Acts Of Nature Part 6

I checked the GPS twice, three times, as we approached the island. The electronics were the only thing that could convince me. This was the place, but it looked nothing like the thick green, idyllic hammock we'd pa.s.sed four days ago. The lushness was stripped away. Simone's winds had brought down the long graceful limbs of cypress and dumped them onto a mud-covered web of mangrove and what at one time might have been a fern bed. The taller trees now showed the splintered white wounds from where their branches had been ripped away and I was immediately reminded of Sherry's once-exposed thigh bone, and then pushed our way into the hammock's interior, looking for the structure of the camp, hoping.

It was easily midafternoon by now and the light was already failing. I finally had to get out and pull the canoe through a nest of tangled gra.s.s. I stumbled and jerked the boat to one side and Sherry gasped in such a high, keening tone I went to her side and couldn't stop repeating, "Sorry, babe, sorry, sorry, sorry."

She was grimacing, probably a good sign. And she reached down to put a hand on the injured thigh, another indication that she knew her pain and was still cognizant of where it was coming from. While I'd still been paddling I'd set the open cooler out in the s.p.a.ce between us trying to catch whatever rainwater would acc.u.mulate inside. I now poured it carefully into one of the empty bottles and held it to her lips. She drank, almost greedily, until it was done.

"We're here, babe. I'm going to go find the camp," I said to her closed eyes. She tightened her lids and weakly whispered "OK."

"I'll be right back."

I picked up the flashlight we'd brought and stepped easily but with a purpose, worried about the sharp branch points and possible sink holes that could end up leaving two injured on the island. I had to climb over a couple of downed tree trunks to get to higher ground and then started looking for a leaning tree trunk that I might climb to get a higher view. I was looking for the edge of a structure, an unnatural right angle, a glint of metal or a flat plane of painted wood. About a hundred yards from the canoe I found the thick secondary limb of a tree that was partially down but still attached to the higher main trunk. I climbed it on all fours until I gained some height. From here I could see edges of water to the southeast and then picked up the shape of bent metal directly to the west. The color was dusty copper but there was also a patina of green at its edges, an old-time sheet metal roof, popular out here and similar to the one on my own river shack. It wasn't more than fifty yards away and probably would have been invisible under the cover of the tree canopy but stood out now through the stripped branches. I traced a path through the vegetation that would offer the least resistance and then jumped down to follow it.

The angles became clearer within minutes. After wading through a couple of low mud bogs and climbing over several downed trees I began to make out the body of the structure, wood paneling that had turned ash gray from the weather, but was standing straight, an optimistic sign. By the time I reached the raised platform of the camp, my hope was rising. The building, simple and square, was intact but for the metal roof at the northwest corner that had been peeled back by the wind, the angle I'd seen from my tree stand. There was some splintered damage below it in the wall, but the deck planks seemed untouched though the film of mud told me that water had risen over them at one point. The windows were all shuttered with the old-style, wood-slat covers, but when I bent to look up through the s.p.a.cing of those slats, there appeared to be some other kind of barrier besides gla.s.s behind them. I walked around to the south side, found the only door, and tried the handle. Locked. And locked tight. The lock set was made of stainless steel but had oddly been painted some kind of faux iron. I shook it hard and then gave the middle of the door a substantial b.u.t.t with my shoulder, half of my weight behind it. Not a budge or even the slightest give. The builder had been very careful.

I circled back to the northwest corner to see what the storm damage might offer and found a possibility. The west side was more exposed than the southeast where we'd approached. There were the remnants of a ca.n.a.l that was now choked with branches but navigable. I could row Sherry around and get her very close. Under the bent roof corner the siding was peeled away by the fingers of the wind and there was a black, open s.p.a.ce in the top three feet of the wall, an opening big enough for a man to climb through. I dragged a downed tree limb across the deck and propped one end against the wall and used it as a step up and then took a good jump, high enough to get a grip on the bottom slat of ruined paneling and pulled myself up. Hanging with one arm I got the flashlight and shone a beam inside. There was s.p.a.ce and something gray- white below, possibly a bed, straight down the inside wall. Two wall studs were still in place but I could probably squeeze my chest between them and drop, headfirst, inside. I felt like some amateur cat burglar in a half-a.s.sed break-in, but figured if I could get inside I could unlock the door and search the place. I put the flashlight back in my pocket-I hate that thing where Tom Cruise puts the flashlight in his mouth while he's being lowered into some dark fortress. He's going to fall and gag himself with that thing someday. Then I got a good grip on an exposed ceiling joist and pulled myself halfway up and through the wall opening. After much shimmying and tearing of clothing and clunking of boot soles, I managed to drop to the inside, hands extended out, and found my first bit of luck by half-falling onto the edge of a bed before landing on the floor. It was noisy and graceless, but there wasn't anyone within miles to hear or even care.

