The Tank Page 4

  “So you get half all to yourself and we get one-third of half?” Matt didn’t look pleased.

  “I’m the one getting the animals, remember?”

  FIVE

  Ranger Heather Winters checked the safety on her service pistol and dropped it into her holster. Ready for another day on the water as an enforcement officer for the state of Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Division, she stepped onto her patrol boat, a twenty-three-foot center console with plenty of power and modern electronics. Her office, as she thought of it; she was extremely comfortable in her element, protecting the environment she loved. Any given day, she could be confronted with something as simple as a boating safety violation—not enough life jackets, no fire extinguisher on board, that kind of thing—to fishing without a license, to more serious things. Crime on the water—piracy—drug smuggling, human trafficking. In her decade on the job, she’d seen it all and then some.

  She pulled on her dark sunglasses and started up her boat, feeling the deck vibrate beneath her feet while she revved the engine, warming it up. Based out of Flamingo in Everglades National Park, Heather never knew quite what to expect on a day out on the water. If there was anything her years of experience had taught her, it was that there was always something new to see and discover. And not always good, either, unfortunately. But that was the nature of the job.

  She eased out into the boating channel, that narrow waterway that had been carved from the marshland to be deep enough for safe passage. Stray to either side of it and the boat would run aground. But Ranger Heather Winters knew the way like it was her backyard, which in fact it was. She lived in the small Everglades town of Flamingo, about a thirty-minute drive from the city of Homestead. People sometimes asked her how she could stand living in such a tiny town, at least thirty minutes away on remote two-lane wilderness highways from real modern conveniences, but Heather wouldn’t have it any other way. She was surrounded by nature, immersed in it. On any given day at work, which usually saw her out on her patrol boat, she could see dolphins, manatees, eagles, flamingos, sea turtles, sharks, crocodiles, or snakes.

  Unfortunately, the reason she was out here day in and day out was to stop the misuse of these natural resources by people. Most of them simply didn’t know any better, and she tended to be lighter on them. But a lesser contingent understood exactly what they were doing and didn’t care so long as they didn’t get caught. And then there were a few rotten souls who were just plain evil, who would do anything for personal gain, or even on a whim. She had come across those only twice in her career thus far.

  Her brow had furrowed into a crease of concern as she relived an unpleasant memory, when she reached the end of the boat channel and veered right, into the wide open but shallow Snake Bight. She had always gotten a laugh out of the name. A “bight” was a shallow recess in a coastline, not quite pronounced enough to be called a bay. But it was almost big enough to be a proper bay, she thought, looking at it now. Sometimes she wondered if they had named a bight simply because the word “snake” preceded it.

  Immediately, she spotted a white vessel, about twenty feet long—a type known as a “flats boat,” meant for cruising shallow waters—pulled up alongside a stand of mangrove trees. Two men on board, fishing rods in hand. Might as well check it out, get my workday started, she thought, pointing her bow in their direction. Check their fishing licenses, make sure they have the basic safety equipment. A few minutes and she’d be on her way with them back to their fishing and her with one stop completed for the day.

  She could see the men watching her closely, knowing that the green stripe on her boat’s hull gave her away as law enforcement. One of the men reeled in his line and set the rod in a holder. Maybe he didn’t have a license? If so, an easy ticket. Possibly just a warning if everything else was in order and they were polite, which she knew from experience was definitely not a given. She cut back on the throttle and coasted up to the private boat.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said as she pulled her boat up alongside theirs. While they replied, she quickly picked up her radio and spoke into it, letting her dispatch know that she was making a water stop.

  “Is there a problem, officer?” said the man who was still fishing.

  If she only had a dollar for every time she heard that, Heather thought. “How’s the fishing, catch anything so far today?”

  The fisherman placed his rod in a holder and opened a lid in the boat which revealed a space meant to be used as a fish holder. It was filled with ice and several whole fish. Heather handed the man’s fishing buddy a rope. “Turn off your engine and tie me off, please.”

  This was the moment that sometimes caused people who had something to hide to freak out. They were officially being boarded, their boat being tied to a ranger vessel. But the man complied without saying anything, turning the key to shut off the engine while his mate tied the boats together. Heather then boarded the private boat and had a look at the fish in the cooler.

  “I can see that not all of those are legal size. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first, I’ll need to see your fishing permits.” She stood there expectantly but neither man said or did anything.

  “Neither of you have a permit?”

  One of the men was Caucasian, the other Hispanic. The Hispanic one said, “No habla.” Heather addressed his partner.

  “You speak English?” She gave him a doubting look, like don’t even try to pretend you don’t. “I thought you had one, Pablo?”

  Heather frowned. “Both of you need to have one if you’re fishing. There are more fish in the hold than can be accounted for by one license.”

  The man said nothing. At least he didn’t try to say he had one but it was at home, Heather thought. That was really annoying; easily verified, but she disliked having to look up something that was obviously a lie.

  “We’ll come back to that. What about life jackets? You’re not wearing them, but do you have at least two on board?” Again, the Hispanic man gave her a blank stare, while the guy she had just spoken to addressed her. “Uh, yeah, somewhere…” He looked around the boat as if unsure where they were, which Heather found odd. This wasn’t a yacht; it was a small boat. She figured they didn’t have them.

