by Matthew Rief
“Get them out of here,” I told her, kissing her on the forehead as I moved past.
“Where are you going?” she said, looking back over her shoulder.
“To try to answer your question.”
If whoever was piloting that boat thought they’d gotten off easy, they were gravely mistaken.
FOUR
I took off down the dock and reached the sandy shoreline in seconds. Jack was racing down the beach, gripping his compact Desert Eagle with two hands.
“What the hell’s going on, bro?” he said through gasps for air.
“Sex traffickers,” I said.
He stopped abruptly, shifting his gaze from me to the dock. I didn’t slow as I approached him. I wasn’t sprinting, but I was close to it.
“Girls are fine,” I added. “One of the kidnappers got away on a center-console.”
That was all it took for my beach bum friend to holster his Desert Eagle and run alongside me toward the parking lot. Jack wasn’t a trained warrior, but he’d always been able to carry himself well and handle a weapon. We’d gotten into a handful of scrapes in our time. He was a good man to have at your side when shit hit the fan.
We reached the parking lot quickly and weaved through a few rows of cars to the small dock where the Baia was tied off. A large group of people had exited the restaurant and were standing around, wondering what all the commotion was about. Even with the Wayward Suns blaring out their island tunes, a storm of repetitive gunfire would have caught most everyone’s attention.
I launched myself over the Baia’s port gunwale and into the cockpit. Flipping up the keypad for the security system, I punched in the four-digit code, inserted the key into the ignition, then twisted. I looked over my shoulder as the engines gurgled to life. Jack already had the stern and bow lines untied. He gave me a quick thumbs-up before jumping onto the sunbed and quickly coiling the lines.
Less than thirty seconds after jumping aboard, I shoved the throttle forward. The engines roared and the propellers churned up a massive white-bubbled wake. We cleared the end of the dock in a blink and accelerated into the dark channel. The Baia’s bow rose high out of the water. For a moment I couldn’t see anything, then the bow splashed back down as we came up on plane.
Thirty knots. Forty, then the max speed of fifty. I turned the helm slightly to the right, heading in the direction where the center-console had disappeared. I scanned back and forth between the dark water surrounding us and the instruments. Depth there wasn’t an issue. I’d boated there many times before and knew the shallowest portions of the channel were well deeper than the Baia’s three-foot draft. The radar captured most of my attention. I kept my eye out for echoes, wanting to avoid collisions and to spot our running quarry.
Jack appeared from below deck with my backpack slung over his shoulder. Balancing himself with ease as we throbbed up and down at full speed, he reached inside and grabbed my night vision monocular. He quickly powered it on and peered at the horizon ahead of us.
Based on the pilot’s trajectory, I assumed that he’d head north for the Gulf. I eased back on the throttles a little and cut through a channel beside Dreguez Key, heading up into Turkey Basin.
The Gulf side of the Keys can be a nightmare to navigate at night, especially at our current speed. Thousands of tiny islands litter the landscape, along with shallow reefs, cuts, and channels. Fortunately we both knew the area well, and I had my side-scan sonar up and running, so I’d at least have a quick heads-up if I was heading for danger.
The tropical evening air whipped past us as we stared forward. Glowing moonlight cast down over the water, allowing me to see the dark outlines of islands. We were nearing the day’s second high tide, which made piloting a little easier.
The only other boat we’d seen out on the water was a pontoon cruiser back when we’d motored into Upper Sugarloaf Sound. It was nearly midnight. Not a lot of pleasure boaters cruised about that late, even on a Friday.
Hoping our quarry hadn’t turned off course, I continued us into Turkey Basin. When we were halfway across the four-mile-long body of water, Jack froze and zoomed in with the night vision monocular.
“Got a bead on somebody,” he said over the Baia’s roaring engines. “White hull, maybe twenty-three feet long with a closed bow.”
“That’s them.”
I hadn’t gotten a great look back from the dock, but the size and color checked out.
Jack lowered the monocular and added, “They’re heading north for the Barracuda Keys. Hauling ass for that small of a boat, bro. Gotta be nearly forty knots.”
“How far off are they?”
I could see a glowing wake far ahead but couldn’t gauge the distance.
“A mile,” he fired back right away.
Jack had a scary ability to judge distances in the islands. Even in the dark, I’d bet a case of Paradise Sunsets that he was close to the mark.
I kept the throttles full and my eyes scanning back and forth between my instruments and the horizon. I managed to close in on them just as we reached the Barracudas. They motored into a narrow cut that was only a few feet deep. I chose a deeper channel just a hundred yards to the west.
“Take the helm, Jack,” I shouted just as we were about to break out from the channel into the lower part of the Gulf.
He took over, and I moved downstairs, through the galley, and into the main cabin. Making quick work of my safe, I grabbed my M4 carbine assault rifle along with an extra thirty-round magazine. Back up on deck, I stabilized myself and took aim over the port side of the windscreen.
If this guy didn’t know we were there, he would soon. I wanted to be the first to strike. I wanted them to know for certain that their bad night wasn’t over yet. That we weren’t the type to back down or let evil men slip away without doing everything we could to stop them.
