Wood's Tempest

by Steven Becker

  Mac could hear the regret in his voice. “No worries.”

  “Forget about the charters and Ruth—if the cylinder was good, I’d fly into a cat five in a heartbeat if you have good intel.”

  “Get your engine fixed and let’s connect after the storm,” Mac said, extending his hand.

  Buck grabbed it. “You’re on.”

  For the first time in a week, Mac had no immediate agenda. He’d spent several days up in Miami with Kurt Hunter finding the Sumnter, then came the start of stone crab season, and now the hurricane. With a small window before Ruth made landfall, he decided to have a look for himself.

  Mac walked out the gate of the FBO, past the trailer that housed the seaplane operation that flew to the Dry Tortugas, and crossed the parking lot to the main terminal. Once there, he found a cab and instructed the pink-haired driver to take him to the marina.

  The air conditioning was a relief, but the traffic looked like it had gotten worse. The driver, thankfully, stayed to herself, and Mac, grateful for the cool air and quiet, opened the Google Earth app on his phone and scrolled to the Quicksands. The undulating bottom of the Quicksands rendered marine charts close to worthless in the area. Their only real use was to point out a few channels that crisscrossed the shallow flats. As the name implied, the shifting sands ate boats. For now, the satellite view was the best for his purposes, but he also knew that when whatever Gross had been looking for sank, the bottom was likely very different than it was now. Mac knew he was just dreaming. Without even knowing what wreck he was searching for, finding that single sign of man in a hundred square miles of shifting sand had worse odds than an injured pinfish eluding a tarpon.

  Mac had been there before. When the lobstering was slow in his usual spots around Marathon, he knew he could count on finding them west of the Marquesas. It was a ways to go, but he’d never come back empty-handed. With the center console fueled up, he had the range to make the trip. What worried him was he had no specific coordinates; it would have been helpful to have Buck fly him over the area. From an easy cruising altitude of five hundred feet, he would have been able to see the bottom.

  The lure of the water and what might lie beneath it was strong, but Mac knew it was a fool’s errand to run out there without a real destination. The news was on the cab’s radio, and he heard that the public safety agencies all had plans to shut down soon. Getting stuck out in a squall was risky, never mind a full-fledged cat-five hurricane. There was another way, though.

  The traffic southbound on Roosevelt had been light, but once the driver turned right to cut across the island, they came to a standstill. “Any way around this?”

  “Just been here a month, man,” the young woman said.

  Mac recognized a Texas accent. With nothing to do except wait for the traffic to thin, he suggested a route around the cemetery. It was longer, but all side streets.

  “You have plans for the hurricane?” she asked.

  Mac wondered if she knew how serious this could be. “Got my boat. I’ll see how Ruth tracks over the next day and decide.” He paused for a second and then, uncharacteristically, asked if she had a plan.

  “I’ve got some friends. We got candles, water, and a case of rum.” She laughed.

  He thought for a minute before responding. “You really ought to evacuate.”

  “Living the dream one day at a time doesn’t include evacuation.”

  The idyllic Key West attitude was going to get people killed. “Look, take my number, at least. If you get scared, call.” He cringed when he said it, but there was something about the lost expression on the girl’s face that made him feel something. There was a good chance she would delete it, thinking he was a creeper or something, but she called out the numbers as he dialed. Once the call went through, he disconnected, but they both had each other’s number in their recent call logs.

  They were passing through a residential area now, and Mac watched as people finished boarding up their homes and packing their cars.

  US 1 was two lanes through much of the hundred-twenty-mile stretch to Florida City. If it wasn’t already, it would soon be a parking lot. Ditto for the three main routes out of Miami. His skin was already crawling. It would be a relief to get out of the car and back aboard his boat. Rough seas he could deal with; traffic was another story.

  “What’s your name?” Mac asked the girl.

  “Sonya, but they call me Sonar,” she said, turning around to face him.

  The smile was genuine. “Look, Sonar. You and your friends need to get out of here. Please.”

