Before I’d said her name, Ange was already on it. She gripped the helm and shot me a look, giving me a second to brace before she tore us out of there like a bat out of hell.
Needing to get off the bow quickly, I dove, slid over the roof, then tumbled onto the sunbed. I grabbed the padded edges just as Ange hit the gas, gripping tight to keep from flying overboard as she punched the throttle.
The engines roared and the Baia rocked back as we accelerated through the water at full power. Ange turned us hard to the right just as our attacker decided to let loose. A storm of automatic gunfire rattled across the air. A few managed to pepper the transom as I crawled and took cover beside Ange, but her sharp turn and abrupt acceleration threw off his aim.
Tossing the spotlight aside, I grabbed my Sig and popped up to retaliate. I fired off three rounds at the boat, striking the pontoons twice and sparking the final bullet off the front of the console, nearly hitting the guy with the rifle.
He let go of the trigger and dropped down for cover. I shifted for a better position, putting the pontoon boat’s pilot right in my sights.
“Port bow!” Ange yelled out.
I glanced over my left shoulder and saw the aluminum utility boat. The man at its helm had gunned his engines as well and was turning straight for the Baia. Once on a collision course with us, he grabbed a handgun and aimed at us through the cabin’s cracked-open port window.
I shifted my aim and fired off a barrage, shattering the glass and sparking off the metal hull. He dropped down but kept his boat flying through the water, tearing straight toward us. With the pontoon boat coming up from behind and the utility boat about to put a new entryway below deck, we needed to make a bold move, and fast.
Even though the two enemy boats were souped-up, they were no match for the Baia. We could fly out into the dark Atlantic in a flash, leaving them in our bubbling wake. But I’d never been partial to running away. I prefer the facing your problems head-on, getting bloodied and battered, but dealing with the task at hand approach. And I wasn’t about to change my ways just because we’d been caught off guard by a few white supremacists.
With mere fractions of a second to make a decision, I got an idea.
“Let him get close!” I yelled to Ange over the roaring engines.
She’d started to turn away from the rapidly approaching utility boat but eased back upon hearing my words. I fired another round at the pontoon boat to keep the two guys on their toes, then holstered my Sig and stormed back up onto the bow.
Ange, realizing what I was about to do, yelled out, asking me what the hell I was thinking. But my mind was made as I balanced myself and sprang to the edge. Ange cut back on the throttles just as the metal utility boat was about to slam into our hull. Instead, it flew less than five feet in front of the bow.
I lunged onto the rail, then hurled my body through the air. Time slowed, my focus intensified, and tropical wind smacked my body. The boat’s cabin flew right by me, and I slammed onto the flat deck behind it. My momentum caused me to roll, and I nearly flew over the side but just managed to grab onto the port gunwale.
Ange continued on behind me, piloting the Baia northward as our boat headed east. I staggered to my feet just as the guy kicked open the cabin door. I jumped, grabbed hold of the roof, and swung my body into his. He let out a grunt and a burst of air as my heels smashed into his chest, causing him to drop his handgun and fly backward. His body sprawled against the helm and he twisted, abruptly turning us starboard, knocking my body against the bulkhead and nearly causing the boat to flip.
I gathered myself and engaged my opponent, who’d shaken off my kick and came at me. Pissed off and unwilling to relent an inch, I socked him hard in the throat, then bashed his head into the nearest window. The glass cracked, and the skinhead groaned before falling hard to the ground.
With my assailant motionless, I took control of the boat and punched the throttles. Ange was still flying north, and the pontoon boat was just over a hundred yards behind her as it cruised right past me. Ange was expanding the gap, but the big engines clamped to the pursuing craft made it move faster than any pontoon boat I’d ever seen before.
Holding on as the utility boat accelerated, I shoved open half of the windshield and fired off a few more rounds toward the pontoon boat. It served its purpose, getting their full attention in a hurry. It wasn’t long before I’d nearly matched their speed, pushing the small craft to its limits and bouncing over the water at nearly forty knots.
