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

by Scott Cook

  The bird’s turbo-charged engine roared to life and after securing everything, the door was closed and it lifted off and sped northwest. The whole event had taken less than ten minutes and left me feeling dazed.

  “Jesus Christ…” I muttered to Lisa as we stood and listened to the last of the rotor noises float away on the light breeze.

  “You think he’ll be okay?”

  I nodded, “I think so. He’s young and strong and he’s in good hands now. In less than half an hour he’ll probably be in surgery and the docs can undo everything I fucked up… it’s out of our hands now. What remains… what remains is to find Uncle Rick.”

  Lisa sighed and clung to me, “What remains is for us to get back to the house and update Wayne and Keisha. Then get some rest.”

  “Yeah… a little rest,” I said. “I’ve got until noon to find that wily Indian.”

  “Do you think you can?”

  I sighed, “I’ve got those coordinates I found this afternoon. My guess is that they indicate the location of the treasure. Or at least where to look for it… and I think he’s there.”

  Together we secured the cabin as best we could. We shut off the lights and the generator, collected my weapons and deposited the bloody sheets and towels into a fire pit in the yard. I then doused them with a little fuel from the generator shed and set them ablaze. After I was sure they’d burned and wouldn’t be a fire hazard, Lisa and I sloshed out to the Maverick and followed a reverse of the course I’d used to find the cabin.

  Aside from sending the rescue chopper, the 9-11 operator had taken my report and said she’d pass it on to the Collier County Sheriff’s office. I asked her to see if she could make certain that deputy CJ Wright received it. They’d need to come out to Rick’s cabin by helo or by boat in order to collect the bodies. We weren’t going to wait for that, however.

  There was probably another route to the cabin other than the one I’d discovered. Since Nolen and his pals had already been there, something told me it would be an easier run. Yet ten o’clock at night was no time to try and figure out another winding path through a maze. We made it back to Rick’s house on Chokoloskee a little after ten-thirty. It wasn’t until we neared the dock that a heavy weariness settled over me. Wayne and Keisha had long ago made dinner and we warmed up a few burgers and taters in the microwave and we told our stories to them.

  “You know he’s probably got some kind of tracker on that boat,” Wayne pointed out.

  I nodded, “Yeah… kind of counting on that. I don’t see as I have much choice. I’m going to lead Nolen to Rick’s secret island hideaway.”

  Keisha frowned, “After all this… you’re just going to give that guy what he wants?”

  I shrugged and swallowed a bite of burger, “Small price to pay for Sharon’s life. If I’m lucky, we might get the politicians out there, too. I have to think that Rick Eagle Feather is ready for this. Why else would he have led me out here by the nose?”

  “Let’s just hope those numbers you found on that gold are the right ones,” Wayne stated glumly.

  I pondered that for a minute, “The thing about the Ten G’s is that for most folks, excepting outdoor people who have lived here their whole lives or maybe a few local fishermen, the Ten

  G’s are damned near as impenetrable as the Dark Continent. However… there are some who have access to technologies that can at least partially remove the veil.”

  “It sounds like you have a plan,” Keisha said with a grin.

  “Sort of…” I mused. “But the situation is forcing me to act. To act quickly and, one could say, rashly. I already have and look how that turned out… I don’t see as I have much choice, though. I need to get back to the boat. I’m going to leave the Marina at first light and head south until I’m parallel with the coordinates I found. Then I’ll try to get as far in as I can and proceed deeper into the islands in the Maverick.”

  “You’re leaving now?” Keisha asked.

  I nodded, “Soon as I whack down the rest of this feast. I need to get organized and study some charts.”

  Lisa locked eyes with me, “I’m with you.”

  From her tone it was clear that she would brook no argument. I smiled at her and nodded.

  “Me too,” Wayne said.

  “I’ll come,” Keisha volunteered.

  I shook my head at her, “Sorry, Miss Alabama… but this is a combat mission. You’re not a combatant. It is very likely to be dangerous and possibly deadly… look what happened tonight. I appreciate the offer but I can’t risk it.”

