Hunted in the Keys Read online

  MATTHEW RIEF

  HUNTED IN THE KEYS

  A Logan Dodge Adventure

  Florida Keys Adventure Series

  Volume 2

  Copyright © 2018 by Matthew Rief

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Logan Dodge Adventures

  Gold in the Keys

  (Florida Keys Adventure Series Book 1)

  Hunted in the Keys

  (Florida Keys Adventure Series Book 2)

  Revenge in the Keys

  (Florida Keys Adventure Series Book 3)

  If you’d like to receive my newsletter to get updates on upcoming books and special deals, you can sign up on my website:

  matthewrief.com

  MAPS

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Everglades National Park, Florida

  Summer, 2008

  A soft breeze whistled through the tall sawgrass in the cool morning air. It was the only sound to be heard for miles, other than the squishing of mud under the bottom of our boots as we trekked through the swamp. The distant sun was just starting to peek over the eastern horizon, illuminating the sky enough for us to switch off our flashlights and stow them inside of our backpacks.

  The three of us were spread out as we searched, with Jack Rubio thirty feet to my right and Scott Cooper thirty feet to my left. This allowed us to cover more ground as we hunted the elusive Burmese python which had invaded the Everglades and had been multiplying dangerously for the past two decades. Jack, a good friend of mine since I was young, was born and bred in Southern Florida. A real-deal conch and the son of conchs back three generations. His curly, blond hair flapped in the breeze beneath a blue snapback as he moved effortlessly through the difficult terrain just downwind of me.

  Scott Cooper, whom I’d met back when I was serving in the Navy, had been the division officer of my special forces unit. He’d gotten out as a Lieutenant Commander, gone into politics, and was then on his first six-year term as a Florida senator. I hadn’t seen him much since we’d struck Aztec gold a few months earlier at Neptune’s Table, just south of the Marquesas Keys. I guess he’d finally gotten sick of life in Washington and needed to add a little adventure into his life, if only for a couple of days.

  “Freeze!” Scott said, holding up his left hand, which was clenched into a fist. He was wearing a black bandana over the bottom half of his face and a faded Florida Marlins ballcap. He glanced at Jack and me, pointed two fingers at his focused eyes, then pointed ahead of him at a portion of the swamp where a narrow, muddy channel met a thick patch of sawgrass.

  I kept my body motionless and drew my gaze to where he was pointing. Slithering slowly across the water, and leaving thin ripples in its wake, was a young python, probably about six feet long. Their dark, camouflage bodies make them difficult to spot in the swamp, especially since most of their body is underwater and they usually hang out in thick underbrush. It’s only when they’re being disturbed that they move out of hiding and become more visible to the naked, human eye.

  Jack moved in closer, raised his Remington 870 shotgun up against his shoulder, and fired off a number four buckshot. The loud explosion boomed across the quiet swamp, echoing for miles as the twenty or so, .24-inch lead balls slammed into the head of the unsuspecting python at over twelve hundred feet per second. Water, mud, and pieces of grass flew into the air. Blood pooled out from the python’s head and Scott cocked his shotgun and fired off another shell for good measure, causing the snake to struggle for a few seconds before going limp in the water.

  “Hell yeah!” Jack shouted. “That’s five for the day already.”

  Scott moved in, covering the sixty feet or so, and grabbed the python with a pair of Tomahawk snake tongs, then dragged it through the water towards us.

  “Keep looking,” Scott said. “I have a feeling there’s more nearby.”

  Moving past us, he headed back towards our airboat which was tied off to a line of mangroves a quarter of a mile west of us. I smiled, nodded at Scott then took a step forward, scanning the swamp once more.

  I glanced over at Jack, shook my head, and said, “I had no idea they were such a problem here.” Though Jack had hunted python in the Everglades many times before, this was my first time. I’d heard about the problem before but could only realize it’s extent after seeing it firsthand.

  Jack laughed. “Yea, the buggers have no predators. Well, other than us they don’t.” He grinned.

  While cruising north along the Florida Keys on my forty-eight-foot Baia Flash, Jack had told me all about how the python had come to live in the Glades. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew made landfall in southern Florida. It was one of the worst hurricanes Florida had seen in recent memory and it was so powerful that it ruined large structures, including a private reptile-breeding facility near the Everglades. Following the storm, the zookeepers realized that they were missing many of their large reptiles, which had included Burmese Pythons. The massive snakes thrived in the humid, swampy landscape of the Everglades which was eerily similar to their native land of southeast Asia. A female python can lay up to one hundred eggs at a time and live up to twenty years of age. With no predators in the Everglades, the Burmese python had become one of the worst invasive species in history. It was believed that over a hundred thousand of them lived in Southern Florida.