I was close enough to see that the guy holding the automatic rifle was the Jake character I’d met that morning. He took up position behind the backseat and transom, then yelled and aimed his rifle straight at me. I hit the deck as a series of rounds pelted the metal hull and shattered the windows.
My 9mm wasn’t cutting it. Every time I fired back, they were able to take cover and my rounds went wasted. And they were creeping farther and farther away from me with every passing second. With seven rounds left, I could go for the engines to slow them down. But as glass rained down upon me, I glanced at the deck and conjured up my second bold idea of the night.
Jake let off the trigger, and the sounds of engines and thrashing water again dominated the scene. After the never-ending barrage, I assumed he was reloading. This was it. My window of opportunity.
Keeping the throttle wide open, I rounded up the coil of cable and grabbed the yellow towfish at my feet. Jake and his crew had been using the device to search for the lost Civil War gold, but I had a different use in mind.
Shouldering back through the cabin door, I secured the end of the cable to the stern of the boat. With the other end already connected to the towfish, I wrapped the cable around the torpedo-shaped metal device twice more to make sure that it would hold.
As I held the towfish in one hand and the coil in the other, I looked forward.
Bold? More like downright crazy.
To cover myself, I let loose, firing all seven remaining rounds and emptying my magazine into the pontoon boat’s engines. As I’d hoped, one of them began to sputter and smoke, and the craft slowed, cutting the distance between us just enough for my plan to have a fighting chance.
Picking up the cable and towfish, I hustled in front of the cabin and locked in on my target. I set the cable on the deck, grabbed the device with two hands, and hurled it as hard as I could. The towfish flew from my grasp and spun through the night air. As it soared, my eyes gravitated to Jake, who was about to put me in his sights with a fresh mag jammed into his rifle.
The guy watched in awe as the towfish slammed home, rattling onto the pontoon boat’s deck just forward of the transom. The moment I saw it land, I jumped down into the cockpit, then jerked the throttle to full reverse and bolted out the door. The engines whined in protest and the craft jolted just as I dove headlong into its wake.
I splashed and spun as the dark water swallowed me whole, then kicked and surfaced in a blurry haze. Just as I broke free of the water, I heard a loud crash, followed by pounding splashes and groaning metal. I wiped the salt water from my eyes and watched as the utility boat crashed onto its side, then yanked the pontoon boat backward. Since it had already been angled back due to motoring full throttle, the extra pull was more than enough to cause the pontoon boat to flip backward, twist to its side, then tumble across the water. Pieces of the boat flew out, and water sprayed in all directions as the two boats were torn apart in a chaotic blur.
TWENTY-TWO
After a loud and turbulent couple of seconds, the chaos abated. The two boats finally settled and floated partially submerged, both sinking as water bubbled into the open spaces.
I caught my breath as I scanned the water. There was little doubt in my mind that both men on the pontoon boat had perished in the accident, but I wanted to be sure.
Seeing what had happened, Ange brought the Baia back around and motored slowly right up to me as I waved her over. I climbed up the ladder and plopped down onto the swim platform. It’d been a cl
ose call, even by our standards.
Leaving the engine idling, Ange sprang aft to look me over. Seeing that I wasn’t badly hurt or bleeding, she let out a sigh of relief.
“I missed it,” she said. “I looked forward for two seconds, and when I looked back, both boats were wrecked like they’d just been struck down by Poseidon and his trident.”
“The god of the sea didn’t make an appearance,” I assured her. “Though some form of divine intervention must’ve been on my side.”
I had a hard time believing that it’d worked so well. I’d expected the heavy towfish not to make the distance, or the cable to snap, or Jake to quickly throw the device back like a visiting team’s home run ball at Wrigley. But fortunately, none of those happened.
Ange stood expectantly, so I told her briefly what I’d managed to pull off. Her eyebrows sprang into her forehead.
“That’s a new one. Why didn’t you just shoot them?”
