DEAD OR ALIVE a totally addictive thriller with a breathtaking twist

by T. J. Brearton

  He made a whistling noise at Malone and pointed. Malone saw it too. Thank God the alligator was cruising away from them, disturbed by their intrusion. Still, Tom wondered whether it would matter if he wet his pants.

  The bugs got worse as the dusk deepened. It was now or never. Tom started a slow paddle, hoping the twilight would further conceal his movements. Behind him, Malone made an angry grunt and shook his head rapidly back and forth. This wasn’t part of the deal, which had been recon only, and they hadn’t seen anything so far to warrant a closer look and breach of private property. More importantly, it had been determined that anything jeopardizing the girl’s safety, like getting too close and alarming the kidnappers, was strictly forbidden.

  But Blythe had given the green light — breach if you have to. And nobody really thought the girl was going to be there anyway. No one in the Vasquez family would have taken on such a liability and Malone was among the skeptics that she was even alive, regardless of what ex-con Mick Lupton had said, because Lupton had every reason to lie and few reasons, if any, to tell the truth. Malone was there to reestablish surveillance, both for the feds and maybe County VNB. He had an extra pack with him, and Tom suspected it contained more cameras, motion detectors — something. There was always another agenda.

  Malone’s concern was with ongoing operations. That was all anyone ever worried about, Tom thought. He was sick of the red tape, sick of taking pictures and waiting on the sidelines. If there was even the slimmest chance, this was worth it.

  He’d spent the previous night reading up on Emilio Vasquez, the baby of Pedro’s brood. As it often went with the youngest sibling, Emilio seemed to have gone his own way. They had him connected here and there with the dope smuggling, but his record was clean and, on paper, he and his wife looked like stand-up citizens. She worked for various charity organizations; he ran a small horse ranch and stabling facility. It was enough to paint them as possibly sympathetic, willing to house a little girl until things got sorted out. Whatever it was that could be sorted. They could have been willing to keep her alive for any number of reasons: the burglars might’ve blindfolded her; they could’ve had their own masks on.

  Tom paddled and tried to remain concealed within the pines growing out of the water. He needed to risk enough to see, but not to be seen. That motivation took him all the way to the higher ground surrounding the compound, making it the island Rhodes described. He circled slowly, checking for cameras. By the time he’d circumnavigated the entire island, Malone was paddling over.

  Tom drifted close enough to whisper, “I don’t think there’s anybody here.” It was almost full dark as they disembarked from the kayaks and dragged them up onto the beach, just enough time to have a look at everything in the waning light.

  The main cabin had a kitchen, a dining room and a bathroom. The next building was a sleeping cabin with two bunk beds and a double bed. Windowless and padlocked, the third and final building looked to be for storage.

  Tom went back to the sleeping cabin and found the door open. He eased himself inside. It smelled unused, like mildew. The beds were made. He looked through the window and saw Malone going through the main cabin — just the vague shape of him passing by the windows. He had that other pack with him. Tom clicked on his flashlight, looked at a small antique bureau, then played the beam along where the floor met the wall — and stopped.

  A stuffed toy was slumped in the corner, a raggedy bunny rabbit with floppy ears.

  “Holy shit.” Tom pulled a small digital camera from the plastic bag keeping it dry, and almost dropped it in the process.

  Malone must’ve seen the flashes. He came over and appeared in the doorway. “What’ve you got?”

  Tom aimed the flashlight at the child’s stuffed animal and Malone let out a long, anxious breath. “Holy shit.”

  “That’s what I said. Put something beside it for scale.”

  After a moment of just breathing and dripping water, Malone moved toward the toy and set his flashlight beside it. “It could be some other kid’s,” he said. “One of Pedro’s grandkids.”

  Tom took more pictures. “Emilio and his wife don’t have children.”

  “So it’s a niece or a nephew. Or it belongs to a family friend. It could be anyone’s.”

  “This is what the mother said Lemon had with her.”