Only the dull streaks of light seeping through the hole I'd created gave the room any illumination. And I must have been dunking of some kind of cop thing from my past because I rolled first, staying low, and then stayed silent. Finally I slipped the flashlight out and scanned the place: Table and two chairs. Kitchen cupboards and sink against one wall. Two beds, bare mattresses, lined up foot to foot against my wall. There was something like a desk against the third wall, next to the outside door. All the windows were darkened and I used the flashlight beam to help me move to the door but still banged the corner of the table with my thigh and the sc.r.a.ping noise it made as its legs dragged across the floorboards made me shiver. Not a scared shiver, but unsettling, like I'd moved something that had not moved in years. I found the doork.n.o.b, stainless and substantial and locked. I twisted out the b.u.t.ton, tried it, and when the door still didn't move I scanned higher and found another heavy-duty deadbolt and snapped it unlocked. It took a couple of yanks to get the door open; the frame was probably warped out here in the humidity and heat. I swung it wide to let the natural light stream in, and the outside air actually smelled fresh compared with what spilled out of the old place. I took a useless look around the deck and then stepped back inside.

The light did little for the place. There were no pictures, hanging fish trophies, or even a calendar on the walls. There were no magazines on the table, no coffee cups filled with pens on the bare desktop, no dishes in the sink drainer. But mounted on the wall above the kitchenette counter was a blue and white metal box labeled FIRST AID KIT FIRST AID KIT. I slid it off its hooks and went through the contents: rolled bandages, tape, antibiotic cream and a bottle of antiseptic, some sterile gauze pads, and a thermometer. There was even some insect repellant and aspirin. I could probably wait to re-dress Sherry's wound here, but the aspirin and bug dope I would take back to the canoe. I set them aside and then moved down to what appeared to be a half-size refrigerator at the end of the counter. Inside there were three half-gallon plastic jugs of water, at which I smiled. I took one out, noted that the top was still sealed, and then twisted it off. I still took a precautionary whiff of the contents and then drank in long gulps. I had not realized how dehydrated I'd become from the rowing and the heat that, despite the cloud cover, had drained me. I even contemplated pouring some of the water over my head in the sink but then thought better of the conservation of the gift. Who knew how long we might have to stay here? After another drink I looked again inside the refrigerator and found two old cans of Del Monte sliced peaches and a single wrapped package. Inside the plastic package, surrounded by tinfoil, was a bar of solid chocolate about the size of a man's wallet. Since the refrigerator was without power, the chocolate was the consistency of warm b.u.t.ter, but I still pulled off a piece from the end and devoured it. The energy is what I needed, sugar to snap some of my dulled synapses back into shape. I took another gulp of water and with a clearer eye looked around the room again. The door to the second room was off-center and to the right. I stepped over to it but my eye picked up the flash of a metal box against the frame at chest level. I used the flashlight again and found myself looking at a digital locking device. I'd seen them many times before. But why the h.e.l.l does someone have one on a room out in the middle of the Everglades?

I punched at the top row of b.u.t.tons, numbered for a combination. No response, though without power I wasn't expecting it. I examined the door more closely, then gave it a shoulder. Nothing. I put some weight behind the next one. Thing was solid. I knocked at the flat surface with the b.u.t.t end of my flashlight. The sound was distinctly metal, and then I banged on it a few more times at an angle. By sc.r.a.ping off some paint I could see that someone had taken pains to paint a faux wood design on what was a substantial metal door. My only thought was that something valuable was inside. You don't build an extra-heavy-duty safe room without something to keep safe inside of it. But the guesses were endless out here: Food? Hunting weapons? I swept the flashlight through the room again. Not a clue. This side of the place was spa.r.s.e. Too spa.r.s.e, in fact.

