We rose slowly and listened again. We soon heard more voices, and though they were muffled and hard to understand, a few words stood out.
“You’d better run… forget them… get the gold…”
THIRTY-FIVE
Deacon Lynch stood, straddling the seat of his idling jet ski while aiming an assault rifle at the foliage where his quarries had disappeared moments earlier.
“They can’t still be holding their breath,” Lynch snarled. “So where in the hell did they go?”
Titus and the skinhead on the back of his jet ski motored right over the pool that the two locals had splashed into, and looked around.
“They’re not here,” Titus said, looking up at his leader.
Lynch clenched his jaw. This wasn’t how he’d envisioned it. The reaction from the man who’d disrupted their operation was just as he’d hoped. A deer caught in the headlights, then a desperate retreat. But the confrontation was supposed to have been punctuated by riddling the man’s body with more holes than a cheese grater, then leaving him for the sharks to pick apart. But somehow, the two had managed to slip right through their fingers.
Out of sheer anger, Lynch raised his rifle and sent a wide spray of bullets into the mangroves. The bullets snapped branches and tore up leaves, the sounds echoing across the water. His men followed suit, sending a hundred rounds into the dense growth before Lynch stopped and ordered the others to halt.
The white supremacist leader listened carefully in the calm after the storm of gunfire, hoping to hear cries and groans of pain. But none came.
His frustration was borderline madness, but he swallowed and focused on the mission. Getting the gold was the first priority. Revenge had been a perk, but unnecessary. He needed to claim the treasure and get the hell out of there.
“You’d better run!” Titus shouted.
“Forget them,” Lynch said. “They’ll get what’s coming to them eventually. We need to get the gold.”
Lynch led the other two jet skis around the corner of branches, then slowed to a stop. Casper Nix motored down from the north on his aluminum skiff. He shut off the engine and pointed over the starboard gunwale.
“The treasure’s there,” he said enthusiastically.
The guy looked terrible. He hadn’t showered or shaved in nearly a week. He’d been living in the dirt, living off scraps and raw fish, and every exposed part of his skin was covered in red mosquito bites.
“Way to go, Nix,” Titus barked. “Your garbage aim scared them off. Did you even injure them?”
Casper was about to defend himself when Lynch told them both to shut up. The leader idled right over the spot where Casper had been pointing. There was a deep hole dug into the shallows, and a big object on the bottom. Lynch killed his jet ski’s engine, then jumped into the water.
He sloshed over to the hole, crouched, then reached down. His eyes lit up as his hands grasped the wooden lid of a chest. Pulling it open, he gasped as he focused on a stack of gold bars.
Finally, he thought, a layer of tears welling up in his eyes. The Avengers’ mission is complete.
Titus dropped down beside him, along with Casper and the rest of the group. They each rubbed their eyes and cheered and splashed down to grab the chest, but Lynch waved them off. He grabbed a bar first, holding it up to the light and admiring it.
“Our ship has finally come in, boys,” Lynch said.
The valuable find would change everything for them. They’d be able to use the millions to recruit many more to their cause, arm themselves with the best weaponry, and plan orchestrated attacks across the state, and the nation.
Snapping himself from his daydreams, Lynch came back to the moment and looked around. They weren’t out of the woods yet. They had the gold, but they still had to get the hell out of there without being caught.
“Load it up,” he ordered.
Casper and Titus grabbed the ends of the chest. But as they tried to pull it out, the rotted wood broke apart and the handles tore free.
“Bring your skiff close, Casper,” Lynch demanded. “We load it up brick by brick.”
Casper did as he was told. Creating two daisy chains, the group made quick work of the trove, hauling all fifty two-kilogram bars into Casper’s boat. They spread them out along the inner hull, distributing the weight as evenly as possible.
Once they were ready, Lynch took one final look along the shoreline, hoping to catch a glimpse of his quarries. But they were nowhere in sight. Somehow, they’d managed to escape into the dense growth.
He ordered his men to hightail it out of there. They started up their engines and gunned it across the lagoon. Casper motored carefully at first. The added weight increased his boat’s draft, so he kept to the deeper portions of the lagoon until they reached their exit.
All four craft throttled wide open once they were out of the lagoon and entering into Biscayne Bay. Off the port side, Lynch spotted the two boats they’d seen anchored in the distance on their way into the lagoon. A small skiff motored toward them with a guy standing on the bow, aiming a pistol straight at them.
The man let loose a barrage of repetitive gunfire from his weapon. But the gunfire soon died off as Lynch and his men blasted over the water at over forty knots. The jet skis could easily hit seventy, but they maintained a slower speed to stick with Casper and the gold.
Snapping his head back, Lynch saw that they’d lost one of the jet skis. Two of his men had been taken down by the gunfire and were lying motionless in the water beside the craft.
More collateral damage.
The two remaining jet skis and
