Redemption in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  Does that guy ever sleep? I thought as I opened the salon door and climbed topside with Atticus right at my heels.

  He ran straight for the swim platform and quickly did his business over the side. When he was finished, he crawled up onto the sunbed and I followed suit, relieving myself over the port side as I stared out over the ocean.

  Thankfully, the weather had cleared up even more. The small cove we’d called home for the night felt more like a lake it was so calm, and I felt only a hint of eastern wind brush against my damp face. It would make the search and any subsequent dives much easier. When I finished, I grabbed my night vision monocular from a locker and moved along the side railing towards the bow. Standing against the forward railing that only reached my shins, I scanned over the landscape that was green-hued through the lens of my monocular. I couldn’t see much because the rocky shore rose up vertically at a ninety-degree angle in places and extended some fifteen feet into the air. Lowering the monocular, I took in a deep breath of ocean air, then stepped back down into the cockpit.

  I switched on the radar, and as it booted up, I opened my laptop and brought up the weather forecast for the day. Partly cloudy with a high of seventy-four degrees, wind speeds up to eight miles per hour, and a ten percent chance of precipitation.

  “Looks like a good day to blow some bubbles, eh, boy?” I said.

  Atticus was sprawled out with his head over the back of the sunbed, staring at me quizzically. When the radar screen materialized with an image of the surrounding area, I rose to my feet and looked it over. Everything looked as it had the night before until I looked closer at the southwest part of the island. There was a large inlet and what looked like a boat anchored just a few hundred feet from shore. I brought up a screenshot I’d taken the night before to compare, and sure enough, the echo wasn’t there. Whoever it was, they’d arrived in the middle of the night.

  I glanced over at Atticus. “You feel like going for a walk?”

  Just as the word walk left my lips, he jumped to his feet and eyed me with eager anticipation. I walked back down into the salon just as Kyle was stepping out of the guest cabin. He was wearing the same black shorts but had changed into a skintight gray workout shirt. He looked like he’d been up for hours and was holding a stack of papers in his hands.

  “You sleep at all?” I asked.

  “A little. How’s the water?”

  “Like glass compared to yesterday.” I nodded towards the charts in his hands. “We’ll head over to the search area and put the magnetometer in the water once the sun pops up.”

  He nodded, and I moved into the main cabin and threw on a blue tee shirt. Reaching into the back of my closet beside my large safe, I grabbed a pair of two-way radios and my Northside water-resistant tennis shoes. I put them on, tightened the laces, then reappeared in the salon as Kyle filled a mug with coffee.

  “What’s going on?” he said, eyeing the radios and seeing my focused expression.

  “There’s something on radar. A boat on the other side of the island. Must have pulled in last night or early this morning.”

  His eyes grew wide and focused on mine.

  “Drago?”

  I shrugged.

  “No way of knowing who it is, but Atticus and I are gonna go check it out.” I handed him one of the radios and added, “Cellphone signal is a joke around here.”

  He looked at the radio for a moment, then said, “You sure you don’t want me to come with?”

  “Yeah. We’re just gonna have a look. Keep that Walther close by.”

  He lifted his shirt slightly, revealing the pistol secured to his waist. I gave a brief nod, and stepped up onto the deck. Atticus was beside the transom and had a difficult time containing his excitement. I was impressed that he was doing so well being cooped up and understood why he wanted to go ashore so badly. Before he’d died, my neighbor in Key West had often taken him out on the water, though rarely for longer than an afternoon.

  “The echo’s only about half a mile to the southwest,” I said. “We should be able to see it up by the lighthouse,” I added, pointing to the highest part of the island in view. “Shouldn’t be gone very long.”

  I stowed my night vision monocular, the radio, and my Sig in a waterproof backpack, then moved aft and plopped down onto the starboard edge of the swim platform. While holding my bag over my head, I lowered myself into the gin-clear seventy-eight-degree water. The water rose up to my shoulders as I planted the soles of my shoes on the sandy bottom. I waded towards the shore, then grabbed hold of a jutting rock and pulled myself up out of the water.

