Wood's Reach (15 page)

“Type it, if you don’t want them to hear,” she whispered.

She had opened a small window in the corner of the display. “Any luck?” he said, wanting at least some conversation to appear normal.

“I’ve got some of the patterns translated into a chart of sorts,” she said, then typed,
But there’s something missing
.

“Show me what you have,” Mac said.

She changed the display of the screen to show a chart of the Middle Keys with lines crisscrossing from all angles. Next to it, she opened another window showing the tattoos. The lines matched.

“What am I looking at?” he asked.

“It’s a portolan chart. The lines emanate from several compass roses set at specific locations. Each one has thirty-two lines showing what they called the wind points, but they’re really just degrees or bearings on the circle.” She started to eliminate lines. “Just offshore of Marathon is where I expect the location is, based on the center of the pattern on the tattoos.”

He slid closer and typed,
Too much information
.

She continued, “It would appear you could locate whatever we are looking for by just transposing the lines onto a current chart, but it’s not quite so easy. There is no projection—you know, the true shape of the Earth’s surface—represented here. These lines assume that the planet is flat. We also don’t know what year this was drawn in. The lines are all based on magnetic north, which is the point a compass shows.”

“Right. We need to account for declination,” Mac said, starting to understand that the information she had uncovered was useful, but the search area was still close to ten square miles. Too large for an effective operation. It was discovered early on in China, and then later in Europe, that the magnetic pole moved over time, but calculating it was more of an art than a science. These charts had no reference to declination or even the date they were drawn. He leaned over and typed,
Any ideas?

She shook her head. “There has to be a key to tell us the year this was drawn. Without that, we’re lost.”

“What’s the range?” he asked.

“Somewhere between two and two and a half degrees every hundred years,” she said.

Mac did some quick math in his head. Averaging the distance of a degree at sixty miles, that could mean over a hundred miles a century, and they had no idea how old the map was. “So what is the missing link?” Mac wondered aloud.

Hawk came up behind them. “Missing link? It looks like you’re making progress.”

Mac looked at the screen, but Alicia had already entered the sequence of keys and it was dark. “Yeah. We’re getting there,” he said.

“Two hours,” Hawk grunted and walked away. Mac got up and looked out the port window. There was nothing but water. He figured they had cleared the Northwest Passage and were now cruising east toward Marathon. He had only a few hours to figure a way out.

***

TJ had been waiting long enough. His work was complete, and he banged on the cabin door. Several minutes later he heard movement, and a shirtless Trufante emerged, squinting in the morning sun.

“Top of the morning to ya.” He smiled, showing off his thousand-dollar grin.

“Come on, man. We gotta go,” TJ said.

“You been busy,” Trufante said.

On the deck were a dozen beer bottles of different varieties that TJ had scrounged this morning from the trash cans around the parking lot. “Had to fight some bums for the bottles,” he said.

“Molotov freakin’ cocktails,” Trufante said. “What’s your recipe?”

“Fuel and oil for the contents. Some torn clothes soaked in alcohol for the wick. Sealed it up with some candle wax I found in the emergency kit.”

“Right on,” Trufante said. “What’s our plan?”

Pamela appeared, shaking her hair out but ignoring them.

“We gotta get Mac and Alicia.”

“Right!” Trufante said. “Fire ’em up and let’s go.”

“How about some breakfast first?” Pamela asked.

TJ was prepared. “Danish in the bag there.”

She brushed past him, took one, and sat on the transom, picking pieces off and eating it, oblivious to what was going on around her. Trufante went to the helm and fired the engines while TJ packed the bottles in an empty beer case he had found. He stashed it in the cabin and released the dock lines. Seconds later they were in the channel, heading toward open water. Once clear of the last marker, Trufante turned to port, and they followed the coastline around Mallory Pier, staying between the markers of the deep channel leading to the entrance of the bight.

“Shit. She’s gone,” he said after they reached the inside marker and had a clear view of the harbor.

TJ looked around, his head falling to his chest. They were too late.

“Not to worry, dude. Mac found them on the radar before. We can do it again.”

