Betrayed in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  Angelina felt a sharp pain bite deep into her side and she collapsed, taking cover and continuing to fire round after round towards the thugs on the center-console. Aside from the guy Angelina had sent to the deck, they all grabbed weapons that only moments earlier had been hidden from view. The big one with the backward hat and sunglasses suddenly leapt onto the Baia, taking cover from Angelina’s assault by ducking down on the swim platform.

  Jack hit the throttles, causing the Baia’s engines to roar ferociously to life and propel them forward like a sprint boat after the starting pistol fires. The nylon line connecting the Baia to the small center-console went taut, causing the smaller boat to flip onto its side, knocking the three thugs into the water.

  Giving Frank the wheel, Jack grabbed his dive knife from his leg, leaned over onto the sunbed, and sliced the line, allowing the Baia to accelerate without having to drag the flipped-over center-console. As the small boat tumbled over a few times in their wake, Jack dropped back down to the deck and reached for his compact Desert Eagle.

  Angelina struggled to sit up. She gripped her Glock as tight as she could and tried to raise and aim it at the thug crouching aft of the transom. But its metal frame suddenly felt impossibly heavy in her hand.

  What the hell was in that thing? She thought as she glanced down at the empty tranquilizer dart rocking innocently on the deck beside her. She’d experienced many kinds of sedatives before in her life, but this was something completely different. Something stronger and faster-acting than anything she’d felt before.

  Her vision went and her muscles seemed to give up. She tried to keep her Glock raised but was unable to as her head began to drop back. Before Jack could draw his Desert Eagle, the thug, peeking over the transom and realizing that Angelina was in bad shape, lunged towards her. She tried to take him out, tried to muster every ounce of strength she had to raise her Glock, but couldn’t. Just as she almost had the thug in her sights, the sinewy muscled man kicked her Glock free, causing it to rattle over the fiberglass and disappear into the white bubby torrent of the Baia’s wake.

  Angelina could feel her consciousness fading away. She could barely keep her eyes open as her vision blurred and she lost control of her body.

  With Angelina down, the thug turned his gaze to Jack who’d just gripped his Desert Eagle. Jack didn’t hesitate. Before the thug could take a shot at him, he fired two rounds into the guy’s chest, causing him to drop his weapon and fall backward. His body hit the deck with a loud thud and he tumbled down the steps, his arms getting caught on the edge of the transom and his left leg dangling over the swim platform into the rushing water.

  Jack knelt down to see if Angelina was alright, then seeing the thug try to stand, he tilted his head up towards Frank.

  “Keep our speed up!” he shouted as he stood and lunged for the downed thug.

  As the bloodied man tried to stand, Jack hit him with a strong front kick, sending his body flying over the stern and splashing into the water.

  “Jack!” Frank yelled as the thug’s body vanished under the Baia’s wake.

  Turning around, Jack’s eyes grew wide as he realized that the speeding go-fast boat was heading straight towards the starboard bow. His heart pounded, and he knew that the two boats would collide in only a fraction of a second. With no time to turn or change speed, Jack hit the deck beside the sunbed.

  “Brace!” Frank yelled as he forced the throttles to neutral, then frantically pulled Angelina’s unconscious body farther forward. A moment later, the speeding boat slammed into the Baia’s hull with an ear-rattling crash.

  The Baia jerked violently, tilting to port in a sixty-degree list in the blink of an eye and nearly keeling over completely. The sudden shock of force caused Frank to slam against the base of the dinette and tumble onto the cushioned seat. He’d kept his body over Angelina’s, causing him to take on the brunt of the damage. Jack, being farther aft, was thrown out of the Baia completely, his body launching over the port side and splashing into the water.

  Frank felt a surge of pain radiate from his back and from the side of his head, which had crashed into the port windscreen. His vision was hazy for a few seconds, and he heard a ringing in his ears. The boat’s momentum kept it cruising fast, and the force from the impact caused it to heel drastically back and forth.

  Looking back, Frank saw no sign of Jack swimming on the surface behind them. He saw only the boat that had collided with them and watched as it cruised towards the Baia with men standing on the deck and aiming rifles in their direction.

