What Lies Beneath: A Florida Action Adventure Novel (Scott Jarvis Private Investigator Book 10)

by Scott Cook

  “More racial slurs?” I commented wryly. “You two lads sure do make a lot of brave noises for unarmed guys with knots on their head and in front of the barrel of a .45.”

  “Uhngh… pale face makem good point,” Rick Eagle Feather said in a hokey old western Indian accent. Then he grinned at me and in a low voice with just a hint of Florida cracker in it said: “I like a man who’s prompt, Mr. Jarvis.”

  Unfortunately, Rick’s sudden return to vengeful wakefulness was accompanied by the arrival of the driver of the SUV… and his three friends.

  The men’s room door slammed open and the new man came running out firing a pistol over our heads and hollering threats and bad words in a heavy Hispanic accent. Having little recourse, I shot him twice, my bullets tearing through his right thigh and lower chest. He went down screaming even more curses and threats.

  That’s also when another vehicle appeared around the corner of the station, its big off-road tires screeching on the pavement. It was a large quad-cab pickup whose body sat six inches above the tires on a lift kit. It reminded me of the last swamp buggy I’d ridden in the past summer, but not quite as large.

  The truck held three men, two of whom were already aiming long guns out of the passenger’s front and rear windows.

  “I think it’s time to remove to a more secure location, Mr. Eagle Feather,” I suggested, grabbing Rick’s arm and yanking him around the side of the SUV.

  “Tactically withdraw you mean?” He asked bemusedly.

  “I mean get the Christ outta here,” I replied as we low ran toward the front of the big SUV. As we did, several of the vehicle’s windows shattered as high-powered rounds obliterated them in their quest to seek vulnerable human flesh.

  “Well this is a pretty kettle of fish,” I complained as we crouched low by the SUV’s grill. “I don’t suppose you have a gun in that truck? That is your truck, right?”

  Rick nodded, “Yes on both counts. I don’t think they removed it or bothered to. Nice outfit, by the way… real stealthy.”

  He was talking about my bright yellow foulies, “What, this old thing? You don’t like it? I thought you’d like it…”

  Rick laughed as several more rounds shattered what was left of the SUV’s glass and buried themselves somewhere inside, “Sharon always said you were a smart-ass. And you stand out like a lamp.”

  I shrugged, “Talk about the pot and the kettle… and you’re one to talk… makem good point… Jesus…”

  Rick chuckled, “You’re drawing unwanted attention.”

  “Well, duh,” I said, getting on my belly to try and see under the cars. “How else are my enemies going to know who to fear? Any ideas on how to get out of this pickle you got me into, by the way? Maybe we should get in your truck and drive away.”

  Two shots and two loud pops were succeeded immediately by sharp hissing. They’d shot out the back tires of the F-150.

  “Great,” I cranked.

  “Shoot them,” Rick suggested.

  “Y’think?”

  “Do it quickly, though… I’m getting all wet.”

  “Must run in the goddamned family…” I mumbled as I quickly shucked my fouly jacket and coveralls. I laid them over Rick, who was also lying prone in the patchy knee-high grass beyond the edge of the parking lot.

  Almost instantly I was drenched… again. I was also gathering a considerable layer of slick mud on the front of my shirt and jeans as I wormed forward toward the front bumper of Rick’s truck. The other truck was parked close to the building, maybe a hundred feet away. I seriously considered reactivating my monocular, but any muzzle flashes I’d happen to be looking at would temporarily blind my left eye. There was enough light, although barely, for me to see that Carver and Stank had gotten to their feet and were running for the bed of the pickup truck.“How’s it look?” Rick said from ten feet behind me.

  “Like what Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie must’ve seen at the friggin’ Alamo,” I grumped. “Or maybe Custer at Little Big Horn.”

  “Are you saying that cuz I’m an Indian?”

  “Yup.”

  “Pale face needum explain analogy,” Rick said with another chuckle.

  “All five men are getting out of the truck,” I said. “Stank and Carver look like they’ve got weapons… confirmed.”

