 CNN, USA TODAY, the Huffington Post and many other news outlets referred to this novel after Wes' rescue off the coast of Cuba by Carnival Cruise lines. Now you can read the scene that inspired so much discussion. Excerpted from “Tortuga Gold” by Wes DeMott. Copyright ©2011 by Wes Demott. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by (publisher or author) solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site
Chapter 1
Taz Keaton, muscular, tanned and shirtless, tried to get more speed out of the outboard, but it was already wide open and screaming like James Brown as it blasted his narrow fiberglass boat up the Central American river. He squinted for signs of the crashed jet in the muddy water or thick jungle canopy, but didn't see a clue as to where he would earn his three million dollars.
"Not looking good," he yelled to his partner, bouncing along in the bow.
Gordon Windsor looked back. "Yeah, but other than our lucky break last year in Cambodia, not looking good is about as good as it ever looks."
"That's a point. Keep an eye out for survivors, maybe a pilot or crew member who's been busted up but is still alive."
"Will do. Not likely though."
Taz glanced at the river's overgrown banks for anyone sitting in a clearing, maybe waiting in pain to be rescued, even though the speed and angle at which the corporate jet went down made it unlikely that anyone could have survived. Then he held his GPS in front of his face and took a quick check of his position as he steered around the stumps and debris of the Changuinola River, bleeding brown into the Bocas Del Toro archipelago off Panama's Caribbean Coast. The river was legendary for keeping her secrets, with her inaccessibility, the snakes and crocodiles, and the thick rain forest all contributing. If the jet wasn't visible now, it might never be, completely shrouded in a matter of days by strangler vines and banana leaves.
"Gordie," Taz shouted as he stood up with a surfer's practiced balance. "We're approaching the crash site coordinates. Is that twisted thing sticking out of the mud over there a tail section?"
Gordie looked where Taz pointed and then glanced behind them. "I think so. I also think our competition's going to catch us. Couldn't you have gotten a faster boat?"
"It was slim pickings in Empalme."
"Next time let me get the boat."
"It's a deal. Do you think those guys back there have guns?"
"Don't they always have guns?" Gordie looked again at the two pangas chasing them through the twists and turns of the ever-narrowing river. One of them was much closer than the other.
"I was kind of hoping–"
"The Panamanians are peaceful people, Taz, but every rule has an exception."
"And I usually manage to find them."
"Yes, you do."
Taz sat down and grabbed a railing. "Time for batting practice, Gordie. I'm turning to face 'em."
"Don't...you must think I love doing this."
Taz slammed the outboard to port, spinning the narrow twenty-foot boat like a top and nearly pitching Gordie out before Taz straightened again.
"Still with me?"
"To adventure, Taz."
"And to those who seek it. Get ready."
Gordie moved farther into the bow and leaned to the edge. "How about if next time I run the boat so you can face the bullets."
"I'd like to say there won't be a next time," Taz said as he aimed for the bow of the first boat, surprising the three men onboard, "but it's a bad bet."
The soldier in the front of the other boat raised his rifle and started shooting.
"Don't worry, Gordie. They're bouncing like crazy in our wake. Who could aim while doing that?" A bullet tore into their panga right next to Gordie's hand and sent shards of fiberglass flying. "It appears that he can."
"Probably just a lucky shot. Are you ready?"
"Pass 'em starboard to starboard."
"I was thinking port to port."
"Don't screw around, Taz. I'm ready to tee off on the starboard side."
"And since when do we do things the easy way?" Taz swerved back and forth over the centerline of the collision course as the two boats closed the distance at nearly sixty miles an hour.
"Damn it. Okay, port to port." Gordie shifted a little to his left.
"If you're going to get all pissy about it I suppose you can have it your way. Here we go to starboard. Ready...now!"
