I ran a mile or more upwind, then shoreward before switching off my engine. Then I set about collecting my gear as I let the wind drift me down, down, ever closer to Copper Rim. Twice I had to use the trolling motor to maintain the driftline I wanted. Then, when I was slightly downwind but still at least a quarter-mile from the beach, I dropped anchor.
The campfire threw a halo of light over what appeared to be a tiny stretch of marl beach. There were half a dozen mullet skiffs pulled up onto the beach, and I could see the dark shapes of men moving around the fire. There were tents in the background; a radio was blaring. The wind swept the jarring heavy-metal racket past me. I checked behind me to make certain I wasn't silhouetted by a marker light—there were none—then I pulled on the balaclava face hood, the gloves, and gathered the A.L.I.C.E. pack in which I had stashed my emergency gear. Finally, I strapped fins over my jungle boots and slid, fully clothed, into the water.
The water was cold and as salty as the open sea. I stayed otter-deep in the water, fins working silently beneath the surface. Found myself counting each leg kick out of old habit. But there was no need for that. Swam nearly to the beach, then had to walk myself hand over hand, belly-down, through the shallows.
There were seven men lounging near the fire, passing a bottle around. The only one I recognized was Julie, the tall fisherman with the biceps who'd given Tomlinson and me a hard time at Arlis Futch's fish house. His buddy J.D. was nowhere to be seen. They didn't see me as I went from boat to boat, slithering over the gunwales to cut each and every fuel hose. I had to do it. One thing I wanted to avoid was a boat chase. My skiff was undoubtedly faster and it ran very shallow indeed. But no boat can run as shallow as a mullet boat. A mullet boat can jump sandbars and travel across flats where shorebirds can stand. It is because a mullet boat's engine is mounted forward near the bow in its own well. To catch me, all they had to do was spread out and run cross-country until they cut me off. Even if I did manage to dodge them, they might have weapons, and a bullet will win a boat race every time.
When I had their fuel systems disabled, I hugged myself down against one of the boats to listen. But because of the music and the wind, I could only decipher snatches of random conversation. Once I heard Julie shout, "An' if you ever tell a living soul what I jes' said . . ." but the rest of his words were indistinguishable. Tried to get a little closer, but couldn't get close enough to hear if there was any discussion of what had happened to Tomlinson.
It wasn't good. My original plan, conceived in rage, was to identify the guilty parties, wait until they were asleep, slice through the tent walls, and then punish them, one by one. Nothing bloody or brutal—using my Israeli knife to carve SPY into their foreheads was never a consideration. But there were ways, several subtle and perfectly quiet ways, to make the guilty men regret for the rest of their lives what they had done to my friend.
Yet I had abandoned that plan for a couple of reasons. One was that Ron Jackson was no fool. He would know who had done it and why it had been done. But the second reason was more compelling: After I had cooled down, I was reluctant to believe—didn't want to believe—that I was capable of such behavior. I was a legitimate biologist, for Christ's sake!
So I had settled upon a simpler plan: gather all the information I could surreptitiously, then take it back to Ron Jackson. By eavesdropping, I might be able to assemble data that was key to the assault on Tomlinson . . . maybe on the bombing and the boat theft ring as well. I'd give Jackson names, dates, and places. Wouldn't be able to tell him how I'd gotten the information, of course, but I would hand him the solutions on a platter, and leave the rest up to him. Everything nice and legal. . . relatively legal. The oudaw netters wouldn't even know that I had been there.
But there was too much wind, too much loud music.
I lay there in the water for more than an hour, hoping they'd shut that damn radio off. They never did. The only time they moved away from the fire—or the bottle—was to wander off into the mangroves. Because this was a two-month base camp, I guessed they'd had the good sense to designate a latrine area.
When I realized that, I realized my plan could still work—but with some tough modifications.
For some reason, that pleased me very much.
I reached into one of the boats and stole a coil of nylon rope. Then crawled out into water deep enough to float me, before swimming log-slow southward from their camp, toward the mangrove fringe. When I was shielded by the trees, I sat up, took off my fins, and wedged them tight into the A.L.I.C.E. pack. Then I put on the night-vision goggles and began to work my way carefully, quietly over the monkey-bar conduit of tree roots. January or not, mosquitoes found me. Cold or not, I was sweating by the time I finally found the little clearing. There was a wooden bench. A roll of toilet paper had been fitted onto a broken limb.
Through instinct and long conditioning, a human being knows that if there is enough light to see, then there is enough light to be seen. That instinct must be ignored while wearing Starlite goggles, particularly if you are hunched down in a swamp, lying stump-still . . . and on the hunt for other humans.
I decided to wait for Julie. I didn't like the bastard anyway, and he, at least, had a motive for attacking Tomlinson. I could picture the wolfish look he had given me while calmly lying to Arlis Futch. And I was still curious about the fragment of sentence I had heard: If you ever tell another living soul what I just said . . .
But Julie apparently had a plumbing system of iron. Or he was too lazy to leave the beach. Over the space of the next hour, four men stumbled through the bushes, did their business, and left. I was close enough to each man to reach out and grab him had I wanted. One of them carried a flashlight, which almost caused me to jump up into sprint position. But I remained frozen . . . closed my eyes as the light panned across the roots within which I lay . . . and he did not notice.
Tomlinson had once told me that too many people see only what they expect to see. It was true.
Finally, I heard the by now familiar rattle of bushes, and Julie came down the path. He was fiddling with his belt, already unzipping his pants. A cigarette hung from his lips. Through the Starlite goggles, the ash of the cigarette glowed like an infrared eye. I watched him drop his pants and take a seat on the bench.
I waited until he was done. Waited until he reached down for his underwear, and then I jumped him. Clapped my hand over his mouth as he went down, jammed my elbow hard into the base of his skull. When he made a meek effort to struggle, I whispered into his ear, "Make a sound . . . try to fight me . . . I'll cut your throat." Then I sapped him with my elbow again.
I felt his body go limp beneath me. Maybe he was unconscious, maybe he wasn't. Fear is the most powerful tranquilizer there is. I used electrical tape on him: hands, ankles, eyes, and mouth.
Then I hoisted Julie onto my shoulder, carried him to the water, and swam him out to my boat.
Chapter 16
I didn't remove the tape from Julie's mouth until we were fifteen miles or so away, on a deserted island named Patricio. Patricio had once been home to a couple of hardscrabble, turn-of-the-century farming families. All that remained of those long-gone lives were a couple of shell-mortar water cisterns and contours of high mounds the farmers had once plowed.
In South Florida, jungle is quick to reclaim the transgressions of man.
I'd used the stolen rope to tie Julie by the ankles. Tossed the rope over the thick limb of a ficus tree, then hauled him high, suspending him like a trophy fish. Let him swing helplessly for a few minutes, hands bound behind his back, before I walked over and stripped the tape away.