Mac travis adventures bo.., p.53
Mac Travis Adventures BoxSet, page 53
part #4 of Mac Travis Series
He saw a strange look come over Pamela at the mention of Trufante’s name. She crawled on the deck, careful to stay below the gunwale and out of sight. Mac glanced down and saw what she was up to. He needed to buy some time.
“What’s in the Glades that has them so interested?” he asked.
Hector ignored the question, but he could see from the look on Edgar’s sadistic face that Trufante was in trouble.
“She’s one mean woman,” Edgar said, laughing.
The brothers had lost their focus, at least for a moment, and Mac knew this was their only chance. He dove for the deck, going for the shotgun. Reaching it, he placed the barrel on the gunwale and fired blindly. Two shots fired back, sending splinters flying. He motioned to Pamela to take the gun and mimicked a trigger squeeze with his forefinger. She nodded and took the weapon. Crawling on the deck, he reached the bang stick and grabbed the shaft. With a glance at Pamela, he held three fingers, then two, and finally one. On the silent count, he heard the blast of the gun and, using it for cover, rose enough to throw the stick at the engine.
Another blast came from the shotgun and he heard a scream from the other boat. He drew a deep breath and cocked his arm. With no time to aim, he threw the spear as hard as he could in the direction of the outboard. Seconds later, there was a loud explosion and debris rained down around them. He wasted no time and went for the helm. Pushing Mel aside, he started the engines and jammed the throttle forward. It was several seconds later that he allowed himself to look at the damage. The small boat was bow up, its transom and engine had already disappeared beneath the surface. He didn’t wait to see if Hector or Edgar were alive.
16
Trufante watched the landscape fly by. After following US 1 past several bays, they had entered the lonely stretch of road through the southern Everglades leading to Florida City. He started to get anxious once they lost sight of the water; the flatlands made him uncomfortable. So did the woman driving. She had been unresponsive to his queries, ignoring him in favor of her techno music. Surprised when she turned left at a sign for Everglades National Park, he started to make a map in his head, not of the roads and landmarks, but rather of the canals and waterways. Thanks to an inborn, or inbred, navigation gene found in Cajuns who grew up in the bayous of Louisiana, if there was water around, he was never lost. From what he could see in the moonlight, they were passing through an agricultural area. The fields soon gave way to nature, and suddenly she turned left and slowed to avoid a yellow barricade with a No Trespassing sign. In the dim moonlight, he could see they had entered some kind of industrial facility.
Canals ran parallel to the streets, some larger than others. If he could get a boat, he was sure he could find his way home. That thought was erased from his mind when the car stopped and she pulled the gun from under her thigh. It had been there the whole time. Even if he had been able to reach the gun, as fast as she had been driving, the move could have been deadly.
“Stay here, and no trouble,” she said, exiting the car.
She went to a squat concrete building. Even in the narrow beam of the headlights, Trufante could see it was abandoned and in bad shape.
He tried to locate the ignition, and found a start button, which he pushed to no avail. Jammed in the passenger seat with the console between him and the controls, there was no way even his long legs could reach the pedals. His attention turned to the woman, who pulled some pipes and a rack from the room and threw them across the floor. A minute later she came toward the passenger door and opened the handle. The other hand, holding the gun, never moved from him.
“Out,” she ordered.
He pulled his six-foot-plus frame out of the car and stood next to her.
“Let’s go.” She jammed the barrel of the gun in his back.
He started toward the building. She pulled his arm and directed him around the side into an open warehouse door.
They were interrupted by the shrill ring of her phone. She answered and he listened to the one-sided conversation. “What do you mean they sunk your boat and got away? I sent you to do a simple job and you fouled that up like everything else you idiots touch.”
She listened to what must have been an explanation.
“Share your location and I’ll send you some help,” she said and hung up. A scowl crossed her face as she approached him.
“It seems your friends are causing me trouble,” she said, handing him the phone. “You will tell them you are my guest.”
Trufante took the phone and stared at the screen.
“Surely even a fool like you knows how to use it.”
He dialed, waited for several seconds, then held the phone away from his ear and shrugged. Mac answering was a long shot, especially if he was on the water.
She understood the gesture and reached for the phone.
“We have your friend—the tall, dumb one. This is none of your business. He will be released in due time.” She left the message and hung up.
“What now?” he asked. “Still could use a bite to eat. Maybe a beer, too.”
She ignored the comment and led him to a small room that had probably at one time been a storeroom. From the light from her phone he could see the low ceiling. Heat pent up from the day blasted from the room when she opened the door, and something slithered past them. He was about to turn and ask for better accommodations when he felt a foot in the small of his back that sent him sprawling into the corner. The door slammed, leaving him in the dark.
Mel ran the boat while Mac worked the Navionics app on the screen of his phone. It would have been easier on the chart plotter, but at night, in these waters, he wanted her to have all the benefits of the real-time display. The app had considerably more detail than the NOAA chart loaded in the boat’s plotter. He had set a course to the north in the general direction of Key Largo, hoping to get some help from Alicia and get Jen back to Marathon. The girl had already seen too much.
