Lost (33 page)

Shane pivots the laptop, points to the screen.

“See this? That’s a Google Earth view of the Everglades. This little corner up here, that’s the Nakosha reservation, but it borders wilderness on two sides, all of which is part of
either Everglades National Park or Big Cypress National Preserve. That’s over three million acres, and the only human occupation is around the edges—and that’s only within the area officially designated as parkland. The actual wilderness is at least five times larger. Very few roads, and most of those are on the periphery. There are hundreds of square miles that can only be accessed on foot or, in a limited way, by airboat.”

“So it really is hopeless. He could be anywhere.”

“No, no. He’s somewhere, a definite somewhere,” Shane strenuously insists. “That’s my point. We need to find a way in to Ricky Lang’s world. Either by locating one of his partners in crime, or an individual who knows him intimately and is willing to talk.”

“Whittle or this Fish person.”

“Precisely.”

Suddenly Shane puts the laptop aside and leaps up, as if he’s got ants in his pants. Or, given our location, roaches. But it’s his cell phone, which he left on vibe, and soon enough he flips it open.

“Agent Healy? We’re fine, any news? I see.”

He shakes his head at me, restarting my heart.

“Good, excellent,” he says, using his eyes to let me know the information isn’t life or death. “Let me get a pen, I want to write this down.”

He fumbles around in his luggage, locating notebook and pen. He listens for about five minutes, saying little more than uh-huh, and small encouragements to keep Healy talking. Finally he concludes, “Sean? Thank you very much. We really and truly appreciate everything you’ve done, everything you’re doing. We know the operation is in good hands. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Garner? She says yes. Excellent. Talk to you soon.”

He flips the phone shut, sits there thoughtfully, as if
ticking over various ideas. “Interesting,” he says. “We finally have a motive.”

“Beyond him being crazy?”

“Might be what made him crazy. Agent Healy just interviewed Ricky Lang’s live-in girlfriend. Apparently this is a recent relationship and the girl has no connection to the tribe, but she does know that Ricky has been obsessed about his dead children.”

“Dead children?” I say, the words catching in my throat.

“Six months ago Lang’s children perished in a house fire. According to the girlfriend, Ricky blames the tribal council.”

“Oh my God. You think they killed his children?”

“No idea,” says Shane. “This is all second- or third-hand information. But if Lang holds the tribe responsible for the death of his kids, that explains a lot.”

“He’s out of his mind with grief.”

Shane nods thoughtfully. “And seeking revenge.”

6. Mr. Crispy Says Goodbye

Roy figures patience is in order, take it one step at a time. Dug and Stick have been on his case about the helicopters flitting over the airfield four or five times in the fading hour before sunset, as if puzzling out whether to bother landing. Like all this unwanted attention is his fault somehow.

Stick Davis, more or less sober, wants to know what the Feds are looking for, and what does it have to do with a stolen Beechcraft.

“This some kind of sting operation?” he asks in his deceptively casual Alabama drawl. “Y’all setting up old Stick?”

Roy figures Stick is armed someway or other. Not in the vicinity of his waist—the oddly protuberant drinker’s belly
takes up all the available space—but maybe an ankle iron, or a larger-caliber handgun secreted in the tattered backpack on the floor of the truck.

Stick in the rear seat, legs out, ankles crossed, wearing leather deck shoes without socks. Actually humming to himself and twiddling his thumbs. A creature never looked so relaxed. Which you might say about a rattlesnake curled behind a rock, if you didn’t know squat about venomous snakes.

Tell him the truth, more or less, Roy decides. As much truth as needs telling.

“They’re lookin’ for a couple of folks, none of ‘em us,” he says. “None of your concern. Nothin’ to do with the airplane.”

Stick chuckles, shaking his head. “Roy, you know what? I wasn’t born yesterday. Other thing, I ain’t figure on getting arrested today, awright? So whyn’t you tell old Uncle Stick what’s really going on?”

Dug, looking eager, says, “It’s a secret, ain’t it, Roy?”

The new Dodge Ram is parked at a deserted rest stop area just outside the reservation. Not that anyone has picnicked here lately—with the crumbling concrete benches and the hard-scrabble ground strewn with broken glass, the area is not exactly welcoming. Not that it matters. None of them have exited the cab, not wanting to be clocked by whatever long-range cameras or spotting devices they may have aboard the surveillance helicopters. Roy has left the motor running to boost the AC, but the cab feels close and smells of whatever Dug has tracked in on his boots. His twin being a magnet for shit of all species. Pig, deer, dog or human; if a turd is out there, Dug will find it.

