The man didn’t react for a moment when I reached to take his knife. Then he knocked my hand away.
“Hey, you want your motor fixed or not? I need a knife.”
The friendly terrorist was listening to the patrol boat, trying to gauge its heading—not easy because of the fog, but also because the diesel engines now blended with a familiar, rhythmic thumping. It was the sound of an approaching helicopter.
Tampa Coast Guard was joining the hunt. Or maybe a military chopper from nearby MacDill Air Base.
The man snapped, “Folano!,” then added a few anxious words I didn’t understand.
Folano slapped the weapon flat-bladed into my palm, then was silent, letting his anger fill the boat. The knife had a polished handle and a short, curved blade. Nice. I touched a finger to the edge—sharp. No wonder he didn’t want to loan it.
I said, “Appreciate it, Folano,” then turned and removed the engine cowling.
Once again, I found the fuel hose. It had a standard quick-clip connector with an inset brass bearing. The bearing functioned as a valve. I squeezed the primer bulb, then used the tip of the knife to push the valve open. Gas should have squirted. It didn’t.
I unscrewed the gas tank’s plastic cap and heard a vacuum rush. Open a fresh jar of pickles and the sound’s similar.
A vacuum. That was the problem. They hadn’t opened the air vent, so gas couldn’t flow. A common oversight.
I opened the vent; replaced the cap.
The engine would start. But I wasn’t done.
“Hand me that red flashlight.”
I was working on a forty-horsepower outboard, an older OMC, with the throttle and gearshift built into the tiller. A lot of power for a small boat. I searched until I found the internal safety switch. It had distinctive wiring, yellow and red. Bypass the safety switch and an engine will start in gear.
Dangerous.
I cut the wires, then twisted them together, bypassing the safety switch.
I found the carburetor, inserted the knife, and bent the butterfly plate wide open. The engine would now get maximum fuel delivery no matter how the throttle was manipulated. There was no way to stop the gas flow without cutting the fuel hose.
The engine was now rigged to start in forward gear, at full speed.
Very dangerous.
It’d taken me less than two minutes. With my back to the men, I locked the engine cowling in place, then pretended to lunge after something I dropped.
“Damn.”
“What now has happened wrong?”
I stared into the water for a moment before I sat up and took the vodka from the bearded man. This time, I really did have a drink.
The friendly terrorist asked, “Why have you stopped working on the engine?”
“It’s fixed.”
“How can you be certain? You haven’t started it.”
The patrol boat was still cruising the island’s west side, maybe confused in the fog, but the helicopter was closing in.
“Trust me, it’ll start.” I patted the seat next to me. “Give it a try.”
I made room as the bearded man said something, then tried English. “Where knife?”
I jabbed my finger at the water. “Down there, knife.” I was looking at the bad knot they’d used to tie my canoe to the inflatable. If the rope didn’t break, I’d have to cut it free—which is why I’d wedged his knife securely into the back of my belt after pretending to drop it.
The bearded man growled a reply as I took the special strobe flashlight from my pocket and braced myself. The friendly terrorist’s hand was on the throttle.
I watched him lean toward the starter cord. The man put all his frustration into that first pull . . .
4
Ignite a rocket on the rear of a small boat and the results would have been similar. When the engine fired, the inflatable catapulted into the fog like a dragster. Men in front were thrown backward. The bearded man landed face-first in the bilge. The friendly terrorist would have been launched over the engine if I hadn’t grabbed him by the belt.
I was going overboard myself soon. I didn’t want his company.
Over the engine noise, he shouted, “This goddamn thing! How to stop my crazy motor?” The man wrestled with the tiller handle. He couldn’t reduce speed and the transmission wouldn’t allow him shift to neutral without decelerating. “Son of a beech. What bad shit is now happening?”
My canoe, still tied to the inflatable, became a wild, swinging rudder. It caused the little boat to veer left, then right, as we tunneled an accelerating arc through the mist. Fog sailed past my face as if driven by a twenty-knot wind. It was inevitable that we’d soon hit something—an island, an oyster bar, rocks. I didn’t want to be aboard when it happened.
