by T. S. O'Neil
This was the first time Jimmy even alluded to anything having to do with the hidden store of gold coins. Char looked at him with a deeply serious look on his face.
“Where did you hide the gold, Jimmy?” Char asked.
Jimmy said nothing immediately, but seemed to want to impart a pregnant pause into the conversation to heighten the sense of anticipation. He reached into the pocket of the shirt he had borrowed from Char, shook out a cigarette and lit it with a butane lighter.
He blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling and then said, “Well, I suppose it’s about time that I tell you what happened to the gold.”
Jimmy started talking and didn’t stop until twenty minutes had passed. He had been thrown clear of the yacht as it was washed ashore by the rogue wave. Returning to the boat, he found Char unconscious, but breathing and Tommy shot dead by the bastard, Handley, who was nowhere to be found. Had he been, Jimmy would have choked him to death or smashed his head on the rocks for killing his little brother. Jimmy had searched for him around the shore—It was raining and the cold rain pelted, which seemed to wake him from the murderous rage that engulfed him after finding Tommy’s body with gunshot wounds in his back.
He knew that his time was limited—although Fort Desoto was isolated, someone would eventually see that a yacht had been beached by the rogue wave. He heard the low whine of emergency sirens in the far distance, probably somewhere on St. Pete Beach. The boat had landed on the shore outside the main fortifications of Fort DeSoto—which consisted of a huge sand berm covering the concrete fortifications that contained the magazine store for the weapons and targeting system for the Rifled Mortars that were the fort’s primary weaponry.
The actual fortifications consisted of little more than a series of long rectangular cement bunkers—the soldiers had been housed and fed elsewhere in buildings that were lost to tropical storms decades ago.
The sand atop the concrete bunkers served as an additional layer of defense that would protect the explosive ordnance and allowed the mortars to remain out of sight while also allow them to lop explosive rounds on the enemy from a concealed location.
On top of the berms were four huge metal airshafts topped with conical lids to allow ventilation while protecting the shaft from wind swept debris. Originally, the airshafts needed to be functional, both to vent fumes form the ammunitions stored below and to allow ventilation of the fort’s interior. They had long ceased to be serviceable and were no longer necessary.
The plans for the ongoing refurbishment of the fort called for the airshafts to be filled in with sand and then topped with concrete in order to prevent some toddler from crawling into them and becoming trapped. But, Jimmy didn’t know that when he frantically sought a place to store eight heavy bags filled with gold coin.
He ran up the man-made sand dune and examined the interior of the airshaft. Finding it filled with sand about three feet below the opening. He carried the bags two at a time to the top of the twenty foot sand dune and laid them at the bottom of the airshaft’s cylindrical base.
Once he had moved all eight bags, he carefully placed them inside the shaft and began using his hands to gather sand and feed it into the opening. This was taking too long and he desperately searched for an alternative, quickly finding a trash can lid that he employed as a shovel.
Satisfied he had buried the gold sufficiently to escape detection at least until he could return, Jimmy went back to the boat, carried his brother’s body to a spot overlooking the beach and buried him with the same trash can lid. Once that was done, he attempted to escape Mullet Key and was caught walking across the causeway into St. Pete Beach by the Pinellas County Sherriff’s Department.
“I became a friend of the Fort DeSoto Associations just so I could get their newsletter. The first issue I got detailed the refurbishment including how they poured cement into the airshafts,” said Char.
“So, the gold is still there, buried under what, two feet of cement?” asked Michael.
“Not sure, a foot, maybe two, but it might as well be a hundred, replied Jimmy. What are we going to do, rent jack hammers, haul them up to the top of the sand dune and go to work?”
Michael stood up, walked to the coffee pot, poured himself a refill, took a sip and looked at his father.
“There is something an old Gunner told me once when I was going through advanced recon training—there is no problem that can’t be solved by the proper use of high explosives.” They all laughed, but Michael was deadly serious. “No shit, we get some explosives; C4, dynamite, hell even black powder, we blow the cement off the top of the airshaft, grab the gold and be gone in a few ticks.”
“How are you proposing we do that?” asked Char.
“Simple—we wait until after the park closes, slip inside and do it.”
“Easier said, than done. When the park gate closes, it can let you out, but not in. It has those spikes that will blow out your tires if you try to enter.”
“Leave that to me,” said Michael as he downed the rest of his coffee.
Chapter 30 - Snake Eater’s Bar
Michael entered the Snake Eater Bar & Grill on MacDill Drive and was momentarily blind in the dimly lit interior. After he stood in the doorway for a moment, allowing his irises to take in as much ambient light as possible—he was gradually able to make out the bar’s dark interior features.
Two pool tables occupied the left side of the building’s interior—a small dance floor sat off to his left and a horseshoe shaped, lacquered oak bar complete with a brass rail, stood directly in front of him. Two large flat screen TVs were mounted behind the bar with another larger unit mounted in front of the dance floor.
The sound was muted, but it appeared from the maps and radar images being displayed that a serious weather advisory was being broadcast for the greater Tampa Bay area. A bright red banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen, indicating the potential for coastal flooding and the possible need for evacuation should the storm continue on its current path.
