Jake tightened his grip on the phone. It was the same guy he’d encountered that morning—the one with the fancy boat and the karate type moves. The confrontation had made him mad as hell, but this? This sent him over the edge. The man who’d been an annoyance had become a serious problem. A problem that Jake needed to squash like a bug.
“Jake, you still there?” Casper said.
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“What are we gonna do about this?”
Jake clenched his jaw. The image of the stranger, and the confrontation that had left him unarmed, soaked from head to toe, and humiliated, burned hot in his mind.
“Lynch already told us what we’re gonna do about this,” Jake said. “We’re gonna kill this local hero. Show him what happens to people who mess with the Aryan Order.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? The guy took us out like we were nothing. He’s got some serious training on his—”
“I said that we’re going to kill him. How long ago did you leave the marina?”
“I just got to Sands. The cops showed up maybe twenty minutes ago.”
Jake narrowed his gaze. That didn’t leave much time. He had no doubt that the stranger picking their operation apart would come back for him next. They needed a plan. They needed to tip the scales in their favor.
“This stranger won’t be a problem for much longer,” Jake said as an idea popped into his mind. “We’ll take care of him.”
“What about me, Jake?” Casper said.
“What about you?”
“What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
Jake sighed in annoyance. “Just hang tight. I told you, I’ll deal with this nuisance. Then we’ll continue on as planned.”
Casper started to reply, but Jake cut his words by switching off the radio. He couldn’t talk with the guy anymore—he needed to get moving.
After pulling in the towfish and coiling the line, he quickly motored out of the lagoon toward where his two companions had the pontoon boat tied off at the main opening.
“What’s going on?” one of them asked when he idled the small aluminum boat up to the port pontoon.
Jake quickly scanned the western horizon with his binoculars. The stranger’s fancy boat was nowhere in sight, but he knew that would quickly change.
“That guy from this morning is coming after us,” Jake said. “You come aboard the cabin cruiser,” he added, jumping onto the pontoon boat. “And stay put.”
“So you’re just gonna leave me here?” he said.
Jake waved a hand.
“You’ll be fine. Just keep searching for the treasure. If you find it, mark its location and we’ll bring it up later. Keep at it until you hear from me later on tonight.”
“What are you two gonna do?”
Jake looked back over the bay, then started up the pontoon boat’s three big engines.
“We’re gonna set a trap for this sumbitch.”
NINETEEN
We cut across the lower section of Biscayne Bay, making a beeline for Totten Key. Keeping our distance, we cut around the tip of the island to get a view through the main opening into Jones Lagoon.
I faced the boat into the easterly wind, then idled the engine and climbed up onto the bow. Peering through my binos over the endless mangroves, I scanned for any sign of the boats we’d seen earlier. Ange stood beside me and looked out as well.
“There,” she said.
I lowered the binos and saw that she was pointing toward the center of the lagoon. Following the line from her finger, I saw the top of an aluminum boat’s cabin. It moved slowly, heading south, its gray hull visible through the walls of foliage, then vanishing a second later.
“That’s the boat that was being towed by the pontoon boat earlier,” I said.
Ange nodded, then stroked her chin. “But where’s the mothership?”
It was a good question. I didn’t know very much about Jones Lagoon, but from what I’d heard and from our kayak expedition earlier that morning, there was a slim chance that someone could motor a pontoon boat into it. From my experience, taking a party barge in less than two feet of water was a bad idea. I reasoned that they’d brought the pontoon as a form of home base while the other boat, with its much shallower draft, did all the searching.
“Maybe around the other side of the islands,” I said. “Or in Old Rhodes Channel, where we anchored earlier.”
Not wanting to scare away our quarries, I piloted us south to get a glimpse into the channel. Seeing that it was empty, I turned to port and eased us through at twenty knots. Popping out into the Atlantic, we gazed north and came up dry as well. There were a handful of boats out on the water, but the closest was a bowrider a mile off.
As we had earlier that day, we completed a full lap, skipping north into Caesar Creek, then motoring back to where we’d started just off Totten Key. The pontoon boat was nowhere in sight.
“Where do you think they would’ve gone?” Ange asked as I idled us again.
I shook my head. “Beats me. With the marina compromised, either they scurried someplace else or we missed them in the mangroves.”
Ange cracked open a chilled coconut water, took a few swigs, then handed it to me to finish off.
“What do you think?” Ange said. “Sit tight and play stakeout?”
“I think it’s the best play,” I said, wiping the residue from my lips.
One of the things my dad always used to tell me was that “a man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.” Though I’m far from a master, it’s certainly wisdom that I aspire to.
We dropped anchor in six feet of water roughly a mile from the main opening into Jones Lagoon. From there, we could see far in all directions. If any boat went in or out of the lagoon, or if one approached our position, we could spot it far off and prepare ourselves to fend off an attack.
After thirty minutes of standing by, just hanging out and downing water to keep cool and hydrated, Ange had a great idea. She grabbed our drone from storage in the guest cabin and quickly powered it up. Manning the controls, she brought the quadcopter high into the afternoon air and zipped it across the bay.
