Back on the ground, I considered angles and distance. Years ago, with the Sig Sauer, I’d been able to shoot consistently and accurately up to about fifteen meters. I paced off the distance from the mangrove tree and built a makeshift lean-to on that spot. Also I constructed a small fire pit, then lit a pile of twigs and let it burn until it smoldered.
This had to be a convincing little outpost.
I thought I had everything I needed in my backpack but, of course, didn’t. Twice I had to make the long walk to my boat to get something I’d forgotten. A typical camping exercise.
This, however, was not a typical camp.
I kept the big fire burning for light. I opened a can of black beans and a small canned ham. Stuck them near the coals and made forays down the beach to collect driftwood for the fire. I had a stack of wood that was belt-high before I finally stopped to eat. I chopped ham into beans, and squeezed in the juice of one of the limes I’d brought. Sat back in the shadows, looking out across black water, eating, looking at the fire.
Driftwood makes the best of fires. It’s saturated with sea salt and ocean minerals. The chemical combustion of those salts and minerals creates flames that burn translucent blue, green, and violet-colors never seen in other campfires. Each piece of wood burns differently; each chunk creates its own prismatic display. Driftwood accurately translates the iridescent hues of Caribbean water into heat and flame.
As I sat there, my memory moved automatically and without conscious interest to that evening, years ago, after I’d loaded my little wooden skiff with camping gear and arrived alone at this place. I remembered my first view of the mangroves of Shark River. To a boy of eleven, they’d appeared massive, prehistoric-a black and green border at the Earth’s end.
The river, too, seemed well-named. For water to suggest the presence of predators, it must be sufficiently dark and volatile to create swirling ambush points and unexpected drop-offs. It must have some depth to it, too, enough to shield that which lies beneath and thus demonstrate a potential for attracting creatures unseen-creatures that are unexpected, dangerous.
The second day of that long-ago camping trip, I’d baited a heavy boat rod with a live mullet and drifted on an incoming tide along the sheer mangrove wall. The mullet was the size of a bowling pin. I never expected that there was anything around big enough to hit it.
I was wrong. Within a few minutes, something below turned on the bait so hard that it nearly snatched the rod and me out of the skiff. Then it ran off a hundred yards of fifty-pound test line, pulling the skiff and me along behind like a ski boat before it popped the monofilament as if it were string.
I’d pitched my Scout tent on Shark Point. After hooking and losing that fish, though, I moved camp south to Cape Sable, miles from the river. Even then, I loved to swim open water, but the experience had done something to my confidence, to my sense of security above water and below. I didn’t want to risk swimming again in a place that attracted animals so large and predatory.
Staring at the fire, I also thought about my mother. No longer able to recall her face from memory, I now remember her only from photographs. An attractive woman with strong cheeks and good eyes. By all accounts, she’d been a gifted amateur naturalist and one of the earliest advocates for a save-the-Everglades movement. She’d spent a lot of time lobbying hard up in Tallahassee.
I found it oddly comforting to know that just around the far curvature of Cape Sable was Flamingo, once an isolated fish camp, now headquarters for Everglades National Park. There, nearly hidden by mangroves, is a little brass plaque commemorating the founding of the park. My mother’s name is there, second column, about midway down.
The last thing I did before climbing the tree and zipping myself into the hammock was re-anchor my boat. I anchored it bow pointed seaward, double-anchored, stern tied by a long line to a stake I drove into the beach.
Then I went for a quick swim. I swam out a couple hundred meters. There was a fresh wind blowing and I rode the waves up and down, the horizon all around me. From the crest of each wave, I could see the stars that form the Southern Cross.
The Cross was at eye level, afloat way, way out there at open sea.
Several times that night, I awoke to the sound of wind and to the niggling despair of old memories. Once I heard a powerboat come in close to shore and shut down abruptly. I thought I saw a light in the far distance. Thought I heard something going thud-thud-thud, like wood hitting wood.
I waited, watched, listened. Decided it was probably a pompano fisherman working the beach, banging his hull with a paddle to spook fish into his gill net.
Cordero or his hired helpers could not possibly have had time already to rent a boat or steal a boat and track me to Cape Sable.
I checked the cell phone to make certain it was still on.
Plenty of battery remaining.
If I had to stay there a few days, I could always recharge it from the adapter on my skiff.
I tried to call Harrington one last time. Got his voice mail. Didn’t bother leaving a message. There was no need.
20
They came to kill me the next day. They came blasting along the noonday beach, spraying white water against the blue of a February sky. Two men, both Caucasian, in a cabined, junky tri-hull that had an OMC outboard on the transom and faded block letters on the side:
CHOKOLOSKEE BOAT RENTALS.
That told me something. Gave me a little boost of confidence. It told me Cordero or his men were acting on last-minute information. Told me they hadn’t taken time to get organized or to plan. They were eager-very, very eager to get the job done. They wanted to find me, make the hit, then get the hell out.
I’d been worried they’d come with a chopper. Maybe two. The drug people have plenty of money. If they’d sent a chopper after me equipped with the right kind of heat-sensing electronics, I wouldn’t have a prayer.
It also suggested that they hadn’t been tracking me personally. Someone had been passing them information.
I knew exactly who it was.
I was high above the ground on my little camouflaged platform watching them through my superb Zeiss binoculars. Hours before dawn, the wind had freshened from the north, blowing in a glittering high-pressure system. The seas were choppy; the sky had a crystal, Arctic resonance. The temperature dropped so abruptly that, by first light, it was too cold to sleep, so I climbed down from my hammock and stomped around until I got the blood circulating again. I used the binoculars to check the beach where I’d heard the boat the night before.
Nothing.
Because I was still cold, I stoked the big beach camp fire until it was roaring and boiled coffee, baking myself in the fire’s heat, watching the horizon for boats.
There were a couple shrimp boats far out to sea, booms folded like wings. A speck of a sailboat, too, its canvas gull-white, motionless in the wind. Nothing in close, though.
Because I was confident I had the time, I took my entrenchment tool and hiked back through the sea oats and prickly pear cactus southward to the grove of royal palms.
It took awhile, but I finally found the remains of what was probably the Lunsford house, the place Tuck had described in his note. Partially buried in the sand were sheets of tin from the fallen roof and gray planks of clapboard. There was a rusted iron hulk being strangled by vines-a generator, perhaps-along with a small junkyard of pipe, porcelain, glass and wire. Out back were a couple of cattle skulls, too. Nearby were short chains of vertebrae growing out of the sand.
The stone pilings weren’t hard to find. There were more than a dozen of them, much too heavy to move, spread out in a symmetrical, Stonehenge pattern.