As I rose from my seat to rejoin Sheena in the cabin, Carson picked up the radio mic and declared his intention to land. Leaving the flight deck, I could hear the rush of air as the landing gear doors opened and the gear was lowered. The co-pilot rose from where he’d been sitting across from Sheena and passed me on his way to the cockpit.
“I thought you were going to land the plane,” Sheena said with a smile. “I made sure to put my belt on nice and tight.”
“When we land,” I said, “the Gulfstream will wait in Miami. We can bring Lane back to Staunton in it.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Sheena said. “These charter companies don’t usually let their planes sit for long.”
“This one will,” I said. “It’s owned by the company I work for.”
She gave me a sideways glance. “You’re an enigma, Jesse.”
I sat down beside her and buckled up. “Not sure what that is. Do I wanna know?”
She only smiled. A minute later, the jet came over the runway threshold and touched down lightly on the runway. I checked my watch; well before noon. Looking out the window, I could see the new hangar Billy had mentioned building some time ago. His Beaver was on the apron just outside it.
“Grab your gear,” I said to Sheena as I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood in the aisle. “Our next ride is waiting.”
I picked up my own pack from the seat across the aisle and started forward as Carson taxied the Gulfstream to a spot off to the side of the hangar. The co-pilot came back and opened the door just as the plane came to a stop.
Carson quickly joined him, handing me his card. “Here’s my number. Mister Armstrong said to ask you what to do from here.”
I pocketed his card. “Head to Miami and refuel,” I said. “We might be a few hours or a few days. Grab a cab to the South Beach Marriott and keep your phone close.”
“Nice to meet you both,” Carson replied. “Thanks.”
I followed Sheena down the boarding ladder to find Billy standing just off to the side of it.
“We’re all set,” he said extending his hand to me. We gripped forearms in the Calusa way he’d taught me so long ago, then turned and smiled at Sheena, extending his hand. “Billy Rainwater, ma’am.”
“Billy, this is very special agent, Sheena Mason, with the FBI.”
Billy rarely showed any kind of emotion, but I caught a glimpse of surprise in his eyes. I doubted Sheena saw it.
Billy was a lot of things. Among Native-Americans in the south Florida area, he was considered the acting chieftain of the Calusa people. His father was the rightful leader and probably the last of the pure Calusa. The old man had been like an uncle to me, but he hadn’t spoken a word since his wife died many years ago. Billy’s mom was half Calusa and half Seminole, giving Billy more Calusa blood than probably anyone on the planet. Billy was also an attorney, a hunting guide, 4x4 expert, and an occasional arms dealer—the reason he blinked at Sheena being a federal agent.
“We’re looking for a killer, Billy,” I said, as we started toward his plane. “He left my island just after sunrise, headed northeast.”
“Northeast?” Billy said. “Ain’t nothin’ for him that way but bugs and sun.”
“He’s not from around here,” I said.
“I’m guessing he’s from somewhere that gets that snow you mentioned on the phone,” he said, opening the back door of his Beaver. “You’re a bit overdressed for here.”
Billy was right. My heavy jeans, boots, and jacket were already becoming uncomfortable after the luxurious, air-conditioned comfort of the Gulfstream. Sheena climbed in back and Billy pointed out the headsets hanging on the plane’s bulkhead. I shrugged out of my jacket and stuffed it and my pack under one of the seats.
Five minutes later, Billy taxied the antique airplane to the upwind end of the runway. He announced his intention on the airport’s UNICOM frequency, and advanced the throttle. Any air traffic in the area would be monitoring the universal communications frequency and respond with their location and intent. The old bird gathered speed quickly and was airborne in seconds.
“Where should we start?” Billy asked over my headset, as I took my phone from my pocket.
“Head toward Flamingo,” I replied, as I pulled up Deuce’s number. “That’s the only place he could go in the direction he took.”
I lifted my headset and put the phone under it.
Deuce answered immediately. “Where are you?”
