Rising Storm: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 11) Read online

  Published by DOWN ISLAND PRESS, 2017

  Lady’s Island, SC

  Copyright © 2017 by Wayne Stinnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication Data

  Stinnett, Wayne

  Rising Storm/Wayne Stinnett

  p. cm. - (A Jesse McDermitt novel)

  ISBN-10: 0-9981285-6-2

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9981285-6-6

  Down Island Press, LLC

  Graphics by Wicked Good Book Covers

  Edited by Larks & Katydids

  Final Proofreading by Donna Rich

  Interior Design by Write Dream Repeat Book Design

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Most of the locations herein are also fictional, or are used fictitiously. However, I take great pains to depict the location and description of the many well-known islands, locales, beaches, reefs, bars, and restaurants throughout the Florida Keys and the Caribbean, to the best of my ability.

  Table of Contents

  Titlepage

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Dedication

  Read More Jesse McDermitt

  Maps

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  More By Wayne Stinnett

  For some time now, people have compared my books and my characters to those of the great John D. MacDonald and his Travis McGee. You people are nuts. If I were to someday become half the wordsmith that he was, I would feel quite fortunate.

  However, I’ve been a huge fan of the Travis McGee series since I discovered it as a teen. I’ve read all twenty-one McGee novels many times over. My collection is worn, with dog-eared pages. So, obviously, my writing has been influenced by MacDonald’s works. Recently, when I began to reread the series—I hadn’t read them in over fifteen years—I discovered that he influenced more than my writing. MacDonald and McGee had a part in my becoming the man I am today.

  One day, I thought to myself, “What if Travis and the Busted Flush were still around?”

  This story is a nod to the greatest storyteller I know. If you’ve read The Deep Blue Good-By, you will see a few similarities in this story. I used some of the same building blocks that MacDonald used in building his story of lust and greed run rampant, then put Jesse and his friends in the middle of it. I hope you enjoy it.

  My wife and I chased this story around for several weeks before I started writing it. God bless her, she listens to my ideas for hours, day after day, as I unfold the plot in my mind and through words. She adds a few suggestions here and there, and follows my ramblings better than anyone could. She holds me accountable when I go too far or not far enough. Without her, my words would be empty.

  My beta reading team consists of a mish-mash of people from many occupations, locations, and acquaintance. (There are over twenty of them, but often the time I have between finishing the manuscript and getting it to my editor is short, so not all of them can take part.) Together we hash out details—especially the technical stuff—in almost real time, in a private Facebook group. Some of these people I’ve known since I was a teen, and some are fans and new friends with specific technical experience and knowledge. Without them, my books would read like See Spot Run. I rely on their wealth of knowledge to polish my stories to a bright shine.

  For this project, I owe a great deal of thanks to Dana Vihlen, Glenn Hibbert, Katy McKnight, Marc Lowe, Tom Crisp, Mike Ramsey, Debbie Kocol, Dave Parsons, Charles Hofbauer, Karl Schulte, Ron Ramey, Dr. John Trainer, and Alan Fader.

  Many thanks to musicians Eric Stone and Chuck Wicks, for the use of some of their lyrics herein. If you found my books through ads on the Tradewinds Radio network, Eric was instrumental in getting me together with managing director Dan Horn, who in turn got me on board with Pyrate Radio, which will launch shortly after this book is published. I am now part (a very small part) owner of Pyrate Radio network, which will feature emerging trop-rock artists and long-time favorites. Even Bob Bitchin, the creator of Latitudes and Attitudes Magazine and current owner/publisher of Cruising Outpost Magazine, is part of this team. One day, I’d love to sit down with this guy over a bottle of rum.

  To the memory of John D. MacDonald.

  His writing pushed a naive sixteen-year-old kid to drive to Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, to find slip F-18 and meet Travis McGee aboard the Busted Flush. The kid was disappointed. But MacDonald had lit a flame that would last for forty years, until the kid inside me told the first story about Jesse McDermitt.

  “Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn’t blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won’t cheat, then you know he never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset.”

  - John D. MacDonald

  If you’d like to receive my twice a month newsletter for specials, book recommendations, and updates on coming books, please sign up on my website: www.waynestinnett.com

  The Charity Styles Caribbean Thriller Series

  Merciless Charity

  Ruthless Charity

  Reckless Charity

  The Jesse McDermitt Caribbean Adventure Series

  Fallen Out

  Fallen Palm

  Fallen Hunter

  Fallen Pride

  Fallen Mangrove

  Fallen King

  Fallen Honor

  Fallen Tide

  Fallen Angel

  Fallen Hero

  The Gaspar’s Revenge Ship’s Store is now open. There you can purchase all kinds of swag related to my books.

