Grayson released the bale on his rod. He could feel the power, and with good reason. His saltwater fishing gear could have whipped a hammerhead. Rod thick as his thumb. Microfiber line testing 150 pounds. Treble hooks in size 14/0.
"Get good 'n' ready before you cast," the guide said. "When there's a hook up, that line's gonna pop like a rifle shot."
"Bring it on," said Grayson.
Once an endangered species, the Florida alligator had grown in population to a robust million-plus--one for every eighteen people in Florida. Firearms were nonetheless illegal in gator hunting, except for the handheld .44 bang stick that delivered a death blow directly to the brain. Experienced hunters used a variety of weapons to snag their prey, from crossbows to snares, harpoons to slings. McFay was partial to a saltwater rod and reel, which allowed him to catch and release small gators.
Over eleven feet and--bang--lights out.
Grayson cast his line into the darkness. With a sniper's precision, he placed it just a few yards away from the glowing red dots at the surface. It was dead-center of the narrow channel that cut through razor-sharp reeds of ten-foot saw grass. Feeling for tension, he slowly retrieved the line, not sure what to expect. Clearly, however, that was no largemouth bass peering back at him through the night. Out there--all around him--was an unending fight for survival that bordered on prehistoric. He had witnessed that fight with his own eyes, and in most dramatic fashion, right before sundown. Grayson was visiting Florida on official business, trying to learn more about the latest threat to the Everglades--pythons. In the first five years of the new century, more than a million had been imported by the United States for commercial sale. Nearly half of them went to Miami. An alarming number of those were now thriving in the Everglades, growing to over twenty feet in length and rivaling gators for the top of the food chain.
Grayson felt the hook drag. With the angler's touch, he worked the line and set it firmly.
A growl in the pitch darkness made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The noise that followed was like a bus dropping into a lake. Line screamed off the big spinning reel as something truly gigantic thrashed amid the water lettuce, lily pads, and pickerel weed.
"Coming right at the boat!" McFay yelled.
"Under the boat!" Grayson shouted back.
Bubbles and mud boiled up from below as Grayson worked the bent double rod around the bow.
"Out on starboard side!" said McFay.
The mighty tail slammed the wooden hull as the gator motored away. McFay popped from his seat to help his client screw down the drag, and off they went on a gator-powered sleigh ride in a twenty-foot boat.
"Bigger 'n twelve feet!" shouted McFay. "Hold on!"
Grayson's arm suddenly felt numb. Sweat ran from his brow.
"I . . . can't," he said weakly.
The tingling gave way to a sharp pain in his chest that shot all the way up to his jaw. The fishing rod slipped from his hands and sailed over the bow. Grayson lost his balance and tumbled backward.
"McFay!" he called, but he was beyond his guide's grasp. In the blink of an eye he went over the side, headfirst into the marsh.
Suddenly, spotlights shone from virtually every direction. It was as if someone had flipped a giant switch, the way the channel lit up. Voices called to him. Grayson was kicking, flailing, and screaming for help, but it was nothing compared to the noises around him--ominous splashes, echoes of the one he'd heard upon hooking that bull gator. Two more, five more, ten more.
Gators!
They were fleeing the barrage of bright lights.
Or maybe it was the Secret Service agents diving in to rescue him.
The life jacket should have kept him afloat, but he felt himself sinking into the muck. Or being dragged down. The pain in his chest was now crushing, and he struggled to overcome it, but his mind was swirling. His body felt stiff and unresponsive. His only choice, it seemed, was to respect nature, to become one with black water, to be the third and weakest leg in a bizarre and deadly triangle. One angry gator. Untold pythons.
And Phillip Grayson--the vice president of the United States.
"Sir, give me your hand!" he heard a man shout.
But he couldn't lift his arm. He couldn't turn his head to look. He couldn't move his mouth to speak.
Vice President Grayson couldn't even breathe.
There was that intense brightness again--the emergency spotlights, or some other kind of light. And then everything was black.
Chapter
3
It was the big one. The other side of the mountain. The downward slope. Half dead. Four-oh.
Forty.
Jack Swyteck was born on December 7, exactly twenty-five years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He'd been stepping on land mines ever since.
"I cant afford this," said Jack.
He and his best friend, Theo Knight, were in the chrome
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and-glass showroom at Classic Cars of Miami, standing beside a fully restored 1968 Mustang GT-390 Fastback. Jack was on his heels, reeling from sticker shock.
"You can't afford not to do this," said Theo.
"I have no desire to make a big deal out of forty."
"Dude, I said it before: 'There's two kinds of people in this world--risk takers and shit takers. Someday, you gotta decide which you're gonna be when you grow up. And today is that day."
The Mustang's Highland Green finish gleamed beneath the halogen lights. Jack could hardly wait to see it in the south Florida sun.
It had been four years since Jack's beloved 1966 Mustang convertible with pony interior had gone up in flames at the hands of some pissed-off Colombians who had their own special way of getting his attention. Theo was at Jack's side as the wrecker towed the burned-out shell away---just as he'd been there for Jack's divorce, Jack's run for his life in Cote d'lvoire, and everything in between. Theo was just a teenager when they'd first met, the youngest inmate on Florida's death row. It took years of legal maneuvering and last-minute appeals, but Jack finally proved Theo's innocence. Becoming the best of friends with a badass from Miami's toughest African American gang had not been part of jack's plans, but Theo had vowed to pay his lawyer back.
Sometimes, Jack wished he would call it even already.
"You don't think this smacks of a midlife crisis?" said Jack.
"Dude, your whole life is a crisis."
The car salesman returned with the keys in hand. Jack's girlfriend, Andie, was with him. She was smiling--a good sign.
