Hunted in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  After hiding the final body, I looked at my dive watch and saw that it was 0230. The night sky was clear and full of stars; the ocean like glass. Having searched each corpse thoroughly, I added a few toys to my arsenal including two more M26 frag grenades, an incendiary grenade, an M4A1 with three spare magazines and a Kevlar bulletproof vest which I donned right away. I threw all of my weapons into the chest in the kitchen pantry except my Sig, which I holstered to my leg, the M4 which I kept slung over my shoulder, and two grenades which I kept clipped onto my belt. I also had an extra magazine for both my Sig and my M4 strapped around my waist, ready to be withdrawn at a moment’s notice if need be. The last thing I wanted was to be caught off guard while moving about the island with nothing but my Sig and dive knife at my side.

  I headed back up the long, spiral staircase and spent a few minutes looking out over the horizon in all directions. The salvage vessel was still anchored in the same spot, about a half of a mile off the Northern tip of the island. But aside from it there were no other boats on the water. Staring at the old, rusted ship through the lens of my night vision monocular, I watched as a handful of guys scattered about on the deck. Dropping the monocular to my side, I took in a deep breath. I had no way of knowing how many of them were on the ship, but there was one thing I did know. When they decided to come back to Loggerhead, they’d do it with a much larger force than they had before. I’d dealt with assholes like Salazar many times over the course of my life, and they all had one thing in common: they all hated to lose.

  I reached for the small radio which was still resting at the foot of my blue folding chair. Flipping it on, I did a quick scan of the channels and, when I couldn’t get a signal, switched it back off. The battery was getting dangerously low, its mini digital display illuminating just one red bar, and I couldn’t find a spare battery anywhere.

  Grabbing my thermos from the floor, I took a few swigs of the lukewarm coffee then set it back down. Looking out at the ship, I decided that if I was going to fight off another attack, I would need to be more prepared. In the basement of the lighthouse, I found an old fishing tackle box filled with lures, bobbers and two coils of fishing line. Thinking back to a raid I’d been on back in Colombia, where the local rebels had used booby traps to try and hold us back, I got an idea.

  Snatching the fishing line, I headed out the door and set up three snares, using the coconut trees surrounding the old white house and the lighthouse to hold them in place. I wrapped the twenty-five-pound test lines around the trunks of the trees, then with tension in the lines tied each end off to one of the grenades, tying one knot to the body and the other knot to the detonation pin. Then, very carefully, I covered the grenades with a few small branches and leaves that had fallen in the storm, concealing them from view. The M26 frag grenade has an injury radius of about fifty feet and a lethal radius of fifteen feet, and since I’d placed them in between palms that were about a hundred feet apart, no matter where these thugs tripped the line they’d at least get injured. The three booby traps created a perimeter that almost circled the entire center of the island, leaving just a few narrow passages between them.

  As I was setting up the traps, I noticed something odd about part of the landscape about three hundred feet southwest of the southernmost coconut trees. Moving over to a small pile of white sand that looked unnatural, I dug into the sand with my hands for a few minutes and soon found that there was something hard buried about a foot down. The storm must have covered it, I thought, as I continued to dig, soon realizing that it was a large, rectangular sheet of mahogany about five feet wide and seven feet long. Digging my fingers underneath its edges, I grunted and lifted it up, revealing a small storage space underneath of it. There was nothing useful inside, just a few empty wooden crates and some shovels and plastic rakes, but it would be a good hiding place if I ever needed to move the Hales. Dropping the board back down, I covered it with a few inches of sand then headed over to the old, white house.