  I had lowered my monocular and taken a quick peek at our opponents. I then turned and looked behind us. Even in the night vision, everything just looked like one big field of grass.

  “What’s back there?” I asked, jerking a thumb over my shoulder.

  “Mostly scrub that eventually becomes saw grass,” Rick said. “There’s a slough not too far, though. You’re thinking we withdraw that way?”

  “Unless you’ve got a better idea,” I replied. “Because two of them have rifles and the other three pistols. They’re at least thirty yards away and there’s obstruction… for now… and I’ve got a pistol.”

  Rick cursed, “I agree with your assessment. Let’s move. It’s darker than a coal miner’s nose out here. We may be able to circle around to your vehicle.”

  “Leave the rain gear,” I suggested.

  “Jarvis!” A man I hadn’t heard before called out in a heavy southern accent. “We got you outnumbered and pinned. Come on out and let’s discuss this reasonably.”

  “Yeah, motherfucker,” Stank added. “I’ll be real reasonable bout breaking my foot off in yo ass.”

  We got to our feet, staying as low as we could and began to run directly away from the parking lot. I was once again impressed by Rick Eagle Feather. He moved lithely and quickly for a man more than twice my age. Behind us, several shots rang out. Since no lead ripped through our flesh and I didn’t hear an impact of any kind, I had no idea what they’d been shooting at. I only knew we were still alive for the moment.

  The sparse grass had thickened and I could tell that we were now up to our thighs in saw grass. Rick put a hand on my arm and stopped me.

  “We’re in the saw,” he whispered, even though we were now a hundred yards from our attackers and rain still came down heavy enough to make hearing our voices from the station impossible.

  “Yeah, glad I’m wearing pants,” I said. “You still want to circle around to my Jeep?”

  “I don’t see we have much choice,” Rick replied matter-of-factly. “We sure as hell can’t stay out here. That slough I told you about is just ahead… and we ain’t alone.”

  I lowered the monocular over my eye and scanned around in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arc. Again, I saw nothing but saw grass and a small stand of pines or small cypress hammock within the device’s enhancement range. Then I heard it.

  From uncomfortably close, the deep staccato rumbling reached my ears and set off a shiver that wriggled along my spine. A primordial sound that had echoed across the wild landscape of the Everglades for uncounted ages.

  It was the croak of a bull alligator. A big one, and it was close.

  Rick turned me ninety degrees from the direction in which we’d been running and tapped me on the back to move forward. I began to step carefully through the grass, placing each foot daintily before putting my weight on it and taking the next step.

  “Except for the rain… this reminds me of the night I met your friend Bill,” Rick’s voice was ghostly quiet and seemed to come from no more than an inch from my right ear even though I knew full well he was a pace behind me.

  That almost stopped me in my tracks. Another wave of gooseflesh rose along my sides, arms and neck. I knew without knowing that it had been Rick Eagle Feather that sent me the package containing Bill’s class ring and the gator tooth. Yet hearing him state it in such a sepulchral tone and in these circumstances lent the statement an eerie other-worldly flavor.

  “So it was you,” I said too quietly for him to hear, and yet he did.

  “His leg was broken, couple of busted ribs and cut up pretty bad by the grass,” Rick’s cryptic whisper explained. “He offered me money to help him.”

&
nbsp; “Why didn’t you?”

  More shots rang out then. Dozens of them. Rapid pistol rounds being squeezed off and louder rifle reports. Again, though, nothing came near us. The gunfire and the audible yet unintelligible shouts of the men seemed to be coming from much further away. As if they belonged to a different world at that moment in time.

  “I knew who he was and what he’d done,” Rick explained. “I’ve been… something of an admirer of your work for a while now. A long while. Anyway, I gave him a break. I let nature decide.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well… I guess I’m not being totally honest. I knew the big mama gator was out there and coming toward us that night. I even warned him to shut his dumb-ass mouth. Yet he kept on ahollerin’ and carryin’ on… well… nature took its course. As my little delivery should have told you.”

  “Jesus Christ…” I breathed. I didn’t feel too much empathy for Bill. Not after what he’d done. I suppose it was more empathy for the Billy Garelli I used to know that made me cringe.

