Gold in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  Sam stepped back onto the deck, then, after grabbing one of her smaller bags, wrapped her arms around me. “Thank you for a most memorable evening.”

  She started to let go and I clasped her hand in mine. “It doesn’t have to end so soon.” She looked up at me and smiled. Keeping my hand in hers, she stepped down towards the salon. I turned on the security system, locked the cabin door, and led her into the main stateroom.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  The next morning, I woke up just after seven and, seeing Sam curled up in the white comforter beside me, tiptoed out of the main cabin and into the salon. I started up the coffeemaker, then walked barefoot up the steps and out the door into the cockpit. After taking a quick look around to make sure nothing had been disturbed on the Baia while we were sleeping, I stepped back into the salon. I grabbed a few mangoes, cut them open and placed them in a bowl beside freshly sliced banana.

  Grabbing my cell phone from a nearby drawer, I saw that I had a message from Jack letting me know he’d be at the Pelican for lunch around noon. I replied, letting him know I’d be there, then texted Scott using a code similar to the one he’d used when contacting me in Curacao a few weeks earlier. The gist of it was that I’d found something and I needed him to come down to Key West as soon as he could get away. He replied a few minutes later, saying he’d let me know when he was coming down.

  The salon quickly filled with the smell of fresh coffee. I checked on Sam and saw that my movements hadn’t disturbed her. She was curled up on her side, her raven-black hair brushed back, revealing her smooth, tanned skin. Somehow she managed to look even better in the morning. A few minutes later, the smell of the coffee drifting into the main cabin caused her to stir. She appeared at the door wearing one of my tee shirts and nothing else. She stood for a moment, smiling at me as I filled a mug and handed it to her. I grabbed my own mug and the bowl of fruit, and we headed up to the sunbed and watched the goings-on in the marina while we ate. Being Saturday morning, there wasn’t a whole lot to see aside from the diving gulls and the few neighbors who were up reading or eating breakfast like us.

  As we were about to finish our small breakfast, Gus appeared down the dock. He was stopping and talking to whoever was out on their decks, and when he got closer to the Baia, I saw that he was pushing a cart with a large package on it and holding a newspaper in one hand.

  “Ahoy, Captain Dodge,” he said, waving at us. When he reached the other side of the transom, I saw that he had a serious expression on his face. “Have you read the Keynoter this morning?”

  “Good morning, Gus,” I said, sitting up on the sunbed. “Come aboard and have a seat. You remember Sam, right?” I grinned as I looked back and forth between the two. “From last night.”

  “Right,” Gus said, stepping over the transom and leaning up against it. “Did you two end up going out of the marina last night?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Logan showed me Joe’s Tug. I’d been wanting to see it at night for quite some time now.”

  It was just a little white lie, and though I was fairly certain Gus would keep his mouth shut, I liked where Sam’s head was at. After all, Joe’s Tug, which is actually a sunken 75-foot steel-hulled shrimp boat, is nowhere near Neptune’s Table

  “Did you see anything suspicious? Any signs of danger?”

  I shook my head. “The water was calm, the night sky clear, and we were the only ones out there.”

  “Good,” Gus said, giving a sigh of relief. “You two were lucky, then. Check out what’s on page one of the Keynoter.”

  He reached out and handed me a folded newspaper, which I set on the table in front of us. Unfolding it, I held it flat to the first page, where there were mugshots of three men, each staring angrily into the camera. They were the same three guys I’d beaten the crap out of when they’d tried to board Jack’s boat a week earlier. The bold-lettered caption said that they were being charged with over twenty counts of theft, drug trafficking, smuggling, and assault.

  “There was an explosion yesterday as well,” Gus said. “Two boats went into the drink, or so I heard. Now obviously, I can’t stop any of the boats here from going out late at night. You can all come and go as you please, of course. But I highly recommend against it. At least until the waters get clear of all the other scum like these guys.”

