by Glenn Trust
“But…” The only thought that seemed to come into Jake’s mind was; high is good, low is bad. “We’re going down.”
“I know. Sorry about that. Best I can do. Andy’s close to dead, those girls would have been sold. We have to try.”
Jake took a breath and nodded. “Okay.” Rince was right. They owed it to Andy and the girls that had been taken from their families and their lives. He owed it to the OSI team. It was time for Jacob Beery to do what the citizens of Meacham County paid him to do.
Staring out the window, hands clenching the seat in a death grip, Jake waited as Rince lined the Cessna up with the road below. The pavement rose towards them, a hard black wall with a yellow stripe down the middle. Lit by the Cessna’s landing light, the road’s phosphorescent centerline looked like an elongated arrow stretching into the dark, leading them to an unseen bullseye. They were a bullet in flight about to smash into the target. It was an unpleasant sensation. His face locked into a squinting grimace ready for the crushing impact. Looking to the side, he saw the tops of trees just below the wingtip. Ahead were the taillights of the Escalade.
Focused, intent, not speaking, Rince guided the plane downward. They seemed to make up no ground on the car below, following it down the roadway. Then suddenly, they were on it passing directly over, just feet above it.
The plane touched down a hundred yards ahead of the Escalade. It was a perfect landing, smooth, the wheels making contact with the pavement with just the slightest bump. Jake turned towards Rince grinning. They weren’t dead. Then the world turned upside down.
Rolling out, decreasing speed, the right wingtip of the plane made contact with a telephone pole alongside the road. Clipping off three feet of wing, the impact spun the plane around so that it faced the oncoming Cadillac and then skidded into the roadside ditch, pinning Rince in the pilot’s seat.
Jake looked down at Rince, the plane almost completely on its side in the ditch. “You okay.”
Rince nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be okay. Get that son of a bitch.”
Pushing hard, Jake muscled the right side door up and open and climbed out with some effort. Sliding down the plane’s belly, he dropped to the ground.
The Escalade had stopped fifty yards away. As Jake approached his weapon drawn and pointed at the car, the driver’s door opened.
“Son of a bitch.” Roy Budroe got out grinning, standing behind the open driver’s door. “That was one helluva thing. Landing that plane like that on the road. Helluva thing. You the pilot?”
“No, he’s still in the plane. Put your hands where I can see them.”
“Scared the shit out of me, roaring overhead like that and then landing right in front. Almost pissed my pants.” Budroe shook his head not believing what he had just seen.
“Put your hands where I can see them! Now!” Still a good forty feet from the car, Jake stopped his approach waiting for Budroe to comply with his order. This was a felony stop. They had practiced felony stops in the police academy. They had not done it with airplanes, but he knew the procedure, had scored well on it in the live exercise. But it was different here on the road, in the dark. This was no instructor playing a bad guy. This was Roy Budroe, a real bad guy. Jake knew he would not be taken easily.
“Put your hands out where I can see them now or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
Budroe shrugged. “Okay.” Raising his hands as high as the open window on the driver’s door, he pulled the trigger on the shotgun.
Struck by six of the nine pellets in the twelve-gauge’s 00 buckshot load, Jake Beery went down, firing two rounds wildly as he hit the pavement. Budroe pumped another shell into the chamber and fired again at the prone form of Meacham County’s sheriff. Then tossing the shotgun across the seat, he climbed back into the Escalade pulled to the left and drove around the wreckage of the Cessna. He hit I-75 an hour later.
The sounds of hot metal from the plane’s engine parts, cooling and popping, mixed with the night sounds. Crickets mingled their chirps into a monotonous hum. Small creatures rustled and scurried in the brush on the side of the road. Somewhere in one of the nearby streams, a bull gator bellowed.
Unable to see what had happened, Rince heard the shots followed by the sounds of the car leaving. Hampered by his fractured left arm as he struggled to extricate himself from the broken plane, he called out to the man who had been his companion for the last three days.
“Jake! You there?”
There was no response.
73. Their World
It was quiet in the woods. Boss Stimes knelt behind a bay tree on the bank of a stream flowing quietly, barely moving to open water. George Mackey would be coming for him. He knew it. He waited for it. He wanted it.
Holding the forty-five in his right hand, Stimes peered around the tree. Waiting for Mackey a hundred yards into the woods, it was dark. The dim glow from the shed in the clearing had disappeared when the door closed. The moon had not yet risen, but the stars cast a faint light that allowed him to distinguish shapes within twenty or thirty yards. Beyond that, all was black.
He listened, trying to get a bead on Mackey from sounds he made moving into the woods. After his initial rush through the brush at the edge of the tree line, the deputy hit the forest canopy where the trees kept most of the low vegetation from growing. The ground was covered with damp leaves and pine straw that muffled the sounds of footsteps. Stimes knew that Mackey could move without making much noise, but he could not move without making any noise. If you listened, there was always some sound. A boot slipping in the wet leaves, clothing brushing against a tree, some slight noise would give away Mackey’s position. That was all it would take. Stimes remained quiet, waiting in the dark, listening.
