Watch Your Back!

38

PRESTON NEVER DID get used to the ride. When the cigarette boat crashed across the sea, if you were down in the forward cabin, you felt it.

And the forward cabin is where he'd been put. The two hard men running this boat, Australians or New Zealanders or some such from their accent, had reached out strong, tough hands and taken him off the sailboat with Pam's mocking laugh loud in his ears. They'd hustled him down the steps beside the wheel— "Watch yer ead" — and into this front cabin, which in motion reminded him mostly of the machine at the hardware store that mixes the paint. They'd made it clear this is where he would remain. "Ye'll stay ere," one of them told him, "an make no trouble, an that way we don't have to bop ye."

"Where are you taking me?"

That made the fellow laugh. "Where do ye think, mate?"

Florida. No question in his mind. That was the scheme, damn their eyes. They'd inveigled him off the island — Pam had been just the perfect Judas ewe, hadn't she? — so they could grab him and deliver him somewhere on the south Florida coast, directly into the arms of the process server. Years of thumbing his nose at them all, and now how they'd laugh.

No. He had to stop it, keep it from happening, somehow turn the laugh back at them. But how?

The two men who'd kidnapped him — were they bribable? He had no money with him, no wallet, not even clothing. He had nothing on his person but flip-flops, a bathing suit, a Rolex, and a floppy brimmed white hat with a chin-strap. But they had to know who he was, or at least something about him, enough to know he was wealthy, that if they took him to a bank instead of to the process server—

No ID. No ATM card, no driver's license, nothing.

Well, let's say. Let's say it's possible somehow to get one's hands on cash; would these fellows accept cash? Or would they bop him if he made the offer?

From the bunk where he sat braced against the sidewall in a vain effort to resist the endless pounding of their passage through the sea, he could look up diagonally and see the lower half of the one seated at the wheel. Occasionally, the other one moved in and out of view, sure-footed on the bucking deck.

Hard, methodical men in their forties, they were, with deep tans and leathery skin. They both wore battered old deck shoes, cutoff jeans, pale T-shirts that said nothing but had the sleeves torn off, and baseball caps without logos. Anonymous to a fault. Blond hair was visible around the edges of their caps, shaggy and unwashed, and their blue eyes contained no more warmth than the ocean.

They would bop him. He had to acknowledge that, that his money wasn't any good on this boat, even if he had his money on this boat. Those two were tough, methodical professionals with long careers behind them and in front of them, and he was one day's delivery.

What would they do on their other days? Smuggle people, smuggle drugs without taking any, smuggle whatever would pay. Today they were smuggling him, and they would concern themselves with his affairs no more than if he were a plastic bag of heroin.

How could he get around them, get away from them, spoil the delivery? He knew how to swim, and God knew he was dressed for swimming, but even if he could get past those two to the ocean, which he knew damn well he could not, where was land? Not to be seen outside the round window next to which he jounced.

When we get there, he thought. Somewhere in Florida. When we get there, we'll see what we can do.

Six fifty-seven p.m. in this time zone by the Rolex, when the quality of their thumping progress across the sea abruptly shifted. The August sun, God's blood blister, hung midway down the sky, and all at once the cigarette boat wasn't lunging any more. It had come to a canter, a trot; its nose was lowering as though to graze. They had arrived.

Where? Preston looked out the round window beside him and saw nothing but sea, the same old sea, if perhaps a trifle less serrated than before. So he leaned forward, no longer having to hold himself tense against the pounding motion of the boat, and there it was: land. Very low land, pale tan, with what looked like mangrove here and there against the water.

Where was this? Not Miami, certainly. Somewhere very low and undeveloped, with shallow water now beneath the boat, though they were still some way from shore, which was probably why they'd slowed so soon.

Florida is almost nothing but coastline, but most of it is very heavily patrolled, because of drug smugglers and potential terrorists and illegals from Cuba and Haiti. The two men operating this boat would know the safe places to land, where there would be no one around to ask the awkward questions, and this would be one of them.

The Keys — that's where they must be, the hundred-mile line of islands dangling south of Florida like a Fu Manchu beard. Much of it was developed and overdeveloped, but some was deserted, like this section here.

Well, no, not completely deserted. As they rolled closer, he could see, off to the left, that the low land curved outward toward the sea, and in the elbow thus created, half a dozen small boats idly bobbed, one or two people standing in each, fishing.

