I could have awakened the dead with all the noise I made thrashing through the underbrush, but since Molly and I were the only residents at present, it didn’t seem to matter.
At Molly’s cottage, a single light still burned in her bedroom window. I stood on the sand under it, a hand of thatch palm tickling my chin. ‘Molly!’
Molly’s worried face appeared like a Halloween mask in the window. ‘Hannah! What the heck are you doing out there?’
‘Come out on your porch. There’s something going on at the Tamarind Tree Resort that I think you need to see.’
While Molly slipped into a bathrobe, I walked around her house and climbed the steps on to her porch. By the time her glass doors slid open, I was already checking out the activity across the way. ‘There’s more lights, now,’ I whispered. ‘I think they’re lining them up along the runway.’ I turned to my friend in the dark. ‘Crazy bastards are going to land a plane! I’d bet my IRA on it!’
Molly carried binoculars, too. ‘Something similar was going on a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn’t as clear an evening then. The only thing I was sure of was the plane landing. That was hard to miss.’
‘A couple of weeks ago? When was that exactly?’
‘About the time…’ she gasped. ‘Oh, Hannah, how can I have been so dense? This must have been what Frank Parker saw!’ She laid the binoculars in her lap. ‘It’s got to be drugs. Why else would you try to land an airplane in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Like dropping an elephant on a postage stamp.’
‘And why tonight?’ she continued, raising the binoculars to her eyes for another look.
‘I think that’s easy.’ I picked up my iPhone, brought up the screen, and flicked open the moon phase web application. I tapped in the date. The crescent moon would appear tomorrow. And twenty-eight days ago, on August 1…
I rotated the display so Molly could see it. ‘No moon. A good night to be out if you’re up to mischief. You can’t see Poinciana Cove from Hawksbill settlement, and they probably think nobody’s at home over here. The power being out is a bonus. You can count on most people sticking close to home, at least until the power comes back on.’
I set my iPhone down on the table where the display eerily illuminated a polished conch shell. ‘Do you have pencil and paper?’
Molly rose from her chair. ‘I’ll go get it.’
‘My inclination is to hop in Pro Bono and toot on over there,’ I said, only half in jest.
‘Oh, that would be a grand idea!’ Molly scolded. ‘They’d hear us coming the minute we left your dock!’ She returned a few minutes later with a candlestick, balanced it carefully on the porch rail and settled into her chair, the notebook on her lap. ‘When did you first notice the lights?’
‘Ten fifteen, or thereabouts.’
Molly’s pencil moved across the page. ‘How many lights, and what did they seem to be doing?’
As Molly wrote, I tried to recall everything I’d seen from the porch of Windswept before coming over to wake her up. Between the two of us, we recorded a timeline all the way up to 11:08 p.m. at which point my cellphone battery died and the digital clock on its face winked out.
So I’m not exactly sure what time it was when we first heard the drone of an engine.
I picked up my binoculars, ready for action. ‘Here comes the plane!’
The hum of the engine became a thrum. From the volume and direction of the sound, I figured the pilot was navigating along the island chain, aided by lights in the settlements below. I wondered if he depended on those lights, or if he had a GPS. If not, his job would be tricky, as large portions of the islands would be darker than usual tonight.
To be on the safe side, I blew out the candle just as the airplane buzzed the tops of Molly’s trees, aiming for the makeshift runway less than half a mile away.
‘Damn! I wish these things would stop wiggling.’ Molly leaned forward, elbows propped up on the porch rail, trying to stabilize the binoculars. ‘What are they doing now?’
‘The plane’s on the ground. Wait a minute! They’ve started up some sort of portable generator light. I can almost make out…’
‘I got it now. What are those people doing?’
We watched, transfixed, as six or seven men swarmed over the runway removing packages from the airplane, loading them on a dune buggy, and driving them down to the beach.
‘It is drugs,’ I said. ‘Gotta be. Cocaine, most likely. Hell! I wish I had a night-vision camera!’
‘Shouldn’t we call somebody?’
‘Even if the power were on, we couldn’t use the radio, or we’d tip them off.’ I reached for my iPhone. ‘Oh, damn. Not much use without a charger.’
‘What are they doing with the packages?’
‘They’re stashing them underwater.’ I told Molly about my visit to the pier, and about the rectangular impressions I’d seen in the sea grass.
‘How on earth do they keep the drugs dry?’
‘I’m certainly not an expert in that department, Molly. Wrap them up good in plastic, I guess.’
‘What happens next?’
‘I don’t know. You’d think they’d fly the cocaine straight into the States without stopping here first.’
‘Maybe it’s easier to fly a plane into the Bahamas than it is into the States. DEA and the Coast Guard have really been cracking down if what I see on CNN is true.’
‘Maybe they’re putting drugs on the plane!’
We watched all the to-ings and fro-ings, taking careful notes.
By midnight, whatever they’d been doing was finished. The dune buggy disappeared, the lights were extinguished, and everything was as it had been before. Dark and quiet.
‘Let’s go over in the morning. Check out the pier.’
‘We can take my boat,’ Molly said.
‘I don’t mind driving.’
‘My outboard is quieter than yours,’ she said, sealing the deal. ‘When do you want to leave?’
‘Can you be ready at dawn? I’d like to get over there just as the sun is coming up. There’ll be less chance of being spotted.’ I grinned. ‘Especially since everyone seems to have been up partying so late.’
‘We need to tell Gator what we’re doing.’
‘We’ll tell Gator after we check it out.’
I was awake before the sun, stunned into consciousness at five thirty a.m. by the squeal of my wind-up alarm clock. The power was still out, but at least I could see in the gray light of dawn.
I got dressed, fed Dickie, then went over to wake up Molly. She was already up. When I entered her kitchen the aroma of fresh coffee nearly made me swoon. The woman was a magician. ‘How did you do that?’ I asked.
‘Gas stove.’
She handed me a paper cup. ‘So you can take it with you,’ and poured a cup for herself. She opened the refrigerator, grabbed the milk and closed the door quickly, so that as little of the cool air would escape as possible. ‘I’ll run the generator when I get back. It’ll be fine,’ she said, and repeated the procedure to put the milk back in.
She pushed a box across the counter. ‘Cinnamon bun?’
‘Where did you get them?’
‘Lola’s. Made a trip over to Man-O-War the other day.’
Lola’s cinnamon buns – and her bread and her rolls – are on everyone’s Best Of list. Heaven is Lola’s buns and coffee. We walked down the dock, sipping coffee and munching.
Good Golly’s white rubber hull glistened with dew. Molly grabbed a towel and dried our seats, then I hopped down and joined her. She started the engine, backed slowly out of her slip, and soon we were on our way toward Hawksbill Cay.
Molly didn’t approach Poinciana Cove directly. We aimed for the settlement, then slowed the engine almost to an idle as we eased around the point, cutting as close to shore as possible.