“You know I have a flair for the dramatic. Plus I’m not the marksman that you are.”
She chuckled. “You can try and sell that someplace else. I’m not buying it.” She paused for a moment, then smiled. “You’d said that you wanted to fish tonight. I think it’s safe to say you broke your record.”
I laughed softly, then eyed the three bullet holes in the stern of the Baia. Two had burrowed into the sunbed cushions, and the third had struck the transom, nearly adding a perfect dot above the i in Dodging Bullets. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be any damage to the engines, but I’d check later on that evening to make sure.
“We really ought to look into changing the name,” Ange joked, shaking her head.
I grinned. Jack had told me the same thing many times before, saying that it should be called Dodges Some Bullets. But that just didn’t have the same ring to it.
My smile faded away in an instant as we heard splashing sounds coming from over by the wreckage. I stood on the swim platform and peered out over the water. There was movement coming from the upturned pontoon boat. It had flipped wildly at forty knots, but someone managed to sneak away with his life. And I had a good idea who.
Ange powered us over to the wreckage, then splashed right up to what remained of the pontoon boat. Jake was bloodied and severely injured, his clothes tattered. But he pulled himself slowly out of the water, sliding onto the underbelly of his wrecked boat and shooting me a sinister gaze.
With my Sig long gone, I strode toward the secret compartment in the cockpit with my spare inside.
“Take the helm,” Ange said, withdrawing her Glock and training it on Jake. “You’ve hogged enough of the action. I’ll deal with this clown.”
I pulled my extra Sig from the compartment, then covered my warrior wife as she stepped onto the Baia’s port gunwale and vaulted the gap to the upside-down pontoon boat. She sloshed across the hull between the two damaged metal tubes.
Jake, seeing her approach, grabbed a knife from his hip and struggled to his feet. I nearly put a round through his chest, but Ange beat me to it. In a flash, she kicked the blade free of his grasp, then threw him onto his back. He yelled and groaned and cursed her between struggled attempts for air.
The guy may have been considered tough in his own narrow-minded little circle, but he was no match for Ange. Even if he hadn’t been banged up bad from the crash, she’d have still handed him his ass on a platter without breaking a sweat.
The big guy leaned back and shook. He was dying, that much was clear. Blood poured out from his head and chest.
“Tell us where your buddy Deacon Lynch is hiding out and we’ll consider getting you some help,” Ange said.
Jake coughed and wheezed. “Screw… you…” he said.
Ange shrugged. “Remember, you attacked us. When someone touches a flame, it’s not the fire’s fault if they get burned.”
The white supremacist dropped his head back, gagged for a few seconds, then breathed his last. Ange jumped back onto the Baia, and the damaged pontoon boat soon took on too much water and sank to the bottom, joining the aluminum utility boat. We marked the location on our GPS, then accelerated away from the scene.
We motored back into the bay and dropped anchor in Sandwich Cove on the western shore of Elliot Key. We decided that we were in the clear following the encounter. The Aryan Order was unlikely to have more of their little troop out on the water. We downed a few shots of tequila to take the edge off, locked the saloon door, then switched on the security system and passed out in the main cabin.
We awoke naturally just after 0700 and ate a quick breakfast. While downing some poppy seed muffins from Blue Heaven Bakery, I called Jane Verona and then the Coast Guard station in Islamorada to let them know what had happened.
Neither Ange nor I cared for dealing with law enforcement, with all the red tape and protocols, but we understood that it was a necessary pain in the rear. Our democracy would quickly crumble without all the red tape and protocols, so we told them everything.
A Coast Guard patrol boat came out, along with detectives from the Homestead Police Department, and we showed them the scene where the two boats rested on the bottom. They were only in twelve feet of water, so bringing them up wouldn’t be difficult with the proper salvage equipment. They found one of the bodies, but the two others had vanished. Eaten by sharks, no doubt.
