Randy White - Everglades

I glanced to the west. The sun was gone; vanished behind a scrim of distant cypress trees. I looked at my watch: 7:56 P.M. Less than a minute remained.

Feeling a sickening sense of unreality, I considered opening the hood and disconnecting the battery. But that would not disable the secondary timer switch. At this distance, any explosion, big or small, would kill all three of us anyway.

That’s when it came to me. What I had to do.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel sickened or frightened anymore.

Tomlinson had Sally cradled in his arms, struggling beneath her weight, trying to get her away from the truck. I called, “Stay here. Get down and cover her with your body.” Then I put the truck in drive, floored the accelerator and began to bounce and jolt my way up the access road.

The back of the truck was loaded to maximum. I could feel the weight in the sluggish, teetering way the truck handled. As I drove, I checked to see if the transmission was in four-wheel drive-it was-then tried to calculate how far I’d have to move the truck so that, when it did explode, Sally and Tomlinson wouldn’t be hurt.

You can’t get far enough in sixty seconds.

That was the inescapable truth. Which is when another idea popped into my brain.

This detonator system is electrical.

It was my only chance. Our only chance.

When I got to the top of the quarry, I turned off the road, onto the ridge, and steered directly toward Lost Lake. It was a couple of hundred yards away. The water color had changed from molten red to molten bronze, and the lake’s surface seesawed before my eyes as the truck’s tires banged over rocks and small trees. Traveling at thirty. .. then forty miles per hour, the steering wheel vibrated and bucked so hard beneath my hands that it was struggle to maintain control.

Seven fifty-seven P.M.

Did I hear an electrical click from behind me?

Still accelerating, I scrunched down in my seat, expecting to feel a blinding white pain that marked the explosion, and the end of my own life. I was still ducked low, accelerator floored, when one of the front right tires blew.

Bang.

Stunned, I released the steering wheel momentarily, and the world tilted crazily as the truck careened sideways, then rolled.

Suddenly, water was pouring through the broken window, gushing like a river, filling the cab. Then I was underwater, in a familiar, slow-motion world.

For a few moments, the escalating speed of the truck’s descent toward the bottom of the lake kept me mashed to the roof of the cab. I reached, found the steering wheel. I pulled myself toward the broken window.

I have wide shoulders. For a terrible, claustrophobic moment, I got stuck in the window, but managed to bull my way through. Then I was ascending toward what appeared as a silver lens, thirty or forty feet above… slowly ascending, exhaling bubbles, right arm extended toward the surface out of old habit.

When I breached the surface, I sucked in air, filling my lungs. Then I paused, sculling, for a reflective moment. If the water hadn’t shorted the electrical system, the nitrate might still explode.

I looked at my watch: I saw 7:59 P.M. become 8 P.M.

Not likely.

I began to do a relaxed breaststroke toward shore-and got another unexpected shock when several big fins cut the surface ahead of me, then disappeared.

Sharks?

I was still spooked from my recent encounter.

Then I smiled.

No. The tarpon, a prehistoric fish, can supplement its oxygen supply by rolling at the surface and gulping surface air.

Billie Egret was right. Tarpon had returned to Lost Lake. Tarpon had come back to the Everglades.

People were screaming.

Why?

The screams we heard were coming from the direction of the outdoor amphitheater. Men and women yelling, falsetto shrieks, their voices echoing through the shadows of cypress trees.

I’d driven the airboat up onto the manicured grass of Sawgrass, as close to the parking area as I could get.

Sally kept telling us, “I’m okay, I’m okay. There’s no need to hurry.”

But she wasn’t okay. She was faint from dehydration, already starting to cramp. She had a swelling subdural hematoma on her temple, and she was probably in shock, too.

And she kept repeating, “The Lord was with me. I was never afraid. All the things that creep tried to do to me; all the things he said. I was never afraid. The Lord put His hand in mine and never let go.”

It was like a dream, she said, opening her eyes and seeing us. For a moment, she thought she was in heaven.

All good boat captains keep a little bag stowed aboard, well stocked for emergencies. Billy Tiger was a good skipper, and I found his emergency bag in the forward hatch. Along with packages of freeze-dried food, a first-aid kit, candles and bug repellent, I found two half gallons of bottled water, and a military-issue blanket.

Tomlinson tended to Sally, wrapping her in the blanket, helping her hold the half-gallon bottle so she could gulp the water down.

I ran the boat. Our return to Sawgrass was not nearly as fast as our trip out, but I didn’t tarry. We needed to get Sally to the hospital. And I was eager to confront Jerry Singh.

Sally’s physical description of the man who assaulted her, and who also murdered Frank and his landlord, left no doubt that it was Izzy Kline-Bhagwan Shiva’s personal assistant. So I wanted to find Kline. I wanted to find him tonight. I wanted to get to him, snatch him, take him to some lonely spot, then eliminate him.

It was irrational. I knew that. Contemplating revenge is always irrational. Besides that, anyone smart enough to simulate an earthquake is smart enough to run far and fast after committing at least two murders and attempting a third.

The bartender said he’d heard Kline was going to Europe-probably a red herring. But I didn’t doubt that Kline was leaving for somewhere.

The last time she’d seen him, Sally told us, was late that morning. She said he’d smiled at her and said, “Give my regards to St. Peter,” and slammed the truck door, timers set, engine running.

So he was probably out of the state. Maybe already out of the country.

If anyone knew Kline’s whereabouts, though, it would be the man Tomlinson called the Non-Bhagwan.

I was eager to look into Shiva’s face and make him talk. So I steered a rhumb line toward Sawgrass, running at speed.

I watched the sunset sky fade to bronze, then pearl, as the far horizon absorbed light. To the east, the vanished sun still illuminated the peaks of towering cumulous clouds. A commercial airliner, banking away from Miami International, became an isolated reflector, mirror-bright, connected to a silver contrail. Below, white birds became gray as they glided toward shadowed cypress heads to roost.

Tomlinson was in the seat below me, holding Sally. Every now and then, he’d stroke her blond hair. Her hand would find his, and squeeze.

Now, back at Sawgrass, I switched off the engine of Chekika’s Shadow, swung down out of my seat and helped Tomlinson get a wobbly Sally Carmel on solid ground.

“We’ve got to find something better than this blanket,” she told us. “I can’t let anyone else see me naked.”

After what she’d been through, her modesty was touching.

That’s when all three of us grew silent, our brains trying to translate and identify the strange, distant sounds coming to us through cypress trees.

Terror has a tone; an unmistakable pitch. We were hearing the screams of terrified people.

I said, “It sounds like there’s a riot going on over there.”

Tomlinson waited for a few moments, head cocked, listening, before he replied, “Something’s happened. Something powerful. I can feel it, man.”

We could also hear the wail of distant sirens.