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  Contents

  Readers Group

  The Rum Runner

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Don't Miss a Book

  Also by Dannal

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Join my Readers Group and be first to hear about new stories in the Maxwell Craig series of thrillers

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  The Rum Runner

  By Dannal Newman

  Maxwell Craig considered the day he had bought the gun: he had purchased the steel-framed 9mm pistol at a seedy pawnshop off Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. He had wanted the gun to put a bullet into his own head.

  He remembered the careful selection process he had gone through in choosing just the right pistol. First, it had to be a 9mm. No other caliber would do. And he needed to find one that would be comfortable in his mouth should he decide to “eat” the gun rather than simply placing the muzzle to his temple. Max had ultimately chosen the Smith & Wesson 6906. Before finding a holster for the gun, he had carefully removed the sharp-edged front sight from the firearm, leaving a nice smooth surface around the muzzle.

  Presently, the pistol hung limply by his right side. The last swill of straw-colored liquid swirled around inside the bottle he held in his left hand; a smoky black glass bottle adorned with the simple image of a black fleur de lis.

  Max’s feet stepped close to the edge. The drop from the rocky shore of the ilet would only be about ten feet, and he would land in the nearly still Caribbean water of Le Robert Bay. He wondered: Should he fall in, would he even try to swim? Perhaps he would forget how. It was such a peaceful place. He wouldn’t find an easier end to his life’s story, tragically as it seemed to have ended.

  Dirt crumbled below Max’s feet as his toes draped over the edge. The lightweight pistol felt good in his hand; his finger curled around the stainless steel trigger.

  Max drained the bottle, holding it upright for a long time, not wanting to waste a drop. Best stuff in the Caribbean, they say. He dropped the bottle. Glass shattered over a partially-submerged rock below. The jagged shards washed away slowly, taken by the gentle ripple of the tide.

  Max released the magazine from the gun and examined its ammunition. There were only three rounds inside—Federal Hi-Shok with 147 grain bullets. He slammed the mag back into the pistol and racked the slide.

  Max leaned forward. Whether he was controlling himself or not, the pistol in his hand began to rise up, his arm crooked.

  A force, like a strong hand, gripped the back of Max’s shirt. It pulled him back away from the ragged edge of the ilet’s shore. Next thing he knew, Max was laying flat on his back. Stars swirled overhead like water draining from a tub.

  And then, the world went black, and Max knew nothing.

  Black water skimmed under the bow of The Cash Settlement as Max eased both throttle levers forward. In response, all four of the eight-cylinder outboards by Seven Marine growled deeper, and the boat raced on even faster than before.

  “How much horsepower you think she’s got?” Max asked Josue, who stood nearby, clinging to the port side handrail beside the console.

  “A lot.”

  Max nodded. “How much you think it cost?”

  “A lot.”

  “No, I mean really, how much you think? Two hundred grand? Half a million?”

  “Probably closer to a million—U.S.,” Josue said, his words infused with the French Creole influence of Haitian-accented English. “It’s custom, made by Hydra-Sports. Very expensive.”

  The water grew choppier as the boat gained distance from the island. Max tinkered with the trim switches of the outboards to keep the bow from bobbing up and down in that nauseating and inefficient rhythm of a poorly trimmed boat. The powerful center console fishing boat responded almost effortlessly, and skipped across the swells as if skating on a sea of glass.

  Max looked at Josue, the young Haitian, who stood as still as a statue. His tight black Under Armor shirt stretched over long sinewy muscles; baggy black cargo shorts hung over angular calves; and black leather gloves made by Oakley wrapped his powerful fingers. A dark gray UV buff covered all of Josue’s face, except for his dark eyes, which squinted against the wind as the stolen sport boat cut through the warm Caribbean evening.

  Josue reminded Max of a puma. Maybe it was the way he stood so still; so patient; so quiet—so dangerous. Josue turned on the balls of his feet and faced the stern. He peered sharply through a pair of Nikon binoculars, delicately twisting the optic’s focus ring.