  “If it’ll keep you happy, we’ll look at the weather in the morning. Tonight, there’s a bunch of hurricane parties, first time for me. It’s going to be awesome.”

  Mac knew the type. After running from their boring lives to live the dream, they would be all in for a while, then the veneer would start to crack. Most would do all they could to convince themselves it was still paradise, but for many, malaise set in. Mel had unearthed a little-known fact that the suicide rate in Monroe County was twice as high as the state average, and just behind Las Vegas for the top spot in the country.

  They reached the dock, and he paid the fare, leaving a tip that would buy enough gas to reach the Georgia border. “Please think about it,” he said, as he left the cab.

  Mac stood by the statue of the fisherman in the turnaround between Turtle Kraals and the Half Shell Oyster Bar. His stomach growled, and he looked through the open shutters of the Half Shell. Normally their happy hour was busy, but the place was less than half-full. Wanting some food and an update on Ruth, he went in and sat at the bar.

  Sipping a beer and waiting for his steak sandwich, he watched the big screens behind the bar. Usually, nonstop sports played on them, but today it was all weather. Two Miami stations and the Weather Channel were featured. All three showed the cone of death. One of the local stations switched to an animated graphic showing what a ten-foot storm surge could do to a house. The other showed an aerial view of a congested highway. The northbound lanes were at a dead stop.

  The Weather Channel interested him more, and he asked the bartender to turn up the sound. No matter your reason for being on the water, if you were going to make your living on it, you needed to learn how to read weather. That meant more than clouds and swells, but the technical stuff as well. Mac studied the charts on the screen, making his own projections about the path of the storm. It was now brushing the eastern tip of Cuba; his prediction that the Keys were going to be dead center matched that of the experts. The only question was exactly where the eye would cross. A storm this size had a forty-mile eye. That was where you didn’t want to be. There would be death and destruction far outside the center, but the eye wall brought devastation. He squinted at the TV. His guess was Big Pine Key. His and Jesse McDermitt’s islands were just to the northeast, near dead center of the projected path.

  Eleven

  From the shadow moving across the cabin, Bugarra guessed Travis was aboard and, with his deckhand at large, he was probably alone. The Rat had confirmed that Melanie Woodson had flown out earlier today. Standing in the darkness on the dock across from Travis’s boat, Bugarra continued to watch, but it was getting late. He was about to give up when he saw the light go out.

  Most endeavors required patience. To be successful in the treasure and salvage business, it was especially necessary. Besides the inherent difficulty of locating a centuries-old wreck lost on the ocean floor, there were many other obstacles. Weather, permits, and equipment malfunctions were just the short list. The successful salvors spent as much time filling out paperwork, researching, and repairing as searching. If you were after a Spanish galleon, it would be necessary to spend as much time in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville as underwater.

  Bugarra had people for that—or, actually, he had people to steal that. He knew finding a five-hundred-year-old galleon was close to impossible. Dealing with the governments of the countries in whose waters it might lie only added to
the difficulty—including the U.S. Bugarra was interested in the permits more than the actual wreck, for those gave him permission to raise money. At that point, finding the wreck itself became secondary.

  Movement on the boat brought him back to the present, and a second later, Travis appeared on deck. He stepped onto the gunwale and then the dock. After checking the lines and shore power, he started toward the street. Bugarra was surprised to see Travis head down the boardwalk, which passed a dozen bars before terminating on Duval Street. From what Bugarra knew about the recluse, this was out of character, but hurricanes did that to people. More interested in what he might find aboard the trawler than where Travis was going to drown his sorrows, Bugarra waited until Travis was out of sight before backtracking to the pier where the trawler was docked.

  Careful to make as little noise as possible, he climbed aboard, waited for the boat to stop rocking, and moved toward the open wheelhouse. Forward was the small cabin, which he checked before returning to the helm. He was surprised to see the pair of screens cut into the dash. Like his mentor, Wood, Travis had the reputation of being old school. The electronics Bugarra was looking at were clearly not.

