by Matthew Rief
When he didn’t reply, I set my MRE and my AK47 on the table, then walked up the creaky, old wooden stairs and knocked softly on the bedroom door.
“Who is it?” I heard Cynthia’s voice say faintly over the sounds of the storm outside.
“It’s Logan,” I replied calmly.
A moment later, I heard the sliding of metal as she unlocked then opened the door. Cynthia appeared in the doorway, her clothes and hair still slightly damp. She still had fear in her light hazel eyes as she examined me from head to toe. Her two daughters were on the bed behind her, bundled together under a quilt.
“There’s some food downstairs if any of you are hungry,” I said.
After a moment’s pause, she said, “Are you alright?”
I nodded then, spotting a pair of binoculars on the window sill inside the bedroom I said, “Can I get those?”
Turning around, Cynthia saw what I was referring to then walked over and grabbed them. Her daughters told her that they were hungry as she carried it back over to the door and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, before turning around and heading down the stairs.
I grabbed my AK and slung it over my shoulder then gripped my MRE as I moved over to where Chris was sitting on the couch with his broken right leg propped up on an old cushion.
“Any luck with that thing?” I said, motioning at the radio in his lap.
He shook his head. “There’s nothing in range.”
I reached out my hand and said, “Here, let me see it.”
He handed it to me and I switched it off and clipped it to my belt, untucking and covering it with the end of my green rain slicker to keep it as dry as I could.
As I moved for the door Chris said, “Where are you going?”
I pointed through the window at the lighthouse where every few seconds a beam of light flickered through the rain splattered glass. “Up there. It’s the best vantage point.”
“You really think you can hold these guys off on your own?” he said. “You’ve obviously got some training, but what happens when Salazar decides to stop messing around and sends a hundred guys here? How could you possibly take on that many by yourself?”
“I’m working on it,” I fired back. “Just do your part. You’re their last line of defense.”
I was out the door and back in the storm before he replied. The last thing I needed was for someone to remind me how high the odds were stacked against us.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
From the top of the lighthouse, I could see for miles in all directions, even with the storm swirling black clouds and thick sheets of rain through the air. I leaned back into a blue folding chair I’d found in a small storage space about halfway up the stairs and opened my MRE, allowing a puff of steam to rise out and dissipate inside the small space. Grabbing an old metal fork, I dug in, cooling off the first few bites before throwing them down the hatch. Unlike most people I’d met in the Navy, I actually enjoyed MRE’s for the most part. I guess it was because my dad had always brought them along on our camping trips just in case the fishing or hunting didn’t pan out.
That one was particularly good, and I ate it in less than two minutes, not realizing just how hungry I was. The protein, carbs and over twelve hundred calories were just what my body needed and quelled my groaning stomach. Grabbing my jug of water, I took a few long swigs to wash it all down before gripping the old binoculars and scanning the horizon. Big raindrops splattered violently against the glass, making the image blurry, but I knew that I’d still be able to spot a boat heading our way. Surprisingly, I could see pretty clearly the red brick walls of Fort Jefferson three miles to the East. Just Northwest of Fort Jefferson, both Hospital Key and Middle Key were completely covered with water, swallowed by massive, white-capped swells.
Even with the ferocious winds beating against the side of the lighthouse, the old structure didn’t make the slightest sound. I didn’t know a lot about the history of Loggerhead Key, but I did know that the lighthouse had been constructed in eighteen fifty-eight, which meant that it had been standing for exactly one hundred and fifty years. In all those years I’m sure it had seen hundreds of hurricanes and tropical storms, many of which I was sure were much worse than Fay. The truth was if I was going to be stranded on an island in the middle of a tropical storm, a lighthouse was probably the best place to be.
I leaned back in my chair, my head just a few feet below the spinning light. Since I could only see half of the horizon at a time, I shifted my chair to face West. That way I could see the yacht and any boats coming near that side of the island. I’d twist my body every few minutes and stretch my neck behind me, making sure there was no activity on the other side that I was missing.
By the time noon came around Fay appeared to be dying off a little, swirling Northeast towards the panhandle. At the rate it was going, I estimated that she’d be clear of Loggerhead later in the evening. Reaching for the radio that sat idly on the ground beside my feet, I switched it on and did a quick scan of the frequencies, listening for any sign of a good signal. When I didn’t hear anything, I turned it off and set it back where it was, trying to minimize the drain of the battery as much as I could. In a normal distress situation, I would have set the radio to channel sixteen, the channel designated by the International Telecommunications Union for distress and safety and made a full report of our situation. But it wasn’t a normal distress situation and I didn’t know who else might have been listening in.
At a few minutes past 1300, I was leaning against the glass, just stretching my legs when I heard footsteps coming from the spiral stairway. Instinctively, my right hand wrapped around my Sig and slid it free of its holster. But as the footsteps moved closer, I realized that they were far too light for it to be a grown man coming up the stairs. I returned my Sig to its holster strapped to my leg just as Cynthia’s head poked up into the small space. She looked better and slightly more relaxed than before.
