Deep Zone

by Tim Green

  While Troy and his father stared each other down, Ty removed his bound hands from the tabletop and let his fingers fish for the cell phone in his pants pocket. He kept his eyes on the father and son as he slipped the phone free and held it in his lap, flipping it open. Ty’s heart hammered the inside of his rib cage.

  He glanced down and worked his thumbs to get into his contacts. He moved the cursor toward Thane’s name and hit it, but missed Thane’s and got Tate’s, which was directly above Thane’s.

  “Hey!” Troy’s dad was looking at Ty now and not his son. “What are you doing?”

  Chapter Sixty-one

  TY’S THUMBS WORKED WITH lightning speed. He typed, “fishcamp,” and just managed to hit send as Troy’s dad snatched the phone from his hand, then pitched it against the far wall to shatter and drop among the feet of the stuffed animals on the floor. Ty winced at the sound of the smashing phone.

  “What did you do?” Troy’s dad demanded.

  “Nothing.” Ty looked the man straight in the eye. “I was just getting my phone.”

  “To do what? Call for help? You think that’s smart? You do that and you’ll ruin everything. You ruin everything, and I’m not going to be able to protect you from what Bonito and the Blade might do. You get it?”

  Ty nodded.

  “Good.” Troy’s dad turned his scowl back to Troy. “Now, if you don’t like it, if you don’t want to help your own father, well I guess that’s just the way you were raised. Pathetic if you ask me, but I can live with it. Either way, you and your buddy here aren’t leaving this fish camp until Sunday, after the Super Bowl. That’s final.”

  “You can’t stop me.” Troy glared. “You’re going to have to tie me up like Ty. Is that what you’re going to do? Is that how you treat your own son?”

  Troy’s father’s face softened. “Let’s not fight, Troy. This is the way it is. Even if I wanted to get out, you don’t just get out with these people. We’re in. Like it or not, we’re in. You and me, and your friend.”

  Ty nodded, knowing it to be true, but neither father nor son saw him, and Ty wasn’t about to tell them his story about the mob.

  Troy didn’t seem to be any happier about the situation. He folded his arms across his chest and stood up, then marched for the door again.

  Troy’s father took a deep breath before springing into action. He grabbed Troy and bent his arm behind his back in a chicken wing.

  “Let’s go,” Troy’s father said to Ty, motioning his head toward the rickety stairs in the corner. “You two aren’t gonna play nice? Up.”

  Ty stood up from the table and started toward the stairs. Troy’s father forced Troy that way too.

  “That room right in front of you,” Troy’s dad said to Ty when he reached the top landing.

  Ty walked into the room. It had two small metal beds on either side, a single dresser, and two chairs. Green wool army blankets covered the sagging beds, and a striped pillow rested on each. A small door opened into a closet-sized bathroom, and two small windows looked out over the swamp. In the moonlight, Ty could see the dark water below. The shape of either a big log or a man-eating gator drifted by. Ty shuddered.

  Troy’s dad propelled Troy into the room. “You think about it up here for a bit. Get some sleep. In the morning, I’ll see if you’re ready to play nice. If you are, that Xbox and some cold pizza will be waiting for you. You might as well play nice, Troy. You’re saving your father’s life, whether you like it or not. I’d like to think you’ll come to your senses. You think the Falcons need to win the Super Bowl? Why? For your mother’s boyfriend? This is my life we’re talking about. Think about that, because you better believe I’d do the same for you.”

  The door closed, and Ty heard the rattle of hardware before the unmistakable click of a padlock. Troy crossed the room and tried the door. It didn’t budge.

  “You can’t do this!” Troy screamed through the door, pounding it with a fist.

  Chapter Sixty-two

  WHEN TROY STOPPED POUNDING, he rested his arm against the door and buried his face. Ty heard a sniff and he looked away. Troy wiped his face on his arm and turned to face Ty.

  “Let me get that off your wrists.” Troy found the edge of the tape and picked at it. Once he got it started, the tape came off fast, sticking to Ty’s skin as he yanked the last bit free.

  “Ow.”

