Fallen Palm (Jesse McDermitt Series) (5 page)

Late Sunday afternoon, 10/23/2005

Jimmy and I were walking through a pouring rain by the time we got to the crushed shell drive, at the Anchor. Normally, I enjoy being outside in the rain. Most people will rush for cover, but I’d learned a long time ago that the human body was waterproof and clothes dried. As we walked through the nearly empty parking lot I noticed a bright yellow Jeep among the few pickup’s parked there. My heart started racing. It was Alex’s car.

When we walked through the door, everyone looked our way. But I only saw one person. Her hair was longer than I’d remembered. She was wearing designer jeans and a blue denim shirt with her hair spilling over the collar and down her back, longer than I remembered. Even though I was expecting to see her, I stopped dead in my tracks, mouth hanging open, dripping wet and Jimmy almost knocked me over in his rush to get in out of the rain.

“Déjà vu, Jesse,” Alex said with a laugh, which seemed to light up the whole room. God, how I’d missed her laugh.

Again, just like that day more than two years ago, I’m standing there with water dripping off my hair, mouth open, speechless. The way she’d said my name was as we’d only been apart for an hour or two. But it’s been over a year. How does this woman do it? How does she make me feel like a high school kid on prom night? I can’t form words anymore. Sentences are way beyond my sophomoric abilities.

I looked down at my soaked shirt and jeans, then back up to her and grinned. It was like that very first day we met, all over again. I took a step toward her as she stood up from the stool at the bar. Then she ran toward me and wrapped her arms around my neck. I held her close and could smell that same jasmine scent in her hair. “I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered and I could feel her sobbing slightly into my shoulder.

I held her tighter and said, “You’re really here? I’ve missed you, too.” Then she tilted her had back and looked into my eyes. “If anything, you’re more beautiful than I remember.” She stepped up on her toes then and kissed me. Not a sisterly peck, but a kiss with more passion than anything I’d ever experienced. I wasn’t ready for that. We’d never kissed before. Hell, we’d never even held hands. In the year we’d known each other we’d become good friends, shared a few meals, worked out, ran, and swam together. I’d fantasized many times about taking our relationship further, but my track record with women wasn’t the greatest and I didn’t want to lose one of the few good friends I had.

“I like the hair,” she said, tussling it. “No more "light and tight"?”

I laughed and corrected her, “It’s high and tight. Guess I’ve just gotten lazy.”

“Well,” she said, “I like it.”

Suddenly, I heard and felt the presence of others in the room. Everyone was cheering and clapping as if the star quarterback had just run the length of the field for the game winning touchdown. I looked around and everyone was looking right at us. Alex’s cheeks colored a little at all the attention. I noticed the TV over the bar was on the Weather Channel. “Um, ah, where’s the storm, Rusty?” I stammered.

“About 150 miles west of Havana and heading northeast. If it holds course, it’ll probably make landfall on the mainland, maybe around your old hometown,” Rusty replied. I was raised in Fort Myers, FL, but hadn’t been home but a few times since I joined the Corps. I’d lived in many places while I served, but when I retired, there was no question where I was going to settle down. Rusty and Julie put me up for a few days, until I found
Gaspar’s Revenge
advertised to be auctioned, in a yacht trader magazine. I borrowed Rusty’s pickup to drive up to Miami to try and buy her. That was just over five years ago. Alex and I walked over to the bar and sat down. The Weather Channel was just giving the update on Hurricane Wilma.

