by Matthew Rief
The mysterious center-console continued its frenzied escape into the darkness of the night, its engines growing quieter and quieter as it headed north into the Gulf. I turned my attention back towards the Baia.
“Are you guys okay?” I asked as I kicked my way behind the now-mostly-deflated dinghy towards the swim platform.
A second later, Ange said, “Never better.” She stepped down, then, holding out a hand to help me up the ladder, she looked me over and added, “Please don’t tell me you got shot.”
I shook my head as we locked hands, then climbed up onto the swim platform beside her.
“A few of those rounds came close,” I said. “But you know how much I hate to disappoint you.”
Jack moved over to the transom and handed me a folded towel. He was still gripping his Desert Eagle in his left hand, and his eyes were wider than the horizon on a cloudless afternoon out on open water.
“Who the hell was that, bro?” Jack asked, turning to stare off in the direction where the boat had disappeared.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Then, toweling off my dark brown hair, I added, “But we should radio the Coast Guard and inform them where they were heading. Tell them to keep an eye out for them.”
Jack nodded, then turned on his heels and strode for the radio attached to a fiberglass panel beside the helm. While he called in a report, I finished drying off and looked over at the thug lying motionless in the barely floating dinghy, his chest riddled with bullet holes.
“Damn,” I said, staring down at him. “These guys don’t like to leave loose ends.”
“Yeah, well, they failed, then,” Ange said, motioning towards the other thug I’d taken out, who was still sleeping like a baby on the deck beside the dinette.
After toweling off, I stepped up into the cockpit and we zip-tied the thug’s wrists and ankles together. Jack finished his call and informed us that the Coast Guard was sending out a few patrol boats from the station in Marathon to look for the attackers.
After a brief moment of silence, Ange said, “You think those guys were after the pirate ship?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think so. I mean, we just learned about it ourselves. And aside from Frank and Pete, there’s nobody that knows we’re even looking for something.”
Ange gasped, rose to her feet and took a step back.
“Logan,” she said, pointing at the unconscious thug on the deck.
“What is it?” I asked, wondering what could possibly cause her to act like she was.
“Look,” she added and I realized that she wasn’t just pointing at the thug. She was pointing at his right hand.
I stepped towards the snoozing thug, bent down and looked at his right hand. Just as I was about to ask Ange what the hell she was talking about, I saw something that made my mouth drop open. The guy had a tattoo of two black snakes slithering around his wrist.
Ange moved beside me and said, “Black Venom.”
ELEVEN
It was just past two in the morning when Black Venom’s boat disappeared in the night and the three of us were left with two thugs, one dead and one unconscious, and a whole lot of questions. It had been nearly a year since I’d helped take Black Venom down and kept them from getting their hands on the Aztec treasure. Why had the powerful Mexican drug cartel finally decided to come back to the Keys? And, more importantly, how many more had they sent?
Those questions alone caused us to station a watch for the rest of the night, starting with me from 0230 until 0330. I sat on the cushioned half-moon seat around the dinette and took intermittent trips up onto the bow to have a look around the horizon with my night vision monocular.
Slung over my chest, I had my MP5N submachine gun, to go along with my Sig holstered to my side. Part of me wanted them to come back as I peered through the scope at the miles of dark ocean and distant islands surrounding us. I would be more prepared this time around.
Leaning back into the seat, I grabbed my white Rubio Charters mug, which I’d recently filled with a fresh brew of Colombian medium roast and took a few sips. The hot liquid felt good, and the caffeine boost felt even better. It had been a long day out on the water, and I’d been looking forward to a long and peaceful night’s sleep before those bozos had decided to show up.
Setting the mug back on the dinette, I glanced down at the guy I’d shot, who was still unconscious, his limbs zip-tied, and lying on his side on the deck beside the sunbed. We’d used my big first aid kit to stop the bleeding, which I’ll admit was more for the sake of my fiberglass deck, which I didn’t want to get blood all over. But at least the guy wouldn’t die. Who knew? Maybe the authorities would be able to get some information out of him. I highly doubted it, though. The other thug, who’d been less lucky during the encounter, lay beside him, his bullet riddled corpse covered with an old bedsheet.
At 0326, the salon door opened and Ange stepped out. She was barefoot and wearing a pair of black workout shorts and a gray tee shirt.
She smiled at me, then took a quick look around the horizon.
“Any more sign of Black Venom?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” I replied. “These guys pissed me off, and I wouldn’t mind a little more ass-kicking tonight.”
She laughed and plopped down beside me. “Well, if they do come back, I’ll be sure to save a few for you.”
I smiled. “You’re the best.” Then I kissed her on the cheek and slid my mug across the table, stopping it right in front of her.
As I rose to my feet, she said, “I only drink black, you know that.”
“It is black,” I replied. “I just filled it.” Then I winked at her and added, “You look sexy in that shirt, by the way.”
She gave a dramatic blush, then whipped her hair to the back of her head. I grinned as I stepped down into the salon, closing the door behind me.
