“I got it, I got it,” he held up his hands waving off the nearly diving bartender trying to avert a drunken mess on his bar.
He stumbled again, this time catching himself on a floor-to-ceiling column that was covered in vacationers’ business cards, pictures and even a couple of bras. That must’ve been a fun night he thought to himself. He looked at the myriad of cards and focused his eyes on a particularly bright looking card. It was a picture of a purple to orange sunset over ocean waves. The text simply said Megan Simons, Ocean Biology and Marine Historian. It said something about the love of ocean legend and blah blah blah… phone number. Good.
He looked over his shoulder to see if Vince was looking and plucked the card from the column. He shuffled out of the bar and made his way to Duval Street.
At this muggy but cool time of early morning, the crowded street was home to stoners, bohemians, flamboyant homosexuals and transsexuals, people who didn’t fit the mainstream life at the north end of US 1. He was not surprised to find it bustling with South Florida socialite kids as well, stumbling about paying way too much for beer. It seemed that everyone here was running from something, and they simply ran out of road.
In the eighteenth century it was pirates, the nineteenth century brought soldiers and the twentieth century introduced smugglers. Any of those would be better than the cracked-out, Miami weekenders that flooded into Key West every Friday night.
He hiked over to where he thought he’d parked his scooter. Not there. He looked around unsteadily for a minute and still saw no sign of his ride.
“Mmmkay,” he muttered, “guess I’ll take the bus.”
Buses, bikes and scooters are the major modes of transportation for locals in Key West. Taxis are for vacationers with lots of money to burn on such things. He walked to the nearest bus stop and plopped down on the bench. He was out as soon as he hit.
“Yo,” a rising voice woke him from a dream about a man, a boat and a fish, “you need a ride, sugar?”
Out of the fog in his head and the fog of the morning, he could see a bus driver, a black woman he’d ridden with many times. She probably outweighed Troy by one hundred and fifty pounds and her arms jiggled underneath from her elbow to her shoulder. She had corn-rowed hair pulled back from her smooth forehead down to her shoulders and a white and pink floral bandana tied on top of her head. The sundress she wore, if you could call it that, was draped over her body in pale yellow with a swirling orange pattern of vines, flowers, moons and stars.
Glowing chestnut eyes smiled at him from a face that was round and smooth. She looked soft and comfortable and safe, like the beloved nanny of some rich, white southern Georgia family. On his frequent rides with her he’d learned that she was new to Key West displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, a Cajun chef from a well-known gumbo café. She had promised him many times to make him a Louisiana meal he would never forget. He could barely remember his time back in Louisiana on the boats… another lifetime.
“Keys ain’t gonna git hit by no hurricane,” she once told him, “they been blessed by the nuns.”
It was an old legend; he knew it well. So far, it had held true.
“Yup,” Troy nearly growled with his throat now cottony dry, “a ride would be good.”
“Where you headed, baby?” she closed the door behind him as he slumped down in the first seat.
“This route go anywhere near Pepe’s?” he asked.
“You bet it does,” she pulled into motion, “right by the front door. Lookin’ for some poke chop covered steak to ease dat pain?”
“I was actually thinking about a Yuengling, but yeah, that sounds good too,” he laughed.
“Baby, stick with dem poke chops,” she scolded him, “ain’t nothin’ but the devil in dat alcohol.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Troy laughed.
The winding bus route let people on and off as they moved away from the tourist district of Duval Street. He easily drifted into sleep again. She woke him as she opened the bus door. They had arrived at Pepe’s. He took the first step down the stairs to exit the bus and she grabbed the sleeve of his shirt.
“Great things gonna come your way, sugar,” she said but her eyes darkened, “but jus’ remember dat deep is a dangerous place. You take care of yaself, Troy.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” he said with a grin and ran his fingers through his hair, “I’ve got a knack for staying out of trouble.”
“Now you know I don’t believe dat,” the black woman threw back her head and laughed.
