Inversely, nothing would change if I killed King and Perry. The balance of the universe had not been compromised, so there was nothing to set right. But I would do it. I would kill both men if I got the chance. In the astronomy of human consciousness, all points of reference are subjective. They are the inventions of our own brief orbit. Righteousness does not exist in an atmosphere of pure reason, so it was not a question of justice or morality or revenge. I wanted Perry and King gone from the space I inhabited. I wanted them dead.
It was that simple, and reason enough for me.
It was while sorting through these dark thoughts that I first heard the sound of the creature plodding through the swamp toward the lake. Instantly, my survival instincts took charge. Was it a predator? A meat eater? What I had told Will the night before about the number of escaped exotics in Florida was, in fact, an understatement. Out there in the darkness could be almost any variety of creature from anywhere in the world: reptile, feline, canine or primate.
It is a reality that Floridians don’t take seriously when we are safely behind closed doors in the comfort of our own homes. Even those of us who venture into the backcountry at night don’t give it much thought because we have been conditioned to believe that we sit rightfully atop the food chain.
It’s not true, as I understood better than most.
My legs and hands were tied. There was no escape. Even so, I wasn’t panicky. There were two men nearby whom I feared far more than any foraging animal.
Even so, I was interested.
What the hell was it?
Whatever was coming toward me, the animal had my full attention, and I wasn’t the only one who heard it.
I lay back and closed my eyes—an attempt to spare my night vision—when King switched on one of my good flashlights and called, “That better not be you trying to sneak off, Professor Jock-o!”
The man probed the edge of the lake with the light until he found me, then said, “Good! For a second, I thought you were trying to crawl out of here on your belly—like a snake.” He laughed.
A snake. King was joking, but he had made an atavistic association that I found interesting.
Because King and Perry were closer to the cypress grove than to the lake, I raised my voice to be heard. “You’re not making much progress with that truck. Why don’t you let me help?”
I was even more eager for them to untie me now. It was ridiculous, but at that moment I would have preferred their company to being staked out like a sacrificial lamb.
King switched off the light and said, “When I want something from you, Jock-o, I’ll rattle my zipper.” His phlegmy laughter was as repugnant as his sense of humor.
For the last hour, the two men had been hammering and bickering as they worked at bending out the fender before changing the tire. Because they didn’t want to risk damaging the rim, they hadn’t babied the truck far enough to find solid ground so the jack kept slipping.
Sloppy. It was typical of those two.
It had taken them twice the time it should have to get the tire on, but they obviously weren’t in any rush. Sunrise was their only deadline, so they had ten hours to waste. I was the only person in a hurry, which gave King all the more reason to delay.
Once, when the two men had stopped to share an MRE, their careful whispering told me they were discussing what to do with me after I had returned from my dive, with or without more gold coins.
There was no mystery about their decision. Arlis and I were liabilities. Even if I returned with what they wanted, they would kill us. They’d probably try to sink our bodies in the lake or drag us into the swamp.
No . . . they wouldn’t risk venturing into the swamp now. Not after what we were now hearing.
I knew it for certain when their bickering stopped long enough for Perry to say, “What the hell is that thing? It sounds like”—he had to think it through—“sounds like the sort of hissing a subway train makes when it stops. Like steam brakes—you know?” He paused for several seconds. “Hear it? Christ Aw-mighty!”
The creature was making yet another unfamiliar noise. It was a distant Hawwwing hiss that echoed through the trees. It reminded me of a kid with a microphone trying to imitate a crowd’s roar in a baseball stadium. The call was brief, and then the thing began to move again.
“Hey, you . . . Ford. What do you think that is?”
I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to give King yet another excuse not to swim out in the inner tube when I went back into the lake.
I said, “Wild hogs, probably. They’re harmless. They root and snort. They’re common around here.”
“Like wild boars, you mean?” Perry asked. He didn’t believe the “harmless” part.
“No,” I said. “I’m talking about farm pigs that escaped and turned wild. They’re not native. And they’re afraid of people. I’m surprised they’ve come this close.”
From the swamp came another rumbling exhalation, then the ratcheting of metallic claws on stone. The animal was getting closer.
Now King was getting spooked, too. The flashlight came on again. It blinded me for a moment, then King began to search the edge of the lake. Water vaporized in gray tendrils, and cattails stood as erect and orderly as scarecrows in a field. I had to roll onto my side to follow the light as he panned along the far shoreline.
“What’s that? See it? The bushes are moving! Right there.” It was Perry’s voice. Maybe he’d taken the light from King. The beam settled on a thicket of wax myrtles and cattails that were backdropped by a lone cypress tree.
Movement in the bushes, along with the noise, stopped instantly as if stilled by the unexpected light. A moment later, I watched an owl the size of a pelican drop from the cypress canopy, its eyes luminous and huge. It made a screeching hiss as it swooped low across the water, then ascended into darkness. The bird was silhouetted briefly by stars, then was gone.
In the fresh silence, I heard King laugh. “You dumb-ass,” he said. “It wasn’t nothing but a big bird. Jesus Christ, Perry, you’d be scared of your own shadow.” He was still laughing, but it was the laughter of nervous relief.
