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Tropical Take Down

"Under my command, there are three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and my way," Frank calmly told an upset Alex as she unconsciously imitated Frank by pacing in the hotel resort's conference room.

A blue shirted Alex was trying hard not to look at Frank's face for she knew that although he had said those words mildly and softly, there would be a stern look on his face. All the better to make your point for you knew I'd have to pay close attention to your words if you spoke them softly--Oh you're sly, Frank! she thought to herself, trying to keep a flat expression on her face. But Alex couldn't help glancing at Frank's face and sure enough, that look of sternness had planted itself on his face.

"Yes, I said that softly, and yes so you'd pay close attention," Frank said. Alex looked guilty. How does he do it? How does he read my mind? she wondered.

Alex was upset because of a decision she had made. It had seemed to be an innocuous decision, for both Frank and Alex, as well as the rest of the team, did this every day--in fact, they did this several times a day.

Alex had been the agent who cornered the woman suspect at the marina. She'd told Frank through her earpiece that she'd spotted the woman running down by the marina's member's only club. After tripping on a rather large clam shell, Alex had sprinted at the woman as she was trying to climb up the steps to the member's only club. The steps were slick, for they'd just been hosed down and the woman had been wearing flip flops.

So for Alex, this was an easy take down.

"Cuff her and stay with her until we get there," Frank's voice had told Alex through her earpiece. Frank and the others would soon be at the marina's club and the entire team would enjoy a seafood dinner that evening at the marina's well known restaurant. That is, after Frank handed the woman over to the FBI.

But Alex had bought the woman's excuse that she'd had to go to the bathroom. Alex had let her go into the bathroom in the member's only club, which was on the second floor and also contained shower stalls. While Alex had accompanied the cuffed woman to the second floor bathroom and had uncuffed her so she could go about her business while in the bathroom, Alex had neglected to do two things. First, she'd neglected to follow the woman into the bathroom, and second she'd neglected to inspect the bathroom itself.

As it was currently configured, the bathroom from which the woman had escaped contained one window. This window had been pried open. The woman had climbed up over the windowsill and had dropped the two stories to the ground.

On the one hand, Frank had been amazed the woman hadn't broken her leg. As a precaution, he'd notified the Big Island's hospitals and medical clinics about the woman's description and possible injuries: sprained ankle or sprained/broken wrist.

Still, Frank was not a happy Franklin Donovan. He liked things to work like clockwork, he liked things to go his way. Oh, he'd still collar and cuff the woman, of that he was sure. She was dealing with Franklin Donovan, and woe be to her. It would just take a little more time to catch her.

More time was what Cody and Monica would like on the Big Island. Frank admitted the weather was quite enjoyable--blue skies, warm winds blowing off the Pacific. And he did allow himself to enjoy the weather. After having to swim a mile in a cold dark river some time back after discovering the contract out on his life, Frank could use some relaxing weather. The river was not a nice place to swim in during winter.

Frank was dressed lightly, and in tune with the tropical aura of the Islands. He was mindful of what had occurred here in 1972, when a team of Agents, dressed in the Bureau's usual dark suits, were staking out a felon in a public place. Two elderly ladies had walked by the stakeout team and one remarked that something bad must be going down if the FBI were in Hawaii. The very next day the edict had come down: all Agents in Hawaii, even visiting Agents, were to wear aloha shirts so that they blended in with the tourists.

Aloha shirts were not in Frank's taste. He considered them garish. In his usual way, he had noted his surroundings and had managed to blend in perfectly. Even the SAC Frank was assisting had agreed Frank could not be distinguished from the hundreds of similarly dressed tourists.

Frank was disguised as a one of the yachties inherent to the Islands and he wore their uniform: white polo shirt, white shorts, ankle length athletic socks and deck shoes.

He'd had his team dress similarly, though in her off hours, Monica was itching to try hula dancing in one of the grass skirts.

