by Scott Cook
I handed him the other two items I’d found in the boat. Lisa’s Glock 43 and Sharon’s Sig Sauer P226. Both 9mm. Keisha hefted the bag and I took it from her. Setting it on the deck, I opened it and withdrew four magazines. Two for Lisa’s and two for Sharon’s pistol. I also handed Wayne my Mossberg Mariner and a box of shells.
“I don’t like you guys going without me,” Wayne said with a frown clearly visible on his dark face even at night.
“Me either, brudda,” I said, shaking his hand. “But space is limited and who knows what these fuck sticks will try next. There are two cars here, so if you don’t like the scene, go back to the boat. Keisha, you okay?”
She leaned down and kissed me gently on the lips, “All good. Be careful.”
I withdrew my M4 from the bag and handed it to Juan. I slid my own Colt 1911 into my waistband and then settled my night vision monocular on my head, but above my left eye for the moment. Wayne and Keisha tossed our lines and I backed away from the dock. I then put the boat in forward and idled down the short channel toward the open water of Chokoloskee Bay.
“You think you can find your way in through all that shallow water and mangroves, amigo?” Juan asked, tapping the chart plotter’s screen, now dimly lit for night use.
“Well, I’m sure that there’s a way in that this boat can use,” I said. “Rick probably goes back there a lot and in this boat. No spaghetti track or pre-plotted way point though. Probably has the route memorized.”
“Sharon mentioned a chart that he had hidden.”
I nodded, “Yeah, probably a reminder. His own secret hideaway… I wish I had a paper chart to look at, though. The plotter is great, but it doesn’t give a big picture… but look here… this is the spot that correlates to the GPS numbers.”
“Looks like it’s on a small island or near one,” Juan commented. “Near a four-foot channel… a natural one.”
“And if you scroll west, northwest…” I said, tapping on the controls of the small plotter. “You can see that there are some deep-water cuts that come out to the bay.”
Juan groaned, “Not well marked, though… not at all.”
I sighed, “No… the Ten G’s aren’t well charted. However… I think if we go in here, just a few miles south of us, we can follow this channel and then feel our way. The night vision will help me see differences in surface texture. And I have to believe that at least when we’re close, there’s got to be some kind of marker that he set up. Tide’s just on the flood now, so that gives us a couple of hours of deepening water if we get in trouble. Okay, let’s make tracks…”
I pushed the throttle forward and the skiff climbed up onto the step very quickly. I backed the throttle down so that we were just barely on a plane, maybe twenty knots or so. I could tell that the boat was capable of far more speed, but the last thing I wanted to do was run into water too skinny even for the Maverick. I’d stay in the deeper parts of the Bay until I reached one of the hundreds of entry points that led into the maze of the Ten Thousand Islands proper. Then we’d have to see. If necessary, I’d back us down and run at a fast idle, but that would mean it’d be an hour or more until we reached Lisa’s last known location.
Juan put a reassuring hand on my shoulder and squeezed, “We’ll find them, hermano.”
“I hope you’re right, my friend…” I said.
“Have faith, amigo, have faith. You have a gift for this.”
The entry point I’d selected actually had a red and green marker to indicate where the channel was. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign. It stood to reason that a place Rick kept private wouldn’t be easy to get to. On the other hand, the Ten Thousand Islands was a mish-mash of mangrove patches no larger than a single tree or two, small mangrove islets that were mostly underwater except on low tides, patches of coral and rock that stuck up above the water and even some larger land masses that covered a couple of acres. Between these innumerable structures flowed brackish water, a mixture of Everglades’ runoff and tidal Gulf inflow. Uncounted shallow and deep channels crisscrossed, looped back onto one another and generally formed an asymmetrical spider’s web. There were probably a dozen ways to get anywhere in the Ten G’s you wanted to go… the trick was finding a path that was more than just a place for Egrets, Pelicans and Cormorants to soak their piggies.
