Wood's Reach (2 page)

Skirting the submerged hazards, Mac steered to the outside of the banks, allowing the escaping boat the deeper water of the channel, and with Jesse running the flats on the inside, they worked together to corral their prey. Both men knew these waters like the backs of their hands, and the boats slowly converged, forcing their prey into the shallows between Cutoe Key and the banks.

The sound of the escaping outboards changed—a high whine drifting back to him on the wind. Mac was watching intently, but he could have closed his eyes and known the other boat had grounded. Dropping speed, he waited for Jesse to make the first move, figuring he would know the adversary they faced. Mac pulled to the edge of the flat and saw the two men on the grounded boat, wondering if they were locals and he should intervene. After a quick look, neither man registered in his database, and the man behind the wheel would be hard to forget. It looked like his round head was stuck on his body without a neck, and Mac filed him away as Ironhead. The other man was smaller and looked more like a lawyer.

Ironhead drew a pistol and pointed it at him. Slamming the throttles in reverse, Mac spun the wheel and sped out of range. Once he felt secure, he ducked behind the console and watched. Bullets splashed the water a hundred yards short and then their aim changed. After realizing they were not shooting at him, he remained where he was and chanced a look. Jesse was returning fire, but the shots were wide. Jesse was a retired Marine sniper, so Mac knew he was firing to pin them down, not to hit them. Both weapons were at the limits of their range, and with the light chop on the water, their aim would be thrown off, but Mac knew Jesse, and if he wanted them dead, they would be facedown on the deck.

Another sound caused him to look up, and he saw an unmarked helicopter speeding toward them. It approached and circled, dropping altitude as it evaluated the threat. Mac could see Jesse on his radio and assumed he was talking to the pilot. The helicopter continued to circle but remained high enough to avoid the gunshots fired from below. Soon the sound of another boat came from the northwest. The sheriff’s boat approached, expertly avoiding the shallows as it coasted to a stop at the edge of the deep water and hailed the stranded boat.

“Drop your weapons and prepare to be boarded,” a man’s voice boomed loudly from the exterior speakers.

Mac turned to the boat and saw the two men drop their weapons overboard. Carefully he marked the spot in his mind to try and retrieve them later. No point letting them sit there for a lobster diver to wander across. The men had their hands over their heads, and the helicopter dropped altitude to cover the approach of the sheriff’s boat. Mac was caught off guard by the blast from an approaching helicopter, and he looked in Jesse’s direction. The flats boat had turned and was angling away from the action. Following his lead, Mac pulled the throttle back and followed Jesse into Harbor Channel.

The two boats bobbed side by side, both men quiet, neither the type who needed to talk everything through. They watched the men climb off the stranded boat under the drawn guns of the deputies. They waded to the sheriff’s boat, climbed aboard, and were handcuffed to a railing. With the prisoners secured, the boat took off in the direction of the mainland. The helicopter turned back and suddenly the scene was silent. The only sound now was the idling of Jesse and Mac’s well-tuned engines, and the waves slapping gently against the hulls as the two men worked with the current to keep their boats in the channel.

“Beer?” Mac asked.

“Sure. I can swing by your place. Want to see what you’re up to,” Jesse responded.

Mac led the flats boat up Harbor Channel and into the cut leading to the single piling where he tied off. Jesse utilized the Maverick’s shallower draft and edged almost to the beach, where he raised the engine and dropped the power pole. Mac waded in and the two men clapped each other on the back.

“Good to see you, man,” Mac said and led Jesse to the main clearing.

“You too. Thanks for the help there,” Jesse responded.

Mac knew he had it handled without him, but let it go. They walked to the clearing, and he went to a small propane refrigerator, where he pulled out two bottles of beer, shook off the moisture and handed one to Jesse. “Can I ask what those guys did?”

Jesse took a sip and tipped the bottle to Mac. “You know how it is,” he said. Mac understood and the two men drank together in silence. It was an interesting friendship, both men naturally reclusive and quiet, but having developed a respect for each other over the years.

