The double boom from the explosion startled both of us. I dropped down into the boat, turned on the batteries, and lowered the engine. It fired up instantly, as Carl pushed the bow away from the dock before stepping aboard.
While he took his cell phone out to call 911, I idled away from the dock and turned on the VHF radio. Plucking the mic from its holder, I spoke into it. “Mayday! Mayday! Any vessel near the Content Keys. There’s a boat on fire northwest of Harbor Key Light. Anyone in the area please respond.”
The Coast Guard answered immediately. “Vessel calling, this is United States Coast Guard Station, Key West. Please identify yourself.”
“My name’s Jesse McDermitt,” I said, as the engine burbled quietly, idling away from the dock. “I live on an island off Harbor Channel. A passing shrimp boat has exploded three miles northwest of Harbor Key Light. I’m in my boat and heading out there to assist.”
“We have a patrol boat in the area,” the dispatcher said, her voice calm and succinct. “ETA is twenty-five minutes, Captain.”
“Jesse,” another voice said over the radio. “This is Dink. I’m fishing off Raccoon Key with a client. Can we help?”
“I don’t know yet, Dink,” I said, steering the boat toward the quickly disappearing smoke. “Head this way if you can. You’ll see me headed north as soon as you clear Content Passage.”
“US Coast Guard Key West to all concerned, please go to channel twenty-two A.”
Hanging up the mic, I switched channels, not that I’d hear anything more. I slammed the throttle to the stop. The Grady dropped low at the stern and clawed its way up on top of the water in a matter of just a few yards.
The next couple of minutes seemed to drag as I pushed against the throttle repeatedly, trying to coax just one more RPM from the Suzuki engine. At the same time, I had to steer a winding course across the shallows. Most wouldn’t dare, but knowing the way through the maze from years of experience, I was unconcerned.
Finally, we cleared the shallows and entered the Gulf of Mexico, still at full throttle. I pointed the nose at the dissipating smoke and trimmed the engine for top speed.
Arriving at the spot where the boat had exploded, I could see that there was little left of the vessel. Just pieces of fiberglass and wood. The hull must have been dragged under. My chart plotter showed that we were in thirty feet of water, more than deep enough to cover the outriggers had the boat sunk completely intact.
I brought the Grady to a stop before reaching the bulk of the debris field; fouling my prop in a shrimp net wouldn’t help anyone. If there was anyone left to help. By instinct, I activated the Save Location feature on the GPS. The current would sweep the surface clean in short order and the Coast Guard would want to know where the wreckage sunk.
Behind us, I could hear the high-pitched whine of a big outboard, coming on fast. I looked back and could see Dink, flying across the water toward us in his new skiff. Another man sat on the little bench in front of the console, gripping the hand-grabs tightly. Dink’s new Maverick was one of the fastest flats boats around.
“Sheriff’s department has a patrol boat on the way, too,” Carl said.
Scanning the debris, I saw body parts floating on the surface. Two distinctly different legs, one dark brown and the other white, floated next to each other. Ahead of us floated the torso of a white man. It was missing everything above the armpits. Nothing on the surface moved.
“My God,” Carl said, surveying the carnage, retching slightly. “What could have caused an explosion like this?”
There was a strange odor hanging in the air. It mixed with other smells—burning diesel fuel, melted fiberglass, and the sickly copper stench of blood, which coated several floating boat pieces. The strange odor was powerful, like some sort of industrial cleanser.
As Dink approached, I waited until he slowed, then cupped my hands to yell. “It’s a shrimp trawler!”
I pointed toward the west side of the wreckage, circling my arm in a wide arc before putting my outboard in gear and turning toward the east. Dink understood and slowed his skiff, steering around the other side, also at a safe distance. Nets are almost invisible underwater and abandoned nets drifting in the currents foul at least five boats a year around here.
I could have sworn one of the severed legs moved when I looked back. I watched it for a second, glancing ahead and all around as I moved the boat slowly around the debris. Suddenly, the water around the leg roiled and it disappeared. Sharks.
I grabbed the mic. “Dink, there are sharks in the water.”
