She half swam, half waded through the water, keeping her head as low as possible. The burning boat erupted into flames behind them, casting a yellow glow over the water. There was a muffled crump! and she felt the pressure-wave of the explosion wash over her, a ball of fire rising orange and black into the night. A series of smaller explosions crackled from the burning pile of firearms.
Suddenly shots were striking all around, sending up gouts of water.
“We’re spotted,” Pendergast said urgently. “Immerse and swim!”
Hayward took a deep breath, ducked below the water, and, rifle awkwardly gripped in one hand, began to propel herself forward in the watery darkness. As her feet sank into the muck, she could feel hard—and sometimes not-so-hard—objects and the occasional slimy wriggle of a fish. She tried not to think about the water moccasins, or about the nutrias and eight-inch leeches and everything else that infested the swamp. She could hear the zip zip of bullets entering the water around her. With her lungs almost bursting she rose, gasped in another breath, and submerged again.
The water seemed to be alive with the buzzing sound of bullets. She had no idea where Pendergast was but she kept going, rising every minute or so to gulp air. The mud under her feet began to rise. Soon she was crawling in ever-shallower water, the trees on the far side of the canal looming up. The shooter was still firing to her right, the bullets striking the tree trunks above her. The shots were more intermittent now. He had evidently lost her and was simply shooting into her general vicinity.
She dragged herself onto the slippery bank, rolling onto her back amid the hyacinths and fighting to catch her breath. She was completely covered with mud. It had happened so fast she hadn’t had time to think—but now she thought. Furiously. It wasn’t the swampers this time, she was sure of that. It appeared to be a lone shooter. Someone who knew they were coming and had time to prepare.
She ventured a look around but saw no sign of Pendergast. Cradling the rifle with one hand, she half crawled, half swam up a shallow rivulet into the cover of the trees. She grasped an old, rotting cypress stump and settled herself behind it. As she did so, she heard a faint splashing sound. She almost called out, thinking it was Pendergast, when a spotlight abruptly went on in the channel, illuminating the swamp to her left.
She ducked down, trying to make herself as small as possible behind the stump. Slowly, with great deliberation, she shifted the rifle in front of her. It was covered with mud. Immersing it in the water of the rivulet, she agitated it slightly, letting the mud dissolve away, then brought the weapon up and felt along its length, trying to figure out what it was. Lever-action, heavy, octagon barrel, big caliber. It seemed to be a .45-70, a modern replica of an Old West rifle, maybe a Winchester reproduction of an old Browning—which meant it would probably still fire despite the immersion. The magazine would hold between four and nine rounds.
The spotlight lanced through the trees, scanning the swamp. The shooting had stopped, but the light was moving closer.
She should shoot out the light. That was, in fact, her only target, as everything else was invisible in the glare. Moving slowly and silently, she raised the gun, shaking out the last of the water. With infinite care she cocked the lever, feeling a round slip into the chamber. So far, so good. The light was now very visible, moving slowly along the canal. She raised the gun to take aim—and suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder.
Stifling a cry, she ducked back down.
“Do not fire,” came Pendergast’s almost inaudible voice. “It might be a trap.”
Swallowing her surprise, she nodded.
“Follow me.” Pendergast turned and crawled up the rivulet, and Hayward did the same. The moon was temporarily hidden behind clouds, but the dying glow from the burning boat gave them just enough light to see by. The little channel narrowed, and soon they were crossing a mudflat covered with about a foot of water. The beam shot across the flat, moving toward them. Pendergast stopped and took a deep breath, sinking into the water as deeply as possible. He looked as mud-encrusted as she was. Hayward followed suit, almost burying her face in the muck. The light passed directly over them. She tensed, waiting for a shot, but there was none.
When the light had passed, she rose. Beyond the flat she could see a massive grouping of dead cypress stumps and rotting trunks. Pendergast was heading directly for it. Hayward followed suit, and within a minute they had taken up a position.
