Avenged in the Keys

by Rief, Matthew

  Lynch eyed the man, who had his Ruger 9mm handgun in one hand and the flashlight in the other. The barrel of his weapon was staring straight at Lynch’s chest.

  The white supremacist leader raised his hands, then slowly stepped toward the guard.

  “Easy,” Lynch said, creeping closer while his men stayed back, their hands hovering over their own handguns. “Nobody has to get hurt here.”

  “You stay right there!” the guard snapped. “I’m calling the police.”

  Lynch took another slow step. Then another. He closed the gap to ten feet. As the guard was about to order him to freeze again, Lynch cut him off.

  “But how are you going to call the police while holding your flashlight and gun?” Lynch said, speaking calmly. Like they were at a damn friendly gathering.

  “I mean it!” the guard snapped. “You don’t move another inch.”

  Lynch did move another inch. More like six of them. He was messing with the guard, almost wanting the obviously inexperienced man to flip the script and take the shot.

  Stopping five feet from the guard, Lynch reached slowly for the revolver on his hip. Pinching it with his right thumb and index finger, he pulled it free, held it out, then dropped it to the ground.

  As the weapon rattled at his feet, Lynch held out both of his arms, palms up.

  “Go ahead and cuff me,” Lynch said. “I’m unarmed.”

  The guard hesitated. Seeing the flat gunwale of a speedboat beside him, he got an idea. Leaving the flashlight switched on, he balanced it on the fiberglass, the beam shooting straight at Lynch. Then he cut the rest of the distance between him and the white supremacist leader with his weapon raised.

  He grabbed a pair of handcuffs from his belt, slid one open, then locked it around Lynch’s left wrist.

  “We really don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Lynch said. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

  “I… I have to do my job…”

  He was about to click on the other cuff when Lynch said, “I know.”

  Just as the words left his lips, Lynch snapped his right hand down, snatched a concealed switchblade from his pocket, then stabbed it up through the base of the guard’s jaw. Blood spurted out and the guard groaned. Lynch knocked the weapon from his hand.

  Lynch forced the guard to the ground, keeping him quiet as he shook and struggled for the last few breaths of life. When he went motionless in a pool of blood, Lynch rose to his feet, then grabbed his revolver off the floor.

  He met up with his men and continued across the space. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he’d lost three minutes thanks to the punk guard. But he’d had no choice. They’d been caught off guard and couldn’t risk firing a weapon. Someone nearby could hear.

  The jet skis were each resting on a heavy-duty flat steel dolly. Kicking free the wooden blocks, Lynch and his men carted three of the small watercraft through the aisles, the wheels squeaking as they pushed them toward the back of the store. They were big and powerful, with 1500cc engines capable of propelling them up to seventy miles per hour. The fine pieces of engineering had a price tag of twelve thousand dollars each, but Lynch preferred the free route.

  Once at the back, Lynch pulled a nylon rope that caused the big garage door to rattle open. Just as the outside came into view, Titus backed a trailer he’d stolen into the building. Lynch and his men rolled the jet skis over, slid them onto the trailer, then strapped them down. With his men climbing back into their hiding place under the tarp in the bed, Lynch waited for the truck to pull out, then shut the garage door.

  He exited via the back door they’d broken, then slid into the passenger seat.

  “What the hell took so long?” Titus asked as he drove them out of the lot.

  Lynch noticed a splotch of blood on his left forearm. Casually, and without remorse, he wiped the red liquid away with a rag.

  “Holy shit,” Titus said, noticing the blood. “What the hell happened?”

  Titus made sure that the coast was clear, then pulled them out onto the main street. Lynch kept a sharp eye out on the road, his gaze scanning between the windows and rear mirrors. There was only one car in sight, and it was heading in the other direction.

  “Collateral damage,” Lynch finally said, relaxing into his seat. “Take us back to the farm. And use the back route around the edge of town.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  We woke the next morning at the crack of dawn. While Ange whipped up some breakfast, I played fetch with Atticus. Rearing back a tennis ball, I tossed it far out over the bow and smiled as our happy Lab bounded off the swim platform, splashed into the water, and swam like mad.

