“Pete, it’s nine in the morning,” Ange said.
He shrugged.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
We laughed, seeing his reply coming from a mile away.
Jack splashed toward the boat and pulled himself aboard.
“No find is going to be celebrated without my lucky Cohibas,” he said. “You two wanna tag along as well?”
I looked to Ange. Her eyes darted to the millions of dollars of gold at her feet.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “You think we’re just gonna leave these here?”
Jack held out his hands, saying that we had the place to ourselves. But we stayed behind anyway. I untied the line while Pete started up the engine. Ange and I watched while they quickly motored across the lagoon, then vanished behind the curtain of mangroves.
Ange and I hugged again, then locked lips. I got swept up in the moment, in her soft skin, and in her warmth. When we finally let go of each other, we gazed into each other’s eyes and laughed.
“What a life, huh?” she said.
I looked out over the landscape, then turned to ogle the hole with the chest at the bottom.
“You know how much I love our usual laid-back island lifestyle,” I said. “But this… chasing down history and searching for treasure. It sure is exciting.”
“Finding stacks of gold bars helps,” she said.
I nodded. “Staking claim to these bars won’t be easy. Especially since this is technically just inside Biscayne National Park.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, if we tell anyone, that is.” She enjoyed my reaction, then playfully hit my shoulder. “I’m just joking, Mr. Serious. Even if we don’t get to keep any of them, this was still fun. Besides, it’s not like we’re hurting for money. What we should do is tell Scott, then have the money from the bars donated to local charities. Win-win.”
I smiled. It was a good idea. Our senator friend would be able to help iron out the details, and there were many great local charities to choose from.
I finished off my water, then turned to look across the lagoon. A distant humming noise caught my attention. My initial assumption was that it was Jack and Pete, racing back with their celebratory items of choice. But I quickly realized that it wasn’t one engine, but multiple ones. They were noisy, and getting louder with every passing second. Unlike normal boats, they made a series of whomping sounds, like the craft was skipping and smacking the surface of the water.
“Sounds like jet skis,” Ange said, standing still and listening carefully as well.
She was right. The unique sounds were a dead giveaway, and the crafts were flying in our direction too fast to be normal jet boats.
“Another tour?” Ange suggested.
Then, in the corner of my eye, I spotted a flash of light. A brief reflection of the sun against a shiny surface. It came from the same direction where Ange had noticed something thirty minutes earlier, but it was closer to the shoreline. Nearly at the edge of the lagoon and just a couple hundred yards to the north of us.
In an instant, the sounds of the jet skis increased in intensity. I snapped my head back and peered over the water. Across the lagoon, we could see three of the personal watercraft. They were barreling full speed, their engines screaming and their propulsion systems shooting up trails of white. They turned once they entered the body of water, heading straight toward our position.
Within seconds, the approaching skis were within a quarter mile of us. Ange and I could make out two figures on each one. Many of them were bald, their shiny heads glistening in the early morning sun. And as they roared closer, we could see the outlines of rifles.
“Ange!” I shouted.
But she’d already snatched her Glock 26 from her waistband and raised it at the approaching attack party. I pulled out my Sig as well, ready to open fire. But we were outnumbered. Severely outnumbered, and outgunned. Looking around, I realized another unsettling fact: we were trapped. Nowhere to run.
I dropped to one knee, then put the lead jet ski in my sights. If this was it, then we sure as hell weren’t going to go down without a fight. Just as I came to terms with fighting being our only option, an image jumped into my mind. Something I’d seen while prospecting the previous day. The unique underwater feature.
The cave.
The moment the risky escape plan popped into my head, gunfire erupted, shaking the lagoon to life like thunder. Water splashed up beside Ange and me as a bullet nearly hit us. But it hadn’t come from the approaching jet skis. No, the shot had been fired from our right, up the shoreline. From the direction where Ange and I had seen the flashes of light.
I dropped, then lunged back beside Ange while my eyes darted toward the source of the gunshot. There was a dark figure of a man wading in the shallows, aiming a pistol toward us with two hands.
Now we were really surrounded. Ange and I were both crack shots, but it wouldn’t matter. Any second, the guys on the jet skis would open fire with their rifles as well, raining a storm of bullets upon us.
“Ange, this way!” I shouted, pointing down the shore. She looked at me like I was crazy, so I added, “Trust me! I know a way out.”
We sprinted through the knee-deep water, then cut around a jutting cluster of branches just as the guy up shore opened fire once more, this time pressing the trigger again and again. I led us to a deep pool in a tiny inlet. At our backs, the sounds of the jet skis indicated that they were nearly upon us.
We willed ourselves to move, sloshing through the water. Just as we were about to reach the deep pool, a loud succession of gunfire rattled the air. Bullets zipped past and splashed into the water around us.
“Dive!” I yelled.
Ange and I both took one final lunge, then sprang headfirst as far as we could. We cut through the surface of the water, slicing to the bottom of the six-foot-deep pool, then angling our bodies parallel with the seafloor. I motioned toward the narrow opening into the cave straight ahead, but Ange had already seen it. We kicked and pulled at the water with everything we had. We could hear muffled blasts coming from the surface, along with rounds tearing through the water at our backs before breaking apart from the friction of the liquid.