“What happened is, Ricky Lang detained a few people,” Roy explains. “They’re lookin’ for them, the, um, people, not the airplane.”

“You saying the Beech isn’t directly involved?” Stick wants to know.

“Not no more it ain’t. Plus, Ricky is on the run, busy getting his butt chased by about five hundred cops. So this is our opportunity to make a few dollars.”

“Uh-huh,” says Stick. “Figured something like that. You’re taking an opportunity.”

“You still in?”

“Until I’m out. Which will be decided dependin’ on my observations of the situation. Calculating risk, we call it.”

“There’s always risk,” Roy points out.

Stick laughs. “Oh my. The boy is a philosopher.”

They sit in the crap stink of the Dodge Ram until the sun winks out over the Everglades. There one moment, gone the next. Just to be sure they wait out the twilight, what the old-timers call “after light,” and there comes a time when the helicopters retreat to the east, seeking home base and refueling.

The vast Everglades, difficult to search in daylight, are impossible at night.

Roy backs out of the rest stop, drives onto the access road. No headlights because he’s heard that satellites can detect running lights. The boundaries of the narrow road are marked by the red eyes of coons and other small creatures sniffing out the truck as it passes. Roy driving with care and concentration, thinking about the multimillion-dollar Beechcraft King Air 350. How he’ll trade the insanely valuable airplane for a new life. Buy some old farm up in the Carolinas or maybe Kentucky, see what happens next. Make sure there’s a cabin for Dug, a place he’ll feel comfortable. Not in the main house, surely. All his brother needs is a place to lay down and creatures to kill. Squirrel or possum or house cat, four legged or two, Dug ain’t particular, so long as he can make it dead.

The airfield glows faintly with the light of early-rising stars. Roy aims the big Dodge like a beacon, crunching on fine gravel until they arrive at the mound of earth that forms the camouflaged hangar. He can feel Stick tensing in the back seat, eyes full of the darkness, thirsty for any sign of betrayal. His own heart slamming because for all he knows the FBI has staked out the hangar.

Meantime Dug, soothed by a chronic lack of imagination, comes awake with a grunt. “Where we at?” he wants to know, grumpy as a child.

“We’re here,” Roy whispers. “Money in the bank, ain’t that right, Stick?”

They wait for a while in the truck, engine off and ticking as it cools, until Roy gathers up his courage and steps out, ready or not, here he comes. Standing in the hot velvety hush of backcountry nightfall, ears keen for the cocking of a gun or the crunch of boots on gravel.

When he’s satisfied they’re alone, Roy tells his brother to get out, hands him the key.

Dug fumbles with the padlock, cussing softly and heaves open the big door. Yawning blackness within, and blessed silence. The airplane in faint silhouette, crouching like some great bird, confident in its stillness.

“No lights,” Stick orders sharply, when Dug reaches for a flashlight. And then softer, mostly to himself. “Hell on toast, we might actually get away with this. Right under their noses, wouldn’t that be sweet!”

The Whittle brothers rig up the tow line, hooking a rope loop on the front bumper, and slowly back the big aircraft out of the hangar once again, this time forever.

“Lordy me,” Stick says, gazing in rapture at the aircraft. “Boys, let’s gas ‘er up, get this show on the road.”

Dug peels the tarp off the back of the Dodge Ram, exposing two drums of Jet-A fuel. Tough to come by, but Stick insisted on the real deal, no substituting high-test and kerosene for properly blended turboprop fuel. Something about pure filtration and low flash, typical pilot talk. Roy uncoils the thick rubber hose and then Stick takes charge, muttering about spilled fuel marking the wings. He uses a tiny penlight to illuminate the fuel access and position the nozzle as Dug works the hand crank on the drums. Dug enjoying the fumes—as a boy he’d huffed gasoline a time or two, seeking extra numbness, and vaguely recalls the cell-killing experience with fondness.

Twenty minutes later the tanks are topped off and Stick Davis has a grin that shows in the dark. “It’s less than five hundred nautical miles to Cancun,” he reminds them, strutting around the aircraft as he goes over a cursory checklist. “Make a little stop, change the tail numbers, then hop over to see my friends in Guatemala.”