“Just took off from LaBelle with Billy and Agent Mason,” I shouted over the engine noise. “We’re headed toward Flamingo and will start searching from there.”
“Andrew is on the water in your Winter,” Deuce said. “He’s headed there, too. Chyrel has him on satellite comm. I’ll have him turn a little north and head for the Ten Thousand Islands area. He said his boat didn’t have enough gas to get any farther than that.”
“Hold on,” I said, then reached into my pocket. I took two small boxes out and handed one back to Sheena. I opened the other and showed her how to activate the earwig, then stuck the communication device in my other ear, under the headset.
“Tell Chyrel to connect my two earwigs,” I told Deuce, and waited.
A moment later, I heard a click from the device in my ear and removed the phone from under my headset. Deuce had already disconnected.
“Jesse’s headed there by air,” I heard Chyrel say. “Turn north toward Everglades City. Okay, Jesse’s on now.”
“Hey, Chyrel,” I said, looking back and getting a thumbs-up from Sheena. “I have Agent Mason of the FBI on my other comm.”
“Sheena?” Chyrel said, excitedly.
“Hello, Miss Koshinski,” Sheena said. “Are you hearing me okay?”
“Five by five,” Chyrel replied. “Deuce, Andrew, and Tony are on here with us.”
Billy had a long, thin mirror mounted above the windshield. Looking in it, I could see myself, as well as Billy and Sheena. The whole cabin could be seen from either front seat.
Sheena smiled brightly. “Brings back fond memories. I never got a chance to thank any of you ten years ago.”
“No thanks needed,” Deuce said. “Jesse, what’s your ETA to Flamingo?”
I looked at the GPS app on my phone and glanced at the air speed indicator. “Twenty minutes,” I replied.
“If he held his course,” Andrew said, “and went fast, he’d run out of gas before he could get to Flamingo. If he puttered along, he might make Shark River, but not much farther.”
“You told Deuce you saw his disturbed water,” I said. “I don’t think he’s the kind of guy to take things slow.”
“I lost track of it after about ten miles,” Andrew said. “He kept a northeast course the whole time.”
“What if he turned east?” Sheena asked.
I looked up in the mirror and saw her studying her own phone, obviously looking at a map of the area.
“He’d be stranded on a mud flat somewhere in Florida Bay,” I replied. “Chyrel, if he did hold that course the whole way, where would he make landfall?”
“Between East Cape Sable and Flamingo,” Chyrel replied. “About midway.”
“He’d run up on First National Bank before he got there,” I said. The less-than- clever name for the shoal waters around Sandy Key Basin was nothing compared to the bank just to the east. “That is, if he didn’t know the water and I don’t think he does. That would be the place to look. Where are you, Andrew?”
“West of Sandy Key about eight miles.”
“Let’s switch,” I said. “You head for First National and we’ll run out a couple miles off Ten Thousand Islands and head south. That bright yellow boat of yours should be easy enough to spot from the air.”
Billy banked to the right and a few minutes later, I could make out Tarpon Bay far off to our left and the Gulf just ahead. He banked
back to the left after we crossed over the wild, southwest Florida coast we both knew so well.
I’d grown up just a little north of this part of Florida, just outside of the small town of Fort Myers. Billy had grown up in LaBelle, a little east of us, and we’d gone to school together ever since I was eight years old, and he was seven. We were blood brothers in the Calusa way.
“It’s beautiful down there,” Sheena said.
“That’s the real Florida,” Billy replied, glancing up in the mirror. “Just like it was before the Spanish came.”
“You know the area well?” she asked.
“Take a look down there at that coastline,” Billy replied. “Anywhere you see a sand beach, me and Jesse have camped and fished it.”
“Coming up on First National,” Andrew said. “Nothing here but a lone sea gull. I’ll slip through the cut to the basin, on the off chance that he found it, then run up to Flamingo.”