After first determining the course on his phone, he traced a wavy line on the screen, showing Mel where the channel ran. In the backcountry of the Keys there was no such thing as a straight line, especially as you moved north toward the Everglades. She nodded that she understood and he went back to his phone. Pinching the screen, he zoomed out to see the big picture on the chart, then panned toward the north. He vaguely remembered where the other test sites were and worked his way toward where Taylor Slough exited into Florida Bay. TS/Ph11, the site he had just seen for himself and the furthest from the source, was the end of the line. He suspected the other sites were compromised as well, and he intended to find the source.
The signal strengthened as they approached the southern tip of Florida, and he Googled the coordinates for the next site. TS/Ph10 was only slightly off their present course. With his phone in hand, he moved back to Mel and entered the coordinates in the GPS. She changed course slightly to the north and they covered the ten miles in silence.
After anchoring on the site, he geared up again. It was deeper here, but for his purposes, the free-diving gear would still be adequate, though this time he chose to use fins. Grabbing a dive light and a lobster bag, he slid off the swim platform and entered the murky water. The bright LED light reflected off the bottom, showing the same damage as the previous site. He swung the beam of light around until the bare sand yielded back to seagrass. It was out of the marked test area, but close enough for his purposes. He finned toward the limits of the dredged area and pulled several clumps of grass from the marl. Placing the samples in the lobster bag, he returned to the trawler and climbed aboard.
After stowing his gear, he looked at the contents of the bag. The grass looked normal under the lights from the boat, but that was no indication it didn’t harbor the fish-killing algae. He needed a scientist’s opinion.
“What do you think?” he asked Jen.
“I couldn’t tell you anything without running some tests and evaluating it under a microscope. Having a similar, healthy sample would be good, too.”
Her answer confirmed his decision to make a quick stop in Key Largo.
The night would have been perfect if it were not for the mood on the boat. There was no sound except the rumble of the engine as the boat sliced through the small moonlit-dappled waves. The silence was broken by a shrill ring from Mac’s phone. He reached for it. The screen said unknown number and he set it back down, cursing the telemarketers who had invaded the cell phone space. A minute later it vibrated, showing the icon for a new voicemail.
Suddenly Pamela was alert as they huddled around the phone and he replayed the message through the speaker. The woman’s voice finished and they looked at each other.
“There’s a timeline for something,” Mel said. “Play it again.”
Mac hit the play button.
“They’re going to kill him,” Pamela wailed.
“Not right away. She is using him to stop us from doing whatever she thinks we’re doing,” Mel said. “She thinks we know more than we do.” She was in full lawyer mode now and Mac let her go. “We must be getting close to something for them to take him,” she said.
“We have to get back to land to get these samples analyzed,” Mac said, moving to the wheel. He turned to the lights of Key Largo and pushed down the throttle.
“Forget the samples. What about Tru?” Pamela called over the roar of the engine.
“We’ll get him back,” Mac said.
Mel and Jen were focused on their phones for the remaining half hour it took to pass to the Atlantic side. Mac steered through the narrow cut and turned north. It took all his attention to find the unfamiliar entrance to the canal in the dark. Without landmarks, he steered by the chart plotter, found the opening in the mangroves, cut the wheel to port and entered the small lagoon. Using the big red and white flag from TJ’s dive shop to guide him, they approached the dock. Mel had already alerted Alicia they were on their way, and the couple was waiting for them on the dock.
After introducing Jen, and a round of quick hugs, they rushed up the back stairs of the dive shop to the apartment. Back in the war room, a computer enclave that resembled the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise, they all stared at the big screen monitors mounted to the wall as Alicia started to populate the screens. She had worked quickly after they had called and already had several maps up.
One showed the historical path of the Everglades’ drainage. The next showed the current discharge. Mac was shocked at the alterations from the natural water flow. On another screen was a detailed map from the South Florida Water Management District, the agency in charge of routing floodwater from Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee drainage through an intricate maze of canals and floodgates. Most of the water was routed to the west coast through the Caloosahatchee River. Mac suspected this accounted for the red tides and the large fish kills in that area.
Alicia started to talk now, explaining the history, but Mac stopped her, more concerned about the present. “We need to get the seagrass samples to a lab and then figure out what they’re up to,” he said.
“And Tru,” Pamela said. “We have to help him.”
“It’s all tied together,” Mel said. “And apparently they need him alive.”
“But . . .” Pamela started.
“We’ll get him, but first we need to figure out what they’re up to,” Mac said.
TJ sat in the captain’s chair, the original fixture in the room, used to control his gaming empire. “Follow the flow, man.”
They all turned to him. Moving his cursor along the map, he traced the flow of water.
He had their attention now. “Look at the data,” he said, changing one of the screens to a complicated spreadsheet.
“What’s that?” Mel asked.
“Florida Coastal Everglades collection results for the last fifteen years. These sites were started just after two thousand.”
They studied the numbers on the screen.