Perry said, “Shut up and tighten them nuts. Let’s see if this old wreck will move.”
I was still looking at the sky, my brain working. An owl wasn’t the source of the distant crashing we’d heard in the swamp. If the two cons believed it, good. But I knew better.
A few minutes later, I listened to a door slam. The truck’s engine started. Lights came on, and the vehicle began to move. Once again, though, King or Perry had made a sloppy decision. I heard the tires hit a marshy area and then I heard them begin to spin. Whoever was driving shifted into reverse, spun the tires faster, then shifted into first gear and accelerated, as if attempting to escape a snowdrift. Back and forth the truck rocked as the tires dug themselves in deeper.
“Stop, you idiot! Stop or you’ll bury her up to the rims!” It was King’s voice, so I knew that Perry was at the wheel.
I heard the door open. There was a long pause of inspection before Perry’s voice whined, “Son of a bitch, why does shit like this always have to happen to me? How bad is it?”
King snapped, “Worse than it would’ve been if you’d taken your damn foot off the gas when I told you. You’re an idiot, you know that?”
As the men argued, my thoughts turned to Arlis. He wasn’t unconscious and he certainly wasn’t asleep. I knew that they had bound his hands and legs again, but they had tied his hands in front of him this time so he could drink when he needed water.
I had hidden the wire cutters and a flashlight under the blanket. If King and Perry left him alone long enough, he could clip the tie wraps and run for it. Or he could even take the truck if Perry was dumb enough to leave the keys in the ignition. It didn’t matter if the truck was stuck. Not with Arlis at the wheel. King and Perry didn’t realize the vehicle had four-wheel drive or the tires wouldn’t be spinning now.
I thought about that for a moment. I wanted Arlis o
ut of harm’s way, but I couldn’t risk him taking the truck. Not now. Without the truck, King and Perry’s plan to drive to freedom with a load of gold would collapse. They would kill me where I lay, then leave on foot.
I raised my voice and said, “Cut me loose and I’ll show you what the problem is.”
“The problem with what, Jock-o? You keep your mouth buttoned until I tell you to speak.”
I said, “The truck has four-wheel drive. You’ve got to shift into low and lock the hubs. It’s not that hard, but you’ve got to know how to do it.”
Perry said, “Shit, that’s right. It’s got four-wheel drive, it says it right on the side.”
King didn’t sound convincing when he told Perry, “I knew that! That’s what I was trying to tell you, numbnuts. If you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t have gotten stuck in the first place. Use the four-wheel drive, she’ll climb right out of there.”
I started to tell Perry that King was lying as usual but stopped in midsentence because I heard yet another unexpected sound.
This time, though, it wasn’t an animal.
The sound came from the far, far distance, in the direction of the swamp, but it was more muffled, barely audible. It was a shrill, two-fingered whistle, a series of piercing notes that were absorbed by the dense tree canopy.
The notes had a familiar rhythm. Or was I imagining it?
I had been facing the truck and so I rolled onto my other side. I moved my head, ears searching, hoping to hear the whistle once again. As I lay there, I sorted through alternative explanations. Screech owls are common in Florida swamps, but what I’d heard was not the mellow trill of the eastern screech owl. No, someone was out there—a person, definitely a person this time. I’d never learned to whistle through my fingers, but I knew a lot of people who could—Tomlinson among them.
Was it possible that Tomlinson was signaling me from the swamp? It made no sense. If he and Will had somehow escaped from the lake, they would have hiked back to the truck. Unless . . . unless . . .
I came up with only two explanations: If it was Tomlinson, he was either injured and unable to move or he was trapped somewhere beneath the ground.
It was a startling possibility. If he and boy were somewhere beneath the surface, even a shrill whistle would be almost inaudible. Water conducts sound more efficiently than air, but that didn’t apply if Will and Tomlinson were beneath ten or fifteen feet of sand and limestone.
Suddenly, the impossible seemed plausible . . . even reasonable. I had read of at least one account of a similar incident. A female cave diver had survived underwater for several hours, only occasionally screaming for help, because she didn’t want to deplete the few inches of air she’d found at the top of the cave where she was trapped.
I continued to listen, hoping for confirmation. The wind had shifted. It was freshening now, a chill breeze from the northeast. The wind seemed to brighten the stars as it moved across the lake and through the cypress canopy. After several minutes of silence, the wind carried once again a distinctive staccato series of notes.
Shave-and-a-haircut . . . two bits.
I didn’t imagine it. As faint as the call was—and it was very faint—I was now sure. It was Tomlinson calling for help.
Struck numb, I listened to Perry say something to King and then I heard the truck start. There was a brief grinding of gears. Lights came on, illuminating the lake.
As the truck began to creep toward me, carrying the extra scuba gear I would need, I rolled onto my back.
I was thinking, My God, they’re still alive.
SEVENTEEN
WHEN HIS FLASHLIGHT FAILED, TOMLINSON CLOSED his eyes to soften the darkness. He began to concentrate on channeling his core energy—and what he hoped was comforting wisdom—into Will Chaser, who was now breathing from the last emergency air bottle while he stubbornly hacked at the ceiling of the snow globe where he had found tree roots.
