Susie says, “God’s making up for his actions.” She turns back from her window, smiling. “The JDF’s Coast Guard station has no boats still in it; probably ran them to the mainland for cover. They’ll be en route back if the storm didn’t get ’em. In and out, Bill, and we’ll be good.”
I look up from Eddie’s last clue, more than a little giddy that I’m not in Haiti. “The old in-and-out, huh?”
Susie winks, pushes me the rum bottle. “Assuming you can handle yourself after the digging.”
I leer, sip the bottle that has the taste of her lips, and pass it back. “Your chances at me aren’t endless; I’d take ’em while we’re out here and there’s no competition.”
Susie does that secret girl thing where they just kind of glow.
Anne interrupts, “We’ll be focusin’ our energies on the gold and a fast exit.”
“Fast?” I turn to Anne. “It’s thirty-five acres. All we really know is the tree. There’s nothing in the clue that says: “Shiver me timbers, ten paces, X marks the spot.”
“Has to be fast.” Susie agrees, straightens in her seat. “The Gryphon will be at Marigot by now, or soon. They’ll tell him about this plane.”
“So what? He can’t know where we’re going.”
Anne says, “We passed a US-built, Haiti-operated radar station thirty minutes back at Tiburon on Haiti’s west coast. We’re already on everyone’s radar who didn’t drown.”
I frown, then read the clue for the twelfth time.
We bank to land in the water. Eddie’s final “trap” could easily be the shoals surrounding Bird Cay, not buried grenades. Or the trap could be both, or neither.
Anne slips out of the copilot seat and back to Susie and me. “I’m guessing we have an hour or less before the JDF or the Gryphon get here—no guarantee either are comin’, but we’d be fools not to expect both. I can’t dig. Jim stays with the plane.” She looks at me. “Time to be special, William.”
Kayak Jim puts us in the water’s lone coral alley, then taxis in straight to the beach and the tree, a windblown tamarind with a few red flowers still in its half canopy.
Two battered femme-fatale pirates and I bail from the plane, Susie and me holding shovels, our AKs slung over our backs.
I look under the tree for X in the sand: “O’Hare’s standing here with no landmarks other than this tree. If the gold is under the tree, he needs to remember which side. He’s with Remi Péralte—one guy’s from Haiti, one guy’s from Sportsman’s. So far, the entire story’s been: rhum, slavery, sugar, rebellion, and horse racing.”
Susie says, “Is there any left or right, front or back to rhum? Or slavery, sugar, rebellion, or horse racing?”
Hmm. “Rhum—no. Slavery—no. Sugar—no. Rebellion—maybe. Horse racing—yes, lots of ’em.” I do a 360 and see nothing but the tree, bird shit, and sand. “O’Hare’s the boss—let’s go with horse racing. Pick words that matter to horse racing.”
Weight.
End.
Circles.
“‘Under the weight’ could be the assigned weight a horse has to carry.
“The ‘end is the end’ could be the finish line.
“‘Circles the friend’ could be the winner’s circle.
“And the ‘friend’ is the horse who won for you.”
Not bad. I don’t hate that.
“So this tree is the big finish for our race. Cross the finish line, then go to the winner’s circle.”
Anne says, “If it’s about horse racing, where’s the front or back, left or right, of a winner’s circle finish line?”
I visualize the finish line at Sportsman’s Park.
Susie says, “What direction did the finish line run?”
“North and south. Same as Hawthorne next door.” I don’t explain why Chicago had two racetracks next door to each other. I ask Susie, “You’re a navigator, can you mark true north?”
“If you’ll hurry your ass up.” She points back toward the plane. “That’s north.”
I face the tree from the south, where Sportsman’s grandstand would be. “If the tree’s the finish line, then the Sportsman’s winner’s circle is on the tree’s right.”
Anne says, “C’mon, Bill, we gotta dig.”
I focus on the tree. Most of its growth is on its left side, not the winner’s circle side.
A saltwater breeze gusts sand into my face. I blink against the sand. Re-look the odd tree, ask Anne: “Prevailing winds out here would be from . . .”