With her eyes locked on a tablet, she watched the live feed from the drone as she flew it high above the islands and Jones Lagoon. After making two passes, we saw that, other than a few paddleboarders we’d missed in the northern part of the body of shallow water, the small aluminum utility boat was the only craft in sight.
Ange pushed the drone to the outer limits of its five-mile range, flying all the way to the lower portion of Elliot Key before cutting south to Broad Creek. After twenty minutes of flying and searching, she flew the device back and landed it softly on the Baia’s bow.
Despite not finding anything, the little device was always fun to fly, buzzing through the air at up to thirty-five miles per hour and giving a beautiful bird’s-eye view of the scenery.
“Well, I’m officially stumped,” Ange said, picking the drone up off the deck and carrying it back down to the cockpit. “Looks like this guy Jake ran away, or he’s a magician.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he ran aground and sank it. Karma works in mysterious ways.”
“Or maybe he learned his lesson and your little confrontation this morning scared him off.”
I stared out over the water. “I doubt it. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who learns things easy.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging and taking intermittent scans of the horizon. Setting up the laptop in the shade on the main deck, we read everything we could on Deacon Lynch and his band of delusional “white race protectors.”
As the sun dipped into the western horizon, we grilled up a few lobster tails and red potatoes covered in garlic. Nestling into the outside dinette, we enjoyed the meal while watching the sun play a symphony of colors as it made its grand exit. The sky was cast in a wide arc of bright yellow that shifted to gold, deep orange, and then to warm red as the celestial orb vanished beyond the ve
il of flat tree-covered coastline.
After finishing up our meal and washing the dishes, we applied a generous amount of bug spray, then sat on the sunbed and called Scarlett. Her voice oozing with enthusiasm, she asked us question after question about all that we’d been up to that day. We gave her the PG-13 version of the aggressive encounters, and she seemed most interested in the lost treasure.
“Have you found it yet?” she asked.
Ange and I both laughed.
“We haven’t looked for it,” I said. “The bad guys who killed Harper’s uncle have been searching all day, but it doesn’t look like they’ve found anything yet.”
We asked her how her day was and, in typical teenage girl fashion, she replied with a single word: boring. It took a little prodding to get more out of her, but apparently she’d spent the day hanging out at our house with Isaac, Harper, and Jack. They’d mainly read, and she and Isaac had done homework while taking intermittent breaks to play with Atticus.
“Sounds like a fun day to me,” Ange said.
“I guess,” Scarlett replied. “But compared to what you guys did, my day was like waiting in line at the DMV with just one worker behind the counter.”
We both laughed again.
“You’ll be an adult and off on your own adventures soon,” I said. “Besides, our house isn’t that bad, is it?”
“No, I can’t really complain. I kid, but there’s definitely much worse places to spend a day than a tropical paradise.”
We told her to make sure she got to bed early for school the following morning, then said our goodnights. She was a good kid, and even though she wasn’t our biological child, she had so many similarities with us that it was almost scary.
By nine o’clock, Ange was starting to doze off. I told her that I was fine staying up, that she should get some rest after the long and eventful day we’d had. Walking with her into the main cabin, I kissed her softly, then shut the door behind me after stepping out. I brewed a pot of coffee, filled a mug, then climbed back out into the evening air.
I enjoyed the peacefulness of it all. The quiet, the serenity, and the incomprehensibly big black sky filled with stars. Every now and then, I climbed up to the bow for a look around. I used my night vision scope and scanned the islands and shorelines in all directions. Spending most of the night on the sunbed, I looked out over the surrounding flat water, listening to the various birds and the occasional fish that surfaced for an evening snack.
Should’ve brought my rod and reel.
After four hours, Ange stepped barefoot from the saloon with a mug of coffee. She wore yoga pants and a thin long-sleeved Rubio Charters shirt on account of the skeeters. It was an hour past midnight, and the evening was still calm and quiet, though a ten-knot breeze had picked up. I’d seen a few boats, but none had come within a quarter of a mile from the Baia. And there was still no sign of the pontoon boat.
“No,” Ange said, waving a hand at me before I could object. “You need your sleep too. Besides, you know how much I love dark moonlit nights on the open water.”
I smiled. If we’d been there under different circumstances, I’d have popped open a bottle of wine and given her a few more reasons to enjoy the moonlit night. But with Lynch’s remaining white supremacist posse still on the loose, the last thing we wanted was for them to sneak up on us and catch us off guard.
“Don’t give me any more than four hours,” I said.
During my years of active-duty service, I’d considered four hours sleeping in. “Anything more than an hour is beauty sleep,” one of my SEAL instructors used to yell at us. Back during the notorious stage of training known as Hell Week, we were lucky to get four hours of sleep over the course of the entire week. I remember dozing off while we carried a two-hundred-pound log on our shoulders, or while doing flutter kicks in the sand and crashing surf. A few seconds here, a few seconds there really added up.
After going through hell, I’d conditioned my body to function on just a few hours, so four was more than enough given the circumstances.
I kissed Ange again, then stepped below deck and crashed on the queen-sized bed.
