boat, covered with a tarp made in Fort Myers.”
Tony grinned, his brilliant white teeth in sharp contrast to his ebony skin. “And of course, you don’t believe in coincidences.”
I nodded.
“And Billy is?” Tank asked.
“Billy Rainwater,” I replied. “Chieftain of the Calusa people.”
“The Indian kid you were buddies with, in 3/9?”
Tank and I were with Weapons Company, Third Battalion, Ninth Marine Regiment, when we deployed to Lebanon the first time. When we rotated back to Camp Lejeune in early ’83, I was nearing the end of my first enlistment and Billy had just transferred in, fresh out of Infantry School. Tank was reassigned as a marksmanship instructor shortly afterward, so he’d hardly met Billy. Yet nearly four decades and thousands of Marines later, he remembered him.
“We were only back for a week before you got orders to the range,” I said, bringing the Revenge up on plane. “You were the company gunny and Billy just a boot PFC. How could you possibly remember him?”
Tank glanced over at me from the port bench. “I served fifty-one years in the Corps. Guess how many Native Americans I served with.”
He was right. The Corps reflected the demographics of the nation very closely, though skewed slightly in favor of minorities. But in my twenty years, I’d only served with one other Indian.
“Probably close to the number of black guys I served with,” Tony quipped from the second seat. “Not a lot of brothers among the SEAL teams.”
“Three,” Tank said. “Besides, I always made it a point to know my troops.”
I set a course of 320° magnetic and engaged the autopilot. We were making thirty-five knots and it’d take four hours to get there, with one course correction in about three hours. I checked my watch.
“It’ll be close to noon when we arrive,” I said to Tank. “What’s in the cooler?”
He grinned. “We went for a run this morning. Five miles in just over forty-five minutes. When we got back, you were probably just waking up, but we were hungry. So, Chyrel made a dozen biscuits and cooked up a whole package of lean sausage.”
Tony was up like his seat had voltage running through it. “I’ll get it.”
A moment later, he came back up the ladder with a brown paper bag in his hand. “I thought you said she made a dozen.”
Tank shrugged. “Like I said, we were hungry.”
Tony opened the bag and passed out three tightly wrapped packages that were still warm. Tank waved him off.
“Is sausage the right thing to eat in your condition?” Paul asked.
Usually quiet and observant, Paul rarely offered an opinion, except from a psychological point of view. Tank was dying of cancer. It wasn’t bad in any one particular part of his body yet, but by the time it was discovered, it’d spread throughout his abdomen and bones.
“I only had one,” Tank said. “Along with some sliced melon, strawberries, wheat toast, and OJ.”
Tony looked down into the bag again. “There’s only five left.”
Tank grinned at him. “What can I say? Living with an old Devil Dog gives a woman an appetite.”
I’d never pried into his and Chyrel’s relationship. At first, their marriage sounded like a business deal. Chyrel wasn’t a kid, but she was twenty-five years younger than Tank. She’d agreed to care for him when the time came that he couldn’t take care of himself. In exchange, she’d get the house he’d bought and a survivor’s pension. Knowing her as I did, and how much she simply liked the man, I knew she’d have done it anyway. She’d already confided to me that when the time came, she’d sell the house and put the proceeds into Tank’s charity fund.
Tank figured that since he’d been a Marine from the age of seventeen and had retired less than three years ago at sixty-eight, he wouldn’t receive a fair pension for all his years of service. By marrying Chyrel, though, she would be eligible for a survivor’s pension when he was gone.
But over the months since they’d married, they seemed a lot more like a couple than business partners. I’d never been one to judge. Hell, Savannah was ten years younger than me. Tank and Chyrel were more than old enough to make life choices on their own. Chyrel had never wanted a husband and to Tank, that was perfect—by not remarrying when he was gone, she’d collect his pension for a long time.
As we headed away from the Keys and into the deeper waters of the Gulf, there was a moderate chop. But the Revenge was a blue water boat, so the waves were barely noticeable.
I told the men about what I’d learned online, about the gang wars, missing and dead hookers, and the drug connection.
“You think MS-13 filled the void after the Blanc cartel was dismantled?” Tony asked.
“That’s possible,” I replied. “Where there’s a demand, someone else will eventually come in to fill the gap.”
Paul had been quietly taking everything in, digesting it all in that analytical mind of his. He turned his head and looked back at me. “How were the two prostitutes