  Turning back, I called to Atticus, who jumped happily into the water with a splash and swam over to me. I threw my backpack over my shoulders and climbed the nearly vertical slab of sharp-edged limestone. Atticus, having found an easier route, climbed up onto the shore fifty feet away from me and reached the top before I did. He shook the water from his fur, then wagged his tail and watched as I caught up to him. He had a proud look on his face, and he seemed to really enjoy beating me.

  “You’re one smart pooch, you know that?” I said, patting him on the top of his head and taking a look around.

  Most of the island was desolate and completely devoid of anything other than jagged rock. But as we moved closer to the lighthouse, patches of green-brown vegetation littered the landscape, including cacti and various tropical bushes that were more brown than green. Atticus trotted off a short ways ahead of me, smelling everything in sight. After a quarter mile or so of walking, we came to the ruins near the base of the lighthouse, long-ago-abandoned structures built to house the lighthouse keeper and whoever else was there. I grabbed my Sig from the waterproof backpack and slid it into my waistband. I’d heard many stories about Cay Sal, and none of them had happy endings.

  There were scattered articles of clothing, remnants of old rafts, and abandoned food containers all around me. It was an important reminder of the frequency with which refugees used the island, and I knew that there was a pretty good chance that I wasn’t alone. I could only imagine the horrors these people had experienced that drove them to risk their lives so dangerously in order to escape their homelands. They had my sympathy, but that wouldn’t stop many of them from killing me and stealing my boat if given the chance. When pushed to utter desperation, people can do vile things in order to survive. I’d seen it many times in my life, and it was why I rarely went anywhere unarmed, even if that meant breaking Bahamian law.

  Atticus barked and shook me from my thoughts. Glancing his direction, I saw that he was standing at the base of the lighthouse just a short ways away from me. I quickly cut the distance between us and saw that he was staring at what looked like the remains of a cooked bird beside a makeshift fire pit. There were hundreds of birds flying near the beach and nesting nearby. I knelt down and placed my hand over the ashes. They weren’t hot, but it was clear that whoever had cooked the meal had done so within the past couple of days.

  “All the more reason to make this quick, eh, boy?” I said, moving around the lighthouse and preparing myself for an encounter.

  My Spanish was pretty good, and if they didn’t attack me, I was hopeful I could try and help them in some way. That is, if they were still on the island. When I reached the other side of the lighthouse, I looked out over the western shoreline to the south. The sun was just starting to glow over the eastern horizon, but not enough to be of much help. I could see a dark outline of the shore and the faint glow from the moon over the water but couldn’t spot anything on the water at the spot where the echo had been on my radar.

  I grabbed my monocular from the backpack, scanned along the coast, but still saw nothing but rocks and waves.

  That’s strange, I thought as I brought my scope down. It’s like whatever was there simply vanished into thin air.

  I heard the shuffling of paws and realized that Atticus had run ahead a few hundred feet and was sniffing a pile of rocks. When I moved towards him, his head snapped to the side and
he gazed out over the water. Following his gaze, I saw movement at the southern tip of the island and peered through my scope to get a better look. It looked like a large fishing trawler, and judging by the size of its wake, it was cruising away from us at nearly twenty knots. Unfortunately, it was too far away for me to read the blurry words on its stern or see any details of the two guys whose outlines I spotted out on the deck.

  “Looks like a false alarm,” I said, then gave a quick whistle, turned around, and headed back towards our cove with Atticus right behind me.

  THIRTEEN

  Drago Kozlov stood at the stern of the sixty-foot trawler. He kept his gaze focused on the island as his thighs leaned against the transom. In his right hand, he held a half-empty bottle of Mamont eighty-proof vodka. In his left, he held a Cohiba that had been dragged down to a stumpy remnant that nearly burned his fingers. His long black hair blew across his face, but his dark eyes stared unblinking.