  Back when I’d first gotten him, I used to fake him out, pretending to toss it and laughing as he jumped into the water, only to turn around moments later and realize his mistake. But two-year-old Atty was wiser and his paws never left the ground until the ball was in the air.

  As my arm warmed up, I gradually increased the distance. After five minutes of playtime, Ange appeared from the saloon, holding two glasses of freshly blended smoothie.

  “We’ve got more bacon in there,” I said.

  “Bacon takes too long. I dreamed of that metal detector hit all night.”

  Once Atticus was at least somewhat tired out, I sprayed him down with the freshwater hose. He shook drops of water all over the place, then I patted him down with a towel. After filling his food bowl, I stepped back topside and joined Ange at the dinette. The sun was just starting to peek over Old Rhodes Key.

  “You think they’re up yet?” Ange said, motioning toward the Calypso.

  It was anchored down just thirty yards from us. I was just about to say that I doubted it when Jack stepped out in nothing but a pair of boardshorts. He yawned, then smiled and waved when he saw us.

  “I guess we’re not the only ones excited about this hit,” Ange said.

  I nodded. Whatever we’d found, it’d somehow managed to get Jack out of bed before the sun, which was nothing short of a miracle for our beach bum friend who never wore a watch.

  We finished our smoothies, then grabbed our things as Jack and Pete motored over on the skiff.

  “All aboard,” Pete said enthusiastically.

  After cracking the windows and locking up, I stepped on first, carrying a black hard case.

  “What’s with the sea scooter?” Jack said, motioning toward the case.

  “Ange had a brilliant idea regarding what to do about the clouds-of-sediment situation,” I explained.

  Pete nodded in approval as he found a good spot for it on the small boat. “Use the prop to wash it away,” he said. “You were born for this kind of thing, Mrs. Dodge.”

  She beamed as she climbed aboard.

  Many years earlier, the Florida Keys treasure-hunting legend Mel Fisher had utilized a similar tactic. While salvaging the Spanish galleon Atocha off the Marquesas Keys, he’d created a device called a “mailbox.” The basic function was to redirect prop wash from a boat’s propeller to the seafloor to wash away sand from shipwrecks. Ange’s idea was a similar stroke of genius and made me wonder for the thousandth time why such a smart, athletic, and beautiful woman had settled for me.

  Jack accelerated us through the mangroves and back into the lagoon. Since we already had a hit to investigate, we’d all decided to come. We reasoned it was fine to leave the boats alone for an hour at least, and we didn’t expect it to take much longer to dig up whatever was getting our metal detectors excited with our shovels.

  Once across the lagoon, Jack and I hopped out to minimize the draft of the skiff as we sloshed the final hundred yards to our destination. After tying us off to a thick branch, I offered a hand to help Ange down.

  She accepted and quipped, “What a gentleman.”

  We trudged over to the spot where we’d been digging the previous day. Other than the hole filling itself in a little due to the current and gravity, the area looked just as it had when we’d left it.

  Pete grabbed his metal detector, then
bounded over. He scanned the coil over the hole for a fraction of a second before a beep blurted out from the tiny speaker.

  “You didn’t believe us?” Ange said.

  He chuckled. “Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.”

  Eager to figure out what was causing our detectors to be so chatty, we went right to work. Jack and I started on shovel duty, stomping the blades through the sediment and hauling out piles of muck to be cast aside.

  Ange powered up the sea scooter and spun the propeller at half speed, holding on tight and bracing herself so she wouldn’t fall backward as prop wash cleared the haze. The high-end devices were powerful enough to drag someone through the water at up to seven knots. We’d put them to good use over the years, once even during a search and rescue mission where we’d been forced to sneak our way into Havana Harbor.

  Jack and I shoveled pile after pile from the hole. But every time we took dirt and sand out, more seemed to just slide back in and take its place. The normal-sized shovels helped, but it was still arduous, backbreaking work.