  “Hey, I ain’t no delicate flower, baby,” Keisha retorted. “And I like Juan, too. I want to help.”

  “Scott’s right, babe,” Wayne said gently. “We know you’re a strong woman… but you’re not a combat veteran. We all are. I don’t mean this to sound mean or anything… but you don’t know what it’s like. You’re not trained and it’s not just dangerous for you, but your lack of experience could endanger us, too.”

  “Oh, this is bull shit!” Keisha declared hotly. “You tellin’ me Lisa here is a soldier? She wasn’t in the military or a cop or anything!”

  “Lisa has worked with me for the better part of two years,” I explained. “She’s dealt with this kind of danger. She even helped us to infiltrate a rebel base in Nicaragua. She’s earned her stripes, you might say.”

  “Whatever,” Keisha snapped, getting to her feet. “You’re such an expert at this, right? But you still let Jillian get kidnapped and you still got your friend shot tonight. So maybe you ain’t so great, either!”

  “Whoa! Keisha—" Wayne held up his hands. She turned on her heel and stomped out into the living room.

  Lisa shot to her feet with anger flashing in her eyes. I held up a hand to stop her, “Let it go. She’s right, technically… she just doesn’t’ understand the scope of some of the things we do. She’s a strong young woman with a lot of heart and she feels up to the challenge. She just doesn’t really have the experience to know the difference between reality and entertainment. It’s fine… I need to go get the Maverick ready.”

  I stood and walked outside. I could hear Lisa asking Wayne what the fuck, but after going outside, I couldn’t distinguish words anymore. Keisha had certainly struck a chord.

  I didn’t feel any guilt about Jillian Moore anymore, but Juan… we’d gone into a situation blind and hadn’t come off well. Of course, there wasn’t a whole lot I could’ve done differently under the circumstances. And if I were to be completely pragmatic about the whole situation, things had worked out so that I was now in a position to truly end the game.

  I now knew that both politicians were involved with Nolen. I knew also that Sharon had allowed herself to be taken. Normally she wouldn’t have made things so easy, whether a gun was held on her or not. I think she wanted to get on the inside one way or another. I also knew that Nolen’s men had planted a tracking device on the Maverick. I’d found it on the way back.

  Yet that didn’t entirely assuage my guilt over Juan. He was a good man. A young man who’d been at my side more than once. If he didn’t come out of this with a whole skin…

  I pulled two full five-gallon jerry jugs from a small shed on the side of the house and used them to top off the Maverick’s onboard tank. It took all ten gallons, but was nearly full. That should be more than enough fuel to get me to Saint Pete and back if I needed to.

  I was just putting the empty jugs back into the small shed when somebody stepped off the deck and walked up behind me.

  “Hey,” Keisha said softly and hesitantly.

  I turned around and saw her standing there with her hands in the front pocket of her hoody. She had a crooked little smile on her face.

  “Hey yourself.”

  She drew in a breath and cleared her throat, “Uhm… I wanted to say… well… I guess that was kind of fucked up, what I said in there.”

  “Kind of,” I replied neutrally. “But I kind of get it. On the other hand, Keisha, it just underscores my p
oint. You don’t know what real combat is… what it can do… it’s nothing against you. I’m glad that you don’t.”

  “I… I guess you’re right,” she reluctantly agreed. “I was just mad and you made me feel… inadequate. So I wanted to hurt you back.”

  I drew in a breath, “I understand. The difference, though, is I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. I’m not saying you couldn’t be an action hero. You’re certainly built for it.”

  She grinned at that.

  “It’s just… Keisha, those who have never gone into deadly action just can’t really know,” I explained gently. “There are things that happen… and I’m not just talking about people trying to kill you or whatever. There’s something that happens to a person once they kill. It’s…it’s hard to put into words. It does something to you. Especially if you have to do it more than once or on a regular basis. Just ask a combat hardened soldier.”

