Everglades Assault Read online

  They were no Boy Scouts—so they did a more than thorough job of tying and gagging me. I’d much rather be tied by a knot expert than someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. You can’t back bad knots—they have to be cut.

  So they used about twenty feet of tough hemp rope to bind arms, hands, and legs, taped my mouth, and rolled me into a narrow broom closet.

  All I could do was lie there on my belly in a reverse fetal position and hope that Hervey would contact the law when I didn’t return rather than come looking by himself.

  But I knew better.

  April had said it best: “He isn’t the type to go whining to the law. . . .”

  So he would come by himself. And they would be ready. And that would make three corpses to carry into the swamp that night.

  I felt the nausea well up in my stomach. I could see again the crimson hole which had been the remains of Billy Cougar’s face.

  That was the way Hervey would look if I didn’t think of something. And think of something fast. Hervey was one of the rare good ones. He had a wife and a beautiful daughter. He would be missed.

  I spent the first hour trying to expand the rope; trying to wiggle free. I just about had my hands loose once—but then the door swung open and Benny stuck his ferret face inside.

  He leered at me. “Damn if the boss wasn’t right. He said check up on you ’cause you were the type to chew your own arm off if it took that to get away.”

  So he kicked me a couple of times in the stomach, then added more rope to arms and legs.

  Escape was useless—for now, anyway.

  So I resigned myself to the situation. My only chance would come that night when they carted me off to the swamp to kill me.

  For some reason, dying in a swamp bothered me. I’ve always wanted to die at sea; just sort of go down and never come back up.

  I remembered Panther James and his prediction that I didn’t have long to live.

  So maybe it would be the swamp after all....

  Mickey Rather had gone off for a while to “check out” my story—or so he had said. The walls of the mobile home were beer-can thin, and when he returned I could hear them talking over the generator hum of the air-conditioning.

  He said that he had called one of his associates in Washington. They had heard nothing of an investigation. Rather said it didn’t matter if I was telling the truth or not. He said the Indian had blown it.

  Listening, I began to put it all together. Rather and his boys had operated an illegal gambling ring in Miami and built condominiums with the profit. They were speculators. He would find a choice bit of land, contract out the work, use the cheapest materials available, and then clip the retirees, selling his condominium apartments at extravagant prices.

  Billy Cougar had gotten in deep to Mickey Rather at the card table and the racetrack. Rather had somehow learned about the unique land on which Cougar lived—probably from Billy Cougar himself. So Rather had taken Billy’s IOUs until the Indian had no choice but to go along with Rather’s plan.

  I should have put it all together after talking to Graff McKinney. He was the one who had told me why the big-time gamblers were interested in Indian land. There would be no state control. And very little federal control.

  For Mickey Rather, taking reign of the Panther James acreage would have been akin to finding the Holy Grail. It was a big-time gambler’s dream come true. The plans for the casino he wanted to build there had already been drawn up. He would bulldoze a road through the swamps and add a ritzy hotel and, maybe in the future, add a condominium development.

  By the time his opponents got things worked out in court, he would have already made his millions.

  Billy Cougar had no choice but to go along with it. Besides, from what I had heard, he liked the idea of being rich anyway.

  The only thing that stood in the way was the old man, Panther James. So Billy Cougar had concocted the idea of scaring him off through the materialization of some old Indian legend—the Swamp Ape.

  But something had gone wrong. The old man had died. And Billy Cougar, suddenly realizing that he held all the cards, had gotten nasty. He had demanded more of the action. And he had tried to get tough when Rather refused.

  So they had blown his face away. And now he rested beneath the tarp in the jeep—right along with Rather’s dreams.

  But I had to give credit to Mickey Rather. He wasn’t one to linger on recent failures. He was already changing gears, planning a new future.

  Through the walls, I could hear them talking.

  “You don’t think they’ll send people looking for us, boss?”