  “It was quick, if that helps any,” Rick said. “After, I tracked her back to her nest a few days later. Wasn’t much left. What there was… well… I found the ring and a broken tooth. There were half a dozen fat babies in that nest when I found it. Lucky mama was out hunting. Anyway… that’s what happened.”

  The bull gator croaked again, his deep-throated gurgle reverberating across the land in spite of the sound of the rain.

  “Don’t worry, he’s not following us,” Rick said. “He’s in that slough… although if I had to guess, he might be getting’ curious about our buddies back at the station. What’s our angle now?”

  I gazed back with the monocular and saw that we’d moved west another fifty yards or so. He could probably tell that too based on the position of the streetlight and the now visible station sign.

  “What it looks like in my naked eyes, too,” Rick confirmed. “Let’s head toward your Jeep, but not directly. Come behind it maybe twenty yards or so, so we can scope hour friends over there.”

  “We could wait a bit,” I suggested. “I can zoom in with this thing and keep an eye on them.”

  Rick chuckled softly, “Under different conditions, I’d agree. Sooner or later, though, they’ll think to screw around with your Jeep. We need it.”

  “Okay,” I said, turning and walking again. “What happened tonight anyway? What the hell’s going on? Do you know— “

  “Easy… one thing at a time,” Rick said. “Yeah, I know some things and I think I know what you’re working on. Bits and pieces. Partly that’s why I called you. I need your help. As far as this situation here… I got sloppy. I should’ve assumed things were happening faster and on a bigger scale than I’d suspected.”

  I listened and waited.

  “You’re a good listener,” Rick commented, patting me lightly on the shoulder. “You know when to ask and when to let a man deliver at his own pace… anyways, I get here and park where my truck is now. At the time, there was only the sedan. The attendant’s car. I go in the store to grab a Coke…”

  “And establish your presence just in case,” I said, somehow sure of my suspicion.

  He harrumphed, “You’re a good detective… exactly. Should something happen, somebody would remember me.”

  “You’re a hard man to forget,” I suggested. “Being so short and pale and all.”

  “You’re a funny kid,” Rick replied dryly, chucking me on the shoulder. “So I go back out to my truck and nothing has changed. I get in and not thirty-seconds later, that big black SUV pulls up next to me. I hadn’t even reached for my weapon when I heard a rustling and the lights went out.”

  “Hmm…” I mused. “They slipped somebody in your back seat. Kind of surprised you didn’t sense that. Use your ancient Calusa powers or something.”

  He snorted, “I should’ve. I really should’ve. Like I said, I got sloppy. And it wouldn’t have been the spirits of my ancestors talking… or maybe not just them… but my Marine Corps training.”

  “You were a Marine?” I asked stupidly, as if he hadn’t just told me that.

  “Did three tours in Nam with Sharon’s dad. From sixty-nine to seventy-three. Anyway, between my Injun blood, my growing up in a wilderness like this, my Corps training and my experiences in an even more deadly wilderness… you’d think I’d have known. But I guess my head wasn’t quite in the game enough. So next thing I know, the back gate is opening and there’s a big tough-looking bruiser holding a portable cannon on those two gang bangers.”

  We were now directly behind my Jeep and crouching low in the scrub grass. My vehicle was only a short sprint away.

  “Okay, so we get in and then what?” I asked.

  “We distance ourselves from these guys,” Rick said. “This is just a bump in the road.”

  “I only see four of them,” I said, suddenly noticing. “Where’s the fifth? Stank and Carver are there, plus the two guys with rifles…”

  “Jarvis! Eagle Feather!” The man with the southern accent shouted. He was standing just outside the entrance near the front corner of the store, and he wasn’t alone.

  “Uh-oh…” I muttered.

  Rick cursed. We both knew what was coming next.

  “I know you’re out there someplace!” The man shouted. “I want Eagle Feather right now, or I waste this innocent clerk! You hear me!?”

  “I don’t suppose you have another gun?” Rick asked.

  I nodded, “I’ve got a small Beretta .32 in my glove box… what’re you thinking?”

