Shorty stuffed his lip full of chewing tobacco, then said, “I’m worried sick. But I feel in my gut she’s still alive.”
“Which is why you took on our business?”
Shorty nodded. “Meg was staying with a couple of other students in an apartment in Jersey. What you told me earlier gives me hope of finding her. And I’m damn well going to give it my best shot.”
“She could be coming to you,” proffered Tara. She was sitting on the Shelby’s hood and working her fingers into her left shoulder muscle.
Shorty shook his head. “I would have gotten a call from her by now.”
Tara stopped what she was doing long enough to take a long pull from a warm energy drink. Climbing down from the hood, she said, “Cell coverage was real spotty all across New York and New Jersey. Even as we drove down the Eastern Seaboard, more often than not my phone had zero bars.”
Shorty spit into his cup. “Like I told your brother, I haven’t heard from her since the day the building fell.” Conviction creeping into his voice, he said, “She’s holed up in her apartment. Of that I am certain.”
“I’d offer you a ride,” said Riker, “but we’re going in two entirely different directions.”
“I figured as much. I’m going to test the waters and see what I can get in trade for this old girl. Worst case scenario, I procure myself a set of wheels.”
“How am I doing?” asked Steve-O
Tara leaned toward the pilothouse. “I think you need to trade that Stetson in for a captain’s hat.”
“No way,” he replied, then launched into a spot-on rendition of John Fogerty’s Proud Mary.
Shorty took a pair of binoculars down from a hook on the pilothouse wall. Thrusting them toward Riker, he said, “You’re taller. Take a look and see what’s going on up on the bridge.”
Helping Steve-O sing the chorus about a “riverboat rollin’ on a river,” Tara intercepted the binoculars and pressed them to her face. She scrutinized the emergency vehicles on the bridge until Miss Abigail was passing beneath them.
Shorty asked, “What do you see?”
Smirking, she said, “Not that itty-bitty thing in your pants.”
Shorty was about to respond when Riker said, “Sis … what’d you see up there?”
“Couple of police cruisers and a bunch of dudes in uniform. One of them is watching us through a way bigger pair of binoculars than Shorty’s here.”
Grimacing, Shorty asked, “Can you tell how the cruisers are painted?”
“All white with gold and blue stripes down the sides.”
“Sounds like Gulf Breeze PD,” noted Shorty. He took the binoculars from Tara and trained them on the cruisers. After a short pause, he added, “Sure is. And that’s no sobriety checkpoint. Too many patrol cars for that. My guess is they’re sealing themselves off from the mainland.”
“We saw the same thing all the way up from Miami,” Riker said. “Sometimes it was local law enforcement doing the job. Other times it was the National Guard blocking the freeway exits. Even saw a couple of off-ramps guarded by local yokels.”
Indicating the arrival of a number of vehicles lit up with red and blues atop the rapidly approaching Pensacola Bay Bridge, Shorty said, “It’s really taking a foothold.” Then, jaw adopting a granite set, he turned to Riker. “Back there at my place—was that the first one of them you killed?”
“No,” admitted Riker matter-of-factly. He pulled a plastic chair from the stack of them behind the pilothouse. Sitting down, he removed his prosthesis and launched into their story, beginning with the first time Tara uttered the word zombie back in her apartment in Middletown. He went on to detail their incarceration and subsequent flight from the high school in Middletown. Touched on how Steve-O came to be their road dawg, then described how they almost got rolled up in the ever-tightening noose consisting of Johnnys in black SUVs and their unmarked helicopter, the Department of Homeland Security in their white Tahoes, and National Guard units from multiple states. It wasn’t until Riker got to the half-man he had stabbed in the eye on I-75 outside of Lake City that he broke down.
“He was the first,” Riker said, drawing a deep breath. “Shouldn’t have been, though. There were others that I should have put down. Had I not been too afraid to act … or too inept when I finally did, I might have saved some people who didn’t deserve to die in the manner they did.”
Tara put her arm around her brother’s shoulder, causing him to start.
“Don’t beat yourself up, Bro.”
Riker buried his face in his hands and leaned forward in the chair.
