The Tank Read online

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  Heather Winters found herself unable to turn away from the macabre, surreal scene unfolding before her horrified eyes. When she’d heard there was a local “animal fighting ring” in town, this was absolutely the furthest thing that had entered her mind. Cockfights were nothing new. Dog fighting, unfortunately, was all too common. She’d even heard of people pitting two alligators against one another in despicable, illegal contests to the death. But this…people fighting wild animals—and losing, badly, with life-threatening injures—shocked her to her very core.

  Not only the violence, but the organization around it was unsettling. She’d had her cellphone confiscated, for crying out loud. Looking over at the driveway where she’d made her entrance, she saw a chain-link gate pulled across the driveway and padlocked shut. Everyone in here is trapped, she thought. Including me. She found it hard to believe, based on the conversations she’d had with the men here so far, that they had organized this horrific, yet no doubt profitable, thing.

  She observed the guys she’d met—Lyle—helping to drag the shark attack victim up onto the platform at the top of the tank. She watched what was damn near a waterfall of blood cascade from the platform to the pool on the ground. The victim, who she had heard calling out in pain, was now silent. She pushed her way through the people gawking at the horrid spectacle and climbed the stairs to the platform.

  “Hey!” a guy yelled, attempting to grab her but losing his grip as she sprung up. “You can’t go up there!”

  “I can help, I’m a trained first responder.” She wasn’t a paramedic or anything like that, but it was true that she received training in first aid and CPR as part of her ranger job, and was required to regularly recertify. She wanted to do something to help. She knew she could scale the fence and run out of here to her car if she really wanted to, but that would draw a lot of attention to her and probably compromise her undercover status. She was torn between helping the victim and doing her job to the best of her abilities, and sought a compromise as she climbed the steps to the already crowded platform.

  “Let me get a look at him before you move him!” she said to Kane, Cody, and Boyd. She knew that moving patients with certain spine and neck injuries was a bad idea, and although she didn’t think that was at play here, there were probably ways of moving him that were more favorable than others. He would need every edge he could get, she thought grimly.

  Kane could tell from her non-nonsense demeanor that she likely did have some sort of trauma or first responder experience, so he told Boyd to stand down when he objected to Heather’s presence. “We could use some help here,” he told him.

  Heather made eye contact with Kane and quickly nodded to show she approved of his decision. Then she knelt down by Greg as Cody and Boyd laid him down on the platform. In spite of herself, she sucked in her breath at the sight of his injuries. Although he had serious bite wounds on many parts of his body, she was certain the extensive trauma to the right arm and shoulder area was the most serious, and where most of the blood stemmed from. The entire arm seemed to be hanging by a flap of skin, and multiple arteries had no doubt been severed. Already the man’s skin was pale and his lips blue. She looked up at Kane to deliver what she hoped would be a sobering assessment.

  “He has got to get to a trauma center immediately to have these arteries clamped off or he’s going to bleed to death.” She thought there was a decent chance he would anyway, but she knew that it was not a good idea to have the victim hear such talk, and so she held that back. She saw the guy who appeared to be the ringleader of this operation exchange glances with the other two. They huddled in close consultation for a few seconds, Heather unable to discern their words.

  “Guys, it’s not an option. C’mon!” she prodded. She would just proceed on her own, but she would need their help to get the man down and safely into a vehicle. Which reminded her…

  “Can we call 911?”

  “No.” Kane’s intensity with which he delivered the single syllable was sufficient to let Heather know that the fight over this would take more time than the victim likely had. She didn’t skip a beat.

  “Then we need to prep a vehicle for transport. Who’s going to take him?” She saw the hesitation in their eyes once again and her exasperation threatened to boil over. “I’ll drive him if I have to! Come on, let’s get this done!”

  Once again, the trio of ringleaders huddled in conference while the victim continued to bleed out. Just as Heather was about to protest again, Boyd stood and called down to someone standing near the platform ladder. “Pull the van up here and open the back. Get Johnny to unlock the gate. Go!”

  Heather looked Kane in the eyes. “Get someone to call the hospital and let them know a severe trauma shark attack victim is incoming, so they can prep for him now.”

  Kane nodded and then told Boyd to make that call. “And make sure you tell the driver what to say about where he was when they bring him in,” he added, knowing that Heather could hear this. Apparently, he was used to people going along with whatever was necessary to keep these events going, no matter how extreme things got. But at least he was getting this poor guy to the hospital, she thought, picking up Greg’s wrist and feeling for his pulse. It was there, oh so faint, but present. But for how long?

  THIRTY

  A light rain started to fall as soon as Greg was driven off to the nearest emergency room. Heather did her best to blend in, to keep her ears tuned to names, in particular, to match those names to faces and commit them to memory until she could write it down later. She didn’t think that would be very long, either, since the match was over, the money, she noticed, distributed.

  So she was stunned to see the man called Lyle—she had yet to get a surname for him—apparently consulting with his inner circle about having another match. Right now. Tonight.