  Popping off the small cover on the front of the right-hand unit, he checked for a microSD card. The slot was empty, as was the unit’s twin. Bugarra hadn’t expected it to be that easy, anyway. Travis was both a salvor and commercial fisherman; both trades were fanatical about protecting their numbers.

  After checking the helm area, Bugarra moved to the cabin, hoping to find a computer. There was nothing other than a few charging cables. Discouraged, he did a quick check of the compartments and holds, but wasn’t surprised when he came up empty. Boats like this often had several lives before the current owner. The older boats, which had been around in the eighties and nineties, had often been used for smuggling. Secret compartments were sometimes built into the hull and engine room, so well concealed they could pass inspection if the ship was stopped by the DEA, or now, ICE. If Travis had hidden the drive in one of them, it would take a more thorough search than Bugarra had time for. The better possibility was that Melanie Woodson had it with her. He would make a call to an associate in Atlanta when he got back to his room.

  He carefully replaced everything he had touched, then exited the boat. Blending in was easy. The docks—in fact, the entire island—were on high alert, which meant its population was out and about. People were everywhere, the traffic was still snarled and not heading in the direction of Duval Street, as it usually was at this time of night.

  Staying to the shadows, he left the dock and started down the boardwalk. Most salvors were early risers, wanting to get out on the water while it was most calm. Bugarra was a night owl, both by nature and his preference to raise funds rather than dive. While many of his contemporaries would be getting ready for bed, he was ready to go out.

  For a destination already known for being wild, the knob had been turned to high, as the hurricane was pushing some kind of hormone-induced craziness ahead of it. Looking into the bars he passed, he saw a level of insanity that could only be beneficial. Thinking Travis’s deckhand was somewhere in the middle of it, Bugarra started checking inside the bars as he went. The Cajun likely knew nothing about Gross’s research, but Travis liked him. He could be used as a pawn.

  Mac shook his head as he passed bar after bar, all full of pre-hurricane hysteria, music blaring at unbearable levels. Through open doors, he could see women, sometimes topless, dancing on bar-tops. Moving quickly, he kept his head down and continued on his way.

  The fever pitch surrounding him dropped a noticeable notch or two when he left Duval Street and turned on to Whitehead. From there, he entered a small alley. Opening a colorfully painted gate that led up a landscaped path to a classic Key West Victorian house, he started up the walk to the entry. Even in the low light, Mac could see the property had been restored, although not as meticulously as some of the others. The house looked heavy, bearing the weight of its years, and it was evident from the way the gingerbread reflected the light that it had been repainted without stripping the previous layer, resulting in an uneven look. Mac knocked on the door, noticing the landscape was overgrown while he waited for an answer.

  “Mac freaking Travis. Took a hurricane to bring you down here.” An older man moved out of the way, allowing Mac to enter.

  Mac shook his hand. “Ned. Still alive, I see.” The old man had worked with Wood back in the eighties and nineties. He and Wood had made an interesting pair, but they got along and had several successes as partners. Where Wood had been the “get out there and do it” guy, Ned was an academic. It was a typical case of opposites attracting.

  “What are you drinking?” Ned asked. “I know you’re not here to reminisce with an old man. Let me pour you something and we’ll get right to it.”

  Mac asked for a scotch neat and started to relax. Small talk, even with someone he was close to and trusted, was not something he was good at. Ned directed him to a corner room with French doors and a transom off the main hallway. The walls were lined with books, and instead of a desk, there were several tables in the middle of the room. Each had charts or books stacked on them. It was more like a library than an office. Going to the closest table, Mac looked down on a chart so old it belonged in a museum.

  “Seventeenth century,” Ned said, handing Mac a half-full glass.

  Mac toasted and took a sip. There were several things he could count on Ned for: one was good information, the other good scotch. He took another sip.

  “Private blend from some distant cousin. Family sometimes has its perks. But you’re not here to discuss my lineage. What do you have?”

