Buzzard Bay (20 page)

hortly after Bob returned from holidays, Tom called them to a community meeting. There he announced that there was a new hotel opening up in Miami, and he had gotten the bid to supply them with fresh produce. This was good news; so far they had been unable to crack the competitive Florida market. Tom told them it was because the hotel liked the fact that APCO was involved in their project that they got the contract, hoping this would keep the managers off his back about keeping the inefficient agency on the project.

Of course, Tom put the onus on management to be able to fill the contract, but they were ready for him. It would mean extra work, but the spring season was here and bearing disaster; this should be their best year yet.

Tom had instructions for the managers, “This is international now. You will bring the produce to the packing house and unload it. The hotel will have their own inspector on-site, and from there on, APCO will pack the produce and load the plane. When you get to Miami, the plane will land at a small commercial airport on the edge of the city. The produce will be put through customs and into cold storage trucks to the hotel as soon as possible. Whoever goes over on the flight will not be able to stay with the plane including the pilot. Once everything clears customs, there is an inspection room at the airport where they will bring you the manifesto to check with yours and if satisfied, sign it. We should train an inspector to go to the hotel just to make sure the produce is handled properly there. The plane will be bringing back supplies, so whoever goes to the hotel will have lots of time to get back for the return flight. These are strict rules, and have to be followed if we want to keep this contract.”

It was decided Bob would go on the first flight along with Maggie. She had worked in the packing plant for a long time and would be a perfect trainee.

The sky was streaked with red in the east as Bob approached the plane. The sun would soon be up, and Larry, the pilot, had the engines warmed up ready to go. The early morning rain gave a fresh smell to the morning air as Larry taxied up.

They found Larry’s smile contagious this morning. They entered the plane and buckled up.

“Ready,” Larry asked, looking behind him to make sure Maggie was in place.

“Here we go.” He pushed the throttle down, and the aircraft began to pick up speed down the runway. The lake came into view at the end of the runway as the plane began to vibrate from the speed. Larry tightened in his seat.

“What the hell has Tom got on here?” Larry’s voice sounded worried. Bob trusted Larry and wasn’t really concerned until he noticed they were farther down the airstrip than usual.

“Fucking Tom,” Larry shouted above the roar of the engines. “I told him not to put any more on. We’re way over as it is.” They were almost to the lake now.

“Lucky there’s no trees between us and the lake.” Larry sounded calm now, “I think she’ll come up.” But Bob could tell he was stressed by the way he hung on to the controls.

They cleared the end of the runway and began flying over the lake. At first they seemed to climb, the engines throbbing, and then they dropped.

“Put your heads in your laps and hang on to anything you can find!” yelled Larry. “I don’t think I can hold her.” The plane seemed to slide along the top of the water, and then the water splashed up onto the windshield obscuring everything.

Larry stayed with it, and they felt the plane rise then slowly lose altitude touching the water pulling the engines down. They could hear the water brushing the plane’s belly. It bounced once more out of the water and then plowed in. They couldn’t see a thing.

“Hang on, we’re going in,” was the last thing Bob heard Larry say before the plane seemed to settle into the water, the motors quiet seconds before; it seemed like they hit something hard. The plane made a terrible grinding sound, and they stopped so sudden Bob felt like he was going right on out the front. But the seat belt held; Bob passed out for a few seconds from the strain on his seat belt.

When he came to, the first thing he saw was red. The cabin was full of blood.

“Is it mine?” he almost screamed and began to feel himself sure his legs were missing. Then he noticed the vegetables piled around his legs. He looked over at Larry expecting to see his head decapitated. Larry was looking over at him, red dripping off his chin.

“Tomatoes, tomatoes,” Bob shouted. “It’s not blood, it’s tomatoes!”

They realized the plane had stopped so sudden the cargo had come forward into the cockpit throwing a crate of tomatoes up against the instrument panel. The tomatoes had flown all over covering the cabin with tomato juice.

“Get the fuck off me.” They heard a voice, both realizing it was Maggie. Her seat had been torn loose throwing her up between Larry and Bob under a pile of cucumbers. She came up out of the pile spitting, her hair and face full of debris.

