Being an official with Fish amp; Wildlife, Riggs had the right to cross almost any boundary, public or private. But when Tatum put out the word that Riggs had the run of the town, it made things a bit easier. He didn't have to worry about some pesky security man with a private badge asking him what he was doing poking around a pump house or a sub-station.
He had spent that first day just driving around Salutations, getting the lay of the land. He had a knack for remembering something the first time he saw it, recalling locations and making the transition from map to the real thing, and back. In college he had almost always won the orienteering competitions he'd entered. Ronny-on-the-spot, they had called him.
Before getting the nod at the office for this assignment, Ron hadn't given this area much thought. He'd read the newspaper concerning the legal battle being waged between competing camps, each armed with their own lawyers trying to fight off the other. But now that he'd had a chance to look at the place, he could fully understand why so many people were willing to go to the mat for this land.
Except for the road leading in to what had been the Edmunds Military Base, the 400,000 acres here was one of the largest roadless areas in the state. It was probably only second to the Everglades National Park in that respect. As military bases went, the construction had been minimal. Most of the area had been used as a bombing range, and even since the 60s, most of the bombing had been done either with dummy ordnance or had merely been bombing runs with no real armaments used. The U.S. Armed Forces had inadvertently created a vast wilderness area.
Of course the wilderness aspect of the former base was now what was in contention among the varied parties. When it had been decommissioned and evacuated, the land had gone on the public auction block. The Berg Brothers group had stepped in and had snapped up the area that had been housing and ops for the base. Since it had already been inhabited, there was no need for environmental impact statements, and they had begun almost immediately with construction of Salutations, to quite a bit of fanfare. Ron had to admit that they had done a wonderful job in building their ideal fantasy town. There were already over five hundred families living there, and more houses were under construction.
The studio boys had even managed to lock down first refusal rights on an additional 50,000 acres, pending environmental impact statements. And that was when the proverbial shit had hit the fan.
It had taken only a few weeks before several environmental groups had taken to the courts and filed suits that were serving as staying actions on any further development beyond the couple of thousand or so acres the studio had bought outright. But they were not well funded, being environmental groups, and the big company was having no major problems in outflanking those suits.
The true monkey wrenches had come from two unexpected sources.
First and foremost, one Vance Holcomb was found to have legal right to a one hundred-acre tract of land abutting that of the Salutations town limits. Concurrent with the groundbreaking of the town, he had begun construction of what the billionaire was calling a "research park," to be the nexus of a school for the study of the pristine environment of the land. With all of those dollars in assets to back him up, Holcomb was proving to be a greater bother than almost any other group vying for the status of the acreage.
The second cog breaker had been the appearance in court of Colonel Winston Grisham, U.S. Marines, retired. He was best known as a right wing extremist with widely publicized racist views, what amounted to a private army, and friends in the Florida legislature. He also owned a one thousand acre farm, which also lay cheek by jowl with projected expansion for Salutations. While a wealthy man, he was not in Vance Holcomb's money class, and his legal strengths had so far lay in the good ol' boys he chummed with in the state government. He'd become something of a thorn in the side of plans to expand Salutations. But he was also a thorn in the side of those who wanted to preserve the acreage as wilderness.
And that was the extent of Ron's knowledge of the current legal status of the almost half a million acres of roadless wilderness he now stood beside and peered into.
The sun was up and startlingly yellow in a clear blue sky about as dark and cloudless as any. Florida skies were the equal of any he'd seen, from the East Coast to Alaska. They rivaled those of the Big Sky country where he'd spent a year as an intern with the Park Service when he was just out of college. Rainy days scoured the air and the prevailing winds from the Atlantic or the Gulf brought in clean breezes. He enjoyed the skies here, most definitely.
He had parked his truck on the south end of Salutations, near an unobtrusive electrical substation that was surrounded by a red brick wall eight feet tall capped with a cast iron row of ornamental spikes. The station had been built on a bed of crushed river rock, he'd noted, hauled in from out of state. That was a very expensive setup for a small substation. But the place reeked of money. He supposed the average price of a home here was about $400,000.
Riggs looked back, down the street, as someone in a Mercedes sedan drove by. A kid in the back seat waved at him, and he waved a return greeting. He walked around the side of the substation and followed a small path through the grass that led off into the tall pines. There were sedges growing here and there, brown in all of that greenery, and the path took him through a field of a type of grass he couldn't identify. But botany wasn't his strong suit. He bent and tugged on a tuft and put the stuff in a plastic baggy he drew out of his pocket. He'd let one of the guys back in town have a look at it. Might be endangered or threatened. Wouldn't hurt to check.