"h.e.l.l with it," I said out loud and the sound of my own voice went dead in the thick air. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up a water bottle, left the front door open, and stepped out onto the porch and checked my handheld GPS. I figured to go through the brush again and then row the canoe around. I could pull Sherry out next to the deck and then get her inside on the bed. Maybe I'd overlooked some blankets, something to keep her covered. I'd tackle the locked room later. Maybe it was the sugar hitting the back of my head, maybe the sharper image now of Sherry's leg, still propped and bound in the bow of the canoe without me there to watch her. But suddenly I wanted her inside, somewhere safe. The light was seeping out of the late afternoon sky now and even though the coming darkness would be no more intense than any other time out here, I did not want to be exposed again.

When I had climbed and slogged and ducked through the beaten hammock to the canoe and spotted Sherry's head through branches in the distance, I called out her name but the dark blondness of her hair did not move, and it scared me.

"Sherry!"

No answer. No movement. I started crashing through some downed poisonwood.

"Sherry!"

Her hand came up, palm facing away from me, fingers straight up and stiff, not a sign but a signal and I stopped. I tried to see beyond her, into the bush and the twig ma.s.s that I'd dragged the canoe through to its resting spot. I kept my vision low, water height, and then tried to move slowly.

Ten yards closer and I spotted the nostrils, like moss- covered walnuts resting on an equally dark log. But these were too symmetrical and behind them, maybe a foot, two hooded black marbles shone. It was hard to tell how big he was from where I stood, or whether he was on a solid ma.s.s of vegetation or still floating. I have seen gators get up on all fours and charge with amazing speed. But under most circ.u.mstances they like to lay quiet, like a spring trap, and snap their prey with a speed and strength that seemingly comes from nowhere. This one might have been stalking Sherry, or her scent, moving at incremental inches until it was at striking distance. My rustlings in the hammock seemed not to have distracted it in the least. Usually, man-made noise, a pa.s.sing airboat or even shouting and the whacking of boat paddles, caused the animals to whiplash their tails and dive down and away into any nearby water. Usually. What the pa.s.sing hurricane had done to the flow of nature was unpredictable and I was not going to guess the mood of this monster. Last year a woman jogger who had simply stopped along the edge of the lake in a Broward County park to dip her feet in the water was s.n.a.t.c.hed by a fourteen-footer, pulled into the lake, and dismembered. With gators there was no such thing as predictable.

I was thinking strategies and to go along with them I picked up a good st.u.r.dy limb that had been sheared from an old-growth mahogany above. I set down my supplies and pulled my knife from its scabbard and started hacking strips off one end of the limb, half a dozen downward strokes, the blade so sharp it slid through the two-inch diameter stake like it was putty, and left a glistening, bone-colored point. You could poke 'em. I'd seen the wildlife resource officers for the state maneuver even the nasty ones by poking them with long-handled nooses and then roping them. But I had no such interest. Just a poke in the snout if the thing came forward. Maybe a jab in the throat if he opened that mouth of his. I took hold of the stick like a foolish caveman and moved toward Sherry. When I got next to her she cut her eyes to me and whispered in a raspy voice: "Jesus, Max. What the h.e.l.l are you going to do with that?"

Adrenaline had perked her up. She was fully conscious.

"h.e.l.l if I know," I answered as truthfully as I could and handed her my knife.

"And what the h.e.l.l am I going to do with this?"

The gator snuffled, I swear, and let out a whoof of air that rippled the water in front of him but he did not move.

My insane reaction was to yell at the top of my lungs and then lunge out at the animal, bringing the broom-length staff of mahogany down with a sharp swat on the surface of the water. The spray erupted in front of the beast's face and in response it snapped out with amazing quickness and bit the end of the stick and pulled it from my grasp.

"s.h.i.t," I said, and reached back into the canoe, fingers searching, and found the long metal staff of Big Bertha that I'd tossed in the boat at the cabin. I whipped the headless golf club out and it whistled past the gator's nose, and he seemed momentarily awed by the sound. He froze but I did not. I reloaded for a second shot and this time I lunged and stabbed at the thing's face, jabbing at the nose but missing and unintentionally sticking the end of the metal shaft a good three inches into its eye socket.

