Sudden, of course, knew the drown-proofing technique, but his legs were sluggish and the large swells frustrated him. He tried grabbing some passing flotsam, but none of the pieces were large enough to support him. He started drifting farther from shore. He wondered how it would feel to drown. He spotted a large fin moving through the debris field. Terrific, he thought dully. I’m bleeding and there is a shark. The creature moved toward him. Two more fins cut through the water. Overkill. He braced for the inevitable savage bite. Then, one of the dolphins arched by him. Soon, all three dove out of sight. Sudden had read about dolphins pushing drowning sailors toward shore. Maybe they figured I was too far gone. Dolphin triage.
A big swell lifted Sudden high in the water. He spotted a large object floating about 100 feet away. It was the roof of the Tiki Hut. It was the toughest 100 feet he ever swam, but he made it. But when he tried to lift himself onto the roof he couldn’t get a purchase on the slippery thatch. Wind-borne salt water stung his eyes and partially blinded him. Finally, his hand grabbed something sticking out of the roof. It felt slick and rubbery but he was able to dig his fingers in and with a final desperate surge of energy he pulled himself up on the raft. Spread-eagled face down, he finally looked up. His fingers were buried to their knuckles in a pulpy leg sticking up from the hut. Blood bubbled out around each digit.
Sudden threw up.
***
“This is a fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Ollie.”
Sudden was staring into the dead eyes of Fats Boudreau, who had been impaled through his midsection by large pieces of timber from the roof of the Tiki Hut. It had been Boudreau’s leg sticking out of the hut. But weakened as he was, Sudden had not been able to separate Boudreau’s corpse from their makeshift raft. In fact, the huge mobster made up much of the raft. They’d been floating together for hours, and as Boudreau decomposed and began to bloat, he actually added buoyancy to the hut. Sudden was grateful for that, though he could have done without the smell.
“Sorry, I know your name isn’t Ollie. And I guess you’re not in the mood for arcane Laurel and Hardy movie references. But this really is mostly your fault, you know.”
Sudden was leaking blood from a dozen or so gashes caused by flying glass and wood splinters. He knew he was on the edge of delirium, but every few hours he roused himself to slide into the Gulf to soak his wounds in salt water. It hurt like hell but temporarily revived him. He knew he was taking a chance. The fins that had been circling the raft for hours didn’t belong to dolphins. A couple of times the sharks actually rammed the raft. He didn’t know what kind most of them were. Just that they were big. The one that frightened him the most was a newcomer, an easily recognizable hammerhead. It must have been 12 feet long. As it glided by he was mesmerized by one of its huge black eyes on its grotesquely flattened skull. Sudden only entered the water when no fins broke the water nearby. Of course, he knew that was no guarantee that sharks swimming below the raft wouldn’t suddenly attack.
“Still, you did save my life,” he said to the corpse. “Tell you what. Everyone is calling the storm Hurricane Spenser. But I’m renaming it. From now on, just between me and you, it’s Hurricane Fats. Least I can do. What do you think of that, big boy?”
Boudreau’s head rolled from side to side with a swell. Pink froth bubbled through his blubbery lips, which looked like they were about to burst.
“No? Too modest? That’s not like you, Fats. Well, I’m going to do it anyway.”
Sudden heard another hissing sound. Oh, not again, he thought. But then the hissing grew louder and began to sound more like thumping. He looked up. An orange dot was heading right toward him. A few moments later, a big U.S. Coast Guard helicopter was hovering above the Tiki Hut lowering a rescue basket. Wash from the big rotor churned the water, pushing it away in concentric circles.
***
Forty feet below the raft, the huge hammerhead felt the strange vibrations through the water. The shark, which was actually 15 feet long, was disturbed. The distinctive structure of its flattened head, called a cephalofoil, served several purposes. The wide spacing of its eyes on each side of head provided excellent 360-degree vision. That allowed the animal to see above and below at all times. But it served a more important purpose. Like all sharks, the hammerhead had electroreceptory sensory pores, called ampullae of Lorenzini. Sensitive to vibrations, these pores were as crucial to locating prey as a shark’s vaunted sense of “smell,” which could detect blood at great distances. By distributing the sensory receptor pores over a wider area in its cephalofoil structure, a hammerhead can track down prey more effectively.