"I know I should have checked the bathroom. I just didn't think she'd jump out, fall two stories to the ground. Especially wearing flip flops," Alex said as she continued pacing in the hotel's conference room.

"We can catch her. It will just take more time," Frank said. "She can't leave the island, unless it's on a boat. She could try to take her boat, but where would she go? She's not accustomed to sailing alone, and she'd be out in the Pacific Ocean without a store of food. She doesn't know celestial navigation, nor does she know how to work the boat's GPS system, so she'd be lost. Eric did all the navigating," Frank said. He knew Alex was upset. But he also knew he could corner the lady.

Alex was still struggling with her emotions since her ex-lover Carlos had been released from prison. Carlos had decided to take the word 'freedom' more seriously than most, and he'd gone off to sit on a deserted beach. He'd hoped Alex would join him--Frank knew the two were still in love--but Alex had declined.

Frank also knew Alex was at war with herself. She was still young, and still adapting to the career change she'd opted for herself. Frank himself had opted for a rather sudden career change after negotiating for the hijacked plane hostages in Ethiopia.

Frank was deliberately withholding his emotions and simultaneously trying to go light on Alex. But he had needed to make his point about her actions.

"Therefore," Frank continued,"she's still on the Island. Hiding. I want you to continue staking out the marina, but you'll be dressed as a Hawaii native," he finished. He knew Alex knew what that meant--wig and grass skirt.

He continued his reasoning. "She'll have to come back to the boat at some point. We know she can sail but not alone.  But she has to have somewhere to sleep and she doesn't know we know where she docked the stolen boat. We first spotted her at Don Ho's restaurant. She could try to hide out somewhere on the Island but she doesn't have enough money and she needs a change of clothes. Those clothes are on the boat," he said.

They had cornered Debbie Martin at the marina by chasing her in the car she'd hot-wired. She'd ditched the car in the marina's parking lot and had started running towards the marina's club. Undoubtedly she trying to get to the stolen boat docked in the marina, but she didn't know the FBI knew that. The only other option open to her was to jump in the water and try to swim underneath a boat dock, hoping to hide out until dark when she could clamber out and get to her boat. There, she'd be safe, for a while.

But Alex had spotted her, then cornered her. Debbie had climbed out the second story window and was now at large again.

Debbie Martin and her husband Eric Martin, were wanted for boat theft on the island of Palmyra, a US Possession. Actually, they were wanted for kidnapping, for they'd taken the boat's owner, tied his hands behind his back, and put him into the dingy which trailed his 40 foot ketch. Debbie and Eric had then sailed back the 1800 miles to Honolulu with the yachtie tied up in the dingy.

Debbie and Martin had thrown him food once a day, which he'd had to eat with his hands tied behind his back. Water  was given to him by Debbie, who, tethered to the ketch, and handled by Eric, had jumped in the ocean, swum to the dingy, climbed in and gave Cyrus Hanson his twice daily drink of water from a sport bottle. Fortunately, for most of the week's trip back to Hawaii, the weather had been cloudy and several times rain had fallen. Cyrus had found himself leaning back with his mouth open to catch the precious water in his mouth. Any bathroom activities were restricted to Cyrus' clothes. A fact which had to have annoyed Debbie.

Still, Cyrus had a nasty sunburn and severe dehydration. Frank had visited him in the hospital and couldn't believe that a man's skin could be so blistered. Frank had suggested putting Noxzema on the man's burns, which had alarmed the nurse. Frank knew Noxzema was a cooling agent, so he'd gone out, purchased Noxzema and Cyrus had applied the cream. He did agree with Frank that his skin felt better and the burning feeling went away. The cream had disappeared into his skin so by the time the nurse had come back, she didn't notice a thing, although she'd been pleased to note Cyrus was feeling better but she attributed that to the medication she'd given him.

Because the kidnapping and boat theft had occured outside any state's jurisdiction, and the tiny island of Palmyra was a US possession, the FBI was called in. Frank's team had been called in to deal with the case because Eric Martin was yet another of Sonny Walker's associates.

