by Carl Hiaasen
The next sound was a wet roar, dying among the waves. Then the sky turned quiet and gray. The helicopter was gone. A plume of smoke rose off the water, marking the grave as surely as a cross. A few minutes later, the rain came.
27
Miraculously, none of the voyagers from the Nordic Princess perished in the Atlantic Ocean. Many had snatched life jackets before leaping overboard; others proved competent if not graceful swimmers. Some of the tourists were too drunk to panic and simply lolled in the waves, like polyester manatees, until help arrived. Others, including the Gilberts, were saved by strong tidal currents that dragged them to a shallow sandbar where they waited in waist-deep water, their hair matted to pink skulls, each of them still wearing a plastic nametag that said, “Hi! I’m——” Luckily a Coast Guard cutter had arrived swiftly and deployed inflatable Zodiac speedboats to round up the passengers. By midnight, all 312 missing persons had been retrieved. The rescue had unfolded so quickly that all thirteen victims of poisonous snakebites made it to the hospital with time to spare and only transient hallucinations. A survey of other casualties included one possible heart attack, seven broken bones, four man-of-war stings, and a dozen litigable whiplashes.
Although the thrust of the rescue efforts concentrated around the cruise ship, a small contingent of Coast Guardsmen launched a separate search for the mystery helicopter one mile away. A slashing rain and forty-mile-per-hour gusts made the task dangerous and nearly impossible. As the night wore on, the waves grew to nine feet and the searchers reluctantly gave up.
The next morning, in a misty sprinkle, a sturdy shrimp trawler out of Virginia Key came upon a fresh oil slick a few miles off Miami Beach. Floating in the blue-black ooze was a tangle of debris: two seat cushions and a nest of electronic wiring from the helicopter, an album sleeve from an old Pat Boone record, a bloodied white-and-aqua football jersey, an Australian bush hat with a red emblem on the crown, and two dozen empty plastic shopping bags from Saks Fifth Avenue. Judging by the location of the slick, the helicopter had gone down in 450 feet of water. When the skies cleared, the Coast Guard sent two choppers of its own, but no more wreckage was found. A forensics expert from the Navy later reported to the Fuego One Task Force that no one could have survived the crash, and that there was virtually no chance of recovering any bodies. The water, he said, was full of lemon sharks.
Terrorist Believed Dead After Aerial Assault on Cruise Ship.
Skip Wiley had been right. The wild saga of the Nordic Princess appeared in sixty-point type across the front page of the Miami Sun the next morning. Cab Mulcahy had been left with no choice, for Wiley had shrewdly selected the day of the week with the most anemic competition for news space—the President was giving a speech on abortion, a bus filled with pilgrims crashed in India, and a trained chimpanzee named Jake upchucked in the space shuttle. The sensational story of Las Noches got big play all over the country, and wound up on the front pages of the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The version that appeared in the Miami Sun was the most detailed by far, though it made no mention of Wiley’s role; Mulcahy was still trying to reach Al García to tell him.
Only one other newspaper devoted as much space to the Nordic Princess story as did the Sun, and that was the Tulsa Express. (Old Mack Dane had outdone himself, dictating thirty-eight breathtaking inches of copy to the national desk over a Coast Guardsman’s marine-band radio.) As for the broadcast media, NBC had capitalized on its extra Orange Bowl manpower and diverted camera crews to the Port of Miami, Coast Guard headquarters, and Flagler Memorial Hospital. Heroes, victims, witnesses, and distant relatives flocked to the bright television lights, hoping to be interviewed by Jane Pauley or someone equally glamorous. By Sunday noon, much of the United States had heard or seen the story about killer snakes from the sky and the gang of South Florida crazies known as the Nights of December.
The chairman of the Orange Bowl Committee didn’t know whether to laugh or blow his brains out. In the space of forty-eight hours at the apogee of the tourist season, homicidal lunatics had detonated a newspaper reporter and launched an aerial attack against a domestic ocean liner. That was the bad news. The good news was: the bastards were dead. The parade was saved.