“
This is Shomari Stone in Marathon. Right now, the winds are starting to pick up. If you look at the palm trees, they are swaying a little bit, but it’s not too intense. Marathon’s in the heart of the Keys between Key West and Key Largo and thousands of Monroe County residents have already evacuated. Twenty seven thousand live in Key West and officials tell us it’s too early to tell how many have left town. Now many of them are concerned about the heavy rain, the wind and the potential threat of a storm surge. If you look right over here, these waves continue to rise and they pound the, uh, the rock here and they’re really expected to rise in the next 48 hours. Authorities expect it to rise all the way up this slope here and we’ll just have to see how far they actually go up depending on the strength of Hurricane Wilma. Now just to give you a unique vantage point, to show you just where we are, if you look right over there, this is the Seven Mile Bridge. It’s the only way to get out of Key West. This thing stretches from Marathon, all the way to Key West and a lot of the residents are headed north on this thing. Forecasters are expecting at least a five-foot storm surge. Now, I’m about six feet, two inches tall, so that would come about to my shoulders, standing here on the seawall. Now, just to let you know, there’s a gas station on the Marathon side of the Seven Mile Bridge and they are open and they have plenty of gas, but will close at five o‘clock. That’s the very latest on Hurricane Wilma. I’m Shomari Stone, for The Weather Channel.”

“Well, that guy was real enlightening,” Alex said. “The Seven Mile Bridge goes all the way to Key West? I bet the people in Big Pine, Cudjoe, Sugar Loaf and Boca Chica got a kick out of that.” She turned to me and asked, “Will the surge really be as high as he says?”

I thought about it for a minute, recalling reports about how the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 had a storm surge of nearly twenty feet, when it crossed the Keys, devastating virtually everything and killing thousands. “Like the guy said, it depends on how strong it gets and how fast it moves.”

“It’s a cat three now and moving pretty fast, Jesse,” Rusty said from behind the bar. “A five foot surge won’t be much problem. We’re ten feet above sea level here and the canal is a good seven feet below the sea wall at high tide. Whatcha gonna do with the
Revenge
?”

“Jimmy and I made her fast at the dock, she’ll be okay there,” I replied.

“But aren’t there still a lot of boats anchored out in the harbor?” Alex asked. “What if one breaks loose from it’s mooring and hits your boat?”

I hadn’t even thought of that possibility. Just then the door opened and Deuce, Tony, and Art walked in. “Deuce,” I said, “I figured you’d be half way back to Virginia by now, what with this storm coming on.”

Deuce laughed and said, “I won’t let a little blow like this keep me from fulfilling dad’s last wish.”

“We stick together,” Tony added. “The Commander tried to order us back to the base but since we’re on leave we pointed out that his orders didn’t really hold any weight.”

“Gentlemen, this is my, um, friend Alex,” I said. “Alex, meet Lieutenant Commander Deuce Livingston and Petty Officers First Class Tony Jacobs and Art Newman.” Alex looked at me when I said the word ‘friend’, then extended her hand to Deuce.
“Pleased to meet you, Commander.” Then she turned to Tony and Art, shaking their hands also, saying, “You too, Petty Officers. My dad was Coast Guard, out of Astoria, Oregon.”

“We’re Navy, ma’am. And please, it’s just Deuce, Tony and Art,” Deuce replied.

“Okay, but only if you drop the ma’am. It’s Alex DuBois. Short for Alexis.”

“Heureux de vous rencontrer, Mademouselle DuBois,” Deuce said.

Alex beamed and said, “Le plaisir est que tout le mien, Commander. Your French is excellent.”

Turning to me, she said, “So, ‘friend’, what about your boat?” Oops, I thought to myself, did I just screw up? I thought she’d come back because of me, but a thousand other reasons instantly came to mind. Then she laughed that hearty laugh of hers and I knew I might at least be a small part of her motivation for returning.

“I’m having second thoughts now that you mentioned all those boats moored in the harbor. There must be forty or fifty out there,” I replied.

Rusty was setting seven cold beer bottles on the bar and said, “Why not bring her up the canal and moor her here?”

“Here?” I asked, passing a beer to everyone. “Your canal isn’t deep enough, Rusty. What is it, five feet deep? The
Revenge
draws four feet. I’d be too afraid it’d bounce off the bottom if waves wash up the canal,” I replied.

“It was five feet. I dredged it to ten feet a coupla months ago. It’s fifty feet across, too. And there’s five concrete bollards on either side. Each one’s poured fifteen feet down. She’d be snug as a bug here,” Rusty said.

“You had it dredged? Who did it?”