  “Hell yes, they will. But a man can buy a whole lot of privacy in South America. I’ve got the cash we were going to use for this project in a Cayman bank. We’ll clean out the account, head for Argentina, and lay low for a while. Besides, I’ve got some connections there. We’ll invest in the dope crops, and feed the profits into one of our subsidiary development corporations back here in Florida. As long as the land holds out, there’s still plenty of dough to be made.”

  Slowly, surely, Mickey Rather broke down their reluctance to leave the country. He painted a picture of South Seas bliss for them. His men would have tropical drinks in the morning and beautiful island girls at night.

  And the tone of his voice implied the alternative—death if they didn’t follow him.

  In the silences I knew they were pouring themselves more courage, drinking to their new future.

  I kept hoping they would go into detail about how they would make their escape.

  But they never did.

  So I lay waiting in the squashed confines of the closet. My legs gradually went numb, and then my arms. I did flexing exercises trying to stay ready. I searched myself for fear of my impending death—and found none. When you have lost everything, there is no fear of that final forfeiture. There was only deep disquiet within me that demanded I try to find a way of going on; some life force that refused to give up as long as there were still good fish to catch, cold beer to drink, and long autumn days to enjoy.

  Every hour or so, Benny would come to check on me, tighten the ropes, and add a few kicks. The kicks were for his boss, he would sneer. He had an ugly chuckle. He said that his boss was going to have to have plastic surgery because of my dog. And he wanted me to suffer for it.

  It was what you would call one very long afternoon.

  They came for me at first dark. Just as they had promised. Benny cut the ropes around my legs, and two of them jerked me to my feet. The muscles were so numb I could barely stand alone.

  The hilarity was gone from them. They seemed nervous; anxious to be done with me and get the hell away.

  Mickey Rather directed everything. His face looked bloated from drinking. The dog bite on his neck had begun to leak blood through the white gauze. He had them shove me outside. With my hands still bound, I landed face-first in the sand.

  “Watch he doesn’t try and make a run for it,” Rather warned.

  “Hell, boss, he can hardly stand up, let alone run.”

  “Just don’t take any chances—that’s all I’m telling you. Louie, you stay here. Start spreading the gasoline. And don’t screw up. When we torch this place I want everything to burn.”

  They dragged me to my feet. My brain kept scanning for some clever means of escape—but found none. I couldn’t make a deal with them. Mickey Rather had too many options to be interested in a deal.

  So I tried to make a run for it. I butted Benny in the stomach with my head, caught Rather between the legs with a well-placed kick, and took off in a numb dash.

  But Louie dragged me down from behind, clubbing at my head with the grip of his pistol.

  Rather rolled on the ground in pain. His face was pale—as if he was about to vomit.

  He looked at Benny. “Get the jeep started!” he hissed.

  Purposefully, he got to his feet. He turned a dead eye on me and said, “Kill him, Louie. Right through the head. I’m go
ing to enjoy this. Buster boy, hold that breath you’re taking—because it’s going to be your last.”

  And just before I heard the explosion, as the double-action hammer click-clicked, I knew that he was right....

  16

  I felt blood splatter hot across my face, and I rolled to the ground wondering why I felt no pain, thinking, strangely: If this is death, it’s not so bad after all....

  There was another explosion, and someone collapsed beside me. Even with part of his head gone, the sneer was still affixed to Benny’s face.

  It wasn’t until I heard the low roar of the Chesapeake that I knew for sure. The dog came out of the darkness and across the shell drive in about four long strides and knocked the fourth man backward. He had been drenching the trailer in gas. With Benny and Louie dead, Mickey Rather sprinted toward the idling jeep with its big balloon wheels. He had been smoking a cigar. He tossed it behind him, and the whole place went up with a pewsh.

  I didn’t see the fourth man run into the fire. But I heard his scream. I was too busy trying to roll away from the sudden searing heat of it.

  Rather punched the jeep into gear and roared away toward the cypress head. The dog bounded after him, but there was a shrill whistle and he stopped in his tracks.