  “Gives you a new appreciation for the laborers who built the overseas railroad,” Pete said. “Much of the work was done by hand. And back then, bug spray wasn’t readily available.”

  When Ange looked tired from holding the sea scooter in position, Pete took over. Even with his hook of a right hand, he managed to keep it in place, never letting the unfortunate loss hold him back.

  After an hour, we’d made it two feet down. We took a break, guzzling down water from the cooler and splashing off in the lagoon. The sun was just over the mangrove barrier, and with barely a cloud in the sky, it beat down on us unobstructed.

  “We’re just under a foot away,” Ange exclaimed.

  She picked up the sea scooter, checked its battery, then lugged it back over to the hole.

  I stretched my back and shoulders, then splashed water over my face. Some people like to sit back and observe, and some like to dive into life’s arena headfirst and get their hands dirty. I’ve always been glad that Ange is the latter of the two.

  Jack and I grabbed our shovels. Our hands were starting to redden. Another hour and they’d blister, but we were confident that we’d reach our desired depth before then.

  “I swear,” Jack said as he sloshed through the water beside me, “if this is a rusted piece of old scrap metal, I’m gonna lose it.”

  We went right back at it. Shoveling, scooping, and tossing aside. Again and again. I let my mind wander as I lost myself in the rhythmic labor, working in sync with Jack’s movements. I thought about what we might find. I thought about the past, and what the future might hold. I loved the life that Ange and I shared. I loved our daughter, our friends, and our island home. Whether it was treasure or just a piece of old scrap metal, it made little real difference to me. I already felt like a winner, like I’d been blessed beyond anything I’d ever imagined. Anything more in life, I’d view as just icing on the cake.

  I pulled out a particularly heavy heap of sediment, having to bend my knees and space out my hands on the handle for leverage. With a grunt, I tossed the pile aside. Jack moved in right after me. With a strong flex of his arms, he shoved the tip of his shovel into the seafloor, then slammed the step with his heel. The sharp metal tip cut through the muck, but instead of a slow, gradual stop, the blade stopped suddenly, slamming against a hard object with a thud.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Jack froze, then his jaw dropped. Leaving his shovel in place, he tilted his head to look at me. It was the distinct sound that caused us all to grin and our hearts to race. Not a ting of metal against rock, but a low-pitched thump.

  “What is it?” Pete said, sloshing back from the skiff with a drink in his hand.

  But we couldn’t speak. We were too excited, too eager to see what Jack had struck with his shovel. It’d been wood, no doubt in our minds about that. And since we’d gotten a hit with the detector, that meant there was also metal nearby.

  Ange moved in closer with the scooter. She accelerated the propeller and held on tight, washing away the cloud of dirt. Jack and I crept in and carefully shoveled a few more piles of sediment.

  We waited for the view to clear. As the dirt washed away, we caught a glimpse of a rounded wooden surface at the bottom of the hole. Running along the center of the wood was a metal brace.

  We cheered and fist bumped and patted each other’s backs. Jack let out a howl, Pete jumped around like a happy prospector, and Ange and I embraced. For a solid minute, we couldn’t stop cheering and laughing we were so excited. Uncovering a buried treasure chest is nearly every kid’s fantasy at one point, and we all acted like kids as we celebrated our find.

  “Three cheers for Angelina!” Pete shouted.

  We followed his lead, then Ange waved us off.

  “Hey, I just waved the coil,” Ange said. “You guys did the heavy lifting. And we never would’ve found it if it weren’t for Scarlett taking the initiative.”

  Ange’s mention of our daughter’s name reminded me of her request just before we’d left. I grabbed my phone from my bag inside the boat, then sloshed back to our dig site and rounded everybody up for a selfie. I managed to extend my arm far enough to get all four of us in the picture, as well as the hole in the background. I’d take more as we salvaged it, but I wanted to capture the initial larger than life smiles plastered across our faces.

  After snapping a few more pictures, Jack and I picked up our shovels and began digging the area around the chest. There was still a decent amount of work to be done before we’d have it free, but the sight of the chest getting bigger and bigger with every scoop gave us new vigor.

