Wood's Reef Read Free Page B

saw a small boat sitting motionless on the other side of the channel. It was too far to see much detail, but he laughed at the bright orange color of an old Tampa Bay Buccaneers cap.

Chapter 4
     
    Jerry Doans watched the entire operation through his binoculars. He was out on a scouting mission aboard his rented 22-foot center console. He needed to keep an eye on his “fleet” — the handful of lobster boats that he shadowed. These were the successful lobster and crab boats, that set their traps in more secluded areas. Seclusion was important for what Jerry did. 
    He kept tabs on the boats to check on the location and frequency with which they pulled their traps. This knowledge was critical to his profession; he liked to dive on the traps the day before they were scheduled to be pulled, as it gave him the best chance of scoring some tails without anyone noticing the two or three he took from each trap. If all the stars lined up, he could dive on Fridays, hit the road to Miami and sell them Saturday. This conveniently had him in the city for party night, with a fist full of spiny lobster dollars. A good day could net him $1000.
    Today, he wanted to get a closer look but was wary of being spotted. Whatever they were doing over there, it was not lobstering, that was for sure. He finished the last of his “Big Gulp” - sized rum drink and looked again, trying to make out what they had pulled up. The rental boat gave him some cover as he slowly motored closer for a better look. No one would recognize it as anything other than a rental. There were rental boats all over this area, and the commercial fisherman and locals treated them like pesky mosquitos. Using a rental gave Doans the ability to go wherever he wanted, automatically labelled an idiot tourist by the locals. He got as close as he dared to the boat hauling from the bottom and sat back to watch.
    It had to be worth something, he thought. Mac Travis wouldn’t waste time pulling garbage off the bottom. He continued to watch the larger boat, wondering how he could capitalize on this new-found knowledge. 
    The object now out of view and Travis underway, he refilled his drink and started figuring out how close he could follow. He wanted to know what Travis was up to.
     
    ***
     
    Mac shielded his eyes from the glare coming off the water as he navigated the forty two foot steel-hulled trawler through the maze of small keys and shoals scattered in his path. This was one of those places where GPS was useless. The straight line the computer and satellites would calculate always ended up grounding you in these waters, as evidenced by the propeller slashes, white in the dark turtle grass.
    The trawler was making about six knots through the choppy waters, the beefed-up 760-hp diesels not needed here. This wasn’t an area you could run full out. They were cruising through one of the less-travelled areas, known by the locals for good permit fishing on the right tide, but not much more. Tourists stayed away, as there were no markers except a stick with a plastic bottle or buoy stuck on it here and there. And to the uneducated eye, there was no rhyme or reason to those, either. You never knew who set a marker there or what they were marking. The red and green navigation markers liberally sprinkled through the Keys to mark the main channels were not in evidence here. 
    He guided the boat through mostly invisible channels, some indicated by subtle color changes, others not at all. The sun was descending toward the horizon, the air cooling slightly, as he slid up to a lone piling twenty feet from a small beach. There he found a camouflaged john boat, some traps and nets hidden by the mangroves growing above the water line.
    “What brings you to these parts?” came a voice from the scrub. 
    “Need your help with something,” Mac called back.
    A grizzled old man walked into view. He waved his walking stick toward Mac, and Mac nodded in a greeting to his old friend. 
    He swung