Red Thunder

“What happened?” I asked Jubal. “Run out of fuel?”

“No, Ma

Caleb was standing in the boat, bailing with a galvanized metal bucket. He looked up and tossed me a plastic bait bucket.

“Bail, son,” he said. “We gotta get outta here. This tub don’t fly too good with two ton of mud in her, and she got no scuppers.”

I didn’t know a scupper from a yardarm, but I could see what he meant. I got to work, and was soon joined by all the others using their hard hats, except Travis, who was reeling in cable as fast as he could wind it. We worked like a road gang in hell.

One good thing about the mud. The mosquitoes couldn’t bite through it.

We had the boat about as dry as it was going to get when Travis pointed into the sky and shouted. Squinting into the glare, I saw four contrails way, way up there. They were flying close, then they moved apart and circled around the remains of the rocket’s vapor trail like bloodhounds casting for a scent.

“Fighter group,” Travis said. “Probably from the base at Boca Chica Key.”

“Navy jets,” Dak said.

“You think they’re looking for us?” Alicia asked.

“They ain’t counting alligators, hon. What else is there out here they might want to see? I never thought the sucker would go up so fast!”

“I t’ink I mighta dropped a-”

“Later, Jube. We got to get outta here. Try to look like tourists!”

We scrambled in and Caleb got us moving. Look like tourists? How were we going to do that, covered in mud?

Kelly started scooping handfuls of water and splashing it over her hair and her face. The rest of us did, too. I dipped a plastic bucket into the water… and promptly lost it, snatched right out of my hand when I let it go too deep. I held on to the next one better, and dumped it over Dak’s head. He sputtered and grabbed the bucket from me.

[178] “I don’t need cleaning up!” he shouted. “I don’t show the dirt like you whiteys do!” And he dumped a bucketful on me. Pretty soon we were mostly free of mud, though we were ankle deep in chocolate-colored water. Even though the air was humid, I figured the rushing wind would dry us pretty soon.

“Over there!” Travis yelled in my ear, and I looked where he was pointing. Far away three elongated specks were moving through the air at treetop level. Travis reached up and tapped Caleb’s leg. Caleb nodded. Travis pointed to a thicket of mangroves, and Caleb arrowed straight for it. He turned off the engine and the silence surrounded us. After a moment we could hear the sound of the distant helicopters.

“Hueys,” Travis said, quietly.

“Did we do something wrong?” Kelly whispered.

“Why are we all whispering?” Alicia whispered. Dak laughed.

“We probably broke some federal laws about fireworks in a nature preserve, something like that,” Travis said. We knew he wouldn’t be behaving like this if that was all that was the matter. “I don’t want to get noticed by the military. Or even the Everglades rangers, for that matter. This has all got to stay secret.”

Before long the Hueys were too far away to see or hear. Caleb backed us out of the briar patch and headed us back home. But soon he was slowing again. He waved, and I stood up and could see another airboat piloted by a grizzled old conch who must have been seventy. There was a tangle of weeds and vines between us, keeping us about twenty yards apart. A tourist couple was sweltering in pants and long-sleeved shirts, wearing safari hats with netting veils. They waved happily to us and we waved back, smiling. Kelly snapped their picture, and the woman snapped right back at her.

“Broussard!” the old man shouted over the idling engines. “Did you hear an explosion, ol’ hoss?”

“Heard something, McGee,” Caleb allowed. “Back yonder, I think.” He pointed at an angle at least ninety degrees away from where the launch had actually happened.

“Saw something takin’ off like a rocket, too.”

“Probably just some kids. You know how they are.”

[179] “Yeah… in my day it was cherry bombs.”

“These days, it’s likely to be an H-bomb,” Caleb laughed.

McGee leaned over and spit in the water, which didn’t make his female passenger too happy. “Y’all take care, now, y’hear?”

IT WAS FUNNY how, on the way out, I figured we were probably the only human beings for twenty miles in any direction. Coming back, I thought somebody needed to install a traffic light.

I’m exaggerating. But we saw maybe a dozen other airboats. There were pickups and SUVs and ATVs on the dirt roads, and small planes overhead. None of them gave us any reason to believe they were looking for us.

We made it back to the Middle of Nowhere in about an hour, then to Caleb’s trailer-home in fifteen minutes. Travis was in a big hurry. We took hasty showers, said our good-byes, thanked Grace for the food-and accepted a picnic basket crammed with more of it-then piled back into our vehicles and hit the road.

When Kelly saw that Nephew Billy had washed all the road grime and bugs off the Ferrari she kissed him on the cheek. I shook his hand anyway.

IN WHAT I thought was an excess of paranoia, Travis insisted the three vehicles not drive together, but maintain a five-minute separation. We were taking Alligator Alley back to Fort Lauderdale, so it wasn’t hard.

“I’ve been asleep at the wheel as far as security goes,” he told us during a cellular conference call. “From now on, we’re going to be more careful than we’ve been. You gotta remember-”

“Travis,” I interrupted. “If we’re going to be careful… do you think we should be discussing these things on cell phones?”

There was silence for a moment. Kelly looked over and gave me a thumbs-up.

“Ma

[180] BAHIA MAR IS one of your nicer marinas. About a zillion dollars’ worth of rich folks’ playtoys were tied up at the finger piers, motor and sail, blinding white and those deep blue tarps they wrap sails in. We found each other easily enough, and Travis led the way to a pretty city park and we all unloaded Grace’s lunch onto a picnic table. There was a bucket of fried chicken and a big Tupperware box of potato salad and scratch buttermilk biscuits and a watermelon for dessert. There was also a red-and-white checkered tablecloth to put it all on, heavy plastic plates and spoons, and a big thermos of grape Kool-Aid.

“I have screwed up just about everything I’ve tried so far,” Travis said after the food had been distributed. “You notice my crazy neighbor lately? He’s ready to take off on a flying saucer with Jesus. Which is what he saw the day I landed you all in the pool by fiddling with something I didn’t understand.

“As for today’s fiasco… what was I thinking?”

“I’m sorry, Trav-”

“Not your fault, Jubal.”

“It was a decimal point, jus’ a little-”

“I know, Jube, I know. But I can’t afford to drop any more decimal points. Friends, Jubal did a search while I was driving… show ’em, Jube.”

Jubal went to http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/3D/ JTrack3D.html on his computer. I knew the site. It kept track of all satellites in orbit. We saw a display of the Earth surrounded by thousands of dots, many of them in a ring at the geosynchronous distance of 22,500 miles. Jubal zoomed in on Florida, then the southern tip of Florida, and entered the time of the launch. We saw a handful of satellites and lines representing their orbits. Jubal moved the cursor over one.

“Dat be Friendship Station. She were ’bout two hu

“Jes… You mean we could have hit it?” Alicia asked.