Taz shoved the outboard sideways as Gordie pushed away the rifle barrel just as the soldier got off a shot that whistled by his ear. The two boats banged together so hard it almost stopped them both and nearly sent Gordie flying over the bow. The soldiers held on for the few seconds it took before the boats started to move again, scraping noisily along each other as Gordie raised the blue aluminum T-ball bat. He took a quick but powerful swing at the soldier in front, but the man ducked back so hard that he went over the rail and into the river.
"The driver's about to shoot, Taz. Looks like he's aiming at you."
"Noticed that. Anytime now, Gordo!"
Gordie yelled "No fuego" to the driver as he threw down his bat and grabbed the flare gun he'd loaded with a huge metal round of white phosphorous. The soldier hesitated, and while he did Gordie aimed at their fuel tank and fired. The phosphorous immediately started to burn and hiss and melt everything, including the fiberglass boat and the plastic fuel tank.
"Glad they can swim," Gordie said as they raced away, while the other two men scrambled out of the blazing boat and swam like Olympians before the panga exploded.
"No fuego, Gordie? Really?"
"It was all I could come up with."
"Old Miss McAvoy would be so disappointed in your Spanish. Let's get over to the crash site."
"I wonder why the other boat's hanging back. And no, I don't want to go ask them."
"If that really is the wreckage over there, man, it's going to be a tough slog through the swamp to get to it."
Gordie looked back at his boss. "Say 'For a change,' Taz. I dare you, I even double-dog dare you to say 'For a change.'"
Taz flashed him that great grin of his. "Then I'm not going to say it. Just for a change," he said as he veered sharply off the river, sliding as fast and far as possible through the grassy flats toward the spot he thought was the crash site. A massive boa constrictor shot across the murky water to get out of their way . "Man, did you see the size of that snake?"
"A fast one, too. We're about out of water, Taz. Are you planning to carry this boat back to town or drive it overland?"
"No idea yet."
Taz kept going until hard-grounding about thirty feet from shore and half that distance from the crash site. He killed the engine and leaped like a kid over the rail and into the knee-deep grassy edges of the jungle.
Gordie jumped too, but he caught his shirt on a cleat and tumbled in head first.
"Enjoy that, Gordie?"
"Funny guy. Let's just get what we came for and get out of here." He started running and Taz followed, their feet turning the water into frothy foam.
"You know what I think?"
"That we should be home watching a game?"
"What I think is that the guys on the other boat decided to wait for us to do the hard part of recovering the case."
"Smart of them. I guess that leaves us no option but to make our way out of here on foot." Gordie looked at the nearly impenetrable wall of jungle just beyond the wreckage. "Well, I must say that's typical news for a day out with you." Then, "Christ, I see a body over there."
"There were no reports or indications of survivors. If there are it will change things. We can't leave them out here to die, regardless of who they are."
"My God that plane's a wreck. Okay, you knew that. But it's totally torn to pieces. Where was the package? Was it cargo?"
"It's supposed to be in a shiny aluminum case that was with a passenger in the cabin."
Gordie sloshed ahead, but stopped short of a large clearing in the marshy river that looked like a small crater full of creamy coffee. "Do you see anything that even looks like it was once a cabin?"
"She sure hit hard. Let's find some sticks so we can set up a search grid."
"I think I see it floating over there."
"No kidding. Wow, that's one sturdy case. Go get it while I find a way out. I hear something."
"No, Taz, please don't hear something."
A black helicopter suddenly swooped over the edge of the jungle canopy and stopped quickly, hovering fifty feet over them with two men in uniform sitting in the open doors aiming rifles.
"Sorry, Gordie. I knew I heard something."
"I hate helicopters. Now what's your plan?"
Taz raised his hands and looked up. "Hola."
"That's your plan? Hola?"
"You want to try hollering no fuego?"
Gordie raised his hands. "Hola, Guys. Hey, how's it going up there?"
Taz looked around. "Think we can reach the cover of the jungle?"
"Depends."
"On?"
"On how much you're willing to get shot up in the process."
"I'll take that as a maybe. Let's split up so the pilot has to keep turning the chopper. Make it harder on his guys to get off a shot."
