Revenge in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  “Shit!” I said, though not loud enough for anyone in the cockpit to hear me over the roar of the engine and the sound of the wind beating past us. I grabbed a headset hanging from a metal clip on the dash in front of me, donned it and spoke into the microphone.

  “There’s a boat down there,” I said, motioning back through the starboard window.

  Ange looked at me, surprised, then angled the joystick in her hands to turn right about ninety degrees, bringing the long silver streak of the boat’s wake into view.

  “Looks like a Cigarette,” Scott said, peering through the glass in the backseat. “Thing’s really moving!”

  After getting a good look, Ange angled us back onto a western course, raising our altitude to two thousand feet.

  “What’s Jack’s status?” I asked.

  Ange manipulated a few buttons on her controls, then said, “Spoke to him thirty minutes ago. Said he was heading through Spanish Harbor Channel and just a few minutes out from Big Mangrove with two go-fast boats on his tail.”

  There was no use trying to communicate with Jack over the loud roar of the engines. Instead, I used the time to tell Ange what we’d found and discuss with Scott everything that we’d seen. Ange didn’t circle around this time. There was no reason, since we were all certain that the Cigarette belonged to the Campos brothers and their fellow drug runners.

  There was no doubt in our minds that they’d managed to find the site, or at least get pretty damn close. Though we didn’t know if there was anyone left in their crew who could handle a dive that deep, we knew that they were resourceful and would probably reach the wreck in a day or two if not stopped.

  Thirty minutes after takeoff, Ange brought us down easy and landed in the middle of Tarpon Cove, easing the small aircraft around and pulling the floats right up against the dock. I opened the passenger door, jumped onto the dock and tied us off. Just as Ange killed the engine, I reached for the radio clipped to my belt.

  “Jack,” I said, holding the talk button. “What’s your status?”

  I released the button, and a few seconds later, Jack’s voice came through the speaker. “We’ve got two in custody. One of the boats was captured, but the other managed to escape. No shots fired.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Did you find the Lone Wolf?”

  “Affirmative. Along with her payload.”

  Scott and Ange unloaded our gear from the backseat, handing it to me so I could set it on the dock.

  “What’s your pos?” I asked Jack.

  “En route to the marina with two Coasties.”

  I told Jack that we would meet him there, then clipped the radio back onto my belt. As we grabbed the gear bags and threw them over our shoulders, Scott dialed a number into his cell phone and talked to someone as we walked down the dock.

  “I don’t know how those guys followed me,” Ange said, shaking her head.

  “It’s not your fault. Once they lost contact with the guys tailing us, I bet they sent every boat they have out scouring the ocean. Seeing the plane landing was inevitable, and having a boat that can push at over eighty knots helps a lot.”

  When we reached the parking lot, we loaded everything into the bed, then climbed inside and headed back towards Conch Harbor Marina. As I pulled us out of the driveway, Scott ended his phone call.

  “That was my contact at Langley,” he said. “He informed me he has something that we need to see.”

  A few minutes later, I turned into the parking lot of the marina and parked alongside three police vehicles in the front row. Through the windshield, I could see a group of police officers standing on the pathway leading down to the docks, huddled in a small circle and talking amongst themselves.

  As I stepped out of my Tacoma, Charles emerged out of the group and walked towards us.

  “I hear you got two of them,” I said.

  His face was all business, and on top of his normal police uniform, he was also wearing a black bulletproof vest and holding an MP-5 submachine gun in his hands.

  “The plan worked smoothly until it came time to close on them,” he said, his voice stern and powerful. “Those assholes were fast. The other boat got away.”

  “For now,” Scott said, stepping out of the truck behind me.

  Charles’s eyes grew wide upon seeing Scott. “Senator Cooper?”

  Scott stepped beside me and said, “We need to talk to you in private. We have information regarding where these guys are holding out at, and if we act fast, we can take them down before they find the wreck.”