Jack had met FBI agent Andie Henning under the toughest of circumstances: she was tracking a serial kidnapper with his sights on Jack's girlfriend. She was now officially Jack's longest steady since his divorce. Even more important--for present purposes, anyway--any woman trained in hostage negotiation had to be able to cut one hell of a deal on a used car.
"Here's your number," she said, as she handed him a slip of paper.
Jack checked it. "Nice work," he said.
"Don't say I never did anything for you."
"So, let's see the Mustang run, shall we?" said the salesman.
Andie glanced at the cramped, fold-down backseat and said, "You boys have fun."
"You're not coming?" said Jack.
"I have a haircut appointment. I think it's time for that short, professional look, don't you?"
Jack was speechless. He loved Andie's hair--long and raven black. With her amazing green eyes and high, Native American cheekbones, it made her a captivating, exotic beauty.
"You're going to cut off your hair?" he said with trepidation.
"Naturally. It's what women do when they--wait a minute. I'm sorry. You're turning forty, not me. Whew, what a relief."
"Very funny."
"Love you," she said.
The L word had entered their relationship in August. Having watched it slowly evaporate from the vocabulary of his first marriage, Jack didn't take it lightly.
"Love you too."
He kissed her good-bye, and it was just Jack, Theo, and their own little piece of automobile history.
Theo snatched the keys from the salesman. "Let's roll," he said.
With the push of a button, the salesman opened the showroom door, and then he climbed in the backseat. Theo settled behind the custom leather-grip steering wheel as if the car were made for him.
"Shouldn't I be driving?" said Jack.
Theo glared. "I'm in the bed naked, about to have sex with Beyonce Knowles, and you're telling me to move over so you can take a nap?"
"What?"
"It's a test drive, Swyteck. We ain't just kickin' the tires here."
It was one of the things Jack loved about Theo. He could hurl insults to your face and still make you laugh.
Jack rode shotgun and, with Theo's turn of the key, smiled at the sound of a perfectly tuned V8. He felt the vibe as the car rolled slowly out of the showroom, and Jack lowered his window. It was one of those mornings that screamed "convertible"--seventy-two degrees, blue skies, not a cloud in sight--but for every perfect December day in Miami there was hell to pay in August. One leaky canvas top on a vintage automobile with crappy air-conditioning was enough in Jack's lifetime.
The showroom garage door closed automatically behind them, and Theo burned rubber out of the parking lot.
"Easy on the new tires," said the salesman.
"Sorry," said Jack, as if it were his fault.
Theo didn't apologize. He just beat it up U
. S
. 1.
The salesman made his pitch over the roar of the engine.
"This baby isn't quite show quality," he said, "but it's a dead ringer for the modified Mustang Steve McQueen drove in the Bullitt movie. Highland Green paint. Black interior. Three
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ninety big block engine pushing four hundred horsepower. I've met dozens of Mustang know-it-alls who swear it was a Shelby flying over the hills of San Francisco in the famous chase scene, but it was a fastback, just like this one. Which is a good thing for you. A restored Shelby in this condition would set you back well into six figures."
Theo downshifted and stopped at the red light. A couple of fit young women clad in running shorts and breathable tank tops were jogging in place at the curb, waiting for the walk signal. Theo revved the engine as they passed in the crosswalk. The Latina with long legs smiled and waved. Jack waved back.
Theo grabbed Jack's arm with enough force to break it.
"Never wave at chicks."
"Oh, come on. Andie is not going to get upset over that."
"Got nothin' to do with Andie. Mustang Rule Number One: You don't wave at chicks. Period."
"But she waved at me," said Jack.
"Don't matter. You just look, nod kind of cool-like, and say Wassup?"
"How is she supposed to hear me if I'm sitting inside a car?"
"She can see your lips move."
"She can also see me wave."
"If she sees your lips move, her mind hears 'Wassup?' If she sees you wave, she hears 'Hey there, Lieutenant Dan: it's me, Forrest. Forrest Gump!' So, don't wave. Ever. Got it?"
"Got it."
The light changed and the Mustang launched like a rocket. Jack switched on the radio.
The salesman leaned forward and said, "The sound system is obviously not original, but you've still got your AM dial if you want that 1960s experience."
Jack tried to find music, but the AM band was mostly Spanish talk radio. At the left end of the dial, an English-language news station caught his attention. The reporter had a decided urgency to his tone: "--is no official word yet, but Associated Press is reporting that Vice President Grayson was unconscious when emergency responders airlifted him from a private refuge near Everglades National Park and transported him to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami."
"Music," said Theo.
"No, wait."
"Mustang Rule Number Two," said Theo, but Jack cut him off.
"I'm serious. Shut up."
The reporter on the scene continued: "The vice president spent all day Friday in the Everglades with a special blue-ribbon commission that is studying twenty-first-century threats to the ecosystem. This morning he was on a guided hunting trip on privately owned land when, approximately thirty minutes before sunrise, something went terribly wrong. Of course, it is widely known that Vice President Grayson has a history of heart trouble. He suffered two heart attacks in his forties, and two years ago he spent his fifty-second birthday in the hospital with chest pains. We can only speculate as to whether today's emergency was health related or some kind of accident. At this point, information is scarce. The hospital has released no comment, except to confirm that the vice president is there. And this area of western Miami -
Dade County where the incident occurred is very isolated, as you might well imagine. We're told that the other members of the vice president's hunting party are being transported back to a private residence in Key Largo, where Vice President Grayson was staying with friends. We re not sure how many hunters were in the party, but we hope to talk to them and bring additional details to you just as soon as we can."