I debated opening fire, but we were still a good distance away. Also, we were clear of the islands, so they had nowhere to hide. In the open waters of the Gulf, we could quickly close the gap and take them down.
“I’m picking up something on radar,” Jack said, catching my attention.
I lowered my monocular and stepped over to the cockpit.
“It’s a ship, and it’s heading west,” he added.
I looked down at the radar screen and spotted the echo right away.
“It’s huge,” I said.
I had to rub my eyes a few times, unable to believe what I was seeing. The object being shown on the screen had to be around three hundred feet long.
I peered through my monocular over the starboard bow. After a few seconds, I saw it: the massive silhouette of a freighter thundering west. At our current rates of speed and trajectories, it would cut directly in front of us in just a few minutes.
Wanting to try and stop the traffickers before we reached the freighter, I pocketed my monocular and gripped my M4 with both hands. I rose up over the windscreen and took aim. I fired off a few rounds as best I could. Both our boats were bouncing, and we were far off, but I managed to pepper a few rounds into the transom.
I let go of the trigger and grabbed my night vision monocular. Focusing on the boat, I could see two guys scrambling aboard and laying low for cover. They were still about a hundred yards off.
One of them grabbed what looked like a rifle, so I opened fire again. Both guys hit the deck before they could retaliate. It looked like I hit one of them, but I emptied the magazine just to be sure, filling their boat’s hull and inner deck with lead.
“They’re done for now, bro,” Jack said.
He was right. If they weren’t dead already from my barrage, their boat would be dead in the water at any second.
Suddenly, a massive beam of bright light shined into my eyes. I lowered my M4 and raised my right hand to shield my face. I dropped down to the deck, trying to adjust my eyes that couldn’t see anything except blurry flashes. I managed to catch a glimpse over the windscreen. To my surprise, the light wasn’t coming from the boat
we were chasing. It was coming from high up on the deck of the passing freighter.
“Dammit,” Jack said.
Unable to see as well, he eased back on the throttles.
Our gunshots must have spooked them. The captain and crew must have expected the worst and assumed that we were the bad guys.
“Get them on the radio,” I said. “Tell them what’s going on.”
The last thing I wanted was for the guys we were chasing to engage the freighter and hurt any of their crewmembers.
I set my M4 on the half-moon seat beside me and slowly rose to my feet. There were two spotlights on us now, both coming from different parts of the freighter. Surprisingly, the massive cargo vessel hadn’t slowed. It was still cutting through the water at what I assumed was its max speed.
Due to the bright lights, I could make out little on the freighter’s deck. A few solid black figures and an apparent buzz of activity. To my astonishment, they didn’t say anything through a megaphone.
Jack idled the engines as the massive freighter blazed by a few hundred yards ahead of us. It cut through the water between us and the boat we were pursuing, causing it to vanish behind a curtain of dark hull and stacks of shipping containers. The freighter appeared barely laden, riding high above the water.
The spotlights stayed on us as we waited patiently. Not able to get ahold of them on the radio, I held my empty hands in the air, trying to let them know that we weren’t a threat. Not to them anyway.
It took less than half a minute for the ship to pass. I tried to look out over the water, but with the beams of light still blazing relentlessly in our eyes, I couldn’t see a thing. Finally, the big ship gave a loud blare of its horn, then the lights switched off in an instant.
I rubbed my eyes and looked out over the water. Grabbing my monocular, I climbed up onto the bow and peered through the lenses to spot where our quarry was. I’d predicted their position based on their previous trajectory, but the boat wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere.
I called out to Jack. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the same blank what the hell expression that I knew was plastered all over my face.
FIVE
Jack tried again to contact the freighter. I scanned through the night vision monocular at the massive trail of white bubbles. There was a chance that the boat had been hit, that it had been too slow to clear the bow of the massive ship and had been smashed to pieces. But I knew that wasn’t the case. We’d have heard the collision. No, the boat was gone, which meant that it was motoring along the starboard side of the freighter, using it for cover.
We remained idle and watched as the freighter grumbled away. We didn’t have much of a choice. The spotlights weren’t exactly a warm welcome. After years of fighting, I could spot the dark outline of firearms from far away. And there were guys with rifles on the deck of the freighter, as was expected, to protect the cargo. If we motored up there, they could very well open fire on us. It wasn’t worth the risk.
After the fifth failed attempt at various frequencies to contact the freighter, we called the Coast Guard. We needed both them and the freighter’s crew to know what they were up against. We told the guy on the line everything we knew. We told them there were armed hostiles in the Gulf. We told them they were motoring along the starboard side of a freighter that was heading west. And we gave them the freighter’s name: Lady Delilah.
By the time we ended the call, the freighter was a dark speck on the western horizon.
“They’re probably gonna send a cutter out to the freighter,” I said. I glanced over at Jack, who was staring silently out over the water. “Everything alright?”
He glanced at me and blinked a few times.
“Yeah.”
His voice wasn’t very convincing, so I raised my eyebrows at him.
“It’s just, we’ve chased down our share of criminals on open water, and how many times have we failed to reel them in?”
