Hawk Channel Chase (27 page)

After we passed the Tamarac sign, Turk asked me to look for Mars Lane on the right. I cued him and he went left, then right, then into a driveway. Too confusing for me at that hour. The house was dark, but Marnie Dunwoody’s Jeep Wrangler was parked under the carport overhang. A flickering street lamp and low-intensity lamps from neighboring yards gave dim illumination.

“I brought the skiff out here before dark,” said Turk. “Place belongs to an old friend who hasn’t come back from his summer in Montana. I ran charters out of here five or six years ago when I was fighting the city for dock space at the Bight.”

Marnie sat upright when Turk knocked on her driver’s side door. Bleary-eyed, coughing herself awake, she said, “New Moon Tours at your service. We have black coffee and fat-filled pastries on the floorboard.”

Turk opened the passenger-side door and grabbed a Styrofoam cup. “Eat fast,” he said. “No food on the boat.”

She climbed out of her Jeep. “You’re welcome, fuckhead.”

Turk jangled his keys then started toward the canal, his feet crunching gravel. Over his shoulder: “That’s Captain Fuckhead to you, mate.”

Marnie laughed and turned to me. “That’s how I felt in the Circle K. Four city cops in there were staring, trying to figure why a news reporter was up at five a.m., looking my worst, and what did I know that they didn’t?”

She wore a photographer’s vest covered with flap-and-zipper pockets, and caught me staring at it. “A nautical reporter’s kit,” she said. She walked her hands from her hips to her shoulders, alternating right and left, to explain the pockets’ contents. “Portable GPS, digital tape recorder, pepper spray, granola bars, boob, boob, cell phone, digital camera.”

“Well-equipped.”

“Electronics, indeed,” she said. “Other than that, let’s get on the boat.”

“Can I ask the point of this excursion?”

“I know Sam better than anyone,”
 
she said. “I know how he juggles facts and twists logic and still hits the truth. We don’t know who left that boat out there, but for a small skiff essentially underwater, it was found too soon. It was meant to be found with Sam’s hull numbers on it, and meant to be a message. It’s so off-the-wall, it sounds like something Sam would do. I think its location was part of the message.”

“So by going out there, we get a better grasp of the whole mess?”

“Or some idea how to help him,” said Marnie. “I’m paying for Turk’s gas and it’s risk-free. We troll around and maybe draw flies. Maybe I can be less like those cops in the Circle K, wondering what I know that they don’t. Because I don’t know screw-all, and there’s nothing else to do at this hour, and it’s all we’ve got.”

Nothing except for an alternate activity I would have enjoyed. But I was there to help Sam, and, with her determined face in the faint light, Marnie was right. Draw sharks… or flies.

Draw conclusions.

The concrete seawall stood five feet above the water. Turk’s Maverick,
Flats Broke
, hung on davit hooks, its propeller a foot above the placid canal water. He flipped a breaker then twisted levers on each davit. The winches turned slowly to lower the skiff, their steel cables popping as they untwisted and released tension.

Turk handed us the loose ends of dock lines cleated to the bow and stern. We stood in silence as the boat settled into the water. He shut off the davits, hunkered on the seawall and stepped down to the gunwale. It took him a minute to unhook the lift slings, clear the bilges and start the motor. Marnie and I pulled the davit arms back to the seawall, then she went aboard and I followed, bringing the dock lines with me. Turk flipped on his depth finder, a small compass, and a GPS unit and slipped it into gear. With his running lights dark he idled confidently out of Tamarac Park. I was glad he could do it. I couldn’t see shit.

The wind freshened and easy waves rolled as we left the protected canal. Turk aimed a hand-held spot ahead of us and lighted a green “1” marker. He panned a red “2” triangle to our left, doused the beam, built up speed between the posts, brought the skiff to a plane and continued southeast. For the first half-minute he adjusted his tilt and engine speed to balance the hull to our weight, our positions around the console. Once we reached a rhythm with the waves, the ride was a joy.