Bob started to laugh more out of relief than anything funny, and Larry joined him. They started to laugh insanely, and Maggie couldn’t help but join in.

“Where the fuck are we?” Bob cried, and they laughed some more.

“Under the lake, I don’t know,” answered Larry hysterically. “Maybe we’re dead, I’ll find out.”

They couldn’t see anything out of the glass in the cockpit, so Larry climbed up on the vegetables and crawled to the back. He dug for a minute and then opened the cargo door. Both Maggie and Bob followed him back and climbed out.

It was soon apparent they had ended upon a small island in the middle of the lake. Only a week before, they had cleaned up the island and put picnic tables on it. The island wasn’t much bigger than the plane. They were very lucky.

Maggie grabbed the two of them. “You’re both crazy, but I love you guys.” The three of them stood watching the sun rise over the lake.

“It’s good to be alive, isn’t it,” Bob told them.

They heard a boat and turned to see July and Rikker pulling up. July didn’t wait for the boat to stop; she just ran over the front through the water and put her arms around Bob.

“I was so sure you were dead,” she told him.

“You won’t get rid of me that easy,” he told her. “In fact, we’re all okay.” More boats were coming now.

“You got here quick,” Bob hugged July.

“I watch you go every morning,” she answered. “This morning, I thought it was for the last time.”

Bill pulled up. “Are you all right?” he shouted; they hollered back that they were.

Tom showed up next. He seemed more worried about the plane than any of them.

“What the fuck happened?” he snapped. Bob and July had to hold Larry back.

“What the fuck did you put on that plane, Tom? I told you not to load any more on there. What the fuck is the matter with your head?” Tom immediately had to take the defensive.

“That’s the same load you always haul.” Tom decided discretion was the better part of valor. He walked around the plane once, and then got back on his boat and left.

Bob talked to Bill for a minute then got into his boat with the others and headed over to his house. All the houses had their own dock. They tied up and went inside for an early morning drink.

Bill soon joined them. “Dale’s trying to scrounge up enough products from the produce barns to make another shipment,” he told them, but it was pretty slim pickings.

Bob looked at his watch. “We could salvage a lot of stuff out of the plane. Let’s see, we have till eight o’clock to get the plane out of here. That’ll put the load in Miami by 10:00 a.m. By 11:00 a.m., it should be at the hotel. That gives an hour to get the produce onto the salad bar. Can you do it, Maggie?”

“Do I have any choice?” For a black girl, she looked very pale.

“I’ll go with you,” July told her, taking her hand. Maggie thanked her, and then she turned to Bob. “Well, Mr. Green, let’s go get that plane unloaded.”

Bill went to tell Dale what they planned to do and arranged for some boats. They handpicked the vegetables as they unloaded them from the plane and loaded them onto boats. Bill and Rikker drove the boats over to where Dale’s men unloaded them. July and Maggie took Rikker’s Sea-Doo back to the house where they cleaned up and got ready to leave.

Just then, a plane came in low over their head. “That’s the rental,” Bob said, looking at his watch. “It’s going to be tight. They’ll have to load in a hurry.”

There wasn’t too much good stuff left in the wreck now. Bob sent the men who had come to help back on one of the boats to see if they could help Dale load the plane. Dale informed them on the radio that he had enough for a load.

“Take a break,” Bob told them.

Bill showed up with a case of beer, and the three of them sat down in the shade from the plane. The sun was already hot, and they were sweating profusely.

Larry finished his first beer and started on his second before he said to Bob, “Did you see the bags packed in the bottom?”

“Yes,” Bob answered, “that’s why I sent everybody back to the other side.”

Bill looked at them. “Whatever are you guys talking about?” He had an alarmed look on his face.

“Come here, and I’ll show you,” Larry told him, getting up. They looked in the cargo door; a few of the bags were visible under what was left of the produce. They cleared more stuff away exposing what looked like a layer of bags covering the bottom of the cargo area.

“It’s a wonder the old girl came up at all,” Larry lamented.

“Whoever loaded the plane either wasn’t very smart or underestimated how heavy you really were,” Bob said.

