The momentum of the boat carried us forward along an old mortar seawall into a narrow cut. The cut was only a few boat lengths wide, but it was deep enough to navigate on any tide. That made it a popular passage for small-boat traffic. The markers to the pretty little village of Pineland, and Pine Island, began on the other side.
"It's right in here someplace." Garrett was standing on the casting deck, his hands out, searching around in the darkness. "Watch yourself. . . ." Then: "Got it."
I felt the boat jolt abruptly.
"What is it?"
"You got a spotlight? Or just come up here and feel."
I reached under the console, brought out a flashlight. What Garrett had found was a length of what appeared to be quarter-inch steel cable. It was stretched tight across the cut, connected to something above the seawall on one side, then to a channel marker on the other.
Garrett said, "After they pulled out, I came blasting over here to see what they'd dumped. If I hadn't been in the dinghy, it'da cut my head off. As it was, it just knocked my hat back and scared the shit out of me. Didn't even see it. Hell, even in daylight, you probably wouldn't notice it—until it was too late."
He was pulling us along, hand over hand, toward the seawall. Had I been sitting at the wheel of my flats boat, the cable would have been about neck-high. Now that I was standing, it was belly-high. I projected what would have happened had a boat come wheeling through that cut doing twenty or thirty knots. A couple of fishermen, maybe, headed out at morning dusk ... or a family with two or three children perched on the bow of their Bayliner. Whatever the scenario, it was a bloody scene to imagine.
It sobered me. It leached the alcohol out of my brain. Stringing a cable across a busy waterway was not vandalism, nor was it a statement of political dissent. It was attempted murder, nothing less.
Garrett said, "Hand me those bolt cutters. I'll snip this side, then we'll pull our way back and get the other side, too."
I said, "No. Not yet."
"Huh? Why the hell not?"
"Did you contact the Coast Guard?"
He said, "What?"
"The Coast Guard."
"I hope you're not serious. There's plenty of time for that later."
"I am serious. Did you call them?"
Garrett demonstrated his impatience by being meticulously patient. "No, Doc, I didn't call the Coast Guard. I don't keep a VHF in a rubber dinghy. An idiot might, but I don't. What I did was go bust-assin' back to Cabbage to get the bolt cutters, then decided I could use some help. Which is where I felt kind'a lucky spotting you. Because I figured you'd be a good man to help me cut this bastard down before some poor sonuvabitch comes flying around that corner and cuts his head off. Which could happen any minute now!"
I told him to calm down, take it easy. Used my hand-held VHF to raise the Coast Guard on channel 16. I asked for the duty officer. The Coast Guard had me switch to 22-Alpha for extended traffic. While I waited, I opened the forward locker and broke out the big spotlight and plugged it in. Also got out the disposable gas air-horn. Handed them both to Garrett and told him that unless deaf and blind people were racing around Pine Island Sound, he should be able to stop any boat for miles.
It took quite a while to give the Coast Guard all the information they wanted, and the duty officer finished by suggesting we stand by.
"Christ awmighty, are you happy?" Garrett sputtered when I was finished. "This'll take all night."
I didn't need all night. All I wanted was a few minutes alone with the cable. Anyone sick enough to rig such a thing was also sick enough to include a booby trap. Jimmy Darroux was a failed bomber. But there might be other, more skilled bombers waiting in the wings.
I handed Garrett the VHF. "If a judge ever starts questioning you about mishandled evidence, you'll thank me."
"Right. . . . Where the hell do you think you're going?"
I had grabbed the flashlight, Leatherman pliers, a chunk of heavy monofilament line, and had slipped overboard into waist-deep water. "I want to take a closer look at the cable before we cut it."
I watched while Garrett and my skiffdrifted away on the incoming tide . . . then used the flashlight to follow the cable up over the seawall.
The cable appeared to be belted around the base of a palm tree. Before approaching the palm, I tied my Leatherman pliers to the monofilament, thereby making an effective plumb line. Then I walked slowly, very slowly, holding the plumb line out just as far from my body as I could get it. If there was a trip wire in my path, the monofilament would catch harmlessly on it.
There was no trip wire.
Even so, I remained cautious. Garrett had told me the men had lifted something heavy out of their boat. Something that made them grunt. The typical marine battery weighs thirty-seven pounds. A five-gallon can of gas weighs more than forty. Add a blasting cap and you have the ingredients for a powerful bomb.
I had good reason to be cautious.
I used the fishing line to probe around the cable. No strings or wires running from it. Used the flashlight to check overhead. No strings or wires to be mistaken for harmless vines. The cable was secured with a common screw-down bridle. I slid the fishing line delicately, very delicately, into the chock, alert for the first slim resistance of wire.
Nothing.
I took a couple of deep breaths . . . relaxed . . . used the screwdriver head on my Leatherman to free the cable. Then I half swam, half waded across to the channel marker, where, after a less exacting inspection, I disconnected that end, too. Had there been a mad bomber, he almost certainly would have placed the device on the Useppa side of the cut, where it could do the most damage.
Garrett came puttering up as I was coiling the cable. Shut off the engine and, after a properly dramatic pause, said, "You get a few beers in you, you act like a damn lunatic. I'm serious."
"Nothing but screws and chocks holding it. So I figured, what the hell, why wait for the Coast Guard?"
Garrett said, "No shit, Sherlock," as I climbed into the boat.
As we idled back toward Useppa's harbor, I asked Garrett what he thought the men might have dumped. He said, "You didn't see? What the hell were you doing up there?" Before I could invent an answer, he said, "Here—take the spotlight. I'll show you." Then turned the wheel. When the bow nudged the beach, he took the light and began to sweep it back and forth. "Probably wake up everybody on the whole damn island. There-— see that? There's another one . . . and another."
What he was showing me appeared to be lengths of bar stock, chunks of two to three feet, scattered along the northwestern fringe of the island. I removed my glasses, polished the salt spots off, and looked again.
What I was seeing were fish. Dozens of them. I stepped out of the boat, carrying the flashlight.
They were big snook, ten-to-twenty-pounders. The snook is a prized saltwater game fish; an extraordinary animal, both in terms of behavior and physical beauty. It has an efficient, cartilaginous jaw that flares cutlasslike around black peregrine eyes that are ringed with gold. Its body is pewter-bright, amplified by yellow, with an armorwork of scales covering a dense and broadening musculature. It is a heavy, functional, predator's body, as if all the thousands of years of the species' evolution were the refinement of one moonless night in murky, prehistoric water. The black lateral line, running from gill to caudal fin, is a sports car touch, something that might have been dreamed up in Detroit. On any other animal, the stripe would appear frivolous. You see a snook for the first time and, along with the lingering impression of beauty, you think: Survivor.