  Charles listened intently and thought it over for a second. “So, that means you guys found it?”

  I nodded. “And so did the Campos brothers.” I moved towards the docks and added, “Join us for some coffee on my boat.”

  The four of us walked by the group of officers and headed down the mahogany steps towards the dock. I could see the two Coast Guard patrol boats Jack had referred to moored up against the temporary dock over by the fueling station. Three Coast Guardsmen were standing beside the cleats, dressed in full body armor and talking to Gus Henderson, the owner of the marina. The commotion had caused a handful of boaters to migrate out onto their decks, observing the goings-on while sipping a beer or smoking a cigarette.

  Ange moved close to Charles and said, “You have the two men in custody, correct, Sheriff?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “They’re at the station right now, and first thing tomorrow, we’ll be transferring them via armored vehicles to Homestead and then up to Miami. Both men have long criminal records, and we’re confident it won’t be long before we can lock them away for at least the next twenty years.”

  The four of us moved down the dock towards the Baia at slip twenty-four. I spotted Jack in the cockpit, talking to an officer who was holding a clipboard tightly in his hands and scribbling an occasional note. When we got close, I realized that it was Officer Kincaid.

  “That’s quite enough for now, Ben,” Charles said as I stepped over the port gunwale.

  The young officer turned around, wrote a quick note on his pad, then said, “I just have a few more questions, Sheriff.”

  “Then we will ask them later,” he said sternly. “Now, head over to the parking lot, and have the guys head back to the station. Make sure Peterson stays for the night shift, and tell Howard to get some sleep and be standing by in the late morning for an update.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kincaid said, then stepped over the transom and headed down the dock.

  Jack was sitting in the rotating helm chair, staring into a flat screen that displayed a map of Spanish Harbor and portions of Big Pine Key as well as No Name Key. He smiled as he saw us step aboard, and when we asked him to join us in the salon for coffee, he told us he already had a pot brewing.

  The five of us stepped in through the hatch, locked it behind us and gathered around the dining table. Under other circumstances, we’d be cracking open a bottle of champagne or going out on the town to celebrate. Finding a lost German U-boat was monumental, and this particular boat had disappeared completely from history, making the find even more spectacular. But we had a mission at hand, and until we took down the Campos brothers, there would be no cause for celebration.

  As Scott opened his laptop and hooked it up to my flat-screen TV, I addressed the group. “As we’ve informed you, the clues my dad left me led us to the lost U-boat. And as he stated in his message, there was a torpedo stuck in the rock about a hundred feet ahead of its cone, jammed into a rocky ledge. Given the symbol etched into its metal casing, and the word toxic written in German, we have more than a good reason to believe that this torpedo is a biological weapon.” I cleared my throat as I pointed to the map flattened out on the table. “We found it here, at the exact coordinates given, and after we surfaced and were being picked up by Ange, we spotted a blacked-out Cigarette cruising less than a quarter of a mile away from us.”

  “That’s the same type of boats the guys following me were using,”
Jack said.

  “And it’s why one of them got away,” Charles added. “As everyone here well knows, I’m sure, those boats were designed for speed and can easily hit eighty knots. Our patrol boats tried to catch it, but they lost it in Big Spanish Channel.”

  “So, that means they know where the wreck is,” Jack said after thinking it over a moment.

  “In all likelihood, yes,” I said. “And while we were diving, we spotted something else wedged into the ledge on the ocean floor. A large metal box that was sunk much more recently and has nothing to do with the wreck. My guess is that the contents of this box are what these thugs are after, but I don’t know for sure.”

  The salon went silent for a moment as Scott finished setting up his laptop. He sat down beside me on the white couch and set the HP laptop on top of the map on the table. Pressing a few keys, he brought up a satellite image on the flat-screen.

  “Well, regardless of what’s in that box, we need to take these guys down,” Ange said.