Bill took his knife and cut into one of the bags. “Looks like flour,” he said.

Larry knew different. “Cocaine,” he said, “probably half a billion dollars sitting there.”

He looked up, “There’s going to be hell to pay for this.”

The three men went back to the shade and opened another beer. In the distance, they heard the roar of plane engines starting up, and silently the rented plane with its load of fresh produce appeared and quickly disappeared across the lake.

“That’s a Gulfstream Flyer,” Larry told them as they shaded their eyes watching the silver bird climb up over the lake. “He’ll make good time, should be in Miami easy by 10:00 a.m.”

“I don’t envy July and Maggie,” Bill said. “They’ll be busy girls for a while.” They sat drinking their beer, until Bob asked the question they knew had to be answered.

“Well, what do we do with the shit?”

“Leave it,” Larry looked at him. “They’ll soon be here looking for it. No one leaves that much money lying around. If you touch it, they’ll blow anyone away who they think took it or even might know about it.”

“Maybe they will anyway,” Bob answered. “We’ve got to think about all the people living here and what we have here, to tell you the truth, I’m scared.”

“Well, let’s see what options we’ve got,” Bill said. “Maybe if we somehow get proof of what’s going on here we can blackmail them into taking the drugs and leaving us alone. You know, some kind of evidence that comes out if they kill us.”

“I don’t know if we have time for those kinds of games,” Bob told him. “We could just go to the police. The transport department will want to have a look at the crash pretty soon, I would think.”

“We don’t know who in that department is on the take either,” Larry was quick to answer. “I don’t think we have more than a few hours at the least before someone’s here.”

“There’s no use fooling ourselves. We all know what APCO’s doing here. I’m damned sure they’ve told their people what’s happened already.”

“Burn it,” Bob sighed. “Can we get the old bitch hot enough to burn everything up?”

“I thought of that too,” Larry answered him. “There’s a lot of fuel on board, but it’s a long time after the crash. Somebody’s going to be suspicious.”

“Okay,” Bob said, “what if they thought someone from APCO stole it?”

“How in hell do we do that?” Bill wanted to know.

“Well,” Bob looked deep in thought, “they’ve got a boat over there at the main dock and two trucks sitting on the runway. What if we need them to move the stuff?”

“They’d know it was us,” Bill told him.

“Maybe not,” Larry was thinking too. “None of them are right around here. They might see us from a distance but not close enough to know what’s going on.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Bob said. “I think most of them are pretty careful to mind their own business. There’s just the people in the office. They’ll probably see the trucks leaving and wonder what’s going on.”

The conversation went back and forth for several minutes until a plan of attack began to form. They were pretty sure Tom was in on the drugs. The original call has to come from Tom, they decided. He had the authority to tell APCO what to do; they wouldn’t question any orders if they came directly from Tom. Bob radioed Dale to find out if he knew where Tom was.

“He left on the rented plane with Maggie and July,” Dale answered right away. That threw a skid into their plans before they even started.

“I bet APCO doesn’t know he’s gone,” said Bill. “If I call them on the phone from his office, I bet I can pull it off.”

The three of them jumped in a boat Rikker had brought back for them and headed for the commissary where Tom’s office was located. It was only a short walk from the lake to the commissary. Tom’s secretary was the only one there. Bob called her over to his office down the hall, while Bill made the call to APCO’s office. Within minutes, they saw the two trucks leave the runway area heading for the crash site.

“That was brilliant getting them to load the stuff rather than us; it lets us off the hook completely.” Larry told Bob.

“Well, we’re in luck there too,” Bob told them. “That’s the same two guys that were at the Andros Hotel the night we followed them. So let’s hope they load up and then spend the time in the hotel until it’s time to head for Buzzard Bay.”

“I told them to arrange for a pick up at Buzzard Bay by midnight,” Bill said. “That should give us lots of time.”

“I hope old Horatio doesn’t get in trouble over this,” Larry said.

“There’s no one else we can turn to, and we know he’s straight,” Bob told them. “I think it will be a real feather in his cap.” They went back to Bob’s house and watched the plane being unloaded through their binoculars.