Red Thunder (23 page)

A flat-bottom Cajun pirogue could have made it through the shallow
channels we saw winding around the hammocks and cypress knees and
mangroves, but you'd have to pole it. An outboard propeller would have
stuck in the mud.

Caleb and Travis pulled a big canvas tarp off a big lumpy thing
sitting next to the dock and I wasn't too surprised to see it was an
airboat. Where the four-wheel tracks end, that's where the airboat
trails begin.

It was a wide, flat-bottom aluminum hull, extremely shallow draft,
designed to skim over the water rather than cut through it. At the back
was an aircraft engine mounted high in a safety cage. In front of it,
almost as high, was a sort of crow's nest seat for the pilot to sit in,
way up where he could more easily pick out his route. An airboat didn't
need much water under the hull. An inch was plenty. If you had a good
head of steam and kept going, it would glide right over mud, too. Even
dry land, for a while. "Don't need no more water'n a skeeter can spit,"
Caleb said as we boarded.

This one had once been a tourist boat. There were four rows of
comfortable bench seats, with pads faded and cracked open by the
relentless sun over the years, yellow foam stuffing showing here and
there.

We all piled out of the vehicles, the mosquitoes swarming again now
that we'd stopped. We put on more repellent, but nothing was going to
make them go away completely, so we worked quickly, hoping to get
moving again soon.

Travis and Jubal lifted a big cardboard box out of the back of
Blue Thunder.
It didn't appear too heavy. They opened it and for the first time we
saw the experimental test vehicle Jubal had cobbled together.

I can't really say that it looked too impressive.

It was a five-foot tube of heavy-duty six-inch gray PVC pipe, the
kind you'd buy for an ordinary plumbing project. A tapered nose cone
had been fitted on the top of it. Below were three metal fins that also
acted as legs for it to stand on. Under the tube was a spherical metal
cage, the only part of the contraption that looked as if a fair amount
of work had gone into it. Without knowing about Jubal's Squeezer
dingus, I'd never have known what it was for. It was intended to hold a
silver bubble about the size of a softball.

I'd seen better rockets at the school science fair.

They put it on its side on the front bench of the airboat and tied
it down with bungee cords. Two aluminum suitcases were set on the floor
in front, and we were ready to go. Caleb climbed up into the pilot's
seat and started the engine.

Soon we were flying along on the smooth water.

THE WIND IN our faces whipped away even the
steroid-pumped Everglades mosquitoes. The day had not yet begun to get
hot. The water below us was the color of weak tea and the sky above
blue and cloudless. We barreled along through a primeval world where I
could easily imagine duck-billed dinosaurs browsing in the trees. Kelly
squeezed my hand and smiled at me. I'd had worse days.

ON A MAP you can see hundreds of what they call
hammocks scattered through the Everglades. There are also islands,
streams, creeks, sloughs. The hammocks on the maps could be miles long,
but even the smallest-scale maps didn't indicate the ones that were
only an acre or two, because they weren't very permanent features.

Caleb finally beached the airboat on a bare knuckle of cracked mud
that might have had enough room to park a dozen cars... if you didn't
mind seeing them sink like mammoths in the La Brea Tar Pits. We had to
step carefully when we got out. My first step cracked through the skin
of dried mud and I almost lost a shoe. The footing was a bit firmer in
the center of the little island.

Looking around, I wasn't sure why Caleb had selected this place, an
hour's ride from where we'd left the vehicles. Most every mile of swamp
we passed through seemed just as isolated as any other mile, though I
knew this wasn't strictly true. We saw other airboats passing in the
distance, and once came close enough to wave at the driver.

We quickly saw that we were basically just along for the ride, and
because Jubal wanted us there. Travis and Jubal set the rocket on its
end near the center of the hammock, then started placing other devices
around it. Neither of them had anything to say, they just worked
steadily stringing wires, plugging things into other things, sweat
dripping off their foreheads. The rest of us stood around, slapping at
mosquitoes.

It occurred to me that, if this thing worked, we might be about to
witness something as historic as the Wright brothers' first flight. But
to tell the truth, all I wanted to do was get it done and get out of
there. I was getting eaten alive!