The path I chose was at first nearly two-hundred-feet wide. A long and slightly curving corridor between masses of mangrove islands and forests. There were even a few more reds and greens that seemed to end at a fork created as the big channel broke up to flow around three mangrove islets. I slowed us to an idle and dropped a way point.
“Now what?” Juan asked.
I studied the scene before me, both with unaided sight and the monocular’s enhancement. There was plenty of moonlight already, yet even so, naked human vision would only go so far with any expectation of reasonable detail. Maybe a hundred yards, and that was only if there was something large to see.
“Well, that one there…” I indicated the northernmost option. “Heads north and narrows pretty quickly. It’s listed here on the chart… This guy to the south kind of does the same thing. Looks like it switches back to this big one here… The edges of the islands are well marked… this one directly ahead kind of goes a little north, too… but then there’s nothing marked for a couple of miles… I say that one.”
“Why?”
“Least obvious,” I said. “This guy has lived in these islands and in the Glades for seventy years… his local knowledge is probably crazy extensive and accurate. He knows not only what to look for but how things work around here and how to spot changes… shit man, otherwise I’m as in the dark as you.”
“I trust you.”
I scoffed, “Well, I’m sure we’ll cure you of that before the night is out… hold onto ya’ butts!”
I accelerated into the middle gap. I kept us at about ten knots, though. Not on plane. The passage was a short tunnel that opened into what you might describe as a lake. An open area of water maybe a hundred yards across. It was seemingly surrounded by mangroves, with some larger trees rising above them on the left. To the right there were two openings in the mangroves and what might be another dead ahead, but if it was it entered the trees at an angle and I couldn’t be sure.
There was a ten-knot breeze blowing, and in this open area and with the monocular, I could see surface detail. There were patches of ripples mingling with slicks in a seemingly random pattern… at first. Yet as I studied the scene, it became clear that the center of the opening was definitely being disturbed by the wind, yet to my right, slicker, and therefore deeper, water wound its way along the shoreline, going out about fifty feet. As a general rule for moving water, still waters ran deep.
I put the boat in gear and idled through the slick, following the curve of the southern edge of the open water until we reached the first opening. All I could see was a short tunnel and then a strip of water and more mangroves a hundred feet away. I moved past the second opening, that looked as if it might lead to the same place. Continuing around the curve and staying out of the center, which was probably a sandbar, I came to what I suspected was an angled path into the mangroves and we received a pleasant surprise.
A short length of two-inch PVC pipe had been hammered into the bottom and stuck out above the water just over a foot. There was a blaze of green paint at the top. Without the night vision, I’d probably never have seen it.
“I think I found a breadcrumb,” I said to Juan, pointing out the marker.
The path was indeed an angled track that led between two mangrove islands. It was narrow, hardly wider than the boat. I idled us through and on more than one occasion, mangrove branches rubbed our gunwales and roots scraped the keel. After a hundred feet or more inside this tunnel, we emerged at the far end of what looked like a long corridor formed by mangroves and other trees to either side. The alley seemed impenetrable on either side and looked like it went for more than a mile.
“Jesus�
��” Juan breathed.
“Yeah…” I agreed cleverly. “I’m gonna risk some speed. We only need eight inches or so, I would think, so why not?”
I tilted the engine up a bit so that the water intake was just awash and pressed the throttle forward. Once on a plane, I adjusted the trim tabs so that we were running as flat as possible. It seemed to be working. We ran for over a mile and I only felt one or two very mild brushes with the bottom or maybe a submerged branch. As we neared the end, though, we came to another option.
Juan groaned, “Are they marked?”
“No,” I said, scowling. “My guess is that he only leaves markers sometimes… if they’re even his markers… and he just remembers which choices at some points… Well, we can go north or south. What do you think?”
Juan looked at the chart plotter, “Lisa’s plotted position is just a few miles away now bearing… one-two-five true. So I think south.”