Circling the debris, we neared Dink’s boat.
“Over there!” Carl shouted, pointing toward the center of the mess.
I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw something move.
“Get up on the bow!” I shouted. “Keep me off anything under the surface.”
I turned and headed straight into the debris field. I saw something move and recognized it as a person’s arm, weakly waving toward us.
“He’s alive!” Carl shouted scrambling forward and kneeling on the forward casting deck, his body out over the forward rail. “Go right!”
I turned the wheel quickly, following his warnings and hand signals, as we made our way toward the injured man. His right arm was bare, though he appeared to be wearing a white shirt. As we got closer, I could see the man’s head, resting on a piece of flotsam, his long black hair covering his face. The back of his shirt and his hair were scorched, as was the bare arm.
Suddenly, the shrimper turned halfway around, releasing the floating piece of debris he was hanging on. It wasn’t a man at all. The woman’s shirt was torn open by the blast, exposing part of a black bra against pale-white skin. The hair on the right side of her head was scorched to the scalp, but she was obviously a woman.
Carl reached over the side rail, as I shifted to neutral and went to help him. He grabbed an arm, just as the woman screamed, throwing her head back. When I reached to grab her other arm, something jerked her under, nearly pulling Carl with her. Her scream ended with a gurgling stream of bubbles.
The splash of a large tiger shark’s tail, as it pulled the woman under left no doubt as to her fate.
“I had her!” Carl wailed, dropping to his knees on the deck.
In the distance, I heard the sound of a siren, and far to the east, I could make out the flashing blue lights of the approaching Coast Guard boat. A moment later, another boat with flashing blue lights made a wide turn around Harbor Key Light. It approached quickly, but without the siren.
Things began to happen quickly. They took our IDs, then ordered us away and told us to anchor. Dropping the hook well away from the wreck, I backed down on it, then shut off the engine. Dink idled over and tied off alongside us. “They say how long we’d have to stay?” Dink asked.
He knew the answer as well as I did. As long as it damned well took. He was asking for his client’s benefit.
“Not long,” I said, as more boats from the Coast Guard, Fish and Wildlife, and sheriff’s office arrived. They began the grisly task of collecting what was left of the people who had been on the boat.
Nearly half an hour later, a county boat carrying Doctor Leo Fredrick arrived. He’s the lead medical examiner for Monroe County and a colorful character to say the least.
The woman’s body, or what was left of it, bobbed to the surface, face up. The right half of her torso from her waist to her ribcage was missing. Small fish continued to dart up, picking at the exposed entrails dangling below the body.
“Divers won’t be able to get in the water for a while due to sharks,” a Coast Guardsman told us, as he idled up alongside my boat. He’d been the second person to arrive, the first being the sheriff’s deputy, who quickly relinquished authority since the wreck was outside the three-mile limit.
“The woman was alive when we got to her,” Carl said. “A big tiger yanked her right out of my hands before I could pull her aboard.”
“Did any of you see what happened?”
&n
bsp; “From a distance,” I said, pointing toward my island. “We live on that island and were on the dock watching the trawler go by when it just exploded.”
“So you have no idea what started the fire?”
“Never saw a fire,” Carl said. He was stressed, out of his element amid the carnage. “I know what didn’t cause it.”
“What do you mean?” the petty officer asked.
“A shrimp boat doesn’t carry anything on board that could cause a blast like I saw.”
“How do you know what a shrimp boat would have on board?”
“I own one,” Carl said. “I’ve been a shrimper most of my life.”
“Diesel fuel?”
“No, not like that at all,” Carl replied, starting to become agitated. “Diesel’s slow-burning, creates a dark orange fireball, more like burning black smoke than anything. There was a diesel explosion, but it came second.”
“You’ve seen a lot of explosions, Mister, uh—”
“Trent,” I said, intervening for Carl. “Captains Trent and McDermitt. And in twenty years of Marine Corps infantry, yeah, I’ve seen a lot of explosions.”
