Wood's Revenge

by Steven Becker

  “Same as the rest of the bottom, just marked off to make sure they test the same area.”

  “What are they looking for?” Mac asked.

  “They take samples of the seagrass to test for algae and contaminants.”

  “What if there is none?”

  “No what? They need plant life to test.”

  He moved to the side and peered into the dark water, trying to figure out what someone would gain from destroying the sampling area. There were three other testing sites in the bay, and he wondered if they had been dredged as well. “There’s nothing else to be gained here,” he said. “Might as well head back in.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he hit the windlass switch and slowly pulled forward, gauging the whine of the motor to tell him how fast the anchor was coming aboard. When the chain hit the roller, he went forward to secure the ground tackle.

  “What about Tru?” Pamela asked.

  Mac looked over at her. She looked like she was back in their world again.

  “You promised we would find him. I can feel him,” she said.

  He had forgotten about the Cajun and now looked toward the lights of Marathon in the distance, wondering where he could be. While he thought, he stared out at the dark water. Far in the distance he saw the green and red lights of another boat coming toward them, and he wondered what anyone would be doing out here at night.

  The other boat was too far away to worry about now, but he needed to keep an eye on it. He could tell from the configuration of its lights that it was not larger than forty feet, making it more maneuverable and probably faster than the trawler.

  “What’s that boat doing out here?” Mel asked. She knew these waters and who ran them.

  “Not sure, but they’re bearing down on us,” Mac said. He suspected trouble. There were few reasons a boat this size would be out at night, and none were good. Sure, there was a chance it was a fisherman, but there was nothing special about these waters. During the day, you could run out here and get away from the crowds. At night, though, this area was dangerous. He also doubted it was a drug runner or smuggler. They generally ran farther out, in deeper water.

  He thought about what weapons were available. “Can you get the shotgun from the hold under the V berth?” he asked Mel.

  She returned a minute later with the weapon. From a small compartment by the wheel he pulled out a box of shells, mostly used for his bang stick in case a shark got too close while he was diving. The boat continued to close and he steered to starboard, giving leeway to the Bamboo Banks. The other boat seemed to match his course and he started to worry.

  “Can you run the boat?” he asked Mel. She moved next to him and took the wheel and he traced an invisible line on the chart plotter with his forefinger for her to steer. Moving past a scared-looking Jen, he wished he had never gotten her involved in this.

  “Pamela,” he nudged her. “We need you.” She was an enigma to him, but they had been in several predicaments together when facing down a crooked antiquities dealer, and at least he knew she wouldn’t panic.

  “Mac Travis, time to rock ’n’ roll?” she asked like she knew what was happening.

  Not wanting to get into her head, he handed her the bang stick and found a long-handled gaff. “There’s zip ties and duct tape in the cabin. Can you attach this to the end of the pole?” He waited for her to move, thankful that Jen followed her below. Scanning the water again, he loaded the shotgun and chambered the first round.

  The boat was less than a quarter mile away, and still moving toward them. He could do nothing but wait. Pamela came back with the makeshift spear. With the addition of the gaff, the bang stick was almost ten feet long, and he tested it against the deck to make sure that it would fire without breaking the temporary bindings. The empty chamber clicked. He reversed the stick and placed a shell in the chamber.

  Looking up again, he realized there was little chance this was going to end well. The boat was coming straight for them, and it was close enough to see the details of the twenty-foot center-console. Even with only a single outboard hanging on the transom, it was faster and drew less water than the trawler. Just as he was about to raise the shotgun to his shoulder to fire a warning round, something whizzed by him, taking a piece of the fiberglass bulkhead with it. He wasted no time and aimed at the approaching boat. Just as he fired, Mel veered off and his shot went wild. Another round hit the boat and he ordered Pamela and Jen into the cabin with directions to stay low.

  “What do you want to do?” Mel yelled over the engine. “We can’t outrun them.”

  She was right. The pursuing boat had a top speed of around forty knots, while his trawler could go twenty on a flat, calm day. He moved to her and studied the chart plotter. The only way to get away was to lead them onto a shoal. The Bamboo Banks, a string of shoals and corral heads in seven feet of water, lay alongside. If he could lead the other boat into them, then quickly change course, he might be able to run them aground. But just as he thought it, the other boat pulled alongside and he saw the two brothers leaning against the rocket launcher, both pointing guns at them.

  They might not have been the shiniest lures in the tackle box, but they knew these waters. His plan was dead before it began.

  “Put it down, Travis,” Hector called out. “And cut the engine.”

  Mac did as he asked. They were underpowered and outgunned. “What do you want?” he yelled across the water.

  “You and your boy Trufante have stuck your noses in the wrong hole this time,” Hector said. “Poor Cajun’s taking a joyride into the Everglades right now.”

  He saw a strange look come over Pamela at the mention of Trufante’s name. She crawled on the deck, careful to stay below the gunwale and out of sight. Mac glanced down and saw what she was up to. He needed to buy some time.

  “What’s in the Glades that has them so interested?” he asked.

  Hector ignored the question, but he could see from the look on Edgar’s sadistic face that Trufante was in trouble.