I agreed. We took the south passage… and found a dead end. Another of those lake-like structures, this one only a hundred feet across. Probably a great bonefishing spot, but with only one way in or out.
So, having no other choice, Juan and I consulted, voted and flipped a coin and decided that the north option was the one we’d take. This one exited fifty feet later into another curving corridor that turned southeast. We ran it for ten minutes until it opened up to reveal a large island. The island was ringed by mangrove trees, but we could see a few buttonwoods, gumbo limbos, a big banyan and even a couple of cypresses near the center. The waterway encircled the island, but I spotted another of those PVC markers to the left, this time with a blaze of red on it. I couldn’t honestly tell the difference between red and green in the monocular, but this patch of paint was darker, and a quick inspection with a flashlight and the naked eye confirmed that it was indeed the color red. Now I could tell the difference in the gray-green world of the night vision from the difference in shades.
It took another twenty minutes, but we eventually came out into what could’ve been a river. It was like the other corridors we’d passed through but wider and there seemed to be a definite current. The far bank, if that’s what it was, was two hundred yards ahead and the river seemed to head west, southwest to our right and appeared to narrow toward the east, northeast. In the center were small mangrove islets and a few more substantial bits of land.
What caught my attention right away was that to our left, maybe half a mile, there were several artificial lights glowing.
“I think we’ve found it,” I said to Juan.
“Never doubted it, mijo.”
“Dude, at least ten times in the past ten minutes, you said we’d never find it. You cried three times and called me every bad word in Spanish.”
Juan lightly punched me on the arm, “Is this how you treat all your friends?”
I chuckled, “Well… sometimes… okay, here’s my thinking… we’re gonna idle closer. I can’t see any boats or anything yet. Probably on the far side of that little island. But the light is a giveaway. So when we get close, I’m gonna kill the engine and we’ll pole in. Here, you take the monocular and lie on the casting deck with the M4. You report what you see. I’ll pole us in and use my stupid biological eyes. You ready?”
Juan pulled the charging handle on the carbine and grinned, “Aye-aye!”
I got us to within fifty yards of the small island and killed the outboard. Even though it was a four-stroke and quiet for an outboard, sound traveled very far and very clearly over water. I quietly retrieved the twelve-foot carbon fiber pole, stepped up onto the poling platform built over the outboard and began pushing the skiff. There was indeed a current, but it wasn’t very strong. With a strategy of altering where I pushed from, I could keep us moving upstream and keep the bow more or less pointed into the light current.
“Just a little further….” Juan hissed back to me. “There’s a little point of mangroves here, but I think once we pass it… yeah…yeah, I see boats. Give me another twenty feet and then can you hold us?”
I poled ahead and then stepped down and dropped the port and starboard short poles. These were solid pipes that were hydraulically lowered and lifted and could act as anchors to hold the boat in position.
I went forward and lay on the deck next to him, “what’ve you got? I see… two boats? A skiff and a pontoon tied to that small dock…”
“Three boats,” Juan corrected. “There’s another pontoon on the other side… and there’s the cabin. Just a small thing, but there’s a light on inside and a light on the dock. I don’t see any people yet, though.”
Pontoon boats would be good in this environment as well. Like the technical poling skiff we were in, and what looked like a Carolina skiff at the dock, the twin aluminum tubes of a pontoon boat drew very little water. Although they weren’t particularly fast, maybe twenty knots most of the time, they were great for the shallows and had a lot of deck space for people and cargo.
“I think it’s go time, brother,” I whispered to Juan.
“Good,” he said in a tight voice. “These fuckin’ cocka-roaches took my woman, mang. They want to go to war… okay… we go to war!”
I chuckled, “Okay there, Tony Montana… let’s watch for a few minutes though and recon a bit.”
I was interrupted by the sound of my phone vibrating from within the console glove box. Although I’d muted the ringer, the vibration sounded like a roar of thunder in the deep quiet of the wilderness.