  “Maybe there’s a tag or a name on the ear or something. Kids do that.” Malone took a pair of plastic gloves from his pocket and snapped them on. He stood over the stuffed animal and regarded it as if it was a snake. Then he squatted down and manipulated it gently, looking behind its ears, turning it over. “No tags, no marks. Nothing sewn in.” He stood up and sniffed, kept looking down at the toy. “We’ll show the parents the pictures.”

  Tom fought the urge to just reach out and grab the thing, take it with them. His instinct to find and rescue Lemon Madras continued to threaten his procedural fidelity, so he self-corrected. “If that’s hers, and we go to charge someone with kidnapping, and the best evidence we have is DNA on a stuffed toy, we don’t want it to be inadmissible because we had no warrant to search the property.”

  Malone looked at him, his eyes catching the fading light in the dim and dusky room so that they gleamed. “We could say we saw something. Back there we saw someone running around — the face — so we came in anyway and we found this. Exigent circumstances.”

  “If we take it and it tips off the Vasquez family that we’ve been out here messing around on their property, not only does it endanger the girl, it screws with your little operation.” He gave Malone’s extra bag a glance. “And you don’t want that.”

  At last Malone nodded. “It stays.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE: HIDING PLACES

  They paddled back in the dark, flashlights taped to the noses of their kayaks. When they ran aground, they deflated the boats and stuffed them, dripping and crawling with insects, into their packs and continued on foot, sloshing through the water in the darkness, the night hot and muggy even after sundown.

  Tom stopped when he heard something cracking through the vegetation. He aimed the flashlight in time to see some pine branches still shivering from a disruption, something passing through. He felt a cold twist in his stomach. People didn’t bother him. Wild animals did.

  Malone seemed unfazed and pushed on. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “What was it?”

  “I saw her a little while back . . . A mother and two fawns. We disturbed them and they’re looking for a better place to bed down.”

  “The panthers hunt those things. That’s what the sign said.”

  Malone didn’t respond, just kept moving through the dark. Tom had his gun out, reacting to every noise until they finally reached Rhodes and the ORV. When they turned the lights on him, the retired special agent was lost in a cloud of cigar smoke, sitting up on the bench seat of the swamp buggy. “You guys bring anything to eat?”

  “She was there and now she’s gone,” Malone said.

  “Say what?”

  Tom unstrapped himself from the pack and hoisted it into the back of the ORV. He climbed in the truck and started going through the pockets for his sealed-up change of dry clothes. Even with the hip-waders he was soaked through to the skin. He felt Rhodes staring at him.

  “We saw a child’s toy, a stuffed animal. And Emilio Vasquez doesn’t have any kids. But we don’t know for sure about it yet.”

  Rhodes just looked at Tom as if trying to read him then fired up the ORV. The loud engine shattered the tranquility. He flipped on the headlamps, got them turned around and headed out of the Big Cypress Swamp.

  * * *

  They’d been going about an hour when Tom smelled the smoke and heard a hard grinding noise.

  “Ah, shit.” Rhodes killed the engine. He hopped down into the dark muck and clicked on his headlamp. The smoke drifted up from the right front wheel. “Bearings are shot. Look at that. The seal must’ve broken, too.” He bent and swiped his finger along the wheel we
ll and showed Tom the blackened goop.

  “So what’s that mean?” Malone asked. He looked like he’d been nodding off. Tom had been dozing a bit, too, dreaming of endless swamp and missing people. Sometimes it was the girl he was looking for and sometimes it was his brother, and eventually he’d seen a tiny hand sticking up out of the water and weeds, hooked into a claw.

  “Means we’re not going anywhere unless we can get that wheel off of there and replace the hub,” Rhodes said.

  “You don’t have a spare?”

  Rhodes didn’t answer and Malone fell silent too, his lips pursed and his expression grim. Tom hopped down and splashed into the swamp, sinking ankle-deep into the murk. The wheel looked bad, its white rim turned black with burning grease. “Looks like the bearing buddy is missing.”

  “Yeah, we lost it.” Rhodes put his hands on his hips and looked back into the darkness like he was considering walking through there to find it.

