Revenge in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  The three of them could see that I was lost in thought, and Jack stepped towards me.

  “What are you thinking, bro?” he asked.

  Bringing myself back from my thoughts, I looked at him and said, “I think it’s time we do some salvaging.”

  Stationing myself at the helm, I accelerated to twenty knots, then turned sharply and entered Harbor Channel. Less than a minute later, I had us up on plane in the Gulf, weaving around the various small islands and heading back towards Key West. Cruising through the darkness, we soon heard the unmistakable sound of sirens as the fire department boats from Key West passed by in the distance, heading for the ever-dying glow on the horizon behind us.

  As we cruised past Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge, I couldn’t help my mind from drifting back to Pedro and his goon. I knew deep down that I hadn’t seen the last of him. And part of me wanted him to come back so I could face him once more. I made a firm resolution that if that did happen, he wouldn’t get away again. His fate would be the same as his brother’s.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Back at the marina, I pulled the Baia up against the dock, controlling both engines separately to ease her in close, then tied her off. The clouds had moved on, leaving behind a dark blanket covered in sparkling stars that stretched from horizon to horizon. The mercury had just crept below seventy degrees, and with a calm breeze sweeping in from the Gulf, the night air felt good.

  After washing down and stowing all of the gear, we cracked open a couple of Paradise Sunset beers and plopped down on the cushioned seats and sunbed. With every swig, I could feel the alcohol taking more and more of the edge off and taking my mind off my sore body.

  When the four of us decided to call it a night, I thanked Jack, then he walked barefoot and shirtless down the dock towards the Calypso. I offered Scott the guest cabin but realized that he had his bag at his feet and was reaching to grab it.

  “I have a flight to catch,” he said.

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah. I was going to leave tomorrow, but I’d rather sleep on the flight up and arrive early in the morning.”

  I wasn’t surprised. He’d always been a very busy guy, but ever since he’d become senator, his time had grown even more precious, and I rarely saw him for more than a few days at a time.

  “Thanks for coming down,” I said, rising to my feet and wrapping an arm around him.

  One of the things I’d always loved most about our friendship was the fact that we always had each other’s backs. It didn’t matter the time, day or location, if one of us needed the other, we were there as fast as possible, willing to risk our lives, no questions asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “I can’t let you have all the fun.” Then he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and added, “Just be careful with that damn torpedo. I’m gonna call a few of my contacts. See if they can help out with getting rid of it.”

  It was a good idea. I’d dealt with explosives many times before, but pulling a biological weapon up out of the ocean that had been down there for sixty-plus years didn’t exactly sound appealing.

  As he stepped from the swim platform onto the dock, he turned back and said, “If you guys need anything else, or if that idiot decides to show his face again, let me know.”

  I told him I would, and then he disappeared down the dock, heading towards the parking lot, where he told me he already had a ride waiting for him. Turning back around, I saw that Ange had disappeared from the cockpit.

  Assuming that she must have turned in after the long night we’d had, I rounded up the empty beer bottles and threw them into a plastic recycle bin on the dock. We’d pushed the Zodiac from the swim platform and it was now in its usual place, tied off to the starboard side of the Baia. I placed the kayak on the dock beside the port gunwale for now and would return it to the storage shed when Gus arrived in the morning.

  After taking a final look around to make sure everything had been stowed, I headed for the hatch into the salon. Just as I swung it open, Ange appeared in front of me, wearing her white bikini bottoms and nothing else. She smiled at me seductively, and I could barely shut and lock the hatch behind me before she jumped into my arms and pulled me towards the main cabin.

  As we moved forward, our lips locked together, I turned on the security system and turned off the outside lights. A few steps later, we were falling onto the queen-sized bed, our bodies pressed against each other and our hearts pounding.

  The next morning I woke up to the smell of sizzling sausage, eggs, and freshly brewed coffee wafting into the stateroom as the door opened. A second later, Ange was on top of me, her long tanned legs straddling my waist as she looked at me with her sparkling blue eyes and smiled. Her blond hair was tied back, and she was wearing her bikini bottoms and a tank top. The morning sun bled through the hatch overhead as I smiled back at her.

  “Something about you taking down bad guys,” she said. “And bringing down a drug-smuggling operation. It really turns me on.”

  Not able to control myself, I pulled her close, pressed my lips to hers and twisted her onto her side.

  “After breakfast,” she said in a cute stern voice as she crawled out of my grasp and tiptoed towards the kitchen, her perfectly shaped butt swinging exaggeratedly from side to side to torture me.

  It wasn’t until I tried to sit up that I realized just how sore my body was. It ached all over, forcing me to ease over onto my side and slip my legs out sideways onto the deck. The Campos brothers hadn’t made it easy on me, and neither had Ange when we’d hit the sack late last night.

  I pulled on a pair of workout shorts and walked shirtless and barefoot out into the salon. Ange was plating the food as I arrived, and she set it on the dinette along with a small pitcher of fresh orange juice. I filled my Rubio Charters mug with coffee, added a little bit of cream and sugar, and sat down beside her.

