Jimmy was the caretaker on my little island and had been for a long time. He was also first mate aboard the Revenge, whenever we chartered, which hadn’t been often in the last year. He had his own place on the west side of the island and kept busy working on the garden and aquaculture system. We raised vegetables for our own consumption, as well as catfish and freshwater Louisiana crayfish, which Jimmy sold to a few restaurants up and down the Keys that had Cajun-style food on their menus, turning a very healthy profit. It was nearly impossible to get fresh crayfish and bayou flathead catfish in the Keys. Jimmy, and Carl before him, had cornered the market.
Carl Trent and I had built the house Jimmy now lives in. He and his wife, Charlie, had been the caretakers for many years, until they moved back to Alabama.
Turning, I gazed back at the clouds building to the south. “Probably raining down on Big Pine. Maybe over in Marathon, too.”
“Could smell it from over on the porch, man. It won’t last long. Want some help down there with the scrubbing?”
“Thanks. Come on down when you’re ready.”
Sitting on the edge of the dock, I strapped a bulky twenty-pound weight belt around my waist, situatied the heavy weight at my back, and then pulled my mask on. I slipped into the warm water behind the Revenge. It was only six feet deep, so all I needed was a mask, snorkel, and scrub brush. The brush had very soft bristles and a short handle; perfect for cleaning the algal growth off the underside of the boat.
Standing on the sandy bottom, only the top of my head and snorkel were visible above water. I took a deep breath and submerged, positioning myself under the hull. With the weight on my back, I could lie on the bottom with the boat’s keel only about two feet above me. The weight gave me the much-needed negative buoyancy, to allow me to move the scrub brush, instead of the scrub brush moving me.
Underwater, you could really see what a boat was. Everything built above the waterline stripe was for looks and convenience. Everything below that was hydro-mechanical. It was the shape of the hull that determined how the boat worked with the water.
The Revenge was a semi-displacement hull vessel, with prop tunnels for the massive twin propellers. With her powerful engines, she could nearly climb up on top of the water, slicing across the surface with her deep V hull, displacing far less than half her weight. My sailboat, on the other hand, had a full displacement hull. Salty Dog’s hull cut through the water, so her top speed was limited, and based completely on her length at the waterline. While moving, she displaced just as much water as she did at anchor. A true planing hull, like my Maverick flats skiff, had a nearly flat bottom. On plane, it skimmed across the surface, displacing only a few gallons of water to keep its 1500 pounds afloat.
I moved methodically, pushing the brush against the hull in long strokes. Small fish darted out from under the pier, catching little pieces that fell away from the hull. Jimmy dropped under the boat off the port side, just after I’d surfaced to take my third breath. We worked quickly and soon had all the growth removed. Bottom cleaning was a necessary part of the maintenance on a boat, and I had a few of them to keep clean. Jimmy and I had had lots of practice.
“That didn’t take long to grow back,” Jimmy said, as we levered ourselves up onto the dock and climbed up. “I just cleaned it a month ago.”
I looked off to the south. The clouds were darkening, looking more menacing. “Days are already getting shorter. Soon, we won’t have to do this for a few months.”
Looking past me, Jimmy saw the approaching storm. “No boat ride today,” he said, obviously disappointed.
“Yeah, we’ll be moving her back inside.”
“No hurry, hermano. That squall won’t get here for twenty minutes, if at all.”
He helped me to back Gaspar’s Revenge under the house again and get her tied up. Then we went up to the deck to watch the approaching weather.
“We haven’t had a charter in a while,” Jimmy remarked. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t need the extra money just now, but it’s fun sometimes.”
“Some of them are,” I agreed.
“Those Miami guys keep emailing. The photographers.”
“Peter Simpson?” I asked. “He’s wanting a night dive?”
“No, man, noon. A shallow reef with pretty models again.”
How many years had it been since the grenade attack against me and the Revenge? It had resulted in one of Peter’s models, a young woman named Annette, getting killed. It’d happened out on G Marker, south of Big Pine. The attackers had been trying to lure me into the open by dropping grenades on sensitive reefs. When that didn’t work, they’d tried a more direct approach, attacking my divers. The small, gold ring in my left ear commemorated that loss.
Early mariners were less afraid of drowning than of not being properly buried, so they wore gold rings in their ears to pay for a funeral if their bodies washed ashore. My first mate on that dive, Travis Stockwell, also wore a gold earring like mine—they’d been given to us by the dead girl’s father. At one time, Travis had worked for Homeland Security and had been Deuce Livingston’s immediate boss. Now he was head of security for Armstrong Research. I called both men my friends and had worked with Deuce’s team of highly trained snake-eaters a few times.
For quite a while now, we hadn’t chartered more than once a month or so. That was about all I could handle. Owning a charter boat that didn’t charter was a waste. And a boat like Gaspar’s Revenge, which could take you far offshore, needed a regular workout.
“Ask Peter if he and Tom would be interested in diving the Tortugas next week. You can pick the day.”
“For real?” he asked, suddenly excited. “That’s way the hell out there.”
