The first night, they’d sat out on the roof of the boat drinking sangria, gazing at the stars, and telling stories. Henry and Bart had rigged some heavy fishing rods using big catfish for live bait. They used empty five-gallon water containers as floats to keep the cats close to the surface.
One of the rods started screaming a few hours after the sun went down. Something big devoured the bait and was running.
Henry and Bart jumped down the ladder to the stern, howling and laughing. Henry fought the shark for an hour, and it put up a good fight.
When Henry pulled the fish close to the stern, Bart leaned over to cut the line. The shark was a juvenile bull, maybe four feet long, thick and thrashing in the water under the light of kerosene lamps.
Bart strained to pull the fish close so he could cut the line above the metal leader and get a better look at the shark, leaning down over the stern. “Right out of the Darwin Awards,” Henry said later that night.
An alligator chomped down on the exhausted shark, skewering it between massive jaws. The gator thrashed its head furiously, shaking the fish like a rag doll.
“Shit!” Bart screamed, cutting the line.
“That was a big-ass alligator,” Henry said.
Suzanne thought it was one of the coolest things she’d ever seen. An apex predator devoured by another predator. She had the feeling that night of moving down several notches in the food chain.
The boat bounced over the light chop of Whitewater Bay. They passed countless mangrove stands that all looked the same, squat trees with roots gnarled and curving into the water.
“Here, take the wheel,” Bobby said. “You see that marker? Head for that. My hands are cramping up.”
Suzanne obliged and Bobby stood next to her, opening and closing his arthritic hands. They flew past the marker, down more narrow corridors of water and leaves, and then crossed the muddy expanse of Hells Bay.
They’d only seen a few moving boats since leaving Flamingo, all of them far away.
For more than an hour, they cruised the northern side of the bay while Bobby tried to remember. They tried more than one channel, only to come upon a dead end and turn back the way they had come.
“It’s a lot easier with a GPS,” Bobby said. Suzanne dumped it over the side before they pulled out of the canal back in Key West.
Suzanne groaned. Everything looked the same.
It was late in the afternoon when Bobby started to get excited. “This is it for sure,” he said. “I remember that stand right there. The branches are extra white, see? The sharp V shape in between.”
She didn’t see.
“This is goanna get tight, and then open up again. We’re close.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said.
“See. Like I said. Getting narrow. Looks like there’s nothing ahead.
Keep going. We’re lucky, it’s high tide. I swear I can smell it.”
Suzanne had the engine barely above an idle. The branches reached down and pushed at her face and the boat, but there was enough clearance to get through. Minutes later, she saw an open area, like a pond surrounded by more mangroves.
“This is it,” Bobby said. “I’m sure of it. You put on your best smiling face, ’cause Coyote don’t care much for strangers. He’s twitchy. He tolerates me, but he doesn’t know you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
River of Grass
The boat the officer had promised waited in the water at Bayfront Park, guarded by a bored-looking MP. Henry stepped out of the car and walked to the boat while his companions got their gear ready.
The boat would not do. It was a nice boat, a thirty-foot open fisherman that would have been ideal for trolling in the Gulf Stream for marlin.
Henry groaned.
“Look,” he said to the young soldier. “This isn’t what we asked for. It’s an open-water boat.”
The guy shrugged. “Best we could do,” he said. “Look around. Do you see many boats? Everybody who could left already. You’re lucky to have this one.”
“It’s not going to get me where I need to go,” Henry said. “We’re headed south to Lake Surprise. Card Sound.” A thin bit of misdirection.
“Sorry, man.”
“How did you get here?” Henry said.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you walk? Did you fly? Did you teleport?”
“A car. There’s no need to be a jerk.”
“How much fuel have you got?”
“Full tank,” the man said.
“I’ll be taking that,” Henry replied. “You go on back to the base in our car.”
“Whatever, man.”
Henry drove west through the Redlands, past wide open fields where crops languished, brown and decaying. This would have been strawberry season. There was no one to work the fields and no water to irrigate them with.
The roads were mostly clear and ruler straight, and Henry kept the accelerator pegged. His chest was tight and he was frantic with worry. Carlos and Wallace tried to distract him with jokes and war stories, but Suzanne and Taylor filled his mind.
They entered Everglades National Park, blowing by the Anhinga ranger station at a hundred miles an hour.
The river of grass stretched for endless miles on all sides. It amazed Henry that an area as wild and huge could exist so close to the sprawling megatropolis of Miami. Brown and green saw grass danced in the gentle breeze, and hardwood hammocks rose in places like islands of green. Anhingas, curious-looking waterbirds with serpentine necks, perched at the edges of the water with wings stretched out, drying off in the winter sun. A few deer bounded through the tall grass. Alligators, looking like blown-out car tires, sunned themselves on the side of the road and sometimes in the middle of it, where Henry went around them.
Henry saw a few campers on the side of the road in different dry spots, tents bright and cheerful against the subdued tan and brown tones of the wilderness.
He prayed they could find a boat at Flamingo. If there were no boats, he would search for a canoe. It would be a long trip, but it was doable. He’d find a way.
“We’d better hope that major doesn’t come in this direction,” Carlos noted.
“He’s got no idea where we’re headed,” Henry said.
“Well, he’s not going to let it go, you can be sure of that.”
“I know it. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
“We’ll be all right,” Wallace said. “He’ll wake up with a headache and a bad attitude. It’ll shake out in the end.”
Henry hoped Wallace was right. The major was the least of his worries.
They made excellent time. Not having the right boat was a blessing in disguise. Let’s see if our luck holds.
There were hundreds of people there, camping, a spontaneous community of folks who’d escaped the suburbs.
Teenagers played a game of touch football in the parking lot. Kids ran around with squirt guns and bathing suits. There was the smell of cooking fish mixed with the scent of the water.
A uniformed park ranger who looked like he was on the verge of forced retirement ambled toward the vehicle, waving at them and smiling.
“Howdy,” he said. “Military?”
“Yes sir,” Henry replied.
Carlos, Wallace, and McCoy opened the trunk and pulled out rucksacks loaded down with weapons and ammo.
“There’s nothing happening around here,” the ranger said, looking worried. “Everybody here is kind of minding their own business. Helping each other. We don’t need a bunch of shooting. Lot of kids, as you can see. Families.”