"You don't even want to consider giving them the case?"
"And change our name to Mayday Salvage and Rescue and Give-away. What would we do with all the old stationary?"
"Just a thought. Guess I'm ready. We'd better get going because I think I hear another chopper." Taz turned to the noise. "That's a plane, not a chopper."
A soldier fired a burst from his automatic, the rounds exploding into the brown water at Taz's feet.
"Hey," Taz yelled. "I haven't moved. Why are you shooting at me?"
"I think they want us to walk toward that clearing over there so they can land."
"There's the plane you heard. It's certainly not military."
An ancient tail-dragger, its doors missing and paint faded, banked over the trees with its engine sputtering from the clogging of old fuel. It dropped down to the river and skirted the water, buzzing so close to the remaining boat that the soldiers jumped out and started swimming. Then it climbed, coughing and wheezing like a sickly old asthmatic, and flew directly toward the tail of the helicopter, closing the distance until panic or good sense overcame the chopper's pilot and he dumped it to the left in an effort to get away. The gunmen in the helicopter's doorway opened fire on the little plane, but their bullets scattered across the landscape as they hung on to keep from being tossed out of the open doors.
Just a couple of seconds before the plane collided midair with the chopper, a giant man with long hair and a beard jumped out and dropped to the swamp as the momentum of his plane carried it into the chopper and pushed the tangled wreckage of both aircraft a hundred feet through the sky before crashing into the water and exploding.
"Wow," Gordie said. "Now that's not something you see everyday."
"That was actually a couple of things I don't see everyday. Do you think he survived the fall?"
"Sure he did."
"You're sure?"
"I'm willing to bet my share on Sam if you want to bet against him."
"I'm not that foolish."
Just then the big man struggled free of the mud that must have broken his fall but then nearly sucked him under. He rose up in waist deep brown water and used it to slosh the muddy slime off his chest. He was pulling a big shard of metal from his massive left forearm with his teeth as he slowly splashed over to Taz and Gordie.
"You two assholes should have waited for me at the dock."
"I left when the boss said to go, Sam. I didn't have a vote. Taz, back me up."
"And I, well shoot, Sam, I wasn't even sure you'd make it from Nicaragua."
"I got here with time to spare, Taz. Hell, I could have taken the time to eat breakfast first." He looked around. "Great, so now I suppose we get to fight our way through the jungle? Again."
Gordie looked with him. "That's almost exactly what I said."
Sam pointed to the case Gordie was holding. "Is that what we came for?"
"This? No, this is a gift I picked up for my ex-wife but forgot to leave behind in my room."
Sam rolled his eyes as Taz said "Let's see if those soldiers survived their crash, and if there's anything we can do to help them. Then we're good to go."
Gordie looked off at the wreckage of the two aircraft. "Let's be quick about rendering assistance. Panama doesn't have much in the way of a military, but it certainly has to be bigger than these few guys."
They hurried over to see what Taz hated most about the career he'd so anxiously chosen and vigorously pursued.
"The pilot's dead," Sam said.
"Co-pilot, too. And a door gunner. The other soldier must have been thrown clear. Let's take a look around."
"He beat feet," Gordie said, aiming out along a fresh path in the low marshland. "Headed off that way. You can see his tracks."
Taz took another look at the dead men and reminded himself that they'd tried to kill him and Gordie. Then he looked at the river and saw one overturned panga and another still ablaze and felt better that the men he and Gordie had fought were all still alive.
"We'll meet the client in Bocas Town," Taz said, shaking off the moment and moving on. "After that, whoever has the least number of leeches will buy the drinks. I'll pay each of you your shares as soon as we get there so Gordie can't claim to have an empty wallet again."
"I still think you both are assholes," Sam said as he scanned the edge of the jungle for a way into it. "Come on, I'll walk point."
Taz laughed. "Hold onto the case, Gordie. We get to follow the big man." |
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