  “You got a jack?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah, ’course I got a jack.”

  “But you don’t have a spare?”

  “We need to get something solid underneath it.” Rhodes pulled out a machete and spent a few minutes hacking at the cypress. They laid out the thin trunks to form a hard surface to support the jack. As soon as Rhodes started to crank it, the thatched wood just sank into the glop.

  “Shit, man.” Rhodes wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm. It had been a half an hour and their situation hadn’t improved. “Think we’re going the rest of the way on foot.”

  Malone, who’d just been sitting there, scrambled off the ORV and started walking into the dark. Tom grabbed his bag, checked his gun was where it should have been and waited while Rhodes bellyached and swore and gathered his stuff.

  “Malone, wait up!” Tom called.

  “Fucking feds,” Rhodes said.

  They caught up to Malone and the three of them slapped away the vegetation. Tom looked around for panthers, felt his bladder aching and said, “I gotta take a leak.” They all stopped and splattered urine against the leaves in the pitch dark.

  The image of the tribal man materialized in his mind and Tom described it for Rhodes.

  Rhodes zipped up his pants. “There’s just a couple things I can think of that look like that to me. One is the scalp-lock hair, you know, shaved except for one part grown long and then they use cardboard or something to fan their hair out. You see any face paint or tattoos?”

  “It was only for a second. No, I don’t think so.”

  “We had a few Kumeyaay Indians in Houston. I saw a couple of painted faces in one of their parades — they got this look where there’s an orange stripe down the middle and dark gray painted on the cheeks.”

  They got moving again.

  “Nah, there was no paint. Just a face. Hard to guess the age — could’ve been anywhere from twenty to fifty.” Tom listened to the chorus of insects surrounding them, thinking of the things slithering and moving all through the sprawling swamp. Thinking about the girl.

  Malone spoke up. “The Miccosukee have the Green Corn Dance. Ever heard of that?”

  Rhodes grunted and hefted his pack higher on his shoulders. “Yeah. I really don’t know what it’s about, but it’s the wrong time of year for that. That’s in May.”

  They came to a sea of sawgrass ablaze in the sunrise. The water had gotten deep again, a mist winding through the sawgrass like torn strips of cotton. It separated to reveal an island of palmetto trees in the distance.

  A loud pop shattered the quiet.

  “The hell was that?” Malone said.

  “Someone’s shooting.” Without any hard woods or mountains to recycle the sound, Tom was able to zero in on it. He got his weapon out as another sharp report split the air and everybody ducked. “They’re warning shots,” he said, but adrenaline still stiffened the hairs on the back of his neck.

  Malone clicked on his flashlight and held it beneath his pistol in a two-handed grip. He started walking in the direction of the firing, sloshing his way into the sawgrass. “Hey!” he yelled. “Federal agent here!”

  Tom caught up to Malone. The sawgrass was over their heads and occluded the view of the palmetto island. The shots were coming from there.

  Someone called back, “I don’t care who you are — you’re trespassing on private property!”

  “You fire again and I’m shooting back!”

  Tom put a hand on Malone’s arm. “We’re just passing through!”

  Despite the distance, the voice carried easily: “Better get moving.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Malone muttered.

  They backed out of the sawgrass as an engine fired up — the noise built into a loud whirring and they watched the airboat come around from behind the bushy palmettos and head their way.

  “Don’t,” Tom said to Malone. He glanced at Rhodes behind them. Rhodes just gave a shake of his head.

  The airboat roared up. The man driving it sat on the high center seat, gripping the rod that controlled the throttle and the rudders. The big air propeller mounted at the back was enclosed in a cage. The man had a white beard and a wide-brimmed hat strapped beneath his chin. His rifle was tucked into a large holster mounted to the seat. He circled them, causing waves and froth, and then he stuck his arm out and pointed, warning them to leave.

  “Hey!” Malone kept calling. “Shut it off!” He had his pistol out and aimed but had lost his flashlight at some point. The sunlight was spreading.