Unable to support the sudden transfer of two hundred and forty pounds, the chair’s front legs buckled. As a result, Riker pitched forward and to his left. Instead of planting his bare stump on the deck and further inflaming the already irritated skin there, he tucked his chin to his chest and rolled, letting his left shoulder suffer the brunt of the fall.
Shorty and Tara both dropped to their knees next to Riker.
“I couldn’t react quick enough to catch you,” explained Tara.
“I didn’t even see what happened,” said Shorty.
They both took ahold of one of Riker’s muscled arms. Standing up straight and straining mightily, they lifted a still sobbing Riker back onto the chair.
Giving the siblings their space, Shorty crowded into the pilothouse with Steve-O and shut the sliding door behind him.
Concern evident in his tone, Steve-O asked, “Is Lee hurt?”
“Not physically,” Shorty said. “He’s just real sad.”
“I’m sad, too,” declared Steve-O. “Sad for the Sickos. Sad that Lee had to shoot some of them tonight. Sad that the Sickos can’t help what they’re doing to healthy people.”
“I’ll be sad right along with you, Steve-O.”
Lighted support columns rose from the water to the arched Pensacola Bay Bridge looming high over Miss Abigail.
Focused intently on the narrow strait between the nearest columns, Steve-O made minute course corrections. As Miss Abigail’s bow drifted to port, he said, “If you want to, Shorty, you may call me Steve.”
“Good to know I’m not on your shit list, Steve-O.”
“Steve, if you want. Your choice.”
“I think I’ll follow your friends’ lead and stick with Steve-O. It has a certain ring.” Turning the volume up on the marine radio to drown out the conversation happening on the other side of the door, he spent a few seconds poring over the gauges.
Declaring Miss Abigail “good to go,” Shorty trained the binoculars on the distant dog-leg left and glassed it from shore to the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, where he saw way more surface traffic than should be present at one in the morning.
Beyond the western point of Gulf Breeze, situated on an immense parcel of land dotted with bright runway lights and nearly surrounded by water, Pensacola Naval Air Station was strangely quiet. No Hornets on afterburner leaping into the night sky. No headlights sweeping the tarmacs with yellow cones of light. Not even a single set of flashing lights associated with taxiing aircraft waiting permission to launch.
It was as if all air operations had ceased.
Not knowing what to make of it, Shorty decided to keep his mouth shut until they were well clear of the mouth to the Gulf.
As Miss Abigail neared the turn to the Gulf, where the waterway narrowed considerably, Shorty took the helm.
“I have a job for you, Steve-O.”
“Whatcha got?”
Indicating a plastic crate on the floor under the console, he said, “Drag that out. See if you can find my spotlight.”
“Got it,” said Steve-O.
The item Steve-O came up with was yellow plastic and featured a lens nearly large enough to double as a dinner plate.
Shorty steered Miss Abigail around a group of sailboats anchored in a small cluster where they shouldn’t be. Cursing them in his head, he said, “Make sure it’s switched off. Wouldn’t want to blind the two of us. Then
go ahead and plug it into the auxiliary outlet.” He took one hand off the wheel long enough to flip up the plastic shield covering the port.
“It’s off,” said Steve-O. “Plugging it in.”
Shorty opened the sliding window to his left, stuck the spot outside, and lit up the sailboats slipping by a dozen feet off of Miss Abigail’s port side.
The decks of the farthest two boats were cluttered with plastic bins and coolers, but devoid of life. Though he couldn’t be sure, the half-dozen dark smudges on the bulkhead of the middle boat sure looked like handprints. Same general size. The splayed fingers of one particular print were abnormally long and tipped by foot-long crimson runners of what Shorty guessed to be dried-on blood.
On the nearest boat—a thirty-footer called Vagabond—a middle-aged man and much younger woman sat on deck chairs, smoking. Lying horizontal across the man’s bare legs was some type of scoped long gun.
At once, the couple raised their arms to shield their eyes against the million-candle-power beam.
A noticeable slur to his words, the man said, “You’re going to get yourself shot if you don’t turn that shit off.”