“Something else exploded before the fuel tank,” Carl said. “Something that burns a lot hotter than diesel. Something that burns so hot and fast that it sucked the oxygen right out of the air and snuffed itself out. But then the diesel blew, and the flames from that ignited whatever fumes didn’t burn in the initial explosion. That’s what caused all the damage. Some sort of highly explosive cloud ignited and just flattened everything. It looked like the hand of God Almighty Himself.”
The petty officer made some notes on an electronic pad and then handed our identification back to us. “You can go, now. If we need anything more, we can reach you by phone.”
Dink and his client quickly untied us, and headed back into the maze of cuts and channels that make up the backcountry. I took my time pulling the anchor. The woman’s face, though disfigured and burned, had looked familiar. I just couldn’t remember where it was I’d seen her before.
We rode in silence back to the island, as the sun was nearing the western horizon. I circled the island and approached the channel.
“Gasoline, maybe?” I asked, as we tied the Grady up to the fixed pier alongside the channel. “At first I thought it sounded like an old two-stroke. Might have been a gas engine.”
“You’ve seen gas explode,” Carl said. “Burns hotter than diesel, sure. But still an orange flame. That first explosion was yellow-white. It sucked every molecule of oxygen out of the air in the immediate area and that’s what caused it to flame out. Then it hung over that boat, waiting to be reignited, while the people on board were running around.”
He was stressing way more than was healthy. I knew only one thing to make him slow down, and that was to get him thinking.
“What burns that hot?” I asked.
Carl stood and stretched his back. “Dunno. Some sort of chemicals maybe. Much too volatile to be any sort of fuel. Think that trawler was carrying industrial waste out to dump somewhere in the bay?”
“Some people will do anything for a buck,” I offered, as we left the dock area and went up the steps to the deck.
“That happened a lot back in the day,” Carl said. “But the EPA has cracked down so hard that it’s stupid risky now. Someone would have to pay a lot of money to make it worthwhile.”
Taking two beers from the cooler under the table, I opened them and handed one to Carl as we looked across the island at the flashing blue lights on the boats out at the wreck site.
“I smelled something out there,” I said. “Smelled like some sort of industrial cleanser or something.”
“I smelled it too,” Carl said, taking a long pull from his beer. “Reminded me of all those damned cats that hang around O’Hare’s place.”
I didn’t want to leave right away. Carl and I never got a chance to finish our earlier conversation, but I was already late picking Kim up at the Rusty Anchor. So we promised to discuss it more later in the evening.
The tide was falling, so I took the longer route east to Rocky Channel, rather than the maze of shallow cuts south of my island. We’d have to go slower on the return when the water would be at its lowest. But for now, I knew I could run right across most of the flats, and those I couldn’t, I knew where they were. While the calm, flat waters in the backcountry might look like you’re on the ocean, with islands scattered here and there, the bottom was only inches below the surface in many places.
The sun, red and enormous, painted the clouds in the western sky with a deep scarlet glow, fading to orange nearer the horizon. Red sky at night, I thought, aiming the bow at the center of the high arch on the Seven Mile Bridge.
Half an hour, idling down the canal to Rusty’s docks, I could hear music coming from the deck area out back, and the sound of a lot of people. A sloop I’d never seen—a nice-looking Morgan center cockpit—was tied up as I entered the small marina. Several familiar boats were docked beyond it, mostly liveaboards who stayed here through the winter. The dock space at the end of the canal, just before the turning basin, was where locals docked smaller boats, and it was packed.
I spotted Dink’s skiff and tossed some fenders over before tying off to his port deck cleats. I was only planning to stay long enough for a beer if Kim was here, two if she wasn’t. There was still plenty of room for someone to get past the Grady to reach the fuel dock in the turning basin.
Shutting off the engine, I stepped over onto Dink’s Maverick and up to the dock. Finn hesitated for a second, then he also jumped to the skiff and onto the dock before taking off toward the back of the property to mooch food from Rusty’s customers.
The parking lot was nearly full, and I recognized most of the cars and pickups. Rusty must have been celebrating something.