Frank knew his team thought Sonny Walker had a lot of associates, and they were right. In the past several weeks, the team had had to deal with a lot of Sonny's associates. Sonny's men were loyal to him, and Frank had a sneaking suspicion the team thought many of Sonny's men were getting revenge on behalf of Sonny Walker. Those men--and women--had been arrested by Frank and his team and one would be cooling his heels in a Thai prison, not for ten years, as Alex had thought, but twenty years was the official word from Thai officials.

Which just goes to show that when you mess with Franklin Donovan, your new bedroom would be an eight by ten foot cell.

Frank was keen on getting Debbie. He knew he would have her in custody soon. Her husband Eric was already in custody, having been taken down by Jake in a mountain field. The mountain field also contained a healthy crop of just-ready marijuana. Honolulu's office of DEA Agents were more than pleased to mow down the hidden field. They'd planted agents in the brush to catch the harvester. Sure enough, there were now two marijuana growers cooling their heels in prison. Jake had rather enjoyed that stake-out, for he'd been one of the arresting agents. Give him some experience in that area, Frank had reasoned when Jake had come to him and requested to be on the take-down team of DEA Agents.

For although Frank was assisting the Hawaiian SAC, he was the supervising SAC in the Martin case, and thus was the man in charge of anything that came out of this case. That had included the DEA stakeout.

Frank now motioned for Alex to leave. She did leave, rather grateful to be out of his scrutiny.

Damn him, Alex thought to herself. How does he always seem to know what I'm thinking. Under his scrutiny for the last several minutes, she knew what it was like for Jake when he'd been called into Frank's office for a 'chat'.

Alex needed to get a black wig and a grass skirt, so she stopped off in the hotel's bar to pick up Monica, who wanted to take hula dancing lessons if she could find the time in her schedule. If she couldn't, well, at least she'd have the skirt.

"I've been told to go undercover as a Hawaiian native," she told Monica after spying Monica in the bar sipping a soda. Frank frowned on drinking on the job, so Monica had been sure to order soda.

"Survived one of his 'chats' in one piece? And your knees aren't shaking? Aren't you lucky! Perhaps you could be teaching me to hula dance?" Monica asked, ever hopeful of getting some hula dancing in. She had been feeling a bit tense as well, and while she knew they were working a case and didn't have much time for personal leisure, she'd was looking forward to at least a few hours of personal time.

Alex just grunted as she waved a cocktail waitress over. "Diet coke, in a can," she said. The waitress nodded and went off to dig the soda out of the cooler behind the bar.

"Frank's just being himself. He likes order and his job is tough," Monica said.

"Keller had the same job, and he didn't act this way," Alex retorted.

"Keller had a different personality, different life experiences. We know Donovan had a tough time during the last weeks he was at the FBI with those plane hostages, and we don't know exactly what is in his background," Monica replied.

"Still he doesn't have to be difficult, so different," Alex replied.

"I don't know what motivates him, except that he likes results, likes them fast, he likes to be sneaky, and he likes order," Monica said as the cocktail waitress brought Alex's soda. She paid and the two women left to go shopping for Alex's undercover disguise.
Disguised as a Hawaiian Native, with her earpiece in place, Alex and Monica were strolling about the place. It was nearing sunset.

Frank had indeed agreed that it would be appear more natural if Alex were indeed teaching Monica to hula dance, and so Alex and Monica had spent the afternoon hula dancing. Frank had bet that Debbie didn't know a proper hula from her shoulder, as her background had been a hard scrabble one raised in a trailer park surrounded by the cornfields of Nebraska.

Cody was in the team's substitute van, having had a few hours to swim. "Checking in, Monica, Alex'," he said.

"Here," and "here" the two ladies responded. Cody thought they must feel like they're in school and were attending roll call.