“Did it myself. Bought an old backhoe and a barge last year. It’s still out there in the canal,” he replied.

“And you never mentioned this to me? I could have dredged my channel deeper and saved a ton of money on dockage. Thanks a lot, buddy,” I said.

“Hey, you never asked,” Rusty laughed. “Anyway, I think the
Revenge
would be better off here than at the docks. You should bring her over and soon.”

“Ready to get wet again, Jimmy?” I asked my first mate.

“Mind if we tag along, Jesse?” Deuce asked.

“The more the merrier. Alex, will you be here for a while?” I asked.

“Actually, Rusty and Julie were kind enough to offer me their guest room until after the storm,” she replied. “We were just talking about it, before you got here.”

“Okay, then let’s go guys,” I said. “I suggest we walk. Might not be able to get back to get your car later Deuce.”

“We’ll take my pickup,” Rusty said. “Gotta fetch that skiff back here, anyway. Finish your beers, while I hook up the trailer.”

Jimmy said, “I hope you dudes don’t mind getting wet or get seasick.”

We all looked at Jimmy and started to laugh. That is, everyone except Alex and Jimmy himself.

“I don’t get it,” Alex said.

Between laughs, Tony managed to say, “We’re Navy SEALS, ma’am, er, I mean Alex.”

We walked back out expecting rain, but the sun was shining and the wind was now coming out of the south-southwest. A good sign.

“What the hell,” Art said, looking up at the sky. “It was pouring just a few minutes ago.”
“Welcome to south Florida, dude,” Jimmy said. “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes.”

We walked around to the docks in back. Just as Rusty had said, there was a Caterpillar 416 loader with a backhoe, sitting on a thirty-five foot barge. On both sides of the canal were several large, round concrete bollards that looked like they could moor a battleship. The canal was straight as an arrow, going south-southeast, into the Atlantic about 250 yards away. There was a small turning basin at the docks where it was a good seventy feet across. Plenty enough to turn the
Revenge
around. “Man, I used to operate one just like this,” Jimmy said, pointing at the loader. “Tough piece of equipment and you can attach all kind of cool things in place of the scoop, even an auger.”

Looking at the loader, I was already thinking about my channel. “Once this storm passes, Jimmy, maybe Rusty’ll let me borrow that thing and you can come up to the house and help me out deepening and widening my channel.” Looking south down the canal, I said, “It’s rough out there but the
Revenge
can handle it with no problem. We can bring her all the way in here and then turn her around. I want her into the wind when we tie off.”

“Will this wind continue out of the south, during the whole storm,” Tony asked.

“I sure hope not, compadre,” Jimmy replied as we climbed in Rusty’s pickup bed. “Canes rotate anticlockwise. Say a cane’s coming right at you from the west. The wind’s gonna blow straight out of the south till it hits ya, gettin’ stronger and stronger as it gets closer and closer. Then POW! The eye hits and everything goes calm and serene, man. But once the eye passes over you, CRASH! The wind starts to blow from the opposite direction. But if it’s blowing slightly from the southwest early on, like it is now, that means the storm is going to pass north of you. The more westerly the wind, the further north it is. The wind’ll keep moving around the compass, blowing more westerly, then northwest, as it moves past. Just the opposite if it passes to your south.”

I looked at Jimmy and nodded, “We’ll tie the
Revenge
in the turning basin, with the bow facing southwest and hope you’re right, Jimmy. Any waves coming up the canal she’ll take on the port beam and the wind’ll move across the deck from the starboard beam, when the storm’s at it’s worst.”

Sunday evening, October 23, 2005

We arrived at the dock and climbed aboard the
Revenge
while Rusty and Julie drove on to the dinghy dock. I went to the helm and got the big diesels started, while Jimmy and our new crew set about untying the lines from the dock cleats. The three SEALS didn’t need any instruction at all, they seemed more at home on a boat than on land. Deuce joined me on the bridge and said, “Fine boat, Jesse. What’s she got for power?”

