All Ahead Full: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 22) Read online

  Copyright © 2021

  Published by DOWN ISLAND PRESS, LLC, 2021

  Beaufort, SC

  Copyright © 2021 by Wayne Stinnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express

  written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy

  of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase

  only authorized editions.

  Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication Data

  Stinnett, Wayne

  All Ahead Full/Wayne Stinnett

  p. cm. - (A Jesse McDermitt novel)

  ISBN: 978-1-956026-02-3

  Cover photograph and graphics by Aurora Publicity

  Edited by Marsha Zinberg, The Write Touch

  Final Proofreading by Donna Rich

  Interior Design by Aurora Publicity

  Down Island Press, LLC, a Down Island Publishing company.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies,

  events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Many real people are used

  fictitiously in this work, with their permission. Most of the locations

  herein are also fictional or are used fictitiously. However, the author

  takes great pains to depict the location and description of the many

  well-known islands, locales, beaches, reefs, bars, and restaurants

  throughout the Florida Keys and the Caribbean to the best of his ability.

  Table of contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Also By Wayne Stinnett

  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

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also By Wayne Stinnett

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  Once a month, I’ll bring you insights into my private life and writing habits, with updates on what I’m working on, special deals I hear about, and new books by other authors that I’m reading.

  The Jerry Snyder Caribbean Mystery Series

  Wayward Sons

  The Charity Styles Caribbean Thriller Series

  Merciless Charity

  Ruthless Charity

  Reckless Charity

  Enduring Charity

  Vigilant Charity

  Lost Charity

  The Jesse McDermitt Caribbean Adventure Series

  Fallen Out

  Fallen Palm

  Fallen Hunter

  Fallen Pride

  Fallen Mangrove

  Fallen King

  Fallen Honor

  Fallen Tide

  Fallen Angel

  Fallen Hero

  Rising Storm

  Rising Fury

  Rising Force

  Rising Charity

  Rising Water

  Rising Spirit

  Rising Thunder

  Rising Warrior

  Rising Moon

  Rising Tide

  Steady As She Goes

  All Ahead Full

  Man Overboard

  There, you can purchase all kinds of swag

  related to my books. You can find it at

  WWW.GASPARS-REVENGE.COM

  To my very good friend, Nick Sullivan, the voice behind Jesse McDermitt and all my characters. Nick was the sixty-third voice actor to audition for my first audiobook in 2015, and I’m glad I waited. He hit it out of the park with his rendition of Rusty Thurman and Jimmy Saunders. Since that day, we’ve become close friends, and co-host a livestream called Talk Write, where we interview other author/narrator teams. Thanks for putting a voice to all my characters. You’ve made my writing a lot better.

  “Old friend, there are people, young and old, that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by an old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it all that way bore hell out of me.”

  ― Travis McGee, Dress Her in Indigo

  Jesse’s island in the Content Keys

  The Bay Islands of Honduras

  December 2, 2021

  The plaintive chuffing of a jaguar could be heard somewhere deep in the dense jungle. Its short, throaty, almost barking sound only carried for a short distance, whereas the great cat’s roar resounded loudly for miles.

  To most, the roar was a terrifying noise, especially at night. Few knew of the chuffing sound the big cats made while preoccupied. But it was a sound that Aldrick knew well.

  The Río Plátano was the ancestral home of many indigenous, primitive tribes, going back to the beginning, when early man first arrived in the Americas. Aldrick had been born not far from where he now hid, crouched among the giant roots of a ceiba tree, waiting for activity on the trail. He’d felt safe in the jungle at an early age, away from his parents and the nomadic troupe they called home. Even as a little boy, he’d somehow sensed it was the place his people ought to be, not penned up in boxes called houses. He’d reconnected with his ancestral home thirty years after leaving, and had instantly felt the pull of his roots.

  The jaguar, feared by nearly every animal in the jungle, was king. On a trip into the Amazon, Aldrick had once seen a female jaguar leap into the river from a high ledge and come up with a large black caiman in its powerful jaws. The jaguar was the third largest cat in the world and the second most dangerous predator in the Honduran jungle. The people Aldrick was waiting for in near total darkness were at the top of that list.

  Lately, Aldrick had seen more and more drug activity in the reserve. The trail he was watching was a secret to most, but he’d learned of its existence shortly after the men had hacked their way to the interior.

  Aldrick knew about their other trails as well.