Leaving Sharon and the girls in the clearing, George had moved quickly through the brush at the border of the tree line, knowing that if Stimes was waiting he would be most vulnerable as he entered the forest from the clearing. Once in the canopy forest, he knelt in the soft brown needles beside a large loblolly pine.
Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, he heard the shed door close in the clearing. A few minutes later, he heard the sounds of a car engine roaring and then moving out of the clearing at a high rate of speed. Probably Budroe, making his getaway, George realized. Good. He did not have to worry about Sharon facing the crime boss on her own. Overhead, the sound of the Cessna’s engine changed pitch slightly as it banked and turned. Rince was following Budroe. George could focus entirely on Stimes. That was the way he wanted it.
The silent waiting and standoff continued for fifteen minutes. It seemed like fifteen hours to both men. Kneeling in the woods, they were not separated by more than a hundred yards. George knew that each had an advantage. Stimes’ advantage was that George would have to come to him. He could wait for George to make himself a target.
George’s advantage was that Stimes could not wait all night to make his move. The State Patrol and GBI would be notified and were probably enroute now with the ambulance that Sharon would have called for Andy. Stimes would want to be long gone before they arrived at the clearing and provided backup. George figured Stimes would make some kind of move presently. He had an hour or two at the most before the other units arrived. George could wait him out, but he didn’t think Stimes would let that happen. He would force the issue; get George out in the open, somehow.
Listening in the dark, Stimes had heard nothing since Mackey’s initial rush into the woods. He knew that each minute that passed increased the deputy’s chances and decreased his own. He had to get Mackey to move, to reveal himself.
He turned and stepped deliberately into the brush along the stream's bank and began moving noisily with the flow of the stream towards the mouth where it hit an area of marsh and open water. After some distance, he stopped and stepped carefully back under the tree canopy walking quietly in the damp leaves another ten yards. He knelt beside a tree and listened.
George heard the movement instantly, noting the directi
on of the sound and the approximate angle to his station beside the pine. He also knew exactly what Stimes was doing. He had to force George to move, or to allow Stimes to escape into the swamp’s backcountry where his chances of being found would be remote. He was not going to allow Stimes to escape.
Advancing towards the sounds in the brush along the stream, George took a course that he hoped would intersect Stimes’ path. When the sounds stopped, he moved forward to the next big tree and dropped to one knee, sinking several inches into a matted pile of roots, limbs and leaves. Shit. There was no way Stimes would not hear the sound. Even muffled by the damp vegetation, in the quiet of the night it sounded like a cannon going off. There was nothing to be done about it.
If his reckoning was correct, he should be about even with Stimes, separated by maybe a hundred feet. He could make out a silver-gray glow ahead through the trees. Open water, he realized. The stream must empty into a marsh or lake.
Kneeling beside the tree after leaving the creek-side brush, Stimes listened. There. It wasn’t much, but it was a sound.
Okefenokee is a Native American word. It means ‘land of the trembling earth’. Every schoolchild in Georgia learns this. If you live around the swamp, you don’t have to be told that the ground is not always ground. In places, especially near water, what appears to be ground is, in reality, vegetation piled on itself over centuries. It often moves and trembles under footsteps.
Stimes knew immediately that Mackey had stepped into some of the false earth. The sound was a dead giveaway, and if Stimes had his way, soon Mackey would be dead.
Moving once more into the brush beside the stream, Stimes made it to the mouth where it emptied into a small lake. He stepped back into the woods and found another tree. Kneeling again, he waited.
The sound of Mackey extricating himself from the soft, false earth and moving forward was immediate. Stimes fired three rounds from the forty-five in the direction of the movement. Then laying it down beside the tree, he moved away, taking a large, folding, lock blade knife from his pocket. The knife’s blade was three inches long, more than sufficient to do what was needed. George Mackey’s intrusion into their affairs was about to end.
Moving with the sound again, George saw the flashes from the forty-five’s rounds. In the strobe light effect, he could make out Stimes holding the pistol as he fired blindly in George’s direction. The bullets buzzed angrily but harmlessly into the woods burying themselves in trees thirty feet away. When the firing ended, the flashes of the gun’s discharges had cost him his night vision, but he knew where they came from, and he advanced towards the tree. Stimes was not going to increase his lead in the dark.
George nearly stepped on the forty-five lying on the ground beside the tree. Seeing it gave him the instant of warning he needed to protect himself. Knife in his right hand, Stimes rushed back to the tree, intent on ending Mackey’s pursuit and his life.
Stepping behind the cover of the tree, George deflected the blow from Stimes’ knife hand thrusting towards his kidney. He tried to bring his own pistol around to bear, but the tree blocked his arm, and Stimes whirling as he passed the tree was on him.
The two stood grappling like wrestlers, each holding a weapon in their right hand. George gave up three inches in height and reach to Stimes, but he was quicker and more agile. It would have been difficult to pick the likely winner of a physical confrontation between the two. It didn’t matter. They were alone in the swamp. There were no odds makers or bet takers. There was only the struggle.
Stimes’ viselike grip on George’s wrist prevented him from turning the pistol towards his assailant. At the same time, he used every bit of strength to keep the thrusting knife in Stimes’ powerful hand away from his body.