I had the high-tech flashlight in my hand. When I punched the switch, it began to strobe with a dizzying, irregular rhythm. Each starburst was intensified by fog, each microsecond of darkness magnified the boat’s speed. My brain was unable to process the chaos and I had to blink to stem the sudden vertigo. The terrorists felt it, too: four faces frozen, wide-eyed, with each explosion of white.
“Idiot! You blind us!”
That was the plan and I wasn’t done.
I looped the flashlight’s lanyard over the tiller and pulled the flare from my pocket. I pictured me popping the gas tank, flare burning, as I cut the canoe free and rolled overboard. These guys liked bombs—let them experience what it was like to ride a floating incendiary. The inflatable would blaze like a torch.
But then, out of nowhere, a dazzling incandescence appeared overhead. It was brighter than my strobe and so unexpected that we all ducked. The circle of light swept past our little boat, touched the water ahead, then found us again.
I turned. The fog was so dense my eyes registered only vaporous glare. Where the hell was the light coming from? Then I felt a faint seismic vibration. It moved through the boat’s hull and into my chest, increasing incrementally. The cadence was familiar.
A moment later, a thudding sound accompanied the vibration, the flexing whomp-ah-whomp-ah-whomp of rotating blades, and I knew the source of the light. A helicopter was tracking us, flying low off our stern.
“Goddamn! What bad luck is here now?”
Maybe bad luck for all of us, depending on the helicopter. Coast Guard helicopters are equipped for rescues at sea. Military helicopters are equipped with machine guns and rockets. Which had the Secret Service called?
“Mechanic. You take!” Panicking, the friendly terrorist shoved the tiller toward me and lunged for his assault rifle. The boat turned so violently that I almost went overboard with bearded guy. It also snapped the rope holding my canoe. The loss of drag caused an abrupt increase in speed that almost flipped us.
I pushed the man off me and climbed back into my seat. The friendly terrorist was on his knees trying to shoulder his assault rifle. The other men were also struggling to get to their weapons.
I put my hand on the tiller arm, straightened our course, then moved to the inflatable’s port side. Coast Guard or not, if the friendly terrorist started shooting the chopper would return fire. I didn’t want to get much farther from my canoe, but I also didn’t want the terrorists to get a clean shot.
I shielded my eyes and glanced behind. I guessed the chopper was a few hundred yards out. The pilot had waited until he was almost over us to toggle his megawattage searchlight. It told me something. Visibility was zero yet he knew where we were.
Some kind of high-tech radar? Older infrared systems don’t work well in fog. But this aircraft’s electronics had nailed us. A thermal image sensor system maybe. Or thermal FLIR goggles. Whatever it was kept the chopper latched to our stern. The pilot seemed to be keeping his distance intentionally.
I took another quick look, then concentrated on driving. The chopper’s military searchlight illuminated the mist without piercing it; my strobe added blinding starbursts. The combination screwed up my depth perception, which was nil to begin wi
th. I’d straightened our course but couldn’t tell if I was focusing on a veil of fog fifty yards ahead or five feet ahead. It was like rocketing underwater through radiant bubbles.
Two men remained hunched low in the inflatable, gripping the outboard safety line. But the friendly terrorist and Folano had managed to balance themselves between the middle seat and deck, both with automatic rifles. In a moment, they’d open fire.
I waited. Kept our course steady, expecting to slam into a reef at any moment . . . or take a bullet in the back. The boat’s top speed couldn’t have been more then thirty knots, but it felt like fifty. When Folano touched his cheek to the rifle’s stock, taking aim, I jammed the tiller hard to port—a threshold turn that almost jettisoned him into the water.
“Goddamn mechanic.”
From his belly, the friendly terrorist pointed his rifle at me. I ducked low and pulled the tiller hard to starboard, then shoved it away. The boat skidded for a moment, then heeled at an impossible angle. He tumbled onto his side and lost control of the weapon.
In rapid succession, I rocked the steering arm back and forth. With each wild turn, the boat careened on its edge, so the four men could do nothing but stay low and hang on to the outboard safety line.
