Brigands Key Read online

  Charley studied the double columns of numbers. Read from left to right, they made no sense. Read backwards from right to left, they jumped off the page at him. The columns were coordinates of latitude and longitude, calculated by global positioning, rendered as coordinates. The latitudes were all in the 29th degree, carried out to fourteen decimal places. Longitudinal readings were all west of the 83rd degree, carried to eleven decimal places. Accurate to within feet. If there was a hit, a note was scribbled in the margins. J for Junk. SB for Sunken Boat.

  The last few entries were recorded the day of Charley’s last trip out with Roscoe. Their coordinates covered a very small area, and there was a single notation, an X, next to the very last number.

  X marks the spot.

  Roscoe had found something. He had returned to the island. And he was never seen again.

  One piece of the puzzle, solved. Charley knew where to look. The pipe would fill in the rest.

  He tried once more to pull the glued cap ends off the pipe, without luck. He placed the pipe on the floor and drew the hacksaw blade carefully against it, scoring it all the way around. He began to saw, slowly and deliberately, careful not to cut deeper than the thickness of the pipe wall. He cut all the way around the pipe, lay the hacksaw aside, and twisted the cut halves apart.

  Inside was a roll of laminated sheets of paper. He pulled them out and lay them on the bed. There were dozens of pages, each filled with line after line of typed, scrambled letters. Gobbledy-gook, like Roscoe’s Caesar shift message.

  Charley opened his notebook to a clean page and copied the first line into it. Then he wrote the complete alphabet on two lines, the second one with the alphabet shifted over to start below R. The R-shift code. This was going to be a snap. He started to decipher the code.

  It didn’t work. After a dozen letters, he still had nonsense. Okay. Roscoe wasn’t going to be that easy. Charley started again, shifting to N. Maybe Roscoe had a shift code for his last name.

  That didn’t work either.

  Charley swore quietly and went to work. After an hour, he’d tried a Caesar shift with every possible start position. None worked.

  He tried writing the encrypted words backwards, like the orange book coordinates, and then applying alphabet shifts. Again, no luck.

  He made a pot of coffee and settled down with his code book and started at the beginning, applying all sorts of codes to the encrypted pages, one after another.

  As the sun rose the next morning, Charley sat back in despair. The pages had resisted every form of code that his little book could offer. Nothing worked.

  The key to something huge was at his fingertips, tantalizingly close, but he was no closer to understanding it now than when he started. No discernible pattern peeked out from this scramble of letters.

  This was a master code, something built by the very best to fool the very best.

  Charley threw the codebook against the wall and picked up his phone and dialed Dr. Grant.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mayor Johnson basked in the warm flickering glow of the Weather Channel, scarcely believing his luck. Celeste had jogged suddenly east and was gunning for Panama City. A Florida landfall was now almost a hundred percent chance, though the storm was still two hundred miles southwest of the Panhandle. Johnson had ordered an evacuation six hours ago and the governor’s chief of staff, a toady by the name of Sara Simmons, had called him within a half-hour with a frantic “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” No one else in the whole state, as far west as Pensacola, had done more than put out advisories. Johnson was manufacturing hysteria, she whined, and Governor Crawford was none too happy about it.

  Too bad. Crawford hated getting beat to the punch, assuming it was his prerogative to order evacuations, not some small-town mayor’s. And now every coastal town from Tampa to Pensacola was scrambling to issue evacuation orders. Johnson’s people were mobilized and putting emergency plans into action while other mayors sat on their fat asses, hanging the citizenry out to flap in the gathering wind.

  Mayor Ralph Johnson, Visionary. Man of the People. Man of Action. Had a damned good ring to it. Governor Johnson. Now that sounded even better.

  CNN had called ten minutes ago and put him on live via telephone. How did Johnson know to act so early? “Just lookin’ out for folks,” Johnson said in his best down-home drawl.

  That CNN spot was big. People knew him now. They had a camera crew on the way even now to put him on the air. They had to know all about the dark dangers threatening this small brave village by the sea. The epidemic, the hurricane. Life was good.