At 8:30 A.M. on Sunday, December 30, a press conference was staged at the office of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, in the hallowed room with the table shaped like a giant navel orange. Sitting around the table’s upper hemisphere were the chairman of the Orange Bowl Committee (at the stem), then Sergeant Al García, Sparky Harper’s successor at the Chamber of Commerce, the mayors of Miami and Dade County, the police chiefs of Miami and Dade County, and an officer from the Coast Guard, who wished he were someplace else. The lower half of the table was occupied by reporters and cameramen, including a crew from the CBS Morning News.
The Orange Bowl chairman stood up and spoke nervously into a microphone at a portable podium. He read from a prepared statement:
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming on such short notice. At approximately 9:16 last night, the cruise ship SS Nordic Princess was accosted by an unmarked, unidentified helicopter off the coast of Miami Beach, Florida. At the time of the attack, the cruise ship was under lease to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce as part of the Orange Bowl Jamboree festivities. As a result of hostile actions undertaken by occupants of the helicopter, more than three hundred persons were forced to abandon the ocean liner in an emergency Mayday. I am happy to report that all those passengers, including myself and several others in this room, were safely rescued. All of us wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to Commander Bob Smythe and the United States Coast Guard for their quick and decisive action.”
Commander Bob Smythe smiled wanly as a half-dozen motor-drive Nikons went off in his face. He couldn’t wait for his transfer to Charleston to come through.
“Shortly after the incident involving the Nordic Princess ,” the Orange Bowl man continued reading, “the suspect helicopter flew away from the cruise ship in an easterly direction. At approximately 9:21 P.M., the aircraft experienced engine trouble and apparently went down at sea. No radio contact was ever made with the helicopter, so the nature of its distress may never be known.”
The Orange Bowl chairman paused for a drink of water. He was unhappy with the tone of the press release, which had been composed hastily by a high-priced public-relations man. The PR man was a former Washington magazine editor who was reputed to be the model of glibness in crisis situations, but the Orange Bowl chairman was unimpressed. The press release sounded stiff and tedious, like it had come out of the Pentagon. The Orange Bowl chairman didn’t know much about good writing, but he knew “Tropical Tranquillity” when he saw it—and this wasn’t it. He wondered why it was so hard to find a good cheap hack.
“At approximately 6:07 this morning, a commercial fishing vessel discovered fuel residue and evidence of helicopter wreckage approximately six miles off Miami Beach. Navy and Coast Guard personnel searched the area thoroughly and found no signs of survivors. Because of the preponderance of carnivorous deep-water marine species, it is highly unlikely that any human remains will be recovered.
“However, one item found in the debris has been conclusively identified as the property of Daniel Wilson, age thirty-six, a former professional football player who had been sought as a suspect in several recent kidnappings.”
The Orange Bowl chairman reached into a brown grocery bag and pulled out the dark-stained Miami Dolphins jersey belonging to Viceroy Wilson. At the sight of the number 31, the photographers became frenzied.
“According to Sergeant Al García of the Metro-Dade police, Mr. Wilson was an active member of a small terrorist group known as Las Noches de Diciembre. This organization, also known as the Nights of December, has claimed credit for several recent kidnappings, homicides, and bombings in the Miami area, including the so-called Trifecta Massacre at the Hibiscus Kennel Club. The Ni
ghts of December also are prime suspects in a bombing incident two days ago in which a local journalist was seriously injured. We have strong reason to believe it was Mr. Wilson and three other members of this radical cell who carried out last night’s attack on the Nordic Princess, and who died in the subsequent helicopter crash. While every effort is being made to verify this information, we feel confident that a sinister and senseless threat to our community has been removed, and that the people of South Florida can celebrate the new year—and the Orange Bowl festival—without fear or worry. Thank you all very much.”
The Orange Bowl chairman sat down and wiped the back of his neck with a crisp white handkerchief. He had no intention of uttering another word, or doing anything to ruin his slick job of delivering the press release. He’d even improvised a bit, changing the distasteful and tourist-repellent phrase “oil slick” to “fuel residue” in the third paragraph.
