Avenged in the Keys

by Rief, Matthew

A middle-aged man with a round belly, ivory skin, and a shaved head stomped into the kitchen just as she pulled the weapon free. She jerked her body around, dropped to one knee, and took aim.

  The big guy had the barrel of his suppressed Ruger .22 staring right back at her. She flexed her finger and pulled the trigger a fraction of a second before he could react. The .38 round boomed out of the barrel and struck him in the left leg. He yelled as the powerful blast caused him to tumble forward, slamming to the ground in a blink.

  Infuriated, the injured man turned rabid from the pain and rolled straight into Harper, pinning her against the refrigerator and causing her to let go of her weapon. The stranger bellowed, punched her in the gut, then wrapped his meaty fingers around her neck as blood oozed out from his shattered leg.

  She gagged, struggling for air as he yelled and squeezed tighter and tighter. Remembering a last-ditch save-your-life move that a friend had taught her, she jammed her thumbs hard into the guy’s eyeballs just as her consciousness began to fade. The man screamed as she oozed her thumbs in deep. He relinquished his viselike grip around her neck and jerked back as she tore herself away.

  Crawling to her left, she reached and grabbed hold of her uncle’s fallen revolver. Blinded by her attack, but not giving up, the man lunged toward her sounds. Harper spun, buried the barrel of the weapon into his chest, and pulled the trigger. The hammer struck, the violent crack painfully loud, and the round blew a substantial hole out of the guy’s back. Blood dripped from the wound, and he collapsed right on top of her. He was heavy, and the sudden drop of weight forced the air out of Harper’s lungs.

  In the haze of the moment, she caught a blurry glimpse of a second guy as he sprinted out from the hall and bolted into the living room. She shoved the dead guy off her and heard the front door slam as she staggered to her feet. She was in no state to chase him down, but she had to at least see what the coward was driving.

  Struggling across the living room, she pushed apart the plastic blinds and focused through the smudged window. The figure sprang into the driver’s side of an old brown sedan, cranked the engine, then floored it out of there.

  Harper dropped her hands to her knees and caught her breath. Stumbling back into the kitchen, she snatched her phone off the floor and dialed 911. She leaned against the counter for support. Tears continued to trail down her cheeks as she listened to the intermittent hum of the connecting call, her solemn gaze focused on her uncle’s bloody corpse.

  THREE

  East of Key Largo

  The Following Day

  I gripped the helm with one hand and eased the throttles forward with the other, rocketing our twenty-two-foot Robalo center-console over the turquoise waters of our tropical paradise. Wind whipped my dark hair back, and I peered through my sunglasses and relished the feel of the ocean air and sun against my shirtless upper body.

  I love everything about being on a boat, especially in the Keys. The feel of the fiberglass beneath my bare feet. The fresh air. The freedom. The views. The seclusion and the quiet, and yet the camaraderie. There’s something primal about being out on the water that feels a lot like going home. It epitomizes romance and beauty, mystery and adventure.

  My wife, Angelina, placed a hand on the small of my back, then kissed the side of my arm. I glanced over and smiled at her. She looked great with her blond hair tied back and sunglasses over her vibrant blue eyes. She wore a white tank top and navy-blue bikini bottoms. Her long, tanned legs glistened in the early-morning sun.

  “How much farther, Dad?” our fifteen-year-old daughter, Scarlett, asked from up on the bow.

  I glanced down at the navigation panel, then held up three fingers. The adventurous teenager liked to hang out up forward and loved it when the water sprayed up over the boat. Her brunette hair flew wildly in the strong breeze, and she extended one of her arms while clasping tight with the other.

  We soon motored up to our destination on the seaward side of the Key Largo Dry Rocks in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. I eased back on the throttle and brought us up to a mooring buoy, smiling as I peered over the side at the perfectly clear water. Moments after our arrival, a school of amberjack swam right up to the boat, hoping for us to toss over some food. It was a popular dive site, and the wild fish were used to chowing down on scraps discarded overboard.

  I called out to Scarlett.

