Trap Line by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction, Detective and mystery stories, Drug traffic, Fishers - Fiction, Fishers, ebook, book, Drug traffic - Fiction, Key West (Fla.) - Fiction, Key West (Fla.)
ISBN: 9780375700699
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 1998-06-29T10:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

THE SOUND of a lone mosquito buzz-bombing a bloodied ear rattled Breeze Albury from a four-hour sleep. He rolled off his bunk and clutched his head with both hands to suppress the vertigo. His arm stung and his stomach roiled. His skull burned where Oscar had clubbed him with the pistol.

Albury dragged himself to the deck where Jimmy and Augie lay like gaping, snoring corpses. He let them sleep. Dusk was settling in on the Florida Keys; a faint, cool gust from the west chased away the choking heat. Albury climbed to the pilothouse and studied his chart through blistered eyelids.

The Diamond Cutter lay tranquilly at anchor off Lignum Vitae Key, a pear-shaped mangrove islet west of Islamorada. Here Florida Bay offered deep water, and concealment. After the killings at Dynamite Docks, the crawfish boat’s flight had been breakneck, confused, haphazard. Instinct had warned Albury to run south, home toward Key West, as swiftly as the big Crusader would take him. But prudence told him to lay low, hide for a few days, ask quiet questions.

Augie had grabbed the helm for the first leg while Albury’s head had cleared. The kid had steered safely southward in the heart of Hawk Channel, past Rodriguez Key, with the idea of slipping through the islands to the Gulf side at Tavernier. It was a good plan, but Augie didn’t know the Upper Keys like he did Key West; numb from the shootout, Jimmy had been no help, either.

As the Diamond Cutter had cleared Tavernier Key, Augie had wheeled her starboard and promptly deposited all forty-three feet of Albury’s pride and joy on a shallow mud flat. There the three of them had sat for two hours, watching the traffic crawl by on U.S. 1, squinting into the sky for some sign of the Coast Guard helicopter that was surely on its way to arrest them for murder.

Finally the tide had come up and gentled the big fishing boat back into the channel, where Albury had taken the wheel. Hunger and dwindling fuel had persuaded him to call at the first ocean-front marina. But a Monroe County sheriff’s car innocently idling in the parking lot had run the Diamond Cutter off.

From then on it had been damn-the-fuel, forget-the-hunger, and run for cover—and for the Diamond Cutter no cover was good enough on the Atlantic side of the Keys. Albury had taken the boat through to the Gulf side under the Indian Key Bridge and anchored behind Lignum Vitae, one of the largest islands in Florida Bay. Sheltered from the badgering southeasterly winds of summer, the Diamond Cutter could at least expect a calm last leg back to Key West.

That would be more than Breeze Albury could expect—if he dared go back to Key West at all. Albury swigged at a can of warm beer that had somehow escaped the aliens’ marauding and tried to think it through.

By now everybody and his brother should be looking for the Diamond Cutter, from the Bahamian Coast Guard to the Florida National Guard.

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