The gator did not roar, did not make any sound at all but spun his huge body away and the slew of his huge tail sent a wave at us, catching me up in the chest as if a ski boat had just peeled by, and when I shook the water from my vision I saw the a.s.s-end of the gator slipping through the greenness headed in the opposite direction.

We were frozen in silence for a few beats, listening to the rustle in the brush echo away, listening to me breathe in gradually slowing gulps, listening, each of us, to our own heartbeats trip down.

I finally turned to Sherry and it appeared as if she had not moved since I left her. Her face was sallow; either sweat or water from the gator splash had covered her face. But at the corner of her mouth was a tickle of a grin.

"I would have just shot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said, and the tickle went to both sides.

I retrieved the fresh water for her, which she drank carefully and also with one of the aspirin. I then gave her the package of chocolate, which she started to gobble, but thought better and licked more than bit at the mushy bar. I told her about the cabin, that it was intact and that there were some medical supplies but nothing that was going to help much with the pain.

"Just get me inside, Max. The pain I can deal with."

I backed the canoe out and climbed in. There was now a good four to six inches of water in the bottom but I didn't bother bailing. I could remember the route I'd figured from the treetop and we paddled around to the water entrance of the cabin in less than twenty minutes.

"How long was that thing lying there watching you?" I finally asked as we got underway. I was still cutting my eyes in either direction, watching for unnatural ripples.

"Seemed like forever," Sherry said from the bow. "Probably as long as we were watching him over the past few days."

The water and no doubt the chocolate had raised her energy and her humor.

"Wally?" I said.

"Same beady eyes," she said and again the smile had partially returned.

She whimpered only once when I lifted her out of the canoe and set her on the deck. The splint was holding up. But when I carried her through the entrance of the cabin and lay her down on one of the beds, I came away with a dark bloodstain on my shirt sleeve and right hip. I got out the first aid kit, ignored the scissors and used my own sharp knife to cut away the duct tape and then the old sheet bandages, and finally more of the leg of her sweatpants.

Her thigh was swollen, maybe from infection, maybe in combination with the tightness of the wrapping. The skin around the wound was puckered and white and I guessed that it was from the constant moisture. Keeping anything dry out here was a struggle. Under these conditions, impossible. I laid the knife next to her and then poured the alcohol onto the wound and used the sterile gauze to clean it. Sherry watched but didn't make a sound even when I picked up the flap of skin and poured more into the gash. I slathered on the antibacterial cream and then used the other sterile pads to cover and then wrap the thigh with another gauze roll, not as tight as before. She needed antibiotics, probably a straight IV drip, probably a drip with all kinds of fluid to hydrate, fight the sure infection, stop the possibility of gangrene.

"OK," I said. "Let's get your shoes off, make you comfortable."

She was already looking around the room.

"Anything in the back room? Radio? Keys to the helicopter?"

I pulled off her mud-covered shoes, those funky red Keds with the yellow laces.

"Haven't gained entry yet to check it," I said and used the alcohol-soaked gauze to clean her toes and get a take on their color. I was looking for pinkness, hoping for circulation.

"Yeah, gained entry," she said in a mocking tone. "I see the digital lock, Max. What's up with that?"

I was concentrating, very carefully poking the pads of her toes with the sharp tip of a corner of the aluminum medicine tube, hoping for reaction, but getting none.

"You saw the digital lock, right, Max?"

She couldn't feel her toes. I needed to get her out of here to a hospital.

"Yeah," I said, standing up. "I gotta check that out. Who the h.e.l.l does that out here, right?"

FIFTEEN.

Harmon was in his bedroom, going through the closet, his closet, the one he didn't share with his wife, the one in fact that he forbade her to use. He knew she probably had gone through it in years past, just looking. You don't keep secrets from your wife for thirty years. She would have looked at his gun collection, the electronics that the company had him keep there for emergency use, maybe even the multiple pa.s.sports he tucked away in a drawer. But if she had questions about those things, she didn't bring them up. She knew that he had been in the military and left unsaid any doubts she had now of the legality of his work. It was yet another reason he was always trying to find leverage against the men who employed him. He'd seen colleagues killed and wives left behind without a clue or a safety net. He knew the company would disavow any knowledge of him and see no obligation to take care of his family if something befell him. Harmon was not the kind of man to say, "That just comes with the business." If that were the case, he wouldn't still be in this dangerous business, no matter how well it paid. If he went down, his instructions for his wife and all the money he had hidden over the years and the evidence against the oil company would be at her disposal. He took care of his own.

