“Sounds like jet skis,” Ange said, standing still and listening carefully as well.
She was right. The unique sounds were a dead giveaway, and the crafts were flying in our direction too fast to be normal jet boats.
“Another tour?” Ange suggested.
Then, in the corner of my eye, I spotted a flash of light. A brief reflection of the sun against a shiny surface. It came from the same direction where Ange had noticed something thirty minutes earlier, but it was closer to the shoreline. Nearly at the edge of the lagoon and just a couple hundred yards to the north of us.
In an instant, the sounds of the jet skis increased in intensity. I snapped my head back and peered over the water. Across the lagoon, we could see three of the personal watercraft. They were barreling full speed, their engines screaming and their propulsion systems shooting up trails of white. They turned once they entered the body of water, heading straight toward our position.
Within seconds, the approaching skis were within a quarter mile of us. Ange and I could make out two figures on each one. Many of them were bald, their shiny heads glistening in the early morning sun. And as they roared closer, we could see the outlines of rifles.
“Ange!” I shouted.
But she’d already snatched her Glock 26 from her waistband and raised it at the approaching attack party. I pulled out my Sig as well, ready to open fire. But we were outnumbered. Severely outnumbered, and outgunned. Looking around, I realized another unsettling fact: we were trapped. Nowhere to run.
I dropped to one knee, then put the lead jet ski in my sights. If this was it, then we sure as hell weren’t going to go down without a fight. Just as I came to terms with fighting being our only option, an image jumped into my mind. Something I’d seen while prospecting the previous day. The unique underwater feature.
The cave.
The moment the risky escape plan popped into my head, gunfire erupted, shaking the lagoon to life like thunder. Water splashed up beside Ange and me as a bullet nearly hit us. But it hadn’t come from the approaching jet skis. No, the shot had been fired from our right, up the shoreline. From the direction where Ange and I had seen the flashes of light.
I dropped, then lunged back beside Ange while my eyes darted toward the source of the gunshot. There was a dark figure of a man wading in the shallows, aiming a pistol toward us with two hands.
Now we were really surrounded. Ange and I were both crack shots, but it wouldn’t matter. Any second, the guys on the jet skis would open fire with their rifles as well, raining a storm of bullets upon us.
“Ange, this way!” I shouted, pointing down the shore. She looked at me like I was crazy, so I added, “Trust me! I know a way out.”
We sprinted through the knee-deep water, then cut around a jutting cluster of branches just as the guy up shore opened fire once more, this time pressing the trigger again and again. I led us to a deep pool in a tiny inlet. At our backs, the sounds of the jet skis indicated that they were nearly upon us.
We willed ourselves to move, sloshing through the water. Just as we were about to reach the deep pool, a loud succession of gunfire rattled the air. Bullets zipped past and splashed into the water around us.
“Dive!” I yelled.
Ange and I both took one final lunge, then sprang headfirst as far as we could. We cut through the surface of the water, slicing to the bottom of the six-foot-deep pool, then angling our bodies parallel with the seafloor. I motioned toward the narrow opening into the cave straight ahead, but Ange had already seen it. We kicked and pulled at the water with everything we had. We could hear muffled blasts coming from the surface, along with rounds tearing through the water at our backs before breaking apart from the friction of the liquid.
My heart pounding, I continued deeper into the cave, which was getting narrower and narrower with every stroke. I stopped, letting Ange go first when it got too constricting for both of us. We wound our way through the unknown tunnel for what felt like an eternity, hoping with everything we had that it eventually led to the surface.
Our lungs throbbed, and the cave got darker. Just as I started to doubt my decision, a faint glow illuminated the rock and tangles of roots ahead of us. We had to pull, twist, and shimmy to fit through. Angling our bodies upward, we managed to force ourselves through a small opening in the mangroves.
I exhaled just before breaking the surface, then quietly caught my breath beside Ange. We were completely surrounded, swallowed up by a sea of thick mangroves that rose twenty feet into the air.
We kept perfectly silent and listened. The gunfire had stopped, and the jet skis had slowed to an idle at the spot where we’d made our desperate dive into the cave. It sounded like they were at least thirty yards off, but it was hard to tell. We couldn’t see a thing.
A million thoughts forced their way into my mind.
How could we have been so easily caught off guard? And how in the hell did Deacon Lynch pull this off?
Ange and I still gripped our weapons, ready to use them just in case. We heard voices, but they were too quiet to understand. Then we heard a low-pitched yell, followed by a pounding series of gunshots. Ange and I dropped back down into the cave, using the limestone walls as cover as more shots filled the air. It felt like an eternity of incessant booms and zipping bullets and cracking branches.
Then,