  The food was delicious. Freshly baked croissants with sausage, over-easy eggs and pepper jack cheese. She told me that she walked along the waterfront to a local bakery, arriving just as they opened to get the croissants as they came out of the oven.

  While eating, I made a quick phone call, dialing the number I’d kept in my wallet. It was the number Alice Pierce, from the Curacao Police Department, had written on a napkin for me while we were eating at the Green Iguana in Willemstad. I gave her a quick rundown of everything that had happened, ending with Pedro’s escape.

  “He’s gonna try and recoup his losses,” she said in her island Dutch accent. “He has associates all over Miami. My first bet would be he’d try and go there.”

  We talked for a few more minutes, then I thanked her and hung up the phone.

  “What’s up?” Ange asked as she dipped her last bite of croissant in runny egg yolk.

  I stared off into the distance for a few seconds, then turned to look at her. “If Pedro makes it out of the Keys somehow, we might have a problem.”

  After breakfast, we returned the kayak to Gus’s storage shed and made a few phone calls to local salvagers. I’d had good experience dealing with Blackbeard Salvagers out of Marathon while salvaging the Intrepid, so they were at the top of my list. They agreed to let us use the Queen Anne’s Revenge, a forty-six-foot research vessel fitted with a crane at the stern. The owner assured me it would be large enough to haul up thirty-three hundred pounds, the typical weight of a Nazi torpedo, as Professor Murchison had informed us.

  Just after noon, we met Jack and Charles for lunch at the Greasy Pelican. It was only about a minute’s walk from my boat, so I went there often, especially for their lunch special, which always featured the catch of the day. Today it was cobia, and I ordered a large plate with plantain chips on the side, coconut shrimp for an appetizer, and lemonade to drink. Charles had met us just after we sat down, and we had a table out on the veranda, overlooking the ocean and marina.

  “I can’t stay long,” Charles said as he waved off being handed a menu. He was wearing his short-sleeved police uniform
and his usual Oakley sunglasses. “I need to head up to Key Largo to interview a few witnesses.”

  That caught my attention, and as I chewed my coconut shrimp, Ange said, “Witnesses? Someone saw Campos?”

  Charles nodded. “We received a report of a stolen vehicle this morning from a harbormaster in Vaca Key. As far as we can tell, Pedro and his accomplice took it late last night.”

  “Any idea where they went?” Jack asked.

  “Miami,” Charles replied. “The Miami police found the vehicle less than an hour ago. They’re doing forensic analysis as we speak, but I have no doubt that it was stolen by our guys.”

  “Miami?” Jack said, shaking his head. “You think the bastard’s trying to rebuild his little army?”

  “It would appear that way,” Charles said. “Though I’m hopeful they’ll bring him down before he has a chance to retaliate. Regardless, we should be ready for anything.”

  I listened intently and thought over their words. Ms. Pierce had warned me that he might head to Miami, and she was right. I didn’t know much about Pedro, but I knew that he wasn’t someone who let things go. Ever.

  Charles left, and after we finished our food, we drove down to Marathon in my Tacoma and picked up Queen Anne’s Revenge. It was a beautiful day, and I wasn’t about to let it go to waste, regardless of the fact that I was still sore as hell and Pedro was on the loose. Jack canceled his charters for the next couple of days, allowing the three of us to spend all day every day out on the water.

  We put priority on getting the torpedo up carefully and disposed of properly, but were waiting for Scott to get ahold of different joint force agencies. So, in the meantime, we devoted all our time to exploring and identifying the wreck. We strove to ensure that no part of the wreck was touched or tampered with, as any minor detail could be incredibly helpful in determining the reason she had gone down. Given the massive crack near the centerline of the hull and the damage to the cone, it was clear the U-boat had run aground. Why she had run aground, however, still remained a mystery.

  We spent a few days surveying the entire wreck, filming every inch of her hull and capturing intricate details of the conning tower, hatches, rudder, stern planes, and screws. Since the crack in the centerline was too small for us to swim through, we used an underwater drone to explore the inner workings of the boat, the same one we’d used to discover the Intrepid wreck, which had been covered by thirty feet of rock.

  Piloting the drone into the wreck for the first time was incredible. The high-powered LED lights and the three built-in cameras allowed us to get a great view of the inside while sitting comfortably on the surface.

  Taking control using the joystick, I eased on the downward thrusters and the three of us watched as clusters of wires, pipes, valves, and various electronic and mechanical equipment came into view. We all went silent as we stared in awe at something that hadn’t been seen by human eyes in over sixty years. The water was surprisingly clean, and I did my best to maneuver the ROV slowly so as to avoid stirring up the layers of silt that coated everything in view.

  We returned to visit Professor Murchison, who lit up with excitement when we told him we’d found the wreck and showed him the pictures. Wanting to do all that he could to help us, he gave us an entire folder dedicated to the model XXI, which included design sketches of the entire inside, detailing the different sections.

  Based on the drone’s orientation to the conning tower and the long metal tubes that we’d clearly identified as the periscopes, we surmised that the drone was in the control room. Using the sketch, I maneuvered around the helm and plane controls, doing my best not to get the tether tangled on any of the jutting metal pipes and wiring.

