“The boat can’t take the extra weight. With every foot the crab climbs up, 904 lists further and further to port. The sound of cracking wood rips through the air. When water washes over the gunwale, I know I’m screwed and we’re going turtle. I climb out of the wheelhouse and grab a life jacket on the way to the starboard side. By now, the side of the ship’s practically straight up. I stand on the edge of the boat and jump. Just as I do, old 904 snaps in half. I hit the water and swim away.
“Behind me, the crab pulls the PT under. The engines gurgle and stop. Water leaks into the spotlight as it sinks and it explodes underwater with this muted pop.
“Then there’s nothing. No sound, no light, no motion. Just me treading water in the Caribbean, the night so dark I can’t tell where the sea stops and the sky begins.”
Marc paused and then shook his head. “Everything happened so damn fast. I’d only been awake for five minutes, and I seen seven men killed and two boats sunk by a giant crab.”
Kathy gripped the hem of her pants in anticipation. “How long were you in the water?”
“Not long. I swam to Loggerhead Key before sunrise. We had this murky chain of command and I wasn’t sure how many people knew where we was, or would miss us if we didn’t get to training the next day. But a little after noon, an all-black helo flies in, circles the key, and picks me up. Everyone inside’s wearing suits, full-fledged spooks. I tell them what happened on the way back to Key West.”
“Did they believe you?” Kathy asked.
“Yeah, like they was expecting it, not a bit of surprise.”
“Did they pass it up the chain of command?”
“All the way to the top. Literally. From Key West, they drive me to some secure place in the Everglades. I sit in something way too similar to solitary confinement for hours, then get ushered into a conference room. There’s a bunch of suits, and Army and Air Force generals, and Navy and Coast Guard admirals. A map of Cuba and the surrounding waters hangs on the wall, with labeled yellow flags pinned all over it. I notice the two flags at Loggerhead Key were black. The kicker? At the head of the table sits the President.”
“Of the United States?”
“John Fitz Kennedy himself. The Coast Guard admiral orders me to report on the mission. Kennedy cuts him off.”
“‘So, sailor, you’ve been patrolling in a PT boat?’ he asks me. He had that same smile that won him an election.”
“I say ‘yes’ and we talk PT boats for a minute or so. He gets kind of wistful, because you know that’s what he commanded in World War II. Then he asks about the crab and I tell him, tell him how one boat sank before I knew it, how I watched my three buddies die before the thing crushed my boat. When I talk about the ship sinking out from under me, tears well in his eyes, I think because his ship was crushed under a Japanese destroyer in the war.
“When I finish, he’s quiet. The whole room, filled with all these powerful people, I can feel their anticipation as he steeples his fingers together and stares at the map.
“‘We can’t unleash those,’ he says. ‘They are not controllable.’
“One of the guys in a suit offers that that was the point. A natural disaster, something to get the Cuban military to react to before the invasion, and a pretext for Operation Zapata, exiles coming home to keep the crabs from spreading over the island.
“Kennedy won’t hear it. He says this was Eisenhower’s plan, not his, and he was barely comfortable with the military side, let alone the cockamamie ‘science fiction’ half of the plan.
“At that point, the two admirals realize I was still there, and have me ushered out. I’m threatened with a minimum of life in prison and a maximum of death for treason if I ever breathe a word of this story to anyone. Now I hope the statute of limitations has run out on that threat.”
“That’s a hell of a story,” Kathy said.
“Ain’t no story. The truth. After I got out of the service, I moved back here. Spent my life hopping around marinas, doing boat repairs, scraping barnacles, charter fishing, whatever came up. The off days I’m out here.”
Kathy sighed. “Looking for giant crabs.”
“You betcha.”
“Find any?”
“Since you ain’t never heard about them until now, the answer’s no, ain’t it?” He shook his head. “Ah, I can see it in your eyes. Crazy old man in his leaky old boat.”
“Not at all.”
