Fool's Run

by Sidney Williams

  Kenny was indeed in place. I lifted Dagney into my arms and rushed on across the blacktop roadway and onto a little outcropping where I jogged toward the waiting speedboat.

  Like the party barge, the runabout was almost aground, but not quite. I sloshed into the water’s edge and passed Dagney to Kenny then climbed over the side. The boat rocked and pitched with the movement of our weight, but I managed to get onto the deck.

  After he’d lowered her onto the bench seat at the back of the boat, Kenny dropped into the driver’s seat.

  “You got this?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Here we go,” he said.

  The motor turned over on the first try, and he yanked the wheel hard right and shoved the throttle forward with a shout of “Wheeeeee!” Interesting contrast to his otherwise ruthless professionalism.

  I dropped into a spot beside Dagney and looked into her confused eyes. She wondered if she could believe me.

  “We’re from your parents,” I said to reassure. “We’re going to take you home.”

  She began to cry. That reminded me the suit coat I was wearing had a display handkerchief, so I pulled that out for her than slipped the jacket off and draped it around her shoulders since the wind slashed around us.

  In a couple of minutes, we reached the end of the canal, and Kenny slowed to navigate a shallow area near a boat launch but then opened up again as we passed from the mouth of the canal into the lake alongside Five Miles Bridge, the Maestri Bridge.

  “Next stop Metairie,” I said. “We’ll figure it out from there.”

  He nodded, and we picked up speed in a smooth uptick that avoided the bounce Arch had warned me about. A spotlight on the bow sent gleaming white streaks across the water’s surface, as if it were a line guiding the way.

  I should have known it had all been too easy, but with adrenalin pumping and a sense of elation that we’d turned up Dagney at all, I was distracted.

  The headlights appeared minutes into what should have been a straight shot across to wherever we wanted to off load. At first, I thought we were watching after-dark fishing boats or other pleasure excursions, but the lamps converged until we were looking at twin white eyes directly behind us.

  It seemed impossible, but maybe someone had pinpointed us, and they were moving in.

  They’d almost had to have been out here waiting for us or had boats outside the neighborhood canals.

  Then it hit me.

  “Dagney, did they bring you in on a boat?”

  She nodded. “A yacht.”

  “The yacht had other boats escorting it?”

  She nodded. “One of them took us over to where the car was waiting for us.”

  Kenny steered right in an effort to lose them, but the lights veered in the same direction.

  They’d match us move for move, get on our tail. I squinted into the pod lights, picking out silhouettes of men behind the blazing light beams. They’d do more than get on our tail. I could see weapons. They were ready to blow us out of the water. I could see rifles cradled, heavy firepower, and I thought I could make out the bulky form of Nestor Zhirov.

  I was glad I hadn’t called the Holsts already and over promised.

  Chapter 47

  I felt my soul deflate, and about then Dagney’s fingers dug into my arm. I glanced at her in the glow of the boat lights. She was terrified. If they sprayed weapon fire our way, we wouldn’t come out well.

  “I just thought they left,” she said.

  I leaned toward her, spoke close to the side of her face as Kenny eased the throttle back and pulled us into a perpendicular stop in front of the boats.

  “This isn’t over,” I said. “Stay low.”

  I ducked with her to the floorboard, and Kenny charted a route through a passage under a draw span of the Maestri, jerking us out of the light beams and under the bridge. Water churned high and white around us, and the boat shuddered beneath us as we zoomed into the darkness.

  We missed any obstructions. Kenny was good even at a high speed. I was glad I hadn’t had to drive. Motors roared behind us, but no shots rang out. They didn’t want to risk hitting Dagney. She was valuable cargo. That was good all around.

  Kenny moved the throttle forward, and angled away from the bridge, charting a course somewhere generally south. The sound of engines behind us seemed to split, a zippy, slightly more shrill motor heading one way, the deeper and grumbling, the other.