Her lightly colored, brunette hair was dry, having been shielded from the rain by the hood of a parka she must have found somewhere inside the old house. In one hand, she held a plastic container of steaming food and in the other, a stainless-steel mug, its contents hidden by a small lid.
Glancing at me with her light, hazel eyes, she said, “I thought you might be getting hungry again.” Then I smiled at her as she took a step closer, set the mug on the ground and pried open the container. I was surprised at how good the smell was as she stirred the food around with a fork and then handed it to me. “There’s only canned foods in the house. But they did have a pretty good selection of seasonings, so I made due.”
“Thank you,” I said, as I looked down at what appeared to be a mixture of rice, black beans and some sort of meat. Taking a bite, I was taken aback by the flavor and couldn’t help but to dive right back in for another forkful.
“Not bad?” she said, eyeing me with her eyebrows raised.
I smiled. “It’s delicious. You should open a restaurant. If you can cook this with just canned food, I’d be curious what you could do when the ingredients are fresh.”
“Funny you should say that,” she said, grinning and handing me the mug.
I wrapped my hand around it, feeling the warm liquid inside. “What, you already do?”
She nodded. “Just opened my second restaurant in Miami a few months ago. It’s the reason we’re down here in the first place. Chris wanted to celebrate by taking us to one of our favorite resorts in Cancun. We’d been enjoying our time for a few days when Tropical Storm Fay changed course. We tried to switch to an earlier flight, but all flights had been grounded. It was just a few hours after we’d decided to get a hotel inland and outlast the storm that Chris got a phone call from a detective he’d worked with in Havana. He’d told Chris that Salazar had escaped. It was just a few hours after that phone call that we found out that judge Wallace and his family had been murdered in their home in the Venetian Islands in Miami.”
While
listening to her, I took a few more bites and washed them down with sips of the hot coffee from the mug. The steaming liquid felt good as it flowed down into my body, and I felt like I could already notice the effects of the caffeine.
“Then that’s when they came after you?”
“Yes,” she said. “At the hotel. We barely managed to escape on that beautiful Regal yacht from Marina Hacienda del Mar, which was just down the beach from our resort. It belongs to Chris’ uncle and he’d always let us use it whenever we visited. Chris and I had always been avid boaters. We would have reached the Lower Keys in less than twelve hours if it hadn’t been for those gang members.”
I took a few more bites and another sip of coffee while mulling over her words. After a few minutes, I finished the food and she reached for the container. “Thanks again,” I said. “And for the coffee too. You’re a lifesaver.”
She smiled as she grabbed the empty container from my hands. “No, you are.” She paused a moment as she stared out over the horizon. Taking in a deep breath, she let it all out then said, “Look, since Chris’ stubborn, hyper-masculine ass probably won’t ever say it; thank you for everything you’ve done. We’d all be dead or worse if you hadn’t shown up.”
I looked into her light, hazel eyes as she spoke. I liked her. She was strong and stern but also had a charming, southern flare in the way that she spoke and in her mannerisms.
“I’m just doing what any honorable man would do,” I said.
She shook her head. “You’re doing what almost no man would do.”
I looked away from her momentarily to scan the horizon and make sure there weren’t any more boats approaching. When I looked back at her, she’d turned around and was heading back down the stairs.
A few more uneventful hours passed and I used the time to clean the sand from my Sig and the AK47, letting my mind wander to everything from my time as a kid to the last few months I’d spent with Sam. Despite how hard I’d tried, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I guess it would just take time, but deep down, I knew that I’d never fully get over her. That I’d felt things for her that I’d never felt for anyone else before. I also thought about Angelina, the fiery, blonde badass who I’d worked alongside many times over the years during various jobs around the world. I thought about how she’d saved my ass while I was fighting Black Venom, taking down Marco with a seemingly impossible shot from her sniper rifle. I hadn’t heard anything from her since she’d taken a job in Africa and I hadn’t seen her since the evening we celebrated finding the Aztec treasure with Nazari at Pete’s restaurant. I found myself worrying about her, even though she was arguably the most lethal woman on the planet.
By 1800, as the sun started to drop down into the ocean, Tropical Storm Fay had almost completely abated. The rains had dissipated, and the majority of the black clouds had blown Northeast towards the mainland of Florida. Though the winds had died down, which was clear from observing the shaking coconut trees below and the white caps over the ocean, I estimated that they were still blowing at over thirty miles per her. Regardless, we’d made it through the storm and had to either find a way to get rescued or somehow find a way off Loggerhead. The problem was that there was only one group of people who knew that we were stranded on that island. And let’s just say that they weren’t the type of guys you wanted to encounter in a dark alley. They were the breed of evil men who would spill innocent blood without hesitation. The kind who would torture and kill all five of us if given the chance; and they’d do it with smiles on their faces.
Half an hour later, as the Western sky was lit up in various shades of reds, yellows, and pinks, Cynthia returned with another container of food. She smiled as she handed it to me and I thanked her again, though she just waved me off, telling me it was the least that she could do. We sat in silence for a few minutes as I enjoyed her food. It was similar to what she’d brought me before, but I could tell that she’d added some additional spices to the mix. Like earlier, I downed the food quickly and watched as the sun disappeared out over the horizon.