We spent over an hour with them, then motored southwest to the Coast Guard station in Islamorada and spent nearly another two hours talking to officers. They asked all the questions and checked all the boxes. Formalities. All of them knew what had happened to John Ridley. They also were very familiar with the Aryan Order. And most of them knew us.
It wasn’t exactly Ange’s and my first interaction with law enforcement in the Keys. We’d made a name for ourselves over the past few years, and they often joked that we should be put on the payroll. Needless to say, the evidence was all in our favor. We had clearly been attacked and had acted in self-defense. We were both free to go.
We walked out alongside Jane, who’d driven up from Key West to vouch for us and to help in any way she could.
“Any word on Lynch?” we asked her as we stepped out from the air-conditioned Coast Guard building and into the hot sun.
It was a quarter past noon. Following the rules had taken a while, but not as long as I’d expected.
“Nothing,” Jane said. “But what you two did the past few days was a major blow to his group. Perhaps even a crippling one. My guess is he’s running.”
We thanked her for making the trip, then asked her to keep us in the loop. Flip-flopping down the private government dock, we boarded the Baia and headed back to Key West.
“You don’t want to stop over at Queen Anne’s to drop her off for repairs?” Ange said. “I’m sure Nick would have a good laugh from seeing us again so soon.”
“Nah, I think we’re fine. There isn’t any damage beyond cosmetic. We can throw a blanket over the holes on the sunbed, and the one in the transom’s hard to spot unless you’re close.” I paused, then added, “Let’s give it a few more months. Might be more damage then.”
Ange laughed. “We keep this up for a few more years and we’re gonna finance an expansion at that boatyard.”
I cruised us out of Snake Creek, then kicked up to our cruising speed, heading home. Ange sat at the dinette beside me, seemingly lost in thought. After ten minutes of uncommon silence, I asked her what she was thinking.
“I’m just surprised is all,” she said. “Really surprised.”
She paused and I bit.
“About what?”
“That you don’t want to head back to Jones Lagoon and search for the Civil War gold.”
“You saw Lynch’s boys. They mowed that place back and forth with their mag all day. If something was there, they’d have found it.”
Ange fell quiet again, clearly not convinced. “It’s just out of character for you not to at least be curious,” she finally said with a wink.
“Oh, I am curious,” I said.
I motored us around a few jet skis that were flying a little too close for comfort. “Maybe we’ll check it out some other time, Ange. That is, if I get a sign that it all wouldn’t be just a waste of time.”
Ange leaned back and slid on her sunglasses. “Well, I’ll just have to hope for a sign, then.”
TWENTY-THREE
“This is your college?” Scarlett said to Isaac as she spun and stared in awe at the campus.
“Pretty cool, huh?” he said.
The College of the Florida Keys has a location befitting a fancy tropical resort. A cluster of whitewashed buildings spread right on the water on the northern point of Stock Island. The grounds were well manicured, with crisp lawns and scattered palm trees. The campus wrapped around a cove with a row of jutting docks, the seafloor having been partially dredged for hands-on dive instruction.
“No wonder you left high school early,” Scarlett said.
They walked past students wearing tank tops, shorts, and flip-flops. After Isaac gave her a brief tour of the grounds, he led her into Tennessee Williams Theatre. The nearly five-hundred-seat auditorium had around fifty people inside of it, most of them sitting in the first few rows. On the stage, a man wearing brown slacks and a blue button-up with the sleeves rolled to his elbows was messing with a laptop on a stand.
Isaac tried to usher her toward his usual spot near the back, but Scarlett had other ideas.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing him by the hand. “I see two spots in the front.”
She led him down the aisle and they sat smack-dab in the front middle seats, wedged between students on both sides. After a minute, the man on the stage turned around and greeted the room. In this late thirties, he was tall and handsome, with medium-length dark hair.
He introduced himself as Nathan Ashwood, professor of oceanography at the University of Washington. After a brief introduction and summary of his experience, which included years of research expeditions all over the world in addition to his four degrees, he began his presentation.
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