I quickly moved back and picked up the phone. I was getting a call from an unknown number. That was more than a little odd. Partly because I wasn’t sure there would be cell service out here and partly because who the hell would be calling me at this time of night?
I ducked down behind the console and accepted the call, “Hello?”
“Scott Jarvis?”
“Yeah.”
“This is George Nolen,” the voice said and held in it a note of smugness. “It’s been a few years, hasn’t it? Far too long… I think we should change that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know why I’m calling.”
“Is this like that Twilight Zone episode where the old lady gets a weird call during a thunderstorm and after a while, it turns out to be her dead boyfriend?” I asked nonchalantly.
“I’m not amused, Mr. Jarvis.”
“Oh, well pardon me,” I replied with as much sarcasm as I could muster. “But since you’re dead, I’m not all that concerned about your amusement… oh wait, or was that just a lie! Gasp! Yeah, Nolen, I know why you’re calling. You kidnapped your daughter after abandoning her, faking your death and oh yeah… murdering her mom? Now you think that I can deliver something in exchange for Sharon and Lisa, right?”
There was a short laugh, “Good. We’re on the same page.”
I scoffed, “Nolen… we’re not even in the same library. Listen to me very carefully. Release your hostages or I’m going to hunt you down and feed you to all the sharp-toothed denizens of the wilderness. You hear me, there?”
Another laugh, this time longer and far more self-amused, “Now you listen, you little shit! You will deliver Rick Eagle Feather to me. When you do, you’ll also deliver or convince him to deliver, the location of Meraux’s treasure. If you don’t do so by noon tomorrow… there will be several deaths… and they won’t be faked, I can promise you.”
The connection was broken, leaving only the sounds of a Florida wetland at night. Night birds chirping, frogs advertising their woes and triumphs, the occasional splash of a mullet and a deeper, more ominous rumble.
That of large hungry predators on the hunt.
Now there was another predator among them. A predator whose hunger was fueled not by caloric needs but by a sudden, tingling rage that needed satiation. A hunter who would silently stalk his prey and would gladly share the kill with the other predators around him.
39
From the musings of Scott’s better half… way better!
Lisa’s Journal Entry 1
2
Although the trip into the Ten Thousand Islands was extremely frustrating… because Deac ran us aground like three more times… I was kind of encouraged by it, too. After all, if these two fuckwits were what we had to contend with, then I was confident that Sharon and I could handle things.
Eventually we made it to a long open area that kind of looked like a river. There were even a few small islands in the stream… winky, winky, Ernest Hemingway… and we pulled up to one that was a bit more substantial than the others. For one thing, there was land, maybe half an acre or so. The island was surrounded by mangroves but had a few hardwood trees and even a couple of palms on it. A fifty-foot dock stretched out sort of to the east and there were two pontoon boats tied to it. A small path led from the dock to a cabin with a railed deck running all the way around. There were lights inside and a small white light on the roof. I could hear the chugging of a small engine from somewhere behind the cabin. Probably a generator.
Deac pulled alongside the dock, managing to bump it hard and causing Troy to have to grab on to one of the pilings to keep us from floating away again. Sharon and I chuckled as the two Stooges got the boat tied and ordered us out of the boat.
“Come on, sweet things,” Troy urged lasciviously. “You got some important people to meet.”
“You two boys realize that my partner and I could’ve killed you at any time tonight, right?” Sharon asked.
Deac scoffed, “Yeah, you keep dreamin’.”
Sharon only chuckled and we moved up the dock. Deac led the way and Troy followed. Just before Deac opened the door to the cabin, Troy pinched my ass. I turned and eyed him for a long moment.
“What? You didn’t like that, baby?” he asked with a leer.
“Oh, I didn’t say that, honey,” I said sweetly and then drove my knee up into his groin.
His eyes bulged out of his head and he gagged as he sank to his knees and doubled over. I thought about going for his gun, but knew that Deac was too close and probably had his trained on me.