My heart pounding, I continued deeper into the cave, which was getting narrower and narrower with every stroke. I stopped, letting Ange go first when it got too constricting for both of us. We wound our way through the unknown tunnel for what felt like an eternity, hoping with everything we had that it eventually led to the surface.
Our lungs throbbed, and the cave got darker. Just as I started to doubt my decision, a faint glow illuminated the rock and tangles of roots ahead of us. We had to pull, twist, and shimmy to fit through. Angling our bodies upward, we managed to force ourselves through a small opening in the mangroves.
I exhaled just before breaking the surface, then quietly caught my breath beside Ange. We were completely surrounded, swallowed up by a sea of thick mangroves that rose twenty feet into the air.
We kept perfectly silent and listened. The gunfire had stopped, and the jet skis had slowed to an idle at the spot where we’d made our desperate dive into the cave. It sounded like they were at least thirty yards off, but it was hard to tell. We couldn’t see a thing.
A million thoughts forced their way into my mind.
How could we have been so easily caught off guard? And how in the hell did Deacon Lynch pull this off?
Ange and I still gripped our weapons, ready to use them just in case. We heard voices, but they were too quiet to understand. Then we heard a low-pitched yell, followed by a pounding series of gunshots. Ange and I dropped back down into the cave, using the limestone walls as cover as more shots filled the air. It felt like an eternity of incessant booms and zipping bullets and cracking branches.
Then, it stopped.
We rose slowly and listened again. We soon heard more voices, and though they were muffled and hard to understand, a few words stood out.
“You’d better run… fo
rget them… get the gold…”
THIRTY-FIVE
Deacon Lynch stood, straddling the seat of his idling jet ski while aiming an assault rifle at the foliage where his quarries had disappeared moments earlier.
“They can’t still be holding their breath,” Lynch snarled. “So where in the hell did they go?”
Titus and the skinhead on the back of his jet ski motored right over the pool that the two locals had splashed into, and looked around.
“They’re not here,” Titus said, looking up at his leader.
Lynch clenched his jaw. This wasn’t how he’d envisioned it. The reaction from the man who’d disrupted their operation was just as he’d hoped. A deer caught in the headlights, then a desperate retreat. But the confrontation was supposed to have been punctuated by riddling the man’s body with more holes than a cheese grater, then leaving him for the sharks to pick apart. But somehow, the two had managed to slip right through their fingers.
Out of sheer anger, Lynch raised his rifle and sent a wide spray of bullets into the mangroves. The bullets snapped branches and tore up leaves, the sounds echoing across the water. His men followed suit, sending a hundred rounds into the dense growth before Lynch stopped and ordered the others to halt.
The white supremacist leader listened carefully in the calm after the storm of gunfire, hoping to hear cries and groans of pain. But none came.
His frustration was borderline madness, but he swallowed and focused on the mission. Getting the gold was the first priority. Revenge had been a perk, but unnecessary. He needed to claim the treasure and get the hell out of there.
“You’d better run!” Titus shouted.
“Forget them,” Lynch said. “They’ll get what’s coming to them eventually. We need to get the gold.”
Lynch led the other two jet skis around the corner of branches, then slowed to a stop. Casper Nix motored down from the north on his aluminum skiff. He shut off the engine and pointed over the starboard gunwale.
“The treasure’s there,” he said enthusiastically.
The guy looked terrible. He hadn’t showered or shaved in nearly a week. He’d been living in the dirt, living off scraps and raw fish, and every exposed part of his skin was covered in red mosquito bites.
“Way to go, Nix,” Titus barked. “Your garbage aim scared them off. Did you even injure them?”
Casper was about to defend himself when Lynch told them both to shut up. The leader idled right over the spot where Casper had been pointing. There was a deep hole dug into the shallows, and a big object on the bottom. Lynch killed his jet ski’s engine, then jumped into the water.
He sloshed over to the hole, crouched, then reached down. His eyes lit up as his hands grasped the wooden lid of a chest. Pulling it open, he gasped as he focused on a stack of gold bars.
Finally, he thought, a layer of tears welling up in his eyes. The Avengers’ mission is complete.
Titus dropped down beside him, along with Casper and the rest of the group. They each rubbed their eyes and cheered and splashed down to grab the chest, but Lynch waved them off. He grabbed a bar first, holding it up to the light and admiring it.
“Our ship has finally come in, boys,” Lynch said.
The valuable find would change everything for them. They’d be able to use the millions to recruit many more to their cause, arm themselves with the best weaponry, and plan orchestrated attacks across the state, and the nation.
Snapping himself from his daydreams, Lynch came back to the moment and looked around. They weren’t out of the woods yet. They had the gold, but they still had to get the hell out of there without being caught.
“Load it up,” he ordered.
Casper and Titus grabbed the ends of the chest. But as they tried to pull it out, the rotted wood broke apart and the handles tore free.
“Bring your skiff close, Casper,” Lynch demanded. “We load it up brick by brick.”
Casper did as he was told. Creating two daisy chains, the group made quick work of the trove, hauling all fifty two-kilogram bars into Casper’s boat. They spread them out along the inner hull, distributing the weight as evenly as possible.