  I leaned back into the cushioned seat and polished off the rest of my coffee. “Thanks for the heads-up, Gus. We’ll be careful when we go out.” Not having read the whole article, I asked, “How many more do the authorities suspect are in the Keys?”

  Gus shrugged. “Been crazy around here, especially lately. Could be none, or could be a lot more. The article just says to be cautious when unknown boats approach or when cruising at night.”

  I slid the bowl of fruit across the table. It still had a few slices of mango and half of a banana. “There’s coffee in the pot if you want to fill a mug.”

  He waved me off. “No, thanks. I gotta inform the rest of my tenants.” He stepped over the transom, lifted the large package off the cart and handed it to me.

  I thanked him, set the package on the deck beside me, and handed him back his newspaper.

  He smiled and continued down the dock. “You two enjoy your morning.”

  We both thanked him as he walked off, and Sam stared at me after he had disappeared down the dock.

  “You’ve seen those guys from the paper before, haven’t you?” I didn’t reply for a moment, then couldn’t help but grin. “I thought so. You looked at them like you knew them.”

  “I may have been involved in their capture in some way, yeah.”

  We finished the fruit, then Sam took a quick shower aboard the Baia as I stowed my newly arrived toys. She stepped out of the main cabin barefoot, wearing denim cutoff shorts and one of my flannel shirts with its sleeves rolled up. She left most of her gear on the Baia after I told her we’d be heading back to the ledge as soon as I was able to get a bigger boat. Grabbing her small bag, she kissed me, then hopped over the transom.

  “I’m gonna meet up with Claire and Tony,” she said, grinning at me as she walked barefoot down the dock. “Let me know when you learn anything. And you better not get that gold without me, Dodge.”

  “Be careful! If you run into any trouble at all, I’m only a phone call away. It’s a small island. I can make it almost anywhere within a few minutes.”

  Just as she disappeared down the dock, I received a message from Scott, saying, in our encrypted style, that he would be able to fly into Key West International the following day. I took a quick shower, then spent the rest of the morning researching salvage vessels that were nearby and contacting the owners to find out how much it would cost to rent one for a week. Pete wasn’t in his office when I drove to his shop looking for him, and the old-timer didn’t use a cell phone, so there was no way of contacting him.

  “I think he might be out on his boat,” Lucy said as I walked back out towards the small gravel lot. “Could be gone all day. You never know with Pete.”

  After finding a few potential salvage ships up north of the Keys, I spent an hour polishing up the engines and performing routine maintenance to make sure the Baia was in tip-top shape. I met Jack for lunch at Salty Pete’s and we sat at a table upstairs on the balcony. It was right against the railing and it overlooked the marina and the open ocean in the distance. When I told Jack what had happened the night before at Neptune’s Table, his jaw fell so hard it nearly broke through the mahogany decking under our feet. Reaching into my pocket, I grabbed my phone and showed him footage of the site and explained how the treasure was located deep beneath the ledge and that we were only able to reach it using Sam’s small underwater drone.

  “That’s a lot of rock between us and that gold,” Jack said. “How do you plan on hauling it all up?”

  I thought it over for a moment. “Well, first things first. We’ll need to identify the wreck. Salvage laws in the US are pretty strict, and I’m sure both Spain and Me
xico will claim ownership of the wreck and all of its contents. We’ll be lucky if we get a few scraps of leftovers from the haul.”

  “Well, I’m sure Pete has a few ideas on how to identify it.” Jack drew his gaze towards Salty Pete’s office through the sliding glass door. Just as he did, Lucy approached with our drinks.

  “Still no sign of him, Lucy?” I asked.

  “The ocean is his therapy, and it hasn’t been a good year for him. In reality, it hasn’t been a good couple of years.”

  “It’s all these cookie-cutter tourist shops, bro. People just aren’t interested in real artifacts anymore. They’d rather buy a dead shark in a jar. Pete’s used to be a landmark around here. Now it’s gone off the deep end. It’s a damn shame.”

