Chapter 34
We had a few minutes left on our safety stop, and that was all right by me. I didn't think Mr. Teeth would bother us down here. If we kept minding our own business, he'd keep minding his. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.
There's always an element of unpredictability with wildlife. Their thought process is not the same. Their priorities are different. They’re not bound by our social mores and customs. The past and future are never more important than the present.
Food and security are primary and instinctual.
Their existence is uncluttered by rent, insurance, taxes, and politics.
Survival and replication are the only things that matter.
They don’t face civil or criminal prosecution.
Taking a chunk of flesh out of a pesky human is no different than chomping on a seal.
To the shark, or any apex predator, there is no moral value associated with its actions.
You’re either a threat, a meal, or, if you’re lucky, something neutral.
My heartbeat and my respiration increased slightly. Only natural given the circumstances.
We waited at our safety stop and watched as Mr. Teeth circled around the cenote a few times. He eventually headed back out the way he came.
We surfaced again in the grotto, and I kept an eye out for our slick friend. I spit out the regulator again and said, "How confident are you that the money is in one of those passageways?”
Mickey frowned and shook his head. "I'm not confident at all.”
"Where else might it be?”
"I guess I could have buried it out on Gator Island.”
This really wasn't the time or place for an extended conversation. I put the regulator back in, plunged below the surface, and swam out of the cave, keeping my eyes peeled. I didn't want to become a buffet for our toothy friend.
The water was so dark, I couldn't see anything outside the beam of my flashlight. The shark could have been a few meters away, and I wouldn't have known.
We both made it to the boat and climbed aboard. I slipped the tank from my shoulders and set it on the deck as I drip dried.
“Well, what did you find?” Flynn asked, his eyes full of anticipation.
I shook my head and told them the story.
Flynn weighed anchor, and Jack fired up the outboards and headed us toward Gator Island.
The moon hung low in the sky, and stars twinkled.
Mickey checked his phone to see if there were any more messages from the kidnappers, but there was nothing. He sat with a long face, looking defeated.
I hoped Isabella would get some kind of lead on the kidnappers. At this point, I wasn't optimistic about ever finding the ransom money. Somebody else could have found it a long time ago and kept their mouth shut about it. Always the best plan of action when coming into large sums of cash.
We bounced across the water with the boat on plane. Mists of saltwater sprayed as the bow sliced the obsidian swells. Mickey sat in silence, almost in a trance. I hoped he was searching the inner recesses of his brain. Maybe through meditation, the location would pop into that clouded head of his.
It took about 45 minutes to get to Gator Island. There wasn’t much out here—just mangrove swamps, shallow channels, thick underbrush, and, as the nickname implies, gators.
I snapped my fingers a few times in front of Mickey's face, bringing him out of his trance. "We're here. Where should we look?"
Mickey surveyed the island as we circled, doing a recon pass.
"When I was smuggling, sometimes we’d use this as a drop point.
At the time, there was a long enough flat run to take off and land.
It wasn’t the best runway in the world, but we kept it pretty well-maintained.
It was an alternative to Bonefish Run.” He thought about it for a moment. "That's another place it might be.”
"I can tell you, Bonefish Run is sitting vacant now. They built a lodge out there, but it fell into disrepair. I'm not even sure who owns it now.”
“Both had a viable airstrip back in the day,” Mickey said. “That makes them contenders. I’d fly to the Keys with a metric shit ton of drugs, refuel, then fly back with cash.”
“And one of those cash loads never made it back,” Flynn surmised.
“You had to have buried the money in something?” I said. “I mean, tell me you didn’t just bury it in a bag and hope for the best? It would rot over 40 years.”
“I’m not that stupid,” Mickey said. “In those days, money was always wrapped tight, just like drugs. Gotta be waterproof in case shit goes down.”
Jack navigated into one of the shallow channels, trimmed the outboards, and cruised us through the water at a leisurely pace, avoiding stumps and other debris that could give you a headache.
True to its namesake, there were plenty of gators on the shore and in the water. I'm sure we looked pretty tasty.
At the end of the channel, Jack nosed the bow ashore. I dropped anchor at the stern, grabbed an AR-15 for good measure, then hopped out of the boat, into the muck.
Jack grabbed a metal detector and climbed out.
Flynn tied a bowline to a mango tree.
The sounds of frogs and crickets filled the air. Mosquitoes buzzed about.
It felt like we had left civilization far behind. A primordial swamp where dinosaurs roamed.
Something rustled the high grass not far away.
I couldn’t see it, but I was pretty sure it was a gator. It emerged from the grass a moment later and slinked into the water with a plunk. Like the sharks, they’d pretty much leave us alone if we didn’t bother them.
Still, I didn’t want to get too close.