The Devlin Deception: Book One of The Devlin Quatrology (10 page)

Hunsucker and Babcock ran over to Norm and Janet, calling for their
compatriot both aloud and into their throat mikes, getting no
response. They pulled Norm's drill out of the sand and saw blood on
it, about a foot up from the tip.

Janet said, "That's Norm's; he cut his toe on it." Norm
showed them his bandage.

Hunsucker threw their chairs aside, then reached for the umbrella.
He pulled up on the shaft, but it wouldn't budge. He reached down to
pull up on the handles of the sand anchor; still no movement.

Norm said, "Twist it ... no, the other way."

Hunsucker twisted and the anchor slowly came up, exposing more blood
mixed in the sand on the blade. He and Babcock began digging in the
sand with their hands, revealing the top of a helmet, then even more
blood mixed with the sand.

"Oh, shit," Hunsucker muttered.

"Oh, Ron, no," Babcock cried.

Norm looked on as more sand and blood came out in the Marines' hands;
he covered his mouth, looked at Janet, and croaked, "Oh, my
god."

Babcock and Hunsucker finally got enough sand out to be able to pull
Ron up and onto the beach. They rolled him over, revealing a
mangled, bloody throat. Hunsucker checked for a pulse, found nothing
but dried and drying blood. Babcock started crying.

The beach crowd shrank even further back, but several kept their cell
phone videos recording. Janet turned away and vomited. A flock of
twenty or thirty seagulls swooped in and began gobbling up her
breakfast muffin.

Babcock leaped to his feet, grabbed his weapon and pointed it at
Norm. "You killed him, you killed him," he screamed, tears
still running down his cheeks.

Norm cried out, "I didn't know he was there!"

Pam yelled, "Stand down, Marine. STAND DOWN, dammit!"

Hunsucker jumped up, grabbed Babcock's weapon and forced it down to
the ground. "Cool it, Babs; cool it."

Pam ran directly between Norm and Babcock, got right in Babcock's
face and in a measured but intense tone said, "I said, STAND
DOWN, Marine!!!"

Babcock, snarling at Norm, looked back at Pam, said, "Yes,
ma'am," and backed away.

Pam said, "It was an accident. How could he know Ron was down
there? Think, Marine." Hunsucker pulled Babcock away from Norm
and Pam, toward the water, talking him down as best he could.

"Goddamn Cheney," Pam muttered. Jake wondered why she was
cursing the former vice president, but before he could think further
about that, Murphy hollered from the Gulf.

"Ma'am, I think you'd better see this."

Pam responded, "Any immediate danger?"

"I don't think so, ma'am."

"Okay. Give me a minute. Babcock, help Miller and Schwartz
with the crowds. Hunsucker, cover him up with something."

Norm said, "Here, take our towels."

As Hunsucker covered the body, sirens sounded in the distance,
rapidly approaching the beach.

"Oh, shit; locals," Pam said under her breath. She pulled
a radio from her beach bag, flicked it on and said, "Chopper
One, Beach Gang. We need you back here right now."

"On our way, Beach Gang; ETA, five."

"Make it two."

"We'll do our best, ma'am."

"We also need a body bag."

After a brief pause, Chopper One responded, "One body bag,
confirmed. Chopper One, out."

Pam turned to her men and ordered, "Marines, prepare for
backup." The Marines arrayed themselves in a semicircle behind
her, facing the parking lots, M-16s at the ready, but pointed
slightly toward the ground.

Three Lee County and four Collier County sheriff's cars pulled into
the parking lots and a dozen deputies emerged, running onto the
beach, some guns holstered, some drawn. The onlookers moved even
further away, cameras still recording.

Pam reached into her beach bag, pulled out a leather wallet and
stepped in front of her men, holding the wallet up in the faces of
the approaching deputies.

"Secret Service; holster your weapons!"

A huge, bald hulk of a man with Collier County sergeant's stripes
lumbered up to Pam and reached out to grab her wallet. She pulled it
back and said, "Look, don't touch, Sergeant."

"Lady, I don't care who you are or what that badge says, you're
in my county and you need to tell me what's going on, why you've got
Marines on my beach, right now!"

