I watched as a swarm of pellets tore into the water, slowed after a few feet, then sank to the bottom just beside the boat. I reached for my dive knife instinctively and pulled it from its sheath. My eyes focusing on the hull, I spotted the movement to my left again.
Rapidly emerging out of the grass, a crocodile appeared, swimming as fast as it could right beside me. Fortunately, the deadly prehistoric reptile either didn’t see me or didn’t mind my presence, for it kept up its pace, vanishing from view just as fast as it had appeared.
I calmed myself and looked back at the boat as the propeller fired up again. My heart rate had picked up. Glancing at my dive watch, I saw that I’d been down for almost three minutes. My lungs had been throbbing for thirty seconds already.
After the boat passed, I kicked out of the seagrass and made a beeline back toward the shore. My lungs begging for air, I kicked again and again, ignoring the plea. My vision was beginning to fade when I finally spotted Ange’s body in the tangle of branches. Moments later, I exhaled as I rose up beside her. I performed three quick, silent inhales and exhales.
“All right,” I said after catching my breath, “that was a little too long.”
“Four minutes by my count. Did you place it?”
I nodded.
“Nearly without a hitch. That shotgun blast sure woke me up.”
“I had my Glock ready when he snatched his twelve-gauge from the deck. Then he yelled, ‘Croc!’”
We waited until the guys came back our way, then turned around for another pass, before making our stealthy escape. Once around the point and out of sight, we kicked toward the kayak. After removing all of our gear and peeling off our wetsuits, we untied the line and I shoved us off.
“I got a message from Jane,” Ange said, peering at her phone.
“You have a signal?”
“One bar somehow. She says the coroners have identified the body. She says she emailed me the full report.”
I gripped tight to my paddle and turned us around.
“Let’s get back to the Baia and check it out.”
We hugged the inner shore again, then paddled our way back into the opening in the shrubs. We relaxed a little once in the narrow channel. No one was going to spot us in there. The mangroves rose up around us and reached overhead, making it feel like we were paddling through a tunnel.
We weaved in and out of the unique landscape, cutting the distance faster the second time around. The incessant humming of the distant engine continued at our backs. My mind drifted from John Ridley to the Civil War treasure William Sawyer and his Key West Avengers had supposedly tossed overboard nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. If the two sweat-covered trigger-happy guys on the boat were searching in the right spot, they’d have most likely found it by then. A big metal-framed chest full of valuable contents would make a magnetometer sing louder than a church choir on Easter Sunday.
As we closed in on the Baia, we both froze mid-paddle as a new sound echoed across the water. It was engines. A whole orchestra of them. And these ones were bigger than the one groaning at our backs. And they were coming from up ahead.
We picked up our pace, pulling hard on the paddles and launching ourselves through the waterway. As we neared the opening in the channel, the engine sounds stopped. But they were soon replaced by a much more unnerving sound.
My sat phone buzzed to life in my lap. Glancing at the screen, I saw an alert from the Baia’s security system. Somebody was on the boat.
TWELVE
Ange and I picked up the pace, pulling our paddle blades through the water as fast as we could while keeping in rhythm. After we’d just gotten her out of the boatyard the previous day, the thought of some stranger wandering aboard made my blood boil.
If there’s so much as a scratch on the hull, I thought, tightening my grip on the paddle.
Avid boaters know better than to wander onto somebody else’s craft. It carries the same legal weight as trespassing onto someone’s property. A big no-no.
We flew through the narrow waterway, winding our way back to the opening out into Old Rhodes Channel. When the Baia came into view, we spotted a pontoon boat right up against its stern. It was old and raggedy, like something straight out of the movie Waterworld. But it had three big, shiny Mercury engines clamped to the stern that looked severely out of place on the leisure craft. The boat also had an aluminum cabin cruiser tied off behind it, a utility-style craft that you often see near marine job sites.
We spotted three guys, two on the pontoon boat and one on the deck of the Baia. We couldn’t get a good look at the guys on the unknown boat, but the one on the Baia had a full dark beard and wore a ballcap.
“What’s the play here, Logan?” Ange said. “And please don’t tell me you want to freedive again.”
“No stealth approach this time, Ange. We paddle up and respectfully tell them to get the hell off our boat.”
We kept up the pace, making quick work of the distance between the edge of the channel and the two boats. As we approached, one of the guys on the pontoon boat spotted us and yelled out to his friend snooping around on the Baia. The guy with the beard and ballcap spun around, then stepped against the Baia’s port gunwale and eyed us suspiciously.
Ange and I both had our handguns within arm’s reach, ready to snatch them, take aim, and fire off a few