  “They want me, so I’m gonna give them what they want.”

  “Why? Why do they want you?”

  “I don’t know who these guys are,” Rick said in a low but angry tone.

  He hadn’t actually answered my question. That annoyed me a little. Here I was risking my life for this guy without even knowing why. It was hardly time for an argument, though, so I focused on the immediate situation instead.

  “We need a plan,” I said.

  “Got any ideas?”

  “Let’s go!” The man, who might have been the driver shouted. “Come out and show yourself, Indian!”

  “Let’s go,” I said, a fist knotting in my gut. “We get to the Jeep, grab the gun and— “

  “No, you stay here and back me up.”

  “Wha— “

  Rick suddenly stood and started jogging toward the parking lot. I cursed and followed him, keeping his large form between me and the Jeep. This would not end well…

  “I’m right here, asshole,” Rick shouted as he reached the pavement and strode past the right side of my jeep. “Let the guy go, son. No need to make things worse.”

  I reached the Jeep two-seconds later and stayed ducked down behind it. I wasn’t sure what Rick was going to do, but I was sure I wasn’t going to like it.

  “Scott, stay hidden,” Rick muttered as he moved forward.“Where’s Jarvis, old man?” The driver asked, holding the portly middle-aged clerk in front of him as a shield.

  “I’m alone,” Rick lied. “Jarvis is still hiding out in the saw grass. Let him go.”

  Rick kept walking toward the man, his hands spread out to show he was unarmed. As he did, the two riflemen turned and aimed their weapons at him.

  They were a good hundred feet or more from me. Not an easy shot with a pistol, even for me. I could probably hit them, but the odds were far better that they’d hit Rick before I could take them both out.

  Then I knew what the old Calusa was going to do. The closer he got to the lead man, the more the building would be between himself and the riflemen. He was going to allow himself to be caught so that the man would release the clerk and then Rick would do… something. It’d be a matter of seconds, but it was the one and only shot we had.

  “God dammit…” I muttered darkly. I edged to the left side of the Jeep and drew a bead on the outer rifleman.

  Rick was nearly to the southern-accented man now. He stopped ten feet away. It was hard to te
ll, but from the angles, I didn’t think that both riflemen could hit him now. Stupidly, they both stood still. I could also see that Carver was still standing halfway between the new truck and the three vehicles along the

  north edge of the lot. Stank had disappeared… why: Because he was going to circle around the other side of the store and back up his boss, of course!

  “God dammit…” I repeated.

  It was going to go bad. I knew it with the suddenness of a lightning flash. I began to squeeze the trigger, slowly applying pressure as I homed in on the leftmost rifleman’s center mass.

  “Now!” Rick shouted.

  I couldn’t see him or the driver or the clerk because the Jeep blocked them from my view. I bit my lip and fired and the world exploded. My shot hit home and the man pitched backward as a .45 steel jacketed slug punched through his chest. His partner, rather than firing, lurched sideways up against the rear wall of the building and trained his weapon on where he thought the muzzle flash had come from.

  My shot wasn’t the only one fired, though. There was another shot off in the direction of the front of the store. Even as I rolled to my right, a rifle bullet skittered across the pavement a few feet to the left of my Jeep. I stood and sprinted toward the front of the store.

  The clerk lay on the ground and Rick and the driver were rolling beside him in a tangle of limbs. They were fifty feet away but the distance seemed like a million miles as I ran.

  Stank appeared near the front corner of the store and I squeezed off three shots at a run, none of them hitting.

  They did turn him around, though and he began to run in the opposite direction.

  I had only a fraction of a second to make my decision. We were outnumbered and in a very bad position. Yet the fact that these men had captured and wanted to recapture Rick meant that they weren’t just out to kill him. I had to take that chance, so I ran after the lanky black thug.

  He rounded the corner and I skidded to a stop, dropped to my belly and rolled past the eastern corner of the store. Three shots rang out and three rounds whizzed past my head. I brought my weapon up and fired twice more. This time I hit the man and Stank went down, his weapon skittering across the pavement.