The breeze on our nose carried open-ocean smells but no pre-dawn chill. The ocean carries a different flavor when it hasn’t been sunbaked. I’ve always found it easier at that hour to differentiate among fish, seaweed, plankton and salt spray. And a new moon it was, with no moon at all, in that period before dawn when the sky is darkest, the stars brightest, more numerous, more mystical.

After a minute or so Turk angled left to take us east at about thirty-five knots. Engine noise and rushing wind made conversation pointless. Lost in our thoughts, we had no need to chat. The only light south of us was Pelican Shoal’s red flasher. Ashore, to the north, I saw headlights on US 1 once or twice, but little else in that direction either. Then, southeast of us, American Shoal’s automated flashing light popped into sight; and, dead ahead, the flashing white light of Ninefoot Shoal. After about twelve minutes, maybe a half-mile from Ninefoot Shoal, Turk slowed, dimmed the depth finder, scrolled his GPS to highlight our surroundings, and circled slowly back to the west.

“This is good,” he said, keeping his eyes on the water ahead. “It’ll stay dark for at least another fifty minutes. That’s what we want.”

Marnie sat in front of the console, hugging herself as if fighting the chill in her mind, the cold fear of what she might learn on the open ocean. Or what she might never know.

For twenty minutes Turk ran a slow yo-yo, a broad east-west grid. He was quiet except once when he muttered, “This isn’t working,” and reversed course.

During a west leg with the wind to our backs, I said, “Why GPS?”
 

“Keep us generally north of West Washerwoman. That’s the ballpark, according to the scuttled boat report. I’m looking for at least eight feet of depth but no less than that. Once you get a quarter-mile off the beach, it shallows up.”

“How waterproof is that unit?”

“If you can trust a salesman,” said Turk, “it’s supposed to survive splashes. If I drop it in a fishbox, it’s probably okay. But if it sinks four feet, it’s history.”

“So someone could have trashed the boat, then come back and found it later?”

Turk shook his head. “I’ve been thinking since we first talked yesterday at your house.” He tapped his GPS. “This runs off the boat’s battery. The battery goes under, along with all the wiring, things go to hell fast. There wouldn’t be any GPS.”

“So how do we know if someone sees us on radar?”

“Maybe they’ll come out to see our real live faces.” Marnie had a shiver in her voice. “Can we give it a few more minutes?”

I had learned about underwater listening devices in the Navy, though I’d never heard of any in the Florida Straits. “How about one other thing?” I said. “Set your tilt to make the prop noisy, wake up the barracuda. Maybe cavitate on your turns.”

“What the hell,” said Turk. He pressed his engine tilt switch, brought the lower unit up a few notches but kept his prop below the surface. He turned to starboard, began a slow circle. The propeller didn’t cavitate at that speed but churned loud enough to disturb plenty of fish. Turk straightened his course and motored toward the east.

For the next fifteen minutes, each time Turk turned, the prop burbled loudly, at least to us.

I heard it east of us, the flutter carried by wind, muffled by distance. My first thought made it a helicopter. More careful listening killed that guess. Multiple motors and the metallic slap of its hull against the low wavetops had it coming our way. Not directly at us but within fifteen degrees, honking along quickly. I raised my hand and pointed toward the rumble.

Turk pulled back his throttle and checked the ominous throb. “If he kept his course, he’d pass south of us, right?”

Ten seconds later Marnie and I agreed.

“So right now he’s fishing.”
 

“Where did he come from?” I said. “Little Torch or Big Pine?”

“If it’s the playtoy I think it is,” said Turk, “it was docked last night in that marina at the bottom of Drost Road on Cudjoe. You’re hearing three 225s on twenty-eight feet. All black paint, no hull numbers, no engine cover logos. I didn’t have my tape measure. Might have been thirty-two feet, but born to be mean.”

Turk spun his wheel, nudged the throttle lever, cavitating louder than before. He went a couple hundred yards, did it again, then pulled us back to idle speed.

Thirty seconds later we heard the boat shift course, aim directly toward us. It was still dark, and I glanced at Turk and Marnie, looked at my own clothing. There wasn’t enough light to make us visible at that range. “Did it have radar?” I said.