  The chuffing of the lone jaguar was close, but Aldrick felt no fear. He could already hear the narcotraficantes coming down the trail. They were in a lot more danger than he was.

  They were moving and making noise.

  Just
to be sure, Aldrick reached into the side pocket of his vest and withdrew a small box. He opened it and drew out a fragile glass tube, then put the box away and tossed the vial lightly onto the trail, where the glass broke soundlessly. Then he sat back and waited.

  Aldrick had discovered the trail two days earlier and had set up a blind on a slight rise, tucked among the buttress roots of a ceiba tree.

  The massive roots, some half a meter thick and often standing two meters in height, spread out across the ground in serpentine wall patterns, supporting the tree’s great weight.

  The date and time of movement along the trail had been recorded in a small notebook, along with Aldrick’s observations of what the men carried and an estimate of weight. Though he was Tawahka, one of the many indigenous tribes of Honduras, he was a well-educated man.

  Spending many days in one place was nothing new for Aldrick. He’d spent eight days in one spot before, just watching the goings-on in his beloved rainforest. He knew the flowers, the trees, the insects, animals, and birds. He knew the sounds of the forest and how they changed from day to night. He was at home there.

  Aldrick was moving toward the late years of life, growing older and wiser with the years. He’d attended university as a young man; his natural curiosity and intellect giving him an edge over the other students, even though he was perceived by some as being from a backward, primitive culture.

  After receiving double degrees in biological science and environmental studies, he’d worked tirelessly, pushing for laws to protect the ecosystem, demanding to be heard. But because of his heritage, his protestations over logging and poaching went largely ignored.

  So, he’d returned to the ivied halls, studying, learning all that he could while earning multiple doctoral degrees.

  While the world paid little heed to an educated young man, as a tenured professor of biology in his middle years, they’d listened. Laws were passed protecting the forest and all its inhabitants. But there were always those who simply ignored the laws. Or worse.

  Over the last several years, many of his peers—environmental activists and scholars—had been murdered. The killings served to shut the collective mouths of the conservation community in Honduras. The situation was akin to a sealed cesspool, the pressure of bio-decay building until it was about to explode.

  Money and greed were winning, but up until the killings had started, activists like Aldrick were beginning to make inroads, finding favor with certain newly-elected government officials. The situation was starting to change.

  Education among his people had mostly been parent-to-child. The young of the troupe were taught to survive and the whole tribe took part, teaching and learning from one another. Children learned to fish the rivers and hunt small game in the forest. They were taught what berries and nuts to gather and which ones to avoid. But even with no formal education, his people knew that this world was their home. Those in the cities, with all their education, technology, and toys, treated Earth as if they had somewhere else to go. The pacified indigenous tribes in the villages weren’t much different. It was at one such village that he’d learned of a long lost brother, now locked in a struggle against extinction.

  The drug cartels had clear-cut large parts of the primordial forest to make room for the coca plants. The coca grew well in the rich, dark soil and men became wealthy. They soon found that some of the trees they’d been slashing and burning were actually quite valuable in their own right.

  Everything in their world revolved around money.

  So, the cartels went into the lumber business, finding that harvesting the trees of the forest was nearly as profitable as making cocaine. The mahogany, cocobolo, rosewood, and ziricote trees were highly prized. The fact that they were endangered and protected didn’t matter to the drug barons. The animals of the forest were likewise captured or killed, then sold on the black market.

  When the voices of environmentalists became too loud, the drug cartels had upped the ante, sending men to hunt down and kill the people involved in protecting the natural resources. They preyed on innocent people, like a jaguar would stalk the agouti or tapir.

  Various predators lived in the rainforests. Each relied on different skills and senses to find their prey. The harpy eagle, one of the most common large raptors in Honduras, relied almost exclusively on their keen eyesight. The jungle was also home to many species of owls, which also relied on sharp vision, especially at night, but they also had excellent hearing. Bats depended almost entirely on their hearing ability. Turkey vultures could track their injured prey for miles just from the smell.

  But the jaguar used all its senses to find its food. Keen eyesight, even at night, coupled with exceptional hearing and sense of smell, put the jaguar at the very top of the food chain. As dangerous as men can be, most cowered in fear at the sound of an adult jaguar roaring in the night.

  Even the great cat’s sense of touch was tuned to the vibrations it felt through the ground or tree branch on which it stood, giving it an edge over its prey. And few animals weren’t on the jaguar’s menu.