TWENTY
After shutting my eyes for what felt like a grand total of three seconds, I awoke to the main cabin door hinging open. Tilting my head forward and focusing my gaze, I saw Ange stride through. Her posture was rigid. I could only see a faint glow of her face from the moonlight glowing through the port-side window, but I could tell that her eyes were narrowed and intense.
“The utility boat’s on the move,” she said before I could ask what had happened.
I brushed off the blanket and slid my bare feet onto the teak floor. “Any sign of the pontoon boat?”
I pulled on and buttoned up my cargo shorts, then threw on the same T-shirt I’d worn the day before.
“Just the utility,” she replied. “Chugged out of the lagoon less than a minute ago. It’s heading north.”
I slid my holstered Sig under my waistband, then strapped my dive knife to the back of my belt so it ran parallel to the ground. It was my usual place for it. Out of the way, yet easy access for my dominant hand.
I followed her topside. The dark landscape was calm, the only change being that the patches of clouds had abated, allowing the moon to illuminate unencumbered by the haze. The moment I stepped out of the saloon, I heard the distant sound of an outboard engine.
I grabbed my night vision monocular and we stepped up onto the bow. Focusing toward the sound of the engine, I saw the aluminum cabin cruiser. It was running at maybe fifteen knots, still heading north just as Ange had said. We were a mile off, but I could make out a figure’s silhouette through the cabin’s port window.
We raised the anchor, then started up the Baia’s engines. Keeping a steady eye on our quarry, we watched as the modified metal boat reached the northern tip of Totten Key, then turned east into Caesar Creek. I followed, cutting across the bay and maintaining distance while keeping the boat in our sights.
We entered the channel, weaving through a few smaller islands, and wondered where the boat was headed. Aside from Elliot Key Ranger Station, Boca Chita Campground, and a few private houses, there wasn’t much to the north of us.
“You think he’d motor all the way to Miami on that little thing?” Ange said.
I shrugged.
“If that’s his plan, he’s an idiot. With the low freeboard on that boat, he should stick to the bay.”
We watched as the boat neared the eastern mouth of Caesar Creek. There, the water was slightly rougher than it’d been in Biscayne. A few small whitecaps splashed water over the boat’s low gunwales. Though it was relatively calm, our quarry’s boat wasn’t designed for open water.
As it exited the channel, the pilot immediately eased it back to the north. Ange’s thought that this guy might chug all the way to Miami was a possibility. We were about twenty miles from the city and its many marinas and docks. If the boat continued that far, we’d motor up and reintroduce ourselves in open water long before he could sneak away.
But I had an eerie feeling about the whole thing. Just a soft, lapping wave of doubt and uneasiness. A hunch. Something wasn’t right.
The boat maintained its speed, motoring along roughly a hundred yards off Elliot Key. Though over seven miles long, Elliot was barely over half a mile at its widest. Like every other nearby island, the shoreline was covered with thick mangroves and untouched beaches.
After a few more minutes of following, my uneasiness swelled.
“Something seems wrong here,” Ange said, as if reading my thoughts.
Ange had spent nearly her entire life in dangerous situations and deadly conflicts. I valued her instincts as much as my own.
“Let’s close in and stop his escape,” I said. “Then convince him to do some talking. Find out where the others are.”
Ange agreed.
Though my dad was right about the importance of patience, we’d sat by long enough. It was time to act.
I eased the throttle forward, causing the engine to groan and the props to churn faster and the sleek boat to accelerate. I brought us to within a quarter mile of the boat. Then a hundred yards. Then fifty.
I peered through my night vision monocular, watching our quarry’s every move. Through the two small rear cockpit windows, I could see the pilot. He stood with both hands on the helm. And though he occasionally glanced over his shoulder at us, his speed remained constant. If he recognized our boat from earlier that day, he didn’t seem fazed.
“Could you take over, Ange?” I said. “I’m gonna get him to stop.”
She gripped the helm and I stepped down into the guest cabin. Opening a storage locker, I grabbed a high-powered spotlight. Once back on deck, I stepped up to the bow as Ange slowed us along the port side of the aluminum boat.
Holding the light with my left hand, I grabbed my Sig with my right. I aimed both at the small cockpit, then rested my finger on the power switch for the spotlight. Just as I was about to flick it and blast the guy with a beam of two-million-candlepower light, I heard the sound of a third boat’s engines in the distance. It came from behind us, and in the direction of Elliot Key.
I spun around and peered toward the source. The glow of moonlight allowed me to see the pontoon boat motoring out from its hiding place in the mangroves. Clearing from the tangle of branches, the engines roared and rocketed the craft straight toward us. It was two hundred yards off, but on the deck I could see two men. One was standing on the bow with a rifle butt pressed to his shoulder, the barrel aimed straight at us.
TWENTY-ONE
“Ange!” I called out as I sprang toward the stern.
There was no time to consider our options, and there sure as hell wasn’t any time to beat ourselves up for clearly playing right into their hands. One of them was aiming his rifle straight at us, and they were too far away to attempt going muzzle to muzzle with my handgun.
Avenged in the Keys Page 9