  She decided to forego the rest of the safety inspection since things weren’t adding up. “Do you have any weapons on board?”

  The man she’d been speaking with shook his head. She said the word weapons in Spanish for the other man, who also shook his head. She looked back to the Caucasian. “I’ll need to see your ID.”

  “Uh…” He put a hand down to the pocket of his shorts, as if a wallet might be there, but he pulled it away without accessing anything.

  “What about him—he have an ID?” Heather looked to the Hispanic man. She knew the letters “ID” were understandable even to Spanish speakers, but still he shook his head and muttered, “No habla.”

  Heather shook her head and took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be the easy stop she’d hoped for.

  “My wallet’s on the console, let me get it,” the English speaker said.

  “Okay.”

  She kept on eye on both men while the one she had just spoken to turned his back on her and moved toward the boat’s small control console, situated in the center of the boat and forward of where Heather stood. While she waited for him to get the ID, she stepped back onto her boat, without taking her eyes off the men, so that she could get a look at the boat’s registration numbers and run them via radio back to dispatch to make sure everything was in order there. She stepped onto the edge of her boat and unclipped the handheld radio from her belt. Eyeballing the registration numbers, she informed dispatch she had a boat to run and recited the digits.

  The guy at the console on the other boat turned around with a wallet in his hand and held it up. He opened his mouth to say something when he saw her eyeing the registration numbers and talking into her radio.

  Even before the dispatcher came back on the radio to repor
t the boat as stolen, the two men were in action. The Hispanic guy alarmed her with not only his speed, but also the fact that he produced a knife from somewhere, which he used to sever the line tying the two boats together. At the same time, the other guy started the boat back up and jammed the throttle up to full power.

  Heather didn’t even bother shouting at them to stop. She yelled into her radio to dispatch. “Suspects fled in the boat, repeat, suspects fled in the boat! Request assistance. In pursuit, out.”

  Her hands raced over the controls as she put her boat in gear and up to speed in seconds, hurtling across the shallow water after the fleeing suspects. While she pursued them, she got on the marine radio to notify all vessels in the area of the high-speed chase. If she was lucky, she might get assistance from another agency; if not, at least she was warning other boaters out of the way. By the time she dropped the radio transmitter and had both hands on the wheel again, the boat she chased was out of sight behind a clump of mangroves.

  A splotch of color against the green made her turn to look as she rounded the mangroves in pursuit of the boat. White. At first, she thought it might be a bird—an egret or maybe a heron—but then she saw blue right next to it; colors that were not common at all out here.

  T-shirts.

  Heather looked over at the boat and now saw it veer to the left in a sloppy arc, out of control.

  The men had jumped from the stolen craft, attempting to hide in the mangroves. She reached for her gun as she turned her boat toward the fleeing suspects, who ran deeper into the cover of the tangled aquatic tree roots. She flipped a switch that let her use the radio microphone as a loud hailer, amplifying her voice as she yelled at the men.

  “Freeze! Hands up!”

  Not that she expected them to, but the suspects didn’t comply. They ran deeper into the tangled, marshy growth. Heather shut her engine off, drew her service pistol, and jumped out of the boat into the waist-deep water. The bottom was soft mud, and it took a lot of effort to pull her boots out of it with each step. When she could, she grabbed hold of one of the more solid tree branches or used a stout root to plant a foot on.

  After penetrating the riotous plant life for some distance, she paused to listen. No sign of them. She knew she had to be extremely careful that the suspects didn’t circle back and take her own boat, which would not only leave her stranded here, but also allow the thieves to escape, not to mention cause her untold embarrassment with her co-workers.

  She heard no telltale snapping of branches or rustling of leaves. Only the tittering of unseen birds and the hum of thousands of insects, almost like a buzz saw. She pointed her gun in each direction she looked, wanting to be ready to fire. A minute went by with no change, and so she set foot on a cluster of tree roots in front of her.

  As soon as she placed her full weight on the tree, she heard a shout of surprise followed by a splash. Not one, but both suspects had fallen from their perch when she’d moved the branch with her weight. She held her position above the water on the root with one hand on the tree and the other aiming her pistol at the two fleeing criminals.

  “Freeze or I’ll shoot!” She repeated the phrase in Spanish for the benefit of the Hispanic man. She could see that both of them had numerous cuts and were bleeding from their hands where they’d tried to scramble quickly through the rough treescape. This time, both of them put their hands in the air.

  She reached for her utility belt and pulled out a set of flex cuffs. Normally, she would ask them to lay face down while she cuffed them, but in this case, they’d be in the water, so she’d have to try it standing up. “Keep your hands up!” she reiterated as she moved in on the English-speaking man, who stood behind and a little to the right of his partner in crime.

  She holstered her pistol in order to cross his wrists and got the cuffs on him, but as she did, the other guy turned and swung at her. She ducked the actual punch but then the trunk of his body slammed into her, knocking her to the foot-deep water. Her first reflex was to reach for her gun, but the guy was quick and he was on her already, so she was forced to grapple instead.