  “Scar, you mind tying—”

  She was already on it, securing us to the mooring buoy with a carabiner attached to the forward mooring line. Once it was secured, she gave me a thumbs-up and I killed the 200-Hp engine. The silence of the open water and the gentle lapping of waves against the hull were a peaceful contrast to the humming engine.

  I stepped up beside Scarlett, then stretched my six-two frame and took a look around. There was only one other boat nearby, and it was roughly three hundred yards off the starboard bow. We had the place to ourselves for the most part, at least for the time being. June is the start of the slow season in the islands, the time of the year when the heat and intermittent rains take over, causing snowbirds to head back north.

  I grabbed a small buoy that had a red flag with a white slash down the middle attached. After tying it off, I tossed it overboard. The dive flag is an important signal to let other boaters know that there are divers in the water.

  “All right,” I said, peering through the gin-clear water at a tall, dark object resting on the seafloor, “you mind doing the scouting honors, Scar?”

  She beamed. With the excitement of a student just let out for summer vacation, she donned her mask and snorkel, slid into her fins, and splashed backward into the water. She kicked smoothly past the stern, then performed a quick lap around our dive site. She kept to the surface, breathing in and out of her bright yellow snorkel.

  Just a few minutes after jumping in, she swam over to the boat and set her fins on the swim platform. Her eyes were massive, and a smile stretched from ear to ear as she removed her mask.

  “That’s amazing!” she gasped as I offered a hand, helping her up out of the water.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Ange said.

  Scarlett wiped the water from her brow, then motioned over her shoulder.

  “I didn’t know there was anything like that in the Keys. How long has it been down there?”

  She was referring to Christ of the Abyss, a nine-foot-tall bronze statue of Jesus with his hands raised and his head tilted back to look toward the surface.

  “Since 1965,” Ange said. “It was cast from the same mold as two other identical statues. One’s submerged off the coast of Grenada and the other’s underwater in… shoot, Logan, you remember?”

  “Italy. Just east of Genoa in the Riviera, I believe.”

  “Who pays for something like that anyway?” Scarlett asked.

  I grinned and pointed at her fins.

  “He did.” She looked down, then back at me, confused. “Cressi,” I explained, pointing at the brand name printed in bold white letters across the fins. “Egidio Cressi, who founded the company with his brother, donated the statue to the Underwater Society of America. So, we have the innovative Italian to thank for both the statue and our ability to easily reach it.”

  I handed her a towel, and after patting down her hair, she grabbed a dry erase board and marker from a locker beside the helm. Ange and I sat in the cockpit under the shade of the Bimini top with Scarlett across from us.

  “All right,” she said after a dramatic clearing of her throat. “Today we will be freediving Christ of the Abyss. We’re looking at twenty-five feet to the bottom with visibility of over sixty feet.”

  She drew up a quick sketch on the whiteboard, showing our boat, the surface of the water, and the statue. Dotted lines and numbers indicated various depths and corresponding pressure. Since we couldn’t go any deeper than the twenty-five feet, we’d be less than two atmospheric pressures throughout the dive.

  “The water temperature on the surface is eighty-three degrees,” she continue
d, “and with the shifting currents and natural slight thermocline, it’s expected to be a few degrees colder at depth. Still, no wetsuit required. All three of us are certified, and we will have at least two of us down in the water at all times. We each have our dive knives and I’ll have a cute little can of Spare Air attached to my waist beside the weights. Any questions?”

  “Not bad,” I said with a nod. “But you forgot about intervals.”

  “Right,” she exclaimed. She grabbed a calculator, quickly punched in a few numbers, then said, “We’ll stick with two-minute surface intervals at least.”

  The two general rules for freediving surface intervals are your dive time multiplied by two, or your depth in meters divided by five. Whichever is greater is generally the best one to choose.

  With Scarlett having done a great job giving the dive brief and with all of us eager to get wet, we downed water and prepared our gear. Since Atticus didn’t require a leash to stay with the boat, I merely filled his water bowl and petted him behind the ears. We tightened our weight belts, then spat into our masks and rinsed them out to prevent them from fogging up.

