Bayou Pirates Page 24

  I would’ve thought so, too, but then I saw that thing.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Holm said with a shrug.

  “Well, I’d say this would be right up there with those stranger things,” I said quietly. “Jean Lafitte’s long lost ship, alive and well and back in the bayou? That’s got to beat at least most of the things we’ve seen in our time, even some of the wildest.”

  “Alright, I’ll give you that,” Holm relented. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.”

  “At this point, I’m not sure there’s much that’s actually impossible,” I said with a small smile.

  “Is there anyone out there?” Holm hissed, jerking his chin in the direction of the ship.

  Slowly, I raised my head back above the grass. There looked to be lights on inside the ship—probably from a lamp of some sort, unless whoever refurbished the thing had added modern conveniences—but there was no one standing outside.

  I quickly ducked back down below the grass and shook my head.

  “No,” I confirmed. “Not outside, but there’s definitely somebody inside. There are lights on.”

  “Lights on in an old pirate ship?” Holm asked. “Like electric lights? That’s sacrilege.” He shook his head in disappointment.

  “It would be, if that’s what they are,” I agreed. It really would be a shame to mess with history like that. “But it could be a lamp for something.”

  “And it might not be the ship you think it is at all,” Nina pointed out. “It could be just a replica or a weird-looking ship that someone commissioned, maybe to trick the hotel owners into letting us use their businesses.”

  “That’s true,” I said, nodding to her. “But that wouldn’t be nearly as exciting.” I flashed her a grin.

  “You guys really do have more fun at MBLIS than we do, don’t you?” Nina grumbled, and I gave a low chuckle.

  “As I said, you should join us sometime,” I said. “We may not be big shot FBI guys, but we get things done.”

  “Well, I’m joining you now,” Nina said, shooting a wary look in the direction of the ship. “Come on. We might as well get this over with.”

  “Let me shoot a message to Barrett, first,” I muttered, pulling out my phone and texting him. “If we need backup, we’ll want someone to know where we are.”

  “Imagine if we hadn’t let someone know last time,” Holm muttered.

  “We wouldn’t be here right now, that’s for sure,” I said with a nod, remembering how a Dominican military helicopter had pulled Holm, myself, and a Haitian man who had been forced to ingest this drug out of the ghost ship’s wreckage in the middle of the ocean.

  “I’ll message my director, then,” Nina said, pulling out her own phone. “He’ll be wondering what I’ve been up to, anyway.”

  We typed away on our phones and then put them away. I replaced mine with my gun in my hand, making sure I had a fresh magazine in there.

  “Everybody loaded?” I asked, looking between my two companions.

  They both nodded.

  “Good,” I said. “Then let’s head up there, see what we can find.”

  Together, we continued to crawl in the direction of the ship, staying beneath the tops of the tall grass just in case anyone was paying attention to the bayou outside the ship. I certainly hoped that no one had noticed us when we rounded the corner in that fishing boat, though I supposed that if they had, they would’ve made themselves known already.

  Finally, we reached the edge of the underbrush, and my hand nearly slipped into the water.

  The grass was lower by then, and I imagined that if anyone was outside, they would’ve seen us. I braced myself for incoming fire or shouting, but nothing came.

  I looked back at Nina and Holm.

  “Alright,” I whispered. “I say we just rush up to the ship and see what we can find.”

  They both nodded their agreement, so I led the way forward.

  We slowly stood up and reacquainted ourselves with walking instead of crawling. Then we darted over to the side of the ship as quickly as we could, ducking down just in case anyone was looking out of one of the many windows.

  There was a small set of stairs leading up to the ship, but it was pulled up, so I had to jump up and grab on to the bottom and pull myself up and over the edge until my feet were finally on solid wood.

  I scanned the area, and it was dark, but I didn’t see anyone anywhere.

  I bent back over the side and helped Nina and then Holm up since I didn’t want to lower the stairs for fear of alerting anyone to our presence with the associated noise.

  Once we were all up there, we surveyed the area. It was an old pirate ship alright, though whoever had refurbished it had done an excellent job.

  There were three giant masts spread across the main deck, stretching high up into the sky. This was what had alerted me to the ship’s presence in the first place when we were crouched down in the tall grass.

  There were crates stacked on either side of the ship, and a lookout nest was perched in the middle, stretching up into the sky along with the masts. There was an old cannon off to the side, and then another on the opposite side of the ship. And there was an area beneath the wheel that led down into the rest of the ship, with a closed door in the middle.

  I beckoned for Holm and Nina to follow me, and we headed in the direction of the door. But before we could reach it, a voice called out and stopped us.

  “Freeze!” a man’s voice screamed, and I whirled around to face a young man, maybe around twenty-seven, pointing a gun right at us.

  He was several feet away from us, and I had to squint in the darkness to make him out, though the light emanating up from the windows below on the sides of the ship helped me not to be completely blind.

  I squinted and realized that this man wasn’t alone. He was flanked by several other men with guns. I could only see their outlines, so I couldn’t make out much about them. I assumed they were members of the gang.

