Everglades Assault

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Teaser chapter

  PRAISE FOR RANDY WAYNE WHITE AND HIS NOVELS

  “What James Lee Burke has done for Louisiana, Tony Hillerman for the Southwest, John Sandford for Minnesota, and Joe R. Lansdale for east Texas, Randy Wayne White does for his own little acre.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “White takes us places that no other Florida mystery writer can hope to find.”

  —Carl Hiaasen

  “White brings vivid imagination to his fight scenes. Think Mickey Spillane meets The Matrix.”

  —People

  “A major new talent . . . hits the ground running . . . a virtually perfect piece of work. He’s the best new writer we’ve encountered since Carl Hiaasen.”

  —The Denver Post

  “White is the rightful heir to joining John D. Mac-Donald, Carl Hiaasen, James Hall, Geoffrey Norman. . . . His precise prose is as fresh and pungent as a salty breeze.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “White doesn’t just use Florida as a backdrop, but he also makes the smell, sound, and physicality of the state leap off the page.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “This satisfying madcap fare could go seismic on the regional bestseller lists.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “He describes southwestern Florida so well it’s easy to smell the salt tang in the air and feel the cool Gulf breeze.”

  —Mansfield News Journal

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, February 1982

  First Printing (Author Introduction), October 2008

  Copyright © New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 1981, 1982

  eISBN : 978-1-101-53058-0

  Introduction copyright © Randy Wayne White, 2006

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Introduction

  In the winter of 1980, I received a surprising phone call from an editor at Signet Books—surprising because, as a Florida fishing guide, the only time New Yorkers called me was to charter my boat. And if any of my clients were editors, they were savvy enough not to admit it.

  The editor said she’d read a story by me in Outside Magazine and was impressed. Did I have time to talk?

  As a mediocre high school jock, my idols were writers, not ball players. I had a dream job as a light-tackle guide, yet I was still obsessed with my own dream of writing for a living. For years, before and after charters, I’d worked hard at the craft. Selling a story to Outside, one of the country’s finest publications, was a huge break. I was about to finish a novel, but this was the first time New York had called.

  Yes, I had time to talk.

  The editor, whose name was Joanie, told me Signet wanted to launch a paperback thriller series that featured a recurring he-man hero. “We want at least four writers on the project because we want to keep the books coming, publishing one right after the other, to create momentum.”

  Four writers producing books with the same character?

  “Characters,” Joanie corrected. “Once we get going, the cast will become standard.”

  Signet already had a template for the hero. He was a Vietnam vet turned Key West fishing guide, she said, talking as if the man existed. He was surfer-boy blond, and he’d been friends with Hemingway.

  I am not a literary historian, but all my instincts told me the timetable seemed problematic. I said nothing.

  “He has a shark scar,” Joanie added, “and he’s freakishly strong. Like a man who lifts weights all the time.”

  The guys I knew who lifted weights were also freakishly clumsy, so . . . maybe the hero, while visiting a local aquarium, tripped during feeding time?

  My brain was already problem-solving.

  “He lives in Key West,” she said, “so, of course, he has to be an expert on the area. That’s why I’m calling. You live in Key West, and I liked your magazine story a lot. It seems like a natural fit.”

  Actually, I fished out of Sanibel Island, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, a six-hour drive from Sloppy Joe’s, but this was no time for petty details.

  “Have you ever been to Key West?” I asked the editor. “Great sunsets.”

  Editors, I have since learned, can also be cagey. Joanie didn’t offer me the job. She had already settled on three of the four writers, she said, but if I was willing to submit a few sample chapters on speculation, she’d give me serious consideration.

  Money? A contract? That stuff was “all standard,” she told me, and could be discussed later.

  “I’ll warn you right now,” she said, “there are a couple of other writers we’re considering, so you need to get at least three chapters to me within a month. Then I’ll let you know.”

  I hung up the phone, stunned by my good fortune. My first son, Lee, had been born only a few months earlier. My much-adored wife, Debra, and I were desperate for money because the weather that winter
had been miserable for fishing. But it was perfect for writing.

  I went to my desk, determined not to let my young family down.

  At Tarpon Bay Marina, where I was a guide, my friend Ralph Woodring owned a boat with Dusky painted in big blue letters on the side. My friend, Graeme Mellor, lived on a Morgan sailboat named No Mas.

