by Mark Allen
He didn’t waste time thinking about it, just put his plan into action and dived into the brackish water.
He swam toward the opposite bank with broad, powerful strokes. He tried not to think about all the dead, decomposing bodies beneath him. At one point, a submerged branch snagged his ankle, and he imagined a skeletonized hand, fingers stripped to the bone by whatever carrion-eaters lurked in these stagnant depths, reaching up to drag him down into a watery hell.
Kane wasn’t given to flights of fancy, but he had no doubt restless ghosts called this godforsaken place home.
He kept expecting to hear shouts of alarm behind him, but he reached the other side of the bog without his escape being discovered. He pulled himself out of the foul water and clambered up the bank by using roots and rocks for handholds, and found himself on the abandoned train tracks that skirted the edge of the prison.
The railroad ties had started rotting. Weeds, browned and dying by the cool kiss of autumn, choked the gravel bed. To Kane, it looked like the road to Heaven.
He turned east toward the mountains and began following the steel rails toward freedom.
Chapter Fifteen
Mad Mike’s cabin
Miles back in the forest, Mike didn’t hear the klaxon wail of the prison’s alarm system alerting the village of Black Bog and the town of Vesper Lake that there had been an escape. He didn’t know that under Nazareno’s orders, the lid had been clamped down and no notifications made to the US Marshals. He didn’t know that Warden Ghastin, directed by her drug-lord master, had only activated the five surviving members of the SORT team—plus a pair of bloodhounds from a local tracker—for the manhunt. No State Police roadblocks, no helicopters circling the rugged terrain with infrared sensors, no hundred-man grid searches.
Mike didn’t know that Nazareno had notified the kill squads seeded throughout Vesper Lake—twenty-four cartel sicarios in all—to be prepared. He had also called Sheriff Dunkirk and advised him that there was little doubt Kane would come for him.
No, Mike’s first hint of brewing trouble was when Beta’s ears suddenly shot up and a low, rumbling growl formed in the back of the wolf’s throat. The beast padded across the wooden floor planks on silent feet and took up a position near the door, head lowered, hackles raised.
Mike put down the cookbook he’d been reading and picked up his AR-15. “What is it, boy?” He moved to take up a position against the wall beside the door. “Somebody out there?”
Beta rumbled a warning deep in his throat again.
Mike nodded. Yeah, they had a visitor. He wondered if they were lost or just had a death wish. Thanks to his cannibalistic reputation, not too many people wandered this way. Nobody wanted to find out if his filed-to-points teeth were just for show.
He reached for the door handle and looked at Beta. “Ready, boy?”
The wolf stood poised, muscles tensed, ready to spring.
Mike yanked open the door. “Get ‘em!”
Beta launched himself forward like a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound fur-covered missile.
Mike slammed the door closed before it could be breached, then spun toward the nearby window. He listened for the bestial snarls that would signal Beta’s clash with whoever had been foolish enough to wander into their territory.
But instead, he heard the wolf yipping excitedly.
Mike looked out the window and saw Kane crouched and Beta wiggling like a happy puppy as he scratched his ears and rubbed his head. The wolf’s tongue lolled out and scraped across Kane’s stubbled cheek in a sloppy dog-kiss. Kane chuckled and sleeved away the saliva.
Mike noticed that Kane was covered in grime and sweat and dressed in prison clothes.
Shaking his head, he opened the door. “Well, well, look who came back.”
Giving Beta one more pat, Kane rose to his feet. “Need your help, Mike.”
“I’ll just bet you do, judging from the looks of you.”
“Sorry to come here, but I don’t have a lot of options.”
Mike nodded. “Don’t worry, I know more than you think.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Come on in, have some tea, and we’ll get it all sorted out.”
Kane had expected his escape to be discovered within minutes, but luck had been on his side this time, and it was a full half-hour before he heard the alarm start blaring. By then, he had followed the railroad tracks until they veered south toward Lake Placid, at which point he’d abandoned them and struck off into the mountains.
Given the illicit nature of the prison, he didn’t expect a full-scale manhunt to be launched. That would bring too much attention. Instead, Nazareno would depend on the remaining members of the SORT team and his kill squads to hunt him down. Also, unless he was sorely mistaken, they would have no choice but to bring in dogs. It was their only chance of running him to ground.
It took an hour, but sure enough, he heard hounds baying in the distance.
He had taken no particular precautions to avoid leaving a scent trail, knowing it would be worthless. No wading through streams or sticking to rocky ground. Tricking a bloodhound was not as easy as the movies made it look. In fact, it was damn near impossible. If properly trained, and with an experienced human tracker/handler, the dogs eventually sniffed out their quarry. Diversionary tactics were just a waste of time.
He stuck to the harshest terrain he could find. That would at least wear out the hounds and slow them down a bit. Of course, the tradeoff to this tactic was that it slowed his progress too.
He kept moving, his peak physical conditioning meaning he rarely had to rest, and when he did pause, it was rarely for more than a couple of minutes. He slaked his thirst in the streams, cupping his hands in the cold, clear water.