  Ten minutes of digging later, we dropped down and reached for the edges of the chest. It was three feet long and just under two feet wide. Much of the wood was rotted away, leaving a weak shell held together by rusted clasps and hinges. As we grabbed hold of the edges and pulled, it was clear that we wouldn’t be able to lift the chest out without it breaking to pieces. Even though the surrounding sediment had kept it from decaying completely, it was still far too brittle for us to lift it up with its heavy contents inside. After all, if the legend was true, it was filled with over two hundred pounds of gold bars.

  We carefully dug out the front side of the chest, clearing deep enough to reach the lock keeping the lid secured. It was rusted and corroded, barely hanging on. I grabbed a nearby rock and made quick work of it, pounding it with a well-placed blow that cracked the shackle and caused it to fall off.

  Gathering around and craning our necks for a peek inside, Jack and I slowly pried open the lid. The inside was dark and murky from folded layers of fabric that had nearly decayed completely over the years. Holding the lid open, we brushed the fabric aside. Rays of morning sunlight shone through breaks in the cloth, reflecting off bright objects that were all too beautiful. Gold. Stacks of shiny gold.

  We let out another cheer. Keeping the lid propped open, we let Ange do the honors. She bent down, reached into the chest, then laughed joyously and pulled out a gold bar. It was incredible, a valuable piece of history that had been lost to the tides of time for a hundred and fifty years.

  Ange handed it to me. It was smaller than I’d expected. Roughly the size of an iPhone, but thicker at about half an inch. It amazed me how heavy it was for its size. It felt close to five pounds.

  I handed it around, and when it got to Pete, he rinsed it off and inspected it closely.

  “Two kilograms,” he said, reading markings on the bottom of one of the bars flat sides. “El Callao.”

  “Venezuela,” Jack said, “the famous South American goldfields.”

  Our hearts continued to race as we cleared out the chest and counted the gold. I couldn’t stop feeling the bar once it got back into my hands, couldn’t stop admiring it and being amazed at its weight. I’d lifted gold bars before, but it always astounded me. Equally awe-inspiring was the fact that the little bar of ore was worth over a hundred thousand dollars at the current market valu
e.

  “Fifty,” Ange said, finishing up her count.

  I stepped back, pressed a hand to my right temple, and shook my head.

  Fifty gold bars? And two kilos a pop?

  That meant that we’d stumbled upon…

  “Over five million dollars’ worth of gold,” Pete said. He laughed and added, “Not bad for two days of prospecting.”

  “I’ll say,” Jack chimed in. “And it’s been sitting here in this lagoon all this time.” He shook his head and added, “If only John Ridley could see this. That guy got all worked up over a belt buckle, so he’d have probably had a heart attack at the sight of this trove.”

  Putting the gold bars back into place after counting them, Ange rose to her feet and stretched. Suddenly, as she glanced over her right shoulder, she froze, then shielded the side of her face from the sun. Her easy-going smile vanished in an instant, replaced by a focused curiosity.

  “What is it, Ange?” I said.

  She kept staring off into the mangrove forest, scanning over the heart of the northern part of Old Rhodes Key.

  “I don’t know, I… I thought I saw something. A flash of light. Like the sun’s reflection off something shiny.”

  “Could be a tour,” Jack said, his eyes still locked on the chest of gold bars.

  “He’s right,” Pete said. “The old Jones family homestead is over that way. Not much left, but it’s still interesting. Been years since I saw it.”

  “Maybe we’ll have to check it out,” I said. “After we get this treasure out of here, of course.”

  Ange stared for a few more seconds, then blinked and looked away.

  “Maybe I’m just seeing things,” she said, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I was so enthralled by the treasure, I haven’t drank anything in hours.”

  She strode toward the skiff, but Pete waved her off with his hook and bounded to the boat.

  “I’ve got you covered, Ange,” he said. He climbed into the boat, hinged open the cooler, and divvied out the last of the bottled waters. “But a find like this deserves a proper celebration.” He stepped up to the helm. “I’ll be right back.”