Behind us, I suspected the chopper’s crew interpreted our zigzagging as evasive action. They’d been on our tail for less than a minute, but it was enough time for their weapons systems to lock. The pilot was probably on the radio with his superiors maybe asking permission to fire. Stick a rocket into our engine’s exhaust. Could that happen?
Yes.
I continued zigzagging, eyes forward, as I looped the fuel hose around the tiller arm to prevent the boat from circling. Then I found the gas tank with my right hand and twisted the cap off. Gas sloshed. The fog had wicked fumes; the two vapors melded into a petroleum cloud. Striking a flare now would’ve been insane, so I lobbed the stick over my shoulder. Then I felt around in my pocket for the lighter—a search that was hampered by my own misgivings. In a cloud of gas fumes, I knew what would happen if spark was added.
I did it anyway . . . took a deep breath . . . released the tiller so I could cup my left hand over my eyes, then flicked the plastic lighter and . . .
Whoof!
A sphere of pressurized heat blasted me backward. I used the momentum to somersault overboard, my left hand now covering my nose, my right hand over my nuts.
Impact: I skipped once on the hard surface, then water settled around me, the bay warmer than air. I stayed under for a moment, then surfaced. I’d worried about landing on an oyster bar, but the depth here was waist-deep, the bottom soft beneath my shoes.
I crouched low in the water, expecting the boat to be in flames. It wasn’t. Maybe the explosion had consumed oxygen so abruptly that it had extinguished itself. Whatever the reason, the inflatable wasn’t ablaze but the strobe I’d left aboard was still firing.
The helicopter rocketed past at tree level and I ducked again . . . then stayed low, thinking the terrorists might manage to fire a shot. They didn’t. Maybe they’d gone overboard, too, when I’d ignited the gas.
I waited, listened. I heard no voices, saw no movement ahead. They were still on the boat.
After a few moments, I stood, my eyes tracking the course of the inflatable by the strobe’s irregular starbursts, feeling relieved but also dumb. The chopper pilot didn’t need thermal imaging to find the boat. All he had to do was follow the blinking light.
The noise of the engines faded but the fogbank continued to flare. It reminded me of a storm cloud filled with lightning. I was surprised the boat hadn’t hit something. I was also surprised that the chopper hadn’t opened fire.
I turned . . . and got another surprise.
Towering above me, closing in fast, was a red light and a green light, aligned like glowing eyes—a boat’s running lights. The patrol boat was bearing down on me at high speed in pursuit of the inflatable.
It was like stepping off a sidewalk into the path of a cement truck. The pilot couldn’t see me, I didn’t have time to get out of the way, and there were only a few inches of clearance between the boat’s churning propellers and the soft bottom.
I reacted instinctively and dove to the right, trying to dolphin out of harm’s way. But too late . . .
The vessel was on me . . . then over me. Its forward displacement wake lifted me off the bottom when I tried to submerge. I felt the boat’s port chine graze my thigh and I balled up into a fetal position, expecting the props to chop my feet off. I released air from my lungs, trying to get deeper, then all that displaced water slammed me hard into the bottom as engines screamed past overhead . . . slammed me so hard that I threw my hands out, anticipating impact.
If I hadn’t, I would’ve broken my neck. Instead, when I hit bottom my left arm buried itself up to the elbow in muck.
Underwater, I waited for a few seconds to be sure the boat was gone, then I tried to pull my arm free. Surprise! My fist had created a suction pocket. It wouldn’t budge.
I got one foot on the bottom and tried to stand. I still couldn’t break the mud’s hold.
Impossible.
Calmly, I tried again . . . and felt muck constrict around my forearm.
I opened my eyes. Darkness accentuated a darker realization: I might die this way. Ironic. It was also absurd. Die on a calm night, in waist-deep water, because I’d gotten one hand stuck in the mud—after the life I’d lived?
Funny, Ford. Fun-n-n-ny.