  “She’s one mean woman,” Edgar said, laughing.

  The brothers had lost their focus, at least for a moment, and Mac knew this was their only chance. He dove for the deck, going for the shotgun. Reaching it, he placed the barrel on the gunwale and fired blindly. Two shots fired back, sending splinters flying. He motioned to Pamela to take the gun and mimicked a trigger squeeze with his forefinger. She nodded and took the weapon. Crawling on the deck, he reached the bang stick and grabbed the shaft. With a glance at Pamela, he held three fingers, then two, and finally one. On the silent count, he heard the blast of the gun and, using it for cover, rose enough to throw the stick at the engine.

  Another blast came from the shotgun and he heard a scream from the other boat. He drew a deep breath and cocked his arm. With no time to aim, he threw the spear as hard as he could in the direction of the outboard. Seconds later, there was a loud explosion and debris rained down around them. He wasted no time and went for the helm. Pushing Mel aside, he started the engines and jammed the throttle forward. It was several seconds later that he allowed himself to look at the damage. The small boat was bow up, its transom and engine had already disappeared beneath the surface. He didn’t wait to see if Hector or Edgar were alive.

  16

  Trufante watched the landscape fly by. After following US 1 past several bays, they had entered the lonely stretch of road through the southern Everglades leading to Florida City. He started to get anxious once they lost sight of the water; the flatlands made him uncomfortable. So did the woman driving. She had been unresponsive to his queries, ignoring him in favor of her techno music. Surprised when she turned left at a sign for Everglades National Park, he started to make a map in his head, not of the roads and landmarks, but rather of the canals and waterways. Thanks to an inborn, or inbred, navigation gene found in Cajuns who grew up in the bayous of Louisiana, if there was water around, he was never lost. From what he could see in the moonlight, they were passing through an a
gricultural area. The fields soon gave way to nature, and suddenly she turned left and slowed to avoid a yellow barricade with a No Trespassing sign. In the dim moonlight, he could see they had entered some kind of industrial facility.

  Canals ran parallel to the streets, some larger than others. If he could get a boat, he was sure he could find his way home. That thought was erased from his mind when the car stopped and she pulled the gun from under her thigh. It had been there the whole time. Even if he had been able to reach the gun, as fast as she had been driving, the move could have been deadly.

  “Stay here, and no trouble,” she said, exiting the car.

  She went to a squat concrete building. Even in the narrow beam of the headlights, Trufante could see it was abandoned and in bad shape.

  He tried to locate the ignition, and found a start button, which he pushed to no avail. Jammed in the passenger seat with the console between him and the controls, there was no way even his long legs could reach the pedals. His attention turned to the woman, who pulled some pipes and a rack from the room and threw them across the floor. A minute later she came toward the passenger door and opened the handle. The other hand, holding the gun, never moved from him.

  “Out,” she ordered.

  He pulled his six-foot-plus frame out of the car and stood next to her.

  “Let’s go.” She jammed the barrel of the gun in his back.

  He started toward the building. She pulled his arm and directed him around the side into an open warehouse door.

  They were interrupted by the shrill ring of her phone. She answered and he listened to the one-sided conversation. “What do you mean they sunk your boat and got away? I sent you to do a simple job and you fouled that up like everything else you idiots touch.”

  She listened to what must have been an explanation.

  “Share your location and I’ll send you some help,” she said and hung up. A scowl crossed her face as she approached him.

  “It seems your friends are causing me trouble,” she said, handing him the phone. “You will tell them you are my guest.”

  Trufante took the phone and stared at the screen.

  “Surely even a fool like you knows how to use it.”

  He dialed, waited for several seconds, then held the phone away from his ear and shrugged. Mac answering was a long shot, especially if he was on the water.

  She understood the gesture and reached for the phone.

  “We have your friend—the tall, dumb one. This is none of your business. He will be released in due time.” She left the message and hung up.

  “What now?” he asked. “Still could use a bite to eat. Maybe a beer, too.”

  She ignored the comment and led him to a small room that had probably at one time been a storeroom. From the light from her phone he could see the low ceiling. Heat pent up from the day blasted from the room when she opened the door, and something slithered past them. He was about to turn and ask for better accommodations when he felt a foot in the small of his back that sent him sprawling into the corner. The door slammed, leaving him in the dark.

  Mel ran the boat while Mac worked the Navionics app on the screen of his phone. It would have been easier on the chart plotter, but at night, in these waters, he wanted her to have all the benefits of the real-time display. The app had considerably more detail than the NOAA chart loaded in the boat’s plotter. He had set a course to the north in the general direction of Key Largo, hoping to get some help from Alicia and get Jen back to Marathon. The girl had already seen too much.

  After first determining the course on his phone, he traced a wavy line on the screen, showing Mel where the channel ran. In the backcountry of the Keys there was no such thing as a straight line, especially as you moved north toward the Everglades. She nodded that she understood and he went back to his phone. Pinching the screen, he zoomed out to see the big picture on the chart, then panned toward the north. He vaguely remembered where the other test sites were and worked his way toward where Taylor Slough exited into Florida Bay. TS/Ph11, the site he had just seen for himself and the furthest from the source, was the end of the line. He suspected the other sites were compromised as well, and he intended to find the source.