  “Mayor, Simmons is on line two again,” Faye called.

  “Got it.” Johnson let Simmons wait for a full minute before picking up. “Mayor Ralph Jack Johnson here,” he said loudly.

  “Mayor, this is Sara Simmons. We’ve got a problem.”

  “No, you’ve got a problem. I’m moving ahead with evacuation. Got a town to save.”

  “Put a sock in it, Johnson. Governor Crawford is ordering evacs all up and down the Panhandle coast. You made the right call but we both know it was dumb luck. We know you were up to something, pulling a stunt to get you out of a little political pickle down there in the sticks, but we don’t really care. We also know there’s little chance of Celeste making landfall as far east as Brigands Key.”

  Johnson hesitated. “I don’t appreciate your assumptions and telling us how to protect our citizens.”

  “Shut up and listen. Ten minutes ago, the Centers for Disease Control ordered Brigands Key under a quarantine. No one leaves the island. You’re to set up a road block immediately on the bridge. The National Guard will have units there to replace your guys within two hours.”

  Johnson got a sudden, cold stab of fear in his gut. “You can’t do this.”

  “No, we can’t. But the Feds can do whatever they want in the name of security. This goes all the way to the top. The White House bought into the CDC plan. No one gets on or off the island until we rein this contagion in. No one. That includes you.”

  * * *

  Randy Sanborn tested the doors of the old high school gym. The ancient metal doors rattled and shook, but seemed solid enough. That was a delusion. If a storm wanted in here bad enough, it was coming in.

  He’d swung by the Gulf to check things out on his way to Brigands Key High. The wind was picking up, whipping the sea into a frenzy, white-capping the waves and blowing the foam off like a head off beer. Any given day, you could count two-dozen boats on the water. Not today. Not a single boat.

  When Sanborn got to the gym, Principal Chancy was fretting about uselessly, directing his custodial staff to straighten this or that, with little point to any of it. Sanborn stepped in and took control and Chancy looked visibly relieved. Readying emergency shelters was not Chancy’s strength. He was new to the island, new to Florida. From Pennsylvania. A very safe state indeed.

  Evacuation order or not, there would be holdouts and curmudgeons vowing to “ride the storm out.” Morons. Most had never experienced a hurricane up close and personal. So a sturdy emergency shelter was vital. This gym had outlived most people on the island.

  Sanborn kept an ear to the radio while hustling in cots, blankets, bottled water, and a truckload of life jackets, just in case, listening to the forecast while he directed the setup.

  “Chief Sanborn,” Chancy said, “I’m not an engineer, but I like to know my school.”

  “An excellent philosophy, Mr. Chancy.”

  “I was looking at the old school blueprints and surveys a few days ago. The school gym is the highest point on the island, outside of the lighthouse. It’s thirteen feet above sea level.”

  “That’s why it’s the emergency shelter. The hundred-year storm event is twelve feet above sea level.”

  “So I hear, so I hear.” Chancy still looked a little green.

  “It’ll be safe in here, Mr. Chancy. No storm in a hundred years here has topped that level.”

  “Yes,
but the Gulf isn’t the Gulf of yesteryear. It’s hotter and more unstable than ever. Didn’t Hurricane Katrina come ashore in Mississippi with an eighteen-foot surge level?”

  More like twenty-five, Sanborn wanted to say. But what was the point? Chancy was right.

  Sanborn’s radio crackled, more static than usual. He unhooked it. “Sanborn.”

  He was surprised to hear Johnson’s voice. As chummy as a little place like Brigands Key was, you just don’t use the police band to make calls. Even the boondocks have protocol.

  “You ain’t gonna believe this, Randy,” the mayor began.

  * * *

  Sanborn whipped his Jeep onto Bridge Street, gunned the engine, and slammed it into a skidding stop in the loose gravel at the island foot of the bridge, positioning the car so as to block both lanes. He slid out of the car seat and slammed the door shut.

  A quarantine. Unbelievable.