Locked in each other’s death grip, George knew that his chances of following his orders from Sandy Davies, and bringing Stimes in alive were diminishing with each passing second. One of them would win this fight. The other would be dead.
Stimes’ advantage in size was moving the conflict to a conclusion. George knew that he could not overpower the man, muscle against muscle. In minutes, Stimes would wear him down and end the struggle when George could no longer fend off the blows from the knife. He had to find his own advantage.
Deliberately dropping the pistol from his hand, George twisted his right wrist freeing himself from Stimes’ grip, reversing the hold and clamping his hand around Stimes’ left wrist. He now had two free hands and held both of Stimes’ thick wrists. Tightening his grip and using every ounce of strength he possessed, he forced Stimes’ arms away from his body. More compact and lower, George had an advantage. It was a dubious advantage, but he would take it. Stimes stood awkwardly, feet spread, and arms forced wide from his body. George used the leverage he had gained to turn Stimes and move him toward the bank of the stream a few feet away.
Stepping back into the brush along the bank, Stimes, stumbled and fell heavily to the earth. As George reached down to try and pin and cuff him, Stimes kicked upward, landing a blow on George’s chin and at the same time sliding backwards down into the water.
Falling back against the tree, George was unable to prevent Stimes’ escape across the stream. He searched in the dark through the leaves under the tree, finding his Glock and stood up. In the faint gray glow from the open water, he could make out Stimes crossing the mouth of the stream.
“I’ll shoot you where you stand.” Holding the Glock in two hands, George peered over the sights at the man’s back.
Thirty feet away, on the opposite side of the stream, Stimes turned, giving a short laugh. “I don’t think so, Mackey. I’ll bet that pussy Davies wants you to bring me in alive, stand trial.” He stood chest deep in the stream, wiping water from his nose with his left hand, still holding the knife in his right.
“You’re right about that, Stimes. He does, if at all possible. Right now it doesn’t look like its going to be possible.” He was silhouetted against the sky. George knew that Stimes could see his movements from down in the stream. He took a firing stance and posture to emphasize his next words. “I will kill you where you stand. You are not getting away. It’s over. One way or another.”
“Bullshit.” Stimes looked up at the deputy on the bank of the stream. “I know they say you shot that asshole in the woods up north. I say it’s bullshit. You don’t have the balls.” Stimes took a step back in the water, towards the opposite bank. “You’ve got the guns, you’ll follow me, you won’t shoot.” He took another step backwards. “You don’t have it in you, Mackey. Whatever everyone else says about you, whatever Budroe thinks about you, I know you. No way you're gonna shoot me in the back.”
“I won’t say it again, Stimes. Stop where you are, or I will shoot you here.”
“Humph. So now it’s shoot, not kill. You’re a pussy George. Fuck you.” Turning, Stimes put a hand out taking hold of a cypress tree root knee projecting up from the water.
Putting the Glock’s sights on the center of Stimes’ back, George increased the pressure on the trigger to four pounds, a pound and a half short of the pressure required to fire a round from his factory stock pistol. He waited. Shit.
Stimes was right. George did have the guns; he could follow, bring him in and make him stand trial. Stimes would spend the rest of his life in prison where all of the other inmates knew he was an ex-cop, at least until they put that big needle in his arm and sent Boswell Stimes to hell. George lowered the pistol and took a step down the bank towards the stream.
Stimes waded towards the cypress tree’s bulbous base, holding onto the root knee to steady himself. He was about to use the tree to push up and out of the stream. A heavy grunt escaped his lungs as if he had been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer.
“What…” Stimes spun in the water, and then jerked violently to one side. He looked like a ragdoll being shaken by a giant hand. “What…” he repeated and then said no more.
The gator’s back rose briefly above the black water, sending ripples across
the stream. It was a monster, fully twelve feet long and close to a thousand pounds, and it was hunting. Jaws clamped around Stimes waist, the animal shook its head and dragged him under as it swam towards the open water. George watched as Stimes’ hand extended above the surface for a moment and then disappeared.
Nearby something moved in the dark, an armadillo grubbing for an insect. Across the stream, a raccoon came to the edge of the water and down the bank to the cypress where Stimes would have come out on the other side. The raccoon put its almost human front paws in the water, seeming to wash and then lowered its head and drank.
Holstering his pistol, he stood on the bank, not feeling anything. George listened to the night sounds. It was their world.
He picked up the forty-five and turned to walk along the stream towards the clearing. Making his way carefully out of the dark world of forest and swamp, he returned to Sharon and to their world.
74. Epilogue
“I have to relieve myself, Eduardo.” Ramon Guzman pulled up the interstate exit ramp near the Georgia - Florida state line.
“Now?” Rivera was annoyed. There had had been no word from Francisco and Emilio since leaving them the day before. It weighed on his mind. Clearly, something had gone wrong with their plan. They had waited until late for the confirmation call from Paco on the satellite phone. Guzman had convinced him that they should change their departure plans and go directly to the airport in Tampa first thing in the morning. They could investigate the situation from the safety of their base in Trinidad, send more men if necessary.