The swim in the bog had washed the blood off his hands physically but not metaphorically. Some deaths left their mark on him more than others, like the teenager he’d been forced to shoot a week ago, kicking into motion the sequence of events that had led him here. But Kane knew that he would never regret killing Goatsack. He might always remember doing it, but his conscience would remain clear.
He’d headed for Mad Mike’s cabin because he needed someone intimately familiar with these woods. Someone who could help him ambush his hunters. He needed to shake the heat off his trail and whittle down the odds so he could focus on cutting the cartel cancer out of Vesper Lake. He owed Luna that much, and he refused to back down.
Plus, he still had a sheriff to kill.
Sitting at Mike’s table and sipping blackberry moonshine with the tomahawked skull keeping them company, Kane brought the hermit up to speed. He kept his words short and succinct. They didn’t have much time.
Mike took it all in and then nodded. “Hell of a tale you got there, Kane. So your plan is to stroll into town like a modern-day Wyatt Earp and start blasting until all the cartel cocksuckers are dead?”
“Pretty much, yeah. But I need to get these assholes off my back first.”
“How many men, you figure?”
“Five would be my guess, plus a tracker and dogs. Nazareno knows I plan on hitting Vesper Lake, so I doubt he’ll pull any of his soldiers out to run around in the woods.”
“Only tracker around these parts is a local guy, half-Mohawk, named Abhijit. Folks just call him Abe. Lives in a shack in a swamp about ten miles north of here. Only got one eye. Lost the other one during a stint in state prison.”
“What’d he do time for?”
“He’s a kiddie toucher. Forcibly raped an eight-year girl behind a casino dumpster.”
“So, he’s a piece of shit.”
“Damn straight, but he’s got a pair of bloodhounds that could sniff out a ghost underwater.” Mike rubbed his beard thoughtfully. “You’re as good as found, pal.”
Kane nodded, accepting his fate. “Guess it’s time for me to start hunting them,” he said. “I’ll backtrack, then cut over the ridge so I don’t lead them to your door.”
“What’s wrong with my door?”
&nbs
p; “Nothing. Just don’t want to bring you any trouble.”
“Spare me the noble warrior crap,” Mike replied. “Just make your stand here.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? Bullets aren’t getting through those log walls, there’s no basement so they can’t hit us from below, and we’ve got an attack-trained dog if they somehow manage to breach. I mean, maybe it’s not the Alamo, but it’s your best option.”
Kane grinned. “Everybody died at the Alamo.”
“Okay, bad example, but you get my point.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Kane said. “But what’s in it for you?”
“Maybe I’m just a Good Samaritan.”
“Or maybe you could just tell me what you want.”
Mike drummed his fingers on the table, studying Kane, clearly wanting to say something but not quite sure if he should. Finally, he sighed and said, “When this is over, there are going to be a lot of dead bodies lying around.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I want you to let me take care of them.”
“Wait, are you saying—”
Mike cut him off. “And I don’t want you to ask me any questions.”
War makes for strange allies, Kane thought. Aloud, he said, “Deal.”
Mike raised his glass of moonshine. “A toast, then. To killing bad guys and fine dining.”
“Cheers.” Kane clanked his glass against Mike’s while thinking this was the strangest damn thing he’d ever drunk to.
The molten-lava moonshine scorching his throat made Kane think of something. “You know, they could just set the cabin on fire and burn us out.”
“They’d have to get pretty close to pull that off,” Mike said. “And we could just pick ‘em off from the windows when they tried.”
“There’s going to be at least five or six of them. They rush us, we might not be able to get them all before they start the cabin cooking.”
Mike smiled wickedly. “Trust me, Kane. When they get here, there won’t be five or six of ‘em. Now here’s what I need you to do…”
Chapter Sixteen
Black Bog / Mad Mike’s cabin
Breezy still couldn’t believe that Goatsack—not to mention Happy, Goodbye, and Red Cent—was dead. But not one to miss an opportunity, he also wondered if he would get a pay raise from Nazareno now that he had been promoted to SORT leader. Sure, he would miss his fallen brothers, but fattened coffers never hurt anyone. Besides, he had no doubt that Goatsack, rest in peace, would approve of him going mercenary in the midst of his melancholy. Grief and greed made for perfectly fine bedfellows.
Of course, he wouldn’t have to worry about his new position or whatever enlarged bank account might follow if he didn’t take down Reaper. Nazareno had made that crystal clear. “You find him, you kill him, and you bring me his head. If you fail, I will slaughter your entire family, all the way down to second cousins. Am I clear?”
Perfectly clear, Breezy had assured him. After hooking up with Abhijit, or Abe, the one-eyed half-breed tracker, and his two hounds Cutter and Duke, Breezy had led Yippy, Big Belly, Duck, and Sirius into the woods to hunt down their prey. The dogs had made short work of identifying where Reaper had emerged from the bog, and the chase was on. Abe estimated Kane had no more than an hour’s head-start on them.
Nazareno had ordered four of his sicarios to stand guard at Ernie Foxx’s residence, anticipating that Kane might seek shelter there. Another four had been dispatched to Cripple Creek Camp to make sure he didn’t try for his Jeep. Four more men had set up a roadblock at the intersection of Wolf Pond Road and Route 86, cutting off the only road out of town.