  THIRTY

  The glow of the distant sun faded away through a patch of fog on the western horizon. Felix, Cesar, and myself were forced at gunpoint to climb aboard an inflatable skiff that had been lowered into the water at the stern of the Yellow Rose. The yacht was moored just a few hundred feet off the northwestern shore of Lignumvitae Key, and as we settled onto the wooden bench seats, one of Jefe’s thugs started up the ninety-horsepower Yamaha and motored us towards the shore.

  There were eight thugs in all including Jefe, who sat facing the three of us on the bow. He kept his revolver in his right hand like it was glued there, even though all three of us had our hands handcuffed behind our backs.

  The vast majority of the island’s two and a half miles of beachfront are covered with rocks and jungle that grows dense right up to the water line. It makes access to the island via boat difficult, and it’s why a two-hundred-foot dock was constructed on the eastern shore. After cruising south for a few minutes, Jefe pointed out a small patch of white sandy beach inside a narrow inlet. It was no more than thirty feet across, but it would be plenty wide enough to accommodate the narrow dark-hulled thirty-two-foot RHIB.

  A RHIB, or rigid-hull inflatable boat, is a lightweight but high-performance boat with a solid hull and pontoons around the edges that form the gunwale. They’re perfect for transporting large groups quickly and in shallow waters, and I’d piloted them many times during my time in the Navy.

  The pilot brought us right up to the beach, the fiberglass hull scraping against the sand as the boat slowed to a stop. He killed the engine and propped it up, protecting the prop from the shallow water beneath us. Two thugs jumped out of the boat, grabbed hold of the bow, and pulled us up onto the beach. Jefe moved with the agility of a much younger man as he climbed over the starboard pontoon and jumped onto the sand.

  “Everybody off!” he said in a loud and authoritative voice. “And haul all of the gear onto the beach.”

  The three of us did as he said, and the others went to work unloading the piles of shovels, metal detectors, and picks. Jefe moved inland into the jungle alongside two of his men and gave the area ahead of us a quick survey before returning to the group.

  Grabbing the artifact from one of his men, he held it up to the dying light and read the inscription. Then he grabbed a handheld GPS and coordinated our location relative to the center of the island.

  “This way,” he said, motioning forward.

  He ordered everyone to leave most of the gear behind, saying that he’d have us backtrack later, once we’d reached the dig site. For the first quarter mile or so, we trekked along what looked like a rarely used footpath that cut through the island from east to west. The sandy pathway with patches of overgrown brush was much easier to navigate than the thick jungle that covered most of the island.

  After five minutes, Jefe pointed north and we moved into the dense jungle. Four of Jefe’s men led the way with machetes, hacking away many of the smaller branches and making it easier to navigate. It was difficult work. Lignum vitae is one of the densest hardwoods in the world. It’s so hard, in fact, that it was once used to make knives and is one of the few kinds of wood dense enough to sink in water.

  The men swung their machetes through the air, sweat dripping down the backs of their necks, as we pressed forward. Part of me cringed with every swing. Lignumvitae Key is a popular state park in the Keys, known for its lush botanical landscape that has remained re
latively untouched for centuries. And there they were, cutting and breaking their way through its heart with reckless abandon.

  Jefe raised his right hand in the air and told everyone to stop. He peered down into the GPS for a few seconds, then handed it to one of his thugs. After receiving an approving nod from the other guy, Jefe proclaimed that we’d reached the center.

  “So now we dig?” one of the big guys wielding a machete said.

  “Not yet,” Jefe replied. He reached into a backpack and pulled out the artifact we’d found underwater in the old chest a few days earlier. Holding the object out in front of him, he read the words aloud. “Thirty paces north of the heart. Ten fathoms down.”

  After a moment’s pause, the big guy wielding a machete beside Jefe said, “What’s the exact length of a pace?”

  Jefe turned back and stared daggers at me, looking for an answer.

  I sighed. I knew as well as Cesar and Felix did that helping them was our best chance at survival. The longer it took, the higher the probability they’d scratch the whole thing, riddle us with bullets, and feed us to the sharks.