  He couldn’t believe he’d acquiesced to Johnson. The fool had just ordered an evacuation, ahead of the curve for the first time in his life, but then caved in just like that.

  The wind was picking up and the normally placid channel under the bridge bristled. Several blocks south, fishermen at the marina scrambled over their boats, stowing, battening, tying, hanging extra bumpers over the sides, readying the fleet for the storm. Soon, some would be throwing their belongings on board and piloting their boats south toward Tampa and safe harbors. They’d better get in gear and get going now if they were going at all.

  He toyed with the idea of calling Julie and giving her the scoop. He should. Her career was taking a new arc with this mess. She’d love the tip. But knowing her, she’d probably already got wind of it and was on her way over. Yeah, but he’d call her anyway. To be sure.

  The Coast Guard already had boats en route to Brigands Key to enforce the quarantine.

  What the hell was happening?

  The sound of an approaching vehicle interrupted his thoughts. He turned and raised both hands, motioning it to stop.

  This was going to be a lot harder than he’d imagined.

  Ashley Gray, his childhood sweetheart, pulled up in her rusting Chevy Cavalier, her two little doe-eyed girls, Erin and Amanda, riding in the front seat with her. A silver compact disc dangled iridescently from the rearview mirror. Ashley stopped, cranked the window down as far as it would go, and leaned out. “Randy? What’s going on? We’re supposed to evacuate.”

  Sanborn swallowed hard, his throat suddenly very dry. “Change of plans, Ashley. The Feds have placed the island under strict quarantine. You’ll have to turn around.”

  Ashley laughed. “Randy, cut it out. We got a long drive ahead. Going to Jacksonville to stay with the girls’ grandma.”

  “It’s for real, Ashley. No joke. No one can leave.”

  Her smile faded, driven away by sudden fear. “No one leaves? Have you not been watching the news?”

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” he lied. “The Governor and the President are in a pissing contest. It’ll be worked out in a couple hours. They’re not going to leave anyone stuck here in a Cat-4 storm.”

  “Cat-4? It was just upgraded to Category 5, Randy, and it’s turning again! People have to go now!”

  Sanborn felt his stomach twist. He hoped to God it was the damn virus coming for him. “I’m sorry, Ashley. Two hours. Come back in two hours. It’ll be worked out by then.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t work out between us,” Ashley shouted. She shoved the car into reverse and slung gravel backing up. The Cavalier roared off. The two little girls, Erin and Amanda, watched him through the rear window as they sped away.

  He wondered if he’d just signed their death warrants.

  * * *

  Sanborn’s cell phone chirped. He glanced at the caller’s number. His cousin, Vince. Not one to dally, Vince had packed up and got going early in the morning, soon as the evac was ordered. Before the quarantine. Sanborn took the call.

  “It’s happening, Randy. Sons of bitches.”

  “You got your family off the island okay?”

  “Yeah. We’re on Route 19. Seven Humvees just passed us, heading your way.”

  “Vince, you’ve done all you can. Hurry on up to Ocala.”

  “Get out while you can, Randy. In twenty minutes you’ll be stuck.”

  “Can’t do that. I’ll see you in a couple days, okay?”

  “I sure hope so.”

  Sanborn climbed atop his Jeep and trained his binoculars on the mainland. In a few minutes, the Humvees appeared and spread out along the far end of the bridge. He climbed in behind the wheel and drove slowly across. The Humvees had fanned out across the road, blocking both lanes. Some thirty soldiers were setting up orange traffic barricades and blinking lights.

  Sanborn coasted to a stop inches from the barricades and slid out of the vehicle. The soldiers hurriedly donned surgical masks. A young Guardsman hurried toward him, his palm upraised. His insignia identified him as a lieutenant. “Close enough, sir.”

  Sanborn kept coming. The lieutenant swung his M4 carbine about, directly at him. “I said that’s close enough.”

