Mac Travis Adventures BoxSet, page 21
part #4 of Mac Travis Series
“Wait,” Alicia put a hand on his shoulder, “let me do this. I can get more information than you can. If you guys go in there looking like this, no one’s going to talk to you.”
Mac nodded and relaxed his hold on the door handle. “You’re right.” He sat back in the seat with the air-conditioner blowing on his face and waited for Alicia to return.
Less than a minute later, she ran from the building. He opened his window and was ready to get out when she ran past him, opened the back door and got in. “That’s him!”
Mac followed her pointed finger to the small twin-engine plane pulling onto the runway. The Cessna was still on the taxiway, about to make its turn at the eastern end of the runway.
“Take the car and try to cut him off,” he yelled at Trufante, who slid behind the wheel as he got out. A water truck was parked twenty feet away, its engine running the pump to fill its tank from the hydrant next to it. Mac raced to the truck, skidding to a stop just long enough to disconnect the hose, then ran to the driver’s door and jumped in. He jammed the truck into gear, and dragging the hose behind him, headed to the far end of the runway.
He could hear the pilot increase the RPMs of the engines and watched the plane shimmy back and forth as he braked, building power for take-off. Mac cut the wheel, turning hard to make the sharp turn from the frontage road to the runway. Two-thirds down the tarmac, he stopped the truck, jumped out and ran for the hose. The plane was moving down the runway, picking up speed as it approached. Mac closed the valve at the end of the hose and went for the control panel on the truck. He turned the pump on full, hoping there was enough water in the tank to stop the plane. The hose bucked as it pressurized and he ran towards the end, dodging the line as it swung towards him. Filled with water, it stopped moving and he grabbed the nozzle and opened the valve. High pressure water blew from the nozzle. He clamped the hose between his legs and aimed towards the grass.
He waited, spraying the half-dead grass, not showing his intentions until it was too late for the pilot to turn. Finally, when the plane was fifty feet from him, he turned the full pressure of the water on it. The plane swerved and skidded sideways as the pilot lost visibility and fought to control the craft on the slick runway. One of the engines cut out, probably from the water, and the plane spun on the tarmac, coasting to a stop on the grass.
Mac closed the nozzle, set the hose down and ran for the passenger door. The pilot already had his door open and was half way out of the plane, but he was of no concern.
He reached the plane and climbed the strut. Before he could reach the door, Davies opened the hatch, slamming the thin metal into him in an effort to dislodge him from the plane, but the door was too light to do any damage. Mac took the opportunity to slide down the strut and lean over backwards, grabbing Davies in a grip between his legs. With anger built from a week of hell, he squeezed and pulled the man from the plane, flipped him, releasing the grip with his legs at the apex, watching as Davies body slammed into the hot tarmac.
He walked past the growing crowd of people surrounding the body, barely casting a glance at Davies and walked to the car.
34
Mac felt uneasy and a little scared that the Sheriff had posted a guard, but he walked through the door of the hospital ready to face whatever lay in his way. His resolve took him past the admittance counter and to the elevator. As he waited, he glanced over his shoulder, expecting to be confronted, but the up arrow lit and the doors opened. He moved to the side and then entered after a nurse wheeled out a man in a wheelchair. One more obstacle stood in his way and he breathed out. No one was waiting for him outside the elevator, in the hall or at Mel’s door. He entered her room and paused. White coats were clustered around the bed. His hopes fell.
A nurse brushed past him with a tray and he was about to ask what was going on, but thought better of it. The group worked frantically around the body on the bed. Mac stood glued to the window, watching, until suddenly they stopped. His stomach dropped, feeling powerless to do anything. Two doctors left the group and exited the room. There was something about their demeanor that he didn’t understand. He looked back in the room, his eyes drawn to the signal on the heart monitor. Instead of the flatline he expected, it bounced up and down.
“How is she?” he asked the doctor, who he recognized from the ethics committee.
“She’s out of the coma and reacting to treatment,” he said and turned to go, but paused. “Thanks to you. That DC lawyer and his phony doctor almost had us pull the plug.”
“Can I see her?”
“Go on in. I don’t think she is coherent enough to recognize you, but she’s strong. It might take a little time, but I expect she will recover.”
Mac thanked him, tentatively walked into the room and went towards the bed. The nurses were fussing over her IV bag and sensors, but they moved aside to let him approach. He went to the side of the bed, feeling out of place and not knowing what to do. Her hand lay beside her body and he picked it up and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed, but the breathing tube was gone. A spark went through him as he felt pressure on his hand. He looked down and her fingers were moving, trying to grasp his. He gently squeezed back and thought he saw a smile cross her face.
He stayed with her until a nurse tapped his shoulder, indicating it was time to leave. He squeezed her hand one more time before moving out of the way and left the room, feeling unnatural, like he was walking on a cloud, the adrenaline of the last week draining with every step.