  Lucy walked back into the restaurant to serve a couple who had just walked in through the door. I took a drink of the Key limeade.

  “In the meantime, we’re gonna have to head back to the ledge and explore more around the treasure,” I said. “Maybe find a cave big enough for us to squeeze through.”

  “Those drug runners we saw out there the other day don’t give a damn about salvage laws. How do you plan to deal with them?”

  I took another sip and looked out over the water, still amazed by how great of a view the place had. It was now almost one in the afternoon, and a few patches of gray clouds covered the blue sky above. A strong breeze was blowing in from the west, shifting the palm leaves and forming small whitecaps on the water.

  “I plan to avoid them as best as we can. But I’m going to bring that gold up, Jack. If I have to fight them off again, so be it. Besides, Scott’s flying in tomorrow. There’s nothing in the Caribbean more dangerous than the three of us fully armed.” I grinned, but Jack still looked unconvinced. “Look, I’ll understand if you don’t want any more part in this.”

  “It’s not me. I’m worried about Isaac.”

  Lucy came through the door just then holding two plates of food. After setting them in front of us with a smile, she turned on her heels and headed back inside.

  “I’m sending him to his grandparents’ for a few days. They live up in Chicago, and I know he’ll be safe there. I just don’t want him here with everything that’s been happening lately.”

  “When does he leave?”

  “Got him on a flight first thing in the morning.”

  I nodded and thought it was a pretty good idea. We ate the delicious grouper sandwiches along with their specialty sweet potato fries. When we were finished, we headed back to the marina and boarded the Baia, and I showed Jack more footage of the treasure on the laptop. We spent a few hours studying the space beneath the ledge and trying to formulate a way to reach the treasure. The weather turned even worse as darker clouds rolled in and the wind picked up, and we decided that we’d wait for the following day to return to the ledge with Scott and Sam. Around five in the afternoon, Jack headed to his house to be with his nephew on his last night in the Keys and to make sure he was packed. I texted Sam, telling her the plan, and she invited me to have dinner with her, saying she’d already made reservations at the Paradou Chateau, one of the higher-end restaurants in Key West. I got a long workout in, running the Old Town loop course, which is about ten kilometers and circles around town to White Street Pier, then back to the marina. Then I did a combination circuit involving pull-ups, planks, and various push-up variations. Being in the SEALs had taught me to be able to get a good workout in anywhere and at any time, so I’d never had much use for a gym membership.

  After the workout, I grabbed a quick shower on the boat, then dressed in the nicest clothes I had, which consisted of a pair of gray slacks, a blue dress shirt and black Converse All Star high-tops. After locking up my laptop in the safe, I killed all of the lights on the Baia except the ones in the cockpit, then locked the door and turned on the security system. Stepping over the transom, I walked down the dock towards the parking lot. It was Saturday night, so there were a few parties taking place on nearby boats, and as I passed the Pelican, I saw that it was so full of people that a small crowd had formed at the door. I reached the parking lot, hopped into my Tacoma and drove downtown.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  The main streets of Key West were bustling with people, and when I reached the Paradou Chateau, I pulled into the front entrance, hopped out and handed the valet my keys. The place was full and a few groups were sitting in the lounge, waiting to be seated. I told the host that I was reserved under a party of two for Samantha Flores. She smiled and led me along a row of elegant tables and chairs in the fancy French restaurant. She ushered me to a booth right next to one of the restaurant’s front windows, overlooking a long sandy beach and distant crashing waves that white-capped in the moonlight.

  I sat on the nice cushioned seat and ordered a few drinks and an appetizer. A few moments later, Sam arrived wearing a sexy black dress and high heels. The dress was just tight enough to show her lean figure and short enough to show her long, tanned legs. Her hair looked different. It was straighter and seemed to fall slightly past her shoulders. She smiled when she saw me and I smiled back.

