We both made it to the boat and climbed aboard. I slipped the tank from my shoulders and set it on the deck as I drip dried.
“Well, what did you find?” Flynn asked, his eyes full of anticipation.
I shook my head and told them the story.
Flynn weighed anchor, and Jack fired up the outboards and headed us toward Gator Island.
The moon hung low in the sky, and stars twinkled.
Mickey checked his phone to see if there were any more messages from the kidnappers, but there was nothing. He sat with a long face, looking defeated.
I hoped Isabella would get some kind of lead on the kidnappers. At this point, I wasn't optimistic about ever finding the ransom money. Somebody else could have found it a long time ago and kept their mouth shut about it. Always the best plan of action when coming into large sums of cash.
We bounced across the water with the boat on plane. Mists of saltwater sprayed as the bow sliced the obsidian swells. Mickey sat in silence, almost in a trance. I hoped he was searching the inner recesses of his brain. Maybe through meditation, the location would pop into that clouded head of his.
It took about 45 minutes to get to Gator Island. There wasn’t much out here—just mangrove swamps, shallow channels, thick underbrush, and, as the nickname implies, gators.
I snapped my fingers a few times in front of Mickey's face, bringing him out of his trance. "We're here. Where should we look?"
Mickey surveyed the island as we circled, doing a recon pass. "When I was smuggling, sometimes we’d use this as a drop point. At the time, there was a long enough flat run to take off and land. It wasn’t the best runway in the world, but we kept it pretty well-maintained. It was an alternative to Bonefish Run.” He thought about it for a moment. "That's another place it might be.”
"I can tell you, Bonefish Run is sitting vacant now. They built a lodge out there, but it fell into disrepair. I'm not even sure who owns it now.”
“Both had a viable airstrip back in the day,” Mickey said. “That makes them contenders. I’d fly to the Keys with a metric shit ton of drugs, refuel, then fly back with cash.”
“And one of those cash loads never made it back,” Flynn surmised.
“You had to have buried the money in something?” I said. “I mean, tell me you didn’t just bury it in a bag and hope for the best? It would rot over 40 years.”
“I’m not that stupid,” Mickey said. “In those days, money was always wrapped tight, just like drugs. Gotta be waterproof in case shit goes down.”
Jack navigated into one of the shallow channels, trimmed the outboards, and cruised us through the water at a leisurely pace, avoiding stumps and other debris that could give you a headache. True to its namesake, there were plenty of gators on the shore and in the water. I'm sure we looked pretty tasty.
At the end of the channel, Jack nosed the bow ashore. I dropped anchor at the stern, grabbed an AR-15 for good measure, then hopped out of the boat, into the muck.
Jack grabbed a metal detector and climbed out.
Flynn tied a bowline to a mango tree.
The sounds of frogs and crickets filled the air. Mosquitoes buzzed about.
It felt like we had left civilization far behind. A primordial swamp where dinosaurs roamed.
Something rustled the high grass not far away.
I couldn’t see it, but I was pretty sure it was a gator. It emerged from the grass a moment later and slinked into the water with a plunk. Like the sharks, they’d pretty much leave us alone if we didn’t bother them.
Still, I didn’t want to get too close.
35
Mickey led us through the underbrush and dense foliage. We ducked under branches and stepped over fallen logs. Leaves crunched underfoot.
It didn't take long for the familiar smell to hit my nostrils. Soon, we were no longer in dense underbrush. The canopy of leaves from taller trees sheltered the area. The crop of marijuana had been planted in irregular patterns between the larger trees. It would be difficult to spot from above, and couldn’t be seen from the shoreline. Unless you knew it was here and were specifically looking for it, the grow would evade detection.
Not far away, rain catchers flowed into barrels that fed drip lines that snaked throughout the grow. We had gotten plenty of rain this season. Combined with the drip lines, these plants weren’t hurting for moisture. This was a sizable crop. Somebody had to maintain it regularly. With a good amount of daylight, moderate temperatures, and well outside of hurricane season, this was prime grow season.
"Looks like somebody's putting the island to good use," Mickey said.