Hayward quickly rinsed and recleaned her gun. Pendergast plucked his Les Baer from its holster and did the same. They worked quickly and silently. The light came back, this time closer, moving directly toward them.
“How do you know it’s a trap?” Hayward whispered.
“Too obvious. There’s more than one gunman there, and they’re waiting for us to fire at the light.”
“So what do we do?”
“We wait. In silence. Unmoving.”
The light snapped off and darkness reigned. Pendergast crouched, immovable, unreadable, behind the great tangle of stumps.
She listened intently. There were splashes and rustles in the night, seemingly everywhere. Animals moving, frogs jumping. Or was it people?
The burning boat finally sank, the slick of burning gasoline rapidly dying out, leaving the swamp in a cool quasi-darkness. Still they waited. The light came on again, drawing ever closer.
70
JUDSON ESTERHAZY, WEARING SHOULDER WADERS, moved with infinite caution through the thick vegetation, a Winchester .30-30 in his hands. It was much lighter than the sniper rifle, far more maneuverable, and a gun he’d used for hunting deer since he was a teenager. Powerful but sleek, it was almost like an extension of himself.
Through the trees he could see Ventura’s light, shining about, steadily approaching the area where Pendergast and the woman must have gone to ground. Esterhazy was positioned about a hundred yards behind where they had been driven. Little did they know they were being squeezed in a pincer movement, as he worked up behind their position among the fallen trees while Ventura approached from the front. The two were sitting ducks. All he needed was for them to shoot once—a single shot—and then he could pinpoint their position and kill them both. And eventually they would be forced to shoot out the light.
The plan was working perfectly, and Ventura had played his part well. The light—on a long pole—moved slowly, haltingly, ever closer to their position. He could see its beam fitfully illuminating a tangle of cypress roots and a massive, rotting trunk—an old blowdown. That was where they were: there was no other decent cover anywhere nearby.
He maneuvered himself slowly to acquire a line of sight to the blowdown. The moon was higher in the sky and now it emerged from behind the clouds, casting a pale light into the darkest recesses of the swamp. He had a glimpse of the two of them, crouched behind the log, focused entirely on the light in front of them—and fully exposed to his flanking maneuver. He didn’t even need them to shoot the light after all.
Slowly, Judson raised the rifle to his cheek, peering through the Trident Pro 2.5x night-vision scope. The scene leapt into sharp relief. He couldn’t get a line on both at once, but if he took down Pendergast first, the woman would not present much of a challenge.
Shifting slightly, he maneuvered the scope so that Pendergast’s back was centered on the crosshairs, and readied himself for the shot.
Hayward crouched behind the rotting trunk as the light swung back and forth in the darkness, moving erratically.
Pendergast whispered in her ear. “I think that light’s on a pole.”
“A pole?”
“Yes. Look at the curious way it’s bobbing. It’s a ruse. And that confirms there’s a second shooter.” Suddenly he grabbed her and shoved her down into the shallow water, her face in the muck. Half a second later she heard a shot just overhead, the dull thud of a bullet hitting wood.
With desperate movements, she followed Pendergast as he crawled through the muck and then wedged himself up behind a tangle of roots, pull
ing her next to him. More shots came, this time from both forward and behind, tearing through the roots in two directions.
“This cover’s no good,” gasped Hayward.
“No, it isn’t. We can’t stay here—it’s only a matter of time until one of those bullets finds its mark.”
“But what can we do?”
“I’m going to take out the shooter behind us. When I leave, I want you to count ninety seconds, fire, count another ninety, then fire again. Don’t bother aiming—it’s the noise I require. Take care your muzzle flash is concealed… and then, only then, after the first two fake shots, shoot out the light. And then charge him—and kill.”
“Got it.”
With a flash Pendergast disappeared into the swamp. A fresh burst of gunfire rang out in response.