Now, however, the thumping of the copter’s engine and the wash from its rotors overloaded the hammerhead’s sensory system. The huge fish, which had no trouble driving off the smaller bull sharks, now was itself driven away by something obviously larger. It dove for the bottom, seeking quieter prey.
***
Say what you will about the Coasties, Sudden thought, they’re always there when you need them. Proved it during Katrina, when they were the first on the scene.
He tried to climb into the basket. His arms flopped helplessly at his side. He tried again and almost slipped off the roof. Above the rotor sound he heard someone yell, “Just hang on, buddy. Don’t waste your strength.”
Sudden heard a splash. An air-sea rescue crewman had jumped into the water. He swam over and was now climbing onto the roof.
“How are you doing, sir?”
“All things considered,” Sudden said, “I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”
“Jesus,” the kid blurted when he got close to the nude Boudreau.
“Don’t get the wrong idea, sailor,” Sudden said, aware of his own nakedness. “I hardly knew the guy.”
The Airman laughed and reached for the rescue basket that had suddenly plopped into the water next to them.
“Well, at least you would’ve never starved.”
CHAPTER 31 – SURVIVOR
The Coast Guard chopper dropped Sudden off in a hospital parking lot in Sarasota, which had escaped the brunt of the storm. Fuel considerations and logistical problems with disentangling Boudreau forced the crew to leave the mobster behind. Besides, Sudden looked to be in bad shape and they didn’t want to waste any time. But they radioed a nearby cutter with the coordinates and marked the area with a yellow dye marker.
Sudden heard the woman co-pilot say, “Don’t worry. You can’t miss it.”
As it turned out, the triage doctors in the hospital quickly established that most of Sudden’s injuries were superficial. He looked a lot worse than he really was. They had many more seriously injured people to care for and he was discharged the next day after many stitches, a tetanus shot, prescriptions for pain and antibiotics, and strict orders to avoid alcohol for at least a week. Before he left the hospital, a Florida State Trooper brought him a set of clothes, shoes and a wallet with new I.D., credit cards and cash.
“Who the hell do you know?” the trooper said.
“Rich uncle,” Sudden deadpanned.
“Right,” the trooper said. “Anyway, I have orders to take you to the airport. There’s a plane waiting for you.”
As Sudden was walking out, rescuers were still bringing in casualties, lining them up in the hallway. Men, women and children. No stranger to trauma, he was still shocked at some of the injuries. Some of the victims looked near death. He felt both guilty and grateful that he had escaped with such minor damage. Considering that he’d survived a hurricane and a tornado, been in a wild gunfight in a dark room and had two stone killers pointing guns at him, he knew it was a minor miracle.
Doctors and nurses were running from patient to patient, barking orders. E.M.T. paramedics, cops, firemen and orderlies were rushing in every direction. It looked like chaos, but Sudden knew it wasn’t. It was a dangerous world, and American hospitals all had disaster plans in place. The drills had paid off. Everyone knew exactly what to do. For all its problems, he knew, American medicine re
igned supreme, especially in a crisis. Even the near-dead stood a pretty good chance once they got inside the hospital door. He had recently proved that in Connecticut.
As Sudden passed one gurney a man reached out and grabbed his arm.
“Hey,” the man said, “you made it out, too. I guess you never fixed the leak.”
Sudden was incredulous. It was the guard from the elevator at the Shalimar II. The guy moaned. He was obviously in considerable pain.
“I’ll be right out,” Sudden told the trooper, and bent over the injured man.
“How are you doing, pal?”
“My legs are broken. They say I might lose my foot. I think the whole fuckin’ building fell on me.” He managed a weak smile. “But I ain’t complainin’.”