Anne points her AK. “Northeast trade winds.”
But the tree hasn’t grown on the right where the wind should have pushed it . . . instead, it flourished on the left, into the wind.
I ask the tree, “Why would you do that?”
Because . . .
Prior to being the best fucking treasure hunter of all time, I dug foundations all the time; I know what foundations do to root systems.
I check my two pirate girlfriends, then answer for the tree:
“You grew into the wind because the root growth on the leeward side had to go deeper for water.” Grin. “Because something big was buried there that got in the way of your roots.”
I mark a big X in the sand to the right of the tree, a “smartest guy at the track” spot I’ve occupied enough times that it’s like some cosmic river brought me here. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.”
Susie and I stack our AKs against the tree, safeties off, and start digging. We dig, and dig. And dig.
One-armed Anne walks our perimeter, AK in hand, eyes 360 all the time.
The sand’s easy to dig, but it’s endless and the hole continues to collapse, almost as wide as it is deep. We stop at four feet.
Anne says, “We’re here too long.” She looks down at me in the hole. “You’re sure this is your spot?”
Frown. Pant. “Eighty years ago. Lotta sand moving since then.”
Susie pants, re-grips her shovel, chugs water, and keeps digging. She’s a woman possessed, outrunning an outcome I’ve seen in my night terrors. We sweat, dig, sweat, and dig for another ten minutes.
Susie hits rock, then I do. A natural coral pit, ten feet square.
Inside the borders of the coral, we quickly get down another three feet.
I find a skull; Susie finds a rib cage.
She pants. “Bet a hundred this is Remi Péralte.” The skull has a bullet hole in the rear.
My heart beats faster. We dig faster. My shovel hits metal. I drop to my knees and slough sand. The metal’s stamped “USS Machias,” possibly the lid of a large ammunition box.
Susie says, “Oh shit.”
I check for booby traps, suck a breath, hoping not to explode . . . and we pop the lid.
No explosion.
Stacked inside the metal box are twelve-inch-by-twelve-inch wooden crates, each six inches deep. Each crate is stamped “United States Mint, San Francisco.” I pop the first crate.
It’s divided into a grid for coins—five rows of five columns. I pull out ten gold coins from one of the twenty-five sections, then squint at the dates: “1910.”
Susie’s jaw drops; she extends her hand. “Gimme.”
I hand her the coin.
She fingers it, flips it, and yells: “Anne! Saint-Gaudens $20 double eagles.”
I pop the lids on the other crates in the top row of the ammo box. “Coins. The same. Some from 1909.”
Anne yells down from the top of the hole: “How many?”
“Two-fifty in this crate. More below.”
Susie the treasure hunter tells me: “The US minted six million; worth at least $3,000 a piece, probably more.”
I do the math. “This one little wood crate is . . . seven hundred fifty thousand dollars?”
Susie grins. “C’mon, unpack ’em all up to t
he rim.”
The little crate I’m holding weighs close to twenty pounds. We empty the metal ammo box, hauling twenty-five crates total out of the hole, then the empty ammo box that I push up and over.
Up top, Anne kneels next to the twenty-five wood crates we unpacked. She’s smiling ear to ear. “Nineteen million dollars, chums. Call it $20 million with premiums.” She grins as wide as her bandages will allow. “Never doubted us for a moment.”
I turn to celebrate with Susie. She’s at the bottom of the hole, dead silent, staring at her feet. Fuck. I think Trap, stop breathing, and say, “Don’t move.”
Susie doesn’t move. She says, “There’s another ammo box.”
Anne shouts, “Careful!”
I jump down to Susie. “How rich you wanna be? Twenty mil should be plenty.”
Susie’s lost her grin. “Not leaving a dime for the monster to rebuild his horror show if I can’t kill him. Not a fucking penny. Climb out, I’ll open it alone.”
“We’re having kids, right?”
Susie blinks, shakes her head. “So glad I don’t have a dick.”
I point at her. “And the first night you’ll wear the pirate outfit. That was the deal.” I kneel, check the box’s edges, and look up. “You sure?”