  It made her sick to her stomach to think any of them would go through with such a thing after witnessing what had just happened to Greg. And in fact, some of the spectators did leave, but not most of them. Some were now tuned to a television playing a weather broadcast showing an early season hurricane that may or may not strike South Florida. It was a way of life here that when these killer storms got too close, evacuation was necessary unless one liked playing Russian Roulette with the weather.

  Others were concerned with the tank itself, particularly with the bloody water inside it. Heather lingered around this group, drinking water she’d surreptitiously poured into a Bug Light can. One guy, apparently suicidal, was entertaining the idea of getting into the tank for the second half of the night’s double-header. Parker, his name was, and she’d gleaned that he was a local bartender. What’s more, his leg was still heavily bandaged from what she overheard was a shark bite in a previous match. Never mind the sharks, though, his chief concern was the water itself, now contaminated with Greg’s blood.

  “Change out that water and I’ll do it,” he told the leader, Lyle, “but I don’t want that guy’s blood in my system.”

  Boyd, who by what Heather could tell thus far was in charge of the actual tank setup, showed them the 55-gallon drums of seawater they still had. “These are all the extras,” he said. “Enough to change out maybe half the water, but not all of it, unless someone wants to head down to the beach and go get some more right now.”

  “Let’s change out half and see what it looks like,” Parker said, and the team of men set about draining some of the water from the tank, with the sharks still in it, and then dumping more seawater back in it. The net result was to flush most of the blood out, so that the water looked clear enough for Parker to stand there with his hands on his hips and nod silently.

  “That should be okay,” he said.

  Heather was beside herself with angry disbelief—how crazy was this guy?—but at the same time, she didn’t want to reveal her true role here by focusing too much attention on herself. So she remained silent. She had considered sneaking out along with the vehicle that took Greg to the hospital and
calling the police as soon as she was off the property, but they had her cellphone.

  At the same time, she wanted to see what would happen here. She still didn’t have a last name for any of the key people, didn’t know where they lived, didn’t know when or where the next match was, or even if there would be one…she would stay for the second “match,” God how she hated calling it that, even to herself. She didn’t have a better word for it, though. It was man against beast, pure and simple. And very illegal, pure and simple, too. She was also curious as to what would happen to the sharks at the end of the match. Would they simply be killed, perhaps eaten? Reef sharks weren’t known for being food fish, though. At the same time, why would they risk releasing the animals and being seen doing so?

  A shock of adrenaline rocked her as she recalled the men she’d stopped with the shark at the boat ramp. These are those guys! She couldn’t tell which ones, exactly, since she hadn’t gotten a good look at their faces that night at the ramp, but it made perfect sense to her now. Odd that they would go through the trouble of releasing it, but it fit with the small undercurrent of not harming the animals she’d seen in her short time observing. Lyle, in particular, had reiterated the rules which included no weapons that would confer an unfair advantage to the human, and limiting the number of matches to two per night so as not to tire out the animals. So he probably did let them go at the end of the match. That fact made her feel better, but she wouldn’t let it stop her from bringing in the architects of this brutal ring to face justice.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Lyle standing atop the platform and waving for the crowd’s attention. “You want another match?” His eyes registered a seriousness that hadn’t been there earlier as he pointed to Parker. The spectator response was undeniably in the affirmative as Parker stripped off his shirt so that he wore only a pair of surfer’s board shorts and a dive knife strapped to his right calf. A thick wrap covered his entire left thigh.

  Parker signaled he wanted everyone’s attention. “You saw what happened to the last guy. You saw what happened to me last time.” He paused to point to his leg. “I’ll do it, but you’re going to have to show me the money, people. Show me the love. And it’s five minutes.”

  A few boos went up here and there and Parker shrugged in response. “Take it or leave it. Or maybe someone else wants this match.” No one stepped forward. “If I’m going in there…” he pointed to the tank, “…it’s for five minutes to win. You want to see that or what?”

  “Greg lasted less than five,” someone pointed out.

  The pot went around, and to Heather’s chagrin, overflowed quickly. She noted that there was a real demand, as it were, for this event, it was not being pushed on anyone or conducted merely for kicks, although she suspected it may have started out that way. But these people wanted this. It disgusted her and reminded her how important her job was to protecting animals and the ecosystem as a whole—whether on sea or land.

  “It’s on!” Parker yelled, before turning and walking to the platform steps, where he had a brief word with Boyd and Lyle. Then he and Lyle ascended the steps to the platform. They looked out over the tank, where the four reef sharks swam placidly around the tank, apparently more relaxed now that most of the blood had been drained away.

  Heather observed them, looking for any signs that things were orchestrated beyond what the crowd knew, that the match’s outcome was somehow rigged, but the two men didn’t even speak to one another on the platform. Parker stared down at his adversaries in the tank while Lyle reached up and set the countdown clock to five minutes. Then he turned to Parker who nodded.

  “Ready!” Lyle shouted to the crowd.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Heather stood near the tank and watched as Parker, knife in hand, slipped into the octagon with barely a ripple while Lyle sounded the countdown bell. Parker stood in place for a moment, gauging the sharks, which continued their unhurried movements near the center of the tank. The tension was palpable, the area dead quiet as all waited to see if the man would be immediately attacked by the gang of sharks which had already proven their bloodthirstiness.