“Head offshore toward Sand Key, and we can lose some of this traffic,” TJ said, sliding next to Trufante and pressing the power switch for the electronics. Seconds later, the screen populated, and he studied the boats. He had an idea what he was looking for, but he had to be patient. Soon, several miles from land, the clutter started to clear. The screen showed mostly boats now, and they saw a small blip, moving slowly east on the Gulf side.

“That’s them,” TJ said.

Trufante pushed the throttles down, letting out a whoop as he cut the wheel. The boat pivoted and sped toward the Gulf. They were on plane in seconds, cruising at fifty knots into a light chop. TJ studied the blip. It was at the edge of the third ring, fifteen miles ahead. At their current speed, they would be on them in an hour.

“What we gonna do when we catch ’em?” Trufante yelled over the engines.

“Pirates of the Caribbean,” Pamela said, smiling.

***

The closer they got to Marathon, the more distracted Mac became. Somehow he needed to give Hawk enough of the puzzle to buy some time. He briefly wondered what had happened to Trufante and TJ, but from his experience with the Cajun, he’d show up when you least expected or needed him. TJ might have a plan, but Mac couldn’t wait. He would have to act on his own.

Mac typed,
Transpose the lines onto a chart and give him something.

Alicia looked at him and nodded, then closed the window. She was working in one window with all the data in what appeared to be layers. Hiding the tattoos and land features from the screen, she left the grid. Next, she opened the NOAA chart labeled 11453 and placed it in the background. Manipulating the size of the grid she estimated the scale.

“There are no landmarks on the tattoos. Where do we put the compass roses?” she asked.

Mac rubbed the stubble on his face. That was one of the parts he could never figure out, but now with her computer wizardry, it became clear. “There are three, right?”

She nodded and looked at him, her fingers poised on the keyboard.

“Indian Key, Marathon and Key West. See if they’ll line up with Boot Key Harbor and the bight in Key West,” he said, tapping the locations on the screen with his finger, hoping at least the two roses would fall on the two natural harbors. He watched, nervously tapping his foot. Almost forgetting about Hawk and their circumstances, he was excited—after all these years, he sensed they were on the verge of solving the mystery. Anxiously he watched while she moved the grid to the two points he indicated. They fell into place, and he studied the chart.

The two roses fell directly in the center of the harbors, the third near Indian Key, an old wreckers’ port near Islamorada. Those would have been the three best landmarks in the early 1700s, and he sat back, wondering if he had been wrong all along.

“Give me the coordinates of these points.” He tapped the screen with a pen to show her three spots offshore of Marathon where all three sets of lines intersected. Hopefully this would buy some time.

Chapter Eighteen

Mac handed the coordinates to Hawk, who took them to the chart table. “You’re sure about this?”

“You know as well as I do that this is not an exact science,” Mac said.

“You lead me on some kind of wild goose chase, and this partnership is not going to end well,” Hawk said.

Frustrated, Mac got up, but Ironhead moved toward him, a pained look on his face. “We’ve been at this a long time. Mind if we go out on the deck and get some air?”

Hawk looked up from the chart where he was plotting the coordinates and nodded. “Looks like deep water,” he said.

“If it wasn’t, whatever it is would have been found already,” Mac said, pushing the door open.

He stood on the deck with Alicia. Looking out at the small puffy clouds and the light chop on the water, he shook his head. “What’s missing?”

Alicia was sitting on a small built-in bench backed up to the cabin. Mac motioned her toward the transom where they were less likely to be heard. “A key—there’s got to be one thing that will align everything.”

Mac stared at the wake of the boat, thinking of how, if it was him, he would have hidden a reference for the chart. Before electronics, mariners relied on sun and star sightings using sextants and backstaffs to estimate their position. The chronometer and then the GPS came along later, adding accuracy, but ancient mariners, no matter their origin or technology, all had one thing in common. “Stars,” he said.

“Maybe. That would date it, clarifying the declination,” she said. “Let me go have another look.”

“No,” Mac said. “He’s happy for now. Let him be.” Mac could see Hawk through the tinted windows, bent over the table studying the chart. The northern tip of Big Pine Key had just come into view, and they sat in the sun, watching the small islands pass by on the starboard side. “That’s it,” Mac said, studying the island. “Cheqea is the only one I don’t have pictures of.”

