Revenge in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  Seeing no reason to drive back to my place, we walked just a few hundred feet down the dock to where I had the Baia moored at slip twenty-four. We paused before boarding, watching for the slightest ripple around the hull to signal that someone might be aboard. Once we were confident that there was no one inside, we headed into the main cabin and crashed onto the queen-sized bed. We were both tired from the long day, but watching Ange undress and kissing her soft cherry-red lips easily convinced me to put off going to sleep for a few more hours.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I woke up the following morning to the sound of my radio turning on and playing Kenny Chesney’s “Beer in Mexico” on Island Vibes. Without cracking open my eyes, I dropped a hand on the OFF button and crawled out of bed before it woke up Ange. I took a moment to admire her beauty as she lay halfway beneath my white comforter. Her blond hair was sprawled out over her head, leaving only a small glimpse of her tanned face, and her long, toned legs stuck out slightly, allowing me to see her sexy feet and white-painted toenails.

  Forcing my eyes to look away from her, I took in a deep breath, cleared my head, and headed for the salon. We had a busy day ahead of us, and I knew that I would have to be focused and alert at all times, ready for anything. I scooped some medium roast into my coffeemaker, then poured the water and started it up. Breakfast would be light. It was already five in the morning, and the sun would be waking up within the next hour. I cut into a few mangos, then sliced up some bananas. Ange woke up a few minutes later to the smell of the coffee, and after making quick work of our breakfast, we hopped into the shower together.

  After toweling off, I put on a pair of swim trunks and a tee shirt. Ange put on a white bikini, then covered it with a pair of short jean shorts and one of my cutoff shirts. Moving out into the cockpit, I saw a faint glow in the distance as the sun was just starting to rise over the eastern horizon. We’d agreed that it was imperative that we leave early, given the popularity of the nearby dive and snorkel sites.

  I took a few minutes to check over all my gear, making sure I had full scuba tanks and checking the integrity of every strap, flap, and clip of my BCD. At zero five thirty I saw Jack walking down the dock, carrying his gear bag over his shoulder. Jack was one of the best divers I’d ever met, and he knew the Keys as good as anyone alive, so I was glad that he’d agreed to tag along. After making sure all our gear was properly stowed, we untied the mooring lines and disconnected both the shore power cable and freshwater hose. After Jack gave me the thumbs-up, I started up the twin six-hundred-horsepower engines and eased us away from the dock.

  The weather forecast called for partly cloudy skies with less than a ten percent chance of rain, but Jack knew that it was wrong. He’d always told me that he had that islander instinct that can’t be taught. And after living in the Keys for almost half a year, I’d grown to rely on his forecast more than any other.

  “We’ll have until one o’clock before the rains come,” he said, staring up at the sky, which was barely covered with scattered gray clouds.

  Along the equator, seasons don’t exist in the usual sense. Instead of the normal four seasons, there exists a rainy and a dry season. The dry season lasts from November to April, and the rainy season from May to October. Since it was mid-October, we were still barely in the rainy season, which meant downpours came and went with little notice at times.

  The waters leading out into the open ocean were calm. There wasn’t much wind as I cruised us out between Sunset Key and the familiar waterfront attractions of Mallory Square and the Key West Aquarium. It was always cool to see Mallory in the early morning with very few people around, and then marvel at how it became a different animal entirely by midafternoon, filled with live music, quaint shops with doors propped open, street vendors and an assortment of interesting characters showing off their talents for anyone who wanted to watch. The laid-back lifestyle of the Keys combined with the wild and crazy nightlife to make Key West one of my favorite places on Earth.

  I picked up speed as we headed south around Fort Zachary Taylor. Turning to port, I put us on a direct course for the Thunderbolt due northeast of us, then brought us up to the Baia’s cruising speed of forty knots. All three of us kept a sharp eye out on the horizon, the threat of the Campos brothers and their drug-smuggling posse ever lingering in our minds.

