The Sound of Many Waters (5 page)

“If you had, I wouldn’t be here.”

Skip nodded. “That’s right, but if you really want to know the truth, now that you’re old enough, well, I’ll just say it. You can credit your existence to a keg party and some latex that sat in a hot car for too long. But that’s life for ya, I guess.”

Zane had always assumed himself the product of an accident and the catalyst for his parents’ hurried wedding, but hearing it said by his own father helped him see the full tackiness of his creation, the inconvenience of his place in their lives. He turned and looked out the window, at the grove of masts in the marina where his fishing boat was moored, at the pelicans lazing on pilings splattered white by their own droppings, at the cumulonimbus storm clouds billowing on the horizon.

“Zane?” said Skip. But Zane did not want to reveal his tears.

“Zane!? That
is
your name, right?” Zane turned and saw Miguel glaring at him, his hair slicked back by the wind. It was a risky habit, but sometimes while driving his boat, the drone of the engines would lull Zane into a daydream or recollection. This had been a particularly emotional one, and he lowered his head to dry his eyes with his forearm while still holding the steering wheel.

“Get back to earth, boy,” Miguel shouted. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Problem?” Zane checked his course: still heading north. He checked the fuel gauge: half a tank.

“Can’t this boat go any faster?” Miguel stomped and the fiberglass rumbled like an earthquake.

“We’re at full speed. What’s wrong?”

“That bastard squealed and now the Feds are onto us.”

“What bastard?” Zane scanned the horizon. “There’s no one out here but us.”

“Oh yeah? Look here.” Miguel pulled a handheld monitor out of his pocket. It was rigged with a thick antenna that pointed to the sky like an accusatory finger.

The small screen on the unit showed two green, flashing dots chasing each other at about an inch apart.

“This is us.” Miguel pointed to the dot in the center. “And this is them, ten miles south and closing.” He pointed to the other dot so forcefully that it made a permanent blotch on the LCD screen.

“But how—”

“GPS tracking device. Like they put on sea turtles. I slipped it into their bilge last night, just in case.” Miguel had a subtle haughtiness in his words, obviously proud of his foresight.

“Then what do we do?”

“We get ready.” Miguel rushed to the forward hatch and wrenched a duffel bag out of it. Zane had forgotten about the bag since they disembarked. He recalled how surprised he had been about its extreme weight when Miguel first boarded, and how Miguel insisted that Zane not try to help him with it. So, it was hardly a surprise to see Miguel now extract an automatic rifle from the bag and slam an ammunition clip into it. Zane had never seen such a large gun.

“What’s with the cinderblocks in your front hatch?” asked Miguel.

Zane thought up a lie. “I’m making an artificial reef. To attract snapper.”

“Is fishing all you care about?”

Zane did not answer.

“Anyway, here’s the plan,” said Miguel, holding the rifle across his chest. There was a sudden wildness in his eyes, as if the gun had transferred some of its ferocity into him, and his words spilled out with frenetic intensity as he laid out their strategy. Zane would drive while Miguel would hide behind the gunwale in wait. When the Feds came close enough, Zane would slow the boat and pretend to comply, and then Miguel would leap up and try to disable their outboard motors with a quick barrage of gunfire, the prompt for Zane to throttle away at full speed. That was Plan A.

Plan B, on the other hand, would be implemented should the Feds approach with guns already drawn. Plan B terrified Zane. For that contingency, Miguel had placed his revolver barrel-down in a fishing rod holder behind Zane, with instructions for Zane to grab it and use it if a firefight ensued. “Aim for their chests,” Miguel said. “Heads are too difficult out here with the waves.”

Zane did not want the gun anywhere near him. “Aren’t you afraid I might use it on
you?
”

“Not really. You already passed my test.”

“Test?”

“Earlier, when I was getting the bale, I gave you a chance to push me over the side—but you were too much of a coward, which is good because I was ready to kill you if you tried. So the answer is no, captain, I’m not afraid of getting shot by a scared little boy. You wouldn’t even get lined up before I’d stuff you so full of lead you’d sink straight to the bottom and be worth an extra twenty dollars if they ever found you.”