  “Wow, you look incredible.” I slid out from my seat and held out my hand as she sat down across from me.

  “Thank you. I never imagined I’d be wearing a dress on this trip. Luckily Claire and I are about the same size.”

  “Well, you wear it well. I think you might need to do the world a favor and take it off her hands.”

  She blushed as the waitress arrived and set a mojito and a mai tai on the table, in front of us along with a small plate of escargots with melted butter and garlic that looked amazing.

  “I took the liberty of ordering you a drink,” I said with a grin. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  She grabbed the glass and took a sip of the mojito, then tried the mai tai. “One of the best I’ve ever had,” she said, setting it on the table. “I’d heard this place was good.”

  “It’s one of the finest restaurants in the Keys.”

  I grabbed the mojito and took a few sips, savoring the delicious flavor and smelling the fresh mint. My eyes grew wide and I nodded. It was a perfect blend of white rum, club soda, sugar and fresh mint leaves between clear cubes of ice. Shaken to perfection. The escargots were equally good, and we both decided on the chef’s special, which was bouillabaisse with cream of watercress soup. The main course tantalized our taste buds as we savored the seafood stew, which was loaded with fresh clams, lobster, and fish.

  When we finished the meal, we walked out onto the patio, then down to the beach. The wind was strong and the sun had fallen hours earlier, but it was still over seventy degrees and the cool breeze actually felt pretty good. We walked barefoot in the surf by the light of the moon and talked about where we were from and how we’d ended up where we were in life. Turned out her mom had immigrated from Mexico when she was only eight years old, taking her and her older brother to live in the States and eventually settling in San Antonio.

  “She raised us both on her own,” Sam said. “You’d like her, Logan, and you’d also like my brother. He’s a Marine.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “No kidding. I believe I would like him, then.”

  The truth was I’d always liked Marines, regardless of how much our branches always trash-talked each other. If I hadn’t been so hell-bent on being a SEAL, I would have joined the Marines, no question.

  “They still live in Texas?”

  She shook her head. “Mom lives with me in Wakulla Beach, just outside of Tallahassee, and my brother lives in San Diego.”

  “No kidding. There’s great cave diving in Wakulla Springs.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I’ve been down there a few times.”

  “Really? I didn’t think it was legal anymore.”

  “One of the benefits of having the backing of a university. I found mastodon bones there while exploring some of the unknown portions of the cave system. You know there’s over twelve miles of mapped caves there, and much mo
re that isn’t discovered.”

  “You found mastodon bones?”

  She grinned. “Yeah. A friend and I did a piece on the cave and we stumbled into them accidentally, believe it or not.”

  A large wave broke on the beach, splashing past our ankles, and as it slid away I noticed something in the sand about five feet in front of us. Reaching down, I grabbed ahold of what looked like a shell, but after bringing it up and examining it in the moonlight, I realized it was a shark’s tooth. Rinsing it off in the next crashing wave, I handed it to Sam.

  She smiled and thanked me, staring at it for a few minutes as we continued to walk.

  The conversation turned to the treasure and how we would spend the next few days trying to haul up as much as we could of it. At just after eleven, her phone rang and she slipped it out of her pocket and answered it.

  “Hello?” She listened for a moment, then froze in place. A wave receded, sucking the sand from beneath her feet, but she didn’t move a muscle. Her face turned from pleasantly happy to shocked in an instant.

  “Where are you?” she asked, frantically. I listened and watched Sam intently, trying to figure out what was happening. “Okay, we’ll be right there.” She hung up the phone, then looked at me with wide eyes.

  “We have to go, Logan!” she exclaimed. “I need your help.” She grabbed my hand and started running up the beach, back towards the parking lot.

  “What’s going on?” I asked calmly as I caught up with her.

  “It’s Claire.” Sam was running as fast as she could, and when she reached the wooden steps of the restaurant, she kept running, not bothering with her heels. “She’s in trouble.”