Jesse broke the silence. “You’ve got quite the project going here. I didn’t know the damage was this bad.”

“It’s just work,” Mac said and drank again. “Something to do so I don’t have to think about business and Mel. If you think this is bad, you ought to see my old house.”

Jesse left it alone and finished his beer. “What’s that buddy of yours, Tru, up to? Isn’t it about time he stirred up another hornet’s nest?”

Mac shook his head solemnly. “You have no idea. Last I heard, he was in Key West working a parasailing gig.”

They both laughed at the thought, finished their beers, and walked back to the beach together. Mac stood there as Jesse backed out of the cut, watching him enter the channel, then cut the wheel to starboard and speed away. When the white running light from the flats boat faded into the distance, Mac picked his way back to the clearing, fighting the mosquitos as he went.

He pulled a large lobster tail and a beer from the refrigerator by the shed and went to the grill. Using a match, he lit the burner, the ignitor long lost to the salt and moisture in the air. Solar electric and propane were his energy sources, but the photovoltaic panels had been damaged in the fire, leaving him with only gas appliances. For the time being, the only electrical power came from a small generator used to operate the tools he needed to rebuild the house. Rain barrels were the water department, and along with the refrigerator, the water heater and grill comprised his utilities. When completed, the house would use the roof for both solar panels and water collection, greatly increasing the capacity of the island.

While the grill heated, he grabbed another beer and moved into the shed to avoid the mosquitos. The small room was overloaded but organized. On the right was a sheet of plywood where the solar equipment would be mounted. Against the back wall, gear and tools were piled on steel shelves. The left-hand side had a workbench with shelves overhead for more tools and hardware. The space was cluttered, but somehow it reassured him. He lit a kerosene lamp and sat on a barstool pulled up to the bench. Once the light had evened out, he pulled out a manila envelope, opened it, and took another sip of beer, steeling himself for the latest bad news.

His livelihood, a converted forty-five-foot lobster boat, had been confiscated when Trufante, his wayward friend and deckhand, had been talked into a quick score. He had finally gotten it back, but the feds had not taken care of it while it was in their care, and one of the twin diesels had seized. Removing the invoice from the envelope, he placed it on the counter, deciding another beer was in order before he got the bad news. After putting the lobster on the grill and grabbing a fresh bottle, he sat down and reviewed the carefully itemized bill.

Not as bad as he’d thought, but it was considerably more than his meager cash on hand. He might have gotten his boat back from the feds, but his commercial fishing license was still suspended after Trufante’s illegal plundering of the lobster casitas. Mac had earned a good deal of money working with Wood and salvaging when he could, but the cost of rebuilding the house on the island and his boat at the same time was beyond his means. Now without the fishing income, he was living on his small nest egg. He thought back to the lost stash of gold he had cached on the reef, again realizing how foolish he had been to trust his treasure to the sea. One stray anchor had dispersed the contents over the seafloor—probably never to be found again.

He reached up for the thumb drive on the shelf and turned it in his hand. The images on the drive contained what he thought were the clues to a mystery—one that might have a large payday attached to it. Over the years he had tried to figure out the mysterious tattoos, suspecting they led to a treasure, but had hit a dead end. He’d never had the right eyes to analyze the images, and the mystery had remained unsolved.

The smell of the lobster cooking brought him back to reality, and he went outside to check the grill. The tail was ready. Taking it from the grate, he sat down and ate in silence, his thoughts drifting to his other enigma—Mel.

***

“You freakin’ morons,” Hawk berated the two men sitting in the Mercedes with him. “How the…?” He stopped short, knowing his breath was wasted on the men, one a thug hired for his muscle, the other a disbarred lawyer employed for his brains. He stared at them, then turned away and started the car. Pulling out of the sheriff’s station, he turned onto US-1 and headed north. After a silent mile, he turned right into a driveway. “We’ll talk on the boat.” It had taken a long call to the sheriff filled with promises of future favors to persuade him to drop the weapons charges. That was the easy part. It was ICE and the antiquities trafficking charges that worried him—the federal agency was known to act quickly.