Once they were ready, Lynch took one final look along the shoreline, hoping to catch a glimpse of his quarries. But they were nowhere in sight. Somehow, they’d managed to escape into the dense growth.
He ordered his men to hightail it out of there. They started up their engines and gunned it across the lagoon. Casper motored carefully at first. The added weight increased his boat’s draft, so he kept to the deeper portions of the lagoon until they reached their exit.
All four craft throttled wide open once they were out of the lagoon and entering into Biscayne Bay. Off the port side, Lynch spotted the two boats they’d seen anchored in the distance on their way into the lagoon. A small skiff motored toward them with a guy standing on the bow, aiming a pistol straight at them.
The man let loose a barrage of repetitive gunfire from his weapon. But the gunfire soon died off as Lynch and his men blasted over the water at over forty knots. The jet skis could easily hit seventy, but they maintained a slower speed to stick with Casper and the gold.
Snapping his head back, Lynch saw that they’d lost one of the jet skis. Two of his men had been taken down by the gunfire and were lying motionless in the water beside the craft.
More collateral damage.
The two remaining jet skis and Casper’s skiff rocketed across the bay, making a beeline for the mainland, and cutting the distance to their destination in just over ten minutes. Lynch wasn’t leading his men to a boat launch or a marina. No, those would be too obvious.
The three craft flew into a canal half a mile north of Teddy’s Marina. It was part of the same long, intricate series of channels that Casper had used to make his desperate escape five days earlier. The hundreds of miles of interwoven canals had been dredged during the early 1900s in a large-scale attempt to drain the southern Florida swamps.
Lynch and his men powered west through the canal, passing thousands of acres of farmland and zipping under bridges. The canal was flanked by a dirt road on one side and a footpath on the other. Even with their loud engines blaring across the landscape, there weren’t many people around to give them attention.
Two and a half miles inland, they turned with a sharp bend in the canal. The dredged waterway straightened out, then cut back to the west a thousand feet later. It was a good place to stop, with nothing in sight but flat, seemingly endless farmland.
They quickly pulled their boats up to the grassy northern shore. One of Lynch’s guys hopped off his jet ski, darted between a nearby row in the palm tree plantation, then started up a moving truck and backed it up to the edge of the canal.
Lynch ordered the two jet skis to be dragged ashore. Since the personal watercraft are nearly impossible to sink without taking them apart, their hulls having built-in foam to ensure they stay afloat, Lynch chose the next best thing. They dragged the jet skis and hid them under a row of palms.
Casper trimmed the engine all the way forward and dragged his skiff halfway onto the shore. They opened the back of the moving truck and began transferring the fifty gold bars into the bed. But the moment they started, an unwelcomed sound echoed through the air. Helicopter rotors.
Lynch gazed skyward and spotted an orange-and-white Sikorsky Jayhawk flying along the eastern shoreline in Biscayne Bay. It was just a few miles from their position, and heading their way.
“Taking too long!” Lynch shouted to his men, who’d just started lugging the bricks into the truck. He stormed to the stern of the skiff, unclamped the outboard, then kicked it free. The engine flipped backward and splashed into the murky canal, disappearing from view.
“Just lift the whole damn boat,” Lynch added, grabbing hold of the stern of the port gunwale.
His four remaining men did as their leader ordered. Each grabbing a corner, they lifted the five-hundred-pound boat off the shore, carried it to the back of the truck, th
en slid its metal hull inside. Casper, and two more of Lynch’s men climbed into the bed. Titus jumped up and slammed the door down, locking it in place. Within seconds, Titus and Lynch were in the cab, starting up the engine.
Lynch kept the passenger window rolled down, listening as the Coast Guard helicopter continued its sweep back and forth, heading closer and closer to them with each pass.
“Get us the hell out of here, Titus,” he barked. “But drive slow once we hit a main road.”
Titus held the wheel tight, put the big truck in gear, then accelerated them away from the scene.
THIRTY-SIX
I gritted my teeth and listened as our attackers loaded up the gold bars into their boat. Every time the heavy ore hit the metal hull, it was like a torturous metronome reminding me that I’d been bested. That this white supremacist leader and his motley crew had made fools out of all of us, and that he was about to get away with our find.
“I’m going back,” I said, holstering my Sig and climbing down the branches toward the small opening into the cave.
Ange reached over and snatched my arm.
“Are you crazy?”
“We need to stop them!” I hissed.
“How in the hell do we do that?” she said. “This brush is so thick, it would take us half an hour to reach the shoreline. And swimming back the way we came? They’ll open fire with their automatics the second we surface.”
I stopped, forced my eyes shut, and looked away. My heart pounded in anger. I fumed with every sound the men made, as if it were a constant reminder of my inability to do anything about it.
The whole thing didn’t feel right. I’d faced mountain-sized problems in my life before. I’d stood toe-to-toe with overwhelming odds, never batting an eye, never backing down, and always coming out on top. I wasn’t used to the run-and-hide strategy, and it didn’t sit well. It gave me a sick, gut-wrenching feeling in the pit of my stomach.
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