  The signal strengthened as they approached the southern tip of Florida, and he Googled the coordinates for the next site. TS/Ph10 was only slightly off their present course. With his phone in hand, he moved back to Mel and entered the coordinates in the GPS. She changed course slightly to the north and they covered the ten miles in silence.

  After anchoring on the site, he geared up again. It was deeper here, but for his purposes, the free-diving gear would still be adequate, though this time he chose to use fins. Grabbing a dive light and a lobster bag, he slid off the swim platform and entered the murky water. The bright LED light reflected off the bottom, showing the same damage as the previous site. He swung the beam of light around until the bare sand yielded back to seagrass. It was out of the marked test area, but close enough for his purposes. He finned toward the limits of the dredged area and pulled several clumps of grass from the marl. Placing the samples in the lobster bag, he returned to the trawler and climbed aboard.

  After stowing his gear, he looked at the contents of the bag. The grass looked normal under the lights from the boat, but that was no indication it didn’t harbor the fish-killing algae. He needed a scientist’s opinion.

  “What do you think?” he asked Jen.

  “I couldn’t tell you anything without running some tests and evaluating it under a microscope. Having a similar, healthy sample would be good, too.”

  Her answer confirmed his decision to make a quick stop in Key Largo.

  The night would have been perfect if it were not for the mood on the boat. There was no sound except the rumble of the engine as the boat sliced through the small moonlit-dappled waves. The silence was broken by a shrill ring from Mac’s phone. He reached for it. The screen said unknown number and he set it back down, cursing the telemarketers who had invaded the cell phone space. A minute later it vibrated, showing the icon for a new voicemail.

  Suddenly Pamela was alert as they huddled around the phone and he replayed the message through the speaker. The woman’s voice finished and they looked at each other.

  “There’s a timeline for something,” Mel said. “Play it again.”

  Mac hit the play button.

  “They’re going to kill him,” Pamela wailed.

  “Not right away. She is using him to stop us from doing whatever she thinks we’re doing,” Mel said. “She thinks we know more than we do.” She was in full lawyer mode now and Mac let her go. “We must be getting close to something for them to take him,” she said.

  “We have to get back to land to get these samples analyzed,” Mac said, moving to the wheel. He turned to the lights of Key Largo and pushed down the throttle.

  “Forget the samples. What about Tru?” Pamela called over the roar of the engine.

  “We’ll get him back,” Mac said.

  Mel and Jen were focused on their phones for the remaining half hour it took to pass to the Atlantic side. Mac steered through the narrow cut and turned north. It took all his attention to find the unfamiliar entrance to the canal in the dark. Without landmarks, he steered by the chart plotter, found the opening in the mangroves, cut the wheel to port and entered the small lagoon. Using the big red and white flag from TJ’s dive shop to guide him, they approached the dock. Mel had already alerted Alicia they were on their way, and the couple was waiting for them on the dock.

  After introducing Jen, and a round of quick hugs, they rushed up the back stairs of the dive shop to the apartment. Back in the war room, a computer enclave that resembled the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise, they all stared at the big screen monitors mounted to the wall as Alicia started to populate the screens. She had worked quickly after they had called and already had several maps up.

  One showed the historical path of the Everglades’ drainage. The next showed t
he current discharge. Mac was shocked at the alterations from the natural water flow. On another screen was a detailed map from the South Florida Water Management District, the agency in charge of routing floodwater from Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee drainage through an intricate maze of canals and floodgates. Most of the water was routed to the west coast through the Caloosahatchee River. Mac suspected this accounted for the red tides and the large fish kills in that area.

  Alicia started to talk now, explaining the history, but Mac stopped her, more concerned about the present. “We need to get the seagrass samples to a lab and then figure out what they’re up to,” he said.

  “And Tru,” Pamela said. “We have to help him.”

  “It’s all tied together,” Mel said. “And apparently they need him alive.”

  “But . . .” Pamela started.

  “We’ll get him, but first we need to figure out what they’re up to,” Mac said.

  TJ sat in the captain’s chair, the original fixture in the room, used to control his gaming empire. “Follow the flow, man.”

  They all turned to him. Moving his cursor along the map, he traced the flow of water.

  He had their attention now. “Look at the data,” he said, changing one of the screens to a complicated spreadsheet.

  “What’s that?” Mel asked.

  “Florida Coastal Everglades collection results for the last fifteen years. These sites were started just after two thousand.”

  They studied the numbers on the screen.

  He highlighted some numbers and summarized. “It seems that this last flood pushed farther south than anything before it. It wasn’t the worst storm or the strongest tide we’ve had, but they must have compounded each other.”

  “How’d you get this?” Mel asked.

  “Classified, babe,” he kidded.

  17

  Mac was the last to say goodbye and thanked Jen for her help after her friend arrived to pick her up. There was a sadness in her eyes that Mac understood. She wanted to finish the journey, but Mac couldn’t put her in danger.