“Roger that,” I said, looking out over the water under our wings. “We’re approaching Shark Point now.”
“Still a lot of ocean down there,” Billy said.
With my hurricane hole on the eastern horizon ten miles off to the east, we could see a twenty-mile wide swath of the Gulf and the Everglades, with Cape Sable coming up ahead of us.
“There!” Sheena said, pointing straight ahead through the windshield.
I followed her finger and saw a flash of yellow and white fiberglass. It was just off the beach beyond a finger of sand pointing out into the Gulf. “Middle Cape Sable, Andrew,” I said. “Your boat is about a hundred yards from shore, just to the east of the point.”
Billy throttled back and banked away to the west to bleed off speed. Then he banked back to the left as we slowly descended. It was Andrew’s boat, all right. The large, unusually shaped outboards on the transom were a dead giveaway. A friend of his had been part of the engineering team with Seven Marine, the company that set the benchmark for high-horsepower outboards a few years ago when they debuted the engine at the Miami Boat Show. Andrew had bought the prototypes when they were finished with testing.
As we flew over at less than 80 miles per hour, all three of us looked down. I saw no sign of anyone on the boat or in the water around it.
“I have you in sight,” Andrew said. “Be there in ten minutes.”
“Tony, where are you?” I asked.
“Just went under the Seven-Mile Bridge,” he replied. “It’ll take me an hour to get there in Rusty’s boat.”
“Keep coming,” I told him. “We don’t see anyone aboard. This might turn into a foot search. Circle downwind, Billy,” I instructed. “Put us down as close as you can get us to the boat.”
Billy banked way over to the right, sliding the plane lower, then pulled out just fifty feet over the water and half a mile from the boat. He lowered the flaps and reduced power, checking that the landing gear lights showed the gear up and locked for a water landing, then let gravity do its will.
The plane descended toward the water and Billy decreased power further. As soon as the floats touched the glassy surface of the shallow water, Billy increased power and pulled back on the yoke to keep the nose up and the floats planing as the Beaver slowed down. Finally, about one hundred yards from Andrew’s boat, he cut power to an idle and the plane settled slightly into the water.
“Get the anchor,” Billy directed, as he steered toward the boat.
I hung my headset up and popped the release on the door. The prop wash pushed back against me and the roar was deafening as I pushed the door open. I stepped out onto the float and with one hand on the wing strut, opened the anchor locker.
Billy shut down the engine while we were still about one hundred feet away, and I pulled the anchor out and held it ready to drop into the water.
“It’s cleated at fifty feet,” Billy said, exiting the plane on the left side. “Drop it here and let the line pay out.”
“Would he be fool enough to head into the ’Glades?” I asked, scanning the beach.
Billy shrugged. “I thought I saw where something went ashore when we flew over.”
His seeing the guy’s tracks didn’t surprise me any. When we were kids, we’d done a lot of hunting, and I believed then and still do today, that Billy could track a lizard across solid rock or a fish through the swamp.
Off to the west, I could hear the familiar sound of El Cazador’s diesel engine, and the steady swoosh of her bow wave as she approached the shallows. Looking under the belly of the plane, I could see Andrew bringing her down off plane as he neared us.
“Where do you suppose he went?” Sheena asked, standing on the float beside me.
I was surprised to see that she was wearing a red tank top and khaki shorts. She’d been wearing black slacks and a jacket when we boarded the plane. Clipped to her belt was her badge and sidearm.
She shrugged. “I was told we were overdressed.”
“Him,” Billy said. “You’d look good in a potato sack.”
Sheena smiled at him.
“My guess is he ran aground,” Billy said, as he reached inside the plane and pulled out a pair of binoculars. “Tide’s rising, but it’s still only a few feet deep here.”
The anchor line became taut and slowly spun the plane around to face into the current, the wingtip on Billy’s side nearly over the foredeck of Andrew’s boat.
“Don’t see anyone,” Billy said, glassing the beach. “But I can definitely see where he went ashore.”
