by Hunter Shea
Jack silently cursed himself and prayed that he would make it out alive.
In the front of the boat, John Almeida kept his wife, Carol, close to his chest with one arm, while using the other to clutch the bar between their seats so he could brace them against the sudden movements of the airboat. Carol wept, but not out of fear. One of the bullets had pierced the metal hull of the boat and torn a crimson gully through her upper arm.
It could have been worse, much worse, but the flesh wound went deep and must have burned like hell.
They jerked left and a wave of muddy water washed over them.
“Jesus Christ, that burns!” Carol squealed. Water and blood ran down her arm, and John had to steady himself. The water was only creating the illusion that she was bleeding to death.
But he did need to wrap up her arm, and soon. There was no way he could do that as long as the thug at the controls pushed the engine as fast as it could go.
He had to get him to stop.
The question was, how?
Liz looked back at the guy who had taken over the boat, then at the pistol, and tried to see if there were any bullets in the chamber. It was an old gun, like the kind cowboys wore on low-slung holsters in westerns. With some of them, you could see the chambers in the barrel if you caught it at just the right angle, and tell if they had a bullet nestled inside or not.
The boat clipped the edge of a sandbar and everyone jounced to the left. The man pulled the gun out of view while he fought to keep control.
Her sister Maddie gripped her arm.
“Where do you think he’s taking us?” Maddie said close to her ear. The whirring of the fan sounded like a pride of lions roaring.
“I don’t even think he knows,” Liz said. “He looks kinda confused. It feels like we’re just going in circles, but it’s hard to tell out here. Everything looks the same.”
Liz eyed him from head to toe, looking for any possible weakness. His close-cropped black hair was straight out of Super Cuts. He was about as thick and solid as a pro wrestler, with colorful tattoos of Chinese dragons and koi fish forming two full sleeves. She saw the tension in his jaw as it clenched and unclenched, and took special note of his prison-yard stare. This was a man who made a living out of making regular guys wet themselves with just a look. People like that weren’t accustomed to having other people challenge them, especially young girls.
“I saw you staring at the gun. What do you think?”
“Hard to tell. Even if it’s not loaded, do you see the size of him? He looks like he could box a bear.”
“And probably win,” Maddie added.
She was right, but that didn’t stop Liz from considering all the different angles they could take. Sooner or later, he would have to stop the boat. She just had to think two steps ahead.
That and stop the Italian kid next to her from copping a feel every time they made a hard turn. For now, he was a distant number two on her list.
Angelo’s leg touched the girl’s tan, toned thigh, and he couldn’t help thinking about how she would repay him for being the hero to get them out of this mess. Both chicks were bangin’. Shit, maybe he could get them both at the same time. Twins. Now there was an incentive to show this asshole what New Yorkers did to people who tried to fuck with them.
Dominic tapped his shoulder and motioned with his head to turn around.
The pistol had fallen out of the hijacker’s hand and lay next to the unconscious tour guide’s head.
All he had to do was take three steps and he could go all Mission Impossible on his ass. Dominic would have his back. He saw the old guy at the front look back. Their eyes met briefly, but it was enough to know that they were both on the same page. The dude’s wife was bleeding pretty bad, and Angelo would bet his left nut that he was nice and pissed and ready to stop this ride to nowhere.
They were in the middle of the friggin’ swamp. No one was taking shots at them…now. It was just one guy against at least three of them. Maybe the girls and the dork would jump in once things started.
He gave Dom a slight nod, and another to the guy in front.
His internal countdown began. He was going to fuck this guy’s shit up good.
Chapter Five
Nothing was going Rooster’s way. So much for making a big show with the pistol. That last near-wipeout had shaken his grip on the gun, and now it was at his feet. Worse yet, he saw that several of his hostages, because that’s what the police would be calling them now that word would have spread about the shooting and hijacking of the tour boat, had taken note that the gun was no longer in his possession.
The Jersey Shore guys looked like they had steroid-enhanced visions of heroism dancing in their thick heads. He caught their furtive glances at one another and the middle-aged guy in front. Little did they know that the bag had eleven more guns.
There was no way he was about to entertain even the thought of a mutiny. He remembered a safe house, off the beaten path in the Everglades National Park, that his father had shown him a few times when he was old enough to learn the family business. His dad and his partners used the house from time to time to store stolen goods or just hide out until things cooled down on the mainland.
It had been at least ten years since he’d last been there himself. His father and his buddies had all been killed in that shootout outside the Bank of America in Tampa eight years ago. Eight years in the swamp with no one to watch over its upkeep meant the old safe house was likely in dire shape. Seeing as there were no other options, he had to force himself to remember how to get there. Any thoughts by his hostages of trying to take over the boat and scatter his thoughts had to be put to bed, pronto.
Rooster reached into the bag and slipped his index finger into a trigger guard.
Angelo saw the man take his eyes off them so he could look inside his bag of tricks. Angelo grabbed Dominic by the collar and hollered, “Now!”
They both leaped to the raised pilot’s chair, but the rocking of the airboat sent Angelo sprawling over an empty seat and onto his head.