He parked under the house, built ten feet above the ground, and walked down the gravel path to the boat, unable to take his eyes off the red labels stuck to the doors. His house had been confiscated within hours of the men’s arrest and the discovery of the antiquities they were carrying. Fortunately, the sixty-five-foot steel-hulled trawler he had just boarded was held in a shell corporation and shielded from the authorities. He would have to move it tonight, probably to his ex’s house—the end to a wonderful day.

The men sat across from him in the salon. “Who leaked the information?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but that dude out there got wind of it somehow and was all over us. We made the transfer like you said, but they were on us in seconds. All we could do was run,” the lawyer said.

“Run right into the sheriff is where you ran. Now you cost me twenty grand cash to bail your asses out.”

“We’ll take care of it,” the muscle-bound man with no neck said. “I want a piece of that guy.”

Hawk rubbed the little hair on his balding head. “Let it go. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

Chapter Three

“We gotta talk,” the man said as he walked up to Trufante.

The lanky Cajun continued to hose off the parasail boat, ignoring the request. The man went to the spigot and turned off the water. “Now.”

Trufante turned to face him.

“You can’t be doing that.”

“Doing what?” Trufante asked.

Both men wore khaki shorts and matching polo shirts with the name of a water sports rental company embroidered on the front. Trufante, however, looked ragged and, aside from wearing the clothes, was breaking most of the dress code rules.

“Come on, dude,” the other man said. “It’s one thing to be helping the girls into the harness, another to be feeling them up. You got to keep your hands to yourself.”

“Shoot. Ladies love me,” Trufante said, his Cajun accent getting deeper as he went on the defensive.

“Well, that was the last complaint. One of these women is going to sue us.”

“Y’all got insurance for that, don’t you?” Trufante asked.

“I gotta let you go, man. You’re a blast to work with, but this is going to end badly,” the man said and turned away.

Trufante dropped the hose and kicked the transom of the boat. Losing the job was not the end of the world. It was temporary and wasn’t really his thing, though the contact with the women tourists was kind of nice. All told, though, he’d rather be fishing, but it had been a dismal lobster season and the dolphin hadn’t started to run yet. Most years, stone crabs bridged the gaps between seasons, but they had been down as well, forcing him to seek another line of work, at least until something better came up. Mac kept saying he’d get his commercial license back before too long, but he spent all his time rebuilding Wood’s place. With no options in Marathon, Trufante hopped on his bike and relocated sixty miles to Key West to take advantage of the influx of spring break tourists.

He looked down the dock, trying to see if Shelly was still in the office. Might as well get his last paycheck and blow this town, he thought. Without a reason to stay, he figured he’d head back to Marathon and try to talk Mac into doing something that made some money. He walked toward the office and tried the knob, but the door was locked. He banged a few times, then shielded his face and peered in. There was no one there. Moving into the shade, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the tip money he had earned today. He counted out fifty dollars in wadded-up fives—not bad for not doing much, but nowhere like the cash he and Mac used to make.

Walking over to Front Street, he decided to take a detour to Mallory Square and watch the tourists gape at the sideshows and the sunset. After that, maybe go to the Turtle and have a few beers. His bike was parked at a friend’s apartment on the other side of Duval Street, and he rationalized it was all on the way. The crowd thickened as he approached the square. With spring break came the families, an entirely different crowd than he was looking for, and he thought about shining it and just getting a beer when he saw her.

It was more a dance than a walk. Almost as tall as his six-foot frame, she looked lost, wandering in circles with a purple suitcase in tow. Her frizzy hair partially covered her face, allowing only a glimpse of a proud nose and full lips, then fell halfway down her back. Loose clothes concealed her body, but her shorts showed off legs that were long and lean. Wanting to see her eyes, he moved at an angle towards her and commenced the patented Trufante courtship dance. He liked what he saw.

She was still bopping her head, and he looked for the telltale earbuds, but her hair concealed her ears and there was no sign of a cord. She started to circle back like she was lost, and he decided to make his move.