He emerged dizzy and coughing up salt water. He was trying to swim when his foot hit bottom. In less than ninety seconds the speeding cigarette boat had taken them nearly a mile offshore, where they’d reached a coral reef. He could stand flat-footed with his head above water. He cursed as he stood in the middle of a zipper of white foam that was Esteban’s wake, forced to watch as the boat grew smaller in the distance. Then he froze as he saw that Esteban was turning around. He was coming back-at full throttle, headed right at him.
The bastard is going to flatten me.
Jack dove beneath the surface and pressed himself against the reef. He cut his hands and knees on sharp coral that projected like huge fingers and fans from the floor, but it saved his life. He held fast as the boat zipped overhead. The churning propeller missed him by less than a foot. He emerged for air, saw the boat coming back for another pass, and went under again. This time, though, the boat approached more slowly. Esteban wanted to check his work. After two years of waiting, he had to see the blood.
“Are you fish food, Swyteck?” he called into the darkness. He was nearly certain he’d cut the miserable lawyer in half. He’d felt the thud. But the water was so shallow it was possible the boat had hit bottom rather than pay dirt. He looked left, then right, searching intently as the boat slowly arrived at the spot where he’d last seen his prey.
Jack clung to the reef, struggling to stay underwater. But he desperately needed air. The boat was right overhead, puttering at no-wake speed. A few seconds passed, and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He broke the surface and grabbed onto the diving platform on the back of the boat He looked up. Esteban hadn’t seen or heard him. The triple engines still rumbled loudly, even at a slow speed. Carefully, Jack pulled himself onto the platform and peered up over the stern. Esteban was studying the waves, longing to see little pieces of floating flesh.
Jack moved silently across the diving platform, toward the outboard engines. He was after the fuel lines. Without them, Esteban might get another mile from shore, but then he’d be stranded at sea. Jack reached for them and tried to muffle his cry as he scorched his hand on the hot engine block-but Esteban heard the stifled groan.
“Die!” he screamed, bringing the gaff down like an axe across Jack’s back.
Jack cried out in pain, but he grabbed the gaff and pulled as he tumbled into the water, taking Esteban with him. They plunged into just three feet of sea water, both hitting the jagged coral bottom simultaneously. Esteban emerged first, thrashing like a marlin on the end of a line as he struggled to hold Jack underwater. Jack tumbled over the coral, trying to find his footing so he could get his head above water. But Esteban’s powerful fingers found Jack’s throat before he could plant his feet. Jack kicked and swung with his fists, but the resistance of the water made his blows ineffective. His nostrils burned as he sucked in more salt water. He gasped for air but drew only the sea into his lungs.
He reached frantically on the shallow bottom for a rock to use as a weapon. There were none. But there was the coral that projected from the bottom like a fossilized forest. It was hard and sharp, and it cut like a knife. He groped and found a formation that felt like the stubby antler of a young buck. He grabbed it, snapped it off, and swung it up toward Esteban’s head. It hit something. Jack was blinded by the churning foam, but he sensed the penetration upon impact. He jabbed again, and finally the death grip around his throat loosened somewhat. He broke free and shot to the surface, coughing as he emerged.
Jack spit out the last of the salt water just in time to see Esteban, less than fifteen feet away, once again raising the gaff, which had floated back into his grasp. As he lifted it overhead, Jack could see the blood pouring from his throat.
“You bastard!” Esteban cried out. “You fucking bastard!” His arm shot forward in an attempt to impale, but Jack jinked to his left and grabbed the gaff’s wooden shaft. By now, Esteban’s eyes were glassy and his grip insecure. The loss of blood was taking its toll, but Esteban was still coming at him.
“No more!” Jack called out fiercely.
He drove forward, shattering the Cuban’s teeth with the blunt end of the gaff and pushing it into his throat The force of the movement jerked Esteban’s body backward, then headfirst under the waves as Jack leaned forward and maintained steady pressure on the pole. Only after a full minute, when the bubbles had stopped floating to the surface, did he unclench his hands and swim toward the boat.
Once aboard, he watched intently, still unwilling to believe that the fight was over. He sat for ten minutes, staring at the spot where Esteban had gone under, half expecting him to rise again like the mechanical shark in Jaws. But this was real life, where people paid for their actions. The full moon hung like a big bright hole in the darkness. A shooting star appeared briefly on the horizon, and the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull reminded Jack that even this drama had done nothing to disturb nature’s rhythms.
He heard a flutter behind him and looked up. A Coast Guard helicopter was approaching from shore. Jack sat perfectly still as the warm, gentle current washed across the reef and dispersed the dark, crimson cloud of Esteban’s blood. It was ironic, he thought. Hundreds, maybe thousands of oppressed refugees had fled Cuba in little rafts and inner tubes, only to be caught in the Gulf Stream and lost somewhere in the Atlantic. Finally, one of the oppressors was on his way to the bottom. And with God’s grace, the sea would never give him up.
Jack looked up as the pontoon helicopter hovered directly overhead, then came to rest on the surface. The glass bubble around the cockpit glistened in the moonlight, but he could see his father inside. Jack waved to let him know he was all right, and the governor opened the glass door and waved back.
“She’s okay,” his father shouted over the noise of whirling blades. “Cindy’s okay!”
Jack heard the words, but couldn’t assimilate them. She can’t be alive. He’d seen her with his own eyes. Seen her hanging there. The part of his soul where she’d resided had been ripped out of him. Still, he wanted to believe. Oh, how he wanted to believe. . He looked at his father intently, allowing himself some small measure of hope.
“She is definitely okay,” Harry said, seeing the confusion on his son’s face. “I just saw her. I just held her in my arms.”
The governor threw him a line, but Jack was too stunned to move. Slowly, the realization sank in. Cindy was alive. His father was with him. And the danger was behind them. He reached for the lifeline and swam toward the helicopter. The swirling wind from the chopper blades blew water in his face, but he didn’t mind. All the cuts and scrapes, the bruises-even his cracked rib-were glorious reminders that he was alive-alive with something to live for.
That much was obvious from the face that greeted him. As he looked up, Jack saw tears of joy in his proud father’s eyes.
Epilogue
Before Esteban’s body was borne by currents out to sea, his story had washed ashore with the force of a tidal wave. The media blitz began that Sunday morning and lasted for weeks, but the essential elements of the story were out within twenty-four hours. It was front-page news in every major Florida newspaper. It was the lead story on local and national network newscasts, and CNN even ran several hours of continuous coverage.
By Monday afternoon the Swytecks had revealed all to the media, and the truth was widely known about Esteban’s two-year campaign to avenge his brother’s execution. The public knew that neither Jack nor his father had killed Eddy Goss. Esteban had, as part of his plan to frame Jack and have him executed for a murder he’d never committed. The public knew that Esteban, not Jack, had murdered Gina Terisi, in a last-ditch effort to ensure Jack’s conviction. And the public knew that Governor Swyteck had not executed an innocent man. As Esteban had admitted to Jack, Raul Fernandez was in the act of raping the young girl when Esteban had killed her; both Esteban and Fernandez had gotten what they deserved.