Season of the Machete

by James Patterson

  “Brace yourselves, gentlemen,” Meral Johnson yelled out.

  The steep hill came and went—then swept down roller-coaster style on quiet, narrow side streets.

  An unofficial Grand Prix race was beginning. People along the sidewalks were screaming at the fast-moving, souped-up cars.

  Eight thirty-nine. Damian checked the M-21 carefully. Checked the ammo.

  Clive Lawson still had the submachine gun on his hip.

  His stomach floating up in his chest cavity, his heart pounding like a tight bass drum, Peter watched Isadore Goldman’s man shoot down a narrow, unmarked driveway.

  “White flag” nearly missed it.

  A green Mazda missed; spun off into berry bushes. Harold Hill’s blue Cougar made the hairpin turn in the middle of the road.

  Another quick right turn followed in unfair progression. An immediate impossible left. Then a frightening straight, four-block-long speedway appeared out of nowhere.

  One catch: the speedway was blanketed with people.

  From the bouncing rear seat, Peter watched a blur of panic-stricken blacks running wildly. They’d been loitering around the street, catching the cool breeze…. Now they were diving onto the dirt sidewalks. A few crazy ones seemed to be imitating toreadors, flapping shirts and sweaters at the passing, weaving cars. A woman was hit—bang.

  Eight forty-three.

  Inside the white Charger, Brooks Campbell unholstered his revolver. Dr. Johnson was sitting on the car horn—creating one sustained scream.

  The Corvette twitched into third. Then up into fourth gear.

  Peter took his gun out of his shoulder holster. Semiautomatic Walther. Tough gun.

  The low-slung sports car opened up nearly a two-block lead on the others. It was getting small fast. A white box and flashing taillights—hugging the road—leaving the city like a ground rocket.

  Then Brooks Campbell was screaming, pointing at the Corvette, which was suddenly way over on the right.

  The Corvette was jetting down a dark country road. Opening up a quarter-mile lead.

  Clive Lawson was getting the Uzi ready now. Heplanted his feet in the soft dirt of the hillside. He stretched his arms, right first, then left.

  “We’re losing him, goddammit. We’re losing him!”

  The fat, sweating police chief twirled the steering wheel. The white Charger spun. Turned. Just missed turning over. Peter was thrown across the backseat. Felt his head crack against a side window.

  They were accelerating down the dark back road with the Corvette completely out of sight now. Brooks Campbell radioing for reinforcements, armies. Asking where the Tryall Road came out….

  Eight forty-four. Damian braced the M-21 against a coconut palm. Watched through his nightscope.

  Then all of the surveillance cars braked suddenly for a fork around a huge, spreading kapok tree.

  “Left! Hill will go—”

  The last part of Brooks Campbell’s instruction was drowned out. Peter was screaming at Meral Johnson to step on the gas.

  Unbelievably, the Dodge Charger’s side front window disintegrated.

  A high-powered rifle was exploding over and over in the dark woods. Methodical sniping. A professional marksman.

  The Charger’s roof ripped apart. Another window blew up. The car’s trunk took a blast that would have killed an elephant.

  Meral Johnson was screaming for Macdonald to stay down.

  Somebody’s head slammed against a window and broke right through it.

  “On the floor! On the floor!”

  The roof was hit again. Another blast hit somewhere in the greenhouse—the window frame area. Gun blasts pounded the car like sledgehammers.

  At least twenty explosions came within thirty seconds.

  Then all was quiet on the dark back road. A magic silence. Millions of twitting bugs. Tropical birds. The transition back and forth was almost incomprehensible.

  The wounded Charger was still rolling. Its tires were making pathetic little clicking noises.

  Meral Johnson had his hand down on the floor in the front seat. Flat down on the gritty brake pedal. Finally he stopped the Charger.

  Men from “Green Flag” were running to help. Bouncing sunglasses. Wingtips slapping on macadam.

  Harold Hill was running from way down the road. Screaming something. Looking like the father of a drowning child.

  “Macdonald!” the black policeman also suddenly screamed. “Macdonald!”

  A low groan came from inside the car.