  Ange kept a pair of binoculars glued to her eyes for practically the entire trip, scanning the area around us in all directions. It wouldn’t be easy to spot someone following us, given the fact that there were already a handful of boats on the water. The reef running along the eastern side of the Keys is one of the most popular destinations for diving and snorkeling in the world. And even though it was still technically the rainy season, the tourists were beginning to flock south.

  After an hour and a half, we reached our destination and dropped anchor about a quarter of a mile away from the Thunderbolt wreck. The Thunderbolt started out life as the USAMP Major General Wallace F. Randolph, a 188-foot-long mine planter. She’d spent years changing hands, being used as an oilfield exploration vessel and a lightning research vessel. Years of being hit by lighting were what had earned her the name the Thunderbolt. She was eventually scuttled in 1986 as part of the Florida Keys Artificial Reef Program and now rested in 120 feet of water.

  There was one boat already anchored just south of the wreck, about a thousand feet north of us. There were seven people gathered on deck, and six of them were donning scuba gear. After reading its name, Jack recognized it as a charter based out of Marathon. There were two other boats cruising the turquoise water surrounding us, which only had a few small whitecaps, but neither of them looked suspicious.

  I bent down, opened a storage compartment hatch at the back of the console, and pulled out my BCD, fins, mask, and snorkel. I didn’t usually wear a wetsuit while diving in the Keys, but since we’d be going so deep, I grabbed my three-millimeter from inside the guest cabin closet and pulled it snug over my body. Jack did the same with his wetsuit, and then we strapped our nitrox-filled tanks onto the backs of our BCDs. Nitrox has a higher concentration of oxygen than normal air, which would allow us to stay down longer and be less susceptible to decompression sickness. It would also be essential, considering that it was over a 150 feet down just to the opening of the cave. At that depth, a normal tank would offer only a few minutes of bottom time due to the increased density of the air.

  Once the tank was secure, I grabbed my titanium dive knife from a nearby compartment and strapped it to the inside of my right calf. There it would be easily accessible with my right hand and less likely to get stuck on something than if it was on the outside. I also grabbed a high-powered Prolight dive flashlight, securing it in the front pocket of my BCD, and my Cressi dive computer, which I strapped around my left wrist.

  Once our gear was good to go, Jack and I slid our BCDs onto our backs and tightened them snug. Ange did a buddy check, making sure we didn’t have any loose-hanging straps or tangled hoses, then gave us a thumbs-up. I used eight pounds of sandbag weights and velcroed them into the side pockets of my BCD to help my body sink, then grabbed my mask and fins and moved onto the massive swim platform.

  I sat on the transom next to Jack, and as I slid my feet into my fins, I turned back to Ange and stared into her blue eyes. “Look,” I said, “we don’t know for sure that we weren’t followed. Just be careful and—”

  As if reading my mind, she lifted my gray cutoff shirt that she was wearing, revealing one of my spare Sig Sauer P226 pistols strapped around her waist. Then she motioned towards her hard case resting on the half-moon cushioned seat beside the dinette.

  “If any of those thugs come near this boat, it will be the last thing they ever do,” she said confidently.

  I couldn’t help but smile as I turned my head forward and donned my dive mask. Jack and I gave each other a fist bump, then he said, “Time to solve us a mystery,” before standing and stepping out into the ocean.

  As his wave splashed ove
r the swim platform onto my fins, I stood up as well. Alright, Dad, I thought as I stared down at the blue ocean beneath me. Time to figure out what you were trying to hide.

  I took a big step out, splashing through the surface and gazing at the clear water around me. The warm Caribbean seawater felt good as it seeped into my wetsuit, and I bobbed for a few seconds before letting some air out of my BCD and sinking rapidly alongside Jack.

  Looking around through the glasslike water, we saw long trails of bubbles dancing towards the surface over by the Thunderbolt. The six divers had jumped in a few minutes before us and the leader had almost reached the top of the wreck. The visibility was roughly ninety feet, so we could only see the outline of the front end of the shipwreck as we descended towards our own seemingly insignificant destination.