That still left a dozen cartel hitters prowling the streets of Vesper Lake, locked and loaded and ready to kill.
Breezy didn’t see any way for the man called Reaper to survive this. Then again, they had underestimated him before. He had survived multiple prison attacks. He had survived the Pit. He had escaped and left a quartet of hard-assed operators dead in his wake. Clearly, the man had an unnatural talent for beating the odds and staying alive.
Expecting Kane to lead them through rough terrain, the SORT team had kitted themselves out lightly. Big Belly whined about wearing his Kevlar, but they knew Kane was armed, so Breezy took no chances. Now was not the time to sacrifice protection for comfort.
They all carried Sig-Sauer P228 pistols on their hips and opted for M-4 carbines instead of the shorter-range Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns. Breezy’s M-4 had a 40mm M203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel, a non-agency-approved modification. He carried four rounds slotted into loops on his vest: two high-explosive rounds, one CS round, and one buckshot round. In other words, a grenade for damn near every occasion.
The hounds strained at their leashes, noses flush with the scent of their quarry, eager to run him down. Abe handled them easily and his dark eye roved in its socket, scanning the ground. Kane’s spoor was so obvious that even Breezy could see it. Looked like the bastard wasn’t even trying the usual rocks-and-streams tricks. Probably knew it was pointless.
Breezy couldn’t wait to get his hands on the son of a bitch. Nazareno wanted his head, but before he chopped it off, Breezy intended to make Kane pay for what he had done. Goatsack, Red Cent, Happy, and Goodbye had been his brothers in arms, and he would avenge them. Blood for blood, boys. I got you.
“He’s bleeding,” Abe announced.
Breezy stepped up beside him. “Where?”
The tracker pointed at the ground. Breezy saw it immediately. Little splatters of blood on the leaves, spaced a foot or so apart.
“We don’t even need dogs for this,” he said. “We can just follow his blood trail.”
“Just like tracking a wounded deer,” Duck commented.
Abe shrugged. “I’ll head back if you think you can handle it from here.” He grinned, exposing tobacco-stained teeth that looked like they hadn’t seen a dentist in at least four decades. “Got me a date with Jailbait tonight.”
“Ain’t she a bit old for you?” Yippy asked. “Thought you liked ‘em young, you sick fucker.”
“You wanna dunk your junk, you gotta take what you can get.”
“What you can get,” Breezy growled, “is get going. Make those mutts earn their keep.”
“Oh, they earn their keep, all right.” The tracker grinned again. “I love these dogs.”
The way he said it made Breezy’s skin crawl.
The half-breed loosened up on the leashes, and his hounds surged forward.
Then the earth opened up and swallowed them. Hanging on tight to the leashes, Abe was dragged down with them.
The SORT team rushed forward to see what the hell had happened.
“Holy shit,” Big Belly said. “It’s a goddamned punji pit.”
The hole in the ground was approximately eight feet in diameter and six feet deep. The depth was fitting, given that the pit was meant to be a grave, full of sharpened wooden stakes that jutted up from the bottom like stalagmites. A thin screen of twigs and leaves and dirt had concealed the trap until the hounds, following Kane’s blood trail, had collapsed the camouflaged cover.
Both hounds were dead, impaled. One had caught a spike directly under the jaw and up into the brain. The other had been punctured right through the heart. Neither death was pretty, but both had been relatively quick.
The same could not be said for their owner.
Dragged in by his falling dogs, Abe had fallen face-forward into the punji pit. One spike had shattered his teeth and torn out his cheek. Another had punched into his belly and burst out his lower back, just missing the spine. A third stake had impaled him right through his pelvic girdle. He thrashed like a hooked worm as blood poured from his gruesome wounds.
“Damn,” Yippy muttered. “Can’t say the sick fuck didn’t deserve it, but that’s still a hard way to die.”
Breezy turned away. “Somebody put him out of his misery.”
“Won’t Reaper hear the shot?” Big Belly
asked.
“So what? Not like he doesn’t know we’re coming for him.”
“Good point.” Big Belly drew his Sig and pumped a 9mm mercy round into the back of the tracker’s skull.
“Yippy,” Breezy said, “take point.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’ve got the best eyes.”
“They sure are pretty.” Big Belly made kissing noises at the sniper.
Breezy scowled. “Cut the crap, you hear me?” He glared at the team. “Make no mistake, boys, if we fuck off out here and don’t take shit serious, we’re going to die in these damn woods.”
Big Belly hung his head and shuffled his feet. “Sorry, boss.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be smart.” Breezy looked pointedly at Yippy. “Watch out for fucking traps. Where’s there’s one, there’s bound to be more.”
That turned out to be the damn truth. They found the next one a quarter-mile away.
Yippy snorted derisively. “Kane doesn’t think we’re actually dumb enough to fall for that, does he?”
The blood trail had taken them into a thick copse of pine trees, threading along a narrow game path that was barely wide enough for an anorexic rabbit, let alone a team of geared up Kevlar-clad operators. But hell, if Kane had pushed his way through this shit, they could too.
Right where the path cut between two huge boulders, a giant log hung suspended above the trail. A rope