It was humorous, but Sudden felt something like a kinship with the New Orleans thug. After all, they were apparently the only two people to have survived the collapse of the Shalimar II. He was glad he hadn’t found it necessary to shoot the fellow.
“Anything I can do for you?”
“Nah, thanks. They got word to my folks back home. My old man is comin’.”
It never occurred to Sudden that mobsters had “folks” who would be worried about them. An orderly walked up.
“Sorry, but I have to take this man to X-ray,” he said. “Then on to the O.R.”
“Where’s his things?”
The orderly reached down and pulled out a plastic bag. He shook it and something jangled.
“He didn’t have anything on him except some old dog tags.”
Sudden smiled and took some cash out of his wallet. He put it in the bag. Then he moved to get out of the way. The injured man grabbed his arm again.
“Did you make it all the way up to the penthouse? Do you know what happened to Mr. Boudreau and the others?”
“They didn’t make it, kid.”
“Damn.”
He looked like he wanted to cry. They had been bad guys, but they were his crew. Probably had been through some tough times together.
“Not your fault. You might not have made it either, but you stayed on your post. There’s a lesson in that. Good luck.”
Sudden patted the guy’s arm and walked outside where the trooper was standing against a State Police SUV with whip antennas. With the siren and flashing lights, they made it to Sarasota International in 15 minutes. The first thing Sudden did when he got on the plane Nigel had sent for him was order a double bourbon.
***
“Hurricane Fats” had crossed the Florida peninsula, perversely maintaining much of its power by picking up water vapor and heat from the Everglades. It also spawned a few more tornadoes that sucked up all sorts of things from the swamps and canals along its path. As if they didn’t have enough problems on their hands, residents on the east coast of the state were startled when scores of live and angry Burmese pythons and iguanas dropped out of the sky.
Particularly vexed were thousands of refugees from Florida’s west coast who had fled to its east coast on the assumption that the storm would moderate by the time it reached them. The hurricane gave Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton a very hard time and then swirled into the Atlantic. There, it slowly turned north, squeezed between two high pressure domes. Luckily, colder water and some wind shear sapped much of its remaining energy. By the time it passed over Long Island and crossed into New England, the storm was just a huge rainmaker and tree-feller. It finally petered out over the Maritime Provinces of Canada.
The National Weather Service promptly added Spenser to the list of deadly storms whose names were retired. (The name “Spencer” with a “c” was also added to the retired list, to forestall any future confusion.) Several hundred people had died, mostly in Florida. Sudden wondered if the authorities would include the bodies from the massacre at the Shalimar II in the count of storm victims. He thought he could make a case either way. Dollar-wise, preliminary estimates put the overall damage the hurricane caused, both north and south, in the tens of billions. Comparisons were already being made to Andrew and Katrina.
Sudden’s flight beat the storm’s remnants home. He then spent a week recuperating, and cleaning up his yard and roof after things calmed down. He found the chores cathartic, if a bit painful.
CHAPTER 32 – GOOD FOR THE SOUL
Considering that you got hit by a Category 5 hurricane and a tornado, Cole, you don’t look all that bad.”
“It was downgraded to a Category 4. And the twister was only an F2.”
“Well, that explains it then,” Buss said. “If I had known that I would have had you fly home commercial. But you still have a bit of a limp, I see.”
“My own damn fault. I fell off a ladder clearing out a gutter. Twisted my ankle. Lucky the ground was soggy.”
The two men were in Nigel’s office. They were both eating Philly cheese steaks and sharing a six pack of beer.
“I hate ladders,” Nigel said. “How’s your hoagie?”
“Haven’t had a bad one yet,” Sudden said. “Hoagies and Rolling Rock; I guess I don’t rate Le Bec Fin anymore.”
“You bitching about it?”
“Hell, no. This stuff is better for us anyway. Sorry about your desk. It looks like a crime scene.”
Both of them had dripped gobs of sandwich fillings on Nigel’s desk.