  WWW.GASPARS-REVENGE.COM

  The sun was hot, even though it was a fairly cool day. All around me, glaring white sand bars punctuated the shallow, gin-clear water, and the cobalt sky hung above it. The yellow sand lay just inches below the water’s surface, and the bleached white sand rose only inches above it; together they created a swirl of yellow and white, like some sort of salty Rorschach image.

  Things had quieted to a level befitting the latitude in the last few weeks, as things here tend to do. Excitement levels are kinda like the weather. If you don’t like it, just wait a little while and it’ll change. Normally we see long periods of calm before the next storm.

  Same with the weather.

  The closer you get to the equator—what we call the little latitudes—the more laid-back the lifestyle. We don’t worry about heavy coats, galoshes, gloves, snow tires, furnaces, or the like. I guess that leaves us
with more time to ponder the important intricacies of life.

  Bad things happen anywhere and everywhere; no place is immune anymore, not even paradise. But bad things seldom happen to most people, and between those sorry events there are days, weeks, and months of relative boredom.

  I’ve never been one to get bored. As a kid, if I said I was bored, Dad—or more likely Mom—would quickly find something for me to do to alleviate the boredom.

  What many call boredom, I call tranquility.

  Friends have asked me on occasion how I can sit for hours contemplating nothing more than the scudding clouds over the shallow flats before a squall. Or just watch the setting sun transform the day to night, for the sheer pleasure of the colors it creates in the sky.

  I often find myself mesmerized by the day-to-day life in the shallows of the back-country. These are the things I live for. I’ve seen enough violence and mayhem to last a few lifetimes.

  Sometimes, I let my mind drift—just let it wander around the Glades, Shark River, or Ten Thousand Islands, the area where I grew up. Then I’ll let it drift back in time and meander south, down to the Keys. I can see this area the way it must have looked hundreds of years ago, before it was discovered—drained, divided, and destroyed. Back to a time when the only humans to see this part of the world were the tribes of people that lived along the southwest coast of Florida, before the Spanish arrived.

  The typical tidal pool explorer doesn’t often witness any momentous life-changing events—at least not in his own tidal pool. Watching a couple of hermit crabs duking it out over a vacant conch shell, I thought it might be possible that the outcome could mean life or death for one of the little crustaceans. But it doesn’t usually end up that way. The loser can find a new shell most of the time.

  As for how the hermit battle outcome might affect other lives on the shallow waters that surround my island? It pretty much goes unnoticed.

  Except by me, standing in knee-deep water in a small pool half a mile from my house. At high tide, it’s a deep spot in the shallows and the fish come in to feed. Once the tide retreats, the pool becomes landlocked, surrounded by blinding white sand and safe from marauding predators. It’s at low tide that the little crabs come out.

  Such is the struggle of day-to-day life in a Florida Keys tidal pool.

  Leaving the hermit crabs to figure it out on their own, I continued northeast, walking across the sand bar then wading into the shallows once more. Walking in shallow water means doing the stingray shuffle to avoid hidden dangers.

  Finn followed behind me. He’d been barbed by a small ray just a couple of weeks before. Fortunately, the ray had been a juvenile, and the sharp barb barely broke the skin of Finn’s lower left shoulder. I’d been trying to teach him, cautioning him to walk behind me. He seemed to understand why now. Tough lessons are the best learned.

  We soon reached a cut that encircles an island about three-quarters of a mile from my house. Walking to it at low tide requires a circuitous route, though, and the walk is over a mile. We had to angle northeast to avoid the deeper water along the edge of Harbor Channel. I swim to the island and back three times a week, following the deeper water at the edge of the drop-off. But today I needed to walk out here.

  Lifting a small, water-proof container up to my chest, I waded across the cut. The water deepened for a few steps. Twice a day the tide rises and floods the back-country. Water rushing around the little islands sometimes carves a narrow moat around many of these natural barriers. Then, twice a day, the tide falls, draining the back-country and doing the same thing in reverse, scouring a shallow trench around the islands.

  Finn swam across the narrow cut, splashed ashore, and went running off along the narrow beach. He stopped to sniff at something in the mangrove roots. Then, deeming it worthy, he hiked his leg and peed on whatever he’d smelled there.

  I followed him as he trotted along the beach, stopping occasionally to sniff or to listen to something. On the far side of this little island is a tiny cove, not big enough to hold even a kayak. It’s generous to call it such, but for lack of a better word, it’s a cove.

  I used this island, just twenty or thirty yards from Harbor Channel, for my swims because it was a good distance. A mile-and-a-half swim at a fast pace is by far a better full-body exercise than running twice that distance—and it’s much easier on the knees, an important consideration when one is in one’s mid-forties. At high tide, the trench around the island is deep enough for swimming, which breaks the monotony of simply turning around and returning. At low tide, like now, I’d turn around in deeper water out by the channel.