Bonefish. That's what people tried for down here. Those would be bonefishermen, standing in the bright, hot August Florida sun, its heat and glare and cancer-enhancing qualities redoubled by the bounce from the water all around them, the air very nearly as wet as the sea, and they were here to prove they were smarter than some skinny, inedible fish.

A thumping sounded on the cabin roof. One of his captors had climbed up to toss a rope to whoever was waiting on shore. The other had to concentrate now on maneuvering the big boat in as close as possible to land.

Could he reach the fishermen? He could only try, and this was surely his last chance. It was now or never.

His heart was pounding. What would they do if they caught him? Surely something more than just bop him, if only to relieve their feelings.

As he sat there, wanting to, afraid to, the image of his ex-wives rose unbidden into his mind. The four of them, laughing, and goddamn Pam with them, and by God, they all looked alike! Laughing at him for how easy he was to lead around, and not even by the hand.

A sudden embarrassed rage overtook fear, and Preston was on his feet, up the steps, watching his head, stomp, stomp, over the side like a hippopotamus into a swamp, but away, down, stroking, kicking, away, up, bright day, roar of motor far too near, bonefishermen over there.

It was the crawl he'd learned in college, and it was the crawl he did now, arms pinwheeling, legs kicking, trying not to hear that goddamn boat. Thrusting, thrusting, then realizing the roar of the motor had not gotten louder, it was less, it was fading.

He was swimming faster than the boat? Impossible. He dared a quick look back, a break in the rhythm of the crawl, and the cigarette boat had stopped back there, was glaring at him like an attack dog on a leash, while both men in the boat were pointing at him and yelling toward shore.

Shore. He couldn't stay floating in place out here; he had to keep swimming and somehow try to see the shore at the same time. He did it, panting, straining, and yes, there it was over there, a white limousine moving leftward beside the water, someone in the backseat yelling at the men in the boat.

Well, at least they'd sent a limo for him.

It was too shallow here for the cigarette boat — that's what had happened — so he no longer had them to worry about. Now all he had to concern him was whoever was in that white limousine.

The fishermen had realized something was up, and one of them now put down his pole, sat, and started his little outboard. Putt-putt, it came toward him as the limo stopped, unable to continue along the deep sand and wet mangrove swamp along the shore. Three men clambered from the limo, all in shorts and light shirts and sunglasses, and began fighting their way through the vegetation, waving their arms around as though mosquitoes were happy to welcome them to their island.

The little boat came to a bobbing stop beside Preston, and the man in it called, "Come on up here!"

"Right! Thank you! Right you are!"

Preston flung his arms over the gunwale but could do no more. His legs kept drifting, under the boat, and he couldn't lever his body up out of the water.

Finally, his rescuer grabbed Preston under both armpits from behind, pulled, and scraped his chest up and over the splintery wooden edge of the boat, until he could reach the top of Preston's bathing suit and yank on that, at which point Preston found it was possible to help, thrashing and lunging and kicking and beating until he landed himself on the wet, dirty bottom of the boat.

The man gazed down at him with a grin. He said, "I like that watch."

Gasping, Preston cried, "Get me out of here!"

"Oh, maybe you wanna see your friends, man," the fisherman said, with a snotty little grin. He was Hispanic, heroically mustached, unshaven, dressed in a hopeless straw hat, a Budweiser T-shirt, and ratty green work pants. He was barefoot, and his toenails did not bear thinking about. Still grinning at Preston, he said, "Maybe we wait for them. That's some nice limo."

Preston sat up. No time for nonsense. "If those people capture me again," he said, "they'll kill you. You're a witness."

Abruptly the smile went away, and the fisherman gave a worried look toward the running men. He would know the stories about what sometimes happened in this part of the world. He said, "I don't want none a this shit, man."

"You're already in it," Preston told him. "Get me away from here, and this watch is yours."

"Oh, it's mine, man, I know that," the fisherman said. "Okay, get down now." And at last he turned back to his outboard motor.

Get down? Preston was already seated on the bottom of the boat. "What are you doing?" he wanted to know, and twisted around to look forward.

The fisherman was steering them directly toward the shore. The trio from the limo had found some sort of path and were running much more strongly than before, their arms pumping. The boat and the three, it seemed to Preston, were all going to meet at the same spot, on the shoreline. "What are you doing?"

"Get down, man!"

Then he saw it. A tiny inlet curved away into the mangroves, and just visible way back in there, a footbridge stood barely above the water.

"We can't go under that!"

"Not with you sitting up that way, fool!"

Preston flopped down onto his face as the three men ran on, almost to the bridge, which slapped Preston on the backside as he zoomed by.