“If I’d seen her earlier…”
“You might not have realized it being in that little boat, but you were lucky to get back alive. You surfed in ahead of some swells that would have swamped the skiff.”
Now she realized why the Coast Guardsman was so mad. She had been about to make his job twice as hard.
“I need to go get dry,” she said, “and get some hot coffee.”
“I’ll put on a pot in the office. First round is on me.”
Chapter 9
That night Nathan marveled at the events of his first day at Fort Jefferson.
He felt awful about the kayaker lost at sea. Park rangers weren’t search-and-rescue professionals, and that woman had no business being out in that weather, but he still wished there had been a better outcome. In training, the instructors had told a lot of stories about NPS rescues in some of the more dangerous locations like Grand Canyon and Denali. With only a handful of day visitors at Fort Jefferson, he’d thought life-threatening emergencies would be the least of his problems. Now he knew better.
While he loved the history of the place, he had to admit that he’d been worried about boredom or island claustrophobia setting in over time. If every day was going to be this active, neither of those would be a problem.
Tomorrow, he’d lead his first historical tour of the fort. He’d long memorized the key points around the fort and the short spiel he had time for at each one. Digging into the documents on his hard drive would prime him for his initial scrum of visitors.
When it came to his research, isolation would be one upside of being at Fort Jefferson. The daily distractions of media and managing life chores would not be interfering with the work. The isolation would also be the downside. The instant gratification of an internet search or wandering through a dusty archive were not going to happen. The best he was going to be able to do was plumb the depths of what he’d downloaded, then return to the mainland for another batch.
To get off to a good start, he’d downloaded quite a bit, enough to fill an auxiliary hard drive. He plugged it in and fired up his laptop.
“The best place to start,” he said to himself, “is always at the beginning.”
The beginning would be the early 1800s. Given the key’s remoteness and the lack of fresh water, there had been no indigenous peoples on the island before Spain ceded Florida to the fledgling United States. The basic history said that Commodore David Porter was the first naval officer to survey the keys known as the Dry Tortugas. Nathan began his search with David Porter.
His only hit was the commodore’s ship logbook. The original 1825 book had been scanned and entered into the database in its handwritten form, a shortcut for the person creating the database by not typing a transcription. Despite some legibility issues, Nathan loved it. Reading Porter’s words in his own hand almost two hundred years later made Nathan feel closer to being there. He skimmed through pages of Porter’s exploration of the Florida coast.
Porter sailed down the Florida Keys and gave Key West a lukewarm review, deeming the harbor potentially useful, but he was very wary about the coral shoals and cited the need to resupply it by ship from the mainland. Given the tropical heat and small size, he deemed it “impractical for habitation.” Nathan thought the commodore would be quite amazed at how much “habitation” the island currently hosted.
The next pages contained the entry about the visit to what Porter called the chain’s “further keys.” Garden, Bush, Loggerhead. He was not impressed. Barren, too far from shipping lanes to be useful, too far away to even maintain a lighthouse. Nathan imagined Porter offering them back to Spain with a “thanks, but no thanks” note attached. He understood Porter’s assessment. Without the fort, the treeless Garden Key was little more than a sand bar.
Chronologically, the next visit was four years later by Commodore Josiah Tattnall. His logbook was also in the database in its original form. Yellowed pages filled with a flowery script that put Porter’s scrawl to shame. Tattnall’s ship was out this far in the Gulf searching for an overdue vessel, the U.S.S. Hamilton. At the bottom of a page, he described finding the ship and noted the latitude and longitude coordinates. Nathan double-checked the location on a nautical map and it was on the shoals northwest of the fort.
The top of the next page began mid-sentence, and in a much tighter, hurried handwriting. Nathan flipped back to see if he’d missed something, but the PDF pages were in sequence. Along the logbook picture’s left side, he could make out the jagged edge where a page had been torn out.
That was a big deal. Pages missing from the commodore’s logbook, the most official document aboard ship, would have been a serious offense. For the book to survive this way, without any annotation, meant that it was entered as the official record knowing that it was incomplete. This was the nineteenth century equivalent of a redacted memo.
Tattnall’s entry described the death of two survivors of the Hamilton from “irreversible exposure and dehydration” on board his ship. Then there followed a very detailed description of Bush Key and references to maps made by the crew.
The next day’s entry is back in the earlier, open handwriting style. The entries are mundane, though the ship has reset course to bustling New Orleans, a destination further away than the ship’s more isolated St. Augustine base. There is no further mention of the Keys.
Nathan leaned back in his chair. Historians loved to comb through the records in search of an oddity, and this certainly was one. Missing logbook pages and a radical change in course. Something happened out here. Something bad.
A page later, the ship docked in New Orleans and resupplied. Tattnall would have made a beeline for naval headquarters, but any records of what transpired there would be long gone.
The next mention of the Keys was in Tattnall’s official report to Congress. He portrayed Garden and Bush Keys as critical to national defense, an outpost from which to launch patrols to safeguard American shipping in the area. The location Commodore Porter had earlier thought useless was now of the utmost importance.