“They can meet us at the fuel dock in Key West Bight before sunrise and we’ll get them back in time for a late supper at Turtle Kraals.”
“You’re on, dude! I know they’ll go for that. How much?”
“The regular full day rate plus fifty percent,” I replied. “It’ll take more than half a tank to get out there and back. You and I can hang out in the city when we get back, if you want. Haven’t done that in a while, either.”
“Tres amigos loose on Cayo Hueso, Finn!” Jimmy reached down and held his hand out. Finn obligingly slapped it with his paw—his own version of a high-five.
“But right now, I think I’m gonna steal a page from Finn’s book, and relax a while,” I told him.
When I stepped inside, though my house wasn’t air-conditioned, it felt noticeably cooler. Finn went straight to his big, shaggy rug in the middle of the room. It was four feet round and made of a heavy cotton fiber at least an inch thick. He made almost three complete revolutions around his bed before dropping his hindquarters and then his chest onto the center with a heavy thud.
My home only had two rooms; three if you counted the head. The front room included a small galley set up in the corner with propane appliances and a small table for two. A large workbench was mounted beneath a window on the north-facing wall, which overlooked the island’s interior. The guts of an outboard’s carburetor were scattered across the workbench’s surface, waiting on a part. Against the wall that separated the front room from my bedroom was a smaller workbench. It had a dozen small drawers and a large, lighted magnifier for working on fishing reels or lures. Next to it was a ladderwell and deck hatch that led down to the boathouse below.
I sat down in one of two recliners next to the south-facing window and picked up a book I’d been reading on the natural history of the Florida Keys and South Florida.
The rain started as soon as I opened the book—just a few heavy drops at first. The scent returned, stronger than before. The plants on my island were reacting to the rain, rejoicing in it. Although we saw at least one rainstorm a day during this time of year, this was the first rain to reach my island in a couple of weeks. In the next few days, I would’ve had to pump wate
r up to the cistern from the Revenge’s onboard water tank.
My 1000-square-foot metal roof drained into gutters, which fed into a single small holding tank below the large cistern. From there, rainwater was pumped up to the cistern. Its open top added another thirty-four square feet of rain-catching surface area. The cistern could hold over 1500 gallons of water to supply the whole island, including the aquaculture garden. We used fresh water sparingly.
It was rare that I had to pump water during the rainy season. But after December, it was a monthly occurrence, taking two whole days. Gaspar’s Revenge only had a 100-gallon water tank and it took the reverse-osmosis water-maker an hour to fill it. Working on nothing else, Jimmy and I could fill the cistern in two eight-hour days. But we rarely had eight uninterrupted hours. Living off the grid on an island was hard work. But it only took two inches of rain, running off the roof and into the holding tank, to nearly fill the cistern. A spill gate allowed excess rainwater to drain down to the boathouse, where it flowed back into the sea.
The smell of the rain reminded me of when I was a kid, growing up in Fort Myers. It was a simpler time then. When it rained, I’d join my friends racing Popsicle stick rafts along the curbs on our street. The kid with the fastest raft had to be careful, though. Many a stick raft had disappeared down the storm drain on the corner. The same rain scent also reminded me of a later time during high school, walking with my girlfriend at a lake near where I lived, when a sudden storm drenched us as we ran back to my car. I soon fell asleep and dreamed of being a kid again.
A low, rolling thunder woke me. It was dark, and a muted hum told me the pump under the cistern was running; a welcome sound. The rain smell was gone, but it was still raining. Half-awake, with the book I’d been reading lying open on my chest, I heard the pump stop and wondered how much rain had fallen. The cistern had a float switch that would keep the pump from running when the tank was full and the excess rainwater would just drain off. As lightly as the rain was coming down, the float switch in the holding tank had turned the pump off. I recognized the dark as temporary—not night.
My roof had open rafters—no ceiling. The bare metal was a wonderful conduit for rain sounds, making even the lightest rain audible, and the soft rhythm on the metal roof continued as a fine mist of rain still fell outside.
A vent ran the length of the roof’s ridge and there were vents in the floor, as well. The air up near the metal roof would get hot and rise toward the ridge vent, drawing in cool air from the boathouse below, so that on a hot day, my house was still comfortable.
Looking at my watch, I realized I’d been asleep for only an hour; it wasn’t even noon yet. An hour is a long time in the life cycle of a rain event in the Keys. I rose, and Finn lifted his head. Looking out the window between the recliners, I could see that the sky was clearing; the back edge of the storm was approaching.
Thunder rolled and echoed across the water. It was somewhere off to the northeast now—out over the Gulf of Mexico, beyond where Mac Travis lived. At just shy of two miles away, Mac was my nearest, and really my only neighbor. At least until you got down to the north end of Big Pine Key, nearly six miles to the south. Mac lived on Upper Harbor Key, the last island before Harbor Channel flowed into the Gulf at Harbor Key. His island was one of the few in the area that even had a name.
A noise from my bedroom caused both me and Finn to jerk our heads around. It was similar to the sound that a pump shotgun would make, but it was only my Armstrong satellite phone, trying to connect.
