Suzanne turned as hard as she dared. Boats do not turn on a dime, and if she cut it too sharply, there would be dire consequences. She swung the boat into an arc.
The boat shook with abrupt violence, banging against the sand flat spreading out ahead of the mangroves. The engine bucked in its mounting.
“Son of a bitch,” Bobby said.
Suzanne pushed a tangle of hair from her eyes. She’d kept her hair pulled back behind her head for the last couple of months. The wind had set it free.
“You get up on the bow,” Bobby said. “I’ll put her in reverse.”
Suzanne and the others moved forward to try to even out the weight on the boat. Although they were up on a plane, most of the weight and contact with the water belonged toward the stern. Now, they had a problem. Momentum had carried them well into the sand flats, and the boat was mired in the mud.
The engine grumbled and the prop tore into the muck.
“Ayaugh,” Bobby grunted. “She’s digging like a pig. I don’t want to bust the prop.”
“Ginnie,” Suzanne said, “time to get your feet wet.”
Suzanne stepped off the stern and into the water. Her feet sank into the rich mud. The water was less than a foot deep here, but the mud was almost as deep.
“Oh, this is disgusting,” Ginnie said.
“Shut up and push.” Suzanne was acutely aware of the sharks. They were juveniles, mostly. A bite from a five-foot shark could be fatal out here, though.
They struggled at the bow, putting their backs into it. The boat turned, inches at first, then gaining momentum as the wind helped them to turn it.
Suzanne felt crustaceans and shells against her bare legs, scraping amidst the primeval slime. She pushed so hard, her left foot got stuck, deep down in the muck. She fell facedown when the boat slipped away.
The unrelenting storm poured down thunder and lighting and sideways rain.
Suzanne pushed herself up with both hands and strained to pull her foot free. She managed to do it, but lost her sandal in the process.
“Eek!” Ginnie squealed. “Something just rubbed against me.”
“Well, go!”
The water was up to Suzanne’s knees now, and the boat was drifting away. She could hear Bobby cursing and then the engine caught, and the sound shifted when he put it into gear. Suzanne hustled, letting Ginnie climb aboard at the stern with a hand from Bobby.
She climbed aboard, breathing hard, and minus one shoe. “Damn,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll take the helm for a bit,” Bobby said, a wry smile wrinkling his sun-battered face. “You did good. I’ve been resting. Your turn.”
“No way I can sleep now,” she said. “But you can take the helm. I’ll help navigate.”
“We’re within a few miles of the channel to Flamingo,” Suzanne said. “That’s Snake Bight off to starboard.”
“Yup,” Bobby said. “We find our way there, then it’s easy sailing for a little bit. Then, course, we got Whitewater Bay to cross. And Hells Bay. Ugh. I got no idea why that crazy old fool decided to hole up north of Hells Bay. Coyote’s crazier than I ever thought about being.”
“Let’s hope we can find it,” Suzanne said. “By that, I mean you.”
“Oh, I’ll find it,” Bobby said. He tapped his head with a bony finger. “I know where it’s at. I just don’t like getting there much. Especially not in this mess. All right, hang on. I’m gonna take it slow until I can find the next marker for sure. We don’t want to have to walk out of here.”
The next few hours were maddening. They made little progress, continually running aground, then having to nurse the boat ahead. It was dusk when they spotted a red channel marker. They’d gone a mile off course. The rain tapered off to a drizzle and finally ceased.
By the time they made it to the entrance of the deep channel heading into Flamingo, the stars were strung out across the sky, brilliant and majestic.
“Momma,” Taylor said. “Have you ever seen the sky like that?”
“Not with you, hon. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I wish I could take a picture. So I could show it to Daddy when he comes home.”
Suzanne laughed and hugged her girl. Bobby pulled the boat beneath a canopy of mangroves, and they spent the night under the open air, curled up in the boat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hells Bay
Stryker flashed his ID badge to the MPs at the entrance to the Nashville airport, and drove past lines of military vehicles choking the road. He parked in the garage across from the terminal and went inside. He needed a plane.
His superiors had provided him with written orders and identification that gave him the authority to commandeer a jet if he chose to do so. The problem was, if an officer decided to authenticate those orders, Stryker would be apprehended at best, shot on sight at worst. He decided to take a different course of action.
He wandered onto the airfield, smiling and chatting with the soldiers who were going about their business. There was a sense of relief on the base, and soldiers who might have been baleful and resentful a week ago were eager to help. The bandage on his neck helped, a war wound, he told them, a piece of shrapnel he caught in Colorado.
Removing that damn ICS chip by myself was more dangerous than getting shot at. The Iceman could have been a surgeon.
He caught a ride on a civilian jet bound for Miami, loaded with supplies and a few airmen. He slept on the plane.
At the airport in Miami, he found a helicopter pilot conducting a preflight inspection of his aircraft. When the rotors began to turn, Stryker approached the bird with his weapon drawn.
Stryker convinced the pilot it was in his best interest to fly him into the backcountry. The pilot, a man in his early twenties who told Stryker he had a wife and baby at home, pleaded for his life.
“If you do as I say, you will live,” Stryker said. “I just need a lift.”
“We could get shot down,” the man said.
“You’d better figure something out,” Stryker said.
“I’m supposed to be headed north to Fort Lauderdale.”
“Fly north and then drop down to the deck. Report engine trouble.”
“All right. There is a bad storm headed this way.”
“Perfect. Remember,” Stryker said, “if you cross me, you’re dead.”
“Copy that.”
The small aircraft took off and headed north, then due west. The smoking city below receded and gave way to the Everglades.
They flew just above the trees, the rain pounding the windshield and the wind buffeting the aircraft. The pilot gripped the stick tightly, working the levers with his feet and cursing under his breath. The engine was a roar and small vibrations rippled through Stryker’s chest.
“Where are we going, exactly?”
Stryker produced the GPS coordinates he’d written down. “Here, he said. Just north of Hells Bay,” he shouted.
“There’s nowhere to land the aircraft. It’s all water, from the looks of it.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Stryker said. “I know how to swim.”
With an airspeed of just over a hundred miles per hour, they arrived in the vicinity of the target in just over an hour.
Visibility was poor, and there was nothing to see but a tangled maze of mangroves. Stryker began to doubt the wisdom of this trip.
“Keep circling,” he told the pilot.
“There’s nothing here,” he shouted. “What are you looking for?”
“We’ll know it when we see it.”
“We’re right on top of these coordinates.”
“Put us closer to the water. There in that pond.”
“Roger that.”
Something snapped against the windshield, and a spider web of cracks appeared. A second later came plinking sounds against the light metal skin of the helicopter, and the pilot pulled hard on the stick, the bird lurching and spinning.