Monica had marveled that Debbie, a landlocked person, had known to sail. Frank had told her that Debbie had met Eric Martin, who'd been in the process of teaching her to sail when they'd sailed his boat down to the island of Palmyra.

The Palmyra trip was Debbie's on-the-job training. Eric's boat was still at Palmyra, apparently being a floating transient hotel to the yachties who stopped off at the private island that was under the protection of the US government. Several of the yachties had 'phoned' home via their shortwave radios and gossiped that they were spending the night on the 'crime' boat. Word had spread fast and furious about Eric and Debbie Martin, who'd just been married two weeks prior to their leaving for Palmyra--a whirlwind courtship and marriage.

Frank would have the 22 foot boat towed, although he didn't need the boat as evidence. Eric had stolen Cyrus Hanson's ketch because it was bigger and better equipped than his own boat. Eric and Debbie had toyed with the idea of just dropping out for a while, preferably for the rest of their lives, sailing the seven seas.

Eric had thought that since Palmyra was 1800 miles from Hawaii, there would be no law enforcement agency that could stop him if he stole a boat. Poor reasoning on his part. It was well known amongst the regular Pacific yachties that Palmyra was a private island under US possession, and all crimes there were under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

Although the island was private, and technically the yachties needed the owner's permission to dock at the island, the logistics of the situation were impossible to handle. Most yachties came there for the solitude, a chance to rest up and get on some dry land. And they also came to the island because it had been the scene of a double murder back in 1974.

In other words, Frank had explained to his incredulous team, Eric and Debbie had thought they'd found the perfect place to commit a perfect crime.

Frank would soon correct Debbie Martin's thinking.

She was, after all, dealing with Franklin Donovan. And he had surmised that she'd taken the easy way out, and had hidden, like Monica's stalker, in the dumpster behind the marina.

He'd decided to leave her there until dark. He thought his team needed a few hours of R&R without them knowing it. They were a good team. This was why he hadn't said a word when Monica had gone off into the bar and Cody had headed towards the pool. He knew when to hold firm, and when to yield.

Debbie had been hiding out in the dumpster behind the marina all day. She'd been feeling cramped and very dirty. She didn't like hiding out but she didn't have a chance of escaping during the daylight. That female agent who'd cuffed her had not followed her into the bathroom and Debbie had taken her chance at jumping from the two story window.

She'd landed and had a few bad scrapes on her knees that stung quite badly. Lying in rotting garbage wasn't helping her scrapes either. But she'd had no choice. She had to wait until dark.

Pushing the button on her timex, she saw it was almost dark. She'd be able to leave soon. She'd go to the boat she and Eric had stolen. She couldn't sail it, but she could motor it over to Oahu and hide out there.

She didn't know why she was being chased by the FBI. She and Eric had fed the man, and given him water. And since he was in his own boat, she didn't see how the police could be so interested in her and Eric.

And speaking of Eric, where was he?

Debbie didn't know her new husband had been taken down just after he'd left the boat this morning.


Jake was sitting at the outdoor bar with Frank.. Frank had positioned the table so that it was near the marina's dumpster, which was smelling to high heaven.

"Frank? Must we be so close?"

Frank had merely looked at Jake. He wasn't mad, Jake saw. Perturbed? Jake couldn't describe the look on Frank's face. All Jake knew was...knew. Past tense of know...and Frank knew something that Jake didn't. That's what his look meant. Frank was smirking.

Jake looked around. Then he looked at Frank. Frank merely looked at the setting sun, a placid look on his face. Jake looked closer at Frank's expression, and thought there was just the slightest Mona Lisa smile curling the ends of Frank's lips.

Was this yet another lesson from Frank?

Jake thought about his words. By "must we be so close" meant: "must we be so close to the dumpster?" Doh! Jake almost slapped his forehead. The dumpster! Debbie was hiding out there, and Frank had suspected it. The dumpster had been where Monica's stalker had hidden himself.

He chanced a glance at Frank. Frank was now looking at Jake.

