One Deadly Eye by Randy Wayne White
About the book:
After the deadliest hurricane to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast in a
century, Doc Ford must stop a gang of thieves—and worse—during the twelve hours
of chaos that follow the passing of a storm’s eye.
A Russian diplomat disappears while Doc is tagging great white
sharks in South Africa, and members of a criminal brotherhood, Bratva, don’t
think it’s a coincidence. They track the biologist to Dinkin’s Bay Marina on
the west coast of Florida, where Brotherhood mercenaries have already deployed,
prepared to pillage and kill in the wake of an approaching hurricane.
No one, however, is prepared for a cataclysmic event that will
forever change the island and leaves Doc to deal with escapees from Russia’s
most dangerous prison, including a serial killer—the Vulture Monk—who has a
taste for blood. His only ally is an enigmatic British inventor whose decision
to ride out the storm might have more to do with revenge than protecting a
priceless art collection.\
Doc has a lot at stake—the lives of his fiancée, Hannah Smith, and
their son, plus the fate of his hipster pal, Tomlinson, whose sailboat has
disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico. The greatest threat of all, though, is a
force that cannot be escaped—a Category Five hurricane that, minute by minute,
melds sins of the past with Florida's precarious future.
Excerpt:
Prologue
1
I returned an arcane Station Six pistol
to the US Consulate in Cape Town, South Africa, unaware a storm that would
forever change Florida had gathered to the north, fueled by a mirror that is
the Sahara Desert.
In a world of electronic intrusions,
I’m too often deafened to the silence of atmospheric tides, saltwater and
sunlight—dynamics that can ignite a cataclysm six thousand miles away.
“Has this weapon been fired?” the
consulate armorer asked.
The strange bolt action pistol lay on a
table. Its bulbous barrel (an integrated sound suppressor) had the utilitarian
aspect of a ball-peen hammer.
“At the range a few days ago. Five
rounds,” I said.
“But not in the field.”
“Nope.”
“A few practice rounds. That’s all?” He
sounded disappointed.
“With a bolt action single-shot, five
rounds was four too many.”
A Cold War assassin’s tool was an
ironic weapon to issue me, a marine biologist in Africa under the guise of
tagging great white sharks.
He noticed the bandage on my knuckles.
Blood had wicked through the gauze.
“Tough on your shooting hand. Too bad,
Dr. Ford.”
“Tougher to explain if I’d been stopped
at the border,” I said. “Shouldn’t I get some sort of receipt?”
When I was at the door, the armorer
spoke again. “Afrikaners call the stretch of water off Dyers Island ‘Shark
Alley.’ I heard a Russian diplomat went missing there yesterday.” There was a
pause. “Or defected. Depends, I guess, on who you ask.”
It was a question without a question
mark.
Dyers Island, one hundred twenty
kilometers southeast. It brought back the stench of thousands of fur seals and
penguins fighting, breeding, dying, birthing pups on a rock the size of a
parking lot. Blood, the ammonia stink of urine, verified that monster great
whites cruised the island’s rim.
I replied, “Can’t say I’ve been there
before. Maybe next visit.”
“After your wedding, perhaps. An
interesting honeymoon that would make. A few weeks away, isn’t it?”
In state department/intel circles,
there are no personal secrets, only classified obligations.
“Maybe,” I said again. I tapped my
wrist. “The COS wants a word before I take off.”
He buzzed me out.
The US Consulate in Cape Town is a
geometry of white concrete on acres of landscaped grounds. Tiers of bulletproof
windows, three stories high, are dwarfed by the enormity of Table Mountain, a
slower geologic cataclysm eight kilometers north.
Across the commons, marines in BDUs
were getting in a morning run. Kids with tattoos, jarhead buzz cuts, rocking to
a navy cadence call.
Let ’em blow, let ’em blow,
Let those trade winds blow,
From the east, from the west…
Let those nukes, the new kids glow…
A foreboding message cheerfully voiced
this spring morning in September, half a globe away from my lab and home at
Dinkin’s Bay Marina, west coast Florida.
Building A, through security, up three
flights of granite steps. The Chief of Station slid an envelope across her
desk, an encrypted IronKey memory drive inside.
After some distancing pleasantries, she
said, “Don’t download the files until you’re over international waters. Are you
familiar with Black Dolphin Prison on the Kazakhstan border?”
I might have smiled if I didn’t know
the place was real. Russia sends its twisted worst to Black Dolphin—terrorists,
pedophiles, serial killers, the criminally insane. Cannibals.
