Bob Friel - The Barefoot Bandit

Kenny says the looters “look to see if you don’t have a camera or manpower security. And manpower is best to keep them away.”

Strachan’s manpower strategy is ninja. “I wear a black hooded jacket and stay in the dark bush, low, like a cat, and you don’t see me.” The potential thieves never know where Kenny is, and he’s also let word spread around that he brings along his little friend when he patrols. “Like hogs in a pen, looters know where it’s safe to rub they skins. So when they hear you have guns, they stay away.”

There hasn’t been a theft at Romora Bay since Kenny took on the job.

Saturday evening, though, Kenny decided to leave the shotgun in his room. “After the Lord showed me His plan that this boy was comin’ to me, I said, ‘I ain’t gonna have no gun when he come.’”

The Bahamian police and FBI were warning everyone that Colt was armed and dangerous, but that didn’t worry Kenny. “I wasn’t scared,” he says with a big gap-toothed smile. He had faith that the Barefoot Bandit was coming, and his plan was still to stop him, but he didn’t want to hurt him.

An unmarried father of three (“That’s the way it is here in the Bahamas, with a lot of no-wedlock children”), Kenny keeps himself in great shape. Broad-shouldered, six-one, 212 pounds, he cuts an imposing figure in his tight black shirt. “I’m really strong, and if he didn’t stop when I asked him to, then my plan was I would toss him and wrassle him.”

At 7:38 p.m., Kenny’s phone buzzed with an answer from Sergeant Hart: “Bust his ass and hold him until I come.”

AT THE AIRPORT, I’D gotten the expected stew of rumors and wild speculation from the taxi drivers. The only concrete info was that the big party tonight was at the Bluff, a small North Eleutheran settlement that hosts a yearly homecoming that draws Bahamian diaspora living in Nassau, Miami, and even farther afield for a major fish fry and bashment. This was one of the years when it fell on Independence Day, which made it even bigger and better.

A black SUV pulled up and out jumped a petite powerhouse, Petagay Hollinsed-Hartman. Born in Jamaica, Petagay came to the Bahamas via Key West when she and her former husband, Mike Hartman, created a ground-breaking eco resort named Tiamo on Andros Island. Petagay now lived on Eleuthera, raising her daughter, Bella, and running a small guesthouse, BellaMango, along with the Laughing Lizard Café. The Lizard (motto: “No Haters”) lies in Gregory Town, where Petagay serves fruit smoothies to surfers, pumpkin soup to locals like rocker Lenny Kravitz, and jerk chicken wraps to blow-ins such as Robert De Niro.

The Lizard offers wireless Internet, and I’d warned Petagay (who shares a heaping helping of that islanders’ antiauthoritarian streak) that Colt might stop by to get online. “If he does, I’ll make him a panini,” she said.

ELEUTHERA IS A GANGLY, 110-mile-long island shaped like a marlin’s skeleton picked clean by sharks. Its bill, severed at Current Cut, points toward Nassau, thirty miles away. The island is so narrow that you can stand on its limestone spine in many spots and see both the indigo Atlantic and the aquamarine waters of the shallow Great Bahama Bank.

Gregory Town served as the pineapple capital back when Eleuthera exported boatloads of the sweet fruit. The village is now the island’s laid-back surf city during the winter swell season when board riders fill up the guesthouses, spend long days on the break at Surfer’s Beach, and then gather at Elvina’s for twice-weekly music sessions where anyone can walk in and just jam. South of Gregory, Eleuthera is all about quaint towns like Tarpum Bay and Governor’s Harbour, weekly fish fries and sociable bars, world-class bonefishing, and beach after beach of precious pink and white sand. There was a lot of Eleuthera for Colt to roam, but the highest concentration of boats was up in the north and it made sense he’d still be near the top of the island.

I climbed into Petagay’s truck and we drove straight out to Preacher’s Cave, a nine-mile run from the airport. It seemed too obvious that Colt might be sheltering in the cave where he came ashore, but there’d been a lot of obvious going on lately. It fit the Eleutheran Adventurers’ deliverance story and the Huck Finn archetype, and using the cave wouldn’t be a bad idea as long as he’d already gathered a cache of food and water. There’d be the chance of a tourist stopping by during daylight, but Colt could hide in the surrounding woods and move back in at night. The way Preacher’s entrance faces the open ocean, he’d even be able to build a fire inside to cook and keep bugs away without worrying someone might see the glow.

After leaving the paved highway, we bounced down a sandy, rutted track carved through dense coppice. There wasn’t another soul on the road. The last quarter mile was a narrow, winding path leading into what Bahamians call the backabush. Rainwater filled every pothole and gully. Tropical rule of thumb says that rain one day brings a bloom of biters in three. According to Petagay, they’d had occasional drenching showers all week, which meant the mozzies and nippers would be insatiable. I wondered if Colt had picked up bug juice somewhere along the way.

We parked in a deserted little clearing just as the sun was setting. As we started walking up the sand trail toward the cave, I suddenly thought of something. “Do you have your keys?” I asked Petagay. She looked at me like I was a little crazy, but I convinced her to lock the truck and bring the key while I grabbed my backpack, which held all my gear and notes. It was too easy—and fitting to the story—to imagine us coming out of the cave and finding the truck gone.

Petagay got her Nancy Drew on, checking out footprints. One set leading to the cave was especially large. I noticed a hum that grew louder as we walked. At first I thought it was the sound of waves, but that didn’t make any sense since we were heading away from the shore. By the time we could feel the cave’s cool exhale, the noise had swelled to the buzz of an electrical power station. I stopped and looked at Petagay.

“Bees,” she said.

A huge hive grew on the upper lip of the cave’s mouth. Hundreds of bees swarmed about twenty feet above us, their drone magnified and emanating from the entrance as a single ominous note. The twilight penetrated only a few feet past the cave opening, where two rocks poked like fangs from the ground. Beyond that, a patch of luminous sand pooled beneath a natural skylight. Beyond that was black.

Petagay pulled a small flashlight out of her shorts and clicked it on. We stood together at the edge of the darkness, our eyes intently following her light’s sickly yellow glow as it seeped across the rock walls. The weak beam reached only a short distance, so I slowly moved ahead while Petagay held the light above my shoulder to show the way.

Bats that cling upside down inside pockmarks in the cave ceiling were just beginning to stir. We’d gone about sixty feet, past several ancient Lucayan graves, when Petagay’s flashlight died. Ruh-roh.

“Colt?” I called out into the blackness. “Don’t shoot… ” No answer.

Bees, bats, Lucayan and Puritan spirits, yes, but there was none of that Coltish energy inside Preacher’s Cave.

I dug out a headlamp and its cold-blue LEDs blasted any remaining chills out of the cave. Petagay went back to the entrance looking for signs anyone had built a fire. I took the light and searched all the way to the back of the cave, where I found a small opening that looked like it might be a passageway. I got down on all fours and crawled inside. It didn’t go far before it turned vertical like a chimney. I shined my light up. The cave had saved one last tingle: a giant spider sprawled across its web a foot above my head. I thought of young Colton befriending the spider in his Camano backyard. He could have put a leash on this one and walked it.