Shark River (36 page)

I make it a rule not to linger in sentimentality, however; I seem to have less and less tolerance for it. Tomlinson insists that the opposite is true. He says that I have grown both spiritually and emotionally since I opened the lab at Dinkin’s Bay. He doesn’t seem to understand that I don’t consider that a compliment.

I decided not to waste time ordering dinner at a restaurant. I had canned goods in the boat, drinks, too. Instead, I turned back through town and stopped at the Circle K, where I loaded on more ice and fuel, then launched my skiff at the boat ramp.

The tide on the Baron River was ebbing. At idle, the black current swept me southward through the village and into the night. I stood at the wheel of my boat, big engine rumbling, and looked at the lights of the village. I could see people moving across scrims of windows, framed by leaves and vines, a micro-snapshot of lives being lived in this isolated Florida place.

Then, far off to the left, I could see the glow of Chokoloskee as I powered to plane across Chokoloskee Bay, running the flashing markers out Indian Key Pass, the moon following along behind me, its blue light strobing through the limbs of mangroves. The tops of the trees were individualized and set apart in starlight, a primeval canopy against the brighter sky. Then the mangroves thinned, fell away, and disappeared so that it was like breaking some gravitational hold, and I was suddenly free, running straight into blackness and a horizon of stars.

When I was well offshore, clear of coral rock and oyster bars, I banked southwest. Sea and sky were lucent spheres joined at the horizon. I sledded across, down the surface of one sphere, then up the surface of another.

In a few minutes, I picked up the gloom of Pavilion Key, the westernmost of the Ten Thousand Islands, and an effective range to deep water.

Twenty miles or so beyond, I knew, was Shark River.

I stopped only once. I calculated that I was slightly south of Lostman’s River. I took a whiz off the stern, looking up at the sky. No boats, no lights, nothing. The coast-line was all darkness here. I might have been the only human being left on earth. I switched off the engine. I sat drifting there, in no hurry now. I stripped off my clothes and swung over the side, my only way to bathe for the next few days.

The February ocean was chilly, in the low seventies, nearly cold.

Back in the boat, I dried myself and checked the cut on my left arm. It seemed to be closing nicely. I squirted antibiotic cream onto gauze and taped it into place. Then I put on fresh clothes. I hadn’t worn these clothes in so long that their use suggested ceremony. I put on camo BDUs, the dense Navy sweater over a T-shirt and the black watch cap.

Finally, I tied on my old and comfortable jungle boots before firing the engine and heading down the coast.

 

 

Look at a map, and Cape Sable is the massive riverine promontory that forms the southwestern boundary of the Florida peninsula. It is uninhabited, isolated, seldom visited—many miles of beach fringed by strands of coconut palms, accessible only by boat. It is known for silence, mosquitoes, and some of the most stunning sunsets on Earth.

There was good moonlight, but it was still too dark to see the stand of royal palm trees Tuck had mentioned, so I had to guess. I stern-anchored off Northwest Cape, and muled my gear up the beach. I pitched my red dome Moss tent, collected wood, and built a pit fire for light and as a smudge to sweep some of the mosquitoes away.

Down on the Cape, mosquitoes are distressing in winter. In summer, they can be existential—a peppered cloud that swarms and attacks, a billion winged lives competing for mammalian blood.

With pants, sweater, and headnet, though, I was protected, and worked away without much trouble. I wanted a big, public camp with lots of light and color, something easily seen from miles away. I thought about hiking up to Little Sable Creek to see if there was one of those tall, rope-straight mangroves growing there—a trunk adaptation associated with the Cape Sable area. I had the idea of putting up a little flagpole, something no one could miss.

I decided that seemed a little too much. If they wanted me, they would find me.

A frightening realization: Of course they would.

 

 

When the camp was complete, I began the more careful work of building a second, invisible camp. Because there was a chance I might need it, I took my folding entrenching tool and dug a hole in the hard sand large enough to hold me. I dug it deep enough that water began to seep in, then used my flashlight to find palmetto fronds to cover the thing.