“Sorry, friend,” called Shorty as he lit up the multitude of vessels at anchor in the waterway dead ahead.
Only a handful of the boats had any kind of lights burning above or below deck. Some of those were full of young people partying on deck. Others were ablaze only below deck, the light spilling from portholes and reflecting eerily off the bay water.
***
An hour removed from his namesake bait shop, and a full twenty minutes after having replaced Steve-O on the wheel, Shorty was a bundle of nerves from having to pilot the ungainly ferry through the maze of vessels at anchor in the dog-leg and narrows immediately preceding the exit to the Gulf.
Now, with nothing but wide-open water off the bow, Shorty made two executive decisions. First, he spit out the chewing tobacco and lit up a cigarette. Then, without consulting the siblings or turning to ask Steve-O his opinion, he steered to starboard, pointing the bow at the soft ambient glow thrown from the lights of dozens of cities.
Chapter 37
Sensing Miss Abigail shifting to a course that was a stark deviation from the agreed-upon line of travel, Riker stopped talking mid-sentence and snapped up his prosthesis.
“I felt it, too,” Tara said. “Want me to go investigate?”
“Not after what he said to you earlier. Less time you spend alone with him, the better.”
Finished snugging on his bionic, Riker rose and hugged Tara. “Thanks for listening,” he said, then strode off for the pilothouse.
Arriving outside the closed sliding door, Riker’s attention was immediately drawn to the horizon where, far off, north by west, a substantial swath of it burned orange and red. The way the light play shimmered and undulated like a volatile pool of magma reminded him of approaching Las Vegas in the dead of night. Whether arriving by air or land, the city that never sleeps was always enveloped in a similar bubble of light. Whereas he had seen the glow over Vegas as a beacon drawing him in, what he was staring at now was having the entirely opposite effect.
Tearing his eyes from the surreal sight, Riker knocked lightly on the glass.
As the pilothouse door slid open, Shorty shot Riker a questioning look.
All business, Riker asked, “Why are we hugging the shore?”
Voice taking the same tone, Shorty said, “Two words … maritime interdiction.” Looking to Steve-O, he thanked him for his help, then asked him to put the throttles to idle and trade places with Riker.
“I’m tired, anyway,” he said. “Think I’ll go and rest my eyes.”
“If you need to take a dump or something,” Shorty said, nodding his head to the back of the boat, “there’s one of those chemical RV porta-pottys in the aft locker. Locker’s next to the receptacle you used to add the diesel to the internal tank.”
“I’m a guy who needs his privacy,” said Steve-O as he followed Shorty out of the pilothouse. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just hold it.”
“Suit yourself,” said Shorty. Stepping into the pilothouse, he invited Riker to join him.
Riker ducked his head as he entered. Reaching back blindly, he closed the door against a gathering wind.
For the first time since boarding the ferry, he got a real good look at the inside of the pilothouse. To say the place was cramped would be one heck of an understatement.
Above the front window was a curved mirror. Reflected in the mirror was the water they’d just transited. The surface close in was a churn of white aerated water. Farther off the stern, their wake was represented as a pair of slowly widening Vs.
Waist-high to Riker was a four-foot-long, wood-grained plastic dash. On the far-left side of the dash was a yoke like the kind found in an airplane cockpit. Next to the wheel in Shorty’s capable grip, three identical throttles protruded from the dash.
STERN ENGINES was embossed on a plastic plaque stuck to the dash under the two nearest throttles. The third throttle was not labeled, which, of course, piqued Riker’s interest.
“What’s with the extra throttle?”
Smiling, Shorty said, “Miss Abigail has a secret hiding below deck.”
“Inboard diesel to augment the outboards?”
“Other way around. Let’s just say this old girl is the maritime equivalent of the Millennium Falcon.”
Not getting the meaning of the little man’s quip, Riker let his eyes continue to roam the dimly lit pilothouse.
Mounted to the bulkhead and sloping up and away from the wheel was a rectangular two-foot-wide flat-panel display. The unit was nearly as tall as it was wide. On the screen was a detailed digital map of the Gulf of Mexico. Included on the periphery was the Florida panhandle and good swathes of the southern shorelines of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Since there were no discernable buttons on the glass display, Riker figured it had to be a touch screen.