“Named for a stone dolphin carved by
inmates,” I said. “No prisoner has ever left there alive from what I’ve heard.”
Chief of Station indicated the envelope.
“Until two years ago. There was an earthquake, the facility flooded. Guards
evacuated and left seven hundred prisoners behind. We don’t know how many
drowned, but at least six escaped according to the few villagers they didn’t
murder.” Again, a glance at the envelope. “It’s all in there.”
I started to explain, respectfully,
that I was a poor choice to send to Russia.
Chief of Station surprised me by
agreeing. “Of course. Not at your age, Dr. Ford.” She was bemused. “And your
skill set isn’t up to…well. Let me ask you something. This morning, were you
aware of the van shadowing you?”
I answered, “Until it missed the curve
at Killig Bay. Was anyone hurt?”
Her flat gaze told me the subject was
not to be discussed. “Our concern is, they know who you are. Don’t worry, we’ll
look into the matter. Besides, you’re getting married in a few weeks, aren’t
you?”
Not if a certain agency didn’t stop
leveraging me with extradition threats.
I responded, “That’s the plan.”
As I went out the door, she said
something about the weather—“Keep an eye on it,” possibly, which I took as a
reference to my flight. Or marriage. Or both.
At Wingfield Airbase, a chill breeze
was siphoning toward the Sahara—another silent dynamic. At 36,000 feet, I
opened the IronKey while our pilots rode the North Equatorial Jetstream across
the Atlantic.
I read. I summarized. Four, maybe six
of Russia’s most violent criminals had left a blood trail crossing to the
Caspian Sea and might have entered the US via Venezuela or Mexico.
Might. But it made sense. Bratva, a
Russian criminal brotherhood, and Wagner mercenaries had established crime
syndicates in major US cities, including Miami.
Thus the courtesy of briefing me, a
biologist whose skill set was doubted, but who could at least pick up a phone
and dial for help.
So why bother with the second, unopened
folder on my laptop screen?
Why, indeed.
Sixteen hours in the air. I dozed,
awoke when the pilot warned of turbulence. Somewhere off Brazil, the plane
pitched, banged down hard into thermal clouds that mimicked tentacles. We
landed and took off again at sunset. Below revolved a familiar green mosaic of
seaward borders. South America. The coastline tracked my past and the passage
of time.
To port, a monoxide haze flagged
Caracas. The largest tarpon in the Americas had been landed there long before
Lake Maracaibo became a swill of petroleum, plastics, and industrial offal.
After that, there were only small
pockets of light: jungle villages, fires burning, night islands of humanity
linked by darkness, aglow like pearls, bright and solitary from four miles
high.
We crossed the flight corridor of
Western Cuba, Pinar Del Rio. More solitary lights. Somewhere down there was a
farm town, Vinales, a baseball diamond, wooden bleachers, fields where oxen
grazed.
I winced away fun memories of villagers
and playing ball with barnstorming friends.
Nostalgia is a waste of time. The
present is our only tenuous reality. It’s all a rational person has. But there
was something grating about the Chief of Station’s smirk regarding my skills
and age. And her reference to the impending wedding had the ring of sterile
dismissal.
My betrothed—Hannah Summerlin Smith.
Captain Hannah to fly-fishing aficionados from Ketchum to Key West. And the
mother of our toddler son, Izaak.
In the Everglades, in the middle of
nowhere, is a jet port that never got off the ground for environmental reasons.
But its ten-thousand-foot runway is still used clandestinely and for commercial
touch-and-goes.
Dade-Collier Training and Transition
Airport is the official name.
They dropped me off in the wee hours of
the morning, the air heat-laden, wet, ripe with sulfur. By 4:00 a.m. I was in
my new truck, a gray Ford, crossing the Causeway bridges a few miles from the
marina and home.
I reminded myself, If you don’t stop
lying to Hannah, there won’t be a wedding.
Most of us have a nagging, destructive
voice that second-guesses even the best of decisions.
Is that such a bad thing? mine argued.
Excerpted from One Deadly Eye by
Randy Wayne White. Copyright © 2024 by Randy Wayne White. Published by
arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
About the Author:
Randy
Wayne White is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the
Doc Ford series. In 2011, White was named a Florida Literary Legend by the
Florida Heritage Society. A fishing and nature enthusiast, he has also written
extensively for National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal, Playboy and Men's
Health. He lives on Sanibel Island, Florida, where he was a light-tackle
fishing guide for many years, and spends much of his free time windsurfing,
playing baseball, and hanging out at Doc Ford's Rum Bar & Grille. Sharks
Incorporated is his middle grade series, including Fins and Stingers.
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