Fallen Mangrove (Jesse McDermitt Series Book 5) (14 page)

We had the plane loaded in fifteen minutes and everyone climbed aboard. Even though it was early, the sound of the big radial engine coming up the ramp drew a good-sized crowd for our departure. While they boarded, I ran through a preflight check and started the engine. Once everyone was settled and strapped in, I stood on the right rudder pedal and pushed the throttle up just enough to get her rolling. Once the bow wheels were pointing down the ramp, gravity took over and I pulled her down to an idle, using the brakes to steer down the center of the ramp. The nose gear on a Beaver isn’t steerable. The nose wheels on the front of each float are on casters like a shopping cart, which makes maneuvering a little difficult. Ten feet from the water, I had her lined up perfectly and just let her roll on down into the water.

Idling across the shallows, I raised the landing gear, checking the lights to make sure the wheels were fully retracted. When we were a good hundred feet from shore I called Marathon airport again for permission to take off.

“Beaver one three eight five, Marathon Tower. Traffic outbound is a Cessna Caravan at three miles. Light wind zero niner zero at five. If surface traffic is clear, you’re clear to takeoff.”

I repeated the instructions, checked for boats and, seeing none, I turned her into the wind. I had Kim riding shotgun, with Rusty, Deuce, and Doc in back. I lowered the flaps to thirty-five degrees and pushed the throttle to full power, lining up just to the south of the last marker for Vaca Cut channel.

The plane was up on the step in less than two hundred feet and skipped over the glassy water for another six hundred feet when I could feel her pulling toward the sky. Easing back on the yoke, she came up off the water smoothly. A moment later I raised the flaps, banking southeast and climbing. Once a few miles out over the Straits, I leveled off at five thousand feet, turned to a heading of eighty-five degrees and reduced power to an efficient cruising speed of one hundred and forty miles per hour.

“It’s almost two hours to Nassau,” I said over the intercom.

“Will we be over water all the way?” Kim asked.

“In a little over an hour, we’ll fly over the northern tip of Andros Island,” I replied. “Other than that, there won’t be anything to see but water.”

“This is all very cool, Dad.”

“You want to drive a little bit?” I asked her.

“Me? Fly a plane? I only got my license to drive a car two years ago.”

“There’s nothing to it,” I said. “Pull back a little to go up and push forward a little to go down. Other than that, just keep her aimed at that cloud way up ahead.”

“Are you sure it’s okay?” she asked, reaching for the yoke.

I raised both hands and said, “Off stick.”

Kim took the yoke in her hands, grinning, and asked, “I’m flying?”

“Yeah, you’re flying. Now turn the wheel just a little to the right while you pull back slightly and press lightly on the right pedal.” She did as I told her and the plane banked to the right. “Now do the same thing to the left and bring us back on course for that cloud.”

She banked slowly to the left and lined back up on the cloud. I noticed the altimeter dropped about a hundred feet but didn’t say anything.

“Our altitude changed,” she said, as if reading my mind.

“Yeah, it’ll do that when banking. It’s a heavy plane and kind of slides downward whichever way you’re banking. With practice you’ll get better at maintaining altitude in a turn.”

I took the controls back and brought us back up to five thousand feet. Rusty and Doc started talking about the salvage law requirements in the Bahamas and Kim and I enjoyed watching the ocean slip by below us. After about an hour we could see clouds building up ahead, a sure sign of land.

I pointed out the little village of Owen’s Town and Stafford Creek as we flew over the island.
One day
, I thought,
I’ll have to bring her here to see the blue holes.

Flying back out over the ocean again, I contacted Lynden Pindling International Airport on Nassau when we were ten miles out and requested approach and landing instructions.

A distinctly island voice came back to me, saying, “Beaver one three eight five, Pindling Tower. I have you ten miles out. Traffic three miles inbound is an L-1011 heavy. Runway fourteen, light wind one fifteen at six, clouds are scattered and visibility is ten miles. Cleared to land.”

I acknowledged the instructions and started searching the sky for the airliner. Spotting it, I began an easy turn to fall in behind it. Five miles out from the runway, I reduced power and started to descend. A mile out, I lowered the flaps and landing gear, checking the lights to make sure they locked into position.

We didn’t need a third of the runway the airliner used as I came in over the glide path and touched down a hundred yards beyond the west end of the runway. Once on the ground I switched to the ground control frequency and requested taxi instructions to the fixed-base operator Deuce had arranged for fueling and clearing customs. Ground control directed us to Odyssey FBO, where I turned the plane around so it was facing the taxiway.

Doc handed down the two bags we’d packed with extra food, water, and other emergency provisions, and I placed them on the ground, open. We all walked inside with our passports, leaving the doors open also. It’s been my experience that it’s far easier making everything as accessible as possible when arriving in the islands. It didn’t hurt to have a twenty in each pocket either.

We cleared customs with no trouble and a customs officer accompanied me out to the plane while Rusty made arrangements for a van to take us to the government offices. The customs officer wore a name tag that read only Joshua.

