by Mark Parragh
“I see them,” said Old Rodriguez quietly, peering out into the bay. “They’re coming.”
“Shit,” Acevedo said under his breath. This just got worse and worse. Acevedo led his men down to the beach.
“Let me do the talking,” he said, trying to sound like he knew what he was going to say.
Chapter 23
Crane found the mouth of the channel and steered the kayak into it. It was perhaps twenty feet wide, only a few feet deep—anything with much more draft than his kayak wouldn’t be able to clear it at all. Thick forest lined both banks, the branches interweaving above to form a tunnel of trees and vines. The night air was cooling, and the channel was still. He was paddling against the outflow, but it was so gentle he barely noticed.
On a moonless night like this, it was pitch black inside the tunnel. Crane fished in his pack for the night vision goggles and put them on. As he flipped the switch, the channel lit up in a pale, ugly green. Crane had always hated night vision green, but at least he could navigate by it. He moved up the passage, listening to the sounds of frogs and the soft noise of his paddle blades slicing into the water.
The goggles were giving him strange traces off his paddles, he realized after a few dozen strokes. He tapped them a couple times, to no effect. Then something moved ahead of him. A large iguana hunting at the channel’s edge startled at Crane’s approach and tore up out of the water and into the cover of the trees. The water around it boiled with light. What the hell was that?
Crane switched off the goggles and lowered them to his chest. Then he almost laughed. The water still glowed. He took another stroke, and the water glowed as it swirled around the blade. Bioluminescence! There were millions of microorganisms in the water that gave off a faint glow when something disturbed them. That was what the tourists came to see, and now Crane understood why. There was something eerie but delightful about the water’s glow as he swirled his hand around in it.
He took a few more paddle strokes and then reminded himself he wasn’t here for fun. And he needed to see more than just the water. He put the goggles back on and started off up the channel again.
The passage took a sharp left and then turned back to the right in a long, sweeping curve, but he was moving more or less straight north overall. After one last turn to the left, the channel led straight out of the tunnel and into the lagoon itself. The lagoon was large, roughly rectangular, and ringed by forest. The visibility was slightly better here, out from under the tree cover, but not much on a night this dark. It was a perfect night for smuggling. Crane scanned the shoreline but couldn’t make out anything.
He moved farther out into the lagoon. The water still glowed around his paddles, and he could see pale, gauzy clouds of light beneath him. Schools of small fish were feeding.
Then there was a bright flash ahead. The bullet plowed past him before he heard the crack. The second actually hit the bow of the kayak with an alarming snap. Then there was a third. Crane ducked down to lower his profile as much as possible. Then he dug the paddle into the water and rowed like hell. There was no cover here, nothing but still, open water. His best chance was to be a moving target.
More bullets slashed through the air around him. The flashes were coming from out on the water itself. A boat. There it was. A small inflatable. One figure inside, rising to fire a rifle. Crane ducked low, and a three-shot burst passed behind him. The shooter didn’t have night vision, he realized. He was mostly shooting at the luminosity Crane stirred up as he moved. Bad tactical decision. But that would be little consolation if he got a lucky shot.
Crane took off the goggles and stuffed them back into his pack. He slipped the pack off and set it carefully on the kayak’s prow. The shooting had stopped, for now at least. The shooter had realized he was firing blind and wasting bullets. But he’d be on the move. Crane scanned the water. He thought he saw a low dark shape in the distance and the dim line of its luminescence as it moved through the water. He slipped his legs out of the kayak, careful not to dump his pack into the lagoon, and then edged into the water. It was cool but not uncomfortably so. It glowed faintly around him as he moved. There was nothing he could do about that.
Crane moved his pack into the interior of the kayak just as the gunman decided to try another shot. This one slapped hard into the side of the kayak. He was getting luckier, or else just closer.
There was a cord tied to the kayak’s prow. Crane took it and dove beneath the surface, towing the kayak behind him as he swam. Every stroke created a bright cloud around him. This was no good, he realized. He’d be visible from the surface.