Hayward counted to ninety and then, keeping the rifle muzzle low, fired. The .45-70 roared and kicked back, surprising her with its noise, the sound echoing and scattering through the swamp. In answer, a fusillade of bullets tore through the roots just above her head and she burrowed down in the muck, and then she heard Pendergast’s answering fire to her left, his .45 blasting into the night. The fire shifted away from her. The light bobbed but did not advance.
She counted again, pulled the trigger, and a second roar from the heavy-caliber rifle split the air.
Once again, the fire came her way and was answered by a rapid tattoo of shots from Pendergast, this time from a different place. The light had still not moved.
Hayward turned, crouched in the muck, and took aim at the light with exquisite care. Slowly, she squeezed the trigger, the gun roared, and the light dissolved in a shower of sparks.
Immediately she was up and moving as fast as she could through the heavy, sucking mud toward where the light had been. She could hear Pendergast firing furiously behind her, pinning down the rearward shooter.
A pair of shots clipped through a stand of ferns next to her; she charged ahead, rifle at the ready, and then burst through the ferns to find the shooter crouching in a shallow-draft boat. He turned toward her in surprise and she threw herself into the water, aiming and firing as she did so. The man fired simultaneously and she felt a sharp blow to her leg, followed by a sudden numbness. She gasped and tried to rise to her feet, but her leg refused to move.
She worked the action frantically, expecting at any moment to be hit by a second, fatal shot. But none came and she realized she must have hit the shooter. With a supreme effort she half crawled, half stumbled into the shallow water and grabbed the gunwale, aiming the rifle within.
The shooter lay on the floor of the boat, blood streaming from a wound in his shoulder. His rifle lay in two pieces—the round had evidently struck it—and he was fumbling with one hand trying to pull out a handgun. He was not one of the swampers—in fact, she had never seen him before.
“Don’t move!” she barked, aiming the rifle at him and trying not to gasp with pain. She reached over, snatched away the handgun, pointed it at him. “Stand up, nice and slow. Keep your hands in sight.”
The man groaned, raised one hand. The other hung uselessly at his side.
Remembering the second shooter, Hayward kept as low as possible. She checked the handgun, saw it had a full magazine, took it and tossed the heavy rifle into the water.
The man groaned, a patch of moonlight draping his torso, the dark stain of blood slowly spreading downward from his shoulder. “I’m hit,” he groaned. “I need help.”
“It’s not fatal,” said Hayward. Her own wound was throbbing, her leg felt like a piece of lead. She hoped she wasn’t bleeding to death. Because she was half immersed in water, the shooter didn’t know she’d been shot. She could feel the slither and bump of things against her wounded leg—probably fish, attracted to the blood.
More shots rang out behind her, the massive sound of Pendergast’s .45 interspersed with the sharper crack of the second shooter’s rifle. The firing became sporadic, and then there was silence. A long silence.
“What’s your name?” Hayward asked.
“Ventura,” the man said. “Mike—”
A single crack. The man named Ventura jerked backward and, with a single grunt, collapsed heavily into the bottom of the boat, twitched, and was still.
Hayward, in sudden panic, dropped down low into the water, clinging to the gunwale with one hand. Vile water creatures were worrying at her wound, and she could feel the wriggling of countless leeches.
She heard a splash, swung around with the gun—only to see Pendergast moving toward her through the water, low and slow. He gestured at her to remain silent, then grasped the gunwale, looked around intently for a moment, and in one swift movement swung himself into the boat. She heard him moving about, then he was back over the side, sinking back into the water next to her.
“You all right?” he whispered.
“No. I’m hit.”
“Where?”
“Leg.”
“We’ve got to get you out of the water.” The agent grasped her arm and began to tow her to shore. The silence was profound; the shooting had frightened all life in the swamp into a standstill. There were no splashes, no croaks or chirps and rustlings.
She felt a faint current, and then something hard and scaly brushed her underwater. She stifled a scream. The surface of the water dimpled in the moonlight, and two reptilian eyes rose, along with a pair of scaly nostrils. With a terrifying explosion of water it lunged at her; Pendergast simultaneously fired his gun; she felt something sharp and massive and inexorable clamp down on her injured leg and she was yanked underwater, the pain spiking excruciatingly.