  After taking a quick trip upstairs to warn the others to stay inside and not stray from the house, I moved to the back of the house and examined the propane tank beside the broken back window. It looked to be a five-hundred-gallon tank, which I verified by reading the data plate under the aluminum lid. Beside the data plate was a gage that read about seventy-two percent, meaning that there was right around three hundred and sixty gallons of propane in the tank. With no other explosives on the island other than the grenades, I knew I’d have to make do. Following the black line out of the top of the tank, I saw that it split off with one hose heading to the main house and the other straying off towards the lighthouse. Kneeling down, I shut the isolation valve for the lighthouse line, making it so all of the propane would be directed towards the main house. Following the line inside the house, I found where it connected to both the heaters and the kitchen stove and burned their locations into my mind.

  My night vision monocular in hand, I headed back outside and, avoiding my booby traps, walked towards the Northeast beach where the second group of four thugs had landed on the island. Looking out over the horizon, I could see the dark outline of the ship in the distance. Down on the beach, the scrape marks left by their boat were still visible in the sand just up from the surf.

  Suddenly, my body froze as I heard a bullet zip past my ear and bury itself into the ground behind me, spraying up a pile of sand in its wake. A split second later, I heard the report of a large caliber rifle and hurled my body, diving flat onto my stomach behind a small sandbank. Two more bullets followed immediately after the first, hitting the pile of sand in front of me. I listened intently as the cracking of gunpowder echoed from far out to sea. Someone had a fucking sniper rifle on that ship, I thought as I lay with my head buried in the sand. Fortunately for me though, the guy pulling the trigger wasn’t a crack shot. Crawling backwards away from the beach, I moved into the cover of thick shrubs and headed slowly back towards the center of the island.

  When I’d moved far enough away from the beach, I stood up and tried to zoom in using my monocular to spot the guy. But the ship was too far away. All I could do was shake my head, wishing I had a weapon with the range and scope to take him out.

  As I headed back towards the lighthouse, Cynthia was standing by the door. She was staring at me with wide eyes that glistened by the light of the silver moon overhead.

  “What happened?” she asked, her voice filled with worry. “We all heard the gunshots.”

  I shook my head. “A close call that’s what happened.” Moving closer to her, I added, “Seriously, no straying beyond the house and lighthouse, alright?” She nodded, and I continued, “These guys are gonna come after us with their full force soon. They have to. Now that Fay has passed, these waters will soon come to life with fishing boats, Coast Guard patrols, etc. They must know that they’re running out of time.”

  She stared at me with the stone-cold expression of a worried to death mother. I wasn’t trying to scare her. I just wanted them to be ready for what was about to happen.

  “How many more do you think that they have?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d bet at least twenty though.” Then, looking out in the direction of the ship, I said, “I need you all to be ready and do exactly as I say, alright?” Then looking at her waist, I saw that she was carrying her Beretta in a black holster. Half of the weapon was covered by the bottom of her dirty, black tank top.

  She glanced down at it then back up at me. “I took it from one of the dead guys.”

  I smiled and, feeling the fatigue of the day start to sink in a little, I said, “Any chance I could get some more of that coffee? My thermos is cold and running a little dry.”

  “It’s filled to the brim now,” she said with a smile. “I figured you’d be running low.”

  I thanked her and told her again to be ready for anything before opening the door to the lighthouse and heading up the long, spiral staircase.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN


  At 0500, the first hints of sunlight radiated over the eastern sky, sending a faint red and yellow glow in all directions. For the past few hours, there had been little to no activity aboard the distant ship. A few guys walking about, patrolling the decks or staring at the island through their scopes but nothing more.

  But in the last ten minutes or so, more and more guys had filled the decks, shuffling about as orders were yelled at them from a few guys standing on the control platform at the top of the vessel. Clearly, they were planning something, but there was no way of knowing how or when they would strike.

  The odds were stacked heavily against me. If they stormed the beach utilizing all three skiffs, they’d be able to come at us from all directions. Three booby traps and an exploding propane tank could only do so much against a trained and well-equipped army.

  Reaching for the small, old radio at my feet, I made one final desperate attempt to send a message out to anyone nearby who could help us. As I scanned through the channels, I heard nothing but static as the single red bar indicating what remained of the battery started to blink. When I reached channel sixteen, I held the button and spoke into the microphone.

