Fifteen
ERIC WAS SO FURIOUS he could have torn the kid’s head off with his bare hands, but he was even more furious with himself. How could he have been such an idiot after Jonathan already tried to steal his kayak once? He’d let down his guard and trusted him completely, and now he’d lost everything—stranded in a mangrove swamp with no boat and nothing but his rifle. He waded out into the edge of the water and stood there shaking with rage as he scanned the shadows along the shores of the cove with the monocular. If he could just catch of a glimpse of him slipping away, he would dump a full mag into his sorry ass even if it did bring every son of a bitch on the point running this way to investigate. But he’d been gone more than an hour. If Jonathan left shortly after he did, Eric knew he wouldn’t be anywhere near the little cove now. Eric stood there seething; wanting to scream out loud as he wondered what in the hell he was going to do now. Finding another boat was about his only option, but nothing would replace all he’d lost in that kayak—especially the gold—without which he had nothing to even trade for one. He was about to turn back into the mangroves to cross the point again and figure it out when suddenly; a beam of light hitting the treetops to the south caught his eye.
The light swept through the mangroves and out across the water, but he couldn’t see the source as it was coming from somewhere in one of the little dead-end channels that wound into the trees from the cove. Eric knew it wasn’t Jonathan, because there wasn’t a spotlight that bright in the kayak. This one appeared to be a 12-volt Halogen spotlight, the kind many people carried aboard their boats for lighting up channel markers and such. The light flicked on and off a couple of times, and though Eric listened, he heard no sound of a motor. He began making his way quietly through the trees in the direction of the light, stopping here and there to peer out into the dark bay with the night vision monocular. Finally, he saw the source of the light. A dark hull glided silently out of the mangroves, and he could see the silhouette of a standing man on the elevated platform at the stern. It was a flats fishing boat, running an electric trolling motor, hence the reason he’d heard no sound. In the green glow of the monocular, Eric could now see that the man held a bowfishing rig in his hand, and that a portable spotlight was mounted on the low pulpit beside him. The man was hunting the mangrove channels, evidently shining the clear water, looking for targets for his barbed arrow. Eric watched as he slowly worked his way along the shore to the south, checking each opening in the mangroves as he gradually headed towards the exit from the cove. Had he already fished this spot where Eric had left Jonathan? Did this somehow explain the kid’s absence? Eric got his answer five minutes later, when the lone boatman finally disappeared around the point to the south. A single whippoorwill call emanated from somewhere in the dark mangroves to the north. At first it was a single, solitary whistle. Then after nearly a full minute of quiet, while Eric tried to decide whether or not it was real, the call resumed, over and over with sudden urgency. Eric answered back with one of his own.
“You son of a bitch!” Eric whispered, as Jonathan paddled out of the shadows from the north and glided towards the bank in his kayak. “I was ready to shoot you on sight!”
“That was a close call, dude! I saw that guy come into the cove right after you left. I saw what he was doing, going up into every little channel his boat could fit in, looking for snook or whatever, and I knew if I stayed here he would see me. I got in the kayak before he got close enough, and I was lucky there was a tiny little creek about a hundred feet up that way that’s only about three feet wide. I got out and pulled the kayak up in there as far as I could get it, and then I just settled down and watched. That dude came right by here, man! He saw the channel I was in, but he couldn’t get in there. I watched him for a good thirty minutes, and didn’t think he would ever leave, until he finally turned around and headed back the way he came. I was ready though. I had the M4 you left ready to light up his ass if he saw me and started shooting or something. You didn’t really think I’d cut out on you, did you man?”
Eric just shook his head and turned away as Jonathan stepped out of the kayak and pulled it up in the mud beside him. Yeah, he really did think that at the time, and yeah, he’d been furious enough to kill. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d been betrayed if it had happened, but he didn’t say anything else about it. He just told Jonathan what he’d found on his recon of the point, and how he was thinking about waiting it out until the following night. That option was looking even better now, as they’d just lost another half hour to this little fiasco.
The two of them unloaded the kayak and carried it through the mangroves to the edge of the marsh that separated them from the road. Once they had all the gear there too, they pitched Jonathan’s camouflaged tarp well within the tree line and settled in to wait, first for morning and then for the end of the long coming day.
“I hate to waste the rest of the night and all day tomorrow sitting here like this, but even if we could put into the river on the other side right now, I doubt we’d get past all of the city before daylight. Finding a good hideout up there might be iffy, especially one as good as this.”
“I’m cool with it man. I can slip back through there to the edge of the cove later and do some fishing. It’s not like I’ve got anywhere I’ve got to be tomorrow.”