At 0530, I awoke to the sound of my phone playing Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville.” Opening my eyes, I saw Ange curled up beside me. Somehow she’d managed to crawl into bed without me even noticing, which made me wonder if living in the Keys for so long had made me soft. Or maybe Ange was just that quiet. Thinking about the events of the previous night, how I’d awoken and taken down the two thugs sneaking onto my boat, I knew that the latter was most likely the case.
Ange and I both crawled out of bed together and, after seeing that Jack had nothing new to share, we took a nice hot shower and prepared a small breakfast. I scrambled up a few eggs to go along with toast, slices of mango, and orange juice. As we ate out around the dinette, I watched our captive as he sat propped against the starboard gunwale, staring at the deck. His face was bandaged and still a little bloody from when I’d kicked him in the face, and his shoulder had a few layers of white bandages wrapped around it tightly.
“Hasn’t said a word,” Jack said. “He woke up around four, looked confused as hell, then just sat against the side of the boat. Been sitting like that ever since.”
“Charles said he’d meet us at Boca Chica Marina this morning to take him off our hands,” I said, referring to the conversation I’d had with Key West’s sheriff earlier that morning.
Ange glanced over at the radio beside the helm and added, “And that thing hasn’t made a sound for hours. Which means that they probably got away.”
When we finished eating, I pulled up the anchor from the cockpit using the windlass, then started up the engines. The sun was just rising over the eastern tip of Vaca Key and the Upper Keys beyond as I eased the throttles forward, cruising us out of the shallow bay.
I put us on a course due southwest, and we flew across the calm morning waters of Florida Bay. Looking off the starboard bow, I could see our search area in the distance and wished this little hiccup hadn’t taken place. What with Jack finding the cannonball, I felt like we were close. Just a few more days of searching, and I was confident that the Crescent, and perhaps even its treasure as well, could be ours.
I glanced back at our captive, who was sti
ll sitting motionless, his body tied off to a pair of starboard cleats. Someone always has to throw a wrench in the plans, I thought, shaking my head as I turned back to look through the windscreen.
I kept the throttles at the Baia’s cruising speed of thirty knots as I piloted her under the Seven Mile Bridge, passing right between the small Pigeon Key to the west and Boot Key to the east. Once past the bridge, I turned to starboard, heading west and cruising within a few hundred feet of the tiny Molasses Keys.
My mind instantly shot back to that day three months earlier when I’d crashed into it while taking down Pedro Campos and his small drug-smuggling operation. He and his twin brother, Hector, were both massive guys who’d been former MMA fighters before deciding to break bad. My dad had been working undercover during one of their operations to try and take them down when they’d grown suspicious and murdered him. That had been a big mistake on their part, and once I’d learned about it, I had gone on a mission to avenge his death and brought both of them, and their operation, to ruin.
I cruised through the Middle Keys and into the Lower Keys, eventually reaching Naval Air Station Key West, where I soon eased back on the throttles and turned into Boca Chica Channel. I pulled the Baia slowly right up to the day-mooring section of Boca Chica Marina and spotted two police cars and an ambulance parked along the waterfront on Midway Avenue. As I killed the engines, I heard a massive Boeing C-17 as it took off from the air base, its jet engines roaring as it flew just overhead.
Glancing over towards the marina office, I saw Sheriff Wilkes approaching from the direction of the police vehicles alongside three other officers.
“Finally we can get rid of this guy,” Ange said as the three of us forced the thug to his feet. “I’m getting sick of looking at him.”
Even as we moved him over to the port gunwale, he didn’t say a word or even move his eyes in the slightest. He looked like a lethargic zombie, and I was happy to get rid of him as well.
Sheriff Charles Wilkes was an imposing black man who was just slightly shorter than my six foot two inches. He had a lean muscular frame and looked and moved much younger than his forty-nine years. He walked right up to the port side of the Baia, eyeing both us and the guy we were holding through a pair of dark Oakley sunglasses for a few seconds.
“He said anything yet?” Charles asked in his low and powerful voice.
“Not a peep ,” I said.
The three of us lifted him up over the gunwale, then Charles and the other officers grabbed hold of him. Officer Kincaid cuffed the thug, then cut the zip tie holding his ankles together.
“Jeez, Logan,” Charles said, looking the thug over from head to toe. “He looks beat to hell. It’s no wonder he hasn’t said a word. Maybe he can’t.”
“Hey, he got off easy,” I said sternly, motioning towards the corpse on the deck hidden beneath the sheet. After lifting the dead body up and handing it to two other officers, I added, “If any of his buddies board my boat again, I won’t be aiming for their shoulders.”
Charles thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough. We’ll have the body sent over to the Monroe County Medical Examiner. We’re taking the other guy to the station in Key West, then he’ll be taken up north. I’m guessing you’re aware that the Coast Guard didn’t find any sign of the boat anywhere this morning.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I figured as much when we didn’t hear anything.”
Charles stood beside the Baia for a moment while the other officers ushered the thug over to one of the police cars and carried the body into an ambulance.
Charles turned to me and sighed. “Look, I don’t have to tell you what kind of shit could come out of all this. The last thing I want is for my home to turn into a Mexican cartel war zone.”