Stuffing the sealed bag back into his pocket, he continued down the path. It was possible humans made the path, but he suspected it was more likely a deer trail. Apparently some of the deer were coming into the new neighborhoods and eating the shrubbery and whatever garden vegetables some of the housewives and retirees were planting. Tatum had admitted that a couple of the residents had shot at deer, once successfully. Ron told him that he wouldn't call the game warden, but asked that Tatum inform the shooter that the act was illegal.
The sun was tilting up toward its high point in the sky. He looked back through the grasses and through the trees. There was no sign of anything not put down by Mother Nature. Just trees and palmettos. He calculated he'd hoofed half a mile, maybe a shade more. The vegetation and the breezes swallowed up even the sounds of any passing cars. Some quail called off to his right. He smiled.
Ron supposed that a big snake might follow a path such as this one. He had touched up his knowledge concerning big constrictors and knew that they would cruise game trails looking for a place to waylay their victims. Deer were a bit out of their league, but other animals could use a deer trail, too. He suspected that raccoons and opossum were probably the main prey of any introduced python or anaconda. But considering the size of some snakes, there weren't many animals out of the question for their menu.
Soon he was two miles out from where he'd parked the truck. He'd seen a Pileated Woodpecker on a tall, dead pine ten yards to the left of the deer trail. Ron knew that bird watchers sometimes made the mistake of identifying the Pileated as one of the extinct Ivory-Bills. Hopeful thinking on the part of novice bird lovers, he suspected. Every so often he heard tales that there might still be a pocket of Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers living here or there, but he knew it was just hopes and wishes. He was convinced they were all gone. It was a good thing that the dead snags and dying trees here were left to stand and fall on their own. Some birds preferred to feed on the insects that lived in such trees, refusing to dine on the trunk if it was on the ground. If ever there was a place to find a lost Ivory-Bill, he supposed this was it.
The trail had branched a couple of times, but Ron had kept to the main one, which led southward. A dog might use such a trail to snoop around, checking out the nearby forests. Dogs would be quite edible where a big snake was concerned. Alligators loved them, and that was for certain. Ron had lost count of the number of dogs that were taken by gators every year; it was a common occurrence, and he knew that a resident construction worker had lost at least a pair of dogs to a gator before the place had opened to the public. Apparently, that had pretty much started Dodd's Jurassic Park articles. Ron hadn't seen the reporter since that brief meeting on the steps of the administrative building, and he wondered if the man had gone back to home base.
He was about two and a half miles out when he came to the longleaf savanna he'd spotted from Tatum's office. There was a line of mixed oaks and pines, and suddenly he was out on a wide plain interspersed with longleaf pines, a species mostly gone from Florida, pushed out by the planting of slash pines and other more commercial types. He'd read about such environments, but had never seen one this large. This one was almost a mile square and he was tempted to hike across, just to see what it was like. The trail led out a ways, and just vanished in all of the low grasses and Spanish bayonet. This was a type of forest and grassland that had once dominated vast areas of the Gulf and low country of the East Coast. But now it was reduced to small pockets here and there.
Standing in it, viewing the wide, open country, the pines tall and strong amidst the fields, he understood why groups would vie to own or protect it all. Despite the fact that he was supposed to remain officially neutral about these things, he found himself hoping that no one would be allowed to harm this area in any way.
He smiled. At one time, this kind of country would have been prime hunting area for a large constrictor. This would be perfect habitat for such an animal. Which threw his thoughts back to the job he was there to do.
The only thing that was bothering Ron about the possibility of a python being the culprit of the missing dogs was the time between the disappearances. In the past ten days, four dogs had vanished. Having spoken to owners of the missing dogs, he was aware that only one of the pets had weighed less than twenty pounds. One had been a full-grown Airedale terrier. That dog alone would be enough food mass for even a big snake to sleep off for several weeks.
So why would it take four dogs? The probability that there were more than two large snakes here wasn't even worth considering. Of course, he supposed, stranger things had happened.
Taking his small daypack off, he laid it at the base of a big pine tree and sat down, his back against the tall trunk. He looked up, watched the needles undulating in the breeze. Despite the warmth of the day, he felt comfortable out there, and the wind had chased away whatever biting bugs were about. The thought of taking out the camera and snapping a few shots occurred to him, but he decided it would be better to eat a sandwich and get back to Salutations to start scouting around. After all, if there really were a snake, he'd be better off looking under someone's house than off in the wilderness. He reached into the pack and began to rummage for the roast beef on sourdough he had prepared. The thought of tangy deli mustard had him salivating.
Almost, he didn't catch the rustle of moving grass over the small noises his hand was making in the recesses of his little backpack. Ron froze.
Holding his breath, he looked around. Overhead, a Snail Kite streaked across the sky. Even alert as he was, he made a mental note to mention that one to the boys back at home base. Snail Kites were definitely an endangered species. He stared across the savanna, trying to pinpoint the location of the sound. There was only wind whispering through pine needles.