The possible scenario was, if armed men approached my tent, I could lie on my back in the hole, wait until they’d passed, then surprise them from the rear.

Not a preferred plan of attack, but I wanted as many options available as possible.

When I was done with the hole, I walked inland a hundred meters or so to a border of trees. There were palms and Brazilian peppers—a noxious exotic—and a couple of huge black mangroves, too.

It was late now; the moon had drifted low toward the open Gulf of Mexico and by its light I saw, for the first time, the feathered crests of the royal palms that Tuck had mentioned, and that I also remembered from my first solitary visit to this place years ago as a boy.

A royal palm tree looks as if it is made from cement poured into an eighty-foot tube, then topped with a crown of fronds. Get up into one of those palms and you’d be able to spot any approaching boat miles before its arrival. Trouble was, I needed climbing hooks and a climbing belt to get up one of those trees. Worse, even the closest tree was too far from my false camp, and I didn’t feel like moving all that equipment again.

I decided the black mangroves would be good enough and picked the stoutest, not the tallest, tree. I climbed until I was about twenty or thirty feet above the ground, then chose two strong branches that were about the right distance apart. Between those branches, I strung my good jungle hammock with its camouflaged roof and no-seeumproof netting. Using sawed limbs, I also constructed a solid little platform big enough to hold me comfortably. Then I cut branches until I had a clear view of the beach camp, and used those branches to build a blind.

Back on the ground, I considered angles and distance. Years ago, with the Sig Sauer, I’d been able to shoot consistently and accurately up to about fifteen meters. I paced off the distance from the mangrove tree and built a makeshift lean-to on that spot. Also I constructed a small fire pit, then lit a pile of twigs and let it burn until it smoldered.

This had to be a convincing little outpost.

I thought I had everything I needed in my backpack but, of course, didn’t. Twice I had to make the long walk to my boat to get something I’d forgotten. A typical camping exercise.

This, however, was not a typical camp.

 

 

I kept the big fire burning for light. I opened a can of black beans and a small canned ham. Stuck them near the coals and made forays down the beach to collect driftwood for the fire. I had a stack of wood that was belt-high before I finally stopped to eat. I chopped ham into beans, and squeezed in the juice of one of the limes I’d brought. Sat back in the shadows, looking out across black water, eating, looking at the fire.

Driftwood makes the best of fires. It’s saturated with sea salt and ocean minerals. The chemical combustion of those salts and minerals creates flames that burn translucent blue, green, and violet—colors never seen in other campfires. Each piece of wood burns differently; each chunk creates its own prismatic display. Driftwood accurately translates the iridescent hues of Caribbean water into heat and flame.

As I sat there, my memory moved automatically and without conscious interest to that evening, years ago, after I’d loaded my little wooden skiff with camping gear and arrived alone at this place. I remembered my first view of the mangroves of Shark River. To a boy of eleven, they’d appeared massive, prehistoric—a black and green border at the Earth’s end.

The river, too, seemed well-named. For water to suggest the presence of predators, it must be sufficiently dark and volatile to create swirling ambush points and unexpected drop-offs. It must have some depth to it, too, enough to shield that which lies beneath and thus demonstrate a potential for attracting creatures unseen—creatures that are unexpected, dangerous.

The second day of that long-ago camping trip, I’d baited a heavy boat rod with a live mullet and drifted on an incoming tide along the sheer mangrove wall. The mullet was the size of a bowling pin. I never expected that there was anything around big enough to hit it.

I was wrong. Within a few minutes, something below turned on the bait so hard that it nearly snatched the rod and me out of the skiff. Then it ran off a hundred yards of fifty-pound test line, pulling the skiff and me along behind like a ski boat before it popped the monofilament as if it were string.

I’d pitched my Scout tent on Shark Point. After hooking and losing that fish, though, I moved camp south to Cape Sable, miles from the river. Even then, I loved to swim open water, but the experience had done something to my confidence, to my sense of security above water and below. I didn’t want to risk swimming again in a place that attracted animals so large and predatory.