“Well, look at what the cat dragged in,” said a booming voice from behind the bar; a voice Michael hadn’t heard since Recon’s push into Baghdad.
He was known to his intimates as Triple G, which once stood for Gunny Gordon Groves—formerly of Explosive Ordinance Disposal; having since retired—with all of his body parts intact, no less.
Groves was a bear of a man—with a bald head and a handlebar mustache that was always running afoul of Marine Corps regulations that dictated the mustache could not extend beyond the corners of the wearer’s mouth. In fact, the regulation was so stringent most marines didn’t bother growing one. But Gunny always flaunted most regulations in general and this one in particular, by having the ends upturn and curled in a most audacious fashion. Few combat Senior NCOs or Officers called him out on it because when you needed Triple G, your shit was truly in the wind and no one dared piss him off.
“I haven’t seen you since you detonated that daisy chain of old artillery shells we found buried in front of that industrial complex we were reconning for the division CP,” said Michael while reaching over the bar to embrace his old comrade.
“Yeah, that was a ball-buster,” said Groves with measured understatement.
He reached across the bar and embraced Michael, slammed him on the back a few times and then reached into the cooler in front of him and withdrew two frost-tinged Bud lights. Triple G popped the tops with a catcher’s mitt sized hand and slid one bottle across the bar towards Michael.
“To fallen comrades,” said Groves as he clicked the neck of his beer bottle with the other.
“Fallen Comrades,” Michael repeated as he upended the bottle.
Gunny Grove’s last assignment was at U.S. Special Forces Command, headquartered at MacDill. He was left to developing doctrine involving the use of EOD teams in Special Operations environments—he hated it. Groves was a thrill seeker who lived on adrenaline. He had signed up to disarm bombs, not write about it. He tried to liven up his off duty world by sport
parachuting and scuba diving, but the tedium of his work day life got to him and he put in his retirement packet, bought and refurbished a derelict bar near the base and now passed his time hosting wet t-shirt contests for his clientele that consisted mostly of off-duty SOCCOM guys and coeds from the nearby university intent on hooking up with a “real man.” Triple G was still bored, but the fringe benefits were better.
They shot the shit for two more beers—it was a Monday afternoon and the crowd was thin, but Groves figured Michael wanted something, so he decided to cut to the chase.
“So, Captain Blackfox, what brings you to this low rent section of town?” Groves asked with a wryly raised eyebrow.
“Looking for a particular substance that you have a lot of experience with” he said, quietly, although there was only one other person at the bar.
Groves raised an eyebrow “And what would that be?”
“Come on Gunny, don’t make me say it—ah Hell! Rumor has it that you might be able to lay your hands on a small amount of C4.”
The rumor was started after Gunny turned in slightly less than it was estimated that he used during the battle. No one dared confront him and during the war at the time, customs clearance was sketchy at best.
In reality, Gunny had shipped a container back to Lejeune with about 10 pounds of the substance concealed in a footlocker packed in a CONNEX or shipping container. He stored it in a shed behind his house and used it mostly for blowing stumps on a piece of property he was preparing to build on, and he still had at least nine pounds left.
“That depends, what do you want it for?” Michael explained as much as he could—leaving out tales of escaped cons, dead CIA interrogators and lawyers, but mentioning the gold.
Groves thought for a minute and then smiled.
“Shit, Mike, I can’t let you have it, it wouldn’t be right; you officers are as fucked up as a soup sandwich and you might hurt yourself, but perhaps we can work out a deal. When do you plan executing the operation?”
Mike pointed his chin towards the TV where the weather advisory was still being broadcast and said, “Right before that storm hits.”
Triple G nodded and smiled, “Sounds like a plan.”
Chapter 31 - The Duck
“Only one problem, said Char, after the park gets evacuated, they close the causeway to traffic; no way on and no way off.” He stood in front of the open refrigerator in the motorhome, withdrew three cans of Coors and handed a beer to Jimmy and Michael.
“Okay, so we go in on a rubber raft,” replied Michael. “I’ve done it hundreds of times—slip in and out unseen. We use an RB 15 or something like it.”
The RB stood for “Rubber Boat” and the fifteen was for the number of soldiers, sailors or Airmen or Marines it could carry, was the workhorse of clandestine special operations forces used during covert maritime operations. It was normally employed with a small outboard, a twenty-five horsepower heavily muffled engine—although Recon Marines sometimes used it with just paddles both to limit noise as well as to gain appreciation for the existence of an engine; the latter being done during recon training when candidates for Recon undergo Outboard Appreciation Day by operating the RB 15s for a day with just paddles.
Char opened his beer and took a deep swig, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Can it carry a short ton of gold?”
Michael thought for a moment before replying, “Yeah, up to 3300 pounds, but including the four of us and equipment, that will put us pretty close to maximum load.”
“Okay, sounds do-able, but where can you lay your hands on this boat?” Jimmy asked as he reclined in one of the blue leather Captain’s chair in the front of the RV.” It’s basically a Zodiac with some military specific modifications to enhance the hull strength, but a commercial version might do.”