There were only a few minutes of air left in Tomlinson’s primary tank—which is why he was now holding his breath—and he knew the end was near.
The boy’s knife made a steady metal-on-rock clinking as Tomlinson focused, feeling energy move through his arm, through his fingers, which were pressed against Will’s back, holding the boy in place as he dug. Channeling energy was something Tomlinson had done many times—often gifting strangers who never suspected that the strange, scarecrow-looking man next to them was their benefactor. But he had never given so wholly as he gave now.
Meditation was such an integral part of his life that he could continue channeling even as his brain processed unimportant details such as the glowing numerals of his watch, which he saw whenever his eyes blinked open. It was the only light in the blackness that engulfed them and so was of peripheral interest at first, but then it became more than that.
It was a new watch, and the glowing face gave him unexpected pleasure. The numerals were large and luminous, a swollen molten green.
As Tomlinson moved the watch closer to his eyes, the numerals blurred like fireflies in flight. The next image that came into his mind was that of an owl, its round eyes ablaze. Envisioning an owl—an ancient symbol of death—was an unexpected interruption and caused him to analyze what was going on in his own brain.
I’m buzzed because I’m holding my breath. Must be the carbon dioxide. CO2 is definitely not a marketable gas.
It was 4:57 p.m. He and Will had been underwater for nearly an hour, and they had been burrowing through karst vents and chambers for at least fifteen minutes.
Tomlinson thought, It’ll be dark soon. The sun goes down in an hour.
Not that it mattered. He was now resigned to the fact that this was one marina sunset he would definitely have to miss. Sunset was always a fun and sociable time at Dinkin’s Bay—there were lots of beach-weary, languid women around, usually—and it pained him to think that he would never enjoy another marina party.
Tomlinson moved his wrist closer to his eyes and focused on the sweep hand of his new watch. As he did, he wondered how long he could hold his breath. Two minutes maybe? Possibly longer—he hadn’t smoked weed in almost a week, after all. His regulator was right there, somewhere in the darkness, if he wanted it, but he was determined not to use the thing. The air belonged to Will Chaser. It would be his parting gift to the boy, a final act of kindness.
Into Tomlinson’s mind came a sentence he had written long ago: The only light visible to us is that which we create for others.
Light. The watch’s sweep hand was hypnotic. It was as thin as a hypodermic yet bright in the cavernous blackness—a sight that produced another surge of pleasure in him—and it shifted his focus from the boy to his friend Doc Ford.
The watch Tomlinson was wearing was a big one with a big name—a Graham Chronofighter Scarab. It was similar to the watch the guys at the marina had given Ford for his birthday.
Well . . . actually, it was the watch the marina had purchased for the biologist. Tomlinson had intercepted the thing and kept it for himself—a fact that was yet another painful reminder that he had lived an imperfect life.
What an ass I am to steal Doc’s new watch after all he’s done for me. My God!
Marion Ford wasn’t a complainer, but he had mentioned more than once that his Rolex Submariner was an undependable timepiece and impossible to read in low light. He had also mentioned what at the time was an esoteric wrist chronograph—the Graham.
Ford liked the watch, that was obvious from the accumulation of catalogs and literature that Tomlinson had found scattered around the lab. But he wasn’t a man to rush into anything.
Because the Graham had a distinctive lever on the left side of the casing, Doc believed that it would be perfect for timing procedures in the lab. British pilots had used the same thumb trigger to time bombing runs during World War II because the human thumb is better than a trigger finger when it comes to starting and stopping a watch.
Doc had said it, so no one at the marina doubted it was true.
When the dust had settled, Tomlinson finally chose the Chronofighter from a short list of also-rans: a Bathys Benthic—which Tomlinson loved because of its surf bum mystique—and a Bell & Ross Phantom, a Luminox, a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms and a Traser.
When asked why he’d chosen the Chronofighter, Tomlinson’s official response was honest. The Graham was a classic timepiece and the easiest to read at night. The face was articulately luminous, blue on yellow, and because of the way the sapphire crown was shaped the numerals and hands were magnified when viewed from the side—a little like watching fish in a rounded aquarium. And the thumb trigger, of course, made it the perfect choice for a man who often had to time lab procedures.
This was all true, but the actual deal maker was more complex. The Chronofighter had an elegant British swagger, which was very unlike Ford. It was understated and cool—which admittedly was a little bit like the biologist but not enough to tip the scales.
The deciding factor, in truth, was that after all the research Tomlinson had done he had fallen in love with the Chronofighter, too. It wasn’t just a watch, it was a serious piece of navigational equipment and ideal for celestial charting.
When the Graham arrived, Tomlinson had opened the box in private and he was hooked. The density of the watch, the weight of the thing on his wrist, its precision tolerances and horological beauty, were too much for him to resist.
So Tomlinson had done a selfish thing. He had kept Ford’s Chronofighter even though it was purchased with the marina’s money. Days later, though, he covered his tracks by ordering a more subdued version of the same watch for Doc. Tomlinson had paid for the thing out of his own checking account so it wasn’t exactly stealing, but it was close enough to require a careful series of rationalizations to make what he’d done palatable.
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