Everglades Assault (14 page)

“She's a little beauty,” I told Hervey.

“Reminds me of April when she was little.”

“I'm trying to picture what kind of lowlife bastard it would take to scare a harmless little girl like her.”

“When we find him we'll ask him. If I don't wring his head off first.”

“You may have to wait in line.”

It was a warm September twilight. White ibis flew in rough arrow formation toward the setting sun, and bullfrogs croaked from the swamp in a rumbling chorus.

There was a freshness to the air there in the Everglades. There was the odor of springwater and the clean sage smell of cypress. Every breeze that came through the cypress beyond the oak hammock leached a certain cool musk from the land.

While Hervey talked about family and things with Myrtle, I changed in Eisa's room. The handprint had been scrubbed away. I pulled on the soft Limey commando pants and my Special Forces boots, oiled glove-soft, then decided on a plain black knit T-shirt in favor of the warmer Navy watch sweater.

While I dressed, I thought about the old man. He had impressed me. While his mind seemed to have gone a bit awry—as Myrtle had said—he was still right on the mark with some of the things he had said. Like most people, I'd like to believe that there are people who have a sixth sense about the past. And the future. Maybe because it implies some order in the scheme of things. But there's a pragmatic side to me that scoffs at the few bits of proof I've acquired over the years. He had mentioned the shark attack. How had he known that? Or that Graff McKinney was a friend. My pragmatic side insisted that Hervey had probably mentioned it to Myrtle at some time over the years. And she had told the old man.

But what about his last prediction?

Only my own death would prove him right on that.

When I was ready, I met Hervey outside on the porch.

“You bring a weapon with you?” he asked.

I touched the Randall attack/survival knife strapped to my side. “Just this. I thought you had the shotgun.”

“I do. But I'm leaving it with Myrtle. She doesn't know when her husband's going to be back. And the thoughtless bastard carries their rifle with him.” Hervey gave a long shrill whistle, and in a few moments the huge Chesapeake came crashing through the brush into the clearing. “If we get into any rough stuff, Gator will be some help.”

“After seeing him in action last night, I'd say he'll be all the help we could possibly need. Unless the artifact hunters have automatic weapons.”

“And a lot of them at that.”

I followed Hervey through the oak hammock along the darkwater stream. We carried flashlights and mosquito netting. While we moved along the edge of the creek I watched closely for tracks.

To make mud, the guy in the swamp-monster costume had to get his hands wet.

And to get his hands wet he had to get his feet wet.

Still, I found no tracks.

No human tracks, anyway. But the creek bed was alive with every other kind of print: deer, coon, wading birds, feral hog—and even the massive paw print of a Florida bear.

It was a silvery twilight in the Everglades. The cypress head in the distance looked cooler and darker. In the weakening light, sawgrass on the far horizon looked like pastureland.

The burial mound was about three miles from the main camp. We had to cross the stream to get to it. There was another oak hammock—this one older, and with much bigger trees. In the middle of the hammock was a striking line of elevation. It looked as if someone had dumped several thousand tons of pure sand there, then planted the top and walls with small shrubs, palmetto, and oaks.

The oaks beside the mound were massive, with limbs like beams, and the silver tinge of dusk painted the mound in a celestial light. At both ends of the hammock were royal poinciana trees, like giant umbrellas, shading the burial center with a mass of late lavender blooms.

I am not the religious type, but there was a venerable air about the burial mound.

“Sure is pretty back in here,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Hervey, swatting at some mosquitoes. He pointed to the largest oak tree at the base of the mound. “Back when I was a kid, I built a pole house in the tree. Stayed out here a couple of days by myself.”

“Your granddad didn't mind?”

“Mind? Hell, he helped me. Fell out of the tree house once and liked to broke his ass. He's always been a wild old character—once you get to know him. Folks who don't know him usually think he's deaf and dumb—like Graff McKinney.” Hervey kicked at something in the sand, bent down, and lifted a chunk of pottery shard. “See this here? Might be a thousand years old. When I was a kid, I used to try and imagine all the ceremonies that went on here. And after a real hard rain, you could find bits of bone. Once part of a human skull rolled right down the mound at my feet. I'd always bury them back. Didn't want to piss off any of the ancestors, you know.”

“I don't see any signs of digging,” I said.

“Me neither. Let's walk around to the other side. Maybe they've been doing their graverobbing over there. There's an old swamp buggy path that curves in only about a half mile away on that side. It's the most likely spot.”

It was indeed the most likely spot.

In contrast to the other side of the massive burial mound, the west bank was a mass of recently dug trenches.

Not small tidy trenches, either.

It looked as if they had brought a backhoe in to expedite their desecration.

The trenches burrowed fifteen or twenty feet toward the heart of the mound. The offal had been thrown haphazardly at the base. A recent rain had filled the shallowest trenches with water. The robbers had thrown their beer cans and cigarette wrappers on the ground.

The west side of the mound looked like a construction site where kids went to have their beer parties.

“Son of a bitch,” Hervey said.

I had no personal interest in the land—or the mound—but the indignity of it was enough to make anybody with a sense of right and wrong mad.

“The world has its good people. But it does seem to have more than its share of assholes and jerks.”

Hervey slammed his gear down on the ground. “And what the hell do they get out of this?” he demanded. “They get a few beads. And they get a couple of shoe boxes full of bones so they can leave them on the mantelpiece and prove to their scruffy-assed friends what experts they are on Indian culture. If they really cared about Indian culture, would they do this kind of shit?”

It wasn't a question that demanded an answer. While Hervey fumed, I got to work picking out a recon point for the two of us. At the top of the mound was a gathering of heavy vegetation. The sand was beach-soft and damp.

“I think we ought to split up. If they do show up tonight, we'll give them plenty of time to do some digging.”