  “There isn’t one,” I said, shaking my head. “It depends on whose pace it is. But it’s generally considered to be thirty inches or two and a half feet.” Then I went quiet for a moment, my mind remembering a few documents I’d read. “By all accounts, Captain Shadow was above average height. Somewhere around six feet. So his pace would have probably been slightly longer, say closer three feet.”

  Jefe nodded, tapped the touchscreen of his GPS, and said, “So ninety feet north of the island’s heart.” Then he looked forward, held the device up in front of him to keep us on a perfectly straight path, and added, “Let’s move.”

  Within minutes we reached the place, and like most of the island, it was covered in dense trees. We set what gear we’d brought with us down amongst the dirt, roots, and bushes, then headed back the way we’d come to grab more of the gear. As we went back for our second trip, I heard the sound of a pair of good-sized outboard engines puttering close by. The sounds were heading north along the island’s western shore. Gazing out through the thick brush, I saw a good-sized dark-hulled go-fast boat with silver streaks. I could just make out a group of people aboard, their heads barely visible over the starboard gunwale and windscreen.

  I watched it for a few moments as I wrapped my arms around a handful of shovels tied together and realized that it was heading for the Yellow Rose, whose stern was just barely visible.

  “Hurry up!” one of Jefe’s men barked as he shoved me forcefully.

  I gritted my teeth as every morsel of my being wanted me to tell him to shove it and tackle to the ground. But what then? I could probably get ahold of his gun in a second or two, but then I’d still be bound, and there were seven other thugs ready to shoot me down at a moment’s notice. No, the only way I’d be getting out of this alive was if I played their game, at least until the opportunity to strike revealed itself.

  Less than an hour after finding the dig site, we had much of the area surrounding it cleared. Using saws, we cut away the trees, then broke ground with the picks, cutting, ripping out, and clearing away the strong and deep roots. A second boatful of men joined us from the yacht as we broke ground, digging into the dirt and rocks with our shovels.

  The work was hard, long, and arduous. Only a few minutes passed before a thin layer of sweat appeared on my brow that always came right back no matter how many times I wiped it away. With nightfall came a never-ending army of tropical mosquitoes, hungry to stick their thin needles into any exposed skin and suck our blood. Not long after they appeared from the thick jungle surrounding us, Jefe and his men created a perimeter of tiki torches around our position, deterring most of the savage insects from coming close. They also set up nearly silent running generators and work lights, allowing us to see what we were doing as we dug deeper into the earth.

  The hole was roughly ten feet across, allowing a handful of us to climb down and dig while the rest moved dirt on the surface or took a much-needed rest filled with intermittent gulps of water. The going was painstakingly slow in the moment, but as the hours wore on, our progress became more and more apparent. By midnight, we’d reached five feet down on all corners of the hole.

  Less than an hour later, Jefe left, leaving the three of us under the watchful eyes of twelve of his thugs. The night was quiet and calm, the only sounds being the rhythmic crashing of our pointed shovels through the dirt, followed by a cascading thud as we threw the pile up onto the flat ground above. A few of the thugs took intermittent puffs of their Marlboros. They complained about the work, feeling the aches and pains of the long hours of manual labor take over. I was feeling it too and wished that we had an excavator.

  By four in the morning, we’d reached ten feet and had to use a long metal ladder to climb in and out. After taking a break and heading back down into the hole, I struck my shovel into the dirt near the middle, expecting it to slice through the soil. But it didn’t. The blade pushed only a few inches down. I raised it back up, then struck down again, this time with more force. But again the shovel stopped, and this time I heard the distinct ting of the cutting edge colliding with a piece of rock.

  I’d encountered a few large rocks over the course of the evening, so I had no expectations as I dropped down and dug through the dirt. But after brushing the soil away, I saw that there was something different about that rock. It was flat, unnaturally flat, and was so wide that even after digging for a few minutes I couldn’t find the end of it.

  “I think I have something here,” I said, my breathing labored as I continued to dig around the rock.

  Soon I reached the edges of a flat, square piece of stone and found that there were more of them in place beside it.