“These are the friends want the plane?”

“Them or associates of theirs. Might end up in Caracas or São Palo, hard to say.”

“How much, you figure?” Roy pretty much knows, but wants to savor the amount.

“This little beauty?” says Stick, hands massaging his little belly as he gazes fondly at the plane. “With less than three hundred hours on the airframe? The original owner has to have shelled out close to five mil. Maybe more, with that particular avionics package. If we had clear title we’d get, say, four million easy.”

“Four million,” says Dug. Anything more than will fit in his wallet he can’t quite fathom.

“That’s if we owned it legal, which we don’t,” Stick points out. “Lucky I know some who ain’t particular.”

“So how much?”

“What I said before. On the ground in Guatemala, I won’t take a penny less than a cool million. Cash, U.S. dollars, and we split it fifty-fifty, true partners in crime.”

Roy figures that means two million, but he doesn’t care how much Stick Davis steals so long as he clears the agreed-upon five hundred thousand. That was the deal, sealed on a handshake at the Hunt Club. Roy thinking, don’t be greedy, that’s what wrecked his father, trying to squeeze a crooked deal for every last dollar.

For the first time in a week, Roy feels like he’s back in control. Things have finally fallen in place. Ricky Lang on the run is the best thing could have happened. He and Dug can walk away from the crazy kidnapping, make their money on the airplane, still have enough for a fresh start. Meantime Ricky takes the fall, probably with a SWAT bullet in his whacked-out brain, end of story.

Stick is chattering on about vectors and airspeed in a way that makes Roy think he’s gotten into the vodka. How exactly he can’t imagine, since he showed up sober and hasn’t, so far as Roy has observed, taken a swig of anything. What, does he distill alcohol out of the air? Absorb it through his skin? Then again, Roy knows from long familial experience how clever boozers can be, how furtive, sucking down a medicinal shot so fast the human eye can barely register, like a hummingbird probing a blossom for nectar.

Whatever, Stick Davis has a reputation for getting an overloaded crate off the ground even when so drunk he can’t keep both eyes open. Plus he’ll be flying light in a new machine, nothing but himself and the fuel that will get him to wherever it is he’s going. Anywhere but Cancun, Roy
figures, he’s mentioned that as a destination strictly for diversionary purposes. Probably heading somewhere further down the coast of Mexico. Full tanks give him range to Costa Rica, for that matter. Knowing Stick, he may sell the Beech to a drug king pin, then fly the same aircraft home with a full load, make out on both ends.

Roy doesn’t care where he goes or what he drinks, so long as he delivers the agreed-upon sum.

“Sure you don’t want to come along for the ride?” Stick teases.

“That’s your deal,” Roy says. “Ours is both feet on the ground, right, Dug?”

“Whatever you say, Roy,” says Dug, still a little high from the whiffs of jet fuel.

They’re helping Stick align the aircraft on the narrow runway when Ricky Lang suddenly materializes out of the darkness, a plastic five-gallon bucket in one hand and a.45 caliber Glock in the other.

“Going somewhere?” he says, at the same time squeezing off a round that explodes through Stick’s left foot.

Big bad Ricky Lang standing over the writhing man, saying, in a conversational tone, “You must be the pilot, because these two dumb crackers couldn’t fly a kite.”

Roy and Dug are both frozen, hands on the wings of the aircraft. Dug waiting on his brother to make a decision and Roy calculating if he can get back to the truck and retrieve his handgun before Ricky blows a hole in his back. Deciding no, he can’t. Amazed by the situation, and by Lang’s bizarre appearance—he seems to have bathed in mud, bare-chested, his big arms glistening in the starlight, and the old Moe Howard haircut slicked back and interlaced with what appears to be strands of swamp grass.

Looks like he’s got a head full of snakes, and that’s how he’s acting, too.

“Your name is Davis,” Ricky says to Stick, who’s rolling around, clutching his shattered foot. “I can read your mind. I can see your spine and all the bones. I can see your fat liver.”

Roy, careful not to make any sudden moves, slowly backs away from the wing and says, “It’s not what you think.”

Ricky finds the remark hilarious. But his laughter is silent and therefore terrifying.

“You’re on the run, we figured you’d need money,” says Roy.

Even funnier. Ricky finally gets his breath back and says, “Do exactly what I say or you’re dead.”