  The aft door opened slowly, and Solak stepped out. He wasn’t surprised to see Drago wearing his usual dark attire and his leather overcoat, even in the morning heat of the Bahamas. In the two years he’d known the Russian killer, he’d never once seen him without it.

  “Using the fishing convoy was an excellent decision,” Solak said, standing a few short paces behind Drago.

  The previous night, they’d cruised alongside a group of Cuban fishing boats and had spotted their target’s boat at the northern part of the atoll. Locking their target’s position on a digital map, they’d waited a few hours before looping back and dropping anchor on the other side of the island.

  “A simple tactic,” Drago said flatly, “but an effective one.”

  “And now we move?” Solak said. “They will know where we are.”

  “If what I’ve been told about his training and experience is correct, I have little doubt that he has been aware of our presence for some time now. But this does not concern me.” Solak stared at his companion, then continued, “At worst, given our location, they may suspect that we are poachers, nothing more. Even the most cynical of experienced professionals would not suspect this hunk of metal to be anything more than ordinary fishing boat.”

  But it was no ordinary fishing boat. Carson Richmond had strong connections in the Cuban underworld, having worked alongside drug smugglers and human traffickers to sell and distribute illegal arms across the Caribbean for years. Beneath its decrepit exterior, the sixty-foot trawler was a smuggler’s dream. Top-of-the-line electronics, a powerful radar, and in the engine room, two eight-hundred-horsepower Mercruiser engines that combined to push the big boat through the water at speeds of up to forty knots. She also had spare fuel tanks, allowing a maximum range of over five hundred miles.

  Solak shook his head as he watched them cruise away from the island.

  “We should have just killed them both while they slept!” he said.

  Drago paused a moment, then lifted his left hand to his face and inhaled what little life remained of his Cohiba. The heat singed the skin around his fingers, but he didn’t seem to notice. Pain, like death, was no longer a concern of his. He welcomed both and at times wished for death to overtake him. It was this aspect of his character that made him so different from his fellow assassins, and so deadly.

  “Use your head, Solak,” Drago said. “Why do you suppose that they are here of all places?” When Solak couldn’t come up with an answer, Drago continued, “They are looking for the plane.”

  Solak paused a moment. “But I thought that plane went down a hundred miles from here, on the northeast part of the bank.”

  “That is what was believed to be true based on the plane’s flight plan. But it lost contact. It could have flown off course due to storm. Regardless, the plane was never found, and now we know that Quinn was the only survivor.”

  Solak was beginning to see the logic in Drago’s decision making.

  “Miss Richmond spent a fortune looking for that plane,” Solak said.

  “Yes,” Drago said, then gave a few raspy coughs. “Imagine how satisfied she will be when I call her and tell her that not only have I killed Quinn, but I’ve found her plane as well. We will be able to charge a generous sum in exchange for revealing its location.”

  Drago took a final drag of his cigar, then exhaled. He held the burning nub in front of him and glanced at his red fingertips before flicking it into the white wake below. Turning his gaze back to the island, he scanned over its rocky, desolate terrain and thought he could see the dark outline of a man standing near the base of the old lighthouse.

  FOURTEEN

  Watching every step with careful precision, I made my way back across the coarse landscape towards the cove where the Baia was anchored. As its white deck and dark blue hull came into view, the sun was just starting to appear over the water to the east. I stopped for a moment when I reached the edge where the rocks angled dangerously towards the water below. The view looked like a picture straight out of a fancy travel magazine, the Baia floating in vibrant turquoise water surrounded by steep rock faces with a backdrop of dark blue.

  I took a few deep breaths, enjoying the scene before me, then climbed down. Having learned from my intelligent canine companion, I took his route and reached the lapping ocean with ease, barely having to use my hands at all. I waded into the water and Atticus splashed in, swimming ahead of me and climbing up onto the swim platform.

  “What’d you see?” Kyle asked.

  He was standing beside the sunbed, staring down at me through a pair of sunglasses. Atticus shook the water off a few times, then I set my bag over the gunwale and climbed up beside him.