As if to confirm his fears, a bullet drilled past him like a comet. Then another and another, straight lines of bright light lancing through the water around him. Crane went still and let himself sink deeper, trying to not stir up any more light than he had to. He hit sandy bottom and let himself sink into a crouch. He guessed he was maybe twelve or fifteen feet beneath the surface. He knew this wasn’t something he could keep up. He’d been trained to hold his breath longer than most people could, and remaining still would help conserve his oxygen as well as reduce his glow. But he couldn’t stay down here forever. He was already feeling the lack of air.
Above him, he saw the angry boil of light that was the other boat’s wake. It was an inflatable dinghy. From the way it lit up the surface, he guessed it had an electric trolling motor. He hung still, his arms and legs limp. He heard the muffled sound of another burst from the rifle, but this time the bullets didn’t light up the water around him. They’d been aimed at the kayak itself. The shooter was confused. He’d lost his target. He’d be wondering if he’d hit Crane after all. Was his body slumped down in the kayak, invisible in the dark? Or was he just playing dead there, waiting for his chance to shoot back?
The angry glow calmed as the shooter turned off his trolling motor. The boat slowed as it glided toward the kayak. Crane urged him to hurry as his lungs screamed for air.
Then he felt a gentle tug on the cord in his left hand. He pictured what must be going on above. The dinghy bumping into the abandoned kayak. The shooter putting down his rifle, leaning over the side to pull it alongside and see what was there. The dinghy tipping slightly with his weight.
Crane pushed off the bottom with all his strength, exploding up toward the surface, toward air, toward the barely visible outline of a black rubber boat on a dark night.
The boat was formed from a single pontoon, folded more or less in half to form a wedge-shaped hull. It had a vinyl floor and a transom at the rear to keep the water out. Crane hit one side of the pontoon hard and felt the boat nearly flip. He felt the weight of the body inside it propel out over the side. He heard a man’s scream, as he burst into the night air and let his breath out in a great roar and then breathed fresh air back in. The other man struggled to get his body oriented and under control, and the water lit up around him as he thrashed. In an instant, Crane recognized his friend Emil.
Emil stabilized himself by grabbing the side of the kayak, managed to tread water. He saw Crane and bellowed in rage. Crane pulled his boot knife from its sheath and swam for him.
Emil saw him coming. As Crane thrust with the knife, he managed to slam his forearm into the inside of Crane’s wrist and knock the knife away. Even in the water, his strength was remarkable. But all that muscle was heavy. Crane took a deep breath and held it as they sank beneath the surface again. Emil clawed at Crane, and they grappled as one large, thrashing shape while the water boiled and burned around them. Emil had size on Crane, and he was even fast. But here those qualities worked against him. The water muted his strength, and his mass was dragging him down.
Crane didn’t fight back; he clung to Emil like a tired boxer, preserving his energy and letting Emil exhaust himself. He moved only to defend himself.
They sank deeper and deeper. Crane could make out Emil’s face in the bioluminescent glow, could see him start to panic. Emil tried to disengage as they hit bottom, but now Crane counteratta
cked. He delivered a hard, fast punch to Emil’s abdomen, pushing up against the diaphragm, forcing out the air he was fighting so hard to hold inside.
Emil exhaled a cloud of glowing bubbles and breathed in water. He looked at Crane in terror. He tried to push away and head for the surface, but he couldn’t shake Crane. His struggles grew weaker. At last another stream of bubbles came from him and then stopped. His limbs went limp. Crane released him and let him sink down to the sand. Then he pushed off and broke the surface with a deep breath.
He was beside the dinghy. He pulled himself up onto the pontoon and collapsed there, breathing hard. He looked down into the water. It was still and dark below. Nothing glowed in the darkness there. Nothing moved.
Finally he pulled himself the rest of the way into the boat. Emil’s assault rifle was still lying in the bottom. It was a Czech CZ-805. He found three more magazines in a plastic box secured under the dinghy’s aluminum seat.