"Arlene," he called out to his wife, who was in the kitchen and still p.i.s.sed at the news that the boss had called. "Where's that other jacket I had?"

He checked off his travel list in his head as he touched each item and stuffed it into his bag: the satellite phone, fully charged. The helicopter pilot would have the same model and they would be able to stay in touch regardless of the lack of power or cell towers in the area. His Nikon digital camera, which he'd been instructed to carry in and take detailed photos of any damage and the general disposition of the property, including any lack of foliage coverage, from the air. A couple of two-liter bottles of water because even if this was an easy hour-long drop-in, doc.u.ment, and get back out, he knew the danger of the humidity and the heat of the Everglades from experience. A radio frequency transmitter, routinely used to electronically unlock abandoned or sealed oil rigs and restart their power systems. His Colt revolver with the snub nose, the last one in his collection and an item he never went to work without.

"I've no idea. I thought you wore one on that last trip you guys took," his wife answered, her voice growing as she approached down the hall.

"I lost that one," Harmon said, thinking about the bullet hole in the fabric. He continued sorting through clothes hanging on a rod in the back of the closet.

"Well, I thought you said this was going to be a quick mission. You can hardly be going somewhere cold if it's going to be quick," his wife said, her head looking around the corner of the bedroom door but not entering when his closet was open. Yeah, he thought, she's been in here.

"Doesn't matter if it's cold, honey," he said. "You know when I'm on a job I like to have pockets to put things in." His wife walked away.

They had done this dance a hundred times. Vietnam, Granada, Nicaragua, Kosovo. When he'd retired and gone private he watched her breathe a sigh of relief but still felt her eye on him as he began to spend more time in his library and running the streets in an old pair of combat boots and generally driving himself and her crazy from inaction. When he started going on week-long "security" trips for the company, missing the kids' games or some special ceremony, he knew she was unhappy with the shift once again in his priorities. He was not a domestic man. She knew that. "For you and the kids" was always his response when she gained the guts to outright ask why he did what he did. It pays very well, Arlene. I'm a pro. I'm not going to do something stupid and leave you guys hanging, you know that.

Harmon did not say those words just to mollify. He was a confident man, knew his abilities, even with age. Once set on course he did not believe he could fail. That was his life's playing card, the source of respect from others, the mind-set that had kept him alive through a dozen missions. He did what he did because his soul needed it. But he was not so dumb as to not provide, just in case. He'd left instructions for his wife, just in case. He covered his a.s.s.

"Here's your other jacket," Arlene said, returning to the door with the short spring coat with the big seamed pockets that gave him easy access and room to maneuver whatever was in them.

"Thanks, honey," he said.

"Bring that one back with you. OK?"

"Yeah, sure. You can bet on it."

SIXTEEN.

"Whoa, check it out," Marcus said from across the room, and Wayne seemed to be able to tell by the sound of his friend's voice he wasn't just s.h.i.ttin' him. Wayne was staring, really staring, down into what looked to be a pile of oddly angled polished wood. Marcus stepped over some pots and pans and crossed the bare carpet that sat square and clean and seemingly untouched in the middle of the room.

"What?" Wayne said, watching Marcus kneel and stick his hands into the pile of wood. Marcus came up with a half a dozen CDs, spread in his fingers like a poker hand.

"Dude's got some music, man. Good stuff, too. Twista, Jay-Z, Tha Marksmen," Wayne said, reading off the labels.

"And check out the machine, man," he said, pointing at the stereo player still sitting in a slot in the wall cabinetry. "That's worth some cash right there, unless we wanna keep it, you know."