When I finished eating, I asked her how her husband and daughters were doing and she told me that they were doing as good as could be expected. We talked for a while and I was surprised to learn that she had once wanted to be a doctor. She had spent one year at medical school before dropping out after getting pregnant with Jordan. She’d learned enough in that year to take care of Chris’ wounds, bandaging him up and making sure he didn’t get an infection.
“He’ll be fine,” she said. “But he won’t be moving under his own strength anytime soon.”
Looking at my watch, I saw that it was almost , meaning we’d been talking for an hour and a half and I’d been keeping watch at the top of the lighthouse for a little over twelve hours. Grabbing the empty container, she thanked me again for everything and headed back down the stairs.
A few hours later, as my eyelids were growing heavier and heavier, she appeared once more, this time with a thin quilt wrapped around her body.
“I’m here to relieve you,” she said, sitting on the ground beside my foldout chair. “You need to get some sleep,” she added, her worried eyes meeting mine and noticing how fatigued I was from the long day. “You’ll be no good if you don’t.”
I thought it over for only a moment. Though I wanted badly to take her advice and at least get a few hours down, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. What if while I was snoozing she fell asleep as well? Salazar’s thugs could sneak up on us, surround us and take us down with little if any retaliation. No, I couldn’t take that chance.
Shaking my head, I said, “I’m fine. But could you bring me another cup of coffee?”
She sighed. “You’re not fine. How can you be? You spent all day fighting those guys and its after midnight. You need to get some rest. I’ll keep a lookout.”
Adjusting one of my legs, I glanced up at her and said, “You know, I was once on an extended deployment in the Middle East.”
“You were in the Army?”
“No. Navy.”
She looked at me, smiled and said, “That’s what I thought. You’re a SEAL, aren’t you?”
I nodded, “Anyway, after six months abroad, while hunting a group of Taliban in the Arma Mountains in southeastern Afghanistan, my entire platoon had gone over seventy-two hours without a night’s sleep, spending most of those hours in intense combat and trekking through mountains with eighty pounds of gear on our backs.” I paused for a moment then chugged down the rest of my coffee. “We didn’t make excuses and we didn’t slip up. If we had, we’d have all been dead.” When she didn’t say anything, I held out my empty mug to her, “Could you bring me another cup of coffee?”
After a brief moment, she nodded, grabbed my mug and headed back downstairs. Five minutes later, she returned with a large thermos and handed it to me. “That should tide you over.”
I thanked her again as she walked down the spiral staircase and eventually back into the house a few hundred feet away. I untwisted the cap and took a few sips before standing up to stretch my legs. Staring out over the Western horizon, a few miles out from where the yacht lay wrecked on the beach, I saw something that caught my eye. It was foreign to the surface of the ocean. Grabbing my night vision monocular out of my camelback, I took a better look at the dark object and saw that it was a ship. It appeared to be a large salvage vessel and it was heading straight for the island.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
As the salvage ship drew nearer and the sky darker, I switched over to my night vision monocular to get a better look at it. I estimated that it was about two-hundred feet long and was equipped with a helipad, radio tower and a massive crane that branched out at the stern. It looked old, its bulkheads and the visible portions of its hull covered in rust. On its side, the name Estrella Cubana was painted in faded, white letters, contrasting against the dark blue hull. Near the crane at the aft end of the ship, I counted three skiffs strapped down in a row. And on the helipad, there sat wh
at looked like a Bell 206 twin-bladed, single engine transport helicopter.
The ship continued until it was about a half of a mile from the northern side of the island, then dropped its rusty anchor with a big splash. There were a lot of guys lumbering about on the deck, though from so far away and with the limited magnification of my night vision monocular, I couldn’t make out their faces. One thing was clear, however, they sure as hell weren’t a rescue team.
For the next hour, I watched them under the dark, cloudless sky that was full of twinkling stars. I never took my eyes off the ship for more than a second, and at about one-thirty in the morning, it looked like they were planning to make a move. There were guys dressed in full body armor, armed with AK’s, M16’s, and submachine guns, that were prepping one of the boats. I watched as they loosened the straps holding it down then clipped it onto the end of the crane, lifted it up and lowered it over and down onto the water below. Shit, I thought as I counted eight guys board the boat that looked like a twenty-foot, military grade, black rigid hull inflatable.
As they fired up the engine, I threw my AK over my shoulder, dropped my monocular into my cargo short’s pocket and ran down the spiral stairs. From half a mile away, it would take them about a minute, maybe two at the most, to reach the beach. Barging through the door of the lighthouse at the base of the stairs, I ran across the sand and entered the house. The living room was still lit by a single dying candle, which was resting on the coffee table beside the couch. Chris had moved over to a dusty recliner; Cynthia and the girls were all seated on the couch beside him, huddled beneath a quilt. Chris had gripped his revolver when he saw the door open and was just about to raise it my direction before he realized that it was me. I was glad to see he was so alert but didn’t have time to tell him so.