  Mac took the flash drive from his pocket. It felt like a weight was removed from him when Ned took it. He held it carefully, like it was an old relic.

  “Let’s have a look.”

  Mac thought it might not just be himself who wanted to avoid small talk. Ned quickly led Mac to a table with a large monitor set in the corner of the room, pulling out two chairs. Reaching behind the screen, he inserted the drive and waited while the computer came to life.

  After pulling a pair of thick reading glasses from his pocket, he started to work the keyboard. Mac was surprised at Ned’s aptitude with the computer as he skimmed through screens of data that Mac had no idea how to access.

  “Got years of research on here. Scanned documents from Seville, charts and spreadsheets loaded with data from their searches with a magnetometer. I’d be happy to sit here all night and look through this, but I’m guessing you have something more specific in mind.”

  Ned knew Mac too well. He leaned forward and almost whispered, “Civil War era.”

  “Really? There’s dozens of galleons out there loaded with treasure, and you want some old hunk from the Civil War?”

  “I do.” Mac took a sip of his drink. “It appears to be what Gross was into. A buddy of mine who works for the park service came across the data while investigating his murder.”

  “Bastards. I heard about that. Hope Slipstream and DeWitt have a nice stay in Raiford.” Ned turned back to the computer and scrolled through several more screens. “Sure is a lot about Lafitte on here.”

  “Interesting, but from my recollection, that was earlier than the Civil War. More like the War of 1812,” Mac said, remembering the history of Lafitte saving New Orleans. He was quiet for a minute. “You know we found the Sumnter up there in the park—or, rather, Gross found her.”

  Ned got up, walked to a shelf across from the window, and came back with a coffee-table-sized book. He went right to the index, found the entry, and flipped backward until he found the page. “Nice find.” Ned sat back down and studied the picture and history of the ship.

  “What’s so special about these wrecks when there’s still billions in Spanish gold out there?”

  “Gross was broke. He was after anything he could get a dollar from,” Mac said.

  “That’s a tactic, not a strategy,” Ned said. “You
have to understand the man. You met him, right?”

  “Briefly.” Mac recalled meeting Gross during a week-long excursion on the 1733 fleet off Islamorada.

  “And what did you think?”

  Mac sipped his drink before answering. “Principled, passionate … people change.”

  “They do, but not him. Gill Gross was one of the few who could be trusted in this damned business. If he was going after nineteenth-century wrecks, it was only to raise enough money to find something big.”

  Mac was relieved to hear Ned’s explanation. He wanted to think well of Gross. “Okay, I’ll buy that. He took a bunch of aerial shots of the Quicksands.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Ned said, diving back into the computer. A few minutes and dozens of screens later, he pulled up an image that looked familiar.

  Mac stared at the horseshoe-shaped atoll known as the Marquesas Keys and the waters to the west. “The Atocha was found near there.”

  “And you think that’s the only galleon stuck in those sands?”

  “We need to make a plan,” Justine told Kurt.

  After working the swing shift at the Miami-Dade crime lab, she would often find him asleep when she got home. At least when they stayed at the same place. Newly married, they continued to maintain two residences. Kurt had a park service-issued house on Adams Key in Biscayne National Park. Justine had her apartment in Miami. It was something they needed to work on, but, needing both incomes, two houses were also a necessity. A commute that entailed an eight-mile boat trip plus an hour drive was a little too much to do every day.

  “I’m going paddling in the morning. Then, whether Martinez makes a decision or not, we’re getting out.” She had woken him to deliver the proclamation. Kurt’s boss was an unrelenting ass, pure bureaucrat. She’d been a teenager when Andrew had come through Miami in 1992. The memories had stayed with her. That quickly developing storm had taken only four days to grow from nothing to a category-four storm. This one looked equally intense as it sped toward Florida. Most of the projections had Miami well within the danger zone. Miami-Dade had released all nonessential personnel as of midnight. For the first time being called “nonessential” worked for her.