  “This is an SOS. I repeat, SOS. This is Logan Dodge. I’m stranded on Loggerhead Key, along with four others, and in immediate need of assistance.”

  I waited for a second and then my eyes grew wide. My mouth practically fell to the floor as I heard a voice struggle its way through the radio static.

  “This is Coast Guard Rescue six-zero-four-seven. Logan…. We’re… Loggerhead…”

  The guy's words broke in and out of clarity as the terrible signal crackled over his voice. It was a Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopter and, judging from the bits and pieces of words that had made it unscathed to my ears, they sounded like they were heading that direction. Holding down the talk button, I spoke as loudly and clearly as I could into the microphone, warning the pilots that the island was surrounded by heavily armed Cuban gangsters. But before I could receive a reply other than the loud, annoying static, the radio went silent and it’s LED screen turned dark.

  My heart raced as I stared at the useless hunk of plastic in my hands. I was glad that I’d finally been able to get word out about our situation but was equally pissed off by the fact that the Coast Guard rescue crew, who were in all likelihood heading our direction at that very moment, had no idea what they were flying themselves into. Sure, there was a small chance they’d be able to land near the lighthouse, load all five of us up, then take off and fly away unscathed. But that wasn’t likely. Especially with that sniper on the salvage ship holding down the beach. The possibility of bullets damaging the helicopter or injuring one of their crewmembers was real, and it was a thought I couldn’t clear out of my mind.

  Grabbing my binoculars, I did a quick survey of the dimly lit horizon in all directions. Seeing no sign of the helicopter and seeing that all three skiffs were still strapped to the deck of the ship, I headed down the stairs and over to the nearby house. As I rushed my strides, I tried with all of my strength to imagine an outcome where we all made it out of there alive and well, but it was really hard to do. The inside of the house was quiet and my footsteps creaked the old wooden steps as I made my way up to the second floor and into the bedroom. The four of them were all asleep on the queen-sized bed as I entered, bundled together beneath a seashell patterned quilt. The young girls huddled over their parents as they leaned back against two old pillows covered in pillowcases that looked like they should have been trashed long ago.

  As the bedroom door hit the wall with a bang, Chris and Cynthia’s eyes both opened in unison and looked frantically in my direction as they both sat up.

  “What’s going on?” Chris asked as his two daughters rolled slowly out of bed.

  I told them that, after receiving a signal on the radio, I’d spoken to a Coast Guard helicopter pilot and that they might be on their way to the island.

  Cynthia stared at me, her hazel eyes showing a faint glimmer of hope.

  “When?” she asked, removing the covers and stepping out of the bed fully dressed.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. The radio died only seconds after we started talking to each other. But since I was able to reach them with that short-range radio, I’m guessing they’re nearby. Probably looking for stragglers like us who got caught up in the storm.”

  Chris shifted onto the edge of the bed, staring at the wood floor near his feet. He still looked like hell from when those guys had beat him up a few nights ago and his right leg was wrapped up in bandages. “What do we do?” he asked gravely.

  “We get ready,” I said. “We have to be prepared for if the Coast Guard does arrive, but whether they do or don’t show up, those thugs out on that ship are up to something. And I promise you this, they sure as hell aren’t just gonna sit by and watch as a helicopter flies us all out of here.”

  Cynthia grabbed her holster from the nightstand, strapped it around her waist and locked in the Beretta. As the four of them moved towards me, Cynthia looked me over from head to toe and said, “You still haven’t slept, have you?”

  I didn’t answer her. Thinking about how I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours would only make it worse, and I could already feel the fatigue starting to take over.