  We watched as Scott pressed a few keys on his laptop and zoomed in on what I instantly realized was Spanish Harbor, right where it met US-1. The image had a strange gray tinge, sort of like looking through a night vision scope. As he zoomed in a little more, I realized instantly what we were looking at.

  “That’s my boat,” I said, staring at the top-down view of my Baia and a long white rippling wake behind it. Less than a mile behind my boat were two other boats.

  “This was recorded earlier this evening,” Scott said.

  “How did you get this?” Charles said, amazed.

  “I have contacts at Langley that specialize in global tracking and locations. I talked to them and had them watch and record everything that Logan’s boat did from midnight until three o’clock this morning.”

  Sliding his fingers over a large trackpad, Scott eased forward on the recorded timeline, allowing us to see a fast version of Jack being followed by the drug runners. We watched as he piloted my boat under the bridge connecting Big Pine Key to West Summerland Key, cruising on a direct course for Big Mangrove.

  “There!” Charles said, stepping forward and pointing at the screen. “You can see the Coast Guard and Navy boats spread out on the northern side of the small island.”

  “Yes,” Scott said, slowing down the recording slightly.

  The five of us kept our eyes glued to the screen, watching as Jack led the two boats around Big Mangrove and right into the trap the joint forces had set. Judging by the shape of the hull, the size of their wakes and the number of outboards clamped onto their transoms, it was easy to tell that they were both Cigarettes. One of them, however, was cruising a few hundred feet in front of the other as they maneuvered around the island, falling right into the trap.

  Scott slowed the frames, playing it at normal speed as the two boats slowed and turned sharply upon realizing what was happening. The leading boat had no chance to make an escape. Before it had completed its dangerously sharp turn, two Coast Guard patrol boats had it surrounded. The drug runners raised their weapons but, quickly realizing that they had no chance of escape, they dropped them to the deck and held their hands high in the air. As the leading boat slowed to a stop, the third Coast Guard patrol boat and the Navy boat chased after the tailing drug runners, who had already completed their turn and were cruising full speed in the opposite direction.

  “But what does this show us, other than what we already know?” Charles asked, shaking his head.

  “Hold on,” Scott said, punching a few keys. “I also told them to track any boats following the Baia in order to figure out where they’re going.”

  “That’s why you’re the smart one,” I said, grinning. “Now, let’s see where these guys disappeared to.”

  The screen locked on to the trailing Cigarette, and we watched in real time as the boat sliced through the dark surface, flying across the water at well over eighty knots. In just a few minutes, the fleeing drug runners had tripled the distance between them and their pursuers. In the darkness of the night, it wasn’t long before they’d escaped the patrol boats entirely, weaving around the numerous sporadic islands that litter the Lower Keys. We watched patiently as the boat continued, cruising along the southwest side of the Keys into the Gulf of Mexico.

  “Looks like they’re heading into the Contents,” Jack said. “It makes sense. There’re hundreds of uncharted islands out that way. It’s a good place to hide. Mainlander boaters get lost out there all the time.”

  Ten minutes later, after zigging and zagging through narrow channels, the boat slowed and approached a small island, wrapping around and easing towards it from the southeast. The island, unlike most of the islands in the Content Keys, which were covered with nothing but thick mangroves and the occasional fishing camp, was surrounded by piles of large dark rocks. Zooming in closer, we saw the rectangular shape of a structure that, judging by its size, must have been a mansion.

  The blacked-out Cigarette slowed into a narrow channel of deep water and cruised through a small gap in the rocks. A second later, it pulled up to a long dock alongside two other boats. The three men aboard quickly disembarked and headed inside the house.

  “Wait a second,” Jack said, focusing his eyes on the screen. “I know this place.” The four of us looked at him intently, and he continued, “It’s a private compound that belongs to Tom Steel.”

  Ange looked at him questioningly. “You mean, the Tom Steel? As in the famous movie star?”

