DEAD OR ALIVE a totally addictive thriller with a breathtaking twist

by T. J. Brearton

The man in the black suit hooked his thumbs in his belt and shouldered back. “It’s within Everglades National Park, so it’s under DOD jurisdiction. They’re mandated to follow requirements of the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.”

  “Not Big Cypress. It’s independent of Everglades Park.”

  “I’m telling you, the Defense Department is going to have to be in on this . . .”

  While they argued, Tom moved closer to the screens. The images of the region displayed lots of green and lots of water — characteristic of swampland. Rhodes had told him a bit about the Everglades on their airboat trip months before. In September, it would be getting especially muggy and teeming with insects. Plus plenty of deer, wild hogs feeding on the palmetto bushes, and alligators lurking just beneath the surface. According to Rhodes, even panthers roamed the sawgrass marshes and stalked the sand-pine scrub.

  Studying the moving image, Tom recognized something. “Hey, can you stop it there?” The image froze over a familiar road and stretch of river, with a docked airboat. He pointed. “This is just a couple miles southwest of Mitchell Landing. I’ve been there. I could get Dale Rhodes to take me in. We check it out, see if there’s any activity, we slip back out.”

  The conversation dried up and they looked at him.

  “We’d take canoes or kayaks in case we needed to paddle,” he said.

  The man in the suit blinked. “Who are you again?”

  “This is Agent Lange,” Blythe said. “He’s been working for myself and Ed Skokie. He’s the one who, ah . . . obtained Michael Lupton’s phone.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “We get anything from the phone?” Tom asked, looking between them. He was sure the man in the dark suit was FBI.

  “It’s a burner,” the man answered. “Purchased three days ago. It’s got three numbers on it . . . Valentina Vasquez, some guy who sells boat parts, and Lupton’s mom.”

  Blythe said, “We have to keep this toned down. We wouldn’t even want to do a fly-by over this property. This might be our only shot at getting eyes on.”

  The FBI agent glanced around, incredulous. “With everybody we got working on this? With the entire state of Florida looking for this girl? With a known drug operation likely behind this girl’s abduction, you want to send in Agent—? Sorry, what’s your name again?”

  “Lange.”

  “You want to send in an agent from—”

  “Upstate New York, originally.”

  “Upstate. New York.”

  “Two agents,” Tom said, holding up his fingers. “Dale Rhodes would be coming with me. He’s from Texas.”

  “Agent Rhodes is retired,” Blythe said. But she didn’t seem to be vetoing the idea outright.

  “Retired. Okay,” the FBI agent said. “So that’s a rookie and a civilian. And the rookie looks like he just lost a fight with a grizzly bear. No offense.”

  “It might be our best option,” Blythe said.

  The agent studied the ground, his jaw flexing. “You’re just having a look.”

  “Just a look. They won’t set foot on the premises unless there’s plain view or exigent circumstances.”

  “It’s a fifty-two-acre estate this Emilio guy inherited from his grandfather. If you’re going to get a look at the compound, you’re going to have to breach the property.”

  “Then that’s what we have to do.”

  The agent shook his head woefully. “The only way I’m letting this happen is one of my guys goes in with . . . with Lange and Rhodes, and that DOD monitors their every move.”

  Tom said, “And the only way I’m doing it is if everyone claps me on the back and wishes me good luck. I think we got a deal.”

  The FBI agent looked at Blythe again. “Jesus Christ, with this guy . . .”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: PANTHER COUNTRY

  The next morning, Tom left the Naples field office with a federal agent named Malone. Malone had broad shoulders and a brush mustache. He was older than Tom but not quite as ancient as Rhodes, and he had Fish and Wildlife experience. He knew the region they were heading into, he said, much better than either Tom or Rhodes. They met with Rhodes at Mitchell Landing. Rhodes had provided their transportation for exploring the swamp.

  Tom stood there staring at it. The tires were twelve inches thick and came up to Tom’s waist. The thing was some crazy crossbreed of a golf cart and a monster truck.

  “What do you call this?”