She closed the door and hissed off the brakes into the slowly creeping dawn. Troy laughed to himself as he walked into Pepe’s. His head was finally clearing.
2
Treasure Daydreams
Shoving a plate of mostly finished world-famous Pepe’s pork chops away from him and sipping down the last of a Yuengling beer, Troy Bodean pulled the business card out of his shirt pocket.
“Well, Megan,” he flipped open his cellphone, “let’s see if you’re interested.”
He dialed the number on the card and waited. Two rings, three… then a voicemail.
“Hi this is Meg. Can’t get to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number and a short message, I’ll call you back,” it said followed by the obligatory beep.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. Oops, it was only five-thirty in the morning. He closed the phone without leaving a message... try back later. He got up to leave and the waitress stopped him.
“Cash or charge,” she asked him sarcastically.
He looked over her shoulder and found the manager shaking his head.
“Put it on my tab, sweetie,” he winked at the girl.
“So much for my tip, eh?” she rolled her eyes.
He turned and walked toward the door.
As he opened it to the newly coming dawn he looked back at her and said, “Hey when this next one comes through, I’ll leave you a tip like you’ve never seen before.”
He smiled and walked out as the girl shook her head at his back. This scene played out every time Troy came into Pepe’s and every time he left without paying.
A dreary mile later, he unlocked and opened the door to his houseboat. Calling it a houseboat was a stretch of the term; basically, he lived in a trailer on the water. Parked at the dock was his Honda scooter with a chain through the wheel.
“Oh,” he nodded to the scooter, “that’s where I left you.”
After coming to Key West, he’d realized that his truck was a bit of overkill… nobody local drove a car and very few rode anything but a bicycle. He opted for something in between, a bright red Honda Elite with a small basket on the back.
As the sun rose over the ocean creating yet another spectacular Key West sunrise, he shrugged off his sandals and slumped down on his bed. With his belly full and gentle surf rocking the houseboat slightly, he slipped into unconsciousness.
The blaring chirp of his cellphone jerked him out of his dreams of finding that one chest of gold buried in the deep.
“Troy, where the hell are you?!” the voice at the other end of the line demanded.
“Huh, what?” he struggled to shake off the grogginess.
“Your nine o’clock is here,” the voice was an exasperated whisper.
He glanced over at his alarm clock. Nine forty-five. Ouch.
“I’m on my way, R.B.” he clicked his phone shut and sat up on the edge of the bed.
R.B. was Ryan Bodean, Troy’s younger brother. He’d been estranged from him after returning from Afghanistan, but in an odd turn of events, his brother had bought a seaplane expedition company in the Keys and was suddenly in need of a pilot. Although a seaplane was a different animal from the Apaches he used to fly, he made a pretty quick transition.
He groaned as he lifted himself and stood wobbling slightly. He walked to the tiny bathroom and turned on the cold water in the sink. He splashed the water on his face and tried to rub some of the hangover out of
his eyes. He noticed that his scruffy chin had sprouted a few gray hairs and his wrinkles seemed to be a little deeper. He splashed a little water on his hair and brushed it back with his fingers, a few gray hairs had popped up here lately as well. He thought about showering and shaving, but decided to leave that until later, after this first trip to the fort. A hot steaming shower and shave, he promised himself.
He threw on a new white shirt with the company logo on the chest, Tortuga Adventures, shoved his now infamous Outback Tea Stained straw cowboy hat on his head, grabbed his grey New Balance tennis shoes and slammed the houseboat door behind him. He fumbled through his keys, locked his door while trying to slip on his shoes. The scooter took two attempts but finally sputtered to life. He nearly poked his eye trying to navigate out of his drive and put on his Aviators.
Minutes later, as he pulled into the parking lot, he could see that the seaplane’s engine had been fired up for him. He chained the scooter’s wheel and rushed into the sales booth.
“Bro, what the heck??” R.B. demanded of him, “No, you know what, I don’t want to know.”