He walked out of the hospital, wondering what was next when an ambulance pulled up and shut off the lights and siren. He re-entered reality when the back door popped open, the EMTs jumped down and slid the stretcher out, expertly opening the carriage and dropping the wheels. Two men ran out of the hospital and helped the medics wheel the stretcher in. Mac looked down at the body and saw Bradley Davies, eyes open, looking back at him. Mac didn’t know whether to be happy or sad.
The ambulance driver closed the doors and pulled to the side, leaving a space for the sheriff’s car that had just pulled in to park. Mac kept walking but heard the sheriff call for him to stop. At some point he had to face him.
“You got lucky this time, Travis. That young-un really is CIA.”
Mac stood there facing him, waiting for him to finish.
“I got my eye on you: best watch your step.”
Mac parked his new, beat up pickup, in front of the dive shop and went towards the source of the music. It had been an up-and-down few weeks bouncing back and forth between Miami, where it seemed like he had spent a lifetime. First a suspect, and later a witness testifying to Norm’s escapades, then back to Marathon to be with Mel as she recovered. Alicia had been instrumental in getting him back on his feet, after first bailing herself out of trouble. His boat, where he now lived, had been returned and sat at his dock. He hated staring at the wreck of the house, but fortunately it was covered by insurance and would soon be rebuilt.
“Yo, Mac!” TJ called from the bridge. “Check out the front end.”
Mac waved to him and Alicia, who emerged from behind TJ, and walked to the bow where he inspected the repair. A freshly painted jagged red line traced the repair, like a badge of honor. He gave TJ a thumbs up and walked back to the stern, tossed his gear bag over the gunwale and hopped on board, where he was met with a bear hug from Trufante.
“How’s Mel?” the Cajun asked.
“Doing good. They expect to release her any time.” Mac took the offered beer.
Mac, Alicia and TJ went up the ladder to the bridge while Trufante tossed the lines to the dock. The boat inched away from the pilings and turned towards the canal and open water.
“No life jacket?” Mac asked.
“I thought you said I was boat-worthy now.” She laughed. “TJ’s teaching me how to dive too.”
They stood together on the bridge as the boat came up on plane and headed to the reef. Twenty minutes later, TJ pulled back on the throttles and yelled at Trufante to throw a buoy. He skillfully circled the marker, checking the depth finder to verify the contour of the bottom was right, and pulled forward into the current before calling to Trufante to throw the anchor. The boat settled back as he paid out line and stopped right by the buoy.
Mac had spent countless hours underwater, but most of it was work. He had done little recreational diving over the years and he experienced the thrill of the crystal clear water and colorful fish as if for the first time. He had no purpose other than to enjoy the dive. TJ was several feet away, running Alicia through the safety procedures required for certification. She had her mask entirely off and he watched her put it back in place, tilt her head back and clear the water. He could see the smile in her eyes when she finished the routine and TJ nodded and led them over the reef. They were diving one of TJ’s secret spots right on the edge of Pennekamp State Park, an underwater reserve off Key Largo. Mac was amazed at the numbers and size of the fish, especially the snapper and grouper, who somehow knew they were protected here. He floated over the coral formations, admiring them as he followed TJ and Alicia. It had seemed short, but TJ signaled for them to surface. He checked his new watch and noticed it had been almost forty minutes.
Back on board, they sat back and let the sun dry the water from their bodies.
Trufante broke the silence. “Y’all got some kind of private club going on down there. Come on up and bring me a beer.”
They gathered around the helm. “So I heard Davies is out of the hospital and back in jail,” Mac said, relaying the information one of the nurses had shared with him. “Don’t expect it’ll be one of those country club places this time. But somehow that guy always lands on his feet. Don’t think we’ve heard the last of him.”
“Son of a bitch has more lives than me,” Trufante said.
Mac checked his watch. “It’s been an hour. Ready to get wet?”
Untitled
I want to extend a special thanks to my fellow Florida Keys author Wayne Stinnett for the use of his characters and places. Wayne and I released our first books weeks apart and unknowingly made our main characters neighbors. It only made sense, since they lived in the same place around the same time that they would know each other. It has been a lot of fun working Jesse, Rusty and the Anchor into the book.
Check out Mac and Wood in Wayne’s latest novel: Fallen Honor
Wood’s Reach
1
The scream of line pouring off the reel startled Mac awake. Swinging his feet down from the console, he jumped from the seat at the helm of the twenty-foot center-console, stumbling before he found his feet. The fish on the line was a surprise. He had hoped to get off the island and rest for a while before resuming his work. It was just in his nature to throw a bait out when he was on the water, so before getting comfortable, he had put a small lobster head on a lightweight trolling rig.
Line continued to disappear and he saw an indistinct shape jump on the horizon, its splash confirming it was a large fish. Wide awake now, he gently lifted the rod from the holder mounted on the gunwale and took a deep breath. With the rod tip high, he slowly tightened the drag. His calmness hid the adrenaline that was rushing through him, his years of experience warning him this was a critical time in the fight. With a large fish, it was all about the relationship between the hook and the fish’s mouth. Tighten the drag too much and the hook would pull; too loose and the contact would break.