Eric envied the kid in a way. With no family and no one to be responsible for other than himself, he was truly free. Eric had wanted to be that way too when he was that age, but the pull of adventure and danger was too strong, and he’d signed away his freedom when he enlisted. At the time, he’d considered it a fair trade. He would follow orders and become the property of the U.S. Navy in exchange for the toughest and best training available on the planet. Eric was as gung-ho as they came when he made the cut and earned his place on the team, and that enthusiasm had stayed with him and sustained him through times and experiences that would have broken lesser men.
He had made it out alive when many of his buddies did not. Eric would have gladly traded places with any one of them if it were possible, but apparently it wasn’t his destiny to die in service to his country. He didn’t regret the trade off, giving up his youth and personal freedom to try and make a difference, but he knew now he’d gone too far in the end. He had done his time long ago and like Shauna kept telling him, it should have been enough. If he had listened, he might still have a family, and he probably wouldn’t be wondering whether he’d find his daughter up that dark river ahead of them or if she was still some 2,000 miles away in Colorado.
Eric and Jonathan took turns standing watch throughout the following day. They heard the occasional vehicle passing on the nearby road and a few motorboats running up and down the channel, but there was little danger of anyone wandering into the heart of a mangrove swamp without good reason. Mosquitos and deer flies, combined with the Florida heat and humidity made the day drag on, as there wasn’t nearly as much of a breeze reaching the woods here as there had been at Jonathan’s east coast camp. When night finally rolled around again, the two of them wasted no time getting moving. Eric wanted to have the kayak and all the gear in position on the other side as early as possible.
“I figure if we wait until about 2100 hours, we should be good to go,” he told Jonathan, as they sat on the riverbank, watching an occasional runabout go up or down the channel.
“I guess there’s always the chance of running into a fisherman like that dude bowfishing last night,” Jonathan said.
“Yeah well, we can’t wait forever. We’ll have to take our chances with that. Just because someone sees us, it doesn’t automatically mean there’ll be a problem. Every situation is different. Just back me up with another set of eyes and ears, and remember, don’t splash that damned paddle!”
They favored the south shore as much as possible for the first couple of miles, trying to keep out of the line of sight of anyone that might be manning the barricade at the mouth of the river. When they had traveled a sufficient distance from
their start point, Eric could see that the barricade was indeed there. It appeared to be just as the man from the sailboat described it—a raft of moored steel barges, completely blocking the entrance to and exit from the river. The small boats they’d heard running up and down the channel from the outside were probably cutting through the canals that accessed the waterfront development near the end of the point. Either that, or whoever was in charge had a narrow opening in the barricade to admit such smaller craft. One thing was certain; getting back out to the Gulf from upriver in a larger craft was going to mean getting past that barricade. Whether that was possible through negotiation, Eric didn’t know, but it was indeed going to be a problem later on when the time came to deal with it.
Two miles upstream, the river narrowed as they passed Cape Coral on the north side. Eric and Jonathan spotted a man quietly paddling downriver in a dark green canoe, trying to keep to the shadows the same as them. Eric was sure the man must have seen them in the kayak, but if he had, he did nothing to indicate it. Whether he was a local resident simply using his canoe for transportation or a thief sneaking quietly along the waterfront, they had no way of knowing. Surely other survivors here were using canoes and kayaks for transportation, given the popularity of recreational paddling in these waters before. Even if the lone paddler wasn’t a threat though, Eric didn’t like being seen. The scenario that played out before his eyes in front of Shauna’s dock was a vivid reminder of the importance of stealth, and he just wanted to get out of this city and upstream to the more remote parts of the river as quickly and quietly as possible.
There were several bridges they had to pass under above Cape Coral, and each time they approached one, Eric whispered to Jonathan to stop paddling so he could examine it with the night vision. But as they continued upriver, the bridges were fewer and farther apart, until at last they crossed under the twin spans of Interstate 75 where the river narrowed significantly. Here there were small, wooded islands outside of the main channel, as well as side creeks winding back into dense forests. A short distance upriver from the interstate, Eric spotted one such island too good to pass up. It was less than two hours until daylight again, so they pulled the kayak into the dense vegetation and made another day camp to wait for night to return. It was hard waiting when they were so close, but Eric refused to travel the river in the daylight.
“So, you’re sure we’ll make it all the way there tonight?” Jonathan asked, when the setting sun finally marked the end of another long day of waiting.
“Yep. I know this part of the river well. It’s about 20 miles to La Belle, but my father’s place is on this side of there, maybe 17 or 18 miles from here, tops.”
“He’s sure going to be surprised when you show up, I’ll bet.”
“I have no doubt of it. I’m sure he knows I would come back to the States looking for Megan, but still, he won’t be expecting me, especially not arriving in a kayak. We’re going to have to be careful paddling up there though. Hell, my old man is probably more likely to shoot us than anybody we’ve seen yet, and you can bet that he won’t miss! I damned sure don’t wanna go sneaking up to the dock behind his house in the dark. That would just be asking for it.”
“So what are we gonna do? Wait for daylight to go see him?”