“Dat one beautiful plane, mon,” Joshua said as we approached the Beaver. “What yeah?”

“It’s a fifty-three,” I replied, handing him the signed and notarized bill of sale, title, and registration. “Just bought it this morning.”

He looked from the plane to me and back to the plane. “I know dis plane.” He stopped and turned toward me. “You bought dis from Mistuh Williams?”

“You know Dave?” I asked.

He smiled, his white teeth seeming to glow against the darkness of his skin. “Ya, mon. He been through heah many times. Mind if I go aboard?”

Knowing it wouldn’t matter if I minded or not and wondering if Dave had made a good impression here, I said, “Sure, feel free.”

He stepped up on the starboard pontoon and opened the door. He went straight for the seat cushion, lifting it and rummaging through the contents before stepping down with the plane’s logbook.

“Dese not necessary, but Mistuh Williams like gettin’ it stamped. If ya like, I can run dis into di office?”

I took the book from him and thumbed through it. There were stamps from many airports all over the southeastern United States and half the Caribbean. Thumbing back through the first few pages, I saw airport stamps from several places in Canada and Alaska.

“He never mentioned this,” I said, grinning. “But yeah, it’s pretty cool. A lot of history in this little book.” I handed it back to him and he went back inside.

A moment later, he came back out, followed by the others. A fuel truck pulled up and an Odyssey worker began refueling the tanks.

“Here ya go, Mistuh McDermitt,” Joshua said, handing me the planes log book and my passport. “Ever ting is irey. Soon’s dat mon finish fuelin’ ya and di van get here, yuh can lock her up and go. He wheel her up to doze tie-downs when he done.”

I looked and realized that while I’d turned correctly, I’d missed the tie-downs by ten feet. I didn’t notice them and hadn’t even thought of tying her down. Like the Keys, the weather on these islands could change in half a heartbeat. Not a mistake I’d make again.

I pulled both hands out of my pockets, turned to Joshua and extending my hand, I palmed a twenty into his while handing him a business card with my left hand. “Thanks, Joshua. It’s been a pleasure meeting you. If you get over to Marathon and want to dive the Stream or fish the back country, look me up.”

He lifted the
Gaspar’s Revenge Charters
business card to his eyes while smoothly pocketing the bill in his pants. Sticking the card in his shirt pocket as the van pulled alongside us, he said, “I do dat.”

I closed and locked the doors of the plane. Deuce had already taken care of paying for the fuel, so we climbed into the van and headed for the government office.

It took less than twenty minutes there for Rusty to finish his application and get his Bahamian salvor’s license and permit. That done, we stopped at a little outdoor restaurant on the way back to the airport and had conch fritters and Caribbean gumbo.

We were back in the air before noon, well ahead of the schedule I’d planned. From Nassau to Elbow Cay took less than an hour. I contacted Marsh Harbour Airport and got clearance to do a few low-level flybys of Elbow Cay and the surrounding islands for photography.

“Beaver one three eight five, Marsh Harbour Tower. Minimum altitude is three hundred feet anywhere within the Bahamian five-mile limit.”

I acknowledged him and dropped down to four hundred feet, following the coast of narrow Tilloo Cay to the south of Elbow Cay. At this altitude, the coastline of the two islands seemed almost as one. It was easy to see that many years ago, they had been a single island, now separated by Tilloo Cut.

Approaching the cut, I dropped the speed and lowered the flaps ten degrees. I adjusted the throttle to maintain ninety miles per hour as we passed the cut and followed the shoreline northward.

“There’s where we’ll be staying,” Doc said, having taken over as co-pilot. “The light blue house on the hill with the townhouses below it.”

Passing it, I banked left and turned a slow circle around the property. It looked like a great place for a vacation get away. Deuce used a digital camera with a zoom lens and took a couple of dozen pictures of the property from all angles.

Reaching the beach again, we continued north along the coast. Rusty had the printout Chyrel had given him, with the four locations marked on it.

“The first is just ahead,” he said over the intercom. “The cove with the low limestone cliff on the south side.”

I spotted it and again turned a slow circle while Deuce took another twenty or so pictures. Crossing the beach once more, we continued north. The next one was easy to find. It was a massive rock formation with a house sitting right on top of it. Whoever owned it sure had a great view of both the ocean and the beaches north and south of it.

“The next one is offshore,” Rusty said as I began the same lazy turn around the house. “When you come out of the turn, head north-northeast. It’s about a half mile north of this rock and a half mile offshore.”

Deuce got pictures all the way around the house and I set the heading Rusty had given me. I spotted the rock jutting up out of the sea and banked right to line up for another circle around it.

“When you finish the circle,” Deuce said, “head out to sea a ways and fly back due west about a hundred yards north of it.”

I knew what he wanted. To photograph the area “eighty great advances” to the west of the rock. As I overflew the area, I banked slightly left and kicked the right rudder pedal, causing the plane to fly a straight line while banked to the left, giving Deuce a much better view. I heard the fast clicking of about a hundred frames, stopping only when we reached the beach.

“The next one’s on the northern tip of the island,” Rusty said.