  She drew in a deep breath and sighed, “I think I understand what you mean. My daddy was in the Army. He fought in the Gulf War and saw action in Kosovo, too. He didn’t like to talk about it much, or at least some of it. I guess it always kind of bothered me. It was like he and his buddies were in some kind of special club and no girls were allowed.”

  I chuckled, “Not girls. There are lots of girls in the armed services now… No, it’s just a club that you join without even knowing it. It’s a club formed of shared experiences and sometimes things that are hard to talk about with others who haven’t joined the club. Sometimes even among fellow service people there’s a rift between those who have fought and those who haven’t. But believe me, Keisha, it’s nothing against you.”

  “I know,” She admitted and then smiled. “I’m sorry. But you don’t seem to have too much trouble talking about it, or writing about it.”

  “Well… I’m special.”

  She grinned and lightly frogged me, “Yeah you are. So we good?”

  “You tell me. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

  “Yeah… we’re good,” She said and hugged me. “One thing, though… if you three Rambos go off right now, then I’m all alone here. Isn’t that a problem?”

  We walked back toward the steps to the porch, “Yes it is. You can come to the boat with us tonight, of course. If you want. Then in the morning, we’ll have to leave you at the dock… although maybe there’s something you can do to help, if you’re up for it.”

  “Sure,” She said as we went inside.

  “There’s a few calls I need to make,” I said. “I might be able to use you as a liaison.”

  “Thanks.”

  I put an arm around her and gave her a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek, “Who knows, maybe one day you’ll become a Valkyrie. You already look like Storm.”

  She laughed and we went in to gather up our gear.

  41

  My sleep was fitful at best. There was too much running through my mind and I found it hard to get the damned hamster to quit running on his wheel. Keisha and Wayne took the v-berth and I opened up the portside settee into its full-sized configuration for Lisa and me. Yet when sleep wouldn’t come, I quietly went up into the cockpit and stretched out behind the wheel and played some music. It was nearly one a.m. and a pall of deep silence blanketed the marina. It would be the middle watch and all was well, except for my mind.

  Lisa and I had driven the Maverick over to the marina and Wayne and Keisha had taken her GLC by road. When we got there, I took out my chart book and studied several of the detailed paper charts of Florida Bay and the Ten Thousand Islands. Just as with the digital charts in the plotters, there wasn’t a lot of detail past the edge. This was partly due to the fact that little of land was of any interest at sea, and partly due to the fact that nobody had ever charted… at least publicly… the intricate maze that was the border between the Everglades and the Gulf of Mexico.

  However, I did find a relatively deep channel that led into the interior of the estuary, or at least the first half mile or so that was charted. It wasn’t a marked channel or anything, just a winding path that was about five feet deep at low tide. I could at least get Slip’N’Out into a protected anchorage and use her as a home base. The latitude of what might be Rick’s secret was about twenty-four miles south of Marco. More than halfway to Cape Sable and not all that far from the entrance to the Shark River. I could probably go in through the Shark, yet I had a feeling it wouldn’t be that easy. Or at the very least, it’d be less obvious if I went in the way I’d chosen and worked in deeper with the skiff. I just couldn’t imagine this location being easy to find and right next to a well-marked and regularly used area. If the legends were true and Pierre Meraux had really hidden Spanish gold where the numbers indicated, he would’ve been careful not to be too easy to find as well.

  I wondered if my great times eight grandmother Catherine Cook really might have had something to do with this story. If she might have been pursuing Meraux. I’d have to go and visit my grandparents and get more of her journals. If so, then I was doubly certain he’d have hidden it well. That young lady had proven to be quite tenacious.

  So now I had a place to look, a fleet of vessels to get me there and enough firepower to arm the three of us to go in and deal with whatever was there. However, I also had to worry about Nolen and his hostage… his own daughter for Christ’s sake.