I opened the door to the rustic old bar and stepped inside. There was definitely some kind of celebration going on. The Rusty Anchor was usually a quiet place where liveaboards and locals hung out, fishing guides met with their clients, and sea stories were swapped by all. Being small and out of the way, Rusty didn’t get as much in the way of tourist business as some of the larger places in Marathon, like Dockside or Brass Monkey, did.
Dink was sitting at the bar telling a gathering crowd about the explosion. It was fortunate that he was sitting. Dink was kind of accident prone—but only on land. He had perpetual sea legs and would trip over an ant on land. And you’d have had a hard time finding a politer man; he was the sort that would apologize to the ant.
Looking around, I didn’t see Kim, so I went to the end of the bar against the wall, weaving through the tables to avoid the crowd at the other end. Rusty put a cold Red Stripe on the bar before I got there. The last two stools didn’t have a view of the TV over the bar and a wall blocked the sight of the deck out back, so they were usually empty, which suited me fine. I prefer having my back to a wall.
“Hey, Jesse!” Dink shouted, pointing at me. “He was there, y’all. He saw the explosion.”
As one, the crowd of people who had been listening to Dink turned toward me, several asking questions at the same time. I don’t like crowds and I really don’t like being the center of attention.
“I didn’t see much,” I said. “Wasn’t looking at it when it exploded. Dink and his charter got there about the same time I did.”
I turned toward the bar, and most of them got the hint. They all had familiar faces, though I barely knew half their names.
Hearing the door open, I glanced over and saw my daughter come in. At nineteen, she was in her second year at the University of Florida up in Gainesville. She’d graduated high school a year earlier than her peers and then took nearly a year off before enrolling in college.
“Can’t stay,” I said to Rusty.
Rusty and I know one another better than brothers. He nodded and said, “We’ll catch up Sunday morning.”
Kim scheduled all her classes Monday through Thursday, except for a morning soci
ology class on Friday. Every other weekend, she makes the seven-hour drive down here and stays with me on the island. She usually leaves before noon on Sunday to have time to catch up on her studies before returning to classes on Monday.
I liked to believe it was to spend time with me, but the truth was, she liked the island lifestyle as much as I did and needed the time here to decompress. Then there was the matter of her boyfriend, who lived on Little Torch Key just down island from Big Pine. Lately, I hadn’t seen a lot of her during her weekends home. I understood, though. I remembered being nineteen.
“Hey, Dad,” she said, giving me a big hug. “Hi, Rusty, what’s the celebration about?”
“Celebration? Oh, you mean all these folks drinking and having a good time? Dockside is closed up again. This time it sounds permanent. I kinda feel bad about it, but not a whole lot.”
“Really?” I asked.
“County-ordered,” Rusty replied, sliding a beer down the bar to Jimmy. “Egghead engineers are saying it could slide into the water any minute. Place’s been that way for years.”
The back door opened just as the singer out on the deck started a new song, which brought a chorus of shouts and applause from everyone on the deck.
“Who’s that?” Kim asked, nodding her head toward the little stage.
“Eric Stone,” Rusty replied. “Originally from Texas, but been hanging around down here a few years now. He was supposed to play Dockside this weekend, but now I got him. I guess word spread.” He pointed to a rack of CDs. “He’s got a lot of original tunes.”
Kim went over to the rack and looked through them, returning with a CD and pulling a ten-dollar bill from her purse. “I’ll take this one—Boat Songs Number One, Songs for Sail.”
Rusty quickly made a tick mark on a notepad next to the CD title, and put the bill in a box under the bar. Outwardly, his accounting methods were very simple—he carried a small notepad in his pocket, in which he recorded all the running bar tabs—but I knew that in his office he had a desktop computer with all the latest accounting software. He, or I should say we, since I’m part owner of the Anchor, probably made a dollar from that sale and I had no doubt that every cash transaction was recorded back in that office and declared as income. Rusty didn’t cut corners where the IRS was concerned. Come to think of it, he didn’t cut corners on much of anything at all, that I knew of. He conducted business in person, with a handshake.
Rising Fury: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 12) Page 3