“Iffy on the pirate outfit till I’m put back together, but a deal’s a deal.”
Deep breath. “Okay. Sail together; finish together.”
I pop the lid.
We don’t explode. Susie and I unload another twenty-five crates up to Anne, then double-team the empty ammo box up and out. In the hole, staring at us from where the second ammo box used to be are two more ammo boxes.
When we’re done unloading and not dying, there are four ammo boxes, one hundred crates total: close to $80 million in gold coins. Literally, a ton of money.
Susie and I climb out of the hole. Anne has already dragged the empty ammo boxes to the plane. Susie and I carry one hundred crates, two at a time, and heft them into the plane for Anne and Kayak Jim to repack.
“Weight’s gonna be a problem.” Kayak Jim packs crate on crate. “No one’s ever gonna believe this.”
Susie runs back to the tree and grabs our AKs. Jim climbs into the pilot’s seat and fires the engines. Anne pulls binoculars and 360s the ocean.
Sweat-soaked, Susie and I collapse into our seats. Anne jumps in and pulls the door shut. Kayak Jim hits the throttles and we chug, heavy, into the chop.
Sweat rivers off me; my hands are shaking. I’m cold and hug my shoulders. Anne eyes the ocean, then checks her AK. Each of us has two extra twenty-round magazines and an absolute certainty we’ll need them.
Kayak Jim shouts, “Feels too heavy. Where to?”
Anne shouts back, “How much gas have we got?”
“Hundred miles.”
“No choice, then; has to be Jamaica direct. Put her down in the Black River; that’s thirty miles from here. She’ll be plenty high with the weather.”
Susie cranes out her window and shouts: “Plane!”
From her window, Anne tracks the plane. “Not JDF; not US Marshals . . . gotta be the—”
I yell: “Boat!” Underneath the plane that Anne and Susie are watching is a deep V; its bow high in the water like it’s coming at us fast.
Anne and Susie say, “Fuck. Jamaica Defence Force.”
Chapter 33
Bill Owens
Our plane vibrates and rattles, slogs in the waves as we try to lift off. Kayak Jim shouts, “Too heavy. Pop the door. Throw stuff out!”
Anne pops the door. The full ammunition boxes weigh five hundred pounds each. Susie and I try to move them but can’t.
I say, “We pop the lids on two boxes, empty half the crates, relock the boxes, and shove two out. Maybe five hundred pounds is enough.”
Susie says: “That’s twenty million dollars.”
“You can’t live on sixty?”
Anne shouts: “Boat’s closing.”
Susie and I half empty the first ammo box, seal it, and shoulder-shove it out the door. It dives for the bottom.
The plane buzzes us again, likely a spotter for the Gryphon. The plane can track us wherever we go, but it won’t be able to stop us.
Susie and I half empty the second box, seal it, shove it down the aisle to the door, and out. Our plane picks up speed but not air.
The JDF boat hasn’t veered; it’s coming right at us—they veer just as we lift off out of the water.
“Flyers rule!”
Anne climbs over Susie and me, drops back into the copilot seat. I crawl over wood crates to the door, pull it shut, and collapse again, shoulder to shoulder with Susie. “Treasure business is a bitch.”
Susie pants, laughs. Her arm loops my neck. “Not over yet, cupcake.”
Kayak Jim says, “Black River in nine minutes.”
Anne yells back to Susie and me, “We’ll belly in just over the harbor bridge, splash down past the last riverside dock, try not to hit any crocs, be upriver a half mile at the Broad River turn when we stop. I’ve people up there. If they’re not flooded out, we can make the road, quarter mile east.”
“And if your people are gone?”
“Plan B, William, plan B.” Anne punches fists with Susie. “We’re too rich and too pretty to die now.”
Our plane slows. Kayak Jim yells, “Going down. Hold on.”
The nose drops. The river mouth at the bridge is clogged with boats. Anne shouts: “JDF! Up, up!”
Kayak Jim pulls the stick to his chest, roars the engines, banks hard, but can’t gain altitude. He quits the bank, drops the wing to level, and we fall toward the tree canopy along the river. Our belly doesn’t hit the trees. We realign on the river, flying twenty feet off the water.