  Moving through the patch of sawgrass, we came to another stretch of mud that was covered in about six inches of murky water. I moved slowly through the mud and water, my hip boots oozing down enough to cover my knees at times. In my hands, I gripped my Winchester 1300, which was known for its fast-cycling pump action, making it ideal for hunting. Just like Scott, I’d loaded mine up with number four Buckshot, a slug effective at longer ranges and powerful enough to take down a large deer with one well-placed shot.

  After about five minutes of trekking, we’d made it about a football field from where Scott had taken down his snake. Jack and I moved quietly, swept up in the feeling of the hunt. A strong gust of Caribbean air came out of nowhere, dancing the blades of grass and forming tiny white caps on the surface of the water. A moment later, I saw movement just a few feet in front of my boots beneath a row of cattail plants and a cluster of lily pads. It was dark and it was huge, seemingly too big to be a python. I froze in place as the slow movements of the massive reptile appe
ared closer beneath the rippling waves. I held my breath as it slithered just a few inches from my right boot, its body camouflaged by the murky water and lily pads.

  The first rule of python hunting is never to let the big ones get close. Gripping my shotgun and pulling it up snug against my chest, I took aim, realizing that I’d broken the first rule without even noticing. Jack froze thirty feet away from me as I fired off three slugs in succession, riddling the massive python’s body with lead balls that exploded into its skin, sending out streams of blood. It tried to slither away, its body thrashing and splashing as it struggled its way through the swamp. Stepping towards it and seeing its head appear for the first time, I fired off two more shells, both of them hitting their desired target. Water splashed high into the air as its head disappeared from view. My eyes grew wide as I saw the python from head to tail for the first time. It was the biggest snake I’d ever seen, and I estimated that it was at least fifteen feet long.

  Reaching swiftly for the Condor machete sheathed to my belt, I splashed through the water and gripped the struggling python by the slender part of its body a few slimy feet down from its neck. Its muscles twitched as it tried to wrap its scales around me like I was lunch waiting to be crushed in its grasp. I grunted, reared back my machete, then slammed it fiercely through the humid air. The newly sharpened blade cut into the python's neck, slicing it in half and turning the water dark red. The python’s enormous body went limp in the water just beside the patch of thick sawgrass as I turned to face Jack, my bloody machete raised triumphantly over my head.

  “Jeez, bro, this monster’s gotta be over sixteen feet! And it will easily tip the scale at over a buck fifty.” Jack ran over beside me and stood in awe of the massive reptile lying dead at my feet. “I’ve never seen one so big. Wait until the warden gets ahold of this. He’ll probably want a picture for the paper.”

  I took a moment to admire my kill then went to work. Grabbing a length of nylon rope, I tied it around the python’s dead body then wrapped it around my shoulder. “We gotta get it back to the airboat first,” I replied, grinning.

  It took both of us hauling the rope to move the snake through the water. It was difficult work dragging it through the mud, water, and grass and the going was slow. We kept our eyes peeled and our guns ready for an alligator foolish enough to try and snatch our kill, but we both knew that it wasn’t likely. Pythons were notorious in the Everglades for swallowing alligators, even large ones, whole.

  “Damn, Logan,” Scott said, meeting us halfway to where we’d tied off the airboat. “You always have to one-up me, don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “Competitive nature I suppose. But the day’s still young.”

  Jack laughed, shaking his head. “We won’t see another like this one. No way. This has got to be the biggest snake ever caught in the Everglades. I’d be willing to bet money on it.”

  It was much easier with all three of us and within ten minutes we reached the airboat, with its grassy camo painted hull, then curled up the snake and hauled its slimy body up onto the deck. Too big to fit in the fish holding tank, we coiled it up on the bow. The airboat we were using was a twenty-foot by eight-foot Air Ranger that sat up to six people comfortably and was propelled by a one thousand horsepower engine which drove the large fan to propel it over the water at speeds up to seventy miles per hour.

  A common sight in the Everglades, airboats have been the transportation of choice for people living there for decades. Perfect for the swampy landscape, they’re fast and can operate in just a few inches of water due to their flat-bottomed hulls and no working parts underneath or on the water line. It was a good thing we’d chosen one with so much power because all told we probably had over six hundred pounds of dead snakes by the end of the day.

  We spent a few more hours hunting a single mile radius around the airboat and killed two more pythons, though neither were anywhere close to as big as the monster I’d taken down. By 1100 the tropical sun was almost directly above us, its rays burning down and driving the humid air up past ninety degrees. There was a swift and steady breeze but it wasn’t enough to keep us cool. We’d been downing gallons of chilled water from the cooler on the airboat but knew that it was time to call it a day. Besides, the airboat couldn’t handle too much more, what with the three of us, our gear and the eight snakes we’d bagged.