“Me too,” I said. “But I’m guessing these guys want their revenge for what happened last year. And like I said, if they come near me, I’m going to defend myself with whatever means necessary.”
Charles nodded, then looked over at the officers as they put the thug into the backseat of one of the cars.
“We’ll be in touch, alright?” he said before nodding to each of us. “You guys just be careful.”
“You too, Charles,” I said, and he turned and headed towards the two police cars.
We watched as he climbed into the lead car, and they pulled out onto the road, heading towards US-1.
We filled up the Baia’s tank, and as I was about to start up the engines, Jack told me to hold up.
“You guys hungry?” he said, motioning his head towards Navigator’s Bar and Grill, which sat just a short walk down the beach.
“I thought they didn’t open for a few more hours,” I said, hoping to be wrong, since Navigator’s served some of the best breakfast bowls I’d ever had.
Jack smiled. “I know the owners, bro. I eat here all the time, and I’m sure they won’t mind the company.”
I glanced over at Ange as she said, “I’m starving. I guess that breakfast we had just didn’t cut it.”
I slid my keys out of the ignition, locked up the Baia, then turned on the security system before hopping onto the dock beside Ange and Jack. Jack hadn’t been kidding about being friends with the owners. Not only were they happy to serve us an hour before they opened, but they called out Jack’s name gave him a big hug just seconds after he walked in the door.
We sat around an outside table under the shade of a green umbrella and a few palm trees, our bare feet in the sand. We had a beautiful view of the mooring sailboats, along with the busy channel beyond. We ate a variety of delicious food, including one of their specialty breakfast bowls, a pulled pork sandwich, and fresh fish tacos with mango sauce.
While eating, we talked about everything from the cannonball Jack had lifted from beneath the waves to what we were going to do about Black Venom.
“If I know anything about Black Venom,” I said, sipping on a glass of fresh cantaloupe juice, “we sure as hell haven’t seen the last of them.”
TWELVE
The two men stood across from one another beside the large dining room table of the yacht.
“What the fuck happened?” Felix Callejo said, his voice consumed with rage.
“He… he killed one of our men,” the younger cartel said to his superior. He tried to speak confidently, but the degree to which they’d just messed up weighed heavily on him. He was big and muscular but stood hunched over slightly. “And they took Luis.”
“How did you let that happen?” Felix fired back, his eyes fuming and his jaw clenched. He wasn’t physically imposing. At roughly five and a half feet tall and one hundred and sixty pounds, he was much smaller than the man he was berating. But after decades of criminal activity and dealing with the most hardened criminals in the world, Felix Callejo had an aura about him that could make even the toughest thugs feel a foot tall.
Antonio stood still for a moment. He wanted to choose his words carefully. Too many times, he’d witnessed fellow cartel members unable to hold their tongues or control their wits when faced with an angry higher-up. And that never ended well.
“He’s highly trained,” Antonio said, his words stumbling awkwardly out of his mouth.
“I know that he’s trained,” Felix fired back. He was all rage. His eyebrows pulled down and together, his lips narrowed and he’d stepped close to Luis, allowing the younger man to see the anger deep within his green eyes. “We told everyone involved in this operation that from the beginning. Are you telling me that you weren’t listening, or are you trying to tell me something that I already know?” He looked at the younger man expectantly. “Well? Which is it?”
By way of an answer, all Antonio could do was look at his hands and try to quell his imagination as it ran wild, thinking about what Felix was likely to do to him. In his mind, he could see the faces of men who he himself had thrown overboard with chains tied around their ankles at the order of Black Venom higher-ups. He would be joining them soon, he convinced himself, and it caused a
layer of sweat to form on his brow.
Felix shook his head and barked, “Pathetic. You know very well the consequences of failing so miserably under my command. Your actions today have put our target on alert. And now one of my men is in their hands. Do you even fucking realize how much harder you’ve made this?”
Just as it seemed that Felix’s booming voice couldn’t get any more pissed off, a sound broke the uncomfortable silence.
Felix grunted, reached into his pocket, then pulled out his cell phone. He gazed at the screen momentarily, his face shifting from pissed off to irritated.
Glancing up at Antonio, he said, “We’re not finished here.”
Felix then moved across the room, motioning for the two big guys standing stoically at the back of the lounge to follow him. Moving through a set of metal doors, he entered the most secure room on the entire yacht and told his henchmen to bring the call up on the seventy-inch plasma screen that was mounted to the aft-facing wall. The rest of the room was lined with floor-to-ceiling tinted windows that offered an incredible bird’s-eye view of the ocean below and the deep blue horizon beyond.
The two guys did as Felix asked, and a few seconds later, the call connected and the image of an old, dark-skinned man with gray hair appeared on the screen. He had a stone-cold expression plastered across his face. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and sitting on a black leather couch, with a large window revealing a thick green jungle behind him.
“What is the status of Logan Dodge?” the old man asked in Spanish, getting straight to the point. He had a silky-smooth voice and stared unblinking into the screen, right at Felix.
Felix stared back at his boss, remaining as calm and confident as he could. He knew the leader of Black Venom well and knew that if he backed down even the slightest, the old man would tear him apart.