Staring at the fire, I also thought about my mother. No longer able to recall her face from memory, I now remember her only from photographs. An attractive woman with strong cheeks and good eyes. By all accounts, she’d been a gifted amateur naturalist and one of the earliest advocates for a save-the-Everglades movement. She’d spent a lot of time lobbying hard up in Tallahassee.

I found it oddly comforting to know that just around the far curvature of Cape Sable was Flamingo, once an isolated fish camp, now headquarters for Everglades National Park. There, nearly hidden by mangroves, is a little brass plaque commemorating the founding of the park. My mother’s name is there, second column, about midway down.

The last thing I did before climbing the tree and zipping myself into the hammock was re-anchor my boat. I anchored it bow pointed seaward, double-anchored, stern tied by a long line to a stake I drove into the beach.

Then I went for a quick swim. I swam out a couple hundred meters. There was a fresh wind blowing and I rode the waves up and down, the horizon all around me. From the crest of each wave, I could see the stars that form the Southern Cross.

The Cross was at eye level, afloat way, way out there at open sea.

Several times that night, I awoke to the sound of wind and to the niggling despair of old memories. Once I heard a powerboat come in close to shore and shut down abruptly. I thought I saw a light in the far distance. Thought I heard something going thud-thud-thud, like wood hitting wood.

I waited, watched, listened. Decided it was probably a pompano fisherman working the beach, banging his hull with a paddle to spook fish into his gill net.

Cordero or his hired helpers could not possibly have had time already to rent a boat or steal a boat and track me to Cape Sable.

I checked the cell phone to make certain it was still on.

Plenty of battery remaining.

If I had to stay there a few days, I could always recharge it from the adapter on my skiff.

I tried to call Harrington one last time. Got his voice mail. Didn’t bother leaving a message. There was no need.

 

 

 

T
hey came to kill me the next day. They came blasting along the noonday beach, spraying white water against the blue of a February sky. Two men, both Caucasian, in a cabined, junky tri-hull that had an OMC outboard on the transom and faded block letters on the side: CHOKOLOSKEE BOAT RENTALS.

That told me something. Gave me a little boost of confidence. It told me Cordero or his men were acting on last-minute information. Told me they hadn’t taken time to get organized or to plan. They were eager—very, very eager to get the job done. They wanted to find me, make the hit, then get the hell out.

I’d been worried they’d come with a chopper. Maybe two. The drug people have plenty of money. If they’d sent a chopper after me equipped with the right kind of heat-sensing electronics, I wouldn’t have a prayer.

It also suggested that they hadn’t been tracking me personally. Someone had been passing them information.

I knew exactly who it was.

I was high above the ground on my little camouflaged platform watching them through my superb Zeiss binoculars. Hours before dawn, the wind had freshened from the north, blowing in a glittering high-pressure system. The seas were choppy; the sky had a crystal, Arctic resonance. The temperature dropped so abruptly that, by first light, it was too cold to sleep, so I climbed down from my hammock and stomped around until I got the blood circulating again. I used the binoculars to check the beach where I’d heard the boat the night before.

Nothing.

Because I was still cold, I stoked the big beach camp fire until it was roaring and boiled coffee, baking myself in the fire’s heat, watching the horizon for boats.

There were a couple shrimp boats far out to sea, booms folded like wings. A speck of a sailboat, too, its canvas gull-white, motionless in the wind. Nothing in close, though.

Because I was confident I had the time, I took my entrenchment tool and hiked back through the sea oats and prickly pear cactus southward to the grove of royal palms.

It took awhile, but I finally found the remains of what was probably the Lunsford house, the place Tuck had described in his note. Partially buried in the sand were sheets of tin from the fallen roof and gray planks of clapboard. There was a rusted iron hulk being strangled by vines—a generator, perhaps—along with a small junkyard of pipe, porcelain, glass and wire. Out back were a couple of cattle skulls, too. Nearby were short chains of vertebrae growing out of the sand.