by Zoe Sharp
Whitmarsh had weight on his side but Haines was clearly the stronger party. As I watched he ducked and got a shoulder into Whitmarsh’s expansive stomach, ramming him backwards and toppling him over the side. He made considerably more of a splash when he hit the water than any of the rest of us had done.
And then, not far behind me I heard a strangled cry that could only be Trey. I spun round towards the sound and saw the kid thrashing in the water. I hoped those long shadows closing on him were just a product of the failing light but I knew I was wrong.
“Trey, for Christ’s sake keep still!” I yelled at him. He froze almost instantly, sinking until barely more than his nose and the top of his head was visible out of the water.
Without any clear idea of what the hell I was going to do when I got there I headed for him in a fast crawl. I arrived at just about the same time as an alligator that must have been twelve feet long, its body a dull greyish black like a slightly scaly nuclear submarine, only not so friendly.
Trey was terrified, incoherent with fright as the reptile approached in its sinuous way through the water. I put myself between it and the boy. My brain inconveniently fed me with an old nature programme snippet that an alligator’s jaws had the crushing power of 3000 pounds per square inch. I braced myself, still with no idea how to go about winning such an uneven fight.
But then, almost at the last moment, the ‘gator swerved around us, almost graceful in its evasion. I swear the end of its tail brushed past my bare arm in the water but it could have been one of those damned snakes. Another smaller alligator swam by on the other side, moving fast enough to leave a wake.
It was only when I looked at the water that I realised why they hadn’t bothered with us.
There was blood in it.
Not from Trey and certainly not from me. It was leaching out of the guy Lonnie had blown away in the front of the boat. His body now floated face down less than twenty feet away, leaving a greasy trail of blood in the water like oil from the wreck of a rusting Panamanian tanker.
The alligators converged on the man’s body with a purpose, squabbling over who got first bite of the prize. As I looked one of them seemed to rear up, its massive jaws wide open to show a mouth that was a surprisingly delicate shade of pink inside. A scrap of cloth had snagged on the beast’s teeth and flapped when it shook its head. I didn’t look too closely at what else might have been in there.
“Come on!” I grabbed Trey’s arm, tugged at him. “We’ve got to get away from here.”
Getting him to shift wasn’t easy, even though every ounce of logic should have told him that getting away from the vicinity of the corpse – or buffet as the alligators viewed it – was a good idea. Fortunately, Trey was easy to tow through the water, even if the vegetation did seem to constantly tangle round our limbs.
Suddenly, my feet hit the muddy bottom and then I, like Lonnie, was half-swimming half-staggering with my burden towards the relative safety of the trees.
I still hadn’t caught sight of Sean or Keith and that in itself scared me. Not that I cared what happened to Keith, which I recognised wasn’t the best attitude for a bodyguard. It was always Trey who’d been my responsibility and I was determined to do my damnedest to save him now.
I glanced behind me. The light levels were dropping fast but I could still make out the collective hump in the water where the alligators were feeding. More of them were gathering all the time until I couldn’t count the numbers.
Christ, aren’t they supposed to be a threatened species or something?
And, even though I couldn’t see it, I could certainly hear the airboat circling back towards us. The trees were almost within reach now. I shoved Trey on faster, slipping in my haste, going down on my knees and taking in another lungful of rancid gloop.
Blinded and gasping, I felt a pair of hands grab hold of the back of my shirt and the seat of my trousers and lift me clear of the water. I began to struggle instinctively until Sean’s voice said, “Be still!” in a savage whisper.
He dragged me through a small gap in the trees, and Trey after me. I got to my feet slowly, coughing and retching until there was only air in my lungs again. And not much of that.
On the other side of the trees the area opened out slightly into a pool of fly-blown water with shallow-sloping muddy banks. The trees were close in on all sides, making it darker in there than out on the open swamp.
I squinted suspiciously at a number of dark knobbly stumps protruding out of the pool until I realised they were part of a root system. They stuck up about six inches out of the water and would, at least, be enough to stop the airboat being able to force its way into our sanctuary.
Then, on the other side of the pool, I noticed the elongated shapes of three medium-sized alligators, drawn up on the far bank like beached canoes, watching us unblinkingly.
Keith and Lonnie were standing up to their knees in the water, watching the reptiles and brandishing ripped-out branches just in case any of them decided to make a move. Not that the rotting timber would have lasted long against something with the speed and agility of a hungry ‘gator. For the moment, though, both sides seemed willing to accept the uneasy standoff.
Keith was shaking so hard I’m amazed he could keep hold of his branch, let alone manage to remain at his post. Lonnie looked calmer, cradling his mangled right arm carefully across his body.
“Where’s Jim?” Lonnie asked over his shoulder.
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “He went into the water but I didn’t see what happened after that.”
Sean didn’t comment, just kept low and peered out through the undergrowth at the airboat. He had mud on his face as makeshift camouflage cream and was blending in to his surroundings perfectly. Something about his movements had changed, gone feral.
“Sean.” I put my hand on his arm and he turned his head just enough to look at me. His eyes were as cold and expressionless as those watching us from the far bank. I took my hand back in a reflex, as though he would have bitten me if I hadn’t moved. Whatever words I’d been about to say died in my throat.