Something on those missing pages had changed Tattnall’s mind.
Nathan flipped back to the commodore’s logbook. He read the list of supplies brought onboard in New Orleans. Gunpowder. Cannon balls. Fuses. A lot of them. Tattnall’s ship had depleted its magazine while sailing in peacetime? The cash-strapped U.S. government wasn’t in the habit of firing off ammo doing target practice.
A novel, exciting idea popped into Nathan’s head. Perhaps the U.S.S. Hamilton had encountered pirates and ended up on the losing end of combat. Certainly Tatnall would not want to make public the weakness of the Navy to police its waters and would quickly move to have Congress bolster the area’s defenses.
His heart skipped a beat at opening up a new chapter in America’s history. A pirate attack, a government cover-up. He’d need a lot more corroborating evidence, most of it on the mainland, but such a revelation could shed a new light on a part of the nation’s past that often lay forgotten, the years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Such a discovery would make waves in the community of historians.
Fort Jefferson National Park had always been considered a backwater. Pirates would certainly put it on the map. He couldn’t think of anything happening out here more exciting than pirates.
Chapter 10
“How are you doing this morning?” Nathan asked.
He and Kathy were both working around the fort interior, sweeping and straightening, preparing the grounds for the arrival of the ferry full of tourists. Even low in the sky, the sun seemed to have already set the red bricks afire.
Kathy didn’t want to weigh Nathan down with the burden of a full and truthful answer about a sleepless night and how poorly she was handling the kayaker’s death. “Not bad.”
“How about I greet the ferry today? Then walk everyone over to the fort and launch right into the history.”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“Seriously, just today. Decompress and I
’ll send them to you for the nature talk when I’m done.”
The idea was appealing. She wasn’t sure she could summon her best “Welcome-to-Fort-Jefferson” smile right now. She stopped sweeping.
“I’ll take you up on that,” she said. She leaned the broom against a wall. “I’ll go walk the shoreline.”
“I’ll see you in a while then.”
Kathy left the fort and hiked the shoreline, wanting to look down, but reflexively looking up, and out to sea. The sun had fired up the sky’s turquoise shades in place of the deep early morning blue. The waters were empty. Marc Metcalf must have taken his battered little boat elsewhere in his giant crab search. Just as well that he missed the previous day’s storm.
Near a curve in the shoreline, something large lay half-buried in the sand, one pointed end protruding. As the sun rose, its color brightened to a familiar, gut-wrenching yellow. The same color as yesterday’s kayak.
Kathy approached the object. She grabbed the bow and rolled it up out of the sand. It was only the forward third of the boat. Deep gouges raked the sides where the waves had beaten it against the coral reef. The wider end looked as if it had been chopped off clean, like with a meat cleaver. The thick, hard plastic shell’s edge was straight, almost polished. This kayak hadn’t floundered, hadn’t snapped in half. It appeared to have been cut.
She rooted around in the bow. Scraps of heavy fishing net stuck to the inner hull. This kayak had been part of a commercial fishing operation. Why would a woman in street clothes be seventy miles from civilization in a kayak from a fishing trawler? And why hadn’t the trawler been here looking for her?
Kathy pulled the partial kayak further up on the beach. She searched the water and shoreline for the other half, or whatever pieces might have washed ashore. Further down the beach, she spied a sand-encrusted red nylon pack. It looked like the one the woman had tucked into the kayak’s front seat.
She pulled the pack from the sand. Inside were wire cutters, screwdrivers, electrical tape, and an odd assortment of electronics. Who paddled out to sea carrying something like that?
A strange woman too far from land. A sabotaged or sliced kayak filled with all the wrong tools to take into the Gulf of Mexico. A heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach said that something very bad had already started unfolding.
Chapter 11
Nathan stood on the dock, faced the sun, and smiled. He’d given Kathy a little break and was about to greet his first group of visitors. The cloudless sky glowed a stunning blue and bright fish flickered in the water around the dock’s pilings. He adjusted his campaign hat. This was going to be a good day.
His face shifted to a frown. He gave the waistline of his pants a twist. Today’s dip into historical accuracy was a pair of period-accurate underwear. Knee-length woolen drawers with three buttons up the front. There was a good chance underwear made of fire ants would be more comfortable.
The ferry appeared and soon pulled up to the dock. It idled alongside the piling bumpers, then with a blast of reversed engines, went still. Compared to yesterday, it seemed oddly empty. Stranger still, no one disembarked to secure the ship.
One short man jumped from the ferry to the dock. He looked about fifty, with close-cut silver hair and the kind of face that looked hardened by the elements. His wrinkled blue suit stretched to cover a chest and arms that had spent a lot of hours in the gym. A battered sand-colored backpack hung from one shoulder. He locked steel-blue eyes on Nathan. Nathan suddenly felt like a guilty man before a hanging judge.
The ferry growled into reverse and churned the water white as it backed away. The sole passenger strode over to Nathan. Nathan didn’t even think about launching into the welcome speech.
The man flipped open a leather case housing a badge and ID. “I’m Glen Larsson, Department of Homeland Security. You’re Toland?”