  “Sorry.” Troy crumpled the tape into a ball and fired it at the wall before he looked up at Ty with red-rimmed eyes.

  “It’s okay, you gotta pull it off quick.” Ty rubbed his wrists.

  “I mean about everything,” Troy said. “All this.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I never should have followed him. Why would I follow him?” Troy smacked the top of his own head.

  “If I hadn’t seen my dad in a long time and he just popped up and waved to me, I’d follow him, too,” Ty said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Troy looked at him. “I haven’t even been nice to you.”

  “We’re on different teams. That happens.” Ty looked down at his shoes.

  Troy crossed the room and eased open the old window; flecks of paint and dust filled the air. Troy looked down at the water and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Maybe we could jump. Swim for it.”

  Before Ty could point out the problem with that, Troy clenched his fists and shook his head at the water below. “Stupid. They’d eat us alive, those crazy things. We’re trapped. There’s no way out.”

  Ty cleared his throat. “There might be a way.”

  Chapter Sixty-three

  TROY AND TY PUT their chairs by the window so that they could watch for Tate to bring the police. They turned the bedroom light off to see better up the canal and into the gator pool and the mangroves beyond. Also, the light attracted moths, and they didn’t want the room full of those. Outside, crickets and other insects sang, but not like a whole symphony the way they would sound in the summertime. This was more like a band of stragglers. It would have been peaceful and beautiful if they hadn’t been kidnapped by two mobsters and Troy’s crazy dad.

  “You think she’ll come?” Ty asked.

  “If it was anyone else, I’d say I doubt it, but Tate? She’ll be here. She’ll know just what you meant when you said ‘fishcamp.’ I just hope she can convince the police that this is where we are and not in Miami. If they got my text when my dad said they did, they’re probably already in gear and halfway downtown, if not there already.”

  “She wouldn’t come by herself?”

  Troy looked at him in the moonlight. “You don’t know Tate.”

  As they sat watching, they could hear the sound of the Xbox below. From the sound of it, Troy’s dad was battling an alien race of locusts in Gears of War.

  “I can’t even believe he’s my dad,” Troy said, staring out into the night. “For a lot of years, I actually ached to meet him and know who he was. Now, I think I wish he’d stayed in Chicago.”

  Ty didn’t know what to say; finally he spoke. “You look a lot like him.”

  “My gramps says that’s how come I’m a football player. My dad was too. My gramps thinks a lot of who we are is from our genes. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I do things sometimes that aren’t so great, like not being so nice to you. Maybe that’s my father’s part of me.”

  “My coach—not for the Seven-on-Seven, but my school coach—he said I’m a good receiver and fast like my brother. My brother says we got that from our mom. I guess she had a little brother who was a football player too, so football runs in both our families. I guess that’s how my brother ended up in the NFL.”

  “My father would have been in the NFL, too,” Troy said. “At least that’s what my gramps said.”

  “What happened?”

  “He broke his neck, I guess. He was a running back.”

  Ty sat up straight and put a hand on Troy’s shoulder. “Not at . . . Alabama?”

  Troy gave him a funny look. “How’d
you know?”

  “Your dad’s name isn’t Edinger, is it?”

  “Did you read that in the paper?” Troy asked.

  “Is it Edinger? Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “When I run fast, my brother says I look like an Edinger. My mom took second in the hundred meters at the NCAAs and she had a little brother who played running back at Alabama until he broke his neck. Troy, your dad is my mom’s brother. You’re my family. You’re my cousin.”

  The smile on Troy’s face bloomed slowly but surely.

  “Cousins?” Troy said.

  Ty nodded. “Tate even said we look kind of alike.”

  “That was partly why I think I wasn’t so nice,” Troy said. “She said that to me, too, and I hated it.”

  “We’re cousins.” Ty chuckled and hugged him. Troy hugged him back, laughing as well.

  “This is crazy.”

  “This is great,” Ty said, and then he froze. “What is that? A snake?”