  “What is it?” Max asked.

  “Somebody follows,” Josue said, letting the binoculars hang by their strap around his long neck.

  “It’s not one of those geofence things, is it?” Max said, tapping the bright seventeen-inch LED screens, toggling through to find some evidence of a tracking app. “You did disable the Nav-Tracker?”

  Josue nodded.

  Red and blue lights flashed at the stern, contrasting their bright hues against the foamy white water of The Cash Settlement’s generous wake. The vivid colors bounced off the shiny white fiberglass of the sport fishing boat’s console roof, unnerving Max as he craned his neck for a glimpse of his pursuers.

  “Cops?” Max said, incredulous. “Where did you get this boat?”

  “Marina,” Josue said, not seeming overly concerned by the pursuing police boat.

  “I guess somebody was watching the marina,” Max said. He felt a childlike grin spreading over his face, underneath his own UV buff that concealed his identity. “Probably because there was a million dollar sport fishing boat tied up there.”

  Josue nodded. “Probably why.”

  Max patted his friend on the back.

  “Sorry, Boss.”

  The pursuing craft was a Zodiac Hurricane: a small fiberglass boat rimmed by an inflatable collar, and powered by twin two-hundred-horsepower outboard motors. The small boat featured a stand-up console for the pilot, and not much else. It was the type of vessel designed to cut quickly through swells, delivering armed law enforcement officers to your boat’s gunwale before you even knew you were being pursued.

  “Gendarmerie Nationale,” Josue said.

  “Hand me those binocs and take the wheel, would you?” Max asked, grabbing the powder-coated tubing that supported the hard top above the console and turning to face astern. He took the optics from the other man.

  “There’s only two on the boat,” Max said, making sure his face was fully covered. “One pilot, one guy with a bullhorn and a shotgun.”

  Josue’s hand covered the throttle levers. “You want me to go?”

  “No, my young Haitian friend. Not quite yet.”

  “Arrêter le bateau!” the man with the megaphone shouted, his voice high-pitched, and sounding a touch berserk, as he was clearly very much
on edge.

  Max checked The Cash Settlement’s Garmin touchscreens. “We’re barely doing thirty knots. How fast do you think that raft can go?”

  Josue shrugged.

  Max opened a big black duffel bag which lay on deck at the stern, just in front of the purloined vessel’s quad outboards. He slipped out a Ruger Mini 30 and locked in a fresh twenty-round magazine. Max yanked back the slide handle and released it, slipping a full metal jacket round into the rifle’s chamber, and then he slipped off the safety.

  He aimed the rifle carefully, targeting the water ahead of the pursuing police boat; he wanted to send a message, not kill anyone. Max squeezed the trigger over and over in rapid succession, sending dozens of .30 caliber bullets hurtling into his own wake. The muzzle flash was bright and startling, even against the brilliant flashing of the pursuing police boat’s lights.

  The Zodiac continued to pursue, undaunted.

  Max tapped Josue on the shoulder, and the young man slid over to the port side seat. Max took over the helm, settling into the comfortable captain’s chair which was wrapped in some sort of marine-grade white leather-like material.

  Gunfire erupted from the police boat. Mr. Megaphone was firing rounds, likely buckshot, from his shouldered tactical shotgun.

  “I’m impressed,” Max said, as a scatter of shot zinged past his head, shattering a pizza-sized hole in the boat's hard top, “I really thought they’d bug out when I started firing the Mini.”

  Josue nodded.

  “Did you secure the load? I mean secure it good?”

  Another nod from the reserved Haitian.

  Max turned the wheel to starboard and pushed both throttle levers even further forward. The boat pulled away from the police Zodiac in a wide arc, leaving them in a wake so wide it might have been made by an ocean liner. Max held the sport fishing boat in a wide, disorienting circle; a course the determined pilot of the police boat worked hard to maintain.