  Dusky MacMorgan was born.

  Every winter, Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus came to town. Their trapeze artists, I realized, were not only freakishly strong, but they were also freakishly nimble.

  Dusky gathered depth.

  One of my best friends was the late Dr. Harold Westervelt, a gifted orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Westervelt became the Edison of Death, and he loved introducing himself that way to new patients. His son, David, became Westy O’Davis, and our spearfishing pal, Billy, became Billy Mack.

  Problems with my hero’s shark scar and his devoted friendship with Hemingway were also solved.

  Working around the clock, pounding away at my old black manual typewriter, I wrote Key West Connection in nine days. On a Monday morning, I waited for the post office to open to send it to New York.

  Joanie sounded a little dazed when she telephoned on Friday. Was I willing to try a second book on spec?

  Hell yes.

  God, I was beginning to love New York’s can-do attitude.

  The other three writers (if they ever existed) were fired, and I became the sole proprietor of Captain Dusky MacMorgan—although Signet owned the copyright and all other rights after I signed Joanie’s “standard” contract. (This injustice was later made right by a willing and steadfast publisher and my brilliant agent.)

  If Joanie (a fine editor) feels badly about that today, she shouldn’t. I would’ve signed for less.

  I wrote seven of what I would come to refer to as “duck and fuck” books because in alternating chapters Dusky would duck a few bullets, then spend much-deserved time alone with a heroine.

  Seldom did a piece of paper go into my old typewriter that was ripped out and thrown away, and I suspect that’s the way the books read. I don’t know. I’ve never reread them. I do remember using obvious clichés, a form of self-loathing, as if to remind myself that I should be doing my own writing, not this jobof-work.

  The book you are now holding, and the other six, constituted a training arena for a young writer who took seriously the discipline demanded by his craft and also the financial imperatives of being a young father.

  For years, I apologized for these books. I no longer do.

  —Randy Wayne White

  Cartagena, Colombia

  1

  Sometimes there’s just no way of saying no.

  Especially when the woman asking is a nineteen-year-old sea enchantress wearing one of those thin bikinis that swell and strain against a body that seems hell-bent on escaping.

  I had been enjoying a quiet July morning on my weather-scoured house built on stilts a mile out to sea where Calda Bank curves around the channel into Key West.

  When you’ve lived in Florida for a long time, you come to treasure those summer mornings.

  In the fresh heat of a new day, the sea is glass. Fish moving over the flats leave a wake, and you can hear the sound of barracuda crashing bait a long, long way off. The air is rarefied and washed by the rain of the previous evening, and the allotropic ozone fragrance of lightning is as strong as jasmine.

  So when you treasure the morning, you get up early and try to enjoy every second.

  Like most things in life, the morning is not the sort of thing you enjoy by hot pursuit—like kids racing to open presents on Christmas morning.

  It’s the sort of thing you enjoy obliquely. It’s the sort of thing you enjoy through the wayward eye, savoring and tasting like a voyeur. You have to sit back, pick out a few meaningless tasks, go to work, and let it settle upon you. The Zen people have a delicate image for such things. They use a snowflake. You have to let the flake settle at its own speed, follow its own course, because if you reach out to grab it, it will just disappear.

  So I was enjoying the morning.

  I had awakened at first light, boiled coffee, urinated from the uppermost dock, then forced myself to do pull-ups and a fast half-mile swim before settling back for my attack on the new day.

  On the Transoceanic radio, I dialed in the BBC at twenty-one hundred megahertz. The London Symphony was doing a piece on strings and timpani I had never heard before. It was controlled and fresh, and I turned up the volume so that I could hear it out on the porch.

  Looking south, I could see the thin darkness of Fleming Key. Pelicans wheeled and crashed in the distance, and the eastern sea was a track of molten gold. I sat on the porch, back against the worn wood of the house, and went to work tying leaders.

  When a half-dozen Bimini twists had finally gotten the sweat going, plopping down from my nose, I stood up and went inside.

  I have to watch my beer intake.

  In my line of work, an extra pound of fat can slow you a half step.

  And a half step can mean the difference between living and dying.

  But on a morning such as this, a cold Tuborg was a necessary indulgence.

  As I said, you have to meet the good things halfway.