Sean nodded out into the swamp. “There he is,” he said, clipped, and when I looked I saw him too. Whitmarsh must have been disorientated by his submersion and it had taken him a while to get himself together enough to head for cover. He was making slow progress through the congested water in the rough direction of our hide-out.
At that moment, the airboat came into view again. It seemed that Mason had managed to regain some small measure of control by this time. I don’t know what happened to Haines’s pistol, but he’d taken the Mossberg from its rack and had moved forwards to the bow. Even in the low light he spotted Whitmarsh’s white shirt against the murky water straight away and signalled Mason to change direction.
“Shit,” I whispered. “He’s going to lead them right to us.”
If he lived that long.
As if doing us a favour, Haines brought the shotgun up to his shoulder and fired. The muzzle flash was a bright spout of flame in the encroaching darkness. Whitmarsh cried out and began to flail in the water. Haines was still too far away for it to have been a killing shot. Maybe that was what he’d intended.
I felt a hand slip into mine and hold on tightly. It was Trey.
“For God’s sake, you can’t just leave him out there,” Lonnie said, his voice hoarse. “He saved your goddamn lives.”
Sean shot him a vicious glance but said nothing. There wasn’t much he could say, not when Lonnie was right.
Mason began to circle Whitmarsh, passing within a dozen metres of us as he did so. The wash broke over the trees roots and swept into the pool so we had to brace to keep our feet. The Chevy engine sounded almost on its last legs. Mason was having to coax it along and, after Lonnie’s wild shot, it was clearly costing him.
“Leave him and let’s go back,” he called to Haines, his voice scratchy with pain. “We need to go get the other boat. This one’s gonna die on us any minute and the
n we’ll be stuck out here. And I need to get fixed up. Jesus man, this hurts.”
“If we don’t finish this now, we’ll lose ‘em,” Haines shouted back. “Just keep driving the damned boat.”
“Wait until they come round again, then we’ll go out behind them,” Sean said quietly to me.
I nodded, disengaging my hand from Trey’s with some difficulty. Whatever Whitmarsh might have done, we couldn’t sit back and let Haines slaughter him.
“Wait a minute, you can’t go out there!” Keith protested. “You’ll get us all killed.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Dad, shut up,” Trey hissed. “They’re professionals.”
Keith opened his mouth, shut it again, and fell silent.
Haines fired another shot at Whitmarsh. He was close enough for it to have been a final one, close enough to make the water erupt and boil near his head, but Haines was playing with him now, making the older man suffer for his crimes. The airboat came round again and this time Sean and I slipped into the water in its wake.
I struck out for Whitmarsh, reaching him in half a dozen strokes. Haines’s first shot had taken him in the side and shoulder and he was losing blood fast enough to be fading. I rolled him over onto his back to stop him drowning, trying not to think about the irresistible taste of meat he was putting into the water.
Haines spotted me and gave a cry of triumph.
“Still trying to play the bodyguard, huh, Charlie?” he jeered, leaning out towards me over the side of the boat. “Well, you can’t save everybody. In your case, you can’t save anybody.” And he started to bring the shotgun up.
But just as he took aim the V8 gave its final rattling splutter and stalled. In the unearthly silence that followed I realised I could hear another engine. It could only be another airboat. Close and closing.
Haines realised it too. He whirled round, eyes scanning the darkness of the swamp.
And, as if waiting just for the split-second of his distraction, a dark shape burst out of the water next to Haines. It knocked him straight off his feet and dragged him over the side of the boat.
Twenty-five
The element of surprise Sean achieved was absolute. Haines didn’t even have time to gasp as he went under. Mason was the one who got to shout but, wounded and unarmed, there was little more he could do.
A moment later the two of them broke the surface again, fighting over the shotgun which Haines had kept a tight hold of despite the shock of the attack. He was putting up a ferocious struggle but he’d been trained as a policeman, where Sean had been trained as a soldier and there was a big difference.
Besides, Sean had passion driving him on. A cold hard flame of rage that made him far more deadly and more dangerous.
I heaved Whitmarsh closer to the tree-line, then abandoned him to Keith and Trey’s care and waded back towards the two men. I was in time to see Sean yank Haines close and headbutt him. Haines’s nose broke with an audible crunch and he let go of the Mossberg, falling back into the water.
For a second I expected Sean to turn the gun on him, to force him to surrender, but with a snarl he threw the weapon away behind him and went for Haines with his bare hands.
And that’s when I got really scared.
“Sean!” I yelled. “For Christ’s sake don’t do this.”
Sean turned his head and looked straight through me.
It was like staring at a man turned vampire and realising that although the face was familiar, the soul had been taken. That what was left was cold and empty and not quite human any more.
The sound of the second airboat was growing louder by the minute. A high-wattage searchlight beam flashed across Mason, making him wince and put up a hand to protect his eyes.
“Don’t move!” boomed a megaphone-enhanced voice. “This is the FBI!”
