DePresti and Parkowski headed for a grove of mangrove trees along a small decline that she couldn’t see past in the darkness.
He grabbed her hand as they reached the trees and led her through the maze of trunks and branches until suddenly they fell into the water beyond the trees.
The water wasn’t particularly cold, but it still shocked her system.
She could smell a hint of salt right before they hit the water, but it wasn’t the same as when they had traveled underwater, not the same as the ocean. Parkowski wasn’t a hundred percent sure of the geography, but she guessed they were in a brackish estuary or river that ran parallel to the coast to their east.
The water was slightly murky. As she sank, Parkowski opened her eyes to look around.
To her shock, there was a giant twelve-foot alligator on the riverbed not a dozen feet from her.
Parkowski opened her mouth to scream but remembered she was underwater, expelling precious air as a bubble rose to the surface. She closed it quickly.
There wasn't just one alligator, either. She counted at least four of the massive beasts — three on the bottom and a slightly smaller one floating on the surface, nostrils poking out of the water.
This was it, she thought. She was going to die here. Either she was going to be eaten by alligators, or their pursuers were going to execute them on the side of the road.
Parkowski did everything in her power to not panic.
Her boyfriend was next to her, floating near the bottom of the six-foot depth of water. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to panic. She looked at him and, incredibly, he smiled.
Then, he gave a thumbs-up.
It was time to panic. Something was wrong — DePresti was either hallucinating or just completely losing it.
He slowly but deliberately went up for air, then went back down, taking care not to make any sudden movements. Parkowski did the same, filling her tired lungs while making as little of a sound as possible.
When she submerged again, the Aering engineer saw DePresti carefully swim along the side of the bank, to the south, away from their pursuers.
What the hell was he doing? He was going to get them all killed.
A fish — she couldn’t tell what kind — swam in front of her.
It was huge, and thankfully not a threat. If it was, she’d have been in some trouble.
Another one, this one even bigger than the first, swam right by her legs. Parkowski guessed they had to be some kind of grouper, and had to weigh at least twice what she did. There was no way that they were naturally here, this close to the shore, in a mostly saline environment.
How did such a fish come to exist in a small, remote area?
Then, it clicked.
Parkowski smiled when she realized the answer, then followed her boyfriend deeper into the estuary.
It might just get them out of this one.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Parkowski knew why the fish were so big. And why the giant alligators were so docile and uninterested in her. It was the same reason the turtle they had seen while turning around at the gate seemed so big.
They were in a protected area, one of the few spaces in Florida that was completely closed to hunters and fishermen. The Cape and Kennedy were government facilities, closed off to the general public.
The alligators, groupers, and other creatures had no natural predators. They were at the top of their respective food chains.
No humans were there to hurt or kill them.
The alligators didn’t attack Parkowski or DePresti because they didn’t have to. They were well-fed on whatever lived in this brackish river, and unless threatened would remain in their relaxed state.
DePresti had to have known that, hence why he didn’t panic or freak out when he saw them. It just took her a little longer to come to the same realization.
They swam slowly, almost bumping into a juvenile alligator. Seemingly, they weren’t spotted.
Her boyfriend rose to the surface and stayed there, his nose, eyes, and ears above the water. Parkowski did the same. She scanned the area to see if she could see their pursuers or any other threats.
In the faint light from the far-off launch complex, she could barely make out the three figures along the edge of the water. But they were there, just half a football field away, one of whom was swinging around a flashlight.
They were armed.
And they were loud.
“Shit, my ribs hurt like hell,” one of the men — the one she had hit — said loudly. Parkowski heard the words clearly as they traveled well through the crisp late autumn air. He was the one with the flashlight. “Where did they go?”
“I don’t know,” the other bearded man said. He spat, his saliva striking the water with a hiss. “Fuck, man, I can’t believe they got away.”
Parkowski and DePresti remained perfectly still. She didn’t dare breathe. One false move could give away their position to the killers on the bank.
“They got away because you got cocky,” Everson said, his gravelly voice carrying across the water as the man with the light shone it in a random, haphazard pattern. If he hoped to get lucky and find them that way, it probably wasn’t going to work. “Why didn’t you tie them up?”
“Because you didn’t tell us to, boss,” one of the men said. He kicked a rock into the water.
Parkowski saw a movement in the water, a slight ripple that she was just barely able to make out in the dim light.
“Fuck this,” the man said. He raised his weapon — an MP-5, the same submachine gun used by the shooters at the Manhattan Beach pier — and fired a short, jerky burst into the water.
The other goon did the same, running through his whole magazine. The water rippled with waves from the bullets.
“What the fuck?” Everson said.
The first man who had fired shrugged. “Just want to kill them and get this over with.”
“You aren’t going to hit shit,” his boss replied.
Parkowski felt movement in the water. Their captors had poked the proverbial bear. Something bad was about to happen.
“Stop, I hear something,” Everson said carefully.
“I do too,” one of the other men said, “fuck, is it them?”
The two in the water remained still, breathing slowly.
A creature, either a bat or an owl, flew overhead.
Something brushed against Parkowski. Despite her fear, she ignored it. She wasn’t the threat. The people on the bank were. Her heart pulsed as she waited for the next shoe to drop.
“It’s a gator!” one of the men yelled and opened up with his pistol in the direction of the river, using the flashlight to guide his fire. The attacking reptile — the juvenile they had seen — came on fast, much faster than Parkowski had expected.
The other man and Everson opened fire as well, Everson’s pistol giving an unearthly boom that shattered the silence of the historic launch area.
The three of them fired until there were no more bullets in their magazines. Parkowski couldn’t see the alligator, but there was no way it could have survived that. It was probably ripped to shreds.
“Got the fucker,” one of the operator types that had guarded Parkowski in the van said. He turned the flashlight off.
There was a new disturbance in the water, more of a wave than a ripple.
Their captors had disturbed the larger alligators’ sleep.
Parkowski watched in part horror, part satisfaction as the giant alligators that she had seen resting peacefully on the bottom rose to the water’s surface and started swimming slowly but deliberately toward the three men.
They initially didn’t notice. “We smoked him,” one of the goons said, more quiet than his boastful brags before, as he knelt beside the dead animal. The other goon and Everson reloaded their weapons. “That’s what lead will do to you.”