There was no moon to speak of, a slender cut that chisled shafts of light through the limbs of the live oaks and created quiet shadows and sequined reflections on the surface of the water. Turner Lockett, worn, grizzled, and looking older than his forty years, sat in his boat and looked toward the mouth of the Palachacola River. He was wearing a black rain suit—for camouflage rather than protection—and hip waders. His face was blackened with charcoal from the fire hole in front of his trailer. The others laughed at his caution, but it didn’t bother him in the least. Nothing much did, especially other people.
Although there was no human sound, there was little silence on the river. A light breeze tickled the dried palm fronds and oak leaves along the bank. Jumping mullet launched themselves and splashed loudly when they re-entered the water. And there were soft sounds, unseen creatures sliding through the water or making their way through the marsh. Somewhere out there, beyond the river’s mouth, in the open water of Matthew’s Island Sound, out of sight and hearing, was a boat headed in Lockett’s direction.
He had to urinate. The feeling had been there for some time, ever since he pulled his boat away from the dock behind his trailer and moved toward his position. Excitement and fear were building within him and made the necessity to empty his bladder more imperative. It happened every time. He stood in the stern of his old twenty-foot Grady White and relieved himself; however, the urge returned as soon as he zipped up.
A sixty-eight foot shrimp trawler moved inland along the Southeastern parameter of the Sound. The captain had planned the voyage carefully, so the boat would be at sea until eleven p.m., at which time it would begin to make its run inland. It carried nine thousand pounds of sensimelian—high grade, rosin-heavy marijuana. When the boat entered the river, the captain contacted the pilot boat on his radio.
“Comin’ in.”
“Got you covered,” came the reply.
“Big Dog, the package is arriving,” Lockett said into his walky-talky.
“Okay,” the lead man answered, smiling at Turner Lockett’s ridiculous code words.
The trawler crew, despite the inherent risk of such a venture, had been relaxed until they entered the mouth of the river. Then the adrenaline in their bodies began to accelerate, and nerve-endings extended themselves to the surface of the skin. They were in control, doing something most people couldn’t imagine, unrestricted, masters of their own fates as much as one could be in such a situation. Body and mind were sensitive beyond their normal physical capabilities. They were experiencing the beginnings of criminal euphoria, the best drug of all.
Turner Lockett heard the engines before he could make out the shadow of the large craft coming around the bend. He was sitting in the mouth of Drake’s Branch, a small creek that ran inland off the southern side. He raised anchor and moved out into the channel. Aboard the shrimper, the captain spotted the soft, blue light flashing from the small boat in the middle of the river. Since the trawler would be pushing the size limit the creek could handle, it was important to stay in the center of the pilot boat’s wake. Once out of the river and into the narrow estuary, a variation to either side would be disastrous.
When the big craft was in position behind him, Lockett began leading them on the final leg of a journey that had begun on the Florida Coast, taken them to Jamaica, back to Florida and up the East Coast to South Carolina. The river was quiet. Lockett passed the opening of Patch Creek, used on a previous operation, went another mile and a half and veered left into Falling Creek. Each movement of the pilot boat was matched by the trawler as if the two crafts were attached by a steel rod.
The channel led to an abandoned dock, left that way when the house on the property had burned down several years before. Two small boats were anchored next to the landing to assist with the off load, and two eighteen-wheel vans were backed up to the end of the dock. There was also a black Mercedes parked on the access road. When the trawler was docked, the task of unloading the boat’s cargo began.
The work went swiftly, with little conversation. Once the trucks were loaded, they would proceed to a safe house where the goods would be stored. The vans would then be swept clean, vacuumed and returned to the site where they did their day-work.
When they were safely on their way, the door of the Mercedes opened. A well-dressed man, carrying a briefcase, got out and walked to the landing where the captain of the trawler was waiting for him. They went aboard and, in a few minutes, the man returned to his car and drove away. He was the last of the onshore contingent to leave the area. It had all gone smoothly.
Turner Lockett had the final responsibility: to get the trawler back into the Sound. He talked himself into being patient, didn’t rush, didn’t want to cause any attention despite an urge to get out of there fast. Who knew where the DEA people might be?
His excitement was dissipating. After the tough years of shrimping and fishing and picking oysters, the knowledge that one night’s work had netted him more than twenty thousand dollars was satisfying. Leaving the trawler headed out to sea, Lockett turned for home, telling himself he deserved every penny of it. Let the rich bastards laugh at the poor people. He shook his head in glory. “If they only knew,” he said out loud to the darkness. Life was good.
Almost good. Jared Barnes worked with him in the small shrimping business he had begun when he quit working for the larger shrimpers. There wasn’t much money in it, but, between that and fishing, crabbing, picking oysters, doing a little guide work, bootlegging wild game and all of the other practices common to natural outlaws, it allowed him to survive. That was then. Now that kind of survival was not in question; he could probably afford to live at The Ritz, wherever the hell that was.
But Barnes was asking questions, using sly smiles, pretending he knew something, though Lockett was sure he was just fishing, hoping to get in on whatever he suspected was going on. There was threat in the man’s eyes when he asked questions. He had probably heard a few rumors, figured out a little and thought he knew more than he did, but even a little was too much. Life was going to be too sweet to take a chance.
The others in the company would not condone violence. Hell, it was a game to them; that was explained to him when he was hired, but Barnes wasn’t going away. Fortunately, the man was a loner with no kin, as far as Lockett knew. If something had to be done, no one would miss him, but Turner Lockett had never killed a man and wasn’t sure he could.