“What kind of radar do you have feeding data to that thing?”
“It’s a Garmin Fantom open-array with about a ninety-nautical-mile reach. She has all the bells and whistles. Split-screen. Safety zone monitoring. It’ll do everything and then some.”
Technology, thought Riker as he walked his gaze across a shelf below the dash. On the shelf was a trio of radios, each outfitted with illuminated dials and sprouting its own handset.
“And the radios?”
Shorty looked up from the screen long enough to scan the sea around Miss Abigail. Satisfied there were no vessels lurking nearby in the dark, he said, “They’re the best that money can buy. Let’s just say I can listen in on most any conversation on any frequency.”
Nodding, Riker continued his visual tour of the pilothouse.
Mounted on the wall next to Shorty and bristling with inspection tags was a red fire extinguisher. A holstered flare gun was affixed to the wall underneath the port-side window.
Finished, Riker asked, “What’s your Garmin showing you?”
On the display, the map was still zoomed way out. Indicating a trio of wedge-shaped icons positioned a few miles offshore from Mississippi, Shorty said, “I’ve seen this before.”
“What are they?”
“Coast Guard cutters Cypress, Barbara Mabrity, and the Decisive out of Pensacola, Mobile, and Pascagoula, respectively. That they’re arranged equidistant to each other in a classic picket would normally tell me they’re looking to catch runners bringing contraband to shore. However, due to the Romero bug, I think their mission tonight is containment. Which means they’re supposed to round up squirters and send them back to shore. And that works in our favor. Can’t help but think President Tillman has ordered his firewall moved west a few hundred miles.”
“Thus the answer to my question,” Riker said. “Staying close to shore keeps us off their radar.”
“Yes, and no,” said Shorty. “Hate to burst your bubble. But it’s likely we’re on their radar right now.”
>
“Why the ‘no’ then?”
Shorty zoomed the image on the screen in a few stops. Pointing to one dot among dozens of small dots hugging shore from Pensacola to the first cutter’s position, he said, “Because this little dot on the map is us. Which means we are basically a single needle in a haystack full of them.”
Making a sweeping gesture at the dash, Riker asked, “Why all of this?”
“After Abby died, I deposited the life insurance money straight into Megan’s college fund. The next day I started work on Miss A here.”
“Who’s Abby?”
Shorty didn’t answer at once. When he finally did, his voice wavered. “My wife of twenty-three years. That’s who.”
Riker said nothing.
“About five years ago my Abby got diagnosed with the big C. She went all in with the preventative measures. Went ahead and let the docs lop off both of her breasts to stop it from spreading. That still didn’t get it all.” He went real quiet for a beat. “It spread all over her body. Finally took her from us two years ago Christmas day. Megan was shattered. She still wants nothing to do with the holidays from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.”
“I’m real sorry for your loss, Shorty. Still doesn’t tell me why you need all this on an automobile ferry.”
“I spiraled out of control trying to fill the void the loss of Abby left inside me. I started myself a little smuggling business. At first it was people who weren’t supposed to leave Florida, for one reason or another. I did not deal in fugitives from the law, though. Then my moral compass got all twisted and I started moving stuff that comes packaged in big bundles. I guess I was hellbent on destruction.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Wasn’t thinking about Megan one bit … only about poor ol’ Shorty.” Covertly wiping his eyes, he said, “Enough about me. How’d you lose your left wheel?”
After making Shorty promise him there was no contraband onboard, Riker gave the man the short version of how he’d lost his leg, then steered the conversation back to the digital map, and where exactly on it he could expect Miss Abigail to make landfall.
Tracing the Alabama shoreline with a finger, Shorty said, “We’ll follow this line, pass Mobile”—he looked up at Riker—“where we both agreed I would take you in the first place.” Regarding the touchscreen, Shorty resumed tracing their course, saying, “Somewhere on either side of Gulf Port, Mississippi is probably our best bet. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
The Plan Page 22