  Peter sat up on the backseat. Started to shake off glass. Gash in his head, he realized. Blood … shit….

  He saw Campbell up in front. Looking at the shattered windshield as if he’d finally solved the whole goddamn awful thing.

  Except that the Great Western Air Transport man was too dead to solve things anymore.

  A revolutionary American-made bullet had pierced one side of the handsome face, tumbled over once, tried to tumble over again—exploded brain matter all over the walls and roof of the man’s skull. Like a bulldozer gouging out a small living room.

  And then Peter wasn’t looking at Campbell anymore. He was running. For the first time since April 25—Turtle Bay—he was moving like a certifiable madman, holding the Walther semiautomatic like a baton in a relay race.

  He’d seen the tall blond man up in the woods.

  Damian scrutinized Harold Hill and the black police chief in the steaming headlights of the unmarked police cars.

  Then Rose retreated farther back into the thick brush and brambles. Back closer to the boat. Escape. Carrie.

  Just one more scenario now.

  As he pushed his way through dark tree shapes and hanging moss; Peter heard shrieking birds and bugs all around him. The moon seemed to be racing through the shiny leaf ceiling over his head.

  After about seventy yards of the restrictive bushes, he emerged into the wide-open space of the Tryall Club’s golf course. He could see the Caribbean then, faint line of foamy surf. He could make out the main clubhouse, a long low building with half a hundred windows facing the golf course—closed for the summer season.

  Peter’s wide eyes methodically searched the dark Tryall golf course. He was in a combat trance now, all his movements automatic: search and destroy, kill the mercenary or get killed.

  His eyes ran over the neat, handsome clubhouse; along the dark flagstone patio and walkway; past hedges, gardens; down a long porch filled with rocking chairs.

  Somewhere between the bramble and the clubhouse he’d missed a turn by the tall running man. His powers as a tracker of men were rusty, Peter realized—gone altogether, kaput. A good Vietnamese soldier would have killed him by now.

  A stitch of white lightning lit up the night sky.

  Then Peter heard Meral Johnson’s first scream.

  Usually more athletic, he took a clumsy header onto the flat, rolling lawns.

  Not very expert, he realized as he hit down hard. More like a heavy box bouncing out the back of a speeding truck.

  Except that when he stopped bouncing, he was still alive. Chewing dirt, as Sergeant P. Macdonald once instructed new men in the field.

  And Johnson was still screaming like an agonized madman. “Stay down, Macdonald! Stay there! … Stay there, Peter!”

  Up near the clubhouse, Peter spotted the shadow of a man with a rifle. The blond man? One of Hill’s people? Too dark to be sure.

  His heart started to pound so hard, he couldn’t catch his breath. His mind filled with choking rage. He wanted the bastard so badly! It was fucked up, pathetic as hell—it was against everything he’d been trying to make of himself since Vietnam. But he wanted the man all the same. He wanted him so badly it ached. Infinite pain … why didn’t you shoot me, you prick?

  Suddenly automatic rifle fire came out of a grove of trees to his right. Rifles winked in the night. Licks of orange flame.

  As he looked on, bullets mercilessly ripped and pounded the clubhouse. Expensive windows crumbled out
of the dining room. Lights broke all over. A drainpipe was blown off a wall like papier-mâché.

  Peter carefully aimed the Walther at the shadowy man. He squeezed off a single wild shot. A long, impossible shot that came surprisingly close. Then the shadow with the rifle was gone. All the shooting stopped, and it started to rain.

  “Fuck you!” Peter stood up in the rain and shouted.

  “Fuck you!

  “Fuck you, you lousy son of a bitch!”

  Sheets of rain came in cool, streaming torrents— making it nearly impossible to see. Like having a gunfight in a waterfall. Total confusion.

  Somehow or other, he was thinking, Clive Lawson—late guttersnipe out of Billingsgate, late of the British Commandos, late of the unannounced Third World wars—had gotten himself into a nasty little booby trap….

  There’d been no word around that Damian and Carrie Rose were doubled dealers. Quite the opposite, in fact…. Christ! Why hadn’t he stayed in Miami! Lived to fight another day?