Jim gains enough altitude to bank north again. We do; he shouts: “Five minutes of gas, maybe ten, then we’re in the ocean.”
I yell, “Frenchman’s Bay. Treasure Beach. Up the coast north ten miles. I know people there. Right at the water. Go there. Go.”
Anne and Susie are glued to the windows. Anne says, “Only one road in and out of there. Who’s it you know?”
“Captains. Contrabanders back in the day. Saw a YouTube video last year from Eggy’s Bohemian Bar. Captains were in it, still alive. They can get us gas or boats. Cars, if you think that’s better.”
Anne shakes her head. “Can’t do boats—the JDF. A car might work if we could get inland to Mandeville and change vehicles, hole up until we can get off the Rock. Except the Gryphon’s plane will know we put down in Frenchman’s, then track us wherever we go.”
“Not if we run him out of gas.”
Susie and Anne look at me.
“Gas up in Frenchman’s Bay, head for the Gulf of Mexico. Guy drowns if he follows us.”
“He would.” Anne nods. “Even with auxiliary tanks he would.” She looks at Susie.
Susie shakes her head. “Maybe we shake the Gryphon, but the US radar net will figure us for cocaine and force us down. No way we get the gold off the plane. It’ll be ten years of court battles to get any of it back, and then only fifty-fifty.”
Kayak Jim yells from the cockpit. “Is this it?”
I climb over wood crates to Jim’s shoulder. “Yeah. Eggy’s is dead ahead, up at the east end, this side of the crag. No shoals; they bring the boats right to the beach. Will your plane run on car gas?”
“Low altitude, cool day, no problem. Gotta be fresh, though.” Jim pushes the nose down. “Where we going if we find gas?”
“Anne and Susie are working on it. Get me close to the beach. I’ll get the gas.”
“Hold on.”
Kayak Jim banks us into the flat blue of Frenchman’s Bay, hits the water west to east, and has me out and wading before the Gryphon’s plane can make a second pass.
Eggy his own self is sit
ting out front of his bar wearing the world’s largest Rasta tam and a grin that’s almost as big. “Billy-mon! You come home!” He hugs me and offers the spliff in his left hand.
“Eggy, man, how you doin’? I gotta get gas. Fast, man, like yesterday.”
Eggy blinks, tracks the Gryphon’s plane flying too low. “Troubles?”
“Big. Babylon coming from Black River. Gotta have gas.”
Eggy bends away and yells up the path. “Bernard! Billy-mon back. Him needin’ airplane gas!” Eggy pulls his cell phone and starts calling.
Pete the Pirate, my trusty cab driver from my Meyers’s days, who’d take me anywhere but back to Kingston, jumps off his taxi’s fender, runs down the path to the soft sand, and hugs me off the ground. “Billy-mon!”
“You got gas, Pete? Need enough for that plane. And fast. Whatever you can get, we gotta be back in the air in fifteen minutes. JDF coming from Black River.” I hand Pete four gold coins. “That’s $12,000 US. Get me all the gas you can.”
We burn twelve minutes. Almost every gas can from every car and generator in Treasure Beach is at Eggy’s. Susie stands in the water at the plane’s tail with an AK on her hip. Kayak Jim and Pete fill the plane’s tanks. Anne’s in the plane, an AK one-handed from the door.
Pete looks at Susie, hands me another can, then glances Anne and her red hair, then me.
I grin. “Yep, that’s her; Herself, in person.” I nod at Susie while the can empties. “But that one there . . . man, you got no idea.”
Pete exhales. “You gonna be the most famous white man in JA.”
The Gryphon’s plane makes another pass.
Anne eyes the plane, then the far west side of the bay where the JDF boats will appear out of the glare if they tracked us from Black River. She yells at Kayak Jim: “In the plane, pilot. Fly with what we got.”
***
Kayak Jim climbs us off the water with everyone in Eggy’s Bohemian waving beers at us. Anne says, “Bank back north over the mountains toward Runaway Bay.”
Privateers Page 35