  Air Ranger was painted on the boat hull. Tom looked for a HIN number but didn’t see one. The driver continued to circle them and then straightened out and took off. They watched and waited until he was out of sight, the noise of the air prop fading away.

  “Welcome to the Western Everglades,” Rhodes said. He gave Malone a sidelong look. “Could’ve had Air Ranger give us a ride if you were nice about it.”

  Malone spat dryly and moved ahead.

  They traipsed out of the water and onto dry prairie. In the distance were dwarf cypress, looking like Bonsai trees, as far as Tom could see.

  Malone grumbled over the encounter with the private property owner. “Unregistered boat,” he said. “DOD is going to hear about this.”

  A minute later, he was still stewing. “You know what I mean? I’ll tell you what — these libertarians are full of shit. Libertarians are like toddlers in a room talking about how bad the government is. Meanwhile they’re fed, clothed, sheltered, and have their poopy diapers changed by the adults. You like the internet? Like GPS? We can thank the Defense Department for that. You a soldier, Rhodes?”

  “I was army. Tank Division during ’Nam. Never went down range.”

  “Well, if you had, and your ass got shot at and your Kevlar vest saved you, that’s Defense Department — the DARPA program. People want American energy independence? Thank the Department of Energy for funding the research that led to fracking. How about innovation? Every Tesla you see on the road, DOE funded the facility that made it. The private sector doesn’t invest in anything until the government proves it can work. You want the free market? You want instant earnings? Drug cartels, that’s the free market . . .”

  They let him blow off his steam.

  Masses of knee-high flowers, shaped like miniature evergreens but bright red and violet, grew beneath a grove of closely spaced pond cypress. Rhodes called them cardinal flowers and something named blue lobelia.

  The morning grew hotter as they finally returned to Mitchell Landing. As soon as the car was open, Malone dug out his laptop and popped in the memory card from the camera. Having somehow connected to the internet — Malone didn’t explain how — he sent the pictures from Emilio Vasquez’s place to the feds, including the stuffed bunny rabbit. Tom stripped out of his hip-waders.

  * * *

  They stopped at the diner on 41. It was going on seven thirty in the morning, but Rhodes and Malone ordered beers. Hey, it was a Saturday. One week since the Balfour burglary and the kidnap of Lemon Madras. Tom a
sked for a Coke.

  Malone was hunched over his laptop. He’d mellowed once they’d gotten back on dry land and into air conditioning. “So, according to this, Seminoles sometimes wear porcupine roaches on their heads.” He turned the screen to face them and Tom felt a jolt — that was what he’d seen coming upon the Emilio Vasquez place. “Those are porcupine guard hairs sticking up. Not quills. That’s a black and purple roach there, worn by Buffalo Bull, Grand Pawnee Warrior. But other tribes all over do these roaches.”

  Tom took a sip of his Coke, looked around at the few patrons eating at the other end of the diner and thought about the man he’d seen getting into the black Yukon a few days before. American Indian? He hadn’t thought so, but . . . maybe. “What are you going to say to your people?”

  Malone closed the laptop with a click and gazed off. “I don’t know yet. I’ll tell them what we saw, but . . . what are we even talking about? What are we thinking?”

  Tom took out his phone, brought up Google maps and had a look at Plantation Island, where Evvy’s was located. It was less of an island and more of a cluster of fishing and charter businesses just east of Everglades City and along the edge of the Big Cypress National Preserve. The cabin with the floppy bunny rabbit was located thirty, maybe forty miles away.

  “So, the Seminoles have six federally-recognized reservations in Florida,” Malone said when Tom didn’t answer. “The closest to Plantation Island is Big Cypress Indian Reservation, but that’s landlocked north of I-75. The Brighton Reservation is even further north than that, way up between Lakeport and Buckhead Ridge, near Okeechobee.”

  Rhodes swilled his beer. He nodded, put the beer down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Right. But then there’s Hollywood, Tampa, Fort Pierce, and Immokalee. None of them are any closer.”

  “But not all Seminole people live on the res,” Tom said.

  “No. ’Course not.”