And then it came again.
Whatever it was, it was out in the savanna, maybe a hundred feet away, and it seemed to be coming toward him. He stared, squinting, and finally saw a movement out in the sedges. A tall figure was moving his way, almost a beeline right toward him. He held silent until he could identify it.
It stopped. All he could see was something light colored standing behind a tuft of bear grass. And then it was moving toward him again. Suddenly, it appeared from out of the tall grasses.
"Hello," she called in a husky voice.
Ron breathed out, relieved and wondering why he had been so tense. There really wasn't anything out there likely to be a danger to him. He felt relatively certain he could outrun a big snake. He laughed nervously, low in his chest, before he stood.
"Hey," he replied. The girl was moving his way quickly. She, too, had a small daypack on her back. She was wearing khaki cotton pants and a long-sleeved shirt of similar color, a kerchief of muted green around her neck. She had short brown hair, and she was very tall.
And she was quite pretty, he noticed as she walked up to greet him, her own hand outstretched to take his. Her grip was strong, stronger than he had expected. He had to look up to meet her eyes: she was six feet tall, at least.
"So. You're with Fish and Wildlife." Her gaze was on the patch on his right shoulder.
"Yes," he needlessly replied. "Out here scouting around today."
"You guys thinking of updating those preliminary impact reports you did? Those really sucked, you know. I almost thought you fellows were working for the studio." She was shedding her own pack, revealing a great dark stain down her back. Ron realized she had been out on the savanna for some time, and he wondered how she had spotted him.
"No. I'm not here for anything like that. That's not my gig. They have other boys at the office for that type of thing. I'm more of a Jack-of-all-trades with the department. PR, informational talks, that kind of thing." He indicated his tree. "Have a seat. Plenty of room. Name's Ron, by the way. Ron Riggs."
"Sure. I think I will have a seat. Lunchtime, anyway. Thanks." She tossed her pack next to his and sat, her long legs extending out before her, back against the tree much as Ron had been sitting before she'd arrived. "My name's Kate Kwitney. I was hoping your bunch'd do another impact statement. As I said…"
"The last one sucked," he finished. She smiled at him. "Yeah, I read it, too. I thought it was somewhat superficial to say the least. Hell. I just saw a Snail Kite zipping across the sky here. There was no mention, at all, of Snail Kites in the report." He was sitting next to her, getting his sandwich and searching for his water bottle.
"Christ. You have no idea," she told him as she retrieved a bag of dried fruit. "Why, we've identified ninety-three threatened or endangered species living within three miles of here. And that's just birds, mammals, and reptiles. We're not even talking plant species, amphibians, or fish. Botany and ichthyology aren't my line, mind you, but I know a bit. We have a couple guys working on those."
"We? Who are you with?" Ron sat there, his sandwich poised.
"Oh. Sorry," she told him, working the words around a mouthful of dried apples and apricots. "I work for Holcomb. Vance Holcomb. You know who he is, right?"
"Yes. Yes, I do. He's fighting Berg Brothers tooth and nail over this old bombing range. How's that going, by the way?"
She stopped chewing, and Ron looked at her as she stared off into the savanna. Her blue-green eyes were terribly pretty, he thought. So was the rest of her. "Well, you know Vance is an extremely wealthy man. A billionaire. His fortune is certainly hefty enough to give anyone pause. However, even he can't successfully fight a corporation like Berg Brothers. Them and their damned town." She scowled at something he couldn't see, but could imagine.
"Saaaaaaaaal-yew-taaaaaaaaaaaay-shunz," Ron squeaked.
Kate looked at him, and she laughed, showing a lot of straight, white teeth. He laughed along with her.
"What are you doing?" she asked him. "I mean, after lunch." She reached into her bag and came out with another handful of fruit.
"Just heading back to my truck. Why?"
"Would you like to come back to the compound?"
"Compound?"
"Holcomb's place. The research center."
"The Eyesore!"
She laughed again, and Ron found himself liking her.
"Yes. The Eyesore. We hear that one a lot. You'd be surprised at the glares I get when I go into the market in Salutations and someone recognizes me as one of Holcomb's people." She sighed. "But I'm used to that from way back. Anyway…you want to come back with me? Vance might want to talk to you."
Ron finally took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, thinking. "Hell. Why not? I've never met a billionaire."
"Billion and a half," she corrected.
"Wow. I'm impressed. Sure. I'll come."
As Ron sat and ate his lunch, Kate began to run down her list of ninety-three endangered and threatened species living in the area. He listened, giving her his undivided attention.
And they were not aware of a brief flash of scarlet that glimmered behind them, off in the trees, and then was gone.