But the more he thought about it, the less Michael liked the idea. A commercial version of the RB15 would have a lot less strength than the military version and the boat’s civilian outboard would be un-muffled. They would load up the boat and be at the mercy of the heavy surf that would accompany the storm. There had to be a better way. As a former Marine, Michael’s thinking tended towards vehicles used for amphibious operations; LVTP7s commonly called Amtracs, landing boats with drop front ramps, and hovercrafts. All were in a category of too hard to obtain, as they would most likely reside on a military reservation, such as the nearby Marine Corp’s Reserve Center.
But borrowing one would be both difficult and hazardous, not to mention being a felonious crime of the federal kind. Michael was in this deep enough already, no sense adding theft of sensitive government property to this venture. There had to be another way—then it hit him, he had seen an old amphibious bus called a Duck driving around St. Pete Beach offering tourists rides through surf.
The Duck, was actually a “DUKW”—Michael didn’t remember what the military acronym stood but knew it was a military amphibious truck that was designed in early World War Two by a partnership between some yacht designers and General Motors. It was originally used for both transporting goods and troops over land and water and for use approaching and crossing beaches in amphibious landings on hostile beaches; hundreds were used during the D-Day landing at Normandy.
The Duck was really just a two and one half ton capacity truck with amphibious modifications, such as the addition of watertight hull, six wheel drive, a water propeller and a ten ton winch. They also served during the Korean War and some of them even survived and provided service during Viet Nam. Most of those remaining served as tourist craft in marine environments. A little research indicated that it was capable of carrying a heavy payload over land or water. It would do.
Originally, the Duck’s designers had proved its seaworthiness by using one to cross the English Channel in high seas, but that one had been brand new and in a high state of readiness. Michael hoped this Duck was in similar condition, but he seriously doubted it.
The vehicle sat to the back of the old sun cracked parking lot. Michael at first took it to be a derelict. It was painted a serene ocean blue dotted with illustrations of happy sea animals— a sea turtle, a manatee and several dolphins decorated the hull. A tall blue canopy of high grade vinyl protected the passenger compartment from the weather.
“Yeah, it’s a bachelor Party,” he told the somewhat disheveled old guy in a sweat stained safari shirt sitting behind a counter in a twelve foot aluminum office trailer that had once been a real estate office for the condo complex next door. “The guy getting married used to drive one of those things,” said Michael indicating the large blue vehicle parked outside the window. “What do you call it?”
“A Duck” the man replied dryly, in the manner of someone who gets asked that question way too often.
“Well, my dad said he drove one in Viet Nam or something like it and I thought that it might be fun to take a drive around St. Pete Beach and hit some bars in it. We would rent the whole thing from you for the entire day.”
The man smiled for the first time. One was born every minute. Since starting this business he had lost money every week but at the height of the season when college kids would rent it out to have drunken pub crawls, the other plus side being he got to see a lot of naked breasts as the co-eds liked to flash on lookers from the relative security the Duck provided.
He looked at how the potential customer was dressed and tried to determine a number that would both sufficiently fleece him, while still allowing significant space to negotiate downward—it was more art than science.
“Okay, well the standard price for chartering the DUKW is twelve hundred dollars a day,” he said as if quoting a price sheet.
Michael smiled earnestly, figuring it would help if the guy thought he was a rube.
“That would be fine, but you have to let my dad drive it in the water for at least fifteen minutes as he used to do that in Nam and said it was a blast; one of the best parts of his job. He was a Boatswain’s mate.”
The man no
dded and tried not to smile. He never did anything more than drive it through shallow water for a few minutes as the Duck was over fifty years old and he hadn’t quite kept up its maintenance—business conditions being what they were.
“When do you want to do it,” he asked.
“This Saturday,” Michael said with a neutral expression on his face.
“Sorry, son, but there is a tropical storm due in late Saturday evening and the weather will probably be getting bad. I was going to put it into storage over in Tampa to avoid having it swept out to sea.” “Please, it would be a lot to my old man and it will be the last chance to do it, as he’s getting married on Sunday.” The man’s expression remained interested, but not quite convinced.
In a sudden moment of inspiration, Michael added “I will kick in another three hundred if we could do it on Saturday.” The guy couldn’t help but smile.
“Well, I suppose I could take it over to Tampa after we finish up, as long as it’s not later than nine o’clock in the evening,” he replied.
“I’m sure we will be done by then,” said Michael with a wide grin.
Chapter 32 - Marilyn
A few weeks previous, Internal Affairs had successfully recruited a pretty young patrol officer formerly of vice, who had gotten tired of acting as a decoy for prostitution stings on Route 19. Rumors were carefully spread about her not being up to the task and that she was being transferred back to the Patrol Division. As luck would have it, she had just been partnered with Guy Handley on a two officer patrol.
“Hey Guy, wait a minute will you?” Handley had finished the work day and was getting into his tan 2004 Jeep Cherokee when he heard her call out from across the parking lot. Turning, he was surprised to see Marilyn Ramirez strolling towards him wearing not much of anything—tan high heeled strap sandals, white high waist Tuxedo shorts worn tight enough to show a Camel Toe and a sheer blue silk baby-doll top.