John jerked her back on the boat so hard it made her teeth click. A shark’s open mouth clacked shut on empty air where she had been an instant before.
“God o mighty!” Hunter said, and she looked at John wide-eyed.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” They returned to the gunwale as Randall inched the boat close enough for them to grab the floating man and pull him on board.
&n
bsp; His right side was shredded, and he was dead. They turned to the others still in the water and pulled out three more who were unhurt.
Sharks still circled among the people. Randall cut the motor and used a boathook like a harpoon. He hit a seven-foot long bull shark in the gills. The fish slashed its tail, throwing water on Randall, and left the area trailing a thin ribbon of blood.
Hunter looked at the freighter’s deck, where people still emerged from the hold and hurried off the vessel. How many people can it hold? She thought.
A short, stocky black man dressed far better than the others on the ship, talked on a phone as he walked toward the bow. She pointed at him and said, “That’s a smuggler. Can you get me to shore?”
Randall steered the boat and said, “I’ll try, but its tricky here.” He inched forward several feet, then felt the boat’s bottom slide on sand. “That’s it.”
“Okay,” Hunter said, and hopped out of the boat into knee-deep water. John followed and they pushed to the bank, then climbed out by grabbing handfuls of grass on top of the four-foot ledge. She looked for the short man, but didn’t see him.
John touched her arm and pointed, “There.” Hunter took off like a shot.
A midnight blue Lincoln stopped on the nearby street and the man jogged to it. He opened the back door and turned to look at Hunter and John as they ran across the grass.
His eyes were black holes.
Hunter broke stride when she saw them. He slid in the car and it sped away with a squeal of tires.
John said, “Did you get the plates?”
“No. Did you see his eyes?”
“Scared the crap out of me.”
“Me, too. He won’t be hard to describe to the police.”
Randall trotted to them and said, “I don’t know about you two, but that’s about all the adventure I want for today.”
***
They stayed while the Border Patrol, Fort Lauderdale Police, and Coast Guard went over the scene. Bob Redus, the Border Patrol Assistant Chief that John and Randall knew from a previous case, said hello, then said to Hunter, “Hey, Kincaid. How are you doing? You down here on vacation?”
“Yeah, these two wanted to show me how to relax in Florida.”
“Some relaxing, huh?”
John asked, “You two know each other?”
Bob said, “We worked a couple of details together over the years. The last one was in Arizona.”
“Yeah. That was a good one. Is ICE coming on this?”
“Yep, they should be here in a few. A fellow named Bob Wallis is lead on it.”
“How’s he?”