With the first run over, Mac tried to guess what was on the other end of the line. It was behaving oddly for a backcountry fish. Aside from the tarpon, which were seldom found in open water, the jumpers were typically on the Atlantic side, past the reef in the deep waters of the Gulf Stream, but that didn’t preclude big fish from the Gulf side. Taking his first turn of the reel to get a sense of the drag, he was rewarded by a few inches of line coming in. But the fish must have sensed the pressure and taken off again. Not expecting anything this large, he wasn’t equipped for the battle, and the small reel was running low. He had to consider his options. The sportsman in him wouldn’t allow him to cut the line, and the conservationist was not willing to allow hundreds of yards of monofilament to be lost to the sea.
It was either tighten the drag and fight, which would increase the risk of losing it, or pull the anchor and run towards it. He looked around, observing the shallows surrounding him, and decided he had to fight. The center-console had three feet of draft. Adequate for most areas, but the backcountry of the Keys was famous for its flats and shoals, many covered by only inches of water. Being pulled onto the mudflats was not appealing, especially as it was high tide and would only get worse as the waters receded.
With the rod braced just below his groin and his left hand on the reinforcement above the reel, he gently tightened the star-shaped wheel that controlled the drag. The fish pulled again, but after two long runs, Mac sensed it was running out of gas. Gently he turned the wheel until he could feel the tension increase, and in one motion he brought the rod tip high in the air and pulled the fish toward him. Quickly dropping the tip, he reeled as fast as he could. He repeated the process until a long grey shadow appeared in the water.
His heart dropped when he saw the distinct shape of the shark. It looked to be over six feet and probably weighed two hundred pounds. Without a large freezer, though, the meat would spoil, and the only way to make the tough bull shark meat palatable was with a deep fryer—neither of which he had. Still cautious of his adversary, he continued to reel the exhausted fish to the transom, and when the swivel attaching the leader to the line hit the rod tip, he reached into his pocket, removed a knife, and cut the line. The hook would rust out of the fish’s mouth, and losing the short piece of heavy leader material was better than risking his hand to the shark. Mac stood there and watched the shark swim away before he motored back to the island.
Rising several feet from the high tide line, the half-acre island was mostly scrub and mangroves, similar to many of the surrounding keys, but if you looked carefully, you could see evidence of man’s presence—both the good and bad. Wood, Mac’s mentor, had originally built a small house and workshop on the island in the early ’90s after accepting the property from the Navy in exchange for some off-the-books work. He had retired and lived here for almost twenty years before getting killed in the process of saving a presidential candidate and maybe the country. Mac still felt guilty about getting him mixed up in that affair.
It was now on him to rebuild the house after it had been virtually destroyed by a fire set by a rogue CIA agent out for vengeance. The only thing that had saved it was the two five-hundred-gallon water tanks on its roof. He had spent the last few months rebuilding and repairing the structure, both to rid himself of the guilt that it was his fault, and to try and lure Wood’s daughter, Mel, back to the Keys. He shook his head as the blowback from his bad decisions and adventures replayed in his mind.
Trying to shake off the melancholy, he went forward to pull the anchor but found it bound in the sandy bottom. Back at the helm, he started the single 250-hp engine and bumped the boat forward enough to take the slack out of the anchor line. He ran to the helm before the current could reverse the momentum and pulled the slack from the rode. Finally, after a tug-of-war, the hook released and he was able to haul it in. Before bringing the anchor aboard, he dunked it several times in the water to free the sand and mud before hauling it on board and lashing it down.
He motored slowly toward the island, less than a half mile from the deep cut where he had anchored, thinking about the next phase in the project as he drove. A heron reminded him of the shallow rock that stood sentinel to the channel that Wood had dredged years ago, and he cut the wheel hard to starboard, rounding the rock and coasting to a stop before reaching the beach. Tossing the line over the lone pile, one of the only visible signs of life here, he tied the boat off and hopped into the knee-deep water. Wood had devised an ingenious system of hiding his boats, using skids buried in the sand and a winch hidden in a clearing concealed by brush. He would open a handwoven mangrove gate that was also virtually invisible and crank his old skiff into the clearing. Once the gate was returned, it would take a very good eye to discover his ruse.
Mac had no need or desire to go through the trouble and simply left the boat tied off. He entered the clearing through the open gate, now lying on its side in need of repair, adding that to the list of things that needed attention. Following the well-worn path, he entered another clearing, this one much larger, which held the house and workshop.
The land around the house was barren now. The palms that had shaded the two-story home and the brush that had grown around it were all now charred stumps. Wood, an engineer who had built or retrofitted many of the bridges connecting the Keys, had built the house to survive the devastating hurricanes that plowed through the chain of islands. The concrete piers, which had already survived several surges brought by the storms, were unharmed by the fire, though smoke damaged. The structure resting on them was a different matter. The roof, covered in galvanized metal sheets, was largely intact, but all that was left of the structure underneath were the heavy posts and beams. The exterior walls, whose windows were once covered by lovingly handmade Bahamas shutters, were gone. It stood open to the weather, not a good thing in this climate.