  There were a lot of variables and a lot of unknown factors. I was also deliberately leading George Nolen to what he sought. Yet I had to think that Rick was ready for that. On the other hand… I couldn’t be sure of that and had to make my own plans.

  “I wish I had more time to plan something…” I muttered aloud.

  “If you don’t get some sleep, you won’t be able to do anything, baby,” Lisa’s voice said quietly as she came up the companion.

  She moved back to me and sat between my legs, leaning her back against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head.

  “You should be asleep, too, kid.”

  She sighed, “I was, but then I woke up and you were gone… thought maybe you’d be out here thinking.”

  “Yeah… can’t seem to stop.”

  “What’s bothering you?”

  I chuffed, “Everything. Too little information with too much riding on it… and too little time to prep.”

  “Have you done all you could to prepare?”

  I nodded, “Yeah, I think so… I’ve even prepared a list of calls and messages for Keisha to deliver after we go. It’s just… there’s so much I don’t know and will have to figure out as it happens. It’s just giving me a sour stomach.”

  “Because of Juan?”

  I chuckled softly, “Your insight is scary sometimes. Yes…that’s. part of it. I should’ve seen that coming. I should’ve done more to manipulate the situation to my advantage. Instead I just walked into his trap.”

  “Scott… you did what you had to do and what you were forced to do under the circumstances,” Lisa said kindly. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. No matter how good we are… you are… you’re gonna have a few setbacks. Hell, even Tom Brady loses a game now and then.”

  I chuckled, “Not this last Super Bowl… but you’re right, of course. The problem is that now we’re going into an even more dangerous situation with a lot of unknowns… hell, mostly unknowns. I’m making a lot of assumptions and pinning my hopes on some numbers scratched into a gold bar I found in a sunken boat’s galley… what the Christ?”

  “Well…” Lisa said expansively, wriggling to get more comfortable. “As our friend Captain Aubrey might say… ‘A stitch in time gathers no moss… and you can’t say fairer than that!’”

  “That’s… very helpful,” I said and laughed quietly.

  She giggled and then turned over so that we were facing and kissed me passionately. After a moment, she pulled back a little and smiled, “You just need to relax, and Captain… perhaps I can help to ease your tensions…”

  She kissed me again and then slid
backward, her hands pulling at the waistband of the sweatpants I was wearing. She smiled up at me, treated me to her unique devilish smile and then slid further down.

  At least I got a few hours of sleep. At two bells in the morning watch, I put the coffee maker on while we still had shore power and turned on the VHF for a weather report. The computer-generated voice of the NOAA automated broadcast announced that this was the local weather for our current area.

  “Today: winds northwest at fifteen knots becoming north toward mid-afternoon. Seas two to three feet. Tonight, chance of showers, winds northeast fifteen knots with gusts to twenty. Seas two to four feet. Thursday, winds northeast at ten knots…”

  I switched the radio off and went up on deck and started the engine. We’d have a following wind and a quartering sea the whole way down the coast. With those winds alone I could do six and a half knots. I could motor sail at over seven if I chose, too. The run down to my entry point was about twenty-eight miles all told, factoring in getting out of Capri Pass and making my way around the shoals near Marco and then getting on a rhumb line course. At seven knots, that’d be just about four hours. Plenty of time and plenty of good light once I got close to shore again to navigate.

  Lisa appeared at the head of the companion ladder yawning and looking bleary-eyed. I kissed her.

  “I can handle things if you want to get some more sleep,” I said.“Same for Wayne. Gonna need Keisha to rise and shine, though.”

  “Mmm…” Lisa murmured, sounding pleased at my suggestion. “You sure you don’t need a hand? Especially with the Maverick tied up astern?”

  I shook my head, “Nah… It’s no biggie. Thanks to you I got a few hours of rest.”

  She leaned in and hugged me tight, “My pleasure.”

  “Not as much as mine,” I said and chuckled.

  “Don’t be so sure,” She yawned. “Same way for you when the… position… is reversed. But if you’re sure you’re okay…”