He highlighted some numbers and summarized. “It seems that this last flood pushed farther south than anything before it. It wasn’t the worst storm or the strongest tide we’ve had, but they must have compounded each other.”
“How’d you get this?” Mel asked.
“Classified, babe,” he kidded.
17
Mac was the last to say goodbye and thanked Jen for her help after her friend arrived to pick her up. There was a sadness in her eyes that Mac understood. She wanted to finish the journey, but Mac couldn’t put her in danger.
“You can stay here tonight if you want,” Alicia offered.
Mac pursed his lips and shook his head. As much as he wanted a bed and a good night’s sleep, the clock was ticking. “Thanks, but we need to head back out.”
“We’re here if you need us,” TJ said. He looked at the trawler. “What’s she draw?”
“A little over four feet,” Mac said.
“Why don’t you take the six-pack dive boat. It draws a hair over two feet, and you can tilt the engine if you get in trouble,” TJ offered. “Just filled her too.”
Mac knew he was right. Where they were headed was not like the more open backcountry near Marathon. Although the entire backside of the Keys was riddled with obstacles, it was much worse where they were headed.
“I can’t put you out,” Mac said.
“Those Big Sugar guys’ll put me out of business if you don’t figure this out. The tourists get word of the fish kills, there’ll be no diving here.”
“We appreciate it,” Mel said, then she said goodbye to Mac. She would be heading to the Florida Coastal Everglades offices outside of Fort Lauderdale tomorrow to see what she could accomplish there.
Pamela stood on the deck of the trawler waiting. Mac went over and boarded. He told her about the change of plans and brought over some supplies, and the shotgun. He couldn’t help but notice that her demeanor had changed, knowing their path would lead to Trufante. Mac gave Alicia a quick hug and hopped onboard the twenty-four-foot cuddy cabin. He started the engines and waited for Pamela. She said goodbye and joined him by the helm. They cast the lines and headed back out. Immediately he was grateful for the smaller boat.
“Can you follow the channel?” Mac asked Pamela. Keeping her busy would also keep her focused. “I’m going to enter the coordinates for the other sites.” She nodded and took the wheel. Removing a piece of paper from the pocket of his cargo shorts, he laid it out on the console and started entering the numbers for the other test sites in the chart plotter. After turning the individual waypoints into a route, a line appeared connecting the dots and running up toward Homestead.
“That’s where we’re going?” Pamela asked.
“Yeah. Just follow the yellow brick road. Somewhere up this trail, we’ll find what we’re looking for.”
They stood together in silence as she steered southwest. The Marvin D Adams Waterway they had just used was a faster route, but far better approached from the south where they had come from. Heading north, Tavernier Creek was the safer route back to the bay side. They entered the winding waterway a half hour later and Mac sent Pamela forward with a spotlight. He called out where he expected markers to be and she panned the light across the dark water until the reflectors caught the light. The chart plotter was an aid only; its margin of error of thirty feet seemed minor, but that margin could easily ground them here.
Finally, after a tense passage, they emerged into Florida Bay. Mac remained vigilant, pointing out the numerous shoals and hazards. He was trusting someone else’s electronics, something he was always wary of, though knowing it was used as a dive boat was reassuring. Most charters in Key Largo took their clients to John Pennekamp Park, and, although beautiful, the diving was a little pedestrian for TJ’s clients. He and Alicia had built a reputation for more adventurous charters using custom nitrox mixes to increase bottom time in deeper water. Some of the sites they dove were like finding a needle in a haystack and required fine-tuned electronics to find them. Still, instead of cutting cross-country, he decided on the marked channel running parallel to Key Largo.
With Pamela’s help locating the markers, he followed the channel through Tarpon Basin and back into the bay. It was slow, but safe, and when the sun finally broke the horizon, they found themselves staring at the tip of mainland Florida. Mac stopped the boat a quarter mile from the coast in Barnes Sound, to the northeast of US 1. In front of them was a river that was too symmetrical to be natural.
“Can you pull the canal system up on your phone?” The chart plotter clearly showed the man-made canal in front of them, but had no details. TJ had given them a list of web sites that could help once they were inland.
“C111. They call it the Aerojet Canal,” she said, working the screen on her phone. “Looks like you could fit a jet in it.”
He estimated the width to be over a hundred feet. “That’s exactly what it was cut for. They brought the jet engines for the Saturn rockets through here on barges in the sixties. They were too wide for the highways, so they cut this canal through the Everglades.”
“Tru’s in there,” she said.
Mac ignored her. He was more interested in the entrance to the canal. The markers stopped well short of it. “How far will this take us?”
She pinched and panned the screen of her phone. “If they’re all connected, it goes all the way to Lake Okeechobee. But there are some blanks.”
Mac wondered about the floodgates. He had heard about the mechanical controls to allow excess water through or hold back irrigation water depending on the season.
“There’s very little detail, but this looks big.”
Mac steered toward the inlet. The sun had risen enough by now to illustrate exactly what was happening, and it sickened him. A thin stream of brown water was flowing from the canal. He could only imagine what it would be like when the floodgates were open. The famous River of Grass would turn into the River of Death.