  “What are you doing?” Josue asked. He looked at Max with big eyes and a furrowed forehead.

  “Confusing them. If you were chasing a guy and he started going around in circles like this, you'd be confused, right?”

  Josue nodded. “Yes. Very confusing.”

  “Hang on. Watch this,” Max said with a concealed half-smirk. He whipped the wheel hard to port, while continuing to give the stolen Hydra-Sports boat a generous amount of throttle.

  The Zodiac turned hard to port, the pilot obviously determined not to give up the chase.

  Max threw the throttles all the way forward and whipped the wheel hard back to starboard. The four outboards roared ferociously, and the boat lurched to the right, almost effortlessly. The Hydra-Sports boat pulled away from the pursuing craft like a fighter jet taking off.

  The police boat’s pilot yanked the Zodiac’s wheel hard from port to starboard, desperate to keep up with the stolen boat. The small craft rolled hard to port just as it hit the massive wake caused by The Cash Settlement’s ferocious acceleration.

  The Zodiac launched off the wake like a ski jump. The small craft capsized. The resulting crash hurtled Mr. Megaphone into the sea like a rag doll.

  Max backed off the throttle just long enough to survey the damage. The overturned police boat’s hull bobbed on the choppy surface of the Caribbean Sea, its red and blue lights casting a bright, eerie glow beneath the surface of the otherwise dark ocean water.

  The pilot bobbed in the water, clinging to the hull like a leech. Miraculously, the megaphone guy still clung to his instrument, shouting, “arrêter le bateau,” or “stop the boat.”

  Max shoved the throttles forward and trimmed the engines again. In seconds they skimmed across the open sea at close to seventy knots, leaving the carnage behind inside their massive, frothy wake.

  About ten minutes later, Max corrected course, turning the boat almost a hundred and eighty degrees southwest. He wanted to be certain the police had no idea which way he was heading. His rendezvous point would be nearly fifty miles from Martinique, in the open water of the Caribbean Sea.

  “You have the coordinates?” Max asked.

  Josue produced a slip of paper from his pocket. The paper flapped in the wind.

  “Don’t lose that,” Max said. “I’d hate to have to go back looking for it.”

  The younger man compared the numbers on the paper to the navigational chart on one of the vast Garmin displays. “Nearly there. Two miles or so.”

  Max fiddled with one of the other displays. The expensive boat was equipped with open array radar, and he tapped buttons on the touchscreen until he observed a two-mile radius of radar data.

  “What’s all this?” Josue asked, stabbing a finger at a cluster of small objects that appeared bright red on the radar display.

  “Probably those ominous clouds,” Max said, nodding through the gaping hole in the boat’s hardtop. Even through the dark night sky, the menacing clouds were visible. Max adjusted the wheel, ensuring he was on course toward the preplanned rendezvous point.

  Within two minutes another distinctive shape crept inside the outer ring of the radar’s display. “That’s definitely another boat,” Max said. “Stay sharp.”

  Another minute and they had visual contact with another vessel, this one a fifty-five-foot sport yacht made by Viking. The vessel’s light blue hull bobbed in the distance, the boat’s tall tuna tower looking skeletal as it swayed in the murky moonlight.

  “Get the fenders ready, Josue,” Max said, feeling his heart race as he neared the other boat’s port side.

  Max throttled down, approaching the other vessel with extreme caution.

  As The Cash Settlement slowed, the ocean swells grew more pronounced, and the boat began to rock.

  “Ahoy, Captain Craig,” a voice shouted from the stern of the Viking, where a man with long curly graying blond hair stood bathed in the bright blue glow of the yacht’s LED deck lights. The man wore a Jimmy Buffet t-shirt that depicted a parrot dressed as a pirate, bright turquoise shorts, and flip flops. A UV buff with a skull face wrapped the red-tanned skin of the man’s throat. “I was startin’ to wonder if you’d make it out tonight.” The man brought the neck of a Landshark lager bottle to his lips and took a long swig.