“Cheqea?” Alicia asked.

“Teqea’s twin sister. She’s a bit of a recluse. Lives out there somewhere on state land.”

She followed his gaze to Big Pine. The key was considerably larger than most, famous as the last refuge of the protected Key deer. The undersized deer were given thousands of acres of government land to roam. Somewhere in the scrub that comprised the landscape of the key, Cheqea could be found. The twins had a unique relationship, never understanding that their parents had put them, and their cousin Diego, in a position to find the treasure—whatever it was. If they could have worked together, they had the clues, but they hated each other. It must not have been the first time. The tribal elders had accounted for this, passing the tattoos down for generations without the treasure being found. But now two of the three were gone and the tattoos with them. Teqea and Diego’s tattoos were on the disk—Cheqea’s were missing. It had to be the answer.

***

“Dead ahead,” TJ said, looking up from the radar.

The boat was a thin line on the horizon, growing quickly as they closed the gap. They had just passed the Content Keys. The music blared through the sound system, rivaling the roar of the four engines on the transom. Trufante was still at the helm, and Pamela, who had figured out how to run the sound system, swayed to some Jimmy Buffett.

Trufante looked up from the gauges and saw it too, slowly growing, the tower of the trawler barely visible on the horizon. “Content Keys are coming up. We better make our move soon,” he said. Civilization would soon encroach on their efforts. This far out, the backcountry was the domain of smugglers, drug runners, and a few fishermen; another five miles would bring boat traffic and witnesses. He pushed the throttles forward, redlining the engines. They wailed in protest, but he ignored it and sped after Hawk’s boat. They were close enough to make out the details of the trawler, and he backed down the rpms before they were spotted.

“What’s the plan, man?” he asked TJ.

“Run ’em aground and then firebomb them.”

Trufante looked at him. “Dude, they’re going to have weapons. We need to figure this shit out.”

“Look.” TJ pointed to the trawler, its distinctive shape now clearly visible. “They’re turning.”

Trufante put his hand to his brow, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Wood’s old place.”

“Out here?” TJ asked.

Trufante ignored him, trying to think how they could parlay this development into a plan. “Not sure what the buggers are up to, but we can anchor off the back side, and they’ll never see us. Take ’em on land.”

“You sure that’s a good idea? That water looks pretty skinny.”

Trufante stared at the turquoise water, the color lightening the closer it got to shore until it was almost clear. Ignoring TJ’s concerns, he steered toward it. Hawk’s ship was around the corner now, needing the deeper water of the channel, but with their own outboards tilted up, he figured they only needed a few feet of water.

With a loud thud, all three passengers were thrown forward. They had bumped bottom before he expected. The engines screamed in agony as their water intakes, covered in the sand, were unable to suck the water needed to cool them. Alarms sounded, but Trufante reacted quickly and hit the tilt. All four engines lifted, and the change in weight distribution allowed the hull to float. He looked back at the array, letting the outside two down just enough for water to cover the propellers and submerge the intakes. Leaving the two longer-shaft inside engines in the air, he started the short-shaft pair mounted on the outside and backed off the shallow flat.

“That was freakin’ close,” he said, exhaling and smiling. “Maybe we need to reconsider our attack plan. It’d be a bad thing wrecking Celia’s babies.”

***

Hawk came on deck just as they turned toward Wood’s place. He looked at Mac. “We’re going to stop so you can get your gear. That’s it. No screwing around.” He took Alicia’s arm and dragged her toward the cabin door. “Don’t forget about this,” he said, holding the controller in his free hand.

Mac saw the fear in her eyes before Hawk pushed her inside. He tried to put it out of his mind, focusing his attention on Ironhead, watching him as he picked his way through the shallows, easily finding the cut channel. They coasted up to the piling, and Mac jumped off. He splashed through the waist-deep water and started toward the shore, but his foot caught something, causing him to fall. It was the old cable from the boom. Pushing forward, now totally wet, he gained the small beach and followed the trail to the clearing. Ignoring Ironhead, who was about ten feet behind him, he entered the shed and started tossing gear on the floor.