  Aldrick heard the soft sound of a rotten twig snap. He froze, holding his breath in mid-exhale. The sound was close, just a few meters off to his left. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a black apparition move slowly past his hiding spot. He heard the chuffing sound again, very faint, then a low growl, which was barely discernable over the sound of the men twenty meters away. Aldrick didn’t flinch or turn. To do so would mean a grisly death.

  Finally, the jaguar, an almost completely black female he’d observed many times, moved into the view of the night-vision goggles he wore under his hat. She paused, crouched low, and Aldrick could see her nose twitching as she homed in on the scent he’d thrown.

  The great cat moved closer, its shoulders rolling with each step, totally focused on the approaching men.

  The lead narcotraficante passed the spot where the glass vial had landed. Aldrick counted four men, each carrying a small pack on his back. He estimated the packs contained about ten to fifteen kilos, based solely on how the men moved. The first of the four was armed with a rifle. He reached a bend in the trail and disappeared, the light from his flashlight appearing and disappearing as he moved away through the thick jungle.

  The jaguar began moving faster. Aldrick had watched them attack other animals; stalking slowly until they were close enough, then moving faster and faster, as fewer obstacles separated them from their quarry. The last ten or fifteen meters were a sprint, as they stretched their bodies to gobble up the distance.

  The last man in the line didn’t even hear her until the jaguar made its final soundless leap, tackling him from behind, its fangs sinking deep into the neck and shoulder as its hind talons tore into the man’s pack, clothing, and flesh. The animal didn’t snarl or growl. It was simply working—killing its prey as swiftly as possible.

  A primal scream split the air as blood and white powder flew everywhere. The next man in line simply dropped his pack and ran headlong into the man in front of him.

  The jaguar’s victim died or passed out in mid-scream. The great cat didn’t need to release or adjust her bite, but simply lifted her head high, holding her prey by the collarbone, and dragging the limp body between her legs into the night. She didn’t care whether the man was dead or unconscious. He would be a meal for her and the two cubs Aldrick knew she had in her den, just two kilometers upstream.

  It was over before the man with the rifle could even turn around, and by the time he got back to the bend in the trail, the jaguar and her dinner were nowhere to be seen.

  Aldrick had watched the event unfold in just a matter of seconds, aided by the night-vision goggles. They allowed him to see clearly and be able to write in his ledger. He scanned the jungle and trail. The only thing left was the white powder scattered everywhere, blood dripping from a few leaves, and the man’s hat, lying in the middle of the trail where he’d died.

  December 6, 2021

 
Utilla, Bay Islands of Honduras

  The sun felt warm on my skin, as did the sand. Not hot by any stretch. After all, it was winter. But temperatures in the tropics at this time of year rarely rose above eighty-five degrees, and that wouldn’t be until later in the day.

  The breeze was refreshing to the skin as it came across Blackish Point. Beyond the point was Rock Harbor, where it picked up a little chill from the water, which was a few degrees cooler than the air.

  The wind carried the typical scent of the tropics—fragrant flowers, salt, and decaying seaweed. There were other scents on the breeze—exotic smells, barely discernable or unidentifiable. Those fragrances were carried, scattered, and intermingled with others across thousands of miles of ocean.

  I lay on my back on the warm sand, feet pointed toward the water, letting the sun and wind dry my skin. The sun had risen a couple of hours earlier and the sky was a deep cerulean with no trace of clouds or moisture. Though I had my dive watch on, I wasn’t interested in the time. I was relaxed beyond belief, not a worry in the world.

  Hearing a splash, I raised myself up onto my elbows, looking out toward the water. Savannah had her mask perched on her head, carrying her fins in her left hand. She lifted her knees high, like a majorette in a homecoming parade. It was the unhurried walk of a woman who was in the moment, comfortable in her own skin. It made for quite a sexy exhibition.

  She wore a blue bikini, cut high over wide hips. Her long, blond hair was dark and wet, hanging down over her shoulders, and dripping rivulets of water over her tanned, flat belly. She moved with the grace and ease of a world-class athlete.

  I smiled as she came up the beach toward me, her hips making a figure-eight motion as her feet churned through the powdery sand.

  “You look comfortable,” she said, laying her gear on top of mine in the dive bag. “But you’re going to be covered with sand.”

  “I can return it to the sea with a quick dip.” I said.

  She dropped to her knees beside me, tucking her feet under her as she used a towel to wring the water from her hair.