  “They’re coming under too, and they’re going to try to flank us,” I said.

  “On it,” Kenny shouted, and we picked up more speed, getting a little of that undesirable bounce Arch had spoken of but propelling us still faster in spite of it. Again, I couldn’t judge speed on the water, but it felt significantly faster than we’d managed on the party barge.

  I scanned the south shore, looking at the scattered signs of light. Nothing stood out as a more obvious spot to make for. I didn’t offer any suggestions. I wasn’t processing any great options other than keep away at the moment. Or maybe cops. I yanked my phone out. Maybe it was time for the coast guard. With Dagney on board, the reasons not to call in official help were generally gone. The shrill motor cut in our way before I had a chance to key in 9-1-1, forcing Kenny to adjust his route to avoid a sideswipe.

  “Wa’ the hell?” Kenny shouted.

  The gruff motor came in on the other side. They were trying to hem us in and perhaps control our trajectory.

  I kept an arm around Dagney and flexed my fingers around the PSM.

  “Get us out of this, Kenny.”

  “Workin’ on it,” he said.

  I think he was having a good time. He went full throttle again and tried to tack left and get ahead of the shrill craft.

  Wind ripped at us as he gained a little ground, but as I looked over at the running lights on the craft to our left, I saw they were almost keeping even. They had about the same horsepower.

  I thought I saw three men on board, all with weapons. I wasn’t confident I could do much more than draw responding fire if I blasted in their direction with the PSM at the distance. Before I could even entertain that thought much further, they started cutting toward us.

  “They’re coming to try and sideswipe us,” I shouted.

  If they tipped us, retrieving us from the drink would be easy enough. We wouldn’t have a lot of options then, besides drowning.

  “Giving it all we got,” Kenny said.

  Squinting against the wind, I scanned the shoreline. Most of it was lost in the darkness. We’d veered away from the highway and now faced the marshy Bayou Sauvage wildlife refuge. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. Things might get treacherous out there even if we could lose ourselves. I couldn’t rule out gators well enough to suit myself.

  Not far from the wildlife area, the outskirts of the city stretched, some neighborhoods speckling peninsulas not unlike the north side where we’d been. In land configuration at least if not housing costs. If we could go to ground somewhere near the proximity of other humans, we’d discourage gunplay. There might have been better possibilities for putting to shore, but they weren’t coming to me at the moment. We’d been pushed into an area that wasn’t as ideal as other spots might be. Had they wanted us to head that way?

  Kenny cocked his head in my direction, inquiring.

  “Keep going,” I said. I looked at my phone. I wasn’t getting much coverage. “They’re right behind us. We need to call in a mayday.”

  “Need my hands,” he said.

  Kenny zigged and zagged a bit then put the throttle all the way forward again, getting us a little further away from the flanking crafts.

  “There’s a pass up there,” he shouted, surprising me just a bit. He tapped the Garmin screen on his console.

  “Get us close to a highway?”

  “Yeah.”

  They’d already kept us from getting too close to I-10.

  I slipped my arm from around Dagney and moved forward in the boat, keeping low to maintain balance and
avoid being a target.

  Chef Menteur Pass, which I could read on the screen, curled through the marshy area and ran under Highway 90 as it wended toward Lake Borgne which opened to the Gulf. The older Chef Menteur Highway crossed as well. Maybe there’d be people somewhere there, maybe even some bars or something public that was open. I tried for a cell signal again as we neared the mouth of the pass, but it wasn’t happening.

  This was supposed to have been an easier extraction than racing away in a car. It might have been for someone less organized than Alexeeva. Fate had dealt us a shitty hand, too.

  I knelt at Kenny’s side, tried to steady myself and stared at the radio. We were actually near New Orleans city limits, which at least technically stretched out here somewhere.

  “Not the top-of-the-line unit, but there’s a distress button,” Kenny said, nodding toward a radio. “It’ll send our location.”