Wayne looked up to give his pal a wink that seemed to a.s.sure him they would do whatever they wanted on this little heist safari of theirs. It was a pact they'd come to after their first stop this morning, a moderately damaged fishing camp just on the southern edge of Broward County and the closest GPS coordinate on the list. That camp had been nice enough in its time, a two-bedroom deal with a great room that had one of those big round metal fireplaces in the middle to warm the night in winter. But one wall was now completely gone, ripped away like a leaf of notebook paper, leaving some curtains blowing in the wind, off-white lace curtains that Marcus could tell were better quality than the ones his own mom had in their regular home, not their vacation getaway. They'd found some music there too. But it was mostly old-style R & B stuff, John Lee Hooker, Wilson Pickett, stuff his old man used to listen to before he left. He and Wayne had attacked the place like scavengers, picking up fishing reels, an intact kitchen blender, and half bottles of Chivas and Van Gogh vodka all strewn around in the aftermath of the storm. That's when Buck stepped in and said he was laying down "ground rules." We only take s.h.i.t we can sell: jewelry, real nice pieces of electronics like handheld GPS or shortwave radio stuff, or maybe portable TVs. Only take the sealed booze. Check the drawers and stuff for real money and don't ever pa.s.s on some tin container that might have a stash in it. "These city a.s.sholes come out here to party like there's no rules. There's a lot of pot and c.o.ke and stuff they keep out in these places, so use your eyes, boys."

Yeah, they'd use their eyes. And if they found any drugs, they were going straight into their pockets and he wasn't going to know any different. Wayne winked at his bud. After about an hour of sorting through the place, Buck called them in.

"Can't spend too much time in one place, boys," he said. "Not that we're worried about anybody coming by that we won't hear ahead of time, but if it ain't a rich site, we're gonna move on. There's bound to be a mother lode out here someplace."

It was the flicker of excitement in his eyes that got the boys motivated. It wasn't often Buck got jazzed by anything. Even when they did the jobs in the suburbs when s.h.i.t would get hinky or that time they found that coin collection that they'd sold for eight grand, Buck was still level, moving ahead, but never jumping, never showing emotion. But there was something different in the guy's eyes this time. He was liking this s.h.i.t. They loaded up the airboat with a few things and got her started again. Buck had decided they'd go well north and east to one of the high spots on the map and then work their way down toward home "just in case we find something heavy."

This new place had some definite possibilities. But it was weird. Marcus again went to the middle of the big room and did a three-sixty, scanning the walls, where some of the shelves and cabinetry appeared absolutely untouched. But like the kitchen pots and pans that were jumbled on the floor about fifteen feet away from where they should have been, so too were some couch throw pillows and a lamp and a DVD player about fifteen feet from the den area where they matched. A bookcase on the eastern wall was empty, the books fifteen feet away, piled up against the refrigerator and kitchen island. And in the middle Marcus was standing on a pristine, pearl gray carpet. His eyes moved up the walls to the second floor, to the sheared-away beams that had once supported a cathedral ceiling, until he was staring straight up into the clouds pa.s.sing high above. It was like a tiny tornado, spinning within the chaos of the hurricane, had peeled away the entire roof and then dipped its finger straight down into the building and did a little twirl and then left.

It was disconcerting to Marcus, and he stood there thinking of the time when he was very young, maybe about the time his father had left. His mom had decided to make changes in their lives to forget the past and she'd completely redone his room; moved his bed to another wall; the dresser, the bedside lamp, even the posters, all shifted. He remembered now how it had confused and scared him when he would awake in the middle of the night and have that overwhelming feeling that he didn't know where he was. That fear came over him now, that he was someplace so foreign and unsafe that there was nothing familiar to hold on to.

"Marcus!"

Buck was leaning over a spiral, wrought-iron staircase that gave access to the bedroom upstairs.

"Marcus? What the f.u.c.k, son. You gonna help or just watch, boy? Get your a.s.s up here and go through this other bedroom."

"I got it, Buck," Wayne said, then turned to Marcus. "Why don't you see if you can pack up that player with something waterproof, man."

He nudged Marcus with the satchel he'd filled with CDs and had slung over his shoulder and on the way past whispered, "Got us some booty here, brother."

Wayne was sounding giddy too. "Both you guys are f.u.c.king lost," Marcus said.