As soon as the reporters began firing questions, the Orange Bowl chairman motioned Al García to the podium.
The detective approached the long-necked mircophone with extreme caution, as if it were a flamethrower.
“What about Jesus Bernal?” a TV reporter shouted.
“No comment,” García said. He felt like having a cigarette, but the chief had ordered him not to smoke in front of the cameras.
“Where did all the snakes come from?” someone asked.
“I’ve got no idea,” said Al García. The sound of two dozen scribbling felt-tip pens clawed at his nerves.
“What about the banner?” a radio reporter said. “Did you find the banner?”
“No comment.”
“Where did the chopper come from?”
“No comment.”
Several reporters began to complain about all the no comments and threatened to walk out of the press conference. The Dade County mayor excitedly whispered something to the chief of police, who leaned across and excitedly whispered something to Al García. The detective glared at all of them.
“Seems I’ve been authorized to answer your questions,” García told the reporters, “as long as it won’t interfere with the investigation. About the helicopter—we haven’t traced it yet. It was a rebuilt Huey 34, probably stolen up in Lauderdale or Palm Beach.”
“What about Jesus Bernal?” asked a man from a Cuban radio station.
Al García decided to give the guys in the orange blazers something to think about. “We have no evidence that Mr. Bernal was aboard the helicopter last night,” he said.
The Orange Bowl chairman shot to his feet. “But he probably was!”
“We have no such evidence,” García repeated.
“What about the banner?” the radio reporter asked.
“We recovered it this morning, tangled up in a swordfish line. The streamer was rented yesterday afternoon from Cairo Advertising at the Opa-locka Airport. Three individuals were seen attaching the letters. A white male, bearded, late thirties, wearing an Australian bush hat; a black male, approximately the same age but heavyset, wearing a football jersey; a younger, dark-skinned male, clean-shaven, described as either a Mexican or a native American Indian. The banner on the chopper basically said the same thing as all the previous communiqués—‘Welcome to the Revolution’ et cetera.”
“Those men seen at the airport,” a TV reporter said, “those were The Nachos?”
“Las Noches,” Garcia snapped.
“Who paid for the banner?” somebody shouted.
“Apparently the white male.”
“How much?”
The Orange Bowl chairman sensed that it had been a tactical mistake to let Al Garcia stand at the microphone. The idiot was actually answering the journalists’ questions. The more Garcia talked, the more frenetically the reporters wrote in their notebooks. And the more they wrote in their notebooks, the more stories would appear in the newspapers and the more airtime the dead Nachos would get. More was not what the Orange Bowl Committee wanted to see.
The chairman stood up and said with a smile, “I think that’s all for now.” But he was completely ignored by everyone, including Al García.
“The white male suspect paid three hundred dollars cash for use of the advertising streamer,” García said.
“Could that man have been El Fuego?” a reporter asked.
“It’s possible, yeah.”
“Did he give a name at the airport?”
“Yes, he did,” Garcia said.
Then all at once, like a flock of crows: “What?”
Garcia glanced over at the police chief. The chief shrugged. The Orange Bowl chairman waved a chubby hand, trying to get somebody’s attention.
“The suspect did use a name at the airport,” Garcia said, “but we believe it was an alias.”
“What was it?”
“In fact, we’re ninety-nine percent sure it was an alias,” the detective said, fading from the microphone.
“What was it, Al? What?”
“Well,” García said, “the name the suspect gave was Hugo. Victor Hugo.”
There was a lull in the questioning while the reporters explained to each other who Victor Hugo was.
“What about motive?” somebody shouted finally.
“That’s easy,” García replied. “They attacked the ocean liner for the same reason they marinated Sparky Harper in Coppertone. Publicity.” He smiled with amusement at all the busy notebooks. “Looks to me like they got exactly what they wanted.”
The press conference had taken a perilous turn, and the Orange Bowl chairman could no longer contain his rising panic. Squeezing to the podium, he discreetly placed a stubby hand between García’s shoulder blades and guided the detective to the nearest available chair. Then the Orange Bowl man boldly seized the neck of the microphone himself. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said cordially, “wouldn’t you rather hear the mayor’s firsthand account of his escape from the Nordic Princess?”