“The last week, there’s been motion on the sea floor. I seen it on the sonar. Too big and dense to be schools of fish. Just the right size to be them crabs. You got missing kids. I’ve got your suspect. You don’t want to put ’em together, then that’s on you.”
At this point, all Kathy wanted was to escape this floating madhouse of conspiracy theories. The old man had her listening, but incredulous, up through the crab attack. But meeting Kennedy had been one layer of icing too thick.
“I need to head back and keep the tourists in line,” Kathy said. “My partner will think I’m lost at sea. Thank you for all you’ve told me, and if you find anything out here, let me know.”
She reached over to shake his hand. He gave it a weak attempt.
“Didn’t expect you’d believe me,” he said, looking at the deck. “But at my age, I figured someone had to know. Can’t live forever.”
Kathy didn’t know what to say to that. She backed out of the gloomy cabin and into the cockpit’s pounding daylight. A minute later, she was pointing the skiff back to Fort Jefferson, and away from the poor man with the giant crab delusions.
Chapter 7
By six p.m., purple-black clouds had blotted out the sky’s Caribbean blue. The evening vowed to be loud, windy, and wet.
Pop-up tropical showers were the island’s norm, but tonight a cold front had swept down from the north, and the collision of northern cool air with southern steamy moisture promised a sustained set of storms. The good news was that the day’s tourists had already departed on the ferry, and they’d be back at Key West by now.
Kathy walked across the courtyard of the fort and gave the sky a trepidatious look. Radioing in to Park Headquarters about the vague possibility of missing teens that afternoon hadn’t sat well with her. An incoming storm made her mood as dark as the sky threatened to become.
Of all the places to be in a big storm, Fort Jefferson was one of the safest. Secure behind feet of brick walls, Kathy could stay dry through a hurricane. If she sat in the thick-walled powder magazine on the parade ground’s north end, she probably couldn’t even hear the thunder.
Nathan met her under an arch on the other side of the fort. Worry creased his face. “Weather Service posted a severe thunderstorm warning for us.”
“The sky concurs.”
“Anything special we do?”
“The day trippers are gone and we have no campers,” Kathy said. “The skiff is up on the beach. We just hunker down and ride it out. Before we get soaked, the light show from the terreplein is usually pretty good.”
“Without television or the internet, that qualifies as some major entertainment.”
Kathy led Nathan up to the roof of the fort. No longer blocked by the walls, the stiff wind carried in the damp smell of impending rain, and rippled their pants against their legs.
Nathan stepped over to one of the restored Rodman cannons. Cannonballs stood stacked beside it. The rear of the cannon’s carriage had wheels that rested on an arc of painted iron. He gave it a shove. The cannon pivoted an inch to the left.
“Whoa! These really are restored with a full traverse along the field of fire.”
“Yes, the restoration team went overboard. You’ll get to fire one on the Fourth of July.”
Nathan raised a fist in triumph. “Excellent! A fair trade for a year without internet access.”
Out to the west, the clouds darkened to black. Flashes of lightning backlit them, followed by the low roll of thunder. A mile or two away, a gray curtain of heavy rain stretched from the clouds to the sea.
“No, just a few raindrops.”
“Seriously? Don’t you think of all the people since before the Civil War who stood right here, who waited for the rain, especially when it was the only source of water? We’re part of this whole time-continuum.”
“I guess so. I’m so preoccupied with the safety of our visitors and the wildlife we protect that I forget this place has so much history. I really haven’t researched the fort’s past other than what’s in the visitor’s guide,” Kathy said. “Reuben covered all that. My background is biology, not history.”
“Oh, then you’re totally missing out,” Nathan said. “The history is fascinating.”
Kathy had rarely ever put the words “history” and “fascinating” together, and never with Nathan’s level of exuberance.
Nathan pointed to the south. “After the War of 1812, the country realizes it’s vulnerable to a seaborne invasion by a greater power, which is just about anyone at that point. The government starts building this string of forts to guard harbors, real brick monsters. Southern ones like Fort Sumter and Fort Morgan will become famous decades later in the Civil War when the U.S. Navy has to re-take its property from the Confederacy.”