  From afar, the opening into the cave was impossible to distinguish. It sat nestled beneath an overhanging ledge, which meant that you had to swim almost all the way to the seafloor beside it in order to see it. It had only been by a matter of dumb luck that my dad and I had stumbled upon it.

  We’d been diving the Thunderbolt, of course, and after exploring the wreck, we’d spotted an enormous leatherback sea turtle swimming south, heading along the ledge. It was swimming slowly so we decided to follow it as best as we could while my dad used his underwater camera to snap a few photos. Due to the lighting, the pictures hadn’t turned out well, but just as we were about to head up towards the surface, my dad had spotted a dark opening in the ledge. Upon further examination, we’d realized that it was the opening of a cave. Our hearts had both raced with excitement, but the gauges on our dive tanks had forced us to surface and spend over an hour letting the nitrogen bleed off before diving down to explore it.

  Jack and I finned with calm strokes past the top of the brightly colored ledge that was covered with coral and teeming with sea life. It rose up from the ocean floor about forty feet and marked the point where the coastal waters off the southeastern shores of the Keys transitioned from shallow turquoise waters to the deep blue open ocean. A fine layer of sediment clouded up as we reached the bottom. Glancing at my dive computer, I saw that we were 154 feet down.

  Looking ahead, Jack and I saw the opening of the cave just ten feet ahead of us. The opening was menacing, dark and about half the size of a common doorway. Only one of us could fit at a time, so I pointed a finger at myself, then pointed forward and then pointed a finger at Jack and pointed two fingers forward, indicating that I wanted myself to lead and him to follow. He gave the universal okay signal, pressing his index finger to his thumb. Looking back at the cave, I grabbed my flashlight, switched it on and then finned slowly through the opening.

  The cave was extraordinary. It was filled with sea urchins and the antennas of hundreds of spiny-tailed lobster peeking out from their hiding places below. As we moved deeper, it started to open up a little, allowing Jack and me to swim side by side. It was pitch black aside from the bright beams of our flashlights, which scanned over the unique rock formations.

  Fortunately, the cave didn’t branch out like many caves do, so we didn’t have to worry about getting lost. But we still had to successfully navigate through the ups and downs, twists and turns and widening and narrowing of the cave.

  Cave diving presents many dangers, and I had read my share of stories involving experienced divers who’d ended up trapped beneath a fallen boulder or forced to make a last-ditch effort for the surface due to faulty equipment. Those stories rarely ended happily, and usually resulted in the terrifying and lonely deaths of those involved. Because of the dangers, Jack and I moved slowly and made little to no contact with the rocks around us. We also routinely checked both our gauges and our dive computers, making sure that everything was functioning properly.

  After five minutes of swimming through the cave, it started to angle upwards. The cave narrowed around us like a massive mouth closing in as we angled so much that we were now swimming straight up. Roughly thirty feet above us, the cave opened and, shining our flashlights, we could see the glassy reflection of the rippling surface as our bubbles rose up and broke free.

  We kicked for the surface, breathing out continuously to prevent the dense air from expanding and damaging our lungs. When we were only about fifteen feet from the surface, I noticed something in my peripheral vision. Keeping my flashlight pointed up, I glanced down into the dark water beneath my fins and saw a small speck of light. It was faint, and it was coming from far below us in the cave, but there it was.

  Tilting my head upward, I saw that Jack had moved about five feet above me and was just about to break the surface. I kicked my fins through the water with two powerful strokes, catching up to him. We broke through the surface together, then removed our mouthpieces and breathed in the damp cavern air. Keeping my flashlight trained up into the small dry space, I looked back down at the faint light below.

  “What is it?” Jack said, eyeing me skeptically.

  “Someone’s following us,” I said, looking around at the main portion of the cave, which was about twelve feet tall, twenty feet wide, and made up of large pointy rocks. “We need to get out of the water.”