  I untied a rope lashed to a nearby mangrove branch then shoved the boat out into a shallow channel and jumped aboard. Jack sat in the pilot's seat and, starting up the loud, colossal engine, he brought the massive metal fan to life and we began to move forward. We each grabbed and donned small foam earplugs, as well as over-the-ear protection, as the sounds from the fans can reach in excess of a hundred decibels, which is the equivalent of being in the front row at a rock concert.

  “Hold on,” Jack yelled as he brought the boat into a larger body of water, his left hand gripping the metal steering rod with a firm grip as he pushed he pushed down on the throttle pedal with his right foot. The massive blades spun ferociously, rocketing us over the shallow swampland at over forty knots. The noise was loud even with the double hearing protection, like sticking your ear right up to a house fan, and the powerful wind beat against our faces. I held onto the metal handrail and pressed my body back into the seat behind me.

  Looking out over the seemingly endless marshes, I marveled at the never-ending fields of sawgrass and cypress trees rising up out of the flat swampland in the distance. I thought about how amazing the place really was. The contrast between it and the tropical paradise of the Florida Keys always left me astonished. I’d been to the Everglades a few times before, deep into the heart of it where not a lot of people had seen. I’d gone on camping trips with my dad and he’d taught me about life in the swamp, and being back there brought a smile to my face as I remembered those good times.

  We cruised through Whitewater Bay, a massive body of water that reached all the way to Ponce de Leon Bay and the Gulf of Mexico to the West, heading South towards the opening into Tarpon Creek. Just as we were flying through the creek and into Coot Bay, Jack eased back on the gas pedal unexpectedly. Looking ahead, I didn’t see anything in front of us. It was practically a straight shot across the bay and into Flamingo Channel.

  I looked at Jack questioningly. “What’s up, man? You see something?” I glanced at my shotgun that was bungee strapped to the railing beside me, making sure that it was within arm’s reach just in case.

  “You see that?” he replied, his head tilted and his eyes looking out over the port side of the airboat. Scott and I both looked out that direction and, squinting and focusing my eyes, I saw a dark object far off in the sky.

  Suddenly, Jack killed the engine and removed his hearing protection. Scott and I both did the same and the three of us heard the unmistakable sound of helicopter propellers spinning through the air, growing louder each second as the aircraft headed towards us. I’d heard the sound so many times in my life and usually it was a sound that meant we would be medivacked, but sometimes it was a sound you didn’t want to hear.

  I reached for the monocular in the front pocket of my backpack and looked off in the direction of the approaching chopper. It was approaching from the north and I knew instantly that it wasn’t a Coast Guard helicopter. It was dark gray, pretty good-size and it was flying low and fast straight for us.

  Handing the monocular to Jack I said, “What do you think?”

  He took a look and replied, “There are only a few tourist helicopters that run flights around this part of the Glades. And that sure as hell isn’t one of them. It’s far too big.”

  Instinctively, I reached for my Sig that was strapped to my holster in the main compartment of my backpack.

  Scott put his hand on me and shook his head. “It’s for me.”

  My eyes grew wide. “Are you sure?” He nodded and I added, “Why would they fly all the way out here in the middle of nowhere to get to you?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know but it can�
�t be good.”

  As I watched it fly closer, I realized that it was a Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King, the same make and model used by the president, and it was painted dark blue and white. Jack told us to put our ear protection back on then started back up the engine and maneuvered the airboat towards a patch of dry land off our starboard side that was big and flat enough for the large helicopter to land on.

  Within thirty seconds the helicopter was right over our heads, descending slowly. The wind from its blades blew the grass flat below it and caused the muddy water to stir. We shielded our faces as the pilot brought her down softly, its tires making contact with the ground and its blades slowing slightly. After a few seconds, the side door slid open and a small staircase folded out. Scott and I hopped out of the airboat and waded through the muddy shore onto dry land as two guys wearing nice suits appeared in the doorway and walked down the steps. One of the guys stopped at the base of the stairs but the other continued until he was standing right in front of us.

  “Senator Cooper,” the guy said, loud enough to be heard over the roar of the helicopter blades. He was about my height, had a bald head, wore dark-rimmed sunglasses and looked to be in his early forties. “I need you to get on the helicopter right now. We have a situation.”

  Scott stepped closer to him and said, “What kind of situation?”

  The guy started to open his mouth, then tilted his head and looked at me skeptically. “The classified kind,” he said sternly.

  “Logan was special forces. He’s been involved in more classified situations than you ever will, Kurt.”

  The guy stared at Scott and seemed offended by his words. After a moment’s pause, he motioned back towards the helicopter. “Regardless, specifics are on a need to know basis. I need you on this helicopter right now, sir.”