“What?”

“Just take it easy, Hervey. You brought me along to help, remember. When it comes to fixing boats and running reefs, you're the best. But this sort of thing falls into my line of expertise.”

Hervey nodded, pulling at his beard. “Sorry. Okay, you run the show. But why give them a chance to do more digging?”

“Because I want to hear what they have to say while they dig. If they've been trying to scare your folks out, they'll sure as hell mention it. Maybe even joke about it. Remember, we can't just assume these graverobbers are behind it all. Right?”

“I guess that's so.”

“Okay. You keep the dog with you. Make yourself comfortable in that palmetto thicket on top of the mound. We'd better just plan on sleeping here tonight and every other night until they come back.”

“And what if it is these guys who are playing this swamp-monster game—the ones who stole Eisa?”

I cupped my hands together and blew between my thumbs. “I'll make an owl call when I think it's time to go in. You just follow my lead. If you hear that call, you'll know I've got it set so they can't get away. If they are the ones who took Eisa, you'll have a chance to soften them up as much as you want before we take them to the law.”

“And if they're not?”

“Then we'll make sure they'll never ever even think about coming back here.”

“Now I wish I'd brought the shotgun,” Hervey murmured. “I had no idea they'd done this much damage.”

I looked into my old friend's face. “Hervey, from the look in your eyes, I'm glad you didn't bring it. This old mound has seen enough death. And I'm no gravedigger. . . .”

They came by jeep long before midnight. There were five of them.

At first I thought it was just a matter of our getting lucky. I'd planned on having to stake out the burial mound for a lot longer.

But then I realized that it was Saturday night. And artifact hunters do most of their dirty work on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. I remembered what old Panther James had said about feeling their shovels in his stomach. Maybe they had been coming every night all along. Maybe they were hunting for something in particular.

I heard the rumble of the jeep bouncing down the swamp buggy trail first. And then there was a brief flare of headlights as they swept through the undergrowth.

Bullfrogs paused in their chorus. And somewhere a small animal squealed with finality.

“I think we've got company.” Hervey's voice was ghostly from the darkness at the top of the mound.

“Let's be good hosts—until I give you the signal.”

“Take your time. I'm getting real neighborly with a snake up here that's almost big enough to incorporate.”

“A rattler?”

“Naw. Indigo, I think. Moccasins probably ate all the rattlers up here.”

Hervey wasn't exaggerating much about the snake population around the mound. I had counted two ground rattlers and one full-grown diamondback as I made my way to the big oak where Hervey had once built a tree house. And once safely high in its limbs, I could hear snakes moving through the palmettos below.

“You don't worry about your dog with all these snakes around?”

And from the top of the mound, Hervey answered, “He's swamp-smart, remember? Gives 'em a wide berth. And Dusky, you just gave me a great idea.”

I didn't have a chance to ask him what the idea was. The jeep came ambling through the brush in low gear, and for one wild moment I thought their headlights had nailed my position in the tree.

But they said nothing. Three of them were dim shapes in the back of the jeep. I could see the faces of the other two by the squint-eyed cigarette glow.

These were no rookie artifact hunters. And it obviously wasn't the first time they had visited this mound. They had car headlights mounted on poles and connected to twelve-volt batteries. They placed three of the lights around the perimeter of their excavation.

It put the mound in an icy white glare. While the rest of them unloaded shovels and coolers of beer, another assembled a big wooden frame that held two levels and two sizes of screen mesh—an obvious sieve.

The driver was the ostensible leader. He was a hugely fat man who handled himself with the pompous air of someone who believes that size suggests power. His T-shirt was sweat-stained, and he kept a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth.

The other four were a mixed bag: ages twenty-five to maybe forty. They chortled a lot and hit the beer in the cooler hard. They seemed delighted with what they were doing.

While the fat man sifted, the other four shoveled. Each man had his own trench. It was clear that they planned on digging straight through to the other side of the mound. It also became clear they were all telephone-company employees from Palmville, north of Naples.

Working on their failing phone system was a pastime.

Desecrating Indian graves was their passion.

I gave them an hour to hang themselves. I waited patiently high in the tree, hoping they would mention their scheme to scare Panther James off his land.

But they never did.

They bragged about other mounds they had robbed. They spoke of artifacts and tribes with the air of the pseudoscientist. They dug and talked, joked about their mistresses, and drank a hell of a lot of beer.

I worried about Hervey sitting atop the mound. Him and his dog—I didn't know which would be the hardest to control.

Once I heard a big animal trot through the brush between me and the jeep, and I thought the two of them had tired of waiting and were going in for the kill.

What finally convinced me it was time to act was when the men did start talking about Panther James's swamp monster. I had cupped my hands to my ears, not wanting to miss a word.

The fat man was talking. “Eddie there says he saw the tracks—isn't that right, Eddie?”

“Like I said before—I brought my wife and kids down here yesterday afternoon after work. She thought I'd been sneakin' out to see Alice, and I just wanted to prove that we was down here workin'.”

“Be the first time you was telling her the truth, Eddie,” one of them chided.

“You want me to tell this story or don't you? I was about to tell you how my little boy started yellin' for me. Thought he was snakebit. I went after him on a run, and when I got there he was standing there with his mouth open, pointing at his track. You guys ain't seen nothing like it.” He stopped shoveling for a moment and held his hands three feet apart. “I swear to God, it was this big. Looked like a barefooted man's footprint, only a hell of a lot wider. If the Swamp Ape didn't make it, I don't want to meet the man who did.”

The other men kidded him for a while. He promised to find it for them later. Most of them believed. A couple didn't. They jabbered on about the Swamp Ape, and then flying saucers as they picked the beads and bones from the mound—the fat man sticking them in the bucket like a vulture selecting the best from a bloated corpse.