He swept his hands wide apart. “This fort was a masterpiece. Four hundred and fifty guns, pointing in all directions, ready to blast any ship stupid enough to approach.”
“Anyone ever test that theory?”
“No way. No foreign power ever dared approach Fort Jefferson, and the fort was too far out at sea for Confederate forces to care about, even if they’d had a real navy. In fact, during the war, this place became a prison, housing criminals and Confederate POWs.”
Kathy looked out at the desolate key. “A deterrent to capture, certainly.”
“Being here will really bring depth to my history of the fort.”
Kathy didn’t think that sounded like a best seller outside a few historians.
“Who do you think the most famous prisoner was?” Nathan asked.
“I do know that one. Samuel Mudd, the doctor that set John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg after the Lincoln assassination.”
Nathan looked a bit crestfallen at not being the one to make the revelation. Then his face brightened. “But you know what I found? Letters he wrote from this prison. Never delivered to his family.”
“Because…?”
“The commander was afraid the letters would get him released.”
“How?”
“Mudd writes several times about seeing giant crabs on the beach at night.”
Kathy rolled her eyes. “Great, another giant crab story. You need to swim out to Marc on his cabin cruiser and swap tall tales.”
She went on to relay Marc’s wild conspiracy story about the CIA and giant crabs gone wild.
“I so want to interview that dude,” Nathan said. “He’s living history.”
“Maybe living in his own version of the world, as well.”
“Well, yeah, the story’s bizarre,” Nathan said. “But the giant crab myth is common throughout the Keys. Now, Mudd didn’t know that, and claimed to see crabs fifteen feet wide.”
“Marc’s story says thirty feet wide. Inflation, I guess.”
“Mudd saw them crawl up out of the water at full moon high tides and strip the area of any vegetation or wildlife they could catch. He said the soldiers were sworn to secrecy about it.”
“Didn’t other prisoners see them?”
“Mudd worked as an unpaid doctor, so he got a little more freedom of movement. None of the others were out in the fort at night. The fort commander held the letters, fearing if they got out, Mudd’s family would use them to try and prove he was insane and get him released on those grounds.”
“Ever considered that maybe he was nuts, and the isolation out here didn’t make him any better?”
“I hoped being here would help me put his letters in context. I think—” Nathan paused and pointed to the northwest. “Hey, what’s that out there?”
Over half a mile out to sea, the wind had beaten the water into white-capped-swells. A long yellow sea kayak appeared and disappeared between the waves. In the rear seat, a woman flailed with a two-headed paddle. The gray curtain of rain followed close behind her.
In the race to the shore between her and the thunderstorm, she was going to lose.
Chapter 8
“Damn it,” Kathy said.
She ran down to her quarters on the ground floor and returned with a set of binoculars. She trained them west and scanned the sea. She saw nothing but frothing water.
“Where the hell did that kayak go?” she said.
“There,” Nathan said. “Farther left.”
She angled left and saw bright yellow. She adjusted the focus and a sea-going kayak sharpened into clarity. A red bundle filled the front seat. In the back seat, a woman in a green tank top flailed against the sea with a long two-headed paddle. She didn’t have a hat or a lifejacket. Even at this distance, Kathy could see the exertion had colored her face beet-red.
“A kayak.” She handed the binoculars to Nathan.
“Whoa. What is she doing out this far?” Nathan handed her back the binoculars.
Kathy checked the kayaker again. “Idiots do idiotic things. She doesn’t even have a life jacket on.” She shoved the binoculars against Nathan’s chest. “Raise the Coast Guard. The frequency is next to the radio.”
“Where are you going?”
“To do something stupid, to save a stupid person, who is doing something even stupider.”
Kathy ran down to the ground level, grabbed a green rain slicker from her quarters, and put it on as she sprinted to the skiff by the dock.