  Hervey came charging out of the brush. He looked like a creature from hell in the blazing light of the fire. The sawed-off twelve-gauge was still smoking. He knelt beside me and cut the ropes.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Bruised. And thankful. Very thankful. Thanks for showing up.”

  “Didn’t have anything better to do,” he said laconically.

  I got to my feet, trying to work the muscles back to life.

  “Let’s get that other jeep started,” I said.

  “No way. From the way your head looks, you need a doctor. Now.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Get a doctor. Bring two of them. I’ll be back after I take a chunk or two out of Mickey Rather.”

  Hervey grinned. “Okay, okay—you drive. I’ll reload.”

  The swamp buggy he had left us was no speed wagon. And we never got close enough to get a shot. It pounded and creaked dutifully through the swamp and over the high ground at a screaming fifteen miles an hour.

  But it was easy enough to stay on Rather’s track. His big four-wheel drive left a snaking line of seeping ruts in the marsh, visible in the beam of our headlights.

  “This thing won’t go any faster?”

  “For the fifth time—no.”

  “If he gets out on a road we’ve lost him.”

  “The last place he wants to be is on a road. And if he keeps on heading south we’ve got him. The’glades doesn’t go on forever.”

  A full moon, snow-bright, lifted in the east, and the marsh broke into plains of sawgrass, vast and golden like wheat. For the first time, we got a brief look at Mickey Rather. His jeep was a red speck of tail lights in the distance, at least two miles ahead of us.

  Above him, stars glimmered like icy scars against the sky. Panther James would have seen them as omens....

  We drove on and on for another hour . . . maybe two. Small Everglades deer flushed before our headlights. And once we saw a hulk of a black bear amble across a flag pond and glare back at us. Behind us, the Chesapeake growled—but kept his seat.

  Twice we almost got stuck and had to leave Rather’s trail for higher ground. But each time we circled back on it. The ground kept getting marshier, breaking into sporadic islands of buttonwood and black mangrove. A gathering of laughing gulls in the moonlight told me we were getting near the Gulf.

  “It’s no use, Dusky. There’s an old charcoal maker’s road down here—Pahayokee Cross. He’ll find it and be long gone by the time we get there.”

  “No way, Hervey. No way. You haven’t noticed?”

  He looked at me, perplexed. “Noticed what?”

  “He’s heading west all of a sudden. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just temporary. But if he keeps on going he’s going to run out of land real quick.”

  Hervey looked quickly around, trying to get his bearings.

  “Damn,” he said, “you’re right.”

  “Mickey Rather may be a slick man in a business deal. But the only thing he knows about the wilderness is how to bulldoze it. I think our boy is lost. Lost and desperate—and that makes him dangerous.”

  “I’m not in a particularly good mood myself,” said Hervey through tight lips.

  He had told me about Panther James’s funeral. And about how he had skipped out on the feast after Myrtle had told him where I had gone.

  “Figured if you weren’t back by dinnertime, you needed help bad. I know how much you hate to miss a meal.”

  Hervey had played it a little more cautiously than I had. He had parked his borrowed car just off the Tamiami Trail and walked the whole way to the mobile home through the back country. He had seen my car and reasoned that I was either inside or dead. So he had waited in the bushes, hoping they would make a move.

  “I figured if you was still alive, I’d just hold them at gunpoint and take them to the law. But they sort of forced my hand when they decided to shoot you right then and there.”

  I told Hervey about Billy Cougar and the whole gambling scenario which had brought us to be winding our way through the Everglades in the moonlight.

  “The bastards,” he muttered when I had finished. “I never much liked Billy, but I’m sorry he got tied up with creeps like that. They’re the kind who are ruining this state. Selfish. Selfish and money-hungry and stupid. They’ll stop at nothing. And they won’t be satisfied until it’s all gone.”

  The moon was higher now; so bright you could see the pale outline of trees and the shadows of sloughs without the headlights.