  As I helped Chris down the stairs and lowered him onto a wooden chair beside the front door, I heard a distant humming sound coming from outside. Opening the door, I stepped out onto the small, rundown porch and listened intently as the humming sound grew louder and louder. It was unmistakable, a sound I’d heard countless times before in my life. The sound of helicopter blades slicing through the air at high speeds. I stepped down onto the beach and looked out over the Eastern horizon, the direction that the sounds were coming from. The sun had risen just enough at my back to illuminate the morning sky, allowing me to see a shadowy object flying a few thousand feet over the ocean, heading straight for our island.

  “What is it?” Cynthia asked as she stepped through the door. But before she’d reached the end of the porch, her eyes lit up and she glanced over at me. “Logan, it’s them.”

  I nodded but knew that we were still far from being home free. As I brushed past her, I said, “Make sure everyone’s ready to move with a purpose when that thing touches down.”

  Heading back inside, I walked past Chris who was sitting beside the door, his daughters standing beside him.

  “What’s going on?” he said as I moved towards the pantry. I opened it up and pulled out the old chest that was now filled to the brim with the weapons from all of the thugs I’d taken down. “That sure sounds like a helicopter to me.”

  Opening the chest, I dug through the pile of weapons and pulled out a flare gun I’d found in the lighthouse. “It’s the Coast Guard,” I said, watching as the two girls lit up, their faces contorting into smiles for the first time since they’d arrived on the island.

  Chris’ mouth practically fell onto the old, hardwood floor below. His eyes grew wide and he said, “Logan, that means-”

  “It means that we’re not out of this yet,” I said, cutting him off as I loaded up the flare gun and headed back towards the front door.

  I almost walked right into Cynthia as she stormed back inside. “It’s getting close,” she said, unable to contain the excitement in her voice.

  Before heading outside to signal the helicopter, I wrapped my arms around the four of them, forming a small huddle. “Look,” I said, scanning my eyes between each of them, trying to convey to them the seriousness of the situation we were in. “I’m gonna signal them to land just outside the house here. You guys stay inside and be ready to move when I say so. Nobody takes so much as a step out of this door until I give the all clear, understand?” I waited until each of them spoke up, letting me know that they understood, then continued, “Just hold tight and be ready to run. I’ll come over to help with you,” I said, pointing at Chris.

  With the sounds of the helicopter growing louder and loud
er in the distance, I headed out the front door, shutting it snug behind me, then raced over to a large clearing between the old white house and the lighthouse. It was more than big enough to allow for the helicopter to land and it was far away from any of the booby traps I’d set the night before. Standing in the middle, I raised up the flare gun, pointing it into the dim morning sky then pulled the trigger when the helicopter was less than a mile away from the island. The flare exploded from the barrel, hissing high into the sky and glowing bright red, leaving a thin trail of white smoke behind it.

  Throwing the flare gun to the ground, I ran around the lighthouse and watched as the helicopter made its approach to the island and started to descend. As I’d expected from their call sign, it was an MH-60T Jayhawk, painted in the distinct Coast Guard white and orange colors. The sounds of its spinning rotors shook the quiet air as it flew right over my position at an altitude of about a thousand feet. After passing over the island, it made a wide turn South, hovering over the entirety of the island before slowing back towards the large clearing where I’d fired the flare.

  I waved my hands wildly to get their attention as they kept the bird in place for a few moments. Wondering what the hell they were waiting for, I focused on them through my monocular and saw that one of the guys was staring and pointing a gloved finger at something out in the ocean. Turning around, I scanned the horizon and my heart sank deep into my chest. I saw a boat full of thugs cruising just a few hundred feet from the shoreline, their heads swiveled and their eyes staring at the chopper.

  Every instinct in my body told me to grab the M4 slung to my back, run closer to the beach and send a deadly wave of bullets their direction. I took a few steps towards the beach as their boat turned sharply, heading straight for the eastern beach. The helicopter was still hovering about a thousand feet above, its rotors blocking out all other sounds and sending a swirl of strong winds all around me. I knew that if I did grab my M4 and open fire, the Coast Guard guys might suspect that I was the bad one and put me right in the crosshairs of their M240 machine gun.