She glanced up in the direction she’d last seen the yellow kayak. Nothing but green water. She looked over her shoulder and up at Nathan on the terreplein. He dropped the binoculars from his eyes and pointed west-southwest. He looked grim.
Kathy pushed the boat off the beach, stern-first. The wind-driven waves slapped against the transom and pushed the boat back to shore. It was as if the sea itself was delivering a final warning that should she venture from land, there was no guarantee she’d return.
She gave the boat a stronger shove out to sea, and then pulled herself aboard. She crawled back to the outboard and yanked the starter cord. The engine roared to life and she snapped it into reverse.
The little boat struggled. Water slammed the transom and splashed Kathy’s face. She spun the boat around and headed out into the waves.
Two lifejackets peeked out from under the seat and reminded her she was about to repeat one of the kayaker’s mistakes. She put one on and moved the second so she’d have it ready for the rescue.
Salt spray stung her eyes. She wiped them and turned back to see Nathan. He pointed straight west, over her head. The boat slammed into a wave so hard it shuddered. She turned her face back into the wind and winced.
A half-dozen wave crests ahead, the kayak rose from the sea, nose pointing skyward. Then it scooted sideways down the swell and disappeared.
Huge, heavy drops of rain hit her boat like a handful of rocks. Sheet lightning unfurled across the sky. Then thunder cracked so sharp and so loud that Kathy involuntarily ducked.
The wall of rain raced across the surging sea, over where she’d seen the kayak, then the next instant, over her small boat. She turned to check for direction from Nathan, but the obscuring rain morphed the fort into a dark hulk.
Rainwater pooled around her feet. The boat labored up a wave and over the crest. As it headed down, the outboard’s shaft rose from the water. The engine screamed. The boat plunged down and the prop again found purchase.
Kathy took the next wave at a slight angle. As she rode to the top, she saw nothing but rain against the wave tops. Down that wave, up the next, and still no kayak. Her heart pounded and she began to fear she had been too late.
Lightning flashed and struck the s
ea to her left. Another snap of thunder made her head ring. Water in her boat sloshed over her ankles.
From overhead came the whine of rotor blades. A red and white Coast Guard helicopter flew past her. It banked right and looped back around. A crewman crouched in the door wearing a wetsuit and a flight helmet. He pointed at Kathy, then made a circular motion with his hand and ended up pointing back to the fort. He made the same motion again, this time angrier.
Kathy knew he was right. They were the pros at this, not her. She had little more business out here than the kayaker did. And in another few minutes, she’d be just as bad off. She turned the skiff around and rode the waves back toward the fort. The wind and rain lashed her back, as if compelling her to keep going in that direction.
Behind her, the helicopter began a spiral search of the sea, an ever-widening circle to find the kayaker. The aircraft rocked in the gusty winds. The crewman hung out the open door, grasping a winch cable, searching the sea below.
Soon Kathy approached the dock. She couldn’t risk slamming into the pilings. She cut the engine and the skiff surfed up onto the shore. She jumped out, relieved to be out of the pounding sea.
To the west, the helicopter circled the area where she’d last seen the kayak. She pulled the skiff ashore and shielded her eyes from the stinging rain. The helicopter made one more lap around the area, then peeled away, heading east. It flew over Kathy’s head. The crewman looked down at her and shook his head as he passed.
Her heart sank. Maybe if she’d seen the kayaker earlier, started for her sooner… But those kayaks were supposed to be unsinkable. To have one disappear beneath the waves...
She cursed and kicked a whelk shell back into the foaming sea. She was mad at herself for failing, madder still at the idiot who put herself in that situation. Her feet slipped against the slick rocks as she trudged back to the fort, and shelter from the storm. Nathan met her at the entrance as she stepped out of the rain.
“I…I couldn’t find her,” Kathy said.
“Not your fault,” Nathan said. “She disappeared, the whole kayak disappeared before you got halfway out.”
Claws Page 3