  The mercenary lay sideways like a hurt fish in a stonework gutter. He groped around for a flesh wound and found his left side to be numb. Then it burned as if he’d set a gasoline torch to himself.

  Lawson turned his left arm to his face. Looked at the glowing silver dials on his watch: 9:12. Too bloody bad. His escape had been arranged for nine. Right after he’d gunned down Campbell. The Roses were supposed to get him out of there. Supposed to.

  He started to crawl on his belly inside the littered gutter. He made little fish-fin strokes with his hands. Then, at the end of the gutter, Clive Lawson got up and started to run.

  Damian was God—slowly counting off the final few seconds of confusion.

  He studied the teeming grounds through a light intensifier mounted on the stock of his sniper’s rifle. The sighting device let him see in the dark. It threw whatever was in the rifle scope into a clear circle of eerie, Christmas-green light.

  Watching the human vignettes in the strange green light, he slid his index finger gently down onto the rifle trigger. His finger took in the slack of the trigger….

  Peter’s face was so wet, it was a bitch just to stop his eyes from blinking. Rainwater was rushing off his forehead. Rolling off his nose. He was actually choking on the rain. Getting frightened now because he couldn’t see.

  There was no sound around him except for the downpour and his own heavy breathing. His mind was racing at a madhouse pace. Throwing out Technicolor combat images, firefight scenes, disconnected phrases.

  Up ahead he could see the outline of overturned furniture on a dining veranda. Wrought-iron tables and chairs. Broken plants and flower pots.

  He took one more step forward….

  Then Peter saw the shape of another man across the open-air patio.

  The man was crouching in front of baby palm trees. So far, he didn’t realize that someone was on the terrace with him.

  Peter used the cover of the loud rain to circle around closer. Inch by inch he got ten feet closer. Fifteen feet … another ten feet and he thought he would have a decent pistol shot.

  He conned his mind into thinking that he couldn’t miss, not even in the rain. He would squeeze off at least two quick shots, he knew. Then as many more shots as he could get in. He hoped the man would never get to use his Uzi.

  Then the tall man actually began to move closer to him. He was moving sideways in a crouch, and he still had his back to Peter. He was moving like a professional army man.

  Peter wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. The rainwater made them sting like hell. Now he could see that the man’s hair was blond.

  There is no way I can miss hitting this man, he reminded himself. Zen marksmanship. It’s like standing twenty paces away from one of those big overturned dining tables. Taking your damn good time for a shot. Seeing not whether you hit it, but how close you can come to the little hole in the center for the table’s umbrella.

  How close can I come to the axis of the tall blond man’s spine?

  Kneeling on one knee, arms out stiff, perfectly straight, two hands on the Walther, Peter carefully got the blond man in his sight. He brought an image of the first machete murder into his mind. Then Jane—Jane on the beach at Horseshoe Bay, her shrunken body in the coffin in the cathedral.

  He looked straight down the black barrel into the man’s back. Then Peter finally spoke to the tall blond man.

  “Hey!” he said. “Do you remember me, mister? Hey, shithead!”

  Inside the Tryall clubhouse, a nervous police constable lit a stick match.

  As he struck match after match, the policeman tried desperately to figure out a row of master switches inside a steel gray cabinet. He considered the switches until his last match burned down, then decided to give number one a try. He flicked the black switch and the lights in the small room he was in came on bright and scary. Then the constable could see two distinct rows in the control box: number one through six, and seven through twelve.

  His shaking hand moved quickly down the first row.

  As the man on the dining veranda pivoted around to face Peter, every light in this magnificently frightening world seemed to come on all at once. Night-lights blinked on down the first fairway. A tape system on the veranda started to play soft dinner music.

  Then loud thunder seemed to originate on the back patio of the Tryall clubhouse. Sparks of gunfire lit up all over the lawns.

  Damian Rose was firing his M-21. Harold Hill was shooting an expensive Italian-made rifle. The entire force surrounding the Tryall clubhouse was blasting away at the suddenly bright, white building.

  Peter’s first shot hit the blond man—a dark hole opened on his forehead; then Peter was hit so hard, he couldn’t believe it. He felt as if he’d been blind-sided by a three-thousand-pound automobile. Hit deliberately. So fucking sad. So sad….