  “Swamp Buggy,” Rhodes said. “ORV.”

  It was mid-week and early in the day, but there was one other vehicle parked in the dirt lot. Tom called Everglades County and relayed the license plate. The officer asked him to repeat the letters and numbers more than once because the connection was bad. While Everglades checked with motor vehicles to see who owned the pickup, Malone wandered over to a large sign mounted at the edge of the dirt and gravel parking area. Tom went over to join him.

  On the sign was an illustration of a panther, a big wild cat, stalking through some swampland. Beside the image, a string of warnings:

  Caution — Panther Country.

  Do not hike or jog alone.

  Keep small children under your supervision and close at hand.

  Always keep pets on a leash.

  Do not feed wildlife. Deer and wild hogs will attract Florida panthers. These wild animals are panthers’ favorite prey.

  If you see a panther: Stay calm! Do not run.

  Pick up and hold small children immediately.

  Try to look large — do not crouch.

  Back away slowly while you maintain eye contact with the panther.

  If a panther approaches, wave your arms and shout. Throw sticks and rocks to scare it away.

  Tom looked at his pistol then tucked it back into the holster. He glanced at the pickup truck before turning to Rhodes. “People camp here?”

  “Yeah. Put this on.”

  Rhodes had some rubbery clothing folded up. Tom unfurled it and stepped into the hip-waders, long rubber pants that came up to the waist and strapped over the shoulders like coveralls.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket and he had to reach down into the hip-waders. He managed to answer in time. “All clear,” the officer said. Just some --- on a wildlife ----.” The call was dogged by chronic interference.

  “Say again?”

  “Tourists!” the officer shouted.

  Tom put the phone away as Rhodes climbed into the buggy and got behind the wheel. Malone took the passenger side without asking, leaving Tom to sit up behind them on a narrow bench.

  Rhodes gave the ORV some gas and they started down the trail leading away from the parking area and into the green tangles of undergrowth. Within seconds, the branches started slapping and the bugs zeroed in as the ORV bumped over uneven terrain.

  Their destination was the middle-of-nowhere, ten miles north of US-41 and eleven miles south of I-75. “About as far from a paved road as you can get in Florida,” Rhodes had said. But that was as the crow flew. They’d have to drive around all the impassable swamps, cypress heads and palmetto. Tom put on his special netted hat as mosquitos dove for his ears and neck.

  “Trip like this is only supposed to work in the springtime, when the water table’s low!” Rhodes shouted as they bucked along. “Right now, that water table is two feet above ground in some places!”

  The ORV’s engine had the throaty gurgle of a tractor with the rpm of a motorcycle. Tom leaned forward and yelled into Rhodes’s ear, “Little loud, isn’t it?”

  Rhodes kept his eyes front, cocking his head, shouting out one side of his mouth. “There’s enough activity from tourists and private owners. Buggy like this one sounds like a local! When we get close enough, though, we’ll leave it.” Rhodes pointed. “Check that shit out!”

  Tom tracked his pointing finger and saw a black bear ensconced in the thick palmetto bushes with their long, blade-like leaves. The bear looked at them, then turned and bounded away, disappearing into the greenery.
<
br />   The land opened into a kind of prairie with low scrub brush until they nosed in through a wall of pines. The ORV screamed and clanked and stank of exhaust that burned Tom’s nostrils and smarted his eyes. Rhodes and Malone talked by leaning their heads together. Rhodes pointed at something else but Tom didn’t see what. Rhodes laughed and kept talking to Malone and Tom thought about Katie.

  He knew, that was the thing. He knew she was right, and he knew what he was doing, but stopping was something else. Maybe some people finally faced their demons and changed. Katie didn’t understand how that wasn’t an option for him. How if he faced his demon, he betrayed his mother. If he were to grab that slithering thing, cut its throat, have the boys string it up for everybody to take pictures of, then his mother would have taken those beatings for nothing. Because when he lay down at night as a grown man and closed his eyes, he still saw his father punch her in the face as hard as he could. There was no way to un-see that. And even if there was, in a world of dubious therapies and self-help bestsellers, the only thing he knew for sure was that he felt temporarily better when he let guys like Mick Lupton put a beating on him.

