Rubber ducks, they were called in naval jargon. His were surplus, not the expensive version, with a battery-powered chip that would seduce incoming radar with a signature resembling a much larger vessel.
The buoy would buy him an hour before the battery died. Two hours before the buoy sank.
Top speed, as read through a night vision monocular: fifty-three knots.
Slower than normal because of a heavy load, most of it under the bow shield.
• • •
IN PEARLY LIGHT before sunrise, he passed west of the Dry Tortugas. Loggerhead Key was a single drifting blossom of cumulus cloud. The brick fortress on Garden Key resembled Montana sandstone, a low escarpment on a waterscape of jade.
A seaplane appeared from the direction of Key West. By satellite phone, Ford had contacted his pilot friend Dan Futch, but it wasn’t Dan’s plane. He turned to Figueroa Casanova, who was munching peanuts beside him. “Get under the cover,” he said.
The Cuban’s expression showed pain. “Again? It’s quieter out here with you.”
“You won’t have to stay long,” Ford replied. “Take the peanuts—and don’t forget to share.”
He put the boat on autopilot, a compass heading of 54.12 degrees, and watched for sea turtles. He spotted three loggerheads, and a hawksbill, its shell an iridescent prism of caramel and green.
He slowed but did not stop.
• • •
SOUTH OF MARCO ISLAND, Florida’s coastline is sixty-five miles of wilderness creeks, mangroves, and shell antiquities interrupted by three dots of habitation: Everglades, Chokoloskee, and, to the north, the mudflat village of Mango.
Ford had lived there as a child with a crotchety cowboy uncle, Tucker Gatrell, whose sloppy approach to life had cemented Ford’s allegiance to meticulous routine and coherent patterns of thought. It was this bequest that he valued far more than the shack and cattle pasture he’d inherited, property he seldom visited but on which, of course, he paid taxes annually, and always on time.
At Demijohn Key, he cut east, crossed the flats inside Sandfly Pass, and threaded a backcountry matrix past Panther, Tiger, and White Horse Keys, then burrowed deeper until he exited into a bay northeast of Dismal Key. Ahead in the mangroves, a clearing of low shell mounds, a few trailers, docks, and a house with a tin roof, a pole barn, and pasture. It had been years since cattle had grazed there. Weeds dominated the fence line, but, beside the house, clothing had been hung out to dry on this sunny November morning.
Ford maintained speed, and found a rivulet of wheel tracks that served as a channel. The water was thin here, constricted by oyster bars and rocks.
From behind the house, an old woman appeared, carrying a laundry basket. Mariaelana, her name. She had been his uncle’s Cuban mistress and was now Ford’s tenant who paid no rent but took good care of the place. Near shore was a deep-water basin. He backed the throttles until the boat bucked on its own wake, then idled toward the dock while he scanned for a seaplane.
Figueroa poked his head out from under the bow shield. “My ears, they’re hurting, and I have to pee. Are we there yet?”
No, they wouldn’t get to Sanibel Island until after sunset. Possibly tomorrow morning, depending on how things went.
Ford took out his cell phone, dialed, and asked his pilot friend Dan Futch, “What’s your ETA?”
• • •
SUNDAY, the Office of Citizenship and Immigration on Colonial Boulevard, Fort Myers, was closed. Ford told Figueroa, “If you’re going to live in the United States, it has to be legally, so do us all a favor and try not to get arrested—for the next twenty-four hours anyway.”
Figuerito asked, “It’s illegal to play baseball?” He was thinking, The strange hippie is a lot more fun than this man. I hope he arrives soon.
They were inside Marion Ford’s unusual house. Two small houses, actually, built on posts over the water, which made a nice platform to stand and spit over the railing or pee designs in the water. In glass boxes, the man—who everyone called Doc—owned a lot of fish too small to eat, yet he was protective of them and had many rules regarding their treatment. Already, Figgy had learned to stay out of Doc’s lab.
“I’m trying to arrange a meeting for tomorrow afternoon,” Ford said. “I’ve called in every favor I have to expedite the process. By Friday, maybe earlier—I’m not sure how much paperwork is involved—you should be free to do whatever you want.”
“Is true? I like that. Anything, huh? Yes, brother, of course. I’ll do what you say.”
Ford’s assessment of Figueroa Casanova: a good guy, but a pure spirit unencumbered by the strictures of duality, abstract thought, and other cortex functions, possibly due to injury or deprivation during childhood. Otherwise, very bright, but in the way feral children have a genius for survival. He replied, “I should have put that differently. Wait”—he went to a desk where there was a computer—“I’ll type out a list of what you can and can’t do.”
“Another one?” Figueroa asked. He had yet to read the list given him last night. “I like Key West. I should be there when the hippie comes in his sailboat. There’s a nice baseball field there, that’s all I meant. So, you know, while I’m waiting, play some ball, but don’t worry about the witches. I already know about them.”
“Witches?” Ford looked up through his wire-rimmed glasses.
Figueroa nodded. “How many days before he returns, do you think?”
Tomlinson, who was unencumbered by sexual morals, combined with the Cuban’s zest for direct action, were a combination so volatile, potentially, that Ford didn’t want to deal with it right now. “I’ll let you know,” he said, and went out the screen door.
Figueroa waited respectfully for a large, curly brown dog to go, too. He followed them across a boardwalk to the shore, where Doc’s nice blue truck was parked. Three men were there, working in the shade, tools scattered on a blanket. “Caramba,” Figgy said, “can you teach me how you did that so fast? I already know how those machines come apart.”
Jeth and Alex, two fishing guides, and Mack, who owned the marina, were all smiles even though they didn’t understand questions asked in Spanish. Jeth, stuttering a little, said, “Doc, any cha-cha-chance there are more of these? I’ve always wanted to go to Cuba.” He stepped back, and big Alex Payne did, too. Leaning on its kickstand was a 1957 Harley-Davidson Sportster, candy-apple red, 300 pounds of chrome, steel, and gangster swagger, fully assembled except for the leather seat Mack was sweating over now. On a tarp in the shade, the jet-stream-blue Harley was in pieces, each piece wrapped in a blanket embroidered with Copacabana in gold thread.
Gold. Ford had forgotten something—something important, in light of the little Cuban’s new infatuation with firearms. He and the dog jogged back to the lab, where he had hidden the Thompson submachine guns in one place and their empty magazines in another.
When he returned, he spoke to Jeth, Alex, and Mack in English—not giving orders, exactly, but close—then said to Figueroa, “You see that gate?” He pointed to the parking lot. “Don’t go outside that gate. And wear a helmet.”
• • •
FORD DROVE toward Captiva while the dog, with his head out the window, let the wind turn his ears into wings. I’ve never liked Sundays, he thought. Mini-holidays without purpose. Government offices not open on the one day people can afford to take off—what a pain in the ass. Fewer boats on the water, at least—the Gulf of Mexico, to his right, proved that. “Thanks to pro football,” he said.
Ford’s sentence fragments no longer earned the retriever’s attention.
Another Sunday benefit was that the Mad Hatter Restaurant was closed, but its back parking lot, Gulf side, was open. He pulled in and switched off the engine under the guise of needing a moment alone to think.