I stopped struggling. Told myself not to panic; to stop fighting and think. I did . . . which instantly reduced the pressure around my forearm. I could feel the hole collapsing into rivulets of sand around my fist, as water trickled in and breached the vacuum. I gave a gentle pull . . . and my hand came free.
I surfaced, blowing water from my nose and gasping for air but alert: a second boat might be following in the wake of the vessel that had nearly crushed me.
I stood, waited . . . Silence.
I turned. The patrol boat’s course was marked by a contrail of bubbles but its lights had been swallowed by fog. I could still hear its engines, an eerie demarcation between sight and sound: A sixton boat had vanished into a void of infinite gray.
I took a few careful steps, still shaken by the series of close calls. Bad luck has its own momentum. It’s not conditional or personal, but misfortune does seem to gain energy from panic. Time to move purposefully.
I did.
If the patrol boat’s wake was still visible, the inflatable’s narrower track should be visible, too. I made a slow search and found the residue of exhaust oil and disturbed water.
I backtracked, following the rubber boat’s course, walking, sometimes swimming. The knife with the curved blade, and the extra flashlight I’d slipped into my pants, had both survived, and I used the flashlight. After several minutes, there it was, a ghost ship, awash in fog but still afloat: my canoe. I was afraid the patrol boat had crushed it.
Before I vaulted aboard, I allowed myself a blissful minute to pee.
My watch read 12:15 a.m.
5
I used the GPS to get my bearings, then paddled. A few minutes later, blue topography materialized in the moonlight: Indian mounds elevated above mangroves.
I traveled along Ligarto’s rim. As I did, I heard the diesel rumble of another vessel. It was on the western side of the island. Occasionally, its searchlight breached the fog canopy. The boat was headed north, its engines fading.
Why north? Why not back up the helicopter and patrol boat?
I thought about it as I paddled. Decided there could be only one reason: The former president was aboard. Secret Service agents were taking him to safety. The Special Operations Center at MacDill Air Base was in Tampa, and so was the Coast Guard’s regional headquarters.
What other explanation could there be? The inflatable would’ve been easy to find. The explosion hadn’t damaged the gas tank much because I could still hear the engine—the overrevved scream of an out
board plowing bottom. The boat had finally hit something, and its engine was killing itself; probably kicking up a geyser of mud and grass as it buried the rubber boat on a sandbar.
Less than ten minutes had passed since I’d flicked the lighter and jumped, but they’d been long, long minutes for the four foreigners. They’d spent them careening through fog, out of control, with a helicopter on their tail. With the inflatable grounded, the men would either have to fight or wade. I hadn’t heard any shots, so maybe they weren’t the martyr types . . . or maybe they’d found the bottle of vodka I’d left aboard.
I pictured the guy with the bushy black beard, Folano, guzzling from the bottle and smiled. He could have the liquor—I had his knife. I hadn’t looked at it closely but the heft and balance suggested superb craftsmanship. Consoling. The Blackhawk flashlight I’d sacrificed was expensive.
I continued paddling but not fast. The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed the Secret Service had hustled Kal Wilson aboard the northbound boat. If he was no longer on Ligarto, there was no reason for me to hurry. Even so, I decided to land on the shell ridge as planned.
Maybe I’d learn something. Secret Service agents wouldn’t be as quick to open fire, and they might be talkative if I had information to trade. I’d use a spare flashlight to draw attention and tell the first person I met to notify the cops about four crazy foreigners with guns. That would get a conversation started.
Wait . . . only four foreigners? I remembered the unlikely timing of the explosions, then reminded myself there could be a fifth terrorist already on the island, an insider.
Adrenaline is a chemical accelerant and I felt supercharged. If the Secret Service hadn’t found the fifth terrorist, I might . . . or he might find me.
That was okay.
In fact, I hoped it happened.
WIND STILLED; MOON FLOATED BEHIND HALLOWEEN clouds. Fog became rain—an ascending, silver weight.
Good. My clothes were soaked but visibility was improving. Steam seeped from the tree line, then was vented upward by the bay’s cool surface. Moonlight was chameleon. It mimicked a night sky that was charcoal, then copper.
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