"Figured it out?" he asked.

Jake nodded. "Interesting way to take her down," he said as a cocktail waitress brought them both a shrimp cocktail and refilled their iced tea.

"Considering what she did to Cyrus Hanson, I'm going easy on her," Frank replied as he bit into a large shrimp smothered with cocktail sauce.

"That was inhuman. What I still don't believe is how she thought she and Eric would get away with that."

"People get the strangest ideas," Frank responded.

"Yeah. Guess they thought that their being on Palmyra alleviated them from human responsibility," Jake said as he too bit into a large shrimp smothered with cocktail sauce.

"It's almost dark," Frank drily noted. "She's been in there, scraped and bruised, since 10:30 this morning," he finished, then took another shrimp and drowned it in cocktail sauce.

"Cody?" Frank queried.

"So that's why you had me video the dumpster! And here I thought I was taking out the trash!" came Cody's voice back in both Frank and Jake's earpieces. Cody had wondered about the surveillance camera around the marina but Frank had explained to him that it was all the better to monitor the marina after dark.

"You were taking out the trash. Garbage gets treated like garbage," Frank said after he finished his shrimp. He looked at the setting sun, then speared another shrimp. "She should be out soon. I noticed she had a lighted timex on her wrist," he said as he bit into the shrimp.

True to his words, after Frank and Jake had finished their shrimp cocktails, the sun had set. It was full dark, and Frank motioned for Jake to get up and stand near the water's edge, where Frank had the spotlight installed.

He himself would be standing twenty or so yards in front of the dumpster.

"Monica, Alex, get back to the bar," Cody relayed Frank's message. "Alex, look like yourself," Frank said as he went to stand in front of the dumpster.

The team took their places.

Soon, Frank heard the creaking sound that told him the dumpster's lid was being raised. Cody's voice said, "she's peering out, looking around like a trapped animal."

That's what she is, Frank thought. Cody had installed a camera with night-vision capability on the side of the marina's bar.

"She's climbing out," Cody said but Frank didn't need to be told that. He could hear Debbie grunting and soon he heard the 'oomph' she made as her feet hit the ground.

Debbie moaned.

"Stretching, now," Cody said.

"Walking towards you, but slowly," he told Frank.

Frank got ready. This was going to be so easy.

"She's about 10 yards in front of you," Cody said.

Frank said, "Now," and Jake turned on the spotlight. Debbie threw her hands up in front of her eyes, yelling 'arrrrrrrrrrr!"

Jake moved to cuff her. An easy job and she didn't put up any resistance.

"Well, Debbie. How does it feel to be treated like garbage?" Frank asked Debbie when Jake had her cuffed, and the Honolulu Agents had gotten out of their cars to make the formal arrest.

He watched Debbie pause for a few moments before she replied. "Nasty," she replied.

"Serves you right," Frank said.

Honolulu agents had known of Frank's plan and they'd known the whereabouts of Debbie Martin as Frank had filled them in. They'd spent the afternoon on the golf course, or on Honolulu's beaches. As they now watched one of their men walk Debbie away, another Honolulu agent remarked:
"You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don't mess around with Frank!"
His comrades laughed, agreeing.

"Whew! Nasty!" said a Honolulu agent, who was wearing the aloha shirt, as he led Debbie away.

The rest of the team watched as Frank, in his white shorts, white shirt, white socks and brown deck shoes, stand and watch while a cuffed Debbie was put into the car. He turned towards his assembled team. "Good work. Hope you enjoyed the afternoon off," he said, his teeth flashing in the spotlight he'd had Cody put there. Cody had wondered about that, but Frank had explained that just like the surveillance camera, they might have need of light in the event of Debbie's capture. Cody hadn't thought Frank's actions through.

Frank then walked off into the night. The rest of the team sat at the bar, knowing they were free for the rest of the night. They looked thoughtful as the waitre ss filled their iced tea glasses. Not less than all four of them were wondering about Frank Donovan.