  Windows were breaking everywhere. The wrought-iron furniture was ringing out pings and pangs. Wood thudded hard as it caught errant rifle shots.

  A singularly loud crack echoed, and a speck of the dead Englishman’s head flew off.

  The fallen Englishman was hit again on the side of his face.

  A third rifle shot entered the back of his head as he lay facedown on the flagstone patio.

  Then it was all blinding light and rain. Clean rain that appeared slightly blue in the white light. It was all soothing, steady rain noise with no gunshots at all.

  Men streamed across the flat, muddy lawns…. Gray suits soaked to darker colors. Short pants and pillbox hats. Submachine guns and pistols and dark rifles swinging loose on leather straps.

  The rain was shining like expensive jewelry in all the trees. There was an eerie quiet now.

  Harold Hill was walking straight ahead, looking ridiculous, as if he were lost in the rain. His Top-Siders slapped down on the patio near Peter Macdonald’s head, then he turned away.

  Peter felt himself getting sick, and he fought the nauseated feeling with everything he had left.

  A circle of curious faces began to form over him—like doctors around an operating table, like people staring at a heart attack victim on a New York City street…. Black soldiers and FBI and CIA men. All smiling as if they were his old best friends. Congratulating him as if he’d scored the winning touchdown.

  The black police chief was bending over him, trying to show him where he’d been hit. The stomach? The rib cage? Goddamn nice bastard, Peter thought. “I’m okay.” He grinned at the black man.

  And in the middle of all the confusion—the blinding lights, rain, police sirens, an ambulance driving up on the lawns—a bearded white man in a suit was dragging a corpse by its hair. Some bearded CIA prick.

  A creepy black policeman was snapping flashbulb photos. Spread-eagle shots of the body that was being dragged. Shots of Peter being cradled in Meral Johnson’s arms.

  An American man was working with a buzzing electric camera that took pictures in the dark.

  Suddenly they brought the body to Peter, and everybody was
trying to talk to him all at one time. Peter sat up and waved them away. He stared down at bloodshot eyes turned up as far as they would go in their sockets. Eyes caught in terrible shock and surprise.

  No wonder, though, Peter thought. The right side of the head looked as if it had been bitten into. There was no nose to speak of; what was left of the mouth was frozen in a smirky death cry.

  Peter flashed back to Turtle Bay—the tall, haughty man. Fifteen seconds….

  He concentrated on the blown-up face. Wet blond hair slicked down flat by the rain. Long, athletic body. He felt very tired now, mind fighting against big strong waves of ugly shit…. Dr. Johnson was saying something to him, but all he felt like doing was shouting at the dead man.

  “He’s the one,” he finally whispered to the black police chief. “He’s the one, goddamn him to hell.”

  Which was about the time Peter finally heard what Meral Johnson was saying to him.

  Running in a low infantry crouch, Damian moved forward, his trooper boots squishing across a slippery wooden ramp at the Tryall Club’s yacht basin. He climbed movable stairs down onto the floating dock, stepped into the lurching Bertram Sportsman, and began to smile in spite of himself.

  Then he began to laugh. A chilly, unnatural laugh.

  He could barely distinguish voices in the distant, babbling commotion coming from up around the main clubhouse. He saw the thousand-watt floodlights flashing through swaying palm and banana trees up and down the first fairway.

  Then the bouncing red lights of two ambulances turned a corner of the clubhouse building. Siren screams cut through the rain and wind like sharp knives.

  Finally, after more than a year, after the most insanely exhausting ordeal he’d ever put himself through, it was over and done with.

  Up on the Tryall Club’s veranda, the ex-Green Beret, all-American boy, unimpeachable witness, had identified Clive Lawson as the tall blond man from Turtle Bay…. The English killer’s hair, his hairstyle, height, facial features, were nearly identical with the man Macdonald had seen April 25. At a quick glance, Rose and Lawson were look-alikes—and a glance was all Peter had ever had. Fifteen seconds on a bicycle.

  Moreover, the way Lawson’s face wound up, it was academic anyway.