Billy scanned the beach for a moment more, then lowered the binos and looked over at me. I’d known the man nearly all my life. Though he was the epitome of the stoic Indian, I could read subtle signs in his face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“No ’coons.”
Usually, racoons would flock to the beach when a boat was in the area, or whatever the equivalent was to a big group of banditos. Over the years they’d become so bold they would follow beachcombers. One handout and they felt entitled for generations. I knew what the lack of racoons meant.
Behind me I heard a splash as Andrew dropped Cazador’s anchor. When I turned to look, he was in the stern, already climbing down the ladder into the hip-deep water. Sloshing through it, he moved past us toward his boat.
“Keep a sharp eye out,” I called to him. “There may be a croc around. Billy didn’t see any racoons on shore. And there’re always sharks here.”
He nodded and kept looking around constantly as he moved over toward the stern of his Yellowfin and climbed aboard.
“A crocodile?” Sheena asked, scanning the water.
“Saltwater croc,” I replied. “About the only thing that’ll keep the racoons off the beach.”
“Fuel switch is still on main,” Andrew called over. “If he didn’t use the reserve, the boat can make it to the fuel dock in Flamingo easy enough.”
Billy climbed back into the plane and headed to the passenger cabin, where he opened a small storage compartment in the floor.
I watched Andrew as he checked out his boat. After opening an overhead compartment in the T-top, he looked over at me. “He’s armed, Jesse.”
“What with?”
Andrew moved back to the stern and stepped down into the water. “He’s got my Beretta 92FSR, suppressor, and four mags of ammo.”
“Here,” Billy said, extending a scoped Sig-Sauer AR-10 rifle through the door. “Zeroed at 200 yards.”
I took the rifle and looped the sling over my shoulder. Then I pulled my pack out, removed one of my holstered Sig 9mm handguns and clipped it to my belt. Billy stepped down on my side with his father’s old Remington.
“Let’s go,” I said, stepping down into the water and throwing my pack over my shoulders. “Fan out and don’t bunch up. Head on a swivel.”
Stuart had watched the airplane circle around. It had floats to land on water. He rem
embered an old guy up the valley a way who had one like that and he’d taken Stuart and a group of other men up to a hunting lodge on a lake in northern Virginia once.
Hiding behind the dune, he watched the plane come in and land. Behind him, all he saw was more water. He wasn’t on the mainland at all, just another damned island. Beyond the water, he could see trees on the far bank. And through gaps in the trees, he could see tall grass blowing in the wind. The grassy field extended to the horizon.
When he glanced back out to his stolen boat, he saw the plane heading toward it on the water. Farther out, he spotted another boat heading his way.
“Who are these people?” he wondered.
The meddling tree-huggers weren’t that important, but the people who’d attacked him and took him away from the house the woman was staying in were obviously professionals. Now they’d tracked him across the water to wherever the hell he was. The boat he’d stolen probably had a tracking device or something.
Stuart took stock of what he had. His pants were soaked from wading ashore. The long-haired guy’s shirt was way too small; he couldn’t even button it, but it was keeping the sun off his back. His feet were sliding around in the sandals, even though he’d pulled the straps tight. He had the guy’s weed, papers, and lighter in the shirt pocket. He was looking forward to getting away from all this water and trying it out. The long filet knife and gun in his pants pockets were both hanging out at odd angles.
He pulled the gun out and looked at it again. Stuart was a hunter and knew guns. The one in his hands told him that the guy who’d owned the boat, the big guy with the mustache—he knew guns, too. And this worried him.
Before leaving the boat, Stuart had looked through all the cabinets and drawers. He’d found the knife first and had stuck it and its leather sheath into his back pocket. Then he’d found the 9mm Beretta in a case in one of the overhead compartments. The case also held a silencer and four magazines, all fully loaded. He didn’t care about being quiet, but the length of the silencer added a lot of accuracy to the already-very-accurate handgun.
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