Dominic was faster and slightly nimbler, but his foot got caught under the comatose pilot’s meaty arm, dropping him to his knees. His head caromed off the metal edge of the pilot’s chair, and he just missed getting his hair sucked into the fan cage.
“Dominic!”
Angelo was back on his feet, and the heavy bag fell off the man’s lap. He had another old gun in his hand, but he was having trouble getting a grip. His leg bent and eased off the accelerator. The boat slowed some and vaulted over a small island just big enough to be home to a patch of cattail.
He felt someone stumble into him and saw it was the older guy. The girls were also on their feet, but hanging back.
Time to end this shit.
Angelo and the older dude charged the guy in the pilot’s chair. Angelo took him high in the chest while the other guy went low, around his thighs. He felt the air whoosh out of the man’s lungs and cocked a fist back to land the haymaker of all haymakers on his cleft chin. Angelo’s fist connected with granite and the pain in his hand made his head spin. He looked down to see all four fingers pointing in directions no finger should point in. Each had to have been broken in more than one place.
“My friggin’ hand!” he howled in pain.
Jesus, what a clusterfuck! Rooster almost laughed at Jersey Shore’s face when he saw his broken hand. Between that and the other kid who’d knocked himself out cold, this was turning into the funniest mutiny of all time. Jack-assery was in full swing with these idiots. Rooster reared back and punched the kid square between the eyes to put him out of his misery. At least the kid wouldn’t feel the pain in his hand anymore.
Now he had to deal with the other guy, who had locked his arms around Rooster’s thighs and was trying to wrestle him off the chair. As much as he didn’t want to, Rooster had to take his hand off the rudder stick and his foot off the accelerator. He brought a knee up into the man’s gut and clapped him on the side of his head. The
man’s grip instantly broke and he fell to the floor, deafened and winded.
“You people are crazy!” Rooster cried. “Are you trying to get us all killed?”
He stared down at the girls, who returned his glare without so much as a flick of an eyelid. The little guy behind them looked away, clutching his man-bag to his puny chest.
Rooster continued, “For crying out loud, sit your asses down before I really get mad!”
He scooped up the gun bag and settled back into the pilot’s chair, easing the accelerator down. This time, he had a tight grip on the pistol and aimed it at the girls.
Please just sit down and be good little blondies, he thought.
It took a few seconds, but he had the airboat back in stride and headed for the island of cypress trees that was his first big marker. In this area of the Everglades marsh, there were a ton of little raised islands with cypress trees, but this particular one was special.
The one he was looking for had his all-time favorite number of trees. Thirteen, all nice and bunched up together. His chest heaving from the adrenaline rush that was still coursing through his system, he spied an island and counted trees.
He got as far as eleven when he felt a sharp pain in his ankle and had to jerk his leg back. The Jersey Shore kid who had dinged his coconut had regained his senses and taken a nice bite out of Rooster’s lower leg.
“You son of a bitch!”
Maybe a pistol-whipping would keep him down.
He drew his gun hand back and took aim at the kid’s temple.
Chapter Six
Understanding that too harsh a blow would kill the moron, Rooster eased the tension in his shoulder a bit and was in the process of delivering a class-A pistol whip when he felt a pinch in the crook of his elbow that sent a shockwave of pain all the way to the base of his skull.
“What the fuck?”
The pistol clattered to the hull and the rudder stick slipped from his other hand.
Christ on a surfboard, that hurt like hell!
One of the blonde girls stood at his side, holding his elbow in some kind of Vulcan death grip. Her thumb was buried in the soft flesh. She gritted her teeth and twisted the pad of her thumb, and another wave of agony rolled over him.
The other chick was now in front of him, leaning against the backs of a couple of empty seats, holding on to their sides so she could keep her balance. She smiled at him, but it wasn’t a happy kind of smile. No, sir, this was the kind of smile you gave a cockroach before stomping it to a fine roach paste.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” he demanded.
Rooster was a big man, and when it came to hand-to-hand combat, he was most assuredly used to being the one in charge of the situation. He was finding it hard to wrap his head around this one. Two fucking girls who looked like they should be home dotting the i’s in their diaries with little hearts were handing his ass to him in short order.
The blonde pulled her leg back, then looked at her sister.
“You ready?” she asked her.
The one holding his elbow dug her thumb even deeper and an actual tear sprang to his eyes. Now they were making him cry! This was ridiculous.
“Go for it,” she snarled.
The smiling blonde crushed his nuts with the heel of her shoe with all her might.
His breath exploded out of his lungs and wouldn’t, no matter how hard he tried, come back. His eyes rolled back in his head and he no longer cared about counting cypress trees or finding a safe place to hole up. All that mattered now was the pain and the fact that he couldn’t draw a breath.
Rooster didn’t even realize that the shock from the blow to his balls had caused his legs to stretch out and his knees to lock. The accelerator was mushed to the floor and the fan doubled its speed. The boat lurched forward, and the blonde holding his elbow mercifully fell and let go of him.
Going full speed with no one at the rudder, the airboat headed straight for a stand of hardwood hammock trees.