  He couldn’t have been there for his mother — that was what everyone always told him — but he still should have been, and nothing changed that. Nothing could change that.

  Penance.

  Nick had known it. Nick had known and so Nick had rolled the dice and fanned the cards and never stopped moving. Nick had winked over his shoulder at death chasing him and given a little nod, said, come on — I’m not going to run that hard anyway, am I?

  Nick, who looked down from his heavenly purgatory and said to his brother: Behold, I have refined thee. I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.

  Masochism, right? That’s what they’d call it. Self-indulgence. Putrid selfishness and grow up while you’re at it. Everybody had a tragedy; everybody had a story that could break your heart. Your father abused your mother. So what? The two of them died in a fire that he started, drinking and passing out, and a lit cigarette caught some linen. Shit happens. What you do is you get through it and you make it right and you move on.

  But he couldn’t, and so there was that layer of guilt over everything, too, nice and shiny and thick.

  He argued with himself like this until sometime later — his watch told him almost four hours had passed — when Rhodes killed the engine and Malone unfolded the printout of a satellite map.

  Tom leaned forward in the stunning silence and looked through the netting covering his face. “What have we got?” His voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel.

  Malone pointed to a spot in the middle of the map, a highly magnified satellite view from the upper atmosphere. It showed a grouping of buildings, barely more than shacks. “Emilio Vasquez family compound,” he said. “We’re two miles away.”

  “That’s it? I thought we’d find Neverland.”

  Malone shrugged.

  Tom started to get out of the ORV and Rhodes said, “Hang it up for a second. Eight months out of the year, this place is an island. This was taken when the water table was below ground level. Right now, this is surrounded by swamp.”

  “From here, we’re on foot with the boats,” Malone said, “then we’ll float when we have to.”

  Tom jumped from the buggy and splashed into shallow water the color of brown tea. He helped Malone into his pack while Rhodes helped him into his own.

  “I feel like a boy scout,” Tom said, working his jaw to get his hearing back.

  Rhodes grunted as he tightened the straps so the backpack wouldn’t slide or sag. “Isn’t that what they called you?”

  “What are you gonna do?” He looked over his shoulder at Rhodes. “Bring anything to read?”

  Rhodes clapped him on the shoulder. “You gotta watch out for the cottonmouths. And the — what do you call them, Malone? — the eastern indigo snakes. Big sons of bitches, those.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Rhodes grinned. “This is a wetland. We went over some hardwood hammocks, but now you’re in the juice. Acts like a filter, basically, straining out all the impurities and pollutants. It’ll suck that bad attitude right outta you. It’s a sponge, too.” Rhodes made a slurping noise. “Pulls all that water down into the aquifer.”

  “I bet you make a great date.”

  After a little bushwhacking through the dense growth, Rhodes and the ORV disappeared into the watery reflections and cypress trees. Malone said, “Your friend is something.”

  “Rhodes is all right.”

  “These people out here hate the federal government.”

  “I thought that was Florida in general.” Tom waved at a cloud of bugs and yanked his pack through a thicket.

  “ORVs have to be registered — they didn’t before. They got to be weighed and inspected now. And there’s supposed to be designated trails for travel. Few years back there was a study done by Virginia Tech to make sure certain requirements were met, checking out safety concerns.” Malone gave him a look. “And here we come, Johnny Law, right into the heart of ‘from my cold dead hands.’”

  Tom spat out a gnat that had winnowed through the netting and landed on his tongue. “At least we’re not at a desk.”

  Malone stopped and put his hand up, made a fist. A moment later he dropped down to a squat and Tom did the same. They waited, listening hard but hearing nothing other than the high whine of insects and croaking frogs. Malone looked back over his shoulder at Tom then jerked his head and Tom followed his line of sight.

  There was a face in the palmetto. Tom blinked to make sure it wasn’t a trick of the sweat in his eyes. The person’s hair looked funny, like it was sticking up. As soon as he’d determined that, it was gone.