"Back down, Sergeant. This is a national security issue.
Marines, with me NOW!" Hunsucker and Babcock immediately moved
up to Pam's side and aimed their weapons at the sergeant's feet.
Miller and Schwartz casually but pointedly swept their weapons back
and forth, covering the other deputies, two of whom were still
pointing their sidearms at Pam and the Marines.

Pam got directly in the sergeant's face and spoke coldly and
forcefully, "Stand. Down. NOW. Sergeant."

The sergeant, his face now flushed, hesitated, then turned to the
deputies and hollered, "Holster your weapons, deputies!"
They all complied, both Lee and Collier.

Pam lowered her voice, backed slightly away from the sergeant, and
said, "Now, Sergeant, here's what's going to happen. A
helicopter will be here soon ... hear it? ... and we will take our
dead Marine ... accidental death, by the way ... and leave. My eyes
are up here, Sergeant. Thank you."

She hollered over her shoulder, "Murphy, come here."
Murphy swam to shore and jogged over to Pam.

"What did you find out there?"

"Well, ma'am, there's a box on the bottom, with several scuba
tanks and a remote relay to open them all, to inflate that gorilla
balloon, plus a speaker that floated to the surface and made the
sound, the roar. Nothing else down there, nothing that looks
dangerous. I'm sorry for letting it startle me."

"We'll deal with that later, Murphy." She looked at the
sergeant again, "Now, Sergeant ..." she looked at his name
tag "... Dooley, is it? ... that is something you CAN
investigate. I'll expect to see a copy of your report. My office
will contact you."

At that moment, the helicopter returned and set down, half on the
water, half on shore, and three more Marines in full BDU's exited,
one with a black body bag. They ran to Danuski's body, zipped it
into the bag and carried it back to the helo.

Pam turned to Jake and said, "Jake, I have now officially
cleared you of any national security issues. Good luck with your
book. Sergeant Dooley, this is Jake Devlin, who is a witness, along
with everybody on the beach, to that ... inflatable event. But as
for that Marine we've just carried from your beach, that is off ...
and I emphasize 'off' ... limits to you, and if I hear anything ...
ANYTHING ... about any inquiries you make or harassment of anyone on
this beach on that issue, I will have your job AND your
certification, and you will wind up as MAYBE a mall cop, if you're
lucky. Clear?"

"Yes, ma’am."

"Good. Jake, I will be in touch, and you let me know how it
goes with Sergeant Dooley here, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am, I will."

"Sergeant, for my records, what's your first name?"

"Thomas, ma'am."

Pam smiled slightly, for the first time since the deputies arrived.
"My sympathies, Sergeant."

Sgt. Dooley's face reddened slightly; he did not smile.

Pam then reached into her beach bag, removed a full-body coverup and
wrapped it around herself. Miller folded up her beach chair, and she
and the Marines, still keeping an eye on the deputies, all boarded
the helo.

A little boy ran down to the shore, waving at the helo. Ginny May's
shrill voice rang out, "Stevie Bruce, no!!! Get back here or
you'll get a whuppin'!" The little boy ignored her and kept
waving.

Pam looked out at the boy and then at Jake and burst out giggling
again, mouthing “Stevie Bruce?”

The helicopter took off and headed back north, toward Fort Myers
Beach, leaving Jake with a final vision of Pam's laughing, gorgeous
visage surrounded by grim Marines and the helo's side door sliding
shut.

Sergeant Dooley muttered, "Bitch," under his breath, then
turned to Jake and said gruffly, "So, Jake Devlin, what the hell
happened here?"

Trying to suppress his own laughter, Jake said, "But only as to
the inflatable event, of course?"

Dooley glared at Jake and hissed, "Of course."

-14-

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Morning, afternoon and evening

All of the Sunday morning talk shows were filled, as Donne had
predicted, with political and economic pundits, from both sides of
the aisle, as well as the usual mudslingers and malcontents.
Keynesian economists predicted the immediate demise of the country,
with charts, graphs and statistics to back up their positions.
Austrian school economists refudiated (that actually is a pretty fun
word; JD) each and every one of the Keynesians' assertions and
doomsday scenarios, in spite of the Keynesians' constant attempts to
interrupt, out-talk and out-shout them.