I studied Deuce for a second and thought, what the hell, he’s Russ’s kid. “A pair of Caterpillar C-18E diesels, rated at 1015 horsepower each,” I replied. “I normally don’t divulge that to just anyone, so I’d appreciate you not passing it along. Normally, the Rampage forty five convertible’s are powered by smaller engines, but this one had apparently been custom built for the drug trade. I bought it at a Coast Guard auction a couple years back. It’d been impounded in a drug bust.”

“You were a Gunny, right?” he asked.

How’d he know that, I wondered. I knew where he was going with it, though. The military isn’t the career choice for a person who hoped to get rich. “Yeah, I was,” I replied. “Just before I retired I inherited some stock holdings and land from my grandfather. Between this boat and a small island I bought up in the Content Keys, I had to sell off all the assets and dig deep into my savings. I think Pappy would have approved, though.”

“All set, Skipper!” Jimmy yelled from the cockpit.

Turning my back to the controls afforded me a good view of the stern of the boat against the dock. I put the wheel at the small of my back and nudged the controls into forward. Watching the stern until we were clear of the docks, I could steer slightly with my body, but mostly with the throttles. Once we were clear, I called down, “Y’all come on up!”

The bridge has two seats at the helm and a bench seat for three on the port side. Once all three of them were up the ladder, I steered the
Revenge
along the channel toward Sister Creek. “Jimmy,” I said, “we’ll take Sister Creek out to East Sister Rock and then around the point to Rusty’s channel. Seas are only about five feet, outside. So I doubt we’ll have any trouble at all. But, once we turn toward the channel, we’re going to have a fast moving following sea and I might have to come into the canal pretty hot to have any steerage at all, so stay on your toes.”

Jimmy nodded and Deuce asked, “Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Not really. Jimmy’ll keep an eye out forward as we near the channel. Extra eyes won’t hurt, though. You can watch the starboard side as we come into the channel and if Tony watches the port side, we’ll be fine. The channel’s a bit narrow, only about forty feet across and the
Revenge
has a sixteen foot beam. That’ll leave us a good twelve feet of channel on either side.”

As we passed the end of the private docks, I turned sharply left into Sister Creek, which winds between Boot Key and Key Vaca, where the town of Marathon is located. Boot Key is mostly undeveloped and since the bridge over the mouth of the harbor was closed a couple of years ago, the only way on or off the island is by boat. A number of fishermen live on the island in houses built before the bridge was closed. The federal government maintains a broadcast tower there, which sends propaganda in Spanish to the people of Cuba. It’s called Radio Marti, but the Cuban government blocks the transmission, so only people in the United States can actually hear it. Our tax dollars at work.

“Who’s Gaspar?” Art asked.

“He was a pirate,” Jimmy replied. “Jose Gaspar was his given name, man. But when he left the Spanish Navy, he took the name ‘Gasparilla’. He was one of the last real buccaneers, bro. His base of operations was up in the Port Charlotte area where Jesse’s from. He and his crew plundered ships all up and down the west coast of Florida, man. When he finally decided to retire from pillaging, he was about sixty five. But as he and his crew were dividing up their booty, they spotted a fat merchant ship offshore, flying the Union Jack. They just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to add a bit more to their booty, dude. They sailed out toward the merchant ship, but as they got close, she lowered the Jack and hoisted the American ensign. It turned out that the fat merchant ship was actually the topsail schooner USS Enterprise, a notorious pirate hunter. Gasparilla’s ship was nearly blasted apart, man. Gasparilla went down with her, just off the island now known as Gasparilla.”

“Is that all true,” Tony asked me.

“Well, that’s the way the story goes,” I replied.

We were coming out of the last turn in the creek and about to move into open water. I nudged the throttles up to 1200 rpm and the
Revenge
dropped down at the stern, lifting the bow slightly higher, until the horizon was lost below the windscreen. In just a few seconds, though, the bow came back down as she lifted up on plane. I love the feeling I get when my boat changes from a displacement hull, to a planing hull. I added a little more throttle, bringing her up to about twenty knots, at 1300 rpm, as we left the creek and started to encounter the wind driven waves. The
Revenge
is a forty five foot Rampage convertible, which is one of the best offshore fishing boats available anywhere. The deep vee design cuts through even the roughest water and the Carolina flair of the bow just knocks the spray out and down, so even in rough seas like today, it’s always a dry ride.