  Thankfully, I still had my own gun in my hand, so as I turned around, I brought it up to square right back at him. I looked to either side to see that Holm and Nina had both done the same.

  The two groups faced each other, completely frozen, no one wanting to make the first move.

  “What do you want?” The same man growled after some time had passed. “How did you get here?”

  “I’m Nina,” Nina said, her voice firm and measured. “I’m with you. These are some of my customers.”

  “I thought you got taken in with Ice and Bruise,” the man said skeptically. “That’s what we all heard.”

  A few of the others murmured their assent to this. I squinted again and thought I could make out seven, no eight, goons standing opposite us.

  “Ice and Bruise are dead,” Nina said, making a show of sounding surprised that these guys didn’t know this already. “The police and some FBI agent killed them. A couple of others were taken into custody, but I got away. I think they forgot about me when they were going after Ice and Bruise, honestly.”

  This was a gamble, and I had to admire Nina for taking it. It could very well not pay off because some of these guys might have already heard what really happened above that bar and that Nina wasn’t actually one of them. People talked in prison, after all, including prison hospital wards. One of the guys we captured was bound to talk at some point in the not so distant future.

  “Ice and Bruise are dead?” the guy asked. He still sounded kind of skeptical.

  It was good that he didn’t know that yet. It meant that no one had talked, or word hadn’t gotten this far out in the bayou yet.

  “They are,” Nina confirmed. “The FBI agent took them out, along with a couple of guys from some other agency I’d never heard of.”

  Okay, I’d have to get her back for that jab at MBLIS when we got out of there. But for now, it made sense. Why would a random street gangbanger know what MBLIS was, after all? That’s what tipped Holm and me off that she was telling the
truth about being undercover to begin with.

  “Okay…” the guy said slowly. “So, who are these guys?”

  He moved his gun from Holm to me and back again.

  “A couple of customers of mine,” she said with a shrug. “We went down to Madame Rosaline’s after I got away from the police, since that’s where they mentioned I was headed next, and she said she didn’t have a shipment to dish out yet. So, I asked around, and here we are.”

  “Why would you bring customers with you instead of having them wait for you in the city?” the guy asked, and I decided that he was smarter than he appeared, which was bad news for us. “And why do they have guns?”

  “Which of our customers don’t have guns?” Nina scoffed. “Come on, buddy, try a little harder.”

  “Who are you, really?” the guy asked, taking a step closer to us, though this still didn’t illuminate his face. “I don’t buy this story. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Look, can you just take me to talk to whoever’s in charge?” Nina asked, making a show of seeming flippant and impatient. “It’d make this all go a hell of a lot faster. I need some product. Otherwise, my customers are going to be very unhappy.”

  “Line up against the side of the ship—the one facing the water, not the ground—and we’ll see what we can do about that,” the goon sneered, motioning with his gun for us to do as he instructed.

  I exchanged a look with Holm. I didn’t exactly like the sound of that. We needed to get to Solomon, and we needed to get him alone.

  Nina knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “Okay, look,” she said, refusing to budge. “Who’s in charge? Is it you or someone else, because I don’t want to waste any more time with a bunch of underlings here. That hasn’t exactly gotten me very far in the past if you catch my meaning.”

  “What do you mean, get you very far?” the guy asked, sounding more than a little offended. “We’re higher up than you!”

  “And how long did it take you to get here?” she asked with a sneer. “I’ve only been here a couple of months and look how far I’ve gotten. I’m done waiting around for my opportunities.”

  “Look, either move, or we’ll make you,” the goon said, and Nina sighed.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that,” she said. “Look, you might outnumber us, but I don’t exactly like your odds in this thing, so you might want to back off.”

  Slowly, Nina started to step back once, twice, then three times in the direction of the door, looking at Holm and me like she wanted us to do the same. We did, stepping back several times. Our guns were still drawn and pointed at the goons, goading them to try to stop us.

  “I said stop!” the goon hollered, stepping forward again, and several of the others stepped up to join him.

  “Your call,” Nina told them, continuing to step backward. “We either head through this door here, or we have it out. It’s up to you.”

  A shot rang out then, coming from one of the goons farthest away from us. It hit one of the crates right next to Holm, sending something liquid spilling out of it.

  Holm instinctively shot back, hitting the guy in the chest, and that was it. It was yet another full-on firefight.

  The goon at the front, the one who had been talking, shot right at Nina, but she ducked down in anticipation of this, pulling me along with her.

  On the way down, I got a few shots in myself, though given the low lighting, they weren’t very good. These definitely weren’t the best conditions for a gunfight.

  But just as Nina had thought, we were better than they were. Two of my shots hit, taking down two of the goons in the legs. Holm, who was still standing, finished them off with two more shots as they each tried to return fire.

  Nina shot the head goon right in the stomach before he realized that she had avoided his first shot, catching him at an upward angle. He dropped his gun and fell to the ground, blood pooling around him.

  That was four down, four to go. Two of the remaining four ran at us with their guns held out as they presumably waited for better lighting to make sure their shots landed where they wanted them to.