  Once ready, Ange and Scarlett jumped into the water. I waited a moment, making sure they were all good. When I got a thumbs-up from each of them, I dropped back into the warm tropical water, relishing the experience as the crystalline paradise swallowed me whole.

  Peering downward, I grinned as I took in the sight of the statue and surrounding coral. Scarlett hadn’t been kidding about the viz. It was like jumping into a swimming pool, but one filled with assorted colorful life in all directions.

  I watched as Scarlett went first. With great technique, she duck-dived straight down, then finned with big, smooth cycles. Ange and I followed right behind her, watching as she wrapped around the statue, then surfaced calmly. It amazed me just how much she’d improved since our first time taking her out on the water almost a year earlier.

  I admired the intricate detail of the statue, which was caked in a layer of pewter-gray grime with patches of yellowish-green growth. The well-sculpted likeness of Jesus rested on a square three-tiered concrete base that I’d read weighed nearly ten tons.

  We spent half an hour admiring the sight and surrounding marine life, snapping pictures and doing flips.

  There are moments when all is right in the world. When you soak it all in, knowing that these are the times you will look back on with beaming satisfaction and a healthy dose of nostalgia. My dad always used to tell me to relish those moments with everything you have. That they, along with everything else, are fleeting, like the ever-shifting tides, or the weather and its broad spectrum of moods.

  By the time we were ready to move on, three other boats had arrived and tied off to other mooring buoys around the site. A handful of people swam around us. I was happy to see others enjoying the islands’ most photographed underwater attraction, but the selfish part of me didn’t want the tranquility and privacy to end.

  With Ange watching us from up on the surface, I finned over to Scarlett, who was admiring a barracuda, and signaled that it was time to ascend. She took one more look at the fearless-looking narrow-bodied fish, then relented. Looking up toward the sparkling surface, I kicked once, then let my body glide easily through the water.

  I thought Scarlett was right behind me. But when I reached the halfway point, I glanced down and realized that she’d turned around. She was descending rapidly. She kicked with fast powerful strokes, moving as swiftly as she could toward the seafloor.

  I flipped my body around, my heart pounding as I wondered what she could possibly be thinking.

  Then my eyes focused on a coral patch below her, and I froze when I realized what she was swimming toward. There was a man at the bottom, his upper body barely visible, struggling desperately to free himself from beneath the jutting reef.

  FOUR

  I streamlined my body and kicked the big freediving fins, rocketing straight down. Scarlett reached the struggling swimmer just ahead of me. She grabbed his hands and tried to jar him free, but he wouldn’t budge.

  When I reached them, Scarlett snatched the Spare Air from her hip. The guy was shaking, his eyes bulging. His mask was half-filled with seawater, forcing him to blink and causing him to panic even more. His body language painted a clear picture: he was moments away from blacking out.

  I stabilized myself and tried to see where his body was stuck. A cloud of blood floated up from his left leg. His calf was caught between the base of a big growth of brain coral and a sharp jutting section of limestone.

  As Scarlett shoved the Spare Air toward the guy, mouthpiece first, he accidentally swatted it away with a terror-induced flailing of his arm. The tiny canister sank, then disappeared in a narrow crack in the rock.

  Given the angle his leg was stuck, it wouldn’t be easy to dislodge it. And it certainly wouldn’t be quick. With the clock ticking down on his life, the young man’s only hope had just fallen out of sight.

  I kicked, angled my body around, and pulled myself into the space between the limestone. It was less than a foot wide, with sharp angles and a cluster of over a dozen sea urchins nestled in the cracks. I spotted a glimmer of light reflecting beside a patch of sand just out of reach. It was the canister, and it had sunk even deeper than I’d thought.

  I forced my body into an awkward position and reached as far as I could. The tip of my right index finger was a few inches above it. In order to grab the tiny tank, I’d need to come into contact with the spiky tips of the closest sea urchins. Not seeing another choice, I forced my body down as far as it could go and winced, clenching my jaw and narrowing my gaze as I sucked up the stinging pain of the needle-sharp spines puncturing my upper body.