I mentioned the Wright brothers analogy to Kelly, and she slapped
her forehead and dug around in her purse. In a moment she found a pink
throwaway PrettyPixel camera and started snapping pictures as fast as
she could click the shutter. Travis frowned, and told her those pics
would have to be considered classified information for the time being.

"Yes, sir, Colonel Broussard," she said, and kept snapping away. "And stupid me, I left my vidcam home sitting on my desk."

Which is why there is no video of the maiden—and final—flight of the good ship
Everglades Express,
and why Kelly appears in only one picture taken that day, when Caleb
insisted the six of us pose in front of the completed rocket setup, a
bug-bitten family looking like they'd rather be anywhere else but this
hellhole.

They had it all ready in no more than half an hour. Jubal stood
looking at it, his fists on his hips, nodding in satisfaction. He put
his hand on the conical nose cone. There was a round piece of glass set
into it.

"Dis eye," Jubal said, "dis eye find de sun, yes she does. Lock on
to de sun, den keep herself in dat attitude fo' all de flight. Dat way
she go straight up."

We all piled back in the boat and Caleb eased us off the mud flat
and back through the shallow water as Travis paid out a cable from a
Radio Shack reel.

At two hundred feet Travis looked at Jubal.

"Far enough, Jube?"

I didn't like the frown I saw on Jubal's brow. He muttered, then
looked around, and smiled when he found what he was looking for.

"Ovah dere," he said. He was pointing at another hammock, this one a
bit bigger than Rocket Hammock. Caleb moved the boat over there, and we
could see on the other side there was a small eroded bank, maybe three
feet high, with a fallen tree trunk lying on top of it. Now we could
crouch down behind the bank and the tree and be protected if the rocket
should blow up.

Travis and Jubal took another five minutes plugging the ends of the
wires into an old laptop computer and then they were ready. Travis
handed out safety glasses and hard hats from the boat, and we all put
them on.

"I think we should all get down behind the bank," Dak said.

"Can't we peek over the top?" Kelly asked. "I want to get pictures."

We all looked at Jubal, who was again looking nervous.

"Go ahead on," he said. "Peek. But be careful,
cher.
"

Travis had the remote control in his hands. I put my arm around Kelly. Then I looked at Jubal. He grinned, and shrugged.

"T'ree, two, one, an—"

He flicked the launch switch as he said "zero," and the world exploded.

There was a shock wave that blew my helmet off, an explosion that
sounded like a bomb going off. And directly ahead I saw a wall of mud
rushing toward me.

"Oh, me oh my," Jubal said, and the wall hit us.

It was actually a wall of water, a big wave maybe four feet high,
but it was thicker than water had any right to be. It was full of mud,
decaying leaves, twigs. We all tried to fall back in front of it, but
there was nothing but more water behind us. I staggered a few steps
before sitting down in the glop, and the wave crested over the bank
we'd been sheltering behind, then over us.

For a few seconds everything was dark, then my head broke through
and I was gasping... and that's when the water and mud that had been
blown into the air started to rain down on us. I don't think the planet
has often seen a filthier rain. A bullfrog landed on me and sat in my
lap for a moment, stunned.

Travis was shouting something I couldn't hear clearly, something
about covering our heads. My hardhat had been swept away. I found Kelly
and we huddled together, hunched over, hoping the explosion hadn't been
powerful enough to throw any sizable rocks or tree trunks into the air.

It was over in a few seconds, though it seemed a lot longer. The water settled down, the mud stopped falling from the sky.

"Did it blow up, Jubal?" Alicia shouted.

"No 'splosion,
cher,
" he said, then pointed into the air.
"Look!"

We did, and saw a straight white line rising from the launch site,
already twisted a little as the air currents caught it. Far, far away
the line was still growing as the tiny rocket reached the upper levels
of the atmosphere. Kelly and I stood up unsteadily and watched the line
dwindle and lengthen... and suddenly it stopped.

"What happened?" I asked Jubal. "Run out of fuel?"

"No, Manny." Jubal entered some numbers on the mud-covered computer. "Outta de atmosphere. She up 'bout eight mile now."