Buck was filling the gas tank of the airboat when a hot, dangerous urge came into his head and he stopped to wonder where the h.e.l.l it came from. He could suddenly see himself: the red five-gallon can in hand, sloshing the contents in a careful path along the first floor baseboards of the entire place they'd just looted. Make sure you get it on all sides and in the corners so that every remaining wall would go up in flames. f.u.c.k 'em. a.s.shole city boys and their seaside mansions out here, he thought. He could especially see the now broken photos curling up and going black in the flames. He'd picked one up in the den area: four guys no older than him, big-a.s.s grins on their faces, the two on the ends holding trophy-size mangrove snapper, the two on the inside holding half-full bottles of p.i.s.s yellow Corona beer. One actually had on a polo shirt, probably with his country club logo on it but Buck couldn't tell. One had a ring on his right hand with a rock as big as the eye of the fish he held hooked in the gills. Buck was not normally a jealous sort. He didn't look at fancy sports cars at the casino or on trips into Naples and l.u.s.t after them. The big plasma television sets he saw when he was creeping one of those suburban homes did not have any allure to him. He'd go down to the bar at the Rod & Hunt Club and watch their big screen game for the price of a few beers.

But for some reason this monstrous, yellow-painted structure built like an a.s.s pimple out here in the middle of the Glades and filled with all the comforts of those homes had put him in a p.i.s.sy mood. h.e.l.l, he ought to be thanking the owners. He'd found their stash of booze, a case of some kind of imported rum, back in the corner of a pantry closet. He'd picked up a fine pair of binoculars upstairs in one of the bedrooms; six hundred bucks retail, probably unload them for two hundred to Bobby the Fence. Then he'd pulled out the drawer that he almost missed in what was probably the master suite. The thing was actually built into the bed frame. He'd stubbed his toes on it, expecting his foot to slide under the mattress when he'd stepped up close to the bed and instead kicking the solid frame below.

He'd gone to his knees and saw the handles and the lock. The pry bar he carried took care of the latter. When he pulled out the sliding drawer he was not exactly surprised, considering the boys he'd seen in the photos, to be met by the odor of gun oil and the sight of carefully wrapped firearms. But the five weapons he took out and arranged on the bed mattress were exceptional.

A 30-30 Winchester rifle, old style as far as he could tell, but in such pristine shape it had to be a collector's item. He couldn't help but pick it up, throw the lever action, and sight down the barrel, dreaming scenes of the Old West. Yee ha. He smiled. Born in the wrong century.

Then there was the Mauser, a German-made World War II cla.s.sic, heavy, built to last, knock down a f.u.c.king mule with one shot. As he had already figured, these guys weren't real hunters, they were playboys, out here to make noise with their expensive toys. There was a twelve-gauge over-and-under shotgun there as well, the most utilitarian of the group and no doubt used to knock a few curlew out of the evening sky just for the h.e.l.l of it.

Then there were two handguns: an old 9mm Glock, the one law enforcement gave up on after a couple of heavy-fingered cops said they fired prematurely, and a .45-caliber revolver of the style Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry might have carried but too f.u.c.king big for anyone to lug around these days except for some a.s.shole drive-by g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers who thought the sound of it was cool because it was louder than their car stereos when it touched off.

Buck had stared at the collection for a few seconds. In his excitement over the total haul in the house, his natural wariness of the weapons was lost. No, he didn't like guns. He'd heard too many stories of their violence and how it inevitably came back on you. But there was something about this day that was feeling too easy, everything working out the way he'd envisioned it, the way he boasted on it to the boys. It was all going smoothly and Buck had spent nearly thirty-three years on this earth and nothing had ever gone completely smoothly for him. The guns were now stashed under the pile of other things they'd decided to take. Buck had slipped them there himself, not bothering to tell the boys what he'd found. He'd taken three boxes of ammunition from the secret drawer and wrapped them and the rifles and the big .45 in a blanket and covered that with some raingear he'd found to keep them as dry as possible.

Now he shook off the urge to torch the place and emptied the gas can into the tank and then tossed it onto the dock of the house. f.u.c.k it, he thought. Don't overdo it just to get back at the a.s.sholes for trespa.s.sing on your life. This mission ain't about them. If you set the place on fire, you're sending up a smoke signal that anybody could respond to. Do the job, Buck. What you gotta do. Be smart.

"OK, boys. Let's move on. We're burnin' daylight," he said. Buck and the Duke. He reached into the seat trap and took out the GPS.

"Next on the list ain't but an hour south. If she's still standing we might be able to spend the night there."

Wayne and Marcus put a final knot in the line holding their newfound booty and climbed up into the backseats.