Randy White - Hunter's moon

If I hadn’t, I would’ve broken my neck. Instead, when I hit bottom my left arm buried itself up to the elbow in muck.

Underwater, I waited for a few seconds to be sure the boat was gone, then I tried to pull my arm free. Surprise! My fist had created a suction pocket. It wouldn’t budge.

I got one foot on the bottom and tried to stand. I still couldn’t break the mud’s hold.

Impossible.

Calmly, I tried again… and felt muck constrict around my forearm.

I opened my eyes. Darkness accentuated a darker realization: I might die this way. Ironic. It was also absurd. Die on a calm night, in waist-deep water, because I’d gotten one hand stuck in the mud-after the life I’d lived?

Funny, Ford. Fun-n-n-ny.

I stopped struggling. Told myself not to panic; to stop fighting and think. I did… which instantly reduced the pressure around my forearm. I could feel the hole collapsing into rivulets of sand around my fist, as water trickled in and breached the vacuum. I gave a gentle pull… and my hand came free.

I surfaced, blowing water from my nose and gasping for air but alert: a second boat might be following in the wake of the vessel that had nearly crushed me.

I stood, waited… Silence.

I turned. The patrol boat’s course was marked by a contrail of bubbles but its lights had been swallowed by fog. I could still hear its engines, an eerie demarcation between sight and sound: A sixton boat had vanished into a void of infinite gray.

I took a few careful steps, still shaken by the series of close calls. Bad luck has its own momentum. It’s not conditional or personal, but misfortune does seem to gain energy from panic. Time to move purposefully.

I did.

If the patrol boat’s wake was still visible, the inflatable’s narrower track should be visible, too. I made a slow search and found the residue of exhaust oil and disturbed water.

I backtracked, following the rubber boat’s course, walking, sometimes swimming. The knife with the curved blade, and the extra flashlight I’d slipped into my pants, had both survived, and I used the flashlight. After several minutes, there it was, a ghost ship, awash in fog but still afloat: my canoe. I was afraid the patrol boat had crushed it.

Before I vaulted aboard, I allowed myself a blissful minute to pee.

My watch read 12:15 a.m.

I used the GPS to get my bearings, then paddled. A few minutes later, blue topography materialized in the moonlight: Indian mounds elevated above mangroves.

I traveled along Ligarto’s rim. As I did, I heard the diesel rumble of another vessel. It was on the western side of the island. Occasionally, its searchlight breached the fog canopy. The boat was headed north, its engines fading.

Why north? Why not back up the helicopter and patrol boat?

I thought about it as I paddled. Decided there could be only one reason: The former president was aboard. Secret Service agents were taking him to safety. The Special Operations Center at MacDill Air Base was in Tampa, and so was the Coast Guard’s regional headquarters.

What other explanation could there be? The inflatable would’ve been easy to find. The explosion hadn’t damaged the gas tank much because I could still hear the engine-the overrevved scream of an outboard plowing bottom. The boat had finally hit something, and its engine was killing itself; probably kicking up a geyser of mud and grass as it buried the rubber boat on a sandbar.

Less than ten minutes had passed since I’d flicked the lighter and jumped, but they’d been long, long minutes for the four foreigners. They’d spent them careening through fog, out of control, with a helicopter on their tail. With the inflatable grounded, the men would either have to fight or wade. I hadn’t heard any shots, so maybe they weren’t the martyr types… or maybe they’d found the bottle of vodka I’d left aboard.

I pictured the guy with the bushy black beard, Folano, guzzling from the bottle and smiled. He could have the liquor-I had his knife. I hadn’t looked at it closely but the heft and balance suggested superb craftsmanship. Consoling. The Blackhawk flashlight I’d sacrificed was expensive.

I continued paddling but not fast. The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed the Secret Service had hustled Kal Wilson aboard the northbound boat. If he was no longer on Ligarto, there was no reason for me to hurry. Even so, I decided to land on the shell ridge as planned.

Maybe I’d learn something. Secret Service agents wouldn’t be as quick to open fire, and they might be talkative if I had information to trade. I’d use a spare flashlight to draw attention and tell the first person I met to notify the cops about four crazy foreigners with guns. That would get a conversation started.

Wait… only four foreigners? I remembered the unlikely timing of the explosions, then reminded myself there could be a fifth terrorist already on the island, an insider.

Adrenaline is a chemical accelerant and I felt supercharged. If the Secret Service hadn’t found the fifth terrorist, I might… or he might find me.

That was okay.

In fact, I hoped it happened.

Wind stilled; moon floated behind Halloween clouds. Fog became rain-an ascending, silver weight.

Good. My clothes were soaked but visibility was improving. Steam seeped from the tree line, then was vented upward by the bay’s cool surface. Moonlight was chameleon. It mimicked a night sky that was charcoal, then copper.

Ahead, I could see an elevated darkness that, according to the GPS, marked the shell ridge. The ridge crossed the island-a foot highway built a thousand years ago by contemporaries of the Maya. Florida was home to an ancient people. Visitors to Disney World and South Beach never suspect.

I approached cautiously: two strokes, glide… two strokes, glide. The elevated darkness assumed form. A break in the tree line appeared as a ravine of white. I turned the canoe toward the island and gave a final stroke. Shells grated beneath the boat’s hull as the bow lifted itself onto the bank.

I waited: tree canopy sifting rain… bee-WAH groan of catfish

… vertibraeic pop of pistol shrimp. A separate, living universe intermingled below, indifferent to my vigilance or to the absurd world above the water’s surface.

Was I alone?

I leaned my weight to port, swung one leg, then the other, out of the canoe and stood in knee-deep water. On the island, fog strata created a tunnel; the ridge, made of seashells, glowed like bone. I pulled the canoe onto the ridge. Hid it in a mangrove thicket that was several feet above the tide line, but I tied off to a limb, anyway-the rituals of a compulsive man.

I was undecided about carrying Folano’s knife. The Secret Service would ask questions if they found it. But what if there was a fifth assassin? He would be armed.

I took the knife. Slid it through my belt, over my hip. I was still wearing my black sports jacket, an incongruous combination-dressed for a dinner party, soaking wet, and armed to kill.

I carried a flashlight but didn’t use it as I started up the ridge. At the first clearing, I stepped into the open, faced the island’s interior, and waved my arms overhead-a maritime distress signal. If there was a sniper team positioned on Ligarto’s highest point, I wanted to give them a chance to hit me with a spotlight before they hit me with a bullet.

The only response was the twittering of midnight birds and the faraway boom of an owl: Hoo-ah… Hoo-ah-hoo… Hoo-ah…

I stepped back into shadows and hugged the tree line as I walked, shells resonate beneath shoes. Every few yards, I stopped; checked behind, then searched the corridor of mist ahead.

It was now half past midnight; no sign of the president. I began to feel sure he’d been evacuated. I also began to feel an unexpected disappointment. Outwardly, I’d bristled at being coerced by the celebrated man. “Help me disappear,” he’d said, “and I’ll make your past disappear.”