  “Holy shit!” Cesar said as he leaned over me. “That sure as hell looks man-made.”

  “It has to be,” one of Jefe’s thugs said as he motioned for more men to come over and help dig the area out. He knelt down, grazing a hand over the stone, and added, “Doesn’t feel like limestone.”

  “It’s flagstone,” a voice said from the top of the hole.

  It was a familiar voice. A voice I knew well but had never expected to hear at that moment. For a second, I thought my tired mind was playing tricks on me. We’d been up all night, working tirelessly without any sleep, and I knew what kind of effect that could have on your mind. It can play with you, make you feel like you’re hearing and seeing things that aren’t actually real. But as I turned my aching body around, I saw him standing high above, near the rim of the hole.

  “Frank?” I said, squinting my eyes to get a better look.

  He nodded.

  “Professor Murchison was snooping around near the island yesterday,” Jefe said in a sinister voice. “I was going to just kill him but decided that we could use a mind like his in this endeavor.”

  My heart sank in my chest as I looked up, still unable to believe what I was seeing. He must have been looking for me and been captured, and I couldn’t help but wonder who else he’d been with, even though deep down I already knew the answer to that.

  “Are you alright?” I asked, noticing that he had a cut on his forehead.

  “Never better,” he said.

  “Oh, the professor here is fine,” Jefe said, raising his voice and patting Frank on the back. “It’s Miss Fox who I would be more concerned about.”

  “Where is she?” I said, my voice loud and powerful.

  I looked up at Jefe, staring at him and narrowing my gaze like a carnivore eyeing its prey. For a moment, I forgot about the situation. I forgot about myself entirely and instinctively took a step closer to the thug beside me and the handgun holstered to his right leg.

  Jefe, seeing that he’d struck a chord, tried to pour salt in the wound by shooting back an evil smile followed by a coarse laugh. I didn’t hesitate to reply with an action of my own. In a flash of movement, I reached to the thug beside me and snatched the tan Beretta from his holster.
As he tried to grab me I swung my right leg, slamming it hard into his calf muscles and causing his lower body to buckle and collapse under his weight.

  A fraction of a second later, I shifted my aim up towards Jefe. His eyes grew wide and his arrogant smile left only for a moment. Just as I was about to press the trigger and send hot lead surging through his arrogant face, I heard a loud explosion followed by a slamming pain as a high-velocity beanbag freight-trained into my left pectoral muscle. It hit my body with such force that it knocked the air out of my lungs and caused my body to spin. It was a relentless and jarring pain that radiated across my chest and almost knocked me to the ground.

  Before I could regain myself and take aim a second time, three thugs grabbed hold of me and forced me sternly into the dirt. I punched one of them across the face, breaking his nose as they slammed their knees into my body and ripped the Beretta out of my hands. With hands still cuffed and my face shoved in the dirt, I struggled to breathe as the pain continued, then cursed at the thugs holding me down.

  As I went quiet, I heard only the thundering of my heart beating deep in my chest. As it subsided, I heard a slow and ominous clap echo down from the top of the hole. Through a dirty haze, I saw Jefe staring down at me. He’d stepped closer into the light, allowing me to see his black slacks, rolled-up dress shirt, and the half-burned cigarette sticking out of his mouth.

  “A brave attempt, Mr. Dodge,” he said, giving one final clap. “But too rash. If you had let me finish, I was about to tell you that she’s still alive. For now, anyway.” Then he looked up, raising his voice as he addressed Felix and Cesar. “But if you don’t find this treasure soon, the only thing you will have accomplished this evening will be digging your own graves.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  As the pain in my chest slowly abated, I labored to my feet with the barrels of three different guns aimed at me. I chastised myself for acting out based on my emotions and for my inability to practice self-control. For years I’d learned to take charge of such impulses, to push them aside and to listen to the voice of reason instead. I guess the days of being a captive, the long night of work, and the mention of Angelina had combined to tip me over the edge. I found myself caring and worrying about her like I’d never done for anyone before, even though I knew that she could take care of herself as well as anybody alive.