“This thing probably came from a halfway house. It’s seen worse. By the way, I’ve got some interesting news for you.”
Sudden braced himself. Nigel’s “by the ways” were infamous. He was just as likely to say, “By the way, there’s a live grenade under your chair” as to tell you that he got a nice postcard from his Aunt Minerva.
“Longstreet’s building was a total loss,” Buss said, “but he had a fair amount of insurance on it. It’s the law in Florida. No surprise, there. Between hurricanes, sinkholes and the melting ice cap, the whole state is going to be under water eventually. He put a lot of Boudreau’s money into the property, but with mortgage rates so cheap he also leveraged it. Banks insisted on storm coverage and flood insurance, the whole shebang.”
“So?”
“So, we’re going to get some of it. Plus some of the Boudreau money he stashed in various banks in Florida and offshore. Guy was an asshole, but he knew what to do with his money. Or, rather, other people’s money.”
“Shouldn’t it all go to the people that Longstreet fleeced to begin with? Thousands of them lost their life savings.”
Buss smiled ruefully.
“In a perfect world, yes. And that’s what the referee handling all the lawsuits that came out of Longstreet’s scam wants to do. But there are complications. Boudreau’s money wasn’t involved in the Ponzi scheme. In fact, one could argue he was one of Longstreet’s victims.”
“But Fats stole his money, from someplace.”
“Sure. But no one knows from where. Drugs, prostitution, liquor, extortion, gambling, who the hell can trace it? You want to refund the money that some drunk conventioneer in New Orleans spent on one of Boudreau’s hookers? Point is, this fight will go on in the courts for years, making a lot of lawyers rich. Be a miracle if any real victims see a dime. It sucks, but that’s not our problem. I told the Treasury Department that I wanted finder’s fee for solving all their cases and, thanks to you and some bad weather, eliminating the need for a lot of costly criminal trials. Now they can concentrate on the civil side.”
“How big a fee?”
“Standard ten percent. Should come out to around $4 million”
“And they went for it?”
Nigel’s smile grew wider.
“Well, I might have mentioned that we had enough information about all the bribes Longstreet spread around in Louisiana and elsewhere when he was scamming Boudreau to make things very uncomfortable for some state and federal officials in the Big Easy. Not to mention tie up all the money for the next million years in really endless litigation.”
“What’s my cut?”
“You’re eating it.”
**
*
Buss drove with Sudden to the airport. He wasn’t yet ready for field work and rather than man a desk shuffling paperwork he decided to use up some of the vacation time owed him. The two men sat in the back of the SUV watching the company plane taxi toward the hanger.
“How is the bookstore doing, Cole?”
“Making a little money. I think Allison Beech has taken to it. She’s moved from Michigan into the Village. Nelson DeMille has agreed to do a book signing next month and he’s lining up some other name authors. I may run into Manhattan for a few days and give her a hand.”
“I love DeMille. You going to do a book signing?’
“Sure, but I doubt I’ll be much of a draw.”
Buss laughed.
“How much did you invest?”
“My advance from my new book contract. Seemed like the right thing to do.”
“How much was that?”
Sudden told him.
“When the money comes in from the Longstreet finder’s fee, the unit will match it.”
Buss saw the look on Sudden’s face.
“Hey, I’m not getting soft. I can justify it to the pencil pushers as a way to solidify your cover.”
“Allison may not want C.I.A. money. And I’m not sure it’s a great idea.”
“Cole, please don’t give me a speech about literary ethics and independence, yada, yada, yada. We both know better.”
“Maybe she doesn’t.”
Buss smiled.
“Point taken. Why don’t you ask her? There’s no quid pro quo. For Christ’s sake, you’re already an investor. Hell, if it makes you feel better tell her I’m an old softy who feels guilty about getting her sister killed.”
“That’s not on you, Nige.”
“Jesus, can’t you let me revel in some guilt? It’s good for my soul.”
TWO SUDDEN!: A Pair of Cole Sudden C.I.A. Thrillers Page 13