  I wrapped my hand around the canister of air and gripped it tight. The edge of my mask jammed against the rock as I grabbed it, causing the frame to fill with saltwater and burn my eyes. My vision blurred, I Pressed my free hand to the rock and forced myself out of the crevice. Blood dripped out from the patches of tiny pokes to my body as I turned around and shoved the mouthpiece between the struggling guy’s lips.

  His eyes closed for a moment, then they flashed open and wide. He shook for a few seconds as he looked around. I grabbed one of his arms and motioned for him to calm down. After he’d taken a few breaths, I motioned for Scarlett to grab it. She was nearing blacking out herself. I could see her chest contracting and her eyes verging the edge of panic.

  After she took two breaths, she handed it to me and I sucked in one of my own, then examined the guy’s leg. He’d lodged it good. Getting it free would require a lot of wriggling, muscle, and a lot of pain on his part. But he couldn’t stay down there forever. The small tank only offered sixty surface breaths per the label. And at the rapid rate he was inhaling, it wouldn’t last us long.

  I moved in front of him and tried my best to calm him down.

  This is going to hurt like hell, buddy.

  Shifting along the rock and coral, I grabbed hold of his leg with both hands. Biting down hard, I dug my heels into the rock and pulled with all the strength I could muster. The guy yelled a strand of bubbles and shook savagely. It felt like an eternity of pulling and jerking back and forth, then his leg came free in a thick cloud of deep red.

  Once liberated, the guy kicked like mad. Scarlett and I stayed with him, guiding him toward the surface. He broke free with a yell and a desperate struggle for air. Ange met us on the surface with a life jacket. I tucked it under his body, and we pulled him over to the stern of the Robalo.

  Since he was unable to pull himself up the ladder with his damaged leg, Ange and I climbed out and pulled him up onto the deck. He groaned and winced, blood flowing out from his leg and splattering onto the white fiberglass deck.

  Once he was aboard, I offered a hand to Scarlett and looked her over. If she was in any way fazed by what had happened, she didn’t show it. She threw off her fins and mask and went straight to helping the guy in any way she could.

  As Ange snagged
the first aid kit from a locker beside the helm and carried it over to the injured swimmer, she noticed my wounds for the first time.

  “Logan!” she gasped. “What happened to you? Are you al—”

  I waved her off. “I’m fine. His injuries are much worse.”

  I struggled to get words out over the intense sting that burned and radiated across my upper body.

  Ange splashed antiseptic over the gash in the guy’s leg, causing him to cringe even more. Then, using a pair of tweezers, she cleaned the wound of broken pieces of coral and bandaged it up.

  Once the guy was good, Ange focused on my wounds. She cleaned the tweezers, then pulled out broken pieces of purple spines. It stung, but I did my best to suppress it by petting Atticus. When all the pieces were cleared, she had Scarlett dampen a few rags with hot water and drape them over my wounds.

  “Now, no going back in for half an hour, all right?” she said in her motherly tone. “I’m not done with you.”

  I thanked her, then scanned over the stern as a thirty-foot Bayliner pulled right up to our boat. There was a big, bulky young guy with a decent gut for his age and a farmer’s tan manning the helm. He wore a backward sun visor, purple sunglasses, and stars-and-stripes swimming trunks. He held a beer in his left hand and turned down the music when he reached us. There was a second guy on the boat, but he was too preoccupied by the hookah he was smoking as he lounged at the stern.

  “Cody, are you all right, man?” the big shirtless guy shouted from the Bayliner. “I was taking a leak and didn’t even know what was happening.”

  This guy, oblivious to what was happening? I was willing to bet that was a common occurrence.

  He lowered his sunglasses when he saw the bandage around his friend’s leg.

  “Wow, you get a scrape?”

  “He nearly died,” Ange snapped.

  “She’s right,” I said. “Your friend would still be down there had it not been for Scarlett.”