Troy smiled at him and slapped him on the shoulder. R.B. had come back from the war with a boatload of G.I. Bill money. He got his History degree and a teaching certificate… all the while thinking Troy hadn’t made it back. Troy was lost in a Vegas strip club called the Peppermint Hippo spinning records for the lovely ladies who danced there. Seems the ghastly details of the bomb that had killed Harry Nedman had grown to include Troy’s demise as well.
R.B. was barely removed from graduating and had spent the years since teaching geography, even though his major was in history. That was public schooling for you. He had confided with Troy that the end had come when one of his students had answered a final exam question as follows:
On what continent is the Nile River? Tennessee
Well, at least they’d spelled Tennessee right. He failed the kid, packed up his desk and never looked back. Lucky for him, he’d been run through the pilot program in Afghanistan and could fly everything but a jet. Upon leaving his cushy thirteen thousand a year teaching job, he’d found a floundering seaplane ferry business down in the islands and had made the owner an offer he couldn’t refuse. The money had come in the form of a loan from their grandmother, Charlotte Lucille Bodean along with what little was left from his G.I. Bill. He’d paid everything back within a year. He joked with Troy that he’d gotten his inheritance too, as everyone thought he’d been killed.
R.B. was a good-looking kid with long combed down hair that had golden streaks in it from his time in Key West and a clean-cut goatee, the current cut was just covering his chin. He was built like a baseball player with strong limbs and broad shoulders, but his waist was beginning to show the effect of his love for beer. He and Troy were famous around Key West bars. It was widely thought that R.B. was the most eligible and sought after straight man on the island.
“Did you give ‘em the emergency Fort Jefferson speech?” Troy winked.
“And then some,” R.B. laughed, “You know, management won’t be too happy about this.”
“You fueled her up?” he asked as he grabbed his khaki cap and walked out the door.
“Does the Pope wear a funny hat?” R.B. got up and followed him out.
“That he does, that he does,” Troy gave him a mock salute as he climbed into the plane.
“Good flight,” R.B. called to him.
“You bet,” he nodded and disappeared behind the closing hatch.
As he lifted the Cessna 208 into the air, he began his own speech about the tropical wildlife and sea creatures he and his passengers would see as they traveled to the famed nineteenth century island sixty miles off Key West.
As the plane neared the island, he could hear the oohs and ahs of his passengers.
Troy began what he referred to as his landing speech, “Ponce de Leon called it the turtle island or Las Tortugas long before the fort was ever built and pirates used it as a base for attacking merchant shipping in the sixteenth century. The national park is actually a collection of seven tiny islands surrounded by white beaches, teeming coral reefs and legends of sunken treasure ships, but the stars of Garden Key are the forty-five-foot high casemate style walls that rise up out of the sand.”
With this he took a turn around the island to give his passengers a complete view of the fort’s hexagonal shaped walls that surrounded nearly the entire island; however, Troy couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting out to the open sea beyond it. She was out there; he knew where she was hiding. Finding the right time to go and get her and someone to help him salvage her was the real trick.
He knew he couldn’t trust any local divers with this, hell they might get him out to the site and throw him into the water for some hungry shark to find, sixty miles was a long way to swim. This girl from the business card, Megan, would be perfect, a little green, controllable and highly unlikely to mutiny once they found the wreck. He glanced to the south and could barely see the darkening hurricane sky, he’d have to move fast if he was going to get anything up.
With the rush of splashdown and the exciting ride up onto the white sand beach, Troy received the obligatory applause from the delighted passengers and as they left the plane they tipped him a few dollars for his expertise. He quickly folded the bills into his pocket and helped them step onto the sand. A lot like back in the Army choppering old General Summerton around, he thought to himself as he climbed back up to the cockpit, but without the tips.
The vacationers would be ushered through the fort and served a beachside lunch over the course of about two hours, just enough time for a nap. He leaned back into one of the more comfortable passenger seats and tipped his cowboy hat forward over his eyes.
