Our plan was for Chyrel to contact Fort Myers PD’s Gang Suppression Unit and give them the GPS coordinates of the dealers Tony and DJ had taken down. She’d make the call via her computer and would route it through hundreds of bogus landlines, so the call couldn’t be traced. Tony and DJ had left each dealer with enough drugs to ensure that they would go to jail for distribution.
I heard Tony talking to the guy who called himself Bumpy as I started north, and then I heard a loud thump.
“As you would say, Jesse,” Tony said over the comm, “one more turd fondler down.”
“Get him in your car, Tony,” I said. “Cuff his hands and feet, then head east on Highway 82.” At a light, I pulled up a map on Google. “DJ, you start heading that way, too. I know a place we can take him.”
“Roger that,” they both replied.
It took me a while to find the spot on Google maps. The light turned green, but there wasn’t anyone behind me. When I found it, I could tell from the aerial photo that it was still the same.
Decades earlier, a developer had built roads in part of the Corkscrew Swamp, near Immokalee. But nothing had ever happened with it and the roads were abandoned. I got the GPS coordinates and relayed them to both men.
“What do you want me to tell Savannah if she wakes up?” Chyrel asked.
“Don’t tell her anything,” I said, accelerating northward. “In fact, after you make the call to the DSU, unplug and go to bed. We’ll see you in the morning.”
I headed north on 6-Mile Cypress Parkway, driving a little over the speed limit, but not enough to attract attention. It was late and there were few cars on the road.
Tony was the closest, but only about ten minutes ahead of me and five ahead of DJ. When I reached County Road 876, I hung a right and, not seeing any traffic, floored it for the half-mile crossing of 6-Mile Slough, slowing before I got to the other side. From there, I kept it at a sedate speed for the next eight miles, then made another right onto State Road 82.
“I’m on 82 now,” I said. “Y’all are probably a little ahead of me.”
“Do you know a place called Wild Turkey Strand?” DJ asked. “I’m just passing it now.”
“You’re a mile or two ahead of me,” I said.
“I’m in the middle of East Jesus, Nowhere,” Tony said. “Wait a sec…just passing CR 850.”
“That’s Corkscrew Road,” I said. “DJ and I are about fifteen minutes behind you.”
“Where exactly are we going?” DJ said. “And who the hell made up these names?”
I ignored the second question. “We’re going deep into Corkscrew Swamp near Immokalee,” I replied. “As remote and wild as any part of Florida gets.”
Tony chuckled. “Sounds like a scary place.”
“It is,” I agreed. “Follow your GPS, and once you turn off of Lake Trafford Road onto Pepper Road, you’ll wind your way back into the swamp, taking a series of rights and lefts for a good five miles to stay on Pepper. When your GPS tells you to turn right where there doesn’t look like there’s a road, just trust it. That trail won’t have a name and it’ll be rough going. Go about an eighth of a mile and wait for me.”
“This guy’s starting to wake up,” Tony said. “I have him flex-cuffed in the backseat.”
“Let him wake up,” I said. “Don’t talk to him at all. Let the drive put the fear of God into him.”
Forty minutes passed and the only voice I heard was Bumpy asking Tony what he thought he was doing and where he was taking him. Each time he spoke, he became more and more agitated and demanding. Then he finally started to sound a little scared. I figured Tony had turned onto Pepper Road.
“Drive it like you stole it, Tony,” I said. “If you’re on Pepper Road, there’s nothing out there except swamp and gators. The road is straight as an arrow to each right and left turn. Just slow when you approach a wall of saw palmetto, so you can tell if it’s a right or a left.”
Bumpy’s voice sounded panicked and then he became silent for a second.
“Why you stoppin’, man?” I heard Bumpy say. “C’mon, man! What’d I ever do to you?”
I heard the door open, and the dinging sound of the car’s warning that the keys were still in the ignition. Then the door slammed, and I heard nothing for a moment.
“Man, you weren’t kiddin’,” Tony said, as DJ and I turned onto Pepper. ‘It’s spooky as all hell out here.”
I stayed right behind DJ, driving with my lights off, so as not to blind him, and to keep the glow down. It was flat ground and swamp all around, with occasional cypress hammocks and live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. I doubted anyone was within a mile, but if they were outside, they could likely see the glow from two sets of headlights.
Finally, DJ slowed and turned off of Pepper onto an overgrown track that threaded between overhanging water oaks and live oaks that grew up along the banks of abandoned canals. Saw palmetto had taken over much of the area where the oaks allowed light.
It was slow going. There was no way to tell that the road had ever been maintained, let alone paved. The asphalt had been broken up and choked with weeds when I was a kid. Bigger trees and the saw palmetto, so common to the area, didn’t take root in the cracks, maybe due to the presence of the petroleum in the asphalt.
“Just stay between the palmettos,” I told DJ.
“That would’ve been nice to know when I pulled in,” Tony quipped. “But being a Navy man, I knew to stay in the middle of the channel.”
Just ahead, I could see the reflection of Tony’s taillights. He stood off to