  We waded along the edge of the little puddle. Like the earlier tidal pool, it was almost completely landlocked by the receding tide, but here little wavelets spilled over the sand and dissipated in the slightly deeper water of the cove.

  A fallen palm lay on the far side of the cove. Its trunk extended toward the island’s interior and the palm fronds, brown and slowly rotting, lay in the water. On shore, the big root ball was lifted from a depression, cantilevered, and held above its hole by another dead tree trunk. The newer one on top was from a sudden thunderstorm that had blown up the week before, causing a micro-burst of wind like a mini-tornado. The older trunk it was resting on had probably been there for decades.

  Standing beside the depression where the root ball had once been, I looked around the rest of the island’s interior. There wasn’t much. A small stand of mangroves partially blocked the view of the water on the other side. The island was only about fifty feet across, and the spot where this palm had stood seemed to be the highest ground.

  Placing the box next to the depression, I stooped and used my hands to start digging a little sand out of the bottom, deepening and widening the hole. Finn, curious about what I was doing, stood across from me with his head cocked at an angle, staring down into the hole.

  “No clams in here, buddy,” I told him.

  He whined in response, but nosed through the sand I’d dug out anyway.

  After dropping the box into the hole, I covered it with sand and laid a loose palm frond over it. Even if the tide reached the box, what was inside would stay dry.

  “That takes care of that,” I told Finn. “You wanna walk back, or swim?”

  He barked once by way of reply and jumped toward the water in halting lunges, looking back to see if I was following.

  “You know the way home,” I said, following him into deeper water.

  In waist-deep water, Finn was already swimming effortlessly in circles. He was a mix-breed yellow lab and perfectly at home in the water. Labs have a thick undercoat of very fine hair that traps air and repels water, making them virtually waterproof and buoyant. They have a webbing of skin between their toes that enables them to swim very efficiently, and their thick, otter-like tails act as both a rudder and paddle, holding the tail one way to turn and wagging it back and forth to help swim straight. These are all great qualities for an island dog that spends a lot of time in the water.

  I dove under, swam a few yards, and surfaced next to him. His yellow-white hair was matted down like a seal’s. Together, we turned and followed the edge of the channel back toward my house.

  I live in a stilt house on one of the smaller islands on the south side of the Content Keys. From my island it’s five miles, as the gull flies, to the nearest paved road on northern Big Pine Key. It’s a good six miles by boat, weaving through the shallow cuts and passes, around dozens of islands and sand bars. The Contents are a small group of uninhabited islands on the edge of the Gulf. My house is about twenty miles west-northwest of Boot Key Harbor in Marathon, where I once lived aboard my boat, Gaspar’s Revenge. Now she’s docked under my house.

  Aside from the Gulf of Mexico to the north, this small cluster of islands is surrounded by shallow water, where only locals dare to navigate. Unless you’re in a kayak, or know your way around the maze of unmarked channels, the only way to get to my island is to come down Harbor Channel. It’s a na
tural waterway that opens into the Gulf and runs nearly straight for about three miles to my island, where it turns south and disappears into a network of cuts and passes in the shallows of the back-country. I always know when I have visitors, long before they can even see my house.

  Finn’s a strong swimmer with great stamina, and I don’t have to hold back very much. Over a long swim, like I do every other day to stay in shape, he would need to stop to rest at least once. He’s also easily distracted, being at that age where labs are still puppies at heart, but physically full grown. So, on my exercise swims, he stays home.

  But since this was Saturday, this was just a fun swim; we stopped several times along the way to explore. Finn has a passion for play. Splash water at him and he tries to catch the biggest drops in his mouth. Another passion is clams. He enjoys diving down to dig them up in the shallows. There aren’t a lot of clams in the Keys, but the Contents are more a part of the Gulf of Mexico than the archipelago.

  He soon found some, though I had no idea how, so I stopped and waded to the sandbar to survey our surroundings. Sitting on the sand, I could see the deep, blue-gray water of the channel clearly. It stood out in sharp contrast to the sandy yellow bottom of the flats and the blinding white sand bars exposed by the low tide. To the southeast, where the channel turned and disappeared, I could barely make out the low pier that jutted out from my island. On the highest tides, it was only a few inches above the water and nearly invisible at a distance. My house was shielded from view by the taller mangroves and buttonwoods, mostly impenetrable, that surrounded it on three sides.

  Finn was laying on the sand, opening and consuming his collection of tasty snacks. He stopped, lifted his head, and stared off to the south, ears and head cocked quizzically.

  I’d learned to trust his hearing better than my own, and looked out over the flats in the same direction. “You hear something down that way?”

  Whining softly, Finn left his last clam uneaten on the sand bar and trotted to where I sat. Standing, I could hear it too. An outboard engine was moving slowly up through the confusion of narrow channels, working toward us. Higher than idle speed, so it was either someone who knew their way or someone about to run aground.