Chapter One
The instant he stepped onto the lonesome beach, Walker dropped to his knees, emotionally spent, but damned thankful to be out of the ocean and back in the land of the free. That honored moniker might not apply to him any longer, since he wasn’t exactly free. But this country was still the land of his birth, and to the day he died, he’d be proud to be an American. Still was. Every other time he’d arrived in the States, he’d thanked his lucky stars. Why should this time be any different? No other country on Earth had what America had. Liberty. The pursuit of individual happiness. Inalienable rights. The Constitution he’d fought and damned near died several times for.
Weary to his bones, he peeled his diving mask off. The ten ton gear bag on his shoulder hit the beach next. He leaned forward, pressed his dry, cracked lips to the damp, fragrant sands of freedom, and whispered the word that was more precious than most: “Home.”
He held that position on this lonely stretch of beach in the Florida Keys, his eyes closed and his forehead resting on the spot he’d kissed, a silent homage to the Spirit of Liberty and the men and women who’d died for her. Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of US soil. Nothing like it in the world. Dog-tired, he succumbed to the tender emotion of being alive and free. A tear wound its way out of his eye and disappeared into the same sand.
God, he loved America. Too bad she didn’t love him back.
With that depressing reminder of who he was, Walker rolled to his butt, and contemplated spending the night where he’d landed. Why not? The beach looked deserted, and by hell, he’d earned a reprieve. But that wasn’t the way this world worked. Only a fool would sleep in the open, and Walker wasn’t that kind of stupid. A lone man was an easy target for riffraff, drunks, seagulls, and the occasional alligator these islands were known for. Besides, the last forty-eight hours had been hell, and he was spent at every level. He needed a decent meal, then two days of sleep.
Reaching into the large, sodden, yet waterproof bag at his side, he tore into one of the smaller black plastic bags inside and lifted two protein bars and a bottled water up and out. He hated the bars. They were dry, tasteless, and stuck between his teeth, but he was shaking so hard from his long hours of exertion, there was no choice. His blood sugar had to be flatlined; the jitters had already begun. His gut needed something in it right damned now.
Tired to his core, he stuffed one bar after the other into his mouth, between gulps of just enough water to keep the dense, highly-nutritional mass moving. After the last gulp and swallow, he followed the routine with a couple mints from the tin he’d kept with the bars. At last, the sharp taste of curiously strong cinnamon burst over his tongue. Its powerful, vaporous scent hit his airways. Sometimes the littlest things in life made all the other crap bearable, if not worthwhile. Like these little sugar nuggets. They were made in America, too. He popped a couple more to get the taste of the sea and those bars out of his mouth.
Night was coming on fast. Sunlight had faded over the turquoise ocean, turning it gray, and each wave was now tipped with orange-ish pink foam, as if kissing the sun goodbye.
It’d been two damned long days of hard swimming. Thankfully, he’d made it. This hundred-mile swim had begun north of Havana, Cuba. Unseen, he’d prepared as much as he could for his journey to Florida. But the ocean had grown more dangerous since the last time he’d made this swim. Walker hadn’t expected the hundred-mile channel between here and there to be rife with so many swarms of poisonous box jellyfish, Mother Earth’s signal that her oceans had become polluted and too warm. The pesky, curious, cold-blooded whitetip sharks were another unexpected surprise. Damned things would as soon bite a man’s foot off, as nibble or taste his phalanges. Walker would know. His dive fins now had deep, serrated toothmarks from those few encounters.
He’d been lucky he hadn’t set off a feeding frenzy.
Saltwater was the only constant in this long-distance swim. It never changed, and, as usual, it had seeped into his tightly fitting mask, under his wetsuit, too. Not only was he dead-assed