David Mitchell stepped forward, gripping the sixteen-inch steel tire iron with both hands, his knuckles turning chalky white. “Take your hand off that piece, Vance, or I’ll bury this iron through your teeth!”
Gregory didn't even look at David. In one fluid, terrifying motion, his hand snapped down toward the holster, unclicking the retention strap.
“Excuse me, young man!”
A sharp, clear, indignant voice rang out from the top of the shell path.
Gregory Vance froze. His fingers stopped on the grip of his weapon.
Standing at the edge of the mangrove garden, leaning heavily on her polished black walking cane, was Grandma Rose.
Marcus was three paces behind her, looking utterly helpless and terrified, having clearly failed to keep the eighty-six-year-old matriarch locked inside the cottage.
Rose’s straw hat was slightly askew. Her floral brooch was gleaming under the midday sun. And in her left hand, clutched by the brass handle, was a heavy, five-gallon pressurized galvanized garden sprayer filled with dark, murky liquid—an ancient contraption she had discovered sitting in Victoria’s gardening shed.
“Grandma, NO!” I screamed, moving to put my body between her and the gun.
“Emily, be quiet and stand back!” Grandma Rose ordered with the voice of an angry school principal.
She hobbled down the shell path, her cane clicking with terrifying speed, stopping barely eight feet from the end of the wooden dock.
Gregory Vance stared at Grandma Rose as if an alien had just landed in the mangroves. “What is this? Who the hell is this old woman?”
“I am Rose Miller, you rude, ill-mannered boy!” Grandma Rose snapped, her eyes blazing behind her spectacles. “And you are standing on private property with muddy boots, threatening to set fire to a perfectly lovely mahogany boat!”
Gregory’s jaw dropped. The absurd surrealism of an eighty-six-year-old grandmother reprimanding a violent cartel smuggler seemed to short-circuit his brain for a split second. Then, a dark, murderous sneer twisted his scarred face.
“Get this fossil out of my face,” Gregory barked to the man on the boat, drawing the black handgun from his holster and raising it toward the sky. “Or I’ll start shooting kneecaps.”
“You will do no such thing,” Grandma Rose declared.
With a speed and ferocity that defied her eighty-six years, Grandma Rose pumped the brass handle of the galvanized tank three times with her right hand, raised the heavy brass nozzle, and squeezed the trigger.
FSSSSSSSSSSSSSH!
A high-pressure, jet-stream torrent of thick, pungent, oily brown liquid blasted from the brass nozzle, striking Gregory Vance square in the face with the force of a fire hose.
It wasn't water.
The air was instantly filled with the overwhelming, eye-watering stench of pure, concentrated organic fish emulsion fertilizer, fermented garlic, and concentrated capsaicin pepper extract—the heavy-duty organic pesticide Victoria’s gardener used to repel iguana infestations from the orchid beds.
“AARRRGGGHHH!” Gregory Vance shrieked, dropping the steel pry bar with a heavy splash into the water.
The caustic pepper-and-fish oil solution hit his eyes, his nose, and his open mouth. The burning agony of concentrated capsaicin combined with the nauseating stench of rotten fish oil blinded him instantly. He dropped the handgun onto the wooden dock, clutching his face with both hands, screaming and thrashing like a man engulfed in flames.
“Fire!” Gregory choked, tumbling backward across the dock. “My eyes! I can't breathe!”
David Mitchell roared like a charging bull.
He lunged across the wooden planks, swinging the heavy tire iron in a clean, brutal arc that struck the fuel canister out of the second man’s hands, sending it splashing harmlessly into the canal. David drove his shoulder straight into the second man’s chest, tackling him off the deck of the powerboat and plunging both of them into the four-foot-deep tidal channel in an explosion of brackish water and mud.
The handgun lay on the wooden planks three feet from Gregory’s flailing boots.
Gregory, blind and coughing violently, dropped to his knees, his hands frantically clawing across the wet timber, his fingers brushing the cold steel frame of the weapon.
A heavy, polished black oak cane came down with crushing precision across Gregory Vance’s fingers.
“Ow! God damn it!” Gregory howled, snatching his hand back in agony.
Grandma Rose stood over the blinded smuggler, her foot planted firmly on top of the black handgun, her cane raised high above her head like a club.
“I told you, young man,” Grandma Rose said, her voice dripping with lethal Midwestern discipline. “Arthur Vance Miller taught me how to handle bullies sixty years ago. Now you sit on that dock and keep your filthy hands off that pistol, or the next place this cane lands will be right between your ears.”
Gregory Vance curled into a pathetic, weeping ball on the sun-bleached dock, spitting brown fish fertilizer onto the planks, sobbing in blind, helpless defeat.
Out in the canal, David dragged the spluttering, half-drowned second thug up onto the mudbank, twisting the man’s arms behind his back with plastic zip-ties retrieved from his pocket.
Victoria collapsed against my arm, her mouth hanging open, staring at Grandma Rose in absolute, speechless adoration.
Marcus stared at the ceiling of the mangrove canopy, crossing himself reverently.
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Grandma Rose lowered the garden sprayer nozzle, carefully adjusted her straw hat, and turned her pale blue eyes back toward me.
“Emily, sweetheart,” Grandma Rose said calmly, brushing a speck of dust off her maroon cardigan. “Remind me when we get back to the cottage to wash my hands. That fish oil has a terribly stubborn smell, and we still have to bake some biscuits before dinner.”
The piercing wail of maritime emergency sirens ripped across the shallow waters of the mangrove canal.