  Heather looked around to see if there was anything she could do to further her own agenda—if she could observe someone doing something that would give her more information she could use to bring down this operation. But everyone was focused on Parker, and so she, too, turned her attention to him. It was hard not to, she had to admit.

  The aquatic gladiator edged along the sides of the octagon, opting to stay in slow motion rather than frozen in place. Heather wasn’t sure why, since none of the sharks had displayed aggression toward him yet, but that’s what he was doing. She knew he was considered successful in these contests by those around her, so he may have tried this technique before and lived to tell about it, she considered.

  One of the sharks peeled off from its standard patrol pattern and veered toward Parker, a decisive change in direction without an increase in speed. Parker froze and flexed his legs, tensing in preparation for a possible conflict. But the fish swerved off again before it reached him, as easily as it had come toward him in the first place. The very unpredictability of these animals was what made it so nerve-wracking, Heather reflected.

  “Four minutes,” Lyle called down from the platform.

  Heather also had to admit that, compared to the ill-fated Greg, Parker was much less cocky. She could see that he took this very seriously; he refrained from any professional wrestling-type antics and he never took his eyes off the sharks. Knife in hand, he continued edging his way around the octagon. Another shark took a slow investigative pass toward Parker, and again, he froze until the reef dweller passed him by. Heather couldn’t tell if it was the same shark or not—all but one were very close in size, while the other was a foot or so shorter.

  “Three minutes!” Lyle reported.

  Parker continued to step along the perimeter of the tank, almost all the way across from the ladder now. Then, for some inexplicable reason, two of the sharks began fighting each other. Perhaps one was wounded from the previous match’s feeding frenzy and its fellow turned on it—Heather didn’t know, but the explosion of action put everyone on edge waiting to see if it would spill over to Parker’s side of the tank.

  While everyone had their attention focused on the match, Heather looked around carefully, observing details like vehicle types. She was pretty sure she spotted the same pickup truck from the panther stop and the shark stop, but wasn’t sure. She needed to get a look at the plate, because the one she saw at the ramp had no plate. She hadn’t gotten a look at the plate on the panther stop on 41, but it was possible the owner removed the plate for fear an advisory alert was put out on it, which in fact it was. She watched the tank a bit longer, but Parker was not directly involved with the sharks, so she slinked off to the edge of the crowd closest to the parked vehicles.

  There was that truck, parked with the front end toward her of course, but because front plates weren’t required, she needed to see the back. Normally, she would use her phone to snap a photo of the plate, but that was not an option, so she prepared herself to memorize it fast. She walked backwards toward the truck, eyes on the match, as well as the people watching it. When she was backed up to the front of the maroon truck, she turned and walked around to the back of it.

  No plate. Camper top. This is the same one.

  She gazed into the open truck bed. The tailgate was down, and inside the bed was equipment she recognized as that typically used by those who wrangled alligators and sometimes other animals—snare poles, netting, a black bag, rolls of tape, coolers that by the smell of them held some kind of bait…

  “Hey, you lost or something?”

  The sudden voice startled Heather, and she jumped a little at the sound of it. Turning around, she saw the guy whose name she knew to be Cody, one of Lyle’s roommates. She looked at him, stunned for a moment, not sure of what to say. She wasn’t used to this level of undercover work, she realized now.

&n
bsp; “What are you doing?” Cody asked.

  “Oh sorry, I used to have a truck like this, just wanted to check it out…” she offered lamely. In the middle of a man-versus-shark match. Ridiculous, Heather.

  The young man stared at her for a moment, looking her up and down, not in a leering way but more from a security standpoint, to see if she was carrying anything. Then he leveled his gaze at her eyes and said, “Match is almost over, don’t you want to see it?”

  Heather nodded. “Yeah.”

  He waved an arm away from the truck and toward the octagon, where splashing could be seen and heard. “Then let’s go.”

  He escorted her back to the event, where the crowd now cheered as Lyle’s voice intoned, “One minute!” Heather was grateful that everyone’s attention was riveted on the tank, but at the same time, she had to wonder…was it? She had been observed, after all. Why were they watching her so closely?

  A rise of voices ripped her from her thoughts as something happened in the tank. One of the sharks made contact with Parker, nipping him on the leg and drawing a small amount of blood. Parker slashed at another of the reef sharks with his blade while backing up to the wall so that he couldn’t be attacked from behind. He didn’t come into contact with it, but the fish temporarily retreated in response to the aggressive movement. Rather than move directly across the tank to the ladder, he edged along, back the same way he came.

  His progress was slow and cautious, every other step interrupted to lash out with the blade or fend off a bold intruder, but Parker managed to make his way along the tank’s perimeter without any more bites—just a few tail slaps leaving sandpaper burns on his skin.

  Kane called time before Parker got back to the ladder. He raised his fist to claim his triumph, but other than that did nothing to change his slow and methodical movement along the octagon’s perimeter. The sharks didn’t care that time was up, and he was still in the water. Kane and Cody leaned over from the platform, ready to assist, but Parker would handle it on his own if he could.