“Sleeping on the job again, huh?"
Troy opened his eyes to see a face he hadn't seen in years, Natasha Wainwright, wearing the unmistakable uniform of the United States Park Service, without the hat. Her military posture was hard and straight, and her physique was like that of a triathlon athlete – mainly because she had trained for and competed in at least twenty of them. She had yellow blonde hair pulled back so tight in a ponytail it looked as if it was pulling her razor thin eyebrows upward, not one hair out of place. Troy could feel her pale hazel eyes probing him and found disapproval in her tightly pursed lips. She wore no makeup, but he thought he could see the slightest film of sunscreen on her sharp nose.
They had met fifteen years ago – before the Iraq War– in Little Creek, Virginia where her father's Seal team was based. Troy had been stationed there prior to shipping out to Afghanistan for some training on water rescue. That’s the Army for you, he thought, water rescue in the desert. He had seen her running before dawn each morning, finally asking her out one Friday night at the officer's club. She turned him down three times before giving in to him. She’d had a hard and brusque demeanor and at that time, he’d thought he was into that. That was another lifetime ago, before the war, before Vegas, before Louisiana and before Pawleys Island… way back in his Army days. Nowadays he was laid back and easy going and liked his company that way too.
"Natasha?"
What in the hell was she doing here. He’d been out here hundreds of times and knew all the park rangers by name and had never caught wind of this.
"The one and only; I walked out to see the plane, but immediately recognized your day-old beard and trademark slouch."
He laughed; she hadn't changed a bit, a lifetime military brat that didn't apologize for anything… brash in every sense of the word. She had gone through her military career using her father’s high-ranking connections to get her into the Pentagon. Ambition was her middle name.
After they had gone out for a while, he’d realized they were yin and yang, two very opposite sides of the same coin. She was honest, disciplined and loyal. Right and wrong were not debatable. Troy admired those traits, but he had a more fluid definition of right and wrong. She also didn't approve of how he spent his free time with buddies
drinking and talking about flying and other women. It became apparent they wouldn't last, since they drove each other crazy. Luckily though, the military had done the breaking up for them, his training was over and her new assignment – very confidential – was somewhere else… she couldn’t tell him where. How the hell did she end up as a park ranger on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere?
"You're a Park Ranger?"
"Yep. I decided D.C. and the military was not for me. I wanted to enjoy nature, not order people to blow it up. This seemed like a nice place to get away, seventy-five miles from the mainland."
He knew her well enough to know she was lying; brutally honest people make horrible liars. Besides, her ambitions wouldn't let her pass up opportunities in Washington just to kill time in a place like this. Not only that, Fort Jefferson was sixty miles from the mainland, not seventy-five. A Park Ranger would know that. Why was she here?
"So, you've put your flying to use, I see." She was being sarcastic. To her, if an airplane didn't have sidewinder missiles attached, it wasn't worth flying.
“That I have, darlin’. I answered a classified ad with Tortuga Adventures for a pilot,” he lied, “It’s amazing what you can learn to do watchin’ YouTube videos."
He was suddenly flirting, but he wasn't sure why. She wasn't buying it anyway.
"I like it here, suits me," he said, in a last-ditch attempt to justify his slouchy island existence to someone who would never be impressed by it.
There was a long awkward silence.
“Okay, well, I have to go tend to the tourists, but we should catch up," she said, to avoid continuing down a dead-end conversation.
"Is this a regular trip for you?" she asked.
"Every day there ain’t a hurricane."
"Great! I have some things I want to ask you about the area, and there are some places nearby I'd like to see from the air. Think I can hitch a ride?"
He could see some wheels turning behind her eyes, wheels that had a strangely secretive air to them, but he couldn't say no. Despite having been trained to kill people and all that straight-shooting brashness, she was still cute enough to get whatever she wanted. What was she up to?
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 30