  “Yeah. He comes down here a few times each year, or so I’ve heard. Usually in the winter months, though. A lot of famous people own islands. It’s a good way to get out of the spotlight for a little while.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, angling my head closer to the screen. “That’s Blackett Key.”

  Jack nodded. “Yeah. It was originally owned by Ron Blackett, a multimillionaire businessman. Steel purchased it back in 2002, I believe.”

  “I’ve only ever seen it from a distance,” I said. “Those walls surrounding the compound have got to be at least eight feet high. I’ve only ever caught faraway glimpses of the mansion beyond them.”

  “Looks like the perfect place for a group that wants to remain invisible,” Scott said, searching over the satellite imagery of the compound. “It’s close enough to reach just about anywhere in the Keys quickly with the right horsepower, yet almost completely hidden from civilization.”

  After examining the island compound for a few minutes, I turned to Charles. “We’re gonna need the joint forces again on this one if we’re gonna take them down. I mean, we could probably manage it on our own, but I know how much you hate it when people go and take the law into their own hands.”

  Charles smiled. “Tomorrow night?”

  We all looked at each other and nodded in agreement.

  “I suggest sending a few patrols over to the wreck site,” Scott said.

  “Already done,” Charles replied.

  Good, I thought. The last thing I wanted was for them to somehow get what they wanted, sweeping it from right under our noses before we had a chance to strike them in their heart.

  “The Coast Guard has their men on shift work until we find these guys,” Charles added. “Working twelve-hour days and scouring the Keys for anything suspicious.”

  My resolve strengthened as I stared at the satellite image of the compound, my mind going to work instinctively, formulating an attack plan. These thugs had messed with the wrong guy when they’d killed my dad and tried to kill me back in Curacao. And now they were going to pay for that mistake.

  We spent another hour and two more pots of coffee brainstorming ideas and coming up with a basic infiltration plan. The five of us had well-rounded knowledge that combined to plan and account for unexpected situations during a raid. It was almost zero four hundred when we finally decided to call it a night. Charles informed me that there would still be an officer in the lot as he left, walking down the dock and climbing into his sheriff police car.

  As I wal
ked alongside Jack towards the stern, he turned to face me. “I think your dad would be proud, bro.”

  I patted my old friend on the back. “I think he’d be even prouder after we bring these thugs to justice.”

  After locking the hatch and switching on my security system, I headed for the main cabin with Ange. With my mind racing with ideas and plans to strike the drug runners’ compound, I hadn’t realized just how tired I was. Moving into the main cabin, I collapsed onto the bed beside Ange and was asleep before my head hit the plush white pillow.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The following morning, I woke up with Ange sprawled out beside me, wearing only her panties. She had a long, lightly bronzed leg draped over my lower body, and her head rested against my upper chest. Her blond hair covered most of her stunning face, and it was close enough to smell the intoxicating scents of her shampoo and perfume.

  Not wanting to wake her, I slowly reached over to my nightstand and grabbed my smartphone. Bringing the screen to life, I saw that it was just a few minutes past ten and I hadn’t received any new messages. I brought up the weather forecast, and as if I’d summoned a tempest, I heard a few sporadic drops of rain hit the topside deck over my head, followed soon after a heavy tropical downpour.

  The forecast predicted scattered showers all day and into the evening, with a high of ninety degrees. I’d made it about halfway into a Florida Keys summer, or rainy season, and could understand fully why most people only visited during the winter months. Though I didn’t mind the rain and humidity or seeing a few extra millimeters of the mercury, I wasn’t like most people.

  I placed my phone back onto my nightstand and stayed in bed with my eyes shut, resting back on the pillow. I took occasional glances through a clear hatch over my head, watching as large raindrops hit the glass and flowed out of sight. I thought more about the Campos brothers and our plan to bring them down. I’d planned and executed attacks on enemy compounds before, both in the Navy and as a civilian, but this situation was different than all the others. To borrow the old cliché, this time it was personal.