San Carlos Island, Fort Myers Beach, thanks go to Dan Howes, Andrea Aguayo, Corey Allen, Nora Billeimer, Tiffany Forehand, Jessica Foster, Amanda Ganong, Nicole Hinchcliffe, Mathew Johnson, Janell Jambon, C. J. Lawerence, Josie Lombardo, Meredith Martin, Sue Mora, Kerra Pike, Michael Scopel, Heidi Stacy, Danielle Straub, Latoya Trotta, Lee Washington, Katlin Whitaker, Kevin Boyce, Keil Fuller, Ali Pereira, Kevin Tully, Molly Brewer, Jessica Wozniak, Emily Heath, Nicole English, Ryan Cook, Drew Fensake, Ramon Reyes, Justin Voskuhl, Anthony Howes, Louis Pignatello, and John Goetz.
Finally, I would like to thank Captain J. B. Marlin for his generosity, and my two sons, Rogan and Lee White, for helping me finish, yet again, another book.
— Randy Wayne White
Casa de Chico’s
Sanibel Island, Florida
Now on the day that John Wayne died
I found myself on the Continental Divide
Tell me where do we go from here?
Think I’ll ride into Leadville and have a few beers.
—JIMMY BUFFETT, “INCOMMUNICADO”
1
WE WERE HALF A MILE HIGH IN A BRIGHT EVERGLADES sky, on the trail of five Navy torpedo bombers that vanished in 1945, yet my friend Tomlinson remained fixated on the fate of our marina’s cat, which had gone missing only two days earlier.
The curse of obsession is one of the few qualities my hipster neighbor and I share.
“The problem with cats,” he lectured through the plane’s intercom, “is they have the ability to block human brain probes whenever they’re in the damn mood—hunger and horniness the only exceptions. Otherwise, I would have tracked him down last night. Crunch & Des is always on the prowl, which I used to admire. Not now. Either something bad happened or he’s behaving like an ingrate, showing off just to prove he doesn’t need us. Doc’ll back me up on this one. Won’t you, Doc?”
Crunch & Des is the communal cat at Dinkin’s Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, west coast of Florida, where I run a small company, Sanibel Biological Supply. When, as a young stray, he appeared at a Friday-night dock party, a friendly debate ensued over a fitting name for an ink black kitten with six toes on each paw. By the time three favorites had emerged—Poe, Sasquatch, and Ernest—many cold beers (and saucers of milk) had been consumed, and debate had become mildly contentious. Fortunately, Mack, who owns the marina, intervened. He had just finished one of the late Philip Wylie’s books, so honored the writer by naming the cat after Wylie’s two hard-nosed 1940s fishing guides. It seemed an absurd choice at the time, looking at that sleeping, potbellied kitten curled next to a beer keg. Within a year, though, the cat was big enough, and sufficiently scarred from battle, to shoulder two names.
“If a gator grabbed him,” Tomlinson continued, “I think I would have sensed the panic vibes. Like, alarm bells, you know? With sentient beings I care about, my subconscious maintains a telepathic link. That’s why his disappearance has me so freaked. I think the little bastard’s just screwing with my head. Like, when women intentionally try to make us jealous—but, hey, don’t get me started on that subject.”
Beside me, at the controls of his beautiful little Maule M-7 seaplane, Dan Futch, the best pilot I know, glanced at me, his expression asking You trust this guy?
I nodded Usually before adjusting my headphones and saying, “Shouldn’t your mystic powers be focused on Flight 19? Five planes and fourteen men vanish without a trace almost seventy years ago—if you can make a telepathic link with them, I’ll be impressed. We’ll look for the cat when we get back. If he hasn’t turned up already.”
Tomlinson was sitting behind me and put a hand on the back of Dan’s seat. “Doc gets pissy when dealing with stuff that can’t be explained, you ever notice? Same with anything that requires emotion.”
I ignored him, my thoughts on the missing planes. Fourteen men lifted off from Lauderdale sixty-eight years ago on a routine flight that should have taken two hours. Instead, their disappearance has baffled generations of searchers—and spawned the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.
I looked out the starboard window and asked Dan, “We’re close to Big Cypress Swamp, right?”
The pilot’s eyes shifted to the GPS screen mounted above a console of gauges and electronics. “Parks aren’t marked on this software version. Everglades City is about fifteen miles off our tail, Tamiami Trail a few miles north. No roads or landmarks for the next thirty miles until we’re closer to Miami. So you can see why it’d be easy to get lost without electronics. Or think