Crane pulled the kayak over and recovered his pack full of gear. Then he turned on the electric trolling motor and headed back across the lagoon. This wasn’t finished yet.
Chapter 24
The zodiac hit the beach, and the Colombians leaped over the side into the calf-deep surf and hauled the boat up beyond the tide line. There were six of them, each in black, each with a submachine gun. Acevedo thought they looked like a squad of action movie commandos.
The first man up the beach was balding and missing two fingers on his left hand. That was Vasquez. He was always the man in charge. He might have seen one or two of the others before. They didn’t matter. Vasquez would do all the talking.
“Good evening,” said Acevedo, offering Vasquez his hand. Vasquez ignored it. He looked over Acevedo’s men standing in a rough line behind him.
“Where’s Zajic?” he said.
“He’s coming.”
Vasquez looked displeased. “He did the radio check. Where is he now?”
The other Colombians were still back at the boat. They’d started unloading boxes onto the beach, but Vasquez made a gesture and they stopped. They moved up behind their leader, scanning the trees.
“It’s okay,” Acevedo said quickly. “Everything’s fine. He’s checking something out, and he’ll be right back. He wants to make sure everything goes right. That’s all.”
This was bad, he thought. Very bad. Zajic was the guy with the money. The guy the Colombians were here to do business with. He and his men were just cops. He kept his hands out away from his sides and hoped to God the others had the sense to do the same.
“We’re all here to do business, right? He’ll be here by the time you’re unloaded.”
Vasquez looked uncertain. He had his good hand on the receiver of his gun. The others were taking their lead from him.
“We don’t touch anything until he comes back and pays you,” said Acevedo. “Then you can be gone and we’ll load. That’s our risk.”
Vasquez made eye contact and held it, sizing him up. If they made it through this, Acevedo decided, he was going to kick the Little Russian’s ass, and to hell with him and his boss.
Vasquez relaxed his posture, took his other hand off the gun. Acevedo felt the tension easing slightly.
Then there was the crack of Zajic’s rifle from somewhere out on the lagoon.
The Colombians freaked. Everyone had their guns out now, leveled at him and his men.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Acevedo held his hands up. “It’s cool, it’s all cool. That’s him! He’s taking care of it. He’ll be back with your money.”
“You keep still,” said Vasquez. He gestured to his men, and two of them ran wordlessly across the road toward the shore of the lagoon. The others kept Acevedo and his men covered. A short burst echoed from the lagoon, and then another.
“Everybody just stay calm, all right. Someone was poking around before. Zajic’s taking care of it.”
There were more gunshots.
“What have you got?” Vasquez shouted to the two men on the bank of the lagoon.
“Flashes on the water,” someone shouted back. “Too far out to see.”
“That’s him,” said Acevedo. “He’s taking care of it. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Vasquez ignored him. He paced in a tight circle in the sand, weighing alternatives, muttering to himself.
Finally he turned and shouted toward his two men at the lagoon. “Pablo, Chivo, get back here!”
Acevedo’s instincts told him to get out of there. He took a step sideways, away from Vasquez, and then another.
“Deal’s off,” Vasquez said. “Clean up.”
“No!” Acevedo shouted and dove for the sand. There was a flash of light from Vasquez’s weapon, and he felt the bullet rip through his abdomen. Acevedo hit the sand and lay there, stunned as a firefight erupted around him. Two of the Colombians opened up with their little machine pistols, spraying bullets everywhere. He saw Fat Rodriguez go down in a spray of blood. Sosa managed to get his pistol out of his belt, but another burst cut him down before he could get a shot off.
Old Rodriguez had managed to get behind a palm tree. He fired two shots from behind it but hit nothing. Bullets slammed into the tree trunk, shredded the bark.
Acevedo felt the pain begin, a burning in his gut that kept getting worse when he thought it hurt as badly as it was going to. His luck had finally run out, he thought. No house by the sea. No fishing boat for him. He was going to die here, and Emilia would have to raise the children alone. She would know what he had been.