Struggling, Pendergast still gripping her arm, she tried to twist away, but the huge alligator was pulling her down into the mud at the bed of the channel. She tried to scream, her mouth filling with stagnant water. She heard the thud of his shots above the surface. She twisted again, jammed the handgun into the thing gripping her leg, and fired.
A huge report; the concussion of the shot and the violent, spastic reaction of the alligator combining into a single huge explosion. The terrible biting pressure was released and she clawed her way out of the muck, gasping.
With an almost violent motion Pendergast hauled her to shore, pulling her into the shallow water and onto a bed of ferns. She felt him tear up her pant leg, rinse the wounds as best he could, and bind them with the strips of cloth.
“The other shooter,” she said, feeling dizzy. “Did you get him?”
“No. It’s possible I winged him—I routed him from his hiding place and saw his shadow flitting back into the swamp.”
“Why hasn’t he started shooting again?”
“He may be looking for a new spot from which to improve his fire discipline. The fellow in the boat was killed by a .30-30 round. Not one of ours.”
“An accident?” she gasped, trying to keep her mind off the pain.
“Probably not.”
He slung her arm around his shoulders and hauled her to her feet. “There’s only one thing we can do—get you to Spanish Island. Now.”
“But the other shooter. He’s still out there, somewhere.”
“I know.” Pendergast nodded at her leg. “But that wound can’t wait.”
71
HER ARM AROUND PENDERGAST’S NECK, HAYWARD stumbled through the sucking mud, slipping constantly, at times almost dragging him into the muck with her. With every step, pain shot through her leg as if a red-hot rod of iron had been embedded from shin to thigh, and she had to stifle a cry. She was keenly aware that the shooter was still out there, in the dark. The very quietness of the swamp unsettled her, made her fear he was waiting. Despite the stifling heat of the night and the tepid swamp water, she felt shivery and light-headed, as if all this were happening to someone else.
“You must get up, Captain,” came Pendergast’s soothing voice. She realized that she had fallen yet again.
The curious emphasis on her title roused her somewhat and she struggled to her feet, managed a step or
two, and then felt herself crumpling again. Pendergast continued to half hold, half drag her along, his arms like steel cables, his voice soft and soothing. But then the mud grew deeper, sucking at her legs almost like quicksand, and with the effort of staggering she felt herself merely sinking forward into the mire.
He steadied her and with a great effort she managed to free one leg, but the wounded leg was now deep in the muck and throbbed unbearably at every effort to move it. She fell back into the swamp, sinking almost to her thighs. “I can’t,” she said, gasping with pain. “I just can’t do it.” The night whirled crazily about, her head buzzed painfully, and she could feel him holding her upright.
Pendergast glanced around quietly, carefully. “All right,” he whispered. He was silent for a moment, and then she heard him softly tearing something up—his suit jacket. The dark swamp, the trees, the moon were all turning around, and around… Mosquitoes swarmed her, in her nostrils and her ears, roaring like lions. She sank back into the watery muck, wishing with all her might that the clinging mud was her bed back home, and that she was safe and warm in Manhattan, Vinnie breathing quietly beside her…
She came to as Pendergast was tying some sort of crudely contrived harness around her upper arms. She struggled for a moment, confused, but he put his hand on hers to reassure her. “I’m going to pull you along. Just stay relaxed.”
She nodded, comprehension slowly dawning.
He slung the two strips of the harness over his shoulders and began to pull. At first, she didn’t move. Then the swamp slowly released its sucking embrace and she found herself sliding forward over the water-covered muck, half bobbing, half slipping. The trees loomed overhead, black and silver in the moonlight, their interlocking branches and leaves above forming a speckled pattern of dark and light. Weakly, Hayward wondered where the shooter was hiding; why they had heard no further shots. Five minutes might have passed, or thirty; she lost all sense of time.
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