  Ty poked his head out the window. The hissing sound wasn’t a snake. In the water below, sitting in the front seat of a two-person kayak, was Tate McGreer.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  TATE STOPPED HER HISSING but spoke in an urgent whisper. “Stop hugging each other and get down here.”

  Ty wanted to tell her they were cousins, but the seriousness of the situation came back to him, and he nodded before pulling his head back inside the window. “It’s Tate. She’s in a kayak.”

  “I told you,” Troy said.

  “How do we get down?”

  Troy looked around the room. “Sheets.”

  “Sheets tied together? That’s just in the movies.”

  Troy was already tearing the blankets off the bed. “I saw it on MythBusters. It really worked.”

  Ty watched as Troy tied the sheets together, then said, “Help me move the bed.”

  Together, they picked up the bed closest to the window and quietly moved it so that the metal-framed head of the bed was right up next to the windowsill. Troy tied the sheet to the bed and tugged it tight. Troy whipped off his suit coat and tie and unbuttoned the collar of his white dress shirt before rolling up his sleeves. Ty did the same.

  “Come on,” Troy said to him, shoving the sheet out into the night before he backed out of the window.

  Ty peered out and watched Troy lower himself down into the kayak. He had to hang above it for a moment while Tate positioned the second seat beneath him.

  “There’s no room,” Ty said.

  “I’ll go in the middle.” Troy climbed out of the seat and clung, lizardlike, to the top of the kayak between the two seats. The kayak wavered.

  “I don’t know,” Tate said.

  “We aren’t leaving Ty behind.”

  “I know that,” Tate said. “I thought we could fit two in a seat.”

  “No way. It’s too small. Just come on. Hurry.”

  Ty turned around and backed out of the window, gripping the sheet ladder with all his strength and lowering himself down. He swung above the seat, wavering until Tate was able to back the kayak up underneath him. Ty’s feet found the hole, and he lowered himself right down in. The paddle had been shoved in there too. Ty lifted it up, ready to go.

  “How come you didn’t bring help?” Troy asked Tate in a hushed voice.

  “I tried,” Tate said. “You think I didn’t try? I couldn’t even get through to your mom’s phone. It went right to voice mail, and I left a message. The stupid security guard at the hotel didn’t even believe me. All he kept asking was where my parents were. I wasn’t going to just sit around. I’m here, aren’t I? So stop complaining and let’s get going.”

  Tate pushed them off, using her paddle against one of the piers holding up the water side of the camp. Once they were out in the middle of the channel, she began to paddle them forward. Ty dug in too, careful not to splash. He turned his head and looked back at the cabin. The blue light of the TV flickered in the bottom window, and Ty could envision Troy’s dad sitting there on the couch, fighting locusts, while they made their great escape. It made Ty giddy and he lost his balance, rocking the kayak a bit.

  “Easy!” Troy said, his feet dipping into the water in an attempt to keep them from tipping.

  “Sorry.” Ty focused hard on his balance and on doing all he could to help propel them through the channel.

  When they reached the large open pool where the man-eaters were, Ty swallowed and couldn’t help glancing around. He shivered at the sight of Troy’s left foot dipping into the dark water.

  “Get your foot in,” Ty said.

  “I’m okay,” Troy said. “Just get us out of here.”

  Ty worked hard and built up a sizable sweat by the time they reached the mangrove creek. Halfway through, he heard something slithering through the limbs above and knew it was a Burmese python. Ty dug in even harder, and in his excitement, banged a paddle blade against a mangrove root, sending a shock wave through the small tree and showering them with spider crabs.

  Ty felt one scurry down his neck and into the open collar of his shirt. He lurched sideways, swatting at the disgusting crab. When he did, he heard two splashes.

  The first was Troy dumping into the creek.

  The second was the hungry python up ahead sensing easy prey in the water, and dropping in after it.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  TY SENSED THE BIG snake slithering through the water. Troy scrambled to get back up onto the narrow kayak, but the snake, flickering like a shadow even blacker than the water around it, was closing fast.

  Ty raised his paddle up over his head and turned the blade. As soon as the snake got into range, he swung with all his might, connecting with the enormous reptile’s head so that it writhed and slashed at the water around it.