Old Rodriguez always was a tough son of a bitch. Acevedo saw him get hit, but he kept shooting back, swearing at the top of his voice. But he only had so many clips, and there were six of them. Already they were moving to outflank him. In a few more seconds, they’d have him. It was one more thing for Acevedo to take to his grave. He’d gotten all his friends killed for nothing.
Then two of the Colombians went down, one right after the other with two short bursts. The others looked around for the new enemy.
Acevedo saw him first, a tall man striding through the trees with an assault rifle. The gun flashed, and another of the Colombians went down. The others scattered, looking for cover. Vasquez fired back, but the man wasn’t where he’d been a moment before.
Acevedo knew instantly who he was. This was the man who had killed Hector. The man he’d fired at and missed back at the lab. The man everyone was so scared of.
Acevedo felt his consciousness starting to fade. He was losing blood fast. He heard the gunshots as a single, long roar that sounded like it was coming from a distance. The night lit up with muzzle flashes like fireworks. Acevedo saw the dark-haired man turn, fire, move, fire. He heard someone—one of the Colombians?—calling for someone named Ana. He looked for Old Rodriguez and saw what he thought was his body slumped in the sand near the shredded tree.
Acevedo felt the darkness swallow him, and everything went quiet.
When he woke, he was sitting up against a tree trunk. The dark-haired man was squatting beside him, pressing somebody’s shirt into his wound.
“Hold this here,” he said.
Acevedo looked at him in mute incomprehension for a moment. Then he carefully moved his hand to hold the bloody shirt against his side.
The dark-haired man pulled a field bandage from a pocket on his thigh. The paper packaging was soaking wet. The man tore the soggy wrapper away and peeled off the plastic backing. He looked down and realized Acevedo had let the shirt fall away from his side. Blood pulsed weakly out to soak his clothes.
He was trying feebly to put the shirt back in place when the dark-haired man moved his hand away and pressed the bandage into place.
“That won’t save you,” the man said. “Another hour maybe. You can die here with your friends or I can call for help. If you make it, you’ll spend a long time in prison. It’s your call. What do you want me to do?”
Acevedo couldn’t help laughing, even though it caused stabbing pain in his side. He was being given a choice o
f whether to live or die. That was unexpected. It was funny because he’d probably screw it up. He’d been making a lot of bad decisions lately.
###
Crane stood on the beach, surrounded by the dead. There were four cops from Acevedo’s ring. The smugglers had taken them out, and that wasn’t surprising. The smugglers had submachine guns, H&K MP-5s mostly, though one had actually been carrying an honest-to-God KRISS Vector, mainly for its looks, Crane suspected. The cops, on the other hand, were mostly armed with semiauto pistols. A Glock, a Smith and Wesson. The one who’d managed to get off most of the shots for his side had an old Army .45 M1911. It had been a one-sided fight.
He surveyed the scene. There were ten bodies, shell casings and guns everywhere. A boat and a pile of drugs down by the waterline. It was one hell of a crime scene. Agent Arias would have a field day.
Then Crane heard a faint groan behind him and turned to see Acevedo quivering on the sand. One was still alive, anyway.
He rolled Acevedo onto his back, pulled him over to the nearest tree, and leaned him up against it. Acevedo mumbled something as his head lolled on his shoulder. Crane found a Glock in his belt and tossed it away. Then he checked his wounds. One shot, through his intestinal cavity. He’d be bleeding and oozing fluids internally. Without serious medical help, Acevedo was going to die.
Crane considered leaving him to his fate. This man had tried more than once to kill him. But no, that fight was over. Acevedo was no longer a combatant. Besides, he might know something useful, and Crane was out of people to question.
He cut a black T-shirt off the nearest body and pulled Acevedo’s own bloody shirt away from the wound. Acevedo raised his head and looked at him in confusion. He pressed the balled up shirt into Acevedo’s hand and pressed it against the wound.
“Hold this here,” he said.
Acevedo nodded and weakly pressed the shirt against his side. Not nearly hard enough, but that was no surprise in his condition.