Chapter 4
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Chapter 4As soon as Mark was alone in his room, he called the Chief. He didn’t like the fact that Benny hadn’t picked up the call, and he didn’t like what had happened on the St. John’s River.
Fred was no longer in his office but driving home.
“Yes?” Fred answered.
“Mark here, Chief.”
“Good. I thought you decided to take an early retirement. What’s happening?”
“Not much except that someone almost put me out of action...”
“What? How? Who’s doing the shooting now?”
“Some guys on the second trawler.”
“When?”
“This morning, on our way back to Jaxport to return the launch.”
Fred swore. The last report from his boys was that the two trawlers were back in Nassau... Who was taking puck-shot at his men now, he wondered. “And where are you now?”
“Hilton Island.”
“Hold on... Let me pull out of this traffic.” Fred put down the phone on the seat beside him, got to the shoulder of the road and stopped the car. “Are you driving it then?”
“Yeah, that’s the plan. We’re going to Atlanta in the morning and from there we’ll drive the interstate to Detroit.”
“Okay, but don’t cross the border with the car. I don’t know what the FBI is up to, so I don’t want you people to be picked up at the border.”
“What do you mean you don’t know what the FBI is doing? I thought we were working together...”
“They shut down all communications after the clean-up and told us to stay away.”
“What about Benny; does he know about this? He hasn’t picked up the call we placed when we decided to change course, and...”
“Khalid didn’t let him. The man knows something is wrong – I don’t know how, but he does. So, I told Benny not to take any calls until he sees the code on the display.”
“Okay, but why?”
“Because we don’t know what Slimane’s up to and if he’s after you now, it’s better to leave it until he makes a move.”
“I have no idea what you have in mind...” Mark seemed to be more baffled than ever.
“Don’t worry about it – just drive to the Detroit airport and I’ll arrange to have you picked up. In the meantime, get yourselves another car. The one you’re driving was probably observed leaving San Fernandina Beach, if you know what I mean.”
“We’ll do. I’ll phone you again when we’re in Michigan.”
“Okay then, now let me go home...”
When Mark flipped his phone closed, he sat looking at it for a while. We were now left to our own devices for the next two or three days, and he didn’t like that idea. He had always been working under the protective umbrella of CSIS and that made everything he did a little more reassuring. However, now we were going to have to navigate in a fog. We no longer knew who the enemy was. It could be the FBI, it could be Slimane, or it could be the CIA or someone else. The fact that we had not been tailed thus far only meant that the FBI (or even Slimane) had believed Fred when he told us that I had made it to Miami and taken the flight on time. Yet, for us to believe that, we must not have had any observers on site – why not was the question.
He shook his head and went to freshen up. He couldn’t take a shower as he would have liked to do, but the thought of having an infection set in on his buttocks weighed against taking a shower or a bath of any sort. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have to take a dip in the ocean for a while – the thought made him smile.
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