  Ty raised the paddle and swung again and again, pummeling the monster until it slithered off among the roots of the mangroves. Spider crabs skittered everywhere, along the top of the kayak and down in the hole where Ty sat. He didn’t even care. He barely felt them as he caught his breath and helped lift Troy back into place.

  Troy hugged the boat. “You saved me.”

  Ty couldn’t even respond. He only paddled as Tate did, moving them toward the mouth of the creek and away from the deadly snake.

  When they broke free from the mangroves, Ty let loose a jagged sigh and slumped forward in his seat, gripping Troy by the ankle and squeezing hard. “We made it.”

  They started down the channel that would take them to the final creek, a wider waterway without the overhang for spider crabs and snakes. They had made it.

  “Nothing but open water between us and the hotel.” Ty grinned.

  That was when they heard the motor of a boat coming up the creek from the direction of the hotel.

  “They’re coming for us!” Tate said, practically shouting for joy. “It must be your brother and Troy’s mom.”

  The three of them began to laugh as a swamp boat with a powerful spotlight emerged from the creek ahead and swung its beam full on them.

  Ty rested his paddle across the boat and waved his hands like Tate and Troy. Their laughter lost itself in the whine of the boat’s motor. The boat slowed as it pulled up alongside them. The light was too bright to see, but Ty’s heart swelled at the sound of an adult voice.

  “Hey, kids. Funny finding you out here.”

  Ty shielded his eyes from the spotlight, but that wasn’t necessary. The light snapped off, and the grins on the faces in the boat shone clear in the moonlight.

  “I’d say our luck is holding out pretty well, Mr. Bonito.”

  “I’d say you’re right on, Bennie.”

  Chapter Sixty-six

  TY LAY ON THE rough wooden floor, back in the upstairs bedroom, this time by himself and with no hope of getting free from Bennie the Blade’s duct tape. Tate and Troy, he knew, were in the other two bedrooms on the second floor, and he presumed they, too, had been bound and gagged and secured to a metal bed so that there was no way they
could move. If they even tried to move, it would raise a ruckus.

  He strained to hear the voices downstairs, but they were too soft for him to understand.

  Suddenly, the voices rose and Ty could just make out the words.

  “You think we care what you think? You think you got a say in this? You’re lucky we don’t gut you and your kid, too.” Ty shuddered at Pete Bonito’s surly tone and knew the man meant business.

  “You don’t just kill kids.” Troy’s dad sounded more like a beggar than a person in control.

  “You might not, but we got no choice.” Bennie the Blade’s voice had a soft, slippery quality to it, but his volume was equal to Bonito’s. “We ain’t gonna just disappear after this, Houdini. We got lives to live back in Jersey. We ain’t having no witnesses.”

  “Your kid can go with you, but those other kids ain’t leaving this swamp,” Bonito said. “That’s final.”

  There was a silent pause. Ty thought he might vomit and grew scared of choking on it before he realized it might be a better way to go than being gutted by Bennie the Blade’s knife.

  “Okay, you got me.” Troy’s dad broke the quiet. “I don’t know why the heck I care. Hey, don’t look at me like that, Bennie. Have a drink. Let’s celebrate. This is going to be the biggest scam in the history of sports. Bigger than Pete Rose or Art Schlichster. Bigger than the BC basketball team. Heck, bigger than the Black Sox.”

  Laughter filled the room.

  “Come on,” Troy’s dad said. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “Let’s have two!” Bonito said.

  The men’s voices became indistinct again, but Ty heard the clink of glasses as they toasted their success. The laughter continued, Troy’s dad loudest of all. Ty closed his eyes and thought back to all the things he would miss. He would miss Thane most of all. He would miss knowing his cousin Troy and maybe even getting to see Tate on a regular basis. He would miss the two of them connecting for Halpern Middle, or maybe even playing for Don Bosco, the New Jersey high-school football powerhouse. He’d miss the smell of the grass, stepping out onto the field in the 7-on-7 championship game on Super Bowl Sunday. He’d miss a lot of things, and he was terrified because he knew this was it.