I went into the other room and picked it up, then hurried outside for better reception. On the Revenge, the phone would automatically connect to the onboard comm center, via Wi-Fi. Without that, it needed a clear line of sight to the southern sky. Since the caller ID never showed anything when another Armstrong phone was calling, I didn’t bother to look at it. Armstrong personnel were the only people who had my number.
I stabbed the Accept button. “McDermitt.”
“It’s John.”
“Hey, John. Good to hear from you. How are you getting along?”
“About as good as a one-eyed senior citizen can, I reckon,” John Wilson replied. “Chasing young girls used to be pretty easy. Now they just have to turn right, and I run into a tree.”
I laughed, hearing voices and what sounded like music and glasses clinking in the background. “Where are you, John? I hear music.”
After John had lost an eye in a submersible accident, he and Jack Armstrong had insisted that I take the old man’s place within the organization. I’d agreed, even though I’d known that I could never fill his shoes. John and his daughter, Sara Patrick, had been my instructors during submersible training, and later she’d been my immediate superior and mentor for six months aboard Ambrosia, as I worked to fulfill the required sea time for a master’s unlimited license.
“Beach bar,” he replied. “Hey look, where are you deployed right now?”
Though missing an eye, he’d fully recovered, but as far as I knew, John Wilson no longer worked for Armstrong Research. Since the accident he’d pretty much led the life of a retiree. But there was only one reason he’d ask that question.
“I’m in the Keys with the Revenge,” I told him. “The Dog’s at a friend’s place in Belize, and Floridablanca is in Antigua.”
“Perfect. How soon can you be in the BVI?”
“Tomorrow, by air.”
“With Floridablanca?”
“Three days,” I replied. “What’s going on, John?”
“I’ll tell you about it when you get here. Come to Pirate’s Bight on Norman Island. I’ll meet you there on Saturday at oh-six-hundred hours.”
“You gotta give me more to go on than that, John.” There was silence. “John?” I looked at the screen. The call had ended.
Norman Island in four days? What the heck was going on?
Armstrong would know, so I pulled up the number for the bridge phone on the Ambrosia. After several clicks, Captain Nils Hansen answered.
“Nils, this is Jesse. Is Jack aboard?”
“No, he left three days ago for New Jersey to check on a new build.”
“Sara?”
I didn’t like calling her on the ship’s phone, but if she were on duty, she wouldn’t have her personal sat phone with her. And if she weren’t on duty, Nils would have the switchboard behind him in the control center patch me through.
“One moment,” Hansen said.
Those six months working with Sara on Ambrosia had felt like an eternity. Being that close to her and not being able to touch her had pushed the sexual tension between us off the chart. We’d gotten to know each other a little after carving out some time in our schedules. We’d both lost our spouses to violence. I’d had a succession of relationships and had screwed most of them up. Sara, on the other hand, hadn’t been involved with anyone since her husband had been killed a few years earlier in Afghanistan. She’d admitted to a few one-night stands, purely to satisfy her physical desire, but no serious dating.
Neither of our lifestyle choices was conducive to a relationship, and we both knew that—probably she even better than I did. I’d nearly forgotten how to talk to a woman close to my age, but the times we’d met after our first encounter—the first being Rusty’s wedding—were fun. Sara and I were friends, but we’d both known that we wanted more. She’d arrived at the Rusty Anchor to help me celebrate. That night we’d finally succumbed to our mutual needs and she’d confessed that it was the real reason she’d come.
Since then we’d made time for dozens of discreet escapes. Usually we only had a day together and we’d spend it staring breathlessly at ceiling fans in beach bungalows all over the Caribbean, exhausted and tangled in sweaty sheets. But during those six months of sea time, she’d been 100% business, and a real hardass of a boss.
When Sara answered, I asked her if she knew where her father was.
> “Yes,” she replied. “Did he call you?”
“He did.”
“Do what he says, Jesse.”
“That’s all I needed,” I replied. John was back in the game, it seemed.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Well, that need is always there.”
“That’s good to know,” she said, using her professional voice. Hansen was standing right next to her.
I knew that Ambrosia was in the Leewards; had been for a couple of months. “Can you get away? I’ll be in Antigua tomorrow evening.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Tomorrow afternoon will be perfect. Goodbye, Captain.”
Afternoon? She must have to get back aboard the ship early. I hated flying commercial, but my plane had limited range and would require too many stops to get there by afternoon.
Slipping the phone into my pocket, I went back to the living room and looked around. I spotted my personal cellphone on the workbench beside the scattered carb guts, picked it up and dialed.
Chyrel Koshinski answered on the first ring. “Hey, Jesse. How goes it?”
“Good,” I replied. “How’re the new digs?”
Because of traffic during certain times of year, Deuce had moved our office from a small strip mall on Islamorada into a brand-new four-story office building on Atlantic Boulevard in Key Largo. We had the whole fourth floor.
“I love it!” Chyrel replied. “The internet and power here are so much more reliable. What can I do for you today?”
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