Chapter 3 - BLOOD ON THE TACKLE BOX
"Nobody move. Don't make a sound, or this parking lot turns into a morgue," a voice whispered from the darkness behind them.
Cody, Brody, and Logan froze instantly. Before Cody could turn his head, a second assailant stepped out from behind a parked ambulance van, shoving the cold muzzle of a handgun firmly against the base of Cody’s neck. The man smelled of chewing tobacco and wet nylon.
"Keys on the roof, kid," the man ordered.
Cody didn't argue. He slowly slid his ignition keys from his pocket and tossed them onto the painted hood of the Silverado. Beside him, Logan was trembling so violently his teeth clicked together in the damp air.
"Search 'em," the man inside the truck barked, stepping out through the passenger door. He was shorter, stocky, wearing night-vision compatible goggles pushed up onto his tactical cap. He moved toward Cody with professional, mechanical efficiency.
The stocky man reached straight into Cody’s pockets. But Cody was an athlete—a starting linebacker for Cooper City High who spent his weekends pulling four-foot bull sharks and heavy gators out of tangled mangrove roots. When the stocky operative reached for his left pocket, Cody feigned a stumble against the wet asphalt, shifting his body weight. As the man lunged forward to grab him, Cody drove his elbow backward with everything he had, slamming directly into the man’s solar plexus.
The operative wheezed, the air exploding from his lungs in a ragged gasp.
"Run!" Cody screamed.
Brody reacted instantly. Instead of fleeing into the open parking lot where they could be easily gunned down, Brody grabbed the nearest weapon at hand—a heavy, steel-latched Plano tackle box sitting open on the tailgate of the Silverado, filled with three-ounce lead sinkers, steel wire leaders, and razor-sharp treble hooks. With a feral roar, Brody swung the thirty-pound tackle box like a sledgehammer, smashing it square across the face of the gunman who had been holding Cody hostage.
The impact was sickening. The steel latches shattered, and dozens of heavy lead weights and barbed hooks tore across the gunman’s cheeks and nose, spraying crimson blood across the white tailgate of the truck. The gunman screamed, dropping his weapon and clutching his mangled face as blinding agony took over.
"Get the gun! Cody, get the gun!" Logan shrieked, kicking the dropped firearm across the slick pavement toward the storm drain.
"Forget the gun, run for the tree line!" Cody yelled.
The stocky operative was already recovering, drawing a backup sidearm from his ankle holster. Gunfire cracked through the humid air—suppressed, coughing pops that chewed through the metal panels of nearby parked cars, sending shards of safety glass raining onto the asphalt.
The three teenagers dove over the concrete barrier separating the hospital parking lot from the dense drainage canal behind the property. They hit the muddy slope hard, sliding ten feet down into the muck and tangled roots of Florida black mangroves and sawgrass. Water and rotting vegetation soaked through their clothes, but the thick brush provided immediate, opaque cover against thermal scopes.
Up on the pavement, heavy boots crunched against broken glass, accompanied by the urgent crackle of handheld radios.
"Target has the hardware and the key," a harsh voice echoed from the asphalt ledge above them. "Mercer, the kids slipped into the canal corridor. Vance is neutralized upstairs in ICU—flatlined three minutes ago. We finish the kids, sanitize the truck, and burn the perimeter."
Lying flat in the knee-deep, foul-smelling swamp water, Cody felt the world stop spinning. Arthur Vance was dead. The man they had tried to rescue had just been executed inside an intensive care unit, and now a team of professional assassins was sweeping the brush with flashlights to eliminate them as witnesses.
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Brody tapped Cody’s shoulder, his eyes wide in the gloom, pointing downstream. A hundred yards away, the drainage canal fed directly into the dark, labyrinthine waterways of the Cypress Creek reserve.
"Locker 42," Brody whispered through chattering teeth, his face smeared with black muck. "That’s what he said, Cody. If we don't find out what Arthur Vance died for right now, we’re never walking out of these woods alive."