Miguel was right. Zane was scared—so scared that his hands were trembling. His stomach wrung itself nauseous as he thought about the approaching threat. Both plans put Zane in far more danger than they did Miguel and he was certain that shooting a so-called “Fed,” or anyone else, was out of the question. Was there any way out? Any precaution he could take? He couldn’t think of anything. His hand found its way into his shirt and he kneaded the doubloon with more force than ever before.

He looked toward land. Buildings stretched on endlessly, packed together like headstones in an old cemetery. What would have normally been a gorgeous sunset now filled Zane with dread. The broad tongue of darkness that had emerged in the east now lapped away at the last puddle of daylight in the west, and, by instinct, Zane flicked the switch to turn on his boat’s lights. The red and green navigation lights radiated on the bow while the white anchor light blazed on the stern, altogether illuminating the deck with a dizzying patchwork of color.

“Are you an idiot?” shouted Miguel, turning off the lights and smacking Zane in the back of the head. “You’re as stupid as your father, aren’t you?”

“Sorry, I just thought—” Zane touched his head where Miguel had struck him, and then he looked up with sudden su
r
prise. “You know my dad?”

Miguel studied Zane for a moment. “We’ll discuss that later.”

Zane stood there perplexed. His father had innumerable acquaintances, some of them shadier than others, but he could not recall ever hearing of Miguel before. Skip was no saint, but he was no hard criminal, either, and certainly not someone who would ever knowingly consort with a drug smuggler. Then Zane remembered that Skip had begun calling him not long after they picked up the bale, so many times that Zane’s cellular phone—safely enclosed in a Ziploc inside his shorts pocket, as usual—was nearly depleted of its battery power. Miguel had forbidden Zane to answer.

The succession of illumined hotels and condom
i
niums—elaborate jack-o-lanterns adorning the coast for the last hundred miles—ended abruptly. Beyond them, as far as Zane could see, stretched a long dark shoreline blanketed by the silhouette of forest and a sprinkling of dim lights. The di
g
ital chart on Zane’s GPS showed that they were approaching Cape Canaveral. The lights, he now realized, sat atop launch pads, some of which were still used to hurl rockets carrying satellites—including the ones that provided GPS—into orbit; others were relics left undisturbed since the Space Race, decaying ruins that now sat as lifeless as most of the men who once worked on them.

Gemini. Mercury
.
Apollo
. The
Space Shuttle
. At one time all had punctured the stratosphere above the Cape but now they were things of history. Some had failed dramatically, and Canaveral shrimpers still occasionally dredged up ba
r
nacle-encrusted pieces of the
Challenger
in their trawls. The rockets and vehicles that retired unscathed, on the other hand, had become tourist attractions in museums and visitor centers, their defunct metal controls now burnished by countless greasy fingers, their framework always creaking as if they longed for the thrill of the countdown, the furious shudder of the ignition, and the cold serenity of outer space.

“Three miles,” said Miguel after a quick glance at his tracking device. “And coming fast.”

Even though they were several miles offshore, Zane could see a swath of breaking waves in their path. Globs of white water would materialize, peak rapidly, and then disappear. He realized that they were coming upon the Canaveral Shoals, an undersea peninsula of shallow sandbars that jutted out many miles from shore. Some parts of it were only a few feet deep and his chart had the word DANGER inked in red across the entire area. Experienced mariners knew that the shoals had caused countless wrecks throughout history. Most of the vessels were swallowed so completely by the shifting sands that traces of debris were rarely found.

“We should go around the shoals,” said Zane. “We need to change course.”

Miguel shook his head. “No way in hell. We’d use too much fuel.”

“We could capsize.”

“You really are gutless, aren’t you? We go north and nothing else. Got it?”

Zane trembled. Behind them and before them peril was imminent. If by some miracle the authorities did not stop them, the sea surely would. He reached into his pocket and turned on his cellular phone, then snuck a peak at it. Both the low battery light and the voicemail indicator flashed. He yearned to pick it up and call his father, but he felt certain that Miguel was waiting for any excuse to kill him. He turned it off again and sealed the baggy.