  Bullfrogs rumbled, and nocturnal birds squawked, and once, above the whine of the jeep, we heard the haunting scream of a Florida panther. There was a terrifying force in the noise, and had I not known what it was, I would have guessed that somewhere in the depths of the swamps, some woman had gone mad.

  We came around a mangrove thicket to find the unexpected: Mickey Rather’s jeep caught fender-deep in a tidal creek. Billy Cougar’s body was still beneath the tarp in the back. Hervey and I jumped out, followed by the dog. Hervey held the shotgun at ready, thinking it might be a trap.

  But it wasn’t.

  Through the steaming beams of the jeep lights we could see his tracks, two inches deep in the muck, trail off down the creek bed.

  “After him on foot now?” I asked.

  Hervey shook his head. “I’ll back our jeep up and try to find a way through these mangroves. We’ll let Gator track him from here.”

  The dog didn’t need to be told. He was already casting back and forth in Rather’s tracks.

  In four-wheel drive, we idled on through the moonlight. A grassy slough paralleled the creek. We could hear the Chesapeake crashing through the water, searching.

  Mickey Rather wasn’t far away now. We saw him once in the sweep of our headlights. He looked back over his shoulder, the desperation strange and gray on his face. The gauze on his neck had come undone, and it fluttered by the ends of the tape. When he saw the dog coming after him, he took off at a heavy run. He stumbled once, fell, and pulled himself to his feet, already running again.

  Then, suddenly, he just disappeared.

  It didn’t take us long to find out how. The slough ended abruptly at a black swath of water. It took us both a moment to get our bearings. We jumped out of the jeep, trying to make the water and islands and the vast moonlit desert of open Gulf make sense.

  We looked at each other and said at the same time, “The Shark River. . . .”

  Mickey Rather was a better swimmer than I would have guessed. We could see him clearly in the tunneling jeep lights. The Chesapeake dove in headlong after him, but Hervey whistled him back abruptly.

  “I ain’t sending him in there,” Hervey said firmly.

  And suddenly I knew what he meant.


  “If Rather makes it across, he’ll work his way to the beach on Cape Sable. He might be able to hijack a boat there.”

  “I don’t care. I about lost that dog once. I ain’t gonna take the chance again.”

  “Then I’ll go.”

  I turned my back on Hervey’s objections, kicking off my shoes. Mickey Rather was about halfway across. He was a fair swimmer, but he was no SEAL, and I knew I could catch him before he made it to the island on the other side. I ran into the water until it was waist-deep, then dove after him, swimming with head up, watching the dim shape in the distance.

  About fifty yards out I saw it. I had thought it was the sort of thing you see once in a lifetime and never see again.

  But I was wrong.

  At first I thought it was just a fallen tree drifting in the moonlight.

  But trees don’t drift upcurrent.

  I stopped in the water, sculling, hypnotized by the size of the thing.

  It was midway between Mickey Rather and me. I reached for the Randall knife on my belt and realized I hadn’t worn it—and if I had, Rather’s men would have taken it.

  I should have sprinted back toward Hervey. But I couldn’t. I was mesmerized—and it may have saved my life. Rather still splashed noisily across the river. The creature seemed to pause between us, as if deciding.

  Then, suddenly, it submerged. I felt my breath coming soft and shallow, wondering if it was swimming along the bottom toward me—knowing that it was too late now to try to escape, because even I couldn’t outswim such a magnificent thing.

  There was a long minute of silence. Hervey was calling something behind me, but the words came to me in a jumble. They made no sense. Suddenly, Panther James’s dream popped into my mind: “You were in the water fighting a creature with many teeth. You thought it was a shark. But it wasn’t a shark. . . .”

  So maybe this was another of his dreams coming to pass....

  But sometimes an old man’s dreams aren’t to be trusted, or maybe blind luck can alter a prescribed fate, or maybe nature just has its own sense of inevitable justice, because the giant saltwater crocodile didn’t choose me that night.