We were shielded from their approach by the hull of Mason’s boat so I ignored the instruction, lurching closer to Sean. He was holding Haines under the water now, forearms rigid with the effort of keeping him there as he thrashed and twisted. I couldn’t tell from the position of his hands if Sean was strangling the man or simply drowning him.
Either way, it was murder now.
I thought again of Haines calmly pulling the trigger on the woman in the theme park. I remembered the satisfaction in his voice when he’d admitted torturing and killing Henry. I could well imagine him standing behind Sean’s kneeling figure with the Smith & Wesson aimed at the back of his skull. And I could just see him smiling while he did it.
But it wasn’t Haines I was trying to protect.
“Sean,” I said again, more quietly now. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
For a moment he didn’t respond, then he relaxed his shoulders and brought his hands out of the water and I thought I’d got through to him.
But as he did so I realised that Haines had ceased to struggle. He bobbed to the surface and floated lifeless between us, eyes and mouth wide. The swamp water lapped gently into his open throat.
“Sorry Charlie,” Sean said tightly. He sounded weary, but there wasn’t a hint of regret in his voice. “You’re too late.”
And I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry, either.
We both turned, just as the new airboat arrived with a flourish alongside Mason’s stricken craft. The wash nearly swept the pair of us off our feet.
Half a dozen black-clad figures with machine pistols jumped from one boat to the other, their boots clattering loudly on the aluminium. They had flashlights attached to their guns and a number pointed them at Mason but he didn’t put up any resistance. In the crossed beams I could now see that one arm of his chair was slick with blood and he could hardly even raise both hands. They had to help him down.
Other hands reached over the side towards us.
“Wait,” I said. “We’ve a man injured here.”
Sean cast me a quick glance but I waded back over to Whitmarsh and between us we managed to get him close enough to the airboat for them to grab him and haul him in like a loaded trawler net. He was unconscious and bleeding but they started work on him right away with the urgency to suggest they thought he might survive.
Lonnie and Keith came staggering out of the trees then, still carrying their makeshift clubs. The FBI men were jumpy enough to insist they jettisoned the branches before they’d take them into the boat.
I waited until they’d got Trey out of the water before I accepted help. It was only then, when everyone else was on board, that Sean pushed Haines’s body close enough to be retrieved.
I thought he was being practical, logical, and then it struck me that he’d just been making sure there was no chance of them being able to revive him.
And all the time, around us in the shadows I could hear the rapid movement of the alligators, driven to a frenzy of distraction by the blood in the water. The sudden fear of what might have been bloomed and spread through my imagination faster than I could keep pace with it. And I’d always thought that rats were my biggest phobia.
The reaction started to crowd in then, setting up a trembling in my hands that I had little control over. I sat slumped in the bottom of the airboat, not caring that there were still suspicious guns held over me.
“Well, I guess you’re kinda ready to give yourself up now, missy?” said a voice over the top of me.
I raised my head enough to see Special Agent in Charge Till standing above me. His hands were on his hips.
“Not yet,” I said, with last-ditch bravado I didn’t really feel. “There’s still Brown.”
He nodded. “We’re working on that,” he said. His gaze shifted to Sean, eyeing him warily. “So you must be Meyer. Well, I have to say that for a dead guy you’re looking pretty healthy.”
Sean didn’t reply to that. He sat alongside me with his forearms resting on his knees and his hands hanging relaxed. The two of them stared at each other but maybe they were too similar in nature to ever be comfortable in such close proximity.
“Don’t tell me
– you just happened to be in the neighbourhood,” I said.
Till tore his gaze away from Sean with difficulty. “We found your tape, missy,” he said. “Got the whole thing. Recording’s a little fuzzy maybe but the lab boys reckon they can clean it up some and it’ll go down a storm at the trial.”
“You can thank your Uncle Walt for that,” I said.
“Thank him yourself,” Till said, jerking his head over his shoulder.
I followed his gaze and saw that it was Walt who was driving the second airboat. The old man gave me a nod and sketched a casual salute.
“You brought your uncle on a trip like this?” I said blankly.
Till shrugged, a little embarrassed. “We found him staking out the front gate when we got here,” he admitted, “and we needed someone who could handle an airboat.”
I looked at Walt. “I told you I’d find my own way back,” I said.
He shrugged. “I had nothing else doing.”
Till ran his eye across the other faces his men had pulled out of the swamp and paused when he came to Keith.
“Although I have your confession on record, Mr Pelzner,” he said with a touch of that grim humour, “I’m kinda assuming that you didn’t actually murder your wife.”
Keith opened his mouth a few times, floundering. “Um, I―”
Till smiled. “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “I kinda understand that you were under duress at the time.”
“So, like, where is she?” Trey demanded. “What happened to her?”
Keith’s shoulders bowed even further. “She really did leave, Trey,” he said mournfully. I knew he was trying to be gentle about it but it came across as self-pity instead. “She just upped and left the both of us. The divorce papers arrived from Nowheresville, Ohio. She didn’t even ask for custody.”
Trey looked down at his hands, clasped in front of him, and bit his lip. I scowled at Keith. If he’d had anything about him he’d have left out that last little piece of information, given the boy something he could still cling to.