Brian Keyes watched the press conference on a television in Kara Lynn Shivers’ bedroom. Her father was out playing golf and her mother was eating quiche with the Junior League.
Kara Lynn was curled up on the bed in bikini panties and a lemon T-shirt. Keyes wore cutoffs. He squeezed her hand as they listened to Al García talking to the reporters. When the mayor got up and started to tell about the helicopter attack, Keyes punched the remote control and switched to a basketball game.
For a long time he didn’t say anything, just stared at the TV screen. Kara Lynn put her arms around him and kissed him on the neck.
“It’s really over,” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Keyes said distantly. He kept visualizing that crackpot Wiley, strolling into the Opa-locka Airport with his bush hat and two hundred bags of wild snakes. Keyes tried to imagine the scene later, aboard the Huey, Wiley and his portable record player; Wiley trying to explain Exodus to Viceroy Wilson.
“The only one left is that Cuban,” Kara Lynn said.
“Maybe.” Keyes tried to think of Skip Wiley as dead and could not. The obstacle was not grief; it was plain disbelief. It was not beyond Wiley to have rented an aged and dangerously unreliable helicopter, or to have hired an inept pilot. What was uncharacteristic was for Wiley to have placed himself so squarely in jeopardy. All through December he had kept a safe distance from the actual terrorism, sending Wilson or Bernal or the Seminole to take the big risks. Why the sudden bravery? Keyes wondered. And what a convenient way to die. He had felt a little guilty that he could summon so little sadness for his old friend—but then again, maybe it was too soon for mourning.
“The late Victor Hugo,” Keyes mused. Wiley must have known how his friends would smile at that one; he was forever edifying his own legend.
“Les Miserables,” Kara Lynn said. “Sounds like Mr. Fuego had a sense of humor.”
“Sick,” Keyes said. “Sick, sick, sick.” Wiley would be better off dead, he thought, before the incredible dismal truth were known. With Wiley dead, Kara Lynn would be safe. So would the n
ewspaper; Cab Mulcahy could return to the world of honest journalism. It would be better for almost everybody if Wiley were lost at sea, everybody except Jenna—Jenna was another issue. She hadn’t been aboard that helicopter. Keyes knew it instinctively. Jenna’s talent was creating catastrophes, then avoiding them.
“I want this to be the end,” Kara Lynn said quietly.
“Well, maybe it is.”
“But you don’t believe they’re really dead,” she said.
“The way it happened, it’s too perfect.”
“The Prince of Cynics. You don’t believe life can ever be perfect?”
“Nope,” Keyes said. “Death, either.”
Later, when Kara Lynn was in the shower, Al García phoned.
“It’s about damn time,” Keyes groused.
“Been kinda hectic around here,” the detective said. “I saw this stack of messages from you and Mulcahy. Figured your conscience finally woke up.”
“We had our reasons, Al. Now it’s time to talk.”
“Oh, I can’t wait. But it just so happens I already got a line on El Fuego.”
So Garcia knew.
Keyes felt lousy about not telling him in the first place, but Wiley’s threats had seemed serious and, in retrospect, believable. García would have to understand.
“When we were doing routine checks on Wilson and Bernal, I had a pal search the morgue at the newspaper,” the detective said. “Easy, really. I guess it’s all on computer now. Funny thing, Brian. About four months ago your asshole buddy Wiley does this story on whatever happened to Daniel Viceroy Wilson, the famous football star. Very sympathetic. Hard-times-for-the-troubled-black-athlete number. Typical liberal shit. Anyway, three weeks later, guess what? Guy does a column about Jesús Bernal. Our precious Jesús. Fire burns in the breast of a young Cuban freedom fighter—that’s how the story starts off. Makes me sick, too, I gotta tell you. Nearly tossed my black beans. So I’m thinking, what a weird coincidence this is: two of the four Nights of December getting a big ride in the newspaper just before the ca-ca hits the fan. So, for the hell of it, what d’you suppose I do?”