My guests knew about boats, that I was sure of. You don’t make O-4 and E-6 in the SEALS without having a whole lot of time on the water in all kinds of crafts. I could see by their expressions that they were impressed with the
Revenge.
Tony said with a huge grin, “This is some boat, man! I thought for sure this’d be a pounder.”

“Pounder?” I asked.

“Most of the boats we ride in,” Art replied, “ride like a Sherman tank. This is like riding in a Bentley.” As if on cue, a large wave hit the starboard bow, as I started the turn around Sister Rock island. All it did, was nudge the bow slightly to port and we rolled gently into the trough, coming back on course.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Tony yelled.

As we rounded Sister Rock, I brought the
Revenge
around to the left and started the run toward the channel leading to Rusty’s canal. It was marked with only two markers. The first one, a green marker, was in about twenty feet of water on the port side of the channel. The other one, a red one, was in only five feet of water on the starboard side, nearly on shore. I lined the
Revenge
up with the canal between the two markers and nudged the throttles a bit more to 1400 rpm, as the swells were rolling behind us now. I didn’t want to wallow in the trough, nor be passed up by the fast moving swells. We were now running a lot faster than I usually like to go through a channel, making nearly thirty knots. We flew past the first marker and a few seconds later we were less than a hundred yards from the mouth of the canal. The swells were smaller now and moving slower, so I slowly dropped the engines down to 1200 rpm and the stern rose as we slowed. Passing the last marker, there was only a slight chop, so I dropped the throttles down to idle speed and we nosed into the canal just as the
Revenge
came down off plane and became a displacement hull again.

“You’d have made a half decent Sailor there, Jarhead,” Deuce said. Interservice rivalry was common, especially between Marines and Sailors.

“Sorry, Squid, I only have two arms,” I replied laughing. But coming from a man like Deuce, I took it as a great compliment.

As we idled down the long canal Jimmy, Art, and Tony went down to the cockpit. “Jimmy, go on up to the bow and I’ll put you off on the port side as I turn her around. I can see Rusty and Rufus ahead on the starboard shore. They’ll handle the port lines once I spin her around and you can handle the starboard ones.” Jimmy scrambled along the rail on the port side and made his way across the large foredeck to the pulpit, where he unhooked the cable across the front of the pulpit and stood ready.

When we reached the center of the turning basin, I reversed the port engine and nudged it’s throttle just above idle and spun the wheel to the left. The
Revenge
started turning sideways, while still drifting toward the barge at the end of the canal. Then I shifted the port engine back to forward and goosed the starboard throttle. The
Revenge
surged slightly forward, then I brought the throttles to reverse idle. She stopped just a couple of feet from the western dock and started backing, just as Jimmy took a long stride and stepped onto the western dock, with the starboard bow line in his hand. I swung the wheel all the way to starboard and goosed the port engine throttle a bit, then brought them both to forward while swinging the wheel back to port. The
Revenge
continued it’s spin to the left and Jimmy tied off the bow line to the first bollard as she came to a dead stop. Tony and Art threw lines to Rusty and Rufus, waiting on the eastern dock, who made them fast on the furthest two bollards. I brought both engines to neutral and idled them for a minute before shutting down. We were tied up at a forty five degree angle to the canal, with the stern only a few feet from the barge.

“I take that back, Captain.” Deuce said. “You’d have made a damn fine Sailor.”

“Thanks, Deuce,” I replied. Tony and Art were already throwing off more lines to the three men on shore and within minutes they had six heavy lines tied fore and aft, to both sides of the turning basin. Alex was standing on the old barge next to an aluminum gangplank that was connected to the barge with a large hinge pin. She lowered the other end to Art at the stern. I noticed that Art was kind enough to bungee a bumper to the underside of the gangplank, to protect my finish. “Those are some great Sailors you have there, too.”