Jack Campos couldn’t believe his eyes.
Those two girls were like superheroes! They had taken out that beast in the time it would take to flick a fly off your shirt.
The only drawback was that they were now hurtling full throttle with no one at the wheel. He spun around to see where they were headed, and his stomach dropped so low, he could feel it around his ankles.
Those trees looked pretty damn massive, from the little he could see. The top half of the boat was tilted skyward as they sped, unrestrained, toward land and one hell of a wreck.
Feeling helpless, he reached forward with considerable effort and locked his arms around the waist of the bleeding woman. She was already hurt. If he could do a little something to prevent her from being hurt even worse, he had to give it a try.
“I’ve got you,” he shouted so she could hear him.
Her hand clasped around his own and they braced for the inevitable.
Mick Chella snapped awake in time to see all hell had broken loose.
The running man who had knocked him out was in the pilot’s seat and looking like death warmed over. That was good.
What was bad was the fact that he was still giving the gas all he had and the airboat was tilted at a forty-five degree angle, headed God knew where.
Mick’s throat was throbbing and his head was pounding, but he had to find a way to get up and get control of the boat. A couple of prone bodies lay around him, shifting with the motion.
Holy shit, the madman was killing them off one by one!
Mick struggled to get to his knees by lifting himself with his hands on the side of the pilot seat.
The two pretty blondes were huddled on the other side and in desperate shape. Their long hair had gotten caught in the fan and it was giving them a free, terrible haircut. He knew the cage would stop them from getting their heads chopped off, but the way it was yanking their heads back looked like it hurt like hell. Their mouths were open wide and they must have been screaming, but he couldn’t hear them over the din of the madly spinning fan.
When Mick finally got to his unsteady feet, he looked forward and wished he’d stayed on the hull, blissfully unaware.
Land was coming up fast, and the big trees a few feet from the shoreline were not going to cushion the blow.
Mick pulled the guy’s leg off the accelerator and the fan immediately began to slow. It wasn’t going to stop them from making land like a rocket, but maybe it would prevent them from hurtling into the trees at what felt like Mach one.
The bow dipped down hard, bouncing off the water’s surface.
What the?
Mick must have been hallucinating.
On the shore, watching them come straight for it but not even moving a muscle, was a monkey! Or at least it looked like a monkey. What the hell was that doing out in the swamp? And why wasn’t it hauling tail out of the way?
The airboat went straight for it like a heat-seeking missile.
All Mick could do was mouth, “Oh sh—”
There was a hard bounce and the steel hull rolled over the poor monkey, then the sound of rending metal as it skipped along the sandy shore, heading straight for the trees.
Mick felt himself floating, and it took him a second to register that he was no longer on the boat, but sailing in the air. The big asshole who had caused this mess was flying beside him. It gave him a warm feeling of satisfaction that didn’t last very long, as the trees greeted them both with their unyielding embrace.
Chapter Seven
Rooster and Mick weren’t the only ones to take flight when the boat skidded into the shoreline. Maddie tumbled over the side, her hair freed from the fan, as did Angelo, who was unconscious and unaware, which put him in the best shape of all.
Thanks to Mick’s knocking Rooster’s leg off the accelerator, and the speed bump that the monkey provided, the airboat slowed considerably. It smashed into a big hardwood tree, but not hard enough to turn everyone inside the boat to Thousand Island dressing.
/> To his credit, Jack Campos managed to keep hold of Carol Almeida, preventing her from taking a header into the tree. The impact sent him face forward into the back of her seat and knocked out two of his front teeth.
Dominic, John and Liz spilled along the hull of the boat, catching varying body parts on every hard object they could find along the way. They ended in a heap toward the bow.
The fan died, and all was quiet. Turgid water lapped at the shore, but even the buzzing of the insects had ceased for the moment. A hush fell over the swamp as it waited for the first sign of life to make itself known.
Maybe it was a life of hard knocks, literally, that helped Rooster regain consciousness first. He was sitting upright against a tree, and his back felt like it was on fire. He lifted his hand and gently touched the back of his head, wincing when he found a lump the size of Dolly Parton’s right tit.
“Sweet baby Jesus, that hurts,” he moaned.
The scene before him made him forget his head. The airboat was wedged between a pair of thick-trunked trees. It was demolished beyond use or repair. Several bodies lay scattered along the shore.
Worse still, his small duffel bag must have split open, because crisp twenty-dollar bills lay everywhere. The only saving grace was that there wasn’t even the hint of a breeze, so they weren’t going anywhere.
He pushed himself to his feet, using the tree as a brace. The world spun for a few seconds, and he had to close his eyes to keep from passing out.
“Come on, Rooster, get your shit together. Just put one foot in front of the other.”
He had to get that money. No sense wasting it. He’d be needing it soon enough, once he figured out how to get either to the safe house or out of the swamp. Now that he was no longer speeding along in the boat with the spray from the water and the breeze to cool him down, the oppressive heat had descended like an unwelcome houseguest. Breathing was difficult, and that was not taking into account the fact that his entire torso felt like it had been kicked by a mule.