  Sanborn stopped. The kid was nervous, a bank teller turned weekend warrior. Best not to extend his nervousness to his trigger finger. “This is my jurisdiction, son,” Sanborn lied. As police chief, his jurisdiction ended at the Brigands Key end of the bridge. These guys didn’t need to know that. “The hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Two more Guardsmen hurried to the young officer’s side, flanking him, guns ready. He looked relieved. He was younger than them by a good ten years, and ill at ease with command. “Homeland Security has ordered this sector under strict quarantine,” he said. “We’re here to enforce it, sir.”

  “Who are you, Junior?”

  “Lieutenant Louis Fisk, sir. Florida National Guard, 53rd Infantry Brigade.” Fisk puffed up with resolve. There was no doubt why he became a Guardsman. A chance to do something big that didn’t involve getting blown up in a desert.

  “You guys are a political football. You know that?”

  Fisk didn’t answer. Doubt flickered in his eyes.

  “There’s a bitch named Celeste on her way,” Sanborn continued. “And you’re going to trap an island full of people.”

  “Sir, Hurricane Celeste is expected to make landfall near Port St. Joe.”

  “The situation changes by the minute, Fisk. Celeste has turned due east. Are you under orders to sit in your truck at seven feet above sea level when she hits with hundred-and-fifty-mile-an-hour winds and a twenty-foot storm surge? Are you happy knowing you’ve trapped a thousand people on the island?”

  “Sir, I’m assured that the storm will not strike here.”

  “Fine.” Sanborn climbed back into his Jeep, switched on the engine. “Self-sacrifice is a noble thing. Heroic. But take my advice; get your men out of the area by tomorrow morning. After that, it may be too late.” He looked the other Guardsmen in the eyes. “You may strongly want to consider desertion or mutiny at that point. Junior here has no right to order the deaths of civilians and his own troops for a false cause.” He gunned the engine and sped away.

  As he reached the Brigands Key end of the bridge, a movement to the south caught his eye. He stopped to watch. A gleaming white boat, a seventy-five footer emblazoned with the bright red band of the Coast Guard, purred around the end of the island and into the channel. It cruised slowly up the length of the channel. Seven crewmen, all armed and wearing body armor, studied the small town. Their eyes met Sanborn’s.

  The boat continued north, passing under the bridge to the end of the island, and stopped. Two more boats appeared and growled slowly up the channel. One came about and took up a position fifty yards from the dock. The other set up at the southern tip of the island.

  They were small craft, probably rushed up from the station at Yankeetown. Rumor had it that a seriously armed cutter was speeding up from St. Pete.

  A rush of noise startled him. Overhead,
an Army helicopter swooped past, a mere two hundred feet above. It sped over the island and began a long circle out over the Gulf. Two more choppers came in low and fast, settling into broad circling patterns over the north and south ends.

  Brigands Key was cut off. No one could get in. No one could get out.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kyoko pushed open the door of the little restaurant and stepped inside. It was eight at night, but still hot and bright outside and her eyes took their sweet time adjusting.

  Heads turned her way, and the level of conversation dropped a few decibels.

  Feeling a little uneasy, she scanned the room for the remotest and smallest of tables. She spotted it, a little square Formica thing with two chairs, and made a beeline, pretending not to see the white placard sign that commanded her to please wait to be seated.

  She was famished and a bit light-headed from hunger and heat. At least, she hoped that’s all it was.

  She took a seat at the table and pushed the other chair noisily away with her foot. She spread her notebooks and papers over the table. Anyone not getting the message that she didn’t want company was dense indeed.

  And in walked Grant.

  He came straight over and pulled the ejected chair back to the table. “Mind?” he said, sitting before she could answer.

  Kyoko glared. “Apparently not.”

  The waitress, a young, pretty brunette, glanced at them. Grant nodded to her, smiling. She topped off another customer’s coffee and swooped in on them.

  “I’ve been here a couple weeks now,” Grant said. “My advice; whatever the catch of the day is.”

  “That’d be flounder, mister,” the waitress said uneasily.

  “Flounder for the both of us,” Grant said. “And a couple of Cokes.” The waitress jotted it down with a flourish and hurried off.

  Kyoko gave him a sideward look. “Are you always so presumptuous?”