“Uh, yeah. What are—?”
Larsson snapped closed his case and walked past Nathan toward the fort. “Where’s West?”
“Walking the island.” Nathan jogged a few steps to catch up with Larsson.
“No campers?”
“No. Whoa, what are you doing here?”
“DHS is temporarily closing the park.” He loosened his tie as he walked. “Damn it’s hot out here.”
“Shouldn’t the Park Service do that?”
“Son, on the real world power ladder, DHS is on the top rung.”
They crossed the moat to the fort entrance.
“I must have missed something,” Nathan said. “You think you can close us because of…?”
“NOAA alerted DHS of an incoming red tide. Does that sound like you should be open?”
Nathan could barely place that NOAA was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He thought they tracked hurricanes. “Red tide?”
Larsson rolled his eyes. “A toxic algae bloom. Kills fish, sickens people. How can you not know what that is? You work at an oceanfront national park.”
Nathan blushed. “I’m really more of a historian.”
“Great. Well, to keep you from becoming part of some very bad future history of this place, the park is closed.”
Nathan felt like he’d just been thrown in deep water. “Sorry. I’ve only been here a day.”
“Well, son, you might have just picked the wrong day to take a job at the beach.”
Larsson entered the fort and went straight for the restored powder magazine, a brick outbuilding on the parade ground’s north side. He dropped the protective rope from the doorway and stepped in. “I’ll use this room as a workspace.”
“Whoa,” Nathan said. “This room’s filled with restored artifacts. We put the barriers up for a reason.”
“I’ll try not to break anything.” Larsson’s voice dripped with condescension. “I’ll need about an hour to get organized and then I’ll meet you and West in the main office.”
As the man only carried a backpack, Nathan wondered what he’d need to get organized. Before he could ask, Larsson slammed the door in his face. From the other side, metal scraped on metal as an old deadbolt locked the door shut.
“First day on the job and I let a stranger close the park,” Nathan whispered to himself. “This will not look good on my annual eval.”
Chapter 12
Kathy looked across the key to see the newly arrived ferry headed back to sea. She got a sinking feeling in her gut. The boat was supposed to stay all day and bring the visitors back in the afternoon. It couldn’t leave them all here.
She headed back to the fort at a jog. The main gate came into view and her sinking feeling dropped down below her knees. There should have been dozens of people milling around the entrance. She saw no one.
She entered the main gate and Nathan stood there, looking perplexed. The fort was empty.
“Where are all the visitors?” she asked.
“We’ve been closed. A dude from Homeland Security was the only one on the ferry. It dropped him and headed back to Key West.”
“And why is Homeland Security here?”
“NOAA sent him to close the park ahead of the red tide.”
“What the hell are you talking about? There’s no red tide. It isn’t even the right season for it. And why would NOAA contact DHS instead of the Park Service?”
“You know, the dude didn’t seem open to any questions.”
“Where is this man?”
“Went in the powder magazine and locked the door.”
Kathy balled her fists so tight they went white. She marched straight to the magazine office. She pushed the door but it jammed against the deadbolt inside. The safety-versus-historical-accuracy debate about leaving it on the restored door had just been resolved in her mind. She banged on the door.
“Hey!” She realized she hadn’t asked the man’s name. “Homeland Security! This is Ranger West.”
There was no answer. She slammed on the door a few more times. Something banged within the room. The deadbolt slid back and the door opened.
A short man in olive drab cargo pants and a tight black T-shirt opened the door. Sweat stippled his forehead under short, gray hair.
“Ranger West? I’m Derek Larsson, DHS.”
“What are you doing in my park? Why did you send the ferry back without checking with me?”
Larsson’s eyes narrowed. “First off, I don’t check with you to do anything, Ranger. I’m so far above your paygrade you’d get a nosebleed stepping into my office. Second, I’m in the United States government’s park because a red tide is about to wash ashore, and frankly, DHS doubts you can handle the situation.”
“There isn’t a problem in my park I can’t handle.”
“DHS disagrees. Especially since two campers disappeared yesterday.”
“They didn’t disappear. And how do you—?”
“We’re DHS. We know everything, including that tourists don’t need to spend the day here breathing in toxic algae spores.”
“Algae doesn’t have spores.”
“Whatever it has, it makes people sick.”
“I’m radioing headquarters,” Kathy said.
“Knock yourself out.”
Larsson’s attitude really pissed her off now. She went to the main office and raised Park Service Headquarters on the radio. She finally got through to Fran Nelson, the regional director.
“Fran, I’ve got someone out here from DHS telling me the park is closed.”
“We just sent out a press release and updated the website to that effect. Sorry you were brought into the loop late, it’s all very last minute, an Agent Larsson was in early this morning. NOAA had a red tide coming your way and we can’t risk visitor exposure.”
Kathy was shocked that such a bullying ass could be legitimate. “Wow. But it’s not red tide season.”
“Explain that to NOAA. And I’m told that you and Toland should minimize exposure. Stay indoors, away from the beach until NOAA gives the all clear. Do whatever the agent there recommends to stay safe. Headquarters out.”
Claws Page 4