  Every now and then, one of us would gasp as the remains of a German soldier came into view. Regardless of who they’d fought for and the propaganda that had fueled their military’s resolve, these young men had died for something they’d believed in. They’d died with the hope that they could give their families and their countrymen a better future, which is more than most people die for.

  I had a tremendous amount of respect for all of them and was careful not to disturb their remains as I piloted my way through the inner workings of their old boat. As I moved the drone forward, we discovered that most of the forward section was inaccessible, even for the small drone. The bulkhead leading forward out of control had been crushed, causing the door to be less than a few inches tall.

  Back aft, the door leading into the engine room was blocked only by minor amounts of debris, allowing us to explore and get good footage of the radio room, the electric engine room and the aft torpedo tube. After three days of exploring, we’d learned a lot more about the wreck and had hours of film that could be used to help discover how and why she had sunk.

  I talked to Scott every day, and he informed me that he had contacted various groups to help us with the recovery of the torpedo. One group he’d contacted was Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two, an expeditionary mobile unit that was homeported in Little Creek, Virginia, and was known as the experts of salvage. They had participated in many salvage and recovery operations, including TWA 800, the ironclad USS Monitor, and the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Scott also contacted Vice Admiral Gears, the director of joint force development, to send a team of explosive ordnance disposal technicians to help handle and dispose of the torpedo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On October 14, just five days after taking down Hector along with most of his organization, Scott called and told me that the joint force would be arriving in the Middle Keys the following day aboard the USNS Grasp, a 255-foot Navy salvage and rescue ship.

  The Grasp was one of the most versatile salvage vessels on the planet and had been utilized by many of the Navy’s Mobile and Salvage Units in various operations around the world. Though she had been decommissioned in 2006, she had been transferred to the MSC for continued use. The MSC, or Military Sealift Command, is an organization that works in unison with the United States Navy to provide a full spectrum of support to our nation’s warfighters during peacetime and while at war.

  The USNS Grasp appeared on the northeastern horizon at zero nine hundred the following morning. The large salvage vessel was painted in the typical dark gray of US Navy ships, a color chosen to reduce the contrast of the ship with the horizon and therefore reduce the vertical patterns in the ship’s appearance. On the horizon, it looked very similar to an Arleigh Burke–class destroyer, with a long, narrow body and a large bridge that rose fifty feet into the air. The ship had two cranes, the smaller one up forward and the larger back aft.

  The massive and legendary salvage vessel cruised towards our position as we sat anchored just above the wreck. Brilliant white numbers painted on both the port and starboard sides of the hull indicated its hull number of 51. At five times as long as Queen Anne’s Revenge and with a bridge nearly three times as tall, the Grasp cast a shadow over our boat as she motored close.

  The pilot and crew put the Grasp in a three-point moor, utilizing its port, starboard and stern anchors to orient the large ship in a stabilized position from which dive operations could successfully take place. Due to the depth of the water and strong currents, the crew let out a considerable amount of chain to keep the ship in place.

  A few minutes after the crew had finished mooring the ship in place, they lowered a blacked-out Zodiac Hurricane into the water. We watched as three men climbed aboard, started up a pair of two-hundred-horsepower Mercury engines, and motored over towards the Revenge. The small boat pulled up alongside the stern, and one of the guys stood, staring straight at me.

  “Request permission to board,” he called out.

  My mind went to work as I heard something familiar in the guy’s voice. I stared at the guy as he stood on the bow of the inflatable for a moment, then said, “Come aboard.”

  The guy instantly climbed up over the transom and landed on the deck beside me. He was about five foot eight with a dark Pacific Islander compl
exion. He was sporting a pair of tan UDT shorts and a faded dark blue tee shirt, along with a gray ball cap and sunglasses. As he stepped closer to me, I instantly realized who it was.

  “Chief Dodge,” he said with a big grin on his face.

  I smiled back, then threw an arm around his shoulder. “Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

  Though calling each other by your rank is typical among many communities within the Navy, Special Forces, divers, and EODs were almost always on a first-name basis. Usually ranks were only brought into the conversation when higher-ups were present, or when you just felt like messing with each other.

  I laughed and added, “Well, Seaman Wade Bishop, it’s good to see you.”

  “Hey, it’s Petty Officer First Class Bishop now. You’re not surprised, are you?”

  “A little. I’m surprised they let you reenlist.”

  “It’s amazing how far a bribe can go,” he joked.

  The truth was, I was surprised that Wade hadn’t made chief himself yet. The energetic and incredibly intelligent Hawaiian had always been a top-notch sailor and an even better friend. We’d first met back in 2000 after I’d just finished a six-month-long operation in Nigeria. I’d been assigned to be a temporary Underwater Ordnance Division Instructor at EOD school at Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Wade had been in my unit and had been one of the top students in the class. He was one of only a few students I had gone diving with in my free time once he’d finished training, exploring the Emerald Coast. Though I’d only seen him once since then, during an operation in the Mediterranean, it would be hard for me to forget him.