  Right away, it became apparent that this was no schoolyard brawl; this guy was trying to kill her. He kept one hand on her head, shoving it beneath the water. She would roll to one side and bring it back up only to have him thrust her face under again. Even more troublesome was that the guy used his other hand to reach around and feel for her gun. She couldn’t let that happen, but at the same time, not breathing wasn’t much of an option, either. It wouldn’t be long before she passed out.

  She felt his knee dig into her back—he was grinding her into the muddy bottom now. She tried to sweep her arms up but the awkward angle prevented them from doing so. At the same time, using her arms to push herself up from the bottom didn’t work, either. The bottom was too spongy and her hands actually sank deeper into the muck each time she tried.

  Then her fingers brushed against something solid. A tree branch that had broken off and sunk to the bottom of the mangrove swamp. She reached for it, felt her hand knock into it once, pushing it away, and then the second time she came into contact with it, she grabbed it. It was a long stick. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hit him with it, but maybe she could startle him enough to get him off balance.

  Heather strained her arm until it felt like it would pull out of the socket to raise the stick as high as she could. She could tell by the lack of resistance when part of it had broken through to the air, and immediately she felt the tension on her back ease as her assailant reacted in surprise. She took full advantage of it, knowing she might only have a second before he realized the stick was no threat.

  The ranger rolled sharply to her right, throwing the stranger off of her. Before she even tried to stand, her hand went to her gun holster at her hip. For a fraction of a second, she panicked that the holster would be empty, that it had fallen out in the tumbling around, but her hand fell around its familiar shape and she was pulling it out…

  She saw a blurry form lunging at her before her head broke the surface, and she pointed the gun at it and pulled the trigger. Twice, three times. Saw the figure plummet backwards and fall away out of her sight.

  Her head emerged from the brackish water and she swung her pistol to the left, where the English-speaking guy was—or was it the guy she’d been grappling with who’d somehow gotten over there so fast? No, it was the other man. But he was kneeling in the swamp, hands still cuffed behind his back. Apparently, he wanted no part of the assault on a peace officer his partner had initiated. She turned and aimed the barrel of her gun at the other suspect.

  He fell forward—it might have been a fall caused by his losing his balance—she wasn’t sure—but after what the guy had done to her already, she was in no mood to take chances.

  She fired the pistol again, at his left leg above the knee. He cried out in pain as a bright red circle formed through his jeans and then he went down again into the swamp.

  This time, Heather was on him in a flash, flex cuffs at the ready, binding his hands behind his back with blinding speed. She forced him to his feet and then called the incident in on her radio. As she began marching her arrestees out of the mangroves and back to her patrol boat, she tried to calm her racing pulse. Her heart was beating quickly not only because of the exertion, she knew. These men—especially the one who had so brutally attacked her—made her hopping mad. It wasn’t even the stolen boat the angered her that much. That was a motive she could understand. But all of the undersized fish—these guys definitely knew what they were doing was wrong.

  And she hated people who exploited animals for personal gain.

  SIX

  It was raining for the first real match. No surprise in Florida. Muggy, groggy, gray day, rain coming down, not super-hard but not light either, on and off again for a couple of hours running when the match started. The alligator cared not a whit.

  An old bathtub that sat in the yard was full of ice and cans of beer, while hard rock music stream
ed from Bluetooth speakers on the porch. A pair of Tiki torches burned citronella in a never-ending war on bugs.

  Kane checked out the people in their backyard. Besides his roommates, there were the two guys from the screen place that he’d met earlier today—Boyd and Johnny—plus a couple friends they’d brought along—one male, one female—and then a couple more of Matt and Cody’s friends.

  Kane and Matt broke away from the rest of the group socializing in the yard to stand next to the pool. The eight-foot gator stalked around the pool slowly in a clockwise circle.

  “He looking for a way out, you think?” Matt asked.

  Kane smiled. “Beats me. I’m not a mind reader, not that they have much mind to read, anyway.”

  “So is he hungry or what?”

  “I fed it a whole chicken earlier. I don’t know how much it might have eaten right before I caught it, but it’s probably just normal—not starving, not totally full.”

  “Would it make the matches better to have them be hungrier?”

  Kane frowned. “No. We want a good fight, not an animal that’s weak and desperate. I think they should be fed enough to not be starving, but not so much that they’re lethargic, either. This guy’s good.” He looked again to the gator, which continued plodding around the pool.

  “Who’s going up against this guy?” Cody walked up, nodding to the reptile.

  They both looked to Kane, who asked, “You want me to go?”

  Cody and Matt looked at one another. “I wouldn’t put money down that he couldn’t do it,” Matt said.

  Cody agreed. “You’re not really a good bet. You caught the thing in the first place. I want to see Matty here have a go at it.”

  Matt puffed his chest out, indignant. “What, you don’t think I could do it? I went a round with that other one!”

  Cody looked into the pool and laughed. “That other guy just laid there the whole time. You got lucky. Plus, this one’s bigger, too.”