  I slid my mask down to hang around my neck, then slipped out of my fins and held them by their rubber straps in my left hand. Grabbing hold of the black jagged rocks, we pulled ourselves out of the water, unclipped our straps and slid out of our dripping BCDs. Setting our gear behind one of the larger rocks so it wouldn’t be visible from the water, we climbed around to the other side and leaned over a small ledge, staring down as our pursuer’s lights grew brighter in the dark clear water below. It looked like there were two of them, and as they ascended, we switched off our flashlights and kept covered behind the ledge. We were only a couple of feet above the surface, but we could remain out of sight if we kept our bodies low, pressed against the cool rock face.

  We watched as their bubbles floated up, and less than a minute later, one of the guys broke through the surface. He held a bright flashlight in one hand, which illuminated the cave across from us, and a Glock 26 subcompact pistol in the other. He was well within my reach, so as he slid down his mask, I grabbed my dive knife, leaned over him and stabbed its sharp tip through his right hand, causing it to open and let go of his weapon.

  Blood gushed out from his hand, and he yelled through his mouthpiece. As his pistol sank into the deep abyss below, I sliced his breathing hose in half, causing air to hiss out violently from his tank. Then I stabbed a giant hole in his BCD, causing air to explode out and throwing off his buoyancy. Digging my right foot into his body, I kicked him down as hard as I could, and with the air bubbling away from his BCD, he sank like a rock into the darkness below.

  As the first thug sank, his body on a fast and direct course for the rocks below, thug number two reached the surface. Seeing what had happened to his buddy, he looked frantic and paranoid as he appeared out of the water, holding his Glock out in front of him and firing it in our general direction before the barrel had even cleared the water. The loud booms of gunpowder were deafening in the tight confines of the cave. His bullets rattled and ricocheted off the black rocks, shooting up bright sparks.

  I kept my body low and out of sight behind the ledge and felt Jack’s presence beside me. When the thug stopped firing momentarily, I glanced over the edge. Seeing that he was looking towards the other side of the cave through the dark lenses of his mask, I sprang into action. Still gripping my dive knife tightly in my right hand, I jumped off the ledge and splashed down behind the thug, the force of my body landing on top of him causing us both to sink a few feet beneath the water.

  I wrapped my legs firmly around his waist and stabbed my knife through the center of his chest before he realized what was happening. He yelled underwater, sending a stream of bubbles towards the surface a few feet above us as blood flowed out from his chest. His body struggling in my arms, he tried to aim his pistol at me, but it was no use. I had his body in a full nelson, and no matter how hard he wailed, ki
cked and flailed his arms, he couldn’t get himself free.

  Grabbing hold of his right hand, which gripped his pistol firmly, I forced it into his abdomen and pulled the trigger a few times, sending two nine-millimeter bullets exploding into his dying body and putting him out of his misery. We bobbed on the surface, and within a second, his body went limp in my arms. I relieved him of his weapon, then deflated his BCD, sending his corpse sinking to the bottom of the vertical slug of water to join his friend below in a watery grave.

  I swam through the bloody water, grabbed the corners of a black slippery rock on the edge and pulled myself out. Fishing my flashlight out of the small pocket in my wetsuit, I turned it on and climbed over the space where we’d left our gear.

  “Damn, Logan,” Jack said, meeting me by our gear. Then, glancing down into the water he added, “Those guys the drug smugglers?”

  I nodded. “Some of them.”

  We both shined our flashlights towards the far western corner of the cave. Though it was short and narrow, the cave extended a long way into the darkness. Jack and I climbed over large rocks and steep crevices as we navigated a hundred feet or so into the darkness. Soon the cave became so narrow that we had to practically crawl to fit and, remembering the time my dad and I had explored the cave together, I knew that I was close to the spot where I’d lost my watch.

  It had happened while I was trying to jump from one rock to another. I’d slid on its flat surface, and when I’d grabbed onto a sharp corner to stop my downward momentum, my watch strap had made contact with the rock, unclasped and slid right off my wrist. It fell through a tiny crevice and completely disappeared from view. As I shined my flashlight around me, I looked down and realized that I’d found the spot.