Banking left again, I circled a group of small, quaint-looking cottages sitting right behind the dune and then continued north along the beach. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw color and movement. Glancing over, I saw someone standing on the deck of the middle cottage. A dark-haired woman in a yellow bathing suit was looking up at us as we flew over. She had a flowered sarong around her waist, but one very shapely, tanned leg was exposed. She waved and, not wanting to appear suspicious, I waggled the wings in return before looking ahead again to find the last rock outcropping.

“What the heck was all that about?” Rusty asked from the back seat. “Something wrong with the plane?”

“Just saying hi,” I replied, seeing a large rock outcropping jutting out into the sea thirty or forty feet.

“Well, quit bein’ so danged friendly,” he said. “You’re bouncing the passengers around.”

Approaching the rock, I turned another slow circle around it while Deuce took more pictures. As I circled, I looked off to the south and saw the woman still standing on the deck, watching us. Even at this distance, I could tell she was attractive.

James managed to get to work on time, but it was an effort. He’d never met a woman as aggressive and tenacious as Ettaleigh. He managed to crawl into bed at two o’clock and when he woke, every muscle in his body was stiff from overexertion.

He’d seen her once already that morning. She’d come down to the restaurant for a late breakfast, dressed in a strapless yellow sundress and flat sandals. Though he was completely exhausted from the night before, the mere sight of her excited him. This he couldn’t understand. He’d seen plenty of attractive women, but this woman seemed to have an effect on him that no other woman ever had and that he was powerless to control.

Shortly after breakfast the head desk clerk, Paul, summoned him. “The guest in cottage number two has asked for you,” he said. “She needs more towels and asked if she could talk to you for a moment about taking her fishing. I’ve warned you about soliciting the guests, James.”

“She asked if I had a boat,” James replied, not really lying. “I just gave her my card. If you like, I can tell her no and refer her to someone else.”

Paul thought about it a moment. Employees becoming overly friendly with guests had always been a problem, but James was one of his hardest workers and was well-known all around the islands as being a professional on the water. Besides, the guest had called the desk to ask if it would be acceptable instead of calling James directly.

“No,” he replied. “If the lady and her party want you to take them fishing, that will be all right. But, only on your days off, or after work. I can’t get someone to fill in on short notice.”

James went to the laundry, got a bundle of still-warm towels from the shelf, along with a couple of hand towels, and went to cottage number two.

He knocked on the door and after a moment it opened. She reached out and grabbed his arm, dragging him inside. She wore a yellow bikini, covered with a tight-fitting black mesh dress that extended to her wrists and middle thigh. It had a loop that encircled her middle fingers to hold the sleeves in place and she was wearing black high heels.

She took the towels and tossed them on the bed as she dragged him across the room to the open French door. Without saying a word, she lifted the bottom of the dress above her hips and pulled her bikini bottom off, tossing it on the bed also.

He was already fully aroused before she bent and released him from his shorts, then turned her back. Gripping the insides of the open doorframe, she arched her back, turning her head and smiling seductively at him. “You have about ten minutes before you’ll be missed, James. Don’t waste any of it staring.”

Temporarily sated, Ettaleigh sent her new boy toy on his way, telling him to return by way of the secluded deck when he took his lunch break. In her business life, she had to maintain a certain aloofness to be effective at her job. These business preparation trips were sometimes the only way she could let loose and satisfy her physical needs. Since they were few and far between, she’d learned to be more aggressive and take what she wanted during the short time she was preparing for upcoming business.

Occasionally, she would have a day off on a weekend and would rent a car and drive to another city, where she could go on the hunt for strong young men at will. She had no problem with using modern chemistry to ensure a willing partner and would add a second dose if a man showed even the slightest sign of faltering. So far, this one had remained more than ready, even twelve hours after the first dose.

Opening her laptop she read a few emails, responding to those that required a response, then listened to the latest audio clip sent to her from one of her associates. She played it back and listened closer, then forwarded the audio file to her employer along with a message explaining what she thought this new development would mean for their business plans.

Her immediate work completed, she decided to get a couple of hours in the sun on the secluded deck before lunch. As she lay on the recliner, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the tingling sensation of the cool ocean breeze on her bare skin, she heard the sound of an airplane. She rose from the recliner and stood at the deck’s rail, searching the sky.

She spotted the bright red seaplane circling the house on the rock to the south of her cottage. It then flew a mile offshore and circled a large rock that protruded up from the ocean bottom, undercut all around from the constant wave action. The plane circled the rock and then flew out to sea before turning and coming back toward the beach. It flew over just to the north of her cottage and turned a slow, lazy circle to the south before heading north along the coast once more.

The plane moved so slowly, she wondered how it even stayed in the air. As it flew over the water just offshore, she saw the pilot turn and look down at her. She smiled and waved and the plane dipped its wings in return before moving further up the beach and performing another lazy circle.

She saw James approaching from the beach, carrying one of those large umbrellas people use to ward off the sun. She smiled again.
What friendly people these islanders are
, she thought as she went back inside the cottage, leaving the door open once more.