  But they came into our light before we came into theirs, thanks to a shining window right below where we were, whereas they were just languishing in the dark.

  Nina and I both shot at them in unison, and they fell lifeless to the ground.

  The other two goons, the ones who had been hesitating at the back, looked at each other, and then at us, and then darted off the ship and away into the bayou. We didn’t shoot or go after them. It wasn’t our way to go after sitting—or in this case, maybe even flying—ducks.

  I reached back to open the door, but it opened before I had the chance to turn the doorknob. What must’ve been a dozen more goons came spilling out onto the main deck. None of them were Solomon.

  I stared open-mouthed back at Nina. At this rate, by the time I figured out where Solomon was, he’d be gone already. He always left his goons—or this time, Beck and Williams’s goons—to do his dirty work instead of facing the music himself.

  Nina knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “Go,” she whispered, leaning in close to me so no one else would hear. “Holm and I have got this handled.”

  I opened my mouth to ask her if she was sure, but she pressed a finger to my lips and kissed my cheek before ushering me through the door. I was able to give her and Holm one last glance, just in time to see them engaging with the goons, before the door closed behind me.

  CHAPTER 26

  There was no one there with me when the door shut on the world outside, no goons leftover who had yet to spill out onto the main deck. It was just me and a set of wide wooden stairs leading down into the lower deck of the old pirate ship.

  I glanced back at the closed door one last time, feeling the urge to go back and help Nina and Holm. I hated to leave them to fend for themselves, even though I knew that they were more than competent. But no, the goons could notice any second that I was missing and come after me. I had to look for Solomon before it was too late.

  So I started down the stairs cautiously, gun still in hand. I reloaded just to be on the safe side. There was no telling how many more goons could be waiting for me down below, though, despite the ship’s size, I had a hard time believing there were any more on top of the ones fighting Holm and Nina up above. The gang probably wanted most of its members pushing product instead of stuck out in the middle of nowhere in the bayou with some old Haitian drug dealer hiding from all his problems.

  I remembered, briefly, that Madame Rosaline had said she was coming out there that night. I wondered if she was already there, or if she was on her way, or if she hadn’t come, after all. Somehow, I had the feeling that I hadn’t quite seen the last of her yet.

  At the bottom of the stairs, there was another door standing open. It had undoubtedly been left that way by the torrent of goons rushing up to the main deck.

  I glanced back up the stairs one last time before crossing the threshold and closing this door behind me. I could hear the sound of gunfire going off up there and felt yet another urge to go back and help. But we had to find Solomon and stop him, had to find out if and when any more shipments of this drug were coming into the United States.

  So I closed the door behind me, shutting away the noise along with it.

  On the other side of the door was a wide corridor leading throughout the rest of the ship. It had blue carpet lining the wooden floor and wooden planks on the walls and ceiling. Doors were standing all along both sides, many of them also open.

  I pressed forward, looking both ways with each new step and holding my gun at my side just in case any more goons showed up. But it appeared that they all were on the main deck, as the open doors all led to bedrooms and lounge areas where they had left meals half-eaten and lines of drugs unconsumed, which I supposed was one good thing to come out of all this.

  Finally, I reached the end of the long corridor where a larger door stood closed. There w
ere gold linings all around it, and it looked heavy and made out of metal as opposed to the others’ wooden designs.

  I reached out to try the doorknob, just in case it was somehow unlocked, but of course, it wasn’t.

  I took several steps back and aimed my gun at the lock, then fired three times, and my ears rang instantly, drowning out all other sounds. On the third impact, the doorknob fell to the ground, and the door swung open, revealing a vast bedroom that was more like an enormous studio apartment than anything else. There was even a small kitchen inside, though it wasn’t very up to modern times, with no burners or anything.

  I’d found the captain’s cabin.

  And there, off to the right-hand side of the bed in a lounge area opposite the kitchen, sat Solomon and Madame Rosaline.

  “Ethan!” Madame Rosaline cried when she saw me, waving me over and patting the couch cushion beside her, indicating that I should sit down. “I had a feeling that I would see you again.”

  “You know this agent?” Solomon asked her, looking wildly between us.

  Solomon was a short man, with medium-length dreadlocks and a meek build for a gangbanger. He was standing in front of a chair next to the couch where Madame Rosaline was sitting, staring in terror at the door I had just knocked down. At least this time, he wasn’t wearing a bathrobe, instead opting for plain jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Agent,” she repeated, running her fingers along her chin and eyeing me closely. “My, my, there is more than meets the eye to you, isn’t there, Ethan?”

  “You could say that,” I said, holding up my gun and training it on Solomon. “It’s time to start talking, Solomon. Or whatever your real name is. Why are you here and did you bring another shipment of the drug with you?”

  Solomon held up his hands and sneered at me.

  “And why would I tell you that?” he asked quietly.

  “I can give you a few good reasons,” I said, brandishing my gun to remind him that it was there.

  He flinched and then blinked at me.

  “And how exactly is it that you’re still alive?” he asked, to my amazement.