  So I opened the beer, letting it sluice away the sleep phlegm and morning taste of coffee, then went back outside.

  That’s when I saw the boat.

  One of those old flats skiffs built for stability and shoal water. At first I thought it might be one of the Key West bonefish guides. The skiff was typically overpowered, but the person at the wheel damn sure knew how to use that power.

  The boat came arrowing across the morning sea in a perfect V-ing of turquoise wake. Had to be doing forty, minimum. The pilot paid no attention to the channel markers. Didn’t have to. People who really know the backwaters off Key West can run the wheel tracks of crabbers or the intricate network of flat streams as easily as most people follow interstates.

  And this person obviously knew the backwater.

  I considered going down to my thirty-four-foot sportfisherman, Sniper, and breaking out the binoculars to get a better look at this skiff ace.

  But I didn’t have to.

  The skiff banked prettily, followed the winding Bluefish Channel briefly, then powered off into shoal water my way. And in another minute I could see exactly who the skiff ace was.

  She wore one of those dark-blue string bikinis that grab at the heart and contort the stomach muscles. And since I knew the woman, I also knew that she wore it more for comfort than for style.

  A thousand years ago, she would have been the type to shake her head in disapproval at the fig-leaf breechcloths, and choose instead to run around happily and healthily nude.

  For her the bikini was a compromise.

  I went down to the dock to meet her after pulling on a pair of gray cotton gym shorts. She waved as she backed the skiff off plane, and brought her in starboard side.

  It was April Yarbrough, the daughter of a crusty old Key West friend of mine.

  More than a year before, April had paid me the supreme compliment of falling into a girlish infatuation. She had flirted and winked and wagged that lush body of hers around, and finally I had to take off on my boat just to get the hell away.

  Because the infatuation was mutual.

  But in the meantime she had gone off to college in Gainesville. Her first month away, I had received a steady stream of letters at the marina at Garrison Bight where I run my charterboat and stay when business demands that I be in town.

  But the letters gradually tapered off as her interests and her life were refocused—as I knew they inevitably would be.

  You have to love the young ones from afar. You have to give them plenty of room to live and roam and seek, because if you make the unforgivable mistake of allowing them to give themselves too soon, they must ultimately end up feeling trapped.

  And April Yarbrough was far too fine a woman for that.

  So I had a
cknowledged the letters politely, and allowed them to disappear unchallenged.

  And then buried my disappointment privately.

  But I couldn’t hide my delight in seeing her again. She really hadn’t changed that much. The ravenblack hair had been braided, and it hung like a rope down to her hips. There was the hint of Indian heritage in face and cheeks, and her strange golden eyes still suggested some ancient knowledge that went far beyond her nineteen years. Her body was lithe and long, sun-bronzed beneath the bikini, with heavy thrust of breasts and curve of thighs pouched beneath thin material.

  “MacMorgan, you old fart!”

  “April—you young fart!”

  She gave the bowline a couple of quick wraps and jumped up onto the dock. Her excitement was contagious. I found myself lumbering across the dock to meet her halfway. She threw herself into my arms, and I held her closely, swung her around, feeling that fine body tremble beneath my arms. When I set her down, there was that awkward moment when two people share an uncontrolled emotional outburst without prior intimacy.

  She brushed at her hair, gazed momentarily at her bare toes—then laughed it all away.

  “Damn,” she said, grinning at me. “Damn, it’s good to see you.”

  “And good to see you too, lady. I enjoyed your letters—for as long as they lasted.”

  Her quick temper hadn’t changed either. The golden eyes flared wide, and she put fists on hips. “For as long as they lasted! What in the world did you expect when every letter you wrote back was about as cold as old fish? I’d write you poetry, and you’d send back news briefs. Really, MacMorgan . . .”

  I held up my hands, stopping her. “Take it easy, April. This is a reunion, remember.” I held up the Tuborg. “I was just having a morning beer. Would you like a Coke or something?”

  “Coke!”

  “Or maybe a beer. . . .”

  She yelled, “Coke! You still see me the way I was ten years ago, don’t you, MacMorgan?” Grinning, she actually gave me a shove in the chest. “You still see me as that barefoot girl playing in the dirt down by Daddy’s docks. I had a crush on you even back in those times, you know. I’d get behind a tree and watch you walk by. . . .”