  “Jacques, my man!” Max shouted. “Fancy meeting you way out here.”

  Jacques threw his own rubber boat fenders over the side of the Viking, which bore the bright red lettering Plan B on the back. The laidback mariner also threw across a braided nylon line tied off to his own vessel’s stern. Josue caught the line and hauled it, bringing the two boats together.

  A woman wearing a pink camouflage bikini and a black bandanna tied over her braided blonde hair tossed a bow line from the front of the boat. Despite the moderate swells, the two boats were joined securely back to front in no time, and bobbed on the waves as one.

  “Permission to come aboard?” Max asked.

  “Permission granted,” Jacques said, showing a broad, toothy, almost goofy grin, “but only if you’ve got rum.”

  Max nodded to Josue, who began to untie a cargo net that covered the twenty or so cardboard boxes stacked and secured to the bow of The Cash Settlement.

  Max grabbed a case of rum and handed it over the rail to Jacques before stepping over the rails of both boats and embracing Jacques with a rather masculine hug, the kind that involves lots of back slapping and a minimal amount of chest touching. Within fifteen minutes, the three men had transferred the entire load of boxes onto the yacht’s rear deck. Max grabbed a case and stepped into the elegant dimly-lit salon area of the Plan B. The décor consisted of lots of maple paneling and flooring, and featured leather sofas and cushioned barstools.

  “Hey, stranger,” the bikini-clad woman said, embracing Max and kissing his cheek. She wore no makeup, which unabashedly revealed the crow’s feet beside her eyes and the slight wrinkles on her cheeks and forehead. To Max, she looked exactly like what a woman in her mid-forties should look like: not polished or perfect, just healthy, natural
, and real.

  “Hi, Suze,” Max said. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  “This old thing?” She smiled and put her hand on her hip, turning around to look at the luxurious salon area of the yacht. “Jacques and I like to rough it when we go island hopping.”

  “Retirement suits you,” Max said.

  “Selling the firm really was the best thing Jacques and me ever did. I almost feel stupid for not having done it sooner.”

  “Hold on, Susan. You gotta meet this guy,” Max said, waving over Josue, who stood near the fighting chair on the rear deck, watching the pleasantries exchanged with some degree of caution. The tall Haitian entered the Viking’s galley, standing like a child waiting to be introduced to the grown-ups.

  “This is Josue Remy,” Max said with a great deal of pride. “He’s my right-hand man. I could not do what I do without him. Formerly of Port au Prince—and Miami—and now a resident of Ilet d’Ombres, Martinique. Without this guy I would likely be lying facedown in a gutter somewhere.”

  “That’s an interesting name,” Susan said. “How do you spell that, Haw-soo-eh?” she asked, sounding out the name, as if trying to dismantle it and examine all the parts.

  Max spelled it for her.

  “I love it,” Susan said with a big smile. She hugged Josue tightly around the neck.

  Josue smiled in his shy, boyish way; he looked as though he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

  Then Josue shook hands with Jacques, who was just returning from the forward stateroom, where they had stowed all of the rum, a bottle in his hand. The black smoky glass bottle featured the image of a fleur de lis, and the words rhum elevé sous bois. “May I?” Jacques asked.

  “Of course,” Max said. “They’re yours.”

  Jacques peeled off the plastic seal and removed the corked wooden lid. He inhaled the fragrance of the rum with an expression of euphoria on his face. “Mmmm,” he moaned, before taking a long swig from the bottle.

  “Oh, my.” Jacques clutched his chest as if he were in pain. “That is…so…good.” He passed the bottle around the group and everyone had a drink. Then Jacques produced a thick roll of one-hundred-Euro notes bound by a rubber band. He grinned and handed it to Max. “Two hundred a bottle okay?”