Randy White - Shark River

Through the binoculars, I watched Goatee began to gesture wildly toward my hiding place in the big mangroves. The boat was still half a mile off, but he seemed to be looking directly at me.

Had they seen the red tent? Yes… no doubt about it. I watched the tri-hull gain speed, porpoising through the surf toward the beach.

I touched my hand to the Sig Sauer on the platform beside me, a gesture seeking reassurance. No need for the sound arrestor here. As an emergency out, I’d placed Tuck’s old. 44, freshly loaded, on a plastic bag inside the little foxhole I’d dug. But my plan was to remain where I was, let them track the cell phone, then take them when they got into range.

I’d selected my ambush point. Now I’d wait for the electronic current to sweep them in.

But then I saw something that brought an ascending nervous spasm of nausea to my throat… something that also brought Tomlinson’s old maxim freshly to mind: Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.

What I saw was the third man, the light-skinned black. An older man with curly, graying hair-maybe Cordero himself. He’d been in the cabin below and now stepped up onto deck. He was pulling something by the hair, then punching at something with his fists. I watched as he dragged Tomlinson out onto the deck and club him to his knees.

Then he dragged a second person onto the deck.

It was Ransom. I had to force myself to remain where I was, to keep watching, as he slapped her, making her move along.

It was Cordero. Had to be Edgar Cordero. Pure fury has an energy that’s infectious, radiates, and the light-skinned man was in a rage.

I recalled a phone message from Harrington saying that Cordero had gone berserk, literally, prior to using a bat to beat a mother and child to death.

Now here he was, crazy with anger again.

I recognized it in the way he was brutalizing Tomlinson and Ransom. I could see it in the way his guy steered them hard toward shore, slowing only slightly, surfing down waves until the boat grounded itself on the beach, the hull lifting and heeling to starboard, spray pluming over the transom as first Goatee, then Pumpkin-head swung over the side into knee-deep water trying to steady the thing.

They either knew nothing about boats or didn’t plan to stay long.

Then I watched Cordero shove Ransom backward over the side into the water and Tomlinson leap immediately to help her, lifting her to her feet in the slow surf, her tie-dye T-shirt, red and blue, clinging to her body, her expression dazed as she touched her own face experimentally, then looked at her fingertips. A familiar interrogative: Was her nose bleeding?

I was already climbing down the tree, not even thinking about it, the Sig in the back of my pants, checkered grip secure against my spine, my brain scanning to make sense of what I was seeing. I remembered saying to Tomlinson that I might rent a boat in Chokoloskee; remembered him pressing for us to make the trip together, then Ransom’s dark assertion that they should not let me go alone.

“I’ve got a feeling someone’s going to die,” she’d told me, fingering her beads and her little bag of magic.

I’d done it. I’d put the idea of a rental boat into their heads and, somehow, the two groups had met on that tiny island and at that tiny marina. Ransom was a talker; so was Tomlinson. Both of them were easy sources of information; both easily followed. Both also easily overpowered.

I guessed that somewhere between here and Chokoloskee, probably hidden away in some small backwater, was a second tri-hull.

It was the boat Tomlinson and Ransom had rented before Cordero and his men had followed them, stopped them, then kidnapped them.

Halfway down the tree, I could still see the beach. I watched as Goatee, still holding the little palm computer, pointed toward the red tent. Saw Cordero make an impatient waving gesture with his right hand until the man with the pumpkin-sized head tossed him what looked to be an Uzi.

Under any other circumstances, it would have been an absurdly amusing sight: A distinguished-looking gentleman in gray slacks, black glossy shoes, and an expensive dress shirt holding a submachine gun at waist level. I watched him as he ripped the top-mounted cocking handle back and fired into the tent, holding the trigger on full automatic, the muzzle climbing high enough to spray stray rounds into the trees near me as the nylon of the red tent shuddered.

Reflexively, I pressed myself against the mangrove’s trunk, waiting. Then my ears strained in the abrupt silence of an empty magazine. I watched Cordero change magazines as Goatee walked cautiously to the tent, drew a nine-millimeter semiautomatic and fired several more rounds into it before he ripped the screen door open and peered inside. Then he kicked the tent and kept kicking it until the stakes finally pulled free, and the little red dome tumbled down the beach in the wind like tumbleweed.

I couldn’t hear, then, what Goatee said to Cordero. But I heard Cordero’s voice clearly as he grabbed Ransom and yanked her to his chest like a shield, then touched the barrel of the Uzi to her temple. I saw her jerk her face away from that hot flash arrestor as he called out in English, “You come out now or I kill your sister! You hear me? I blow her fucking head right off you don’t come out!” Then he screamed my name: “FORD!”

Feeling numb, helpless, I dropped down onto the sand and walked toward the beach, hands high over my head.

I still had the Sig Sauer in the back of my pants. Why not? What was the worst they could do if they found it?

They were going to kill us all anyway.

I watched the expression on Edgar Cordero’s face change when he saw me. Watched it change from rage to a slow demonic delight. He shoved Ransom roughly to the ground, absolutely focused on me, lifting the muzzle of the Uzi to chest level as he called, “So! The cockroach finally comes crawling into the sunlight! You are so seldom alone”-he turned and kicked Ransom viciously in the thigh-“that we brought you company! Does that please you, cabron? How does it feel to see a member of your own family in pain?”

I’d never seen Tomlinson attempt violence. Now he did. He went charging at Cordero as if to tackle him, all arms and jeans and Hawiian shirt, but Goatee intercepted. Hit him behind the shoulders with the butt of his pistol once… twice… then kneed him to the ground.

I continued to walk toward the little group, my mind working frantically, seeing the white beach and broad ocean beyond them, their rental boat rolling beam to the waves now, my skiff bucking at anchor nearby.

I had to come up with something. I had to at least try.

The pit I’d dug was about twenty meters to Cordero’s right. Still covered with palmettos, too. If Tomlinson or Ransom created some kind of diversion, maybe I could dive into the pit and come up firing. Take my chances because, the way things looked, it was the only chance we had. It might be even better to let Cordero’s men disarm me first, give them a false sense of safety. Dive and grab Tucker’s old revolver that I’d hidden in there. I could use the big. 44 to take out at least one of them. Then, hopefully, in the confusion, get off a couple more shots.

“Come closer! I want to look into the eyes of the filthy scum who attacked my son Amador when he wasn’t looking. Attacked him when he was not ready, like a woman fights!”

I kept walking. Watched as Cordero handed the Uzi to Pumpkin-head and, in Spanish, asked him for a knife.

I remembered Harrington saying that Edgar collected ears from his adversaries.

Kept them like trophies behind the bar to show his friends.

Now Cordero was walking toward me, opening the knife as he approached, his eyes glittering. I stopped, waited. I began to lower my hands, wanting to get into position to grab my pistol, but raised them again when Pumpkin-head poked the Uzi at me and yelled, “Hands up! I shoot!”