On one of the roundtable shows, two of the participants, both female,
actually came to blows over the correct pronunciation of “divisive.”
The video went viral and had over a million hits within two days.
The apologies each of them issued five days later received minimal
news coverage, but when they returned to the show the following week,
they agreed that both pronunciations were acceptable and that that
word absolutely applied to most of Donne's policies. They could not
agree on their opinions of Donne, which they continued to argue
strenuously, but they did manage to restrain themselves from creating
another viral video.

In cathedrals, churches, temples and mosques all around the country
and the world, Donne's policies on abortion, gay marrage, assisted
suicide and marijuana legalization were variously denounced and
excoriated by passionate priests, pastors, rabbis and imams. All of
them, however, agreed that his tax on nonprofits was a despicable,
antisocial, even demonic money grab. Televangelists were especially
vocal and passionate on that issue, continuously and passionately
pleading with their followers to contribute before New Year's to
avoid that tax.

In Rome, the Vatican issued a scathing attack on Donne and his
policies and excommunicated him, even though he wasn't Catholic. A
British newspaper's Monday morning edition's headline read “POPE
CURSES G.O.D.” Privately, the inner circle debated whether to
call Donne the Antichrist, but the heads of the marketing, legal and
financial departments objected vociferously, so that discussion was
tabled.

Unsurprisingly, no organized crime figures complained about the Al
Capone tax in public, but it certainly was a dominant topic of angry
discussions in English and a wide variety of non-English languages
throughout the United States and around the world. None of those
discussions were in Andorran, though.

National union leaders burned up the phone and internet wires having
similar angry discussions and working to energize their membership
bases against Donne's anti-union policies.

Up and down K Street in Washington, DC, and in their satellite
offices in other major cities, lobbyists were scrambling to spread
anti-Donne talking points to their paid bloggers and to multiple PR
firms, as well as to their hired-gun talking heads, columnists and
radio talk-show hosts.

Nearly all leaders of all types of social justice and environmental
groups spoke with their top groupies and supporters and started
developing strategies and plans for marches, demonstrations and other
ways of objecting to the tax on nonprofits.

At two p.m. Central Standard Time, Steve and John and the other
members of the trial lawyers society's board of directors met in
their headquarters in Dothan, Alabama, and went over all of Donne's
policies that affected their profession, progressively getting
angrier and angrier as they discovered new restrictions on their
ability to control (and fleece) their clients and pad their own
paychecks.

Bankers around the world, especially central bankers, used their
backdoor communications channels to spread a single message, which
boiled down to this: “We have GOT to stop him from paying down
the debt. That would kill our plan to bankrupt the US, along with
all the other countries we've loaned money to, and we'll also lose
the interest payments we planned to receive. Strategies, ideas? Time
to advance the plan for the 2019 India-China-Arab war? Raise US
interest rates immediately? Do a Biddle? Bust the bond bubble
early?”

Back in Washington, both the Democratic and Republican national
committees movers and shakers had been shaking in their boots ever
since Donne's speech, and in their all-day meetings both Saturday and
Sunday, they were also unable to come up with any strategies to
counter his policies, and their frustration levels rose, along with
the blood pressure of many of their senior members.

Predictably, most of those individuals and institutions with funds
that would be confiscated put in transfer requests to their banks and
other financial repositories, well aware that each of those requests
violated Donne's Directives Numbers 213 through 217, but unaware that
each of those transfer requests was routed through DEI's funds
transfer platform, which flagged and rerouted them all to a special
government account Donne had established on Friday, and equally
unaware that each of those requests was noted in a report which
landed digitally on Donne's desk Monday morning and was updated
hourly thereafter.

As he read them, Gordon Donne smiled and said to himself, “And
the second step of my vengeance has begun.”

-15-

Monday, December 12, 2011

Morning, afternoon, evening and overnight

New York, New York

With the Asian and European stock markets in disarray overnight from
Sunday to Monday, US investors and traders were in near-panic mode,
and the futures indicated a market opening down between eight and
thirteen percent, with extremely high volatility.