He was right. When it came to boat chases, we had a pretty good track record.
“Not since last summer,” I said. “In the Everglades.”
One of the Harlan brothers had managed to get away from us in his airboat. Well, more like our boats collided and he swam off. But we managed to track down the notorious serial killer in the end, as well as his two murderer brothers.
“Something feels wrong,” Jack added. “That’s all.”
I nodded. Something did feel wrong. Those guys had been motoring into the open water of the Gulf with us closing in right on their tail. They’d been done for. And then a ship had come in at full speed. It was bizarre seeing a freighter in that part of the Gulf. We were far off from any of the standard nearby shipping lanes. Then there was the timing. It was perfect. Things rarely go perfectly in life, and when they do, they’re almost always methodically planned that way.
“They haven’t gotten away yet,” I said, trying to be a little more positive. “They’ve got nowhere to go, and the Guard will close in and do their thing.”
I grabbed my M4 and moved down into the galley. Atticus was sprawled out on the dinette half-moon cushion. He stirred and jumped down to the deck when he saw me.
“Only you can nap through a firefight, boy,” I said, petting him behind the ears.
I stowed my M4, then moved back topside and grabbed my satellite phone from my bag. With the Guard notified, Ange was my next call. She and the three girls were crammed in Lauren’s Suzuki Samurai. They were almost to Stock Island and would reach the Lower Keys Medical Center in less than five minutes. It was the smart move on Ange’s part. Though all three women appeared to be in decent health, aside from a few scratches and bruises, they needed to see a doctor. They’d most certainly been drugged with who knew what.
“Any problems taking down the runner?” she asked.
“We had a complication.”
She went silent a moment. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you at the hospital. We’re a few miles north of Snipe Point.”
As we spoke, I put my destination into my digital chart plotter.
“Twenty minutes,” Jack said behind me.
Sure enough, the program brought up my route. The time of the trip was listed as seventeen minutes if we maintained the Baia’s cruising speed.
“It’s gonna take time to get from the dock to the hospital,” Jack said, defending the slight discrepancy.
Sometimes it almost scared me how well Jack knew the islands and boats. Though he probably wouldn’t score too high on many generic standardized tests, he was a genius in what he specialized in.
“We’ll be there in twenty,” I told Ange, then we hung up.
It was just after midnight when we eased up to the dock in front of Florida Keys Community College. The college is right across the street from the hospital and is the closest place to tie off. A good friend of ours, Professor Frank Murchison, teaches there and is also a board member. He allows us free use of the dock.
After killing the engines, I locked up. I still had the saloon windows open for Atticus and his water bowl out. He’d have no problem falling right to sleep from the gentle rocking inside the cove.
As I stepped onto the dock, I noticed Jack hunched over the side of the Baia. He was loosening the stern line and, looking forward, I saw that he’d already untied the bow line.
“I’ll take her back to the marina,” he said. “That way you can head straight home after. I’ll bring your truck back. You know I’m not big on hospitals anyway.”
I nodded and handed him the keys to the Baia and my Tacoma. He started up the engines and I shoved him off.
I moved across the campus, through the parking lot, and across College Road to the hospital. I spotted Lauren’s Sammy in one of the first parking spots beside the emergency room entrance. The cool rush of air conditioning felt good as I passed through the double set of sliding glass doors. Being so late, the waiting area was empty, aside from a middle-aged black woman sitting behind the counter. She directed me down the hall,
and I met up with Ange in a smaller secondary waiting area.
She was sitting in a green padded chair. Upon seeing me approach, she came to her feet and walked over. Her eyes examined me from head to toe before she wrapped her arms around me.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Not exactly sure. We chased the boat up into the Gulf. Had a good bead on ’em. Then a freighter came in, cruised between us, and the boat disappeared.”
“Any word from the freighter’s crew?”
“We weren’t able to contact them. The only message they sent was via a pair of spotlights. But we called the Guard and they said they were sending a cutter.” I looked around the small waiting area. “How are the girls?”
We let go of each other. She wasn’t her usual self. Her face was stone serious. Her eyes thin. The bridge of her nose rippled. Ange had a list of things that really put her over the edge. Young women getting taken advantage of was right at the top.
“As good as can be expected,” she replied after a moment of thought. “Lauren and I got to talking with them on the drive here.”
She motioned down the hall. I turned and saw Lauren walking our way carrying two small paper cups filled with steaming coffee. I greeted her as she handed Ange one of the coffees and we stood beside the doorway.
“What did they tell you?” I asked.
“The older blond girl did most of the talking,” Ange said. “She and the other blond girl are from Miami. They’re college students and had been spending a summer weekend with friends. All they could remember was that they’d been spending a night on the town barhopping when a group of guys grabbed them both and threw them into a van. Before they knew it, they were unconscious and woke up the next day with blindfolds on.”
“They say how long they were held hostage?”
“They guessed just a day,” Ange replied. “But they didn’t know for sure. They said they’d been drugged multiple times.”
I fell silent for a moment, thinking everything through.
“What about the third girl?” I asked. “The younger one?”