  “Looked like a fishing boat,” I said. Kyle handed me a towel and I dried off. “But it was too far away by the time I saw it to get any specifics.”

  “They went on the move just a few minutes after you left.” He stepped towards the cockpit and glanced down at the radar display. “They’re still heading south. They won’t be in range much longer.”

  Once my upper body was mostly dry, I grabbed my tee shirt from the drybag and threw it on. I stepped around the transom and looked at the screen beside Kyle.

  “It was around sixty feet long,” I said. “And it looked old. I saw a few guys out on the deck, but they were too far away to notice specifics.”

  “Poachers?”

  “Maybe. Either way, it doesn’t look like they’ll be any trouble.” With my backpack slung over one shoulder, I moved towards the salon door. The smell of cooked sausage and eggs wafted into my nostrils as I stepped below deck.

  “Smells like your cooking’s gotten better,” I said, grinning back at Kyle as I looked over the food. “I guess it couldn’t have gotten any worse.”

  “You’re welcome,” he fired back. He raised his palms in the air, then laughed and added, “And it sure beats the hell out of MREs.”

  He handed me the radio, and I stowed both back in the main cabin closet. We made quick work of the food and I downed a mug of coffee before getting all of our gear ready for the day. By 0700, I brought the anchor rode up with the windlass and slowly secured the anchor in place, then Kyle attached the safety line. I brought the twin engines to life with a low roar and cruised out of our small cove. The red needle on the fuel gauge indicated that the Baia was just over half-full. The fifty-gallon tank I’d filled in Key West would give us some leeway, but we’d still have to keep an eye on it if we were going to eventually reach the nearest marina in Marathon.

  Once we cleared the rocks, I turned the helm to port, putting us on a northerly course. I slowly brought the Baia up on plane, cruising us over the calm water with ease. The sun shone brilliantly across a cloudless eastern sky, so I grabbed a pair of Oakleys from the dash and slid them over my eyes.

  It was a perfect day to be out on the water, and within fifteen minutes, we reached our destination at a spot where the atoll dropped off into the dark blue waters of the strait. Looking out over the horizon, I could see the Dog Rocks to the southeast and the Muertos Ca
ys to the southwest, both island strands nothing more than desolate slabs of rock barely peeking out of the water.

  I eased down to just a few knots and glanced at my depth gauge on the dash in front of me.

  “We’re at two hundred and fifteen feet here,” I said. “At the edge of the atoll, it quickly drops off to well over six hundred. We’d better hope this plane isn’t there, because that would mean we’d be cutting this trip short. I don’t have the equipment to dive that deep.”

  The truth is, diving deeper than a few hundred feet can be very dangerous, even for experienced divers. Most people who die scuba diving do so in deeper water. I had my two Draeger rebreathers aboard, which would allow us to dive deeper for longer periods of time than using air or enriched air, but even rebreathers have their limits.

  “It was dark when the plane crashed,” he said. “After making my way out of the plane, I floated on the surface for a few minutes after it sank. I remember looking down and seeing the faint flashing glow of one of its taillights. From the research I’ve done, even a light as powerful as one of those in the best viz conditions wouldn’t be visible more than three hundred feet down.”

  I smiled and nodded. I had to hand it to him, he’d certainly done his homework. I guess ten years in hiding had afforded him that luxury.

  I idled the Baia then moved aft. My Proton Mark 3 magnetometer sat on the sunbed, and we powered it up, then ran a quick diagnostic to make sure it was working properly. It looked like a fancy yellow torpedo, its aquadynamic shape allowing it to cut through the water with ease. It worked similar to a run-of-the-mill metal detector that you see guys walking around with on the beach sometimes, just with a much better range.

  Once all the checks came back satisfactory, I connected the cabling to the stern cleats and dropped it into the water. In the past, using a magnetometer to search the seafloor at hundreds of feet down required extensive mechanical equipment. But my top-of-the-line mag was so light and its cabling was so thin that I was able to tow it behind the Baia. Still, since the Baia wasn’t designed for salvaging, I connected the cabling to both cleats just in case.