  I squinted in the dim light from the console, spotted the red button and pressed it, producing some beeps.

  “Call in the mayday now,” Kenny said. “Coordinates are on the screen.”

  I grabbed the mic and babbled: “Mayday,” remembering you were supposed to call it three times. I was waiting on the response when shots roared above the motor noise. I wasn’t sure they’d been fired at us or just in the air above us, but I scrambled back to Dagney’s side.

  She’d learned to be silent in her time in captivity, and she held to that now. She had no idea who we really were or what we wanted. I tried to assuage the terror she must be feeling and suppressing, but there wasn’t much hope of that.

  “We’ll have you home soon,” I said. I hoped it was the home with her parents and not the one she’d come to know.

  She just looked at me with wide, still child-like eyes. She’d been controlled and helpless for so long she didn’t know what to convey.

  “Stay low,” I said, shifting to practical mode.

  Kenny lowered the throttle as we moved into the mouth of the pass and our front light illuminated more brown water before us. Hopefully the Coast Guard would mobilize and any other boats in the area would relay the call as well, and they’d hone in on our passive signal.

  We chugged up the first arm of water that stretched toward a curve around an outcropping on our right. According to Kenny’s electronic map, we’d wend through a couple of curves before Highway 90 crossed over. We made it along the first open stretch at pretty good speed then slowed only slightly before rounding a curve and gliding forward.

  That slow-down was what they’d been waiting for. The pursuing crafts that had been hanging on our wake shot past us, one on each side.

  “Uh, oh,” Kenny said.

  The one on our right angled into our path, motor slashing a white trench that buffeted us as we hit the waves off the wake.

  Then the craft was in front of us, perpendicular. Their throttle cut, almost expertly, as another shot past us and joined it nose to nose.

  In an instant, we were headed toward their side as more boats sounded behind us. How many did they have? We were about to be boxed in. It wouldn’t do them any good if we rammed, but it wouldn’t do us any good either. We’d be in the drink a long way from shore. They’d snatch the girl before anyone arrived.

  I looked for a second toward a narrow bar of land off to our right, starboard in boating terms, a stretch covered in vegetation, dark in the night shadows, nothing more than a strip draped in blackness and wisps of mist. I could make out a few bits of a crumbling brick wall behind it. Then I remembered again there’d been a fort here, a guard post during 19th Century wars to keep enemies out of Lake Pontchartrain.

  “They’ve got us on water, Kenny,” I said. “What about over there?”

  He glanced that way and saw what I was talking about. His head seemed to perk slightly.

  “Fort Macomb,” he said, almost with elation. “We could hide in there. It’d be cool.”

  I was thinking gators in the wildlife area might give us a better chance, but he jerked the craft that way and accelerated with almost the same expertise we’d seen from the other craft, and our boat jetted in the fort’s direction before the boats behind us could pull aside.

  Part 4

  In the Realm of Czernobog

  Chapter 48

  “We may be screwed,” Kenny said. Gold star for restating the obvious.

  “No argument there. We have to hold out until the coast guard gets here.” At least that would give me time to rehearse my statement for the police.

  A dark and cold feeling clenched my ribcage.

  If we hit shore, there were roadways and houses not too far away, but it would be a trek on foot with the girl. We might not draw enough attention before the guys on our tail started shooting individual motorists or nosey residents.

  From what I’d seen of the guys on the boat, they looked impatient and could pretty easily finish us both and take the girl back as well in a flat-out battle. Suddenly, our best hope was that they’d toy with us first.

  Maybe we could play to our strengths. Or toy with them.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  Kenny guided the craft up the inlet, not sparing speed. The bow movement was less than ideal.

  A brick wall stretched beside us, a wall overgrown with intense vegetation at its earth packed the top. It looked like a Chia pet. Below the brush, the wall was dappled with small arched cannon ports that looked like deep set, haunted eyes when our light swept that direction. If the old fort had stood against gunboats for so long, maybe we could hold off a few guys. Or, if they turned out to be, commandos.

