Thriller Thursday 1 23
PANAMA CITY BEACH
The lull of the surf was hypnotic, crashing and rolling over the stretch of white sand beach just below Ocean Boulevard. The man sitting in the pick up truck took a moment to wonder why the street was named Ocean Blvd. when it fronted a Gulf, and not an ocean. It could have been named Sea, or Inlet, or even Tidewater, but the planners of the city, in their grandiose stretching, named the sixteen mile piece of asphalt, Ocean, after two bodies of water hundreds, and in one case, thousands of miles away.
He sat in the pristine cab of the old pick up truck, sipping a giant plastic cup of soda and watching as the sun set further west. He wished he had a cold sweating can of beer, or even a draft, belly up to a worn bar, listening to the locals complain about this or that. But tonight was a work night. He had to be here, at precisely 8:42 p.m., twenty minutes after the sunset.
It happened once a week, on rotating nights, a schedule conceived by his brother and followed for the past eighteen months without a hitch.
Tonight, there was a hitch.
A young couple was strolling along the edge of the surf where it lapped against the shore. They paused to kiss, and stare deeply into each other’s eyes, as young lovers were wont to do.
He sighed.
“Oh brother.”
It was half curse, half prayer to his brother. He had exactly two minutes to get the interlopers to vamoose, and it would take longer than that for him to jog to them.
“Hey!” he shouted as he lumbered out of the truck.
His voice was lost in the surf, or they ignored him. Probably the latter as the man folded the girl down onto the packed sand and did his best impersonation of “From Here to Eternity.”
“Hey Kids!” he shouted again and shuffled toward them.
And there they were. One minute early, or his watch was slow, which meant it was time to change the battery, because he was a stickler for being on time.
The conning tower broke the surface, blue sea water streaming from the dull gray metal that blended perfectly into the twilight of the now gone sun.
The young couple sat up to watch. The boy pointed.
“Damn it,” he sighed again.
He walked up behind him, and now they really couldn’t hear him coming, or they were too engrossed in the show fifty yards offshore.
Two men tossed a sixteen foot inflatable rubber raft off the tower and whooshed it open at the base. They made a quick, efficient human assembly line as black plastic wrapped packages were passed up, over the edge and stacked in the boat.
The boy started to stand.
The man pulled a silenced .45 from the waistband at his back and popped him twice in the base of the skull. Before he even slumped down next to his girlfriend, the man swung the pistol over to the side of her temple and pulled the trigger.
She slid next to her boyfriend in the sand, another homage to the classic movie they were trying to emulate not minutes ago.
The man unscrewed the silencer and slipped it into his back pocket. He wiped his fingerprints off the gun with his dirty tee shirt, and put the gun into the girl’s hand.
It had to look believable, so he waited until the rubber boat pulled up on shore.
“Hugo?” a voice called out from the darkness.
“Over here,” said the man. “We had some trespassers, so I’m going to fire my gun. Don’t worry.”
He heard footsteps crunching up to him in the sand, and aimed the gun in the opposite direction. He pulled the trigger.
The blast was loud, and fast. Hugo jumped.
“Hey boss,” said the Spanish accented man. He held out a hand.
Hugo took it and pumped three times.
“How was the trip?”
“Quiet. He won’t let us run the radio,” the Columbian nodded his head to his partner stationed on the conning tower.
“That’s smart,” he pointed at the couple in the sand. “Murder, suicide. Happens all the time. Very Romeo and Juliet.”
“I don’t know them,” said the Columbian.
“Shakespeare?” he laughed. The man shook his head.
“All right partner, let’s get this done then.”
Together, the two men transported the contents of the inflatable to the back of the pick up truck. It took less than ten minutes.
“I’ll transfer the funds when I get to the house,” he told the Columbian. “See you next time.”
The two men shook hands again. He watched as the tiny man slipped back into the boat and shot across the approaching waves to rendezvous with the submarine.
They slashed the rubber boat and hauled it back inside the tower before slipping under the waves as if they had never been.
He cranked the truck and turned on the radio, disappearing into the dark night.
Been working on a few things to get the next one ready:
Start with a brand new FREE AUDIOBOOK for YOU:
Lemon Drop — Click to listen now
Don’t Miss:
Gunpowder Range — FREE
Just Shoot Me Dead: A Chinese Cozy Mystery FREE
Winter can be MURDER (Killer Cozy Mystery Boxed FREE
Lattes and Spirits: A Witch & Ghost Mystery FREE
Long Gone: A Detective Cullen Mystery (DCI Paul Cullen Mysteries FREE
AND:
A Fifth of Trouble — The Jake Burbank Mysteries
AND
Rather listen:
OR