“Not the boat I saw,” said Turk.

“Are they using night-vision goggles?” said Marnie.

“We’d be a speck on the water at this range,” I said. “I think they were guided by a shore facility, and I doubt they’d put Fat Albert’s radar on something small like us.”

“Alex called it,” said Turk. “The beach crew heard us out here and steered him our way. Somebody’s listening to hydrophones.”

Marnie stared ashore. I saw it, too, the single lighted house on Lower Sugarloaf, west on Old Papy Road.

I spoke so only Turk could hear me: “You think that’s what Sam wanted us to confirm?”

“Yep,” he said. “And, by doing it, our trip here was a success. Now we have to pay the tab.”

A separate, louder flutter approached from the west.

“Shit,” I said. “That’s a helicopter. Did we bite off more than we can stomach?”

“It’s most likely another boat, but it’s pay dirt,”
 
said Turk. He pressed the tilt control. The engine rolled back, the propeller went downward. He brought
Flats Broke
around slowly to point south and flipped on his running lights.

“We can’t outrun those clowns,” I said.

“We have to act afraid,” said Turk. “They’re coming right at us and they haven’t identified themselves. They’ll make it pretty fucking clear in about thirty seconds.”

I said, “This has something to do with photo ID, right?”

“Everybody hold on.” He double-checked Marnie’s grasp on the console and pushed the throttle full forward.

We traveled less than a quarter-mile, barely got up to speed before the boat approaching from the west blipped its blue light.

The other boat, now behind us, cued a directional loudspeaker. With painful intensity, like a foghorn with words, a voice said, “Police. Stop your boat, captain. Police. Stop your boat.” Two focused spots lighted us like midday.

Turk eased his throttle. He made it clear that he was stopping but he didn’t risk swamping the skiff by screeching to a halt.

“Turn your boat into the wind, captain. Take it out of gear and rev your prop.”

Turk did so.

The boat behind us approached. The one to the west hung back.

“Captain, identify yourself. Did you lose someone overboard?”

Turk remained still. We were all blinded by the brightness.

The voice shifted to a battery-powered hailer. “Shut her down captain. You and your crew on your knees. Hang your arms over the side so we can see them. Hands in the water. We want to see thirty wet fingers, right now.”

“My hands are in sight,” shouted Turk. “I’m a licensed boat operator. You can read my hull number plain as day. Cut down those lights and come over here and tell me what you want.”

“There goes my wild idea of trying to eat lunch today,” I said.

The stern voice, as if two feet away: “We want you on your knees, hands in the water.”

Turk shook his head. “Ain’t gonna happen, Boats.”

Long pause. The men on the dark boat tried to figure out how Turk knew the man’s nickname, the traditional Navy moniker for a boatswain’s mate.

On the hailer: “What are you doing out here, captain?”

“Trying to see who would come out and ask me that question.”

“If we have to do an equipment demonstration, captain, the first shot airs out your bow at the waterline.”

“Which law does that enforce?”

“Failure to identify yourself to Homeland Security, sir.”

They had been well trained to be courteous to everyone and friendly to no one.

“That’s the Border Patrol with a new name?” said Turk. “Do I look like a Somalian pirate, or what?”

“That’s the loss of your federally-issued captain’s license on first offense.”

“Oh,” Turk said to us softly. “I guess we can take that as adequate jurisdiction. But don’t put your hands under the surface.” He switched off the engine.

We knelt and hung our arms over the side.

“I just made it to page one,” said Marnie. “Tomorrow, above the fold, for good or ill. I’ll either have the byline or be the topic.”

We were less than 2,000 yards at sea, in Florida waters. I was close enough to the beach to hear cars on US 1 or at least imagine that I could. I felt very close to knowing an illegal alien’s desire and desperation, except I had every right in the world to be where I was. At least the Navy allowed me to believe they held a vested interest in my right to life. The men with automatic weapons and black boats with their blacked-out numbers and motor logos had been trained to make me believe the opposite. Their presence assured me that I had no rights at all.