  Kenny angled toward a spot we could pull ashore. I moved to the bow, adjusted my footing to a steady position and waited for the hull to slide up on the bank. Then I stepped out and dragged the boat up onto land, tugging it in just enough to keep it from drifting away.

  Then I crouched and checked the PSM at my spine where I’d tucked it. It snuggled securely in my waistband. With luck, it wouldn’t discharge and blow off my coccyx.

  Behind me, Kenny slid from his seat and crouched in the floorboard. He’d pulled a MAC-10, a machine pistol with a long suppressor, from a compartment. He cradled it in his arms. Knowing Kenny, he’d selected it because it looked cool, but if the way he’d handled the boat was any indication, he’d be helpful.

  I stuffed extra ammo clips into my pockets, and Kenny grabbed a satchel from the compartment.

  “Might have stuff you can use.”

  Tugging it open, he pulled out what looked at first like sticks of dynamite, which he offered me as examples. That seemed a little extreme, but I accepted, fearful of instability until I realized he’d handed me not dynamite but emergency flares. On a boat, what a concept.

  I tucked them back into the bag, found a shoulder strap and slid it over my head then stepped onto the bit of shore we had found and rolled up my sleeves.

  With the girl between us, we hustled up a narrow dirt road that led to the chain link fence.

  “What else you know about this place?”

  “It’s really pre-Civil War,” he said. “Designed when the U.S. needed to give gunners and cannons a covered position to fire from, so it’s really a bunch of tunnels and cannon openings, embrasures.”

  If you picked one of his topics, Kenny truly was an encyclopedia. He and Arch had probably led businessmen on fishing tours this way.

  “The outside walls are really all hallways or really tunnels. There’ll be a structure inside at the center, ruins of barracks and what not. They use the place now in movies a lot and TV.”

  “That’s great news.”

  “It was in NCIS and True Detective. Did you see that?”

  “Must have missed it.”

  “It was on HBO. Good show.”

  “They didn’t spring for the premium channels in lockup,” I said. Might have been helpful to have seen the place.

  Motors roared behind us. I looked skyward, hoping for a Coast Guard helicopter, but nothing was in sight. So, it was the fo
rt.

  From what I could tell the structure was roughly a triangle constructed in its day to fit the available ground. We reached the gate at the end of the dirt path. It didn’t seem formidable.

  “Place is closed. No state money to make it safe,” Kenny said.

  Unstable bricks didn’t seem that threatening at the moment.

  The gate had already been bent a few times for explorers wanting a look in spite of potential hazards. I curled my fingers around the edge and twisted it against the chain and padlock, and we made a space that let Dagney slide through. I followed with Kenny’s help, keeping up the pull and twist.

  We had to bend it with a bit more effort to try and accommodate Kenny’s size, and I heard shouts from somewhere behind us. They were coming.

  “Go on,” he said. “I’ll be along.”

  He abandoned his efforts to get through and headed into brush along the roadside, shoulders slumping downward.

  “Just get to cover,” I said. “Stay safe.”

  “I will.”

  I almost barked instructions for him not to try any heroics, but he’d disappeared, and we needed to move. With my hand around Dagney’s wrist, I led the way on toward the fort’s nearest wall. I released her arm and yanked out the lighted face of the burner and turned it forward, letting it chase shadows back a bit.

  Jasso’s old remark returned to me yet again.

  Life’s a fool’s run on a crooked road. I’d found the truest iteration of his notion.

  A heavy wooden door or maybe even an iron gate had probably once barred the arched passage, a sally port, but now only another chain-link gate had been erected across the opening. That hung from loose hinges. I bent that, and we slid through it easily and into the open archway.

  The passage stretched on through the wall. I led Dagney forward with as much speed as she could manage. We needed to find an opening into the cannon passages. Let ’em try to find us in there.