“Yep. We’ll stop at his boatyard. It’s a little ways downriver from his house, maybe half a mile. I figure we’ll pull in there and just wait. I imagine he’ll be down there to check on things come first light anyway. He’s not one to sit still for long, and knowing him like I do, he’s probably still working on boats every day even though the owners may never come back to pay him.”
“He sounds like quite the character. I can’t wait to meet him.”
“He may give you a hard time at first, but just let me do the talking and it’ll work out okay. We’ll get you set up with a boat, I’m sure of it.”
Jonathan said he didn’t doubt that, but he wondered if he even needed one if he stayed around here. They’d already seen the dangers of traveling by water, and with the barricade downriver and what Eric had witnessed in North Palm Beach, it might be wiser to stay off the waterways. Eric couldn’t argue with what he was saying. Jonathan’s prospects here were dicey despite his excellent fishing and camping skills. They would talk about all that again later though. Right now Eric needed his help to paddle. He was growing more anxious by the mile, knowing that come morning, he would have his answers. Megan would either be at his father’s house or she would not.
Sixteen
BART BRANSON SCANNED THE waters of the harbor between his position and the far end of the dock, waiting for the two fishing kayaks to reappear. He’d spotted them in the moonlight as they approached from across the river, using the docks for concealment as they closed on the shoreline that fronted his boatyard. If they landed, which was what he fully expected them to do, the paddlers would be in view as soon as they stepped ashore. Considering the hour and the stealthy nature of their approach, Bart had little doubt of their intentions.
With his Springfield M1-A steadied on the steel bulwark at the bow of a commercial fishing trawler blocked up on the hard on the west side of the property, Bart swept the reticle of his low-light scope across the black waters of the harbor. He couldn’t pick out all the details in the shadows, but he was mainly looking for movement, checking to be sure there weren’t more than the two he already knew were there. Kayaks were a first since he’d taken to keeping nighttime watches over the yard, but Bart wasn’t really surprised to see them. Fishing from small sit-on-top kayaks had exploded in popularity in recent years, and plenty of the inexpensive plastic boats were still around, adapted to every purpose by those lacking better options in hard times. Bart had to admit that these two characters, whoever they were, seemed smarter than those he’d already dispatched. The kayaks were an excellent idea really, and a 2 a.m. raid conducted from small, silent watercraft certainly put the odds of success in their favor—or at least should have. But what these would-be-looters didn’t know was that their predecessors had already set them up for an untimely demise. When his yard manager and another worker who’d been with him for years were murdered just weeks before, Bart had made up his mind to take matters into his own hands. In the absence of effective law enforcement, there was little else he could do.
Bart knew people had to survive, but raiding his boatyard in the middle of the night wasn’t going to improve their odds of doing so. People were desperate, and the enormity of the situation turned even good folks to deeds they wouldn’t have considered before, but sorting out the good from the bad while they were in the act wasn’t something Bart was equipped to do. As far as he was concerned, anyone taking advantage of other folk’s misfortune in times of disaster deserved no mercy, and none would be given, at least not by him.
The two paddlers landed exactly where he expected they would. There was a narrow beach on the side of the dock opposite the Travelift slipway, and it was the logical place to land small boats. He focused on the lead paddler, who stepped ashore and quickly pulled his boat up onto the strip of grass above the beach. The second kayaker landed in the same place and when both boats were secured, the two men bent over them to retrieve their weapons and tools.
Bart didn’t have to guess what they were after. The bolt cutters and heavy pry bar one of the men carried told him all he needed to know. They were slipping into the dark boatyard with the intention of taking anything useful that they could strap to the decks of their kayaks. Most of the yachts and working vessels on the hard there still contained stores of fuel, liquor, food and other commodities, as well as valuables like electronics and systems components. Several of them had already been hit while Bart was away, most of those the night that his two employees were killed, but he was determined it wasn’t going to happen again.
The man with the tools followed closely behind the one in the lead, who was carrying a pump-action shotgun at the ready as he picked a route into the yard that kept them within the shadows. The seco
nd man had a weapon slung over his shoulder as well, but he was relying on his buddy as they made their advance. Bart watched and waited, taking his time. Their intentions were clear enough that he had no qualms about taking them out before they even touched one of the boats, but there was no rush. Well hidden 15 feet above them on the deck of the dry-docked trawler, there was little chance the two men would suspect they were already in the crosshairs of the yard owner’s riflescope. He would wait until they boarded one of the vessels, and then document the evidence with photos of the bodies along with their weapons and tools. Bart doubted he’d ever need it, but he liked documentation. It was a simple enough extra step that in his opinion it was worth the minor inconvenience, no matter how unlikely it was that anything that happened here would ever be questioned. It wasn’t like the situation was going to suddenly get better, although Bart knew that plenty of people were still in denial about that.
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