As they reached the edge of the shoals, Zane felt a change in the sea. The waves were confused now; no longer traveling with the wind, they barreled in from every direction, slapping into each other and drubbing against the hull.

Zane watched the depth sounder readings fluctuate wildly. Twelve feet. Six feet. Ten feet. Four feet. He was trying to envision the immense humps and trenches of sand beneath the boat when a breaker came out of the darkness and reared up like a frothy warrior in front of him. It grabbed hold of the bow and lifted it into the air, but then, just as quickly, the wave lost its footing in a trench and collapsed. Zane let out a deep exhale as his boat cruised over its remains. He spent the next few minutes weaving in and out of the breakers while trying to maintain the same course.

“Here we go,” Miguel said. He had taken his position stooped in the stern, cradling the rifle. He peered over the gunwale. Zane followed his gaze to see a dark thing bounding over the chop in their direction. Fear coursed through Zane’s body like an injection. His breaths became short, his stomach tossed, and he wanted it all to end. But it would not end, for the boat was nearly upon them.

“Stop your vessel,” a voice boomed across the sea through a bullhorn.

“Do as they say,” said Miguel.

Zane pulled the throttle back and his boat slumped in the waves. He could see two men in the approaching center console but darkness veiled their features. He had expected the
Coasties
—dock talk for the
US Coast Guard
—but this looked nothing like their large orange cutters that usually patrolled the seaboard. This boat appeared smaller than Zane’s, but it did have four outboard engines on the stern compared to his two, which explained how it caught up so quickly.

Who were they, then? FBI? DEA? As the boat edged closer, Zane squinted to read the black lettering on the hull.

“I, R, S,” he read aloud. “
IRS?
”

“Death and taxes,” said Miguel, now lying on the deck, out of sight. “How many of the bastards are there?”

“Two, I think.” What, Zane wondered, would the IRS want with a drug runner?

“Are they packing?”

“Packing?”

Miguel scowled. “Do you see any damn guns.”

Zane studied the silhouetted figures on the approaching boat. His heart thudded when he saw that the man to the side of the driver was holding a gun. The shape of it looked similar to Miguel’s automatic rifle.

“Well, do you or not?” Miguel’s voice was tinged with anger.

“I can’t tell,” said Zane. “It’s dark.”

“We can’t take a chance. I’m gonna count down from three, and on one you grab that pistol and we take them out. Yours is the driver. Got it? Don’t answer—they might see you talking.”

Panic squeezed in on Zane. He tried to think of a solution. Should he warn them? Miguel would surely kill him if he tried. Could he try to evade them? That seemed impossible. Their boat was simply too fast.

“Three,” said Miguel, his finger stroking the trigger.

An idea hit Zane. He drew a deep breath, put his hand on the throttle, and clenched the steering wheel.

“Two.”

Zane looked at the IRS boat. Now only ten feet away, it idled alongside. The men onboard wore black uniforms and appeared to be in their thirties or forties. One of them had short black hair and a well-kept beard. The other had a clean-shaven scalp. Their faces were both stiff with anxiety.

“One!”

It all happened instantaneously: Miguel sprang up with the rifle like a madman, his eyes blazing and his hair blown back by the wind, and the officer with the gun whirled around toward Miguel, and Zane slammed the throttle down as far as it would go and spun the steering wheel away from the other boat. His boat lurched upward and sideways with a tremendous jolt, causing Miguel to tumble backward off the stern and into the water, just as Zane had hoped. But Zane did not anticipate the towering breaker that suddenly charged in and put its shoulders beneath his boat. With the aide of the engine thrust, the wave lifted the boat skyward and slammed it down on top of the IRS boat. A deafening
crack
shot out and shards of fiberglass and splintered wood erupted all around Zane and he felt the deck crumple beneath his feet like wet cardboard. Only blackness and confusion and sloshing water r
e
mained.