Caleb was standing in the boat, bailing with a galvanized metal bucket. He looked up and tossed me a plastic bait bucket.

"Bail, son," he said. "We gotta get outta here. This tub don't fly
too good with two ton of mud in her, and she got no scuppers."

I didn't know a scupper from a yardarm, but I could see what he
meant. I got to work, and was soon joined by all the others using their
hard hats, except Travis, who was reeling in cable as fast as he could
wind it. We worked like a road gang in hell.

One good thing about the mud. The mosquitoes couldn't bite through it.

We had the boat about as dry as it was going to get when Travis
pointed into the sky and shouted. Squinting into the glare, I saw four
contrails way, way up there. They were flying close, then they moved
apart and circled around the remains of the rocket's vapor trail like
bloodhounds casting for a scent.

"Fighter group," Travis said. "Probably from the base at Boca Chica Key."

"Navy jets," Dak said.

"You think they're looking for us?" Alicia asked.

"They ain't counting alligators, hon. What else is there out here
they might want to see? I never thought the sucker would go up so
fast!
"

"I t'ink I mighta dropped a—"

"Later, Jube. We got to get outta here. Try to look like tourists!"

We scrambled in and Caleb got us moving. Look like tourists? How were we going to do that, covered in mud?

Kelly started scooping handfuls of water and splashing it over her
hair and her face. The rest of us did, too. I dipped a plastic bucket
into the water... and promptly lost it, snatched right out of my hand
when I let it go too deep. I held on to the next one better, and dumped
it over Dak's head. He sputtered and grabbed the bucket from me.

"I don't need cleaning up!" he shouted. "I don't show the dirt like
you whiteys do!" And he dumped a bucketful on me. Pretty soon we were
mostly free of mud, though we were ankle deep in chocolate-colored
water. Even though the air was humid, I figured the rushing wind would
dry us pretty soon.

"Over there!" Travis yelled in my ear, and I looked where he was
pointing. Far away three elongated specks were moving through the air
at treetop level. Travis reached up and tapped Caleb's leg. Caleb
nodded. Travis pointed to a thicket of mangroves, and Caleb arrowed
straight for it. He turned off the engine and the silence surrounded
us. After a moment we could hear the sound of the distant helicopters.

"Hueys," Travis said, quietly.

"Did we do something wrong?" Kelly whispered.

"Why are we all whispering?" Alicia whispered. Dak laughed.

"We probably broke some federal laws about fireworks in a nature
preserve, something like that," Travis said. We knew he wouldn't be
behaving like this if that was all that was the matter. "I don't want
to get noticed by the military. Or even the Everglades rangers, for
that matter. This has all got to stay secret."

Before long the Hueys were too far away to see or hear. Caleb backed
us out of the briar patch and headed us back home. But soon he was
slowing again. He waved, and I stood up and could see another airboat
piloted by a grizzled old conch who must have been seventy. There was a
tangle of weeds and vines between us, keeping us about twenty yards
apart. A tourist couple was sweltering in pants and long-sleeved
shirts, wearing safari hats with netting veils. They waved happily to
us and we waved back, smiling. Kelly snapped their picture, and the
woman snapped right back at her.

"Broussard!" the old man shouted over the idling engines. "Did you hear an explosion, ol' hoss?"

"Heard something, McGee," Caleb allowed. "Back yonder, I think." He
pointed at an angle at least ninety degrees away from where the launch
had actually happened.

"Saw something takin' off like a rocket, too."

"Probably just some kids. You know how they are."

"Yeah... in my day it was cherry bombs."

"These days, it's likely to be an H-bomb," Caleb laughed.

McGee leaned over and spit in the water, which didn't make his female passenger too happy. "Y'all take care, now, y'hear?"

IT WAS FUNNY how, on the way out, I figured we were
probably the only human beings for twenty miles in any direction.
Coming back, I thought somebody needed to install a traffic light.

I'm exaggerating. But we saw maybe a dozen other airboats. There
were pickups and SUVs and ATVs on the dirt roads, and small planes
overhead. None of them gave us any reason to believe they were looking
for us.