  Malone didn’t speak or move. Tom listened some more, his ears straining for sounds of movement — the telltale snap of a twig or the splash of swamp water — but there was nothing. His heart was hammering. He’d thought Malone had spotted a panther or the frigging eastern indigo snake.

  Instead, it was somebody wearing a kind of headdress or scalp lock. Even Tom knew that warring Native Americans belonged to a different century.

  Malone stayed rooted to the spot, like he was afraid of a raiding posse or something. Sitting like this was wreaking havoc on Tom’s knees and inflamed ribcage so he stood up.

  Malone glanced at him and rose to his feet. “Fuck,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Miccosukee reservation is around here,” Malone said.

  “Yeah, I know.” They were whispering.

  “Miccosukee don’t wear headdresses, I don’t think.”

  “That one did.”

  “Maybe it was a Vasquez guy messing with us. We could be made. This might be bad — we might have to turn back.”

  “I don’t think so,” Tom said. He pushed past Malone and continued into the bush, using the big stick he was carrying to move aside the thick ground cover. He didn’t look back for Malone. After a few seconds, he heard him back there, breathing, cracking through the vegetation.

  An Indian? He knew the proper nomenclature was Native American, but seeing someone with crazy hair like that, scaring the shit out of you, you thought Indian. Rhodes knew a bit about them and said some of them didn’t like the term “Native American” anyway — found it derogatory and preferred to be called “indigenous,” “first peoples” or by their tribe alone. Down here were the Seminoles and Miccosukee, if memory served. And it was Miccosukee Indian Village that was on the map along Route 41, not Miccosukee Native American Village.

  Tom scanned for any more figures hidden in the twisting, twining vegetation. In all his life he’d never seen anything like that. A face in all that greenery, hair done up like something from an old Western movie. He’d have to tell Rhodes about it. The person had been about fifty yards away, give or take. Someone checking out the intruders who’d then just vanished without a sound. Tom couldn’t let it slow him down.

  The su
n was lowering by the time they got to the point where walking was no longer possible. The water was warm enough, but the muck beneath it sucked at the feet, making for hard going. Once, the suction almost trapped both men as they waded through.

  “Let’s pull ’em,” Malone said finally.

  They stopped and each man took the inflatable kayak out of the other man’s pack so that neither had to set anything down in the wet. It took a few minutes to blow the things up, attach the steering and rudder parts, and then affix the deck seats. Each came with a paddle that snapped together and telescoped out to length. Tom had never used one before but got the general idea. It was getting into the boat that was tricky as hell. He watched Malone do it then mimicked his approach, straddling it with a wide stance and then settling his ass onto the deck seat. The kayak bobbed and threatened to capsize, but he stayed upright and grabbed the paddle. He gave a tentative stroke of the water — then another.

  Malone had gotten ahead of him. Tom started paddling harder — right arm, left arm, back and forth — and followed the FBI agent along as they twisted their way through the cypress trees and southern pines sticking out of the water. If it hadn’t been part of the job, it might’ve been fun.

  They came across the first posted signs: Private property; Trespassing is strictly prohibited; No hunting or fishing. They clearly didn’t have far to go. Tom spotted the first of the small buildings at the same time Malone did. He slowed the kayak then paddled backwards a few strokes — if they could see the compound, anyone there could potentially see them, too. Maybe Emilio Vasquez himself, if he was even around.

  They waited, careful to stay hidden. The kayaks were camo and so were their clothes. Maybe they had a chance. There hadn’t been any other way to find the place than to come right up on it. GPS had only given them a rough estimate, with a half-mile margin of error. Malone took out his camera and glassed the scene, took a few silent shots.

  They remained as motionless as possible, floating in the water. Tom pulled his gun and made sure it had stayed dry. Everything checked out.

  Bugs danced in the air as the sun continued its slow descent toward the horizon. Something plopped into the water. Tom visually tracked the noise and saw a shape cutting through the shallow swamp, making a triangular wake. He spotted a pair of telltale eyes just above the water line.