Once, when the two men had stopped to share an MRE, their careful whispering told me they were discussing what to do with me after I had returned from my dive, with or without more gold coins.
There was no mystery about their decision. Arlis and I were liabilities. Even if I returned with what they wanted, they would kill us. They’d probably try to sink our bodies in the lake or drag us into the swamp.
No . . . they wouldn’t risk venturing into the swamp now. Not after what we were now hearing.
I knew it for certain when their bickering stopped long enough for Perry to say, “What the hell is that thing? It sounds like”—he had to think it through—“sounds like the sort of hissing a subway train makes when it stops. Like steam brakes—you know?” He paused for several seconds. “Hear it? Christ Aw-mighty!”
The creature was making yet another unfamiliar noise. It was a distant Hawwwing hiss that echoed through the trees. It reminded me of a kid with a microphone trying to imitate a crowd’s roar in a baseball stadium. The call was brief, and then the thing began to move again.
“Hey, you . . . Ford. What do you think that is?”
I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to give King yet another excuse not to swim out in the inner tube when I went back into the lake.
I said, “Wild hogs, probably. They’re harmless. They root and snort. They’re common around here.”
“Like wild boars, you mean?” Perry asked. He didn’t believe the “harmless” part.
“No,” I said. “I’m talking about farm pigs that escaped and turned wild. They’re not native. And they’re afraid of people. I’m surprised they’ve come this close.”
From the swamp came another rumbling exhalation, then the ratcheting of metallic claws on stone. The animal was getting closer.
Now King was getting spooked, too. The flashlight came on again. It blinded me for a moment, then King began to search the edge of the lake. Water vaporized in gray tendrils, and cattails stood as erect and orderly as scarecrows in a field. I had to roll onto my side to follow the light as he panned along the far shoreline.
“What’s that? See it? The bushes are moving! Right there.” It was Perry’s voice. Maybe he’d taken the light from King. The beam settled on a thicket of wax myrtles and cattails that were backdropped by a lone cypress tree.
Movement in the bushes, along with the noise, stopped instantly as if stilled by the unexpected light. A moment later, I watched an owl the size of a pelican drop from the cypress canopy, its eyes luminous and huge. It made a screeching hiss as it swooped low across the water, then ascended into darkness. The bird was silhouetted briefly by stars, then was gone.
In the fresh silence, I heard King laugh. “You dumb-ass,” he said. “It wasn’t nothing but a big bird. Jesus Christ, Perry, you’d be scared of your own shadow.” He was still laughing, but it was the laughter of nervous relief.
Perry said, “Shut up and tighten them nuts. Let’s see if this old wreck will move.”
I was still looking at the sky, my brain working. An owl wasn’t the source of the distant crashing we’d heard in the swamp. If the two cons believed it, good. But I knew better.
A few minutes later, I listened to a door slam. The truck’s engine started. Lights came on, and the vehicle began to move. Once again, though, King or Perry had made a sloppy decision. I heard the tires hit a marshy area and then I heard them begin to spin. Whoever was driving shifted into reverse, spun the tires faster, then shifted into first gear and accelerated, as if attempting to escape a snowdrift. Back and forth the truck rocked as the tires dug themselves in deeper.
“Stop, you idiot! Stop or you’ll bury her up to the rims!” It was King’s voice, so I knew that Perry was at the wheel.
I heard the door open. There was a long pause of inspection before Perry’s voice whined, “Son of a bitch, why does shit like this always have to happen to me? How bad is it?”
King snapped, “Worse than it would’ve been if you’d taken your damn foot off the gas when I told you. You’re an idiot, you know that?”
As the men argued, my thoughts turned to Arlis. He wasn’t unconscious and he certainly wasn’t asleep. I knew that they had bound his hands and legs again, but they had tied his hands in front of him this time so he could drink when he needed water.
I had hidden the wire cutters and a flashlight under the blanket. If King and Perry left him alone long enough, he could clip the tie wraps and run for it. Or he could even take the truck if Perry was dumb enough to leave the keys in the ignition. It didn’t matter if the truck was stuck. Not with Arlis at the wheel. King and Perry didn’t realize the vehicle had four-wheel drive or the tires wouldn’t be spinning now.
I thought about that for a moment. I wanted Arlis out of harm’s way, but I couldn’t risk him taking the truck. Not now. Without the truck, King and Perry’s plan to drive to freedom with a load of gold would collapse. They would kill me where I lay, then leave on foot.
I raised my voice and said, “Cut me loose and I’ll show you what the problem is.”
“The problem with what, Jock-o? You keep your mouth buttoned until I tell you to speak.”
I said, “The truck has four-wheel drive. You’ve got to shift into low and lock the hubs. It’s not that hard, but you’ve got to know how to do it.”
Perry said, “Shit, that’s right. It’s got four-wheel drive, it says it right on the side.”
King didn’t sound convincing when he told Perry, “I knew that! That’s what I was trying to tell you, numbnuts. If you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t have gotten stuck in the first place. Use the four-wheel drive, she’ll climb right out of there.”
I started to tell Perry that King was lying as usual but stopped in midsentence because I heard yet another unexpected sound.
This time, though, it wasn’t an animal.
The sound came from the far, far distance, in the direction of the swamp, but it was more muffled, barely audible. It was a shrill, two-fingered whistle, a series of piercing notes that were absorbed by the dense tree canopy.
The notes had a familiar rhythm. Or was I imagining it?
I had been facing the truck and so I rolled onto my other side. I moved my head, ears searching, hoping to hear the whistle once again. As I lay there, I sorted through alternative explanations. Screech owls are common in Florida swamps, but what I’d heard was not the mellow trill of the eastern screech owl. No, someone was out there—a person, definitely a person this time. I’d never learned to whistle through my fingers, but I knew a lot of people who could—Tomlinson among them.
Was it possible that Tomlinson was signaling me from the swamp? It made no sense. If he and Will had somehow escaped from the lake, they would have hiked back to the truck. Unless . . . unless . . .
I came up with only two explanations: If it was Tomlinson, he was either injured and unable to move or he was trapped somewhere beneath the ground.
It was a startling possibility. If he and boy were somewhere beneath the surface, even a shrill whistle would be almost inaudible. Water conducts sound more efficiently than air, but that didn’t apply if Will and Tomlinson were beneath ten or fifteen feet of sand and limestone.
Suddenly, the impossible seemed plausible . . . even reasonable. I had read of at least one account of a similar incident. A female cave diver had survived underwater for several hours, only occasionally screaming for help, because she didn’t want to deplete the few inches of air she’d found at the top of the cave where she was trapped.
I continued to listen, hoping for confirmation. The wind had shifted. It was freshening now, a chill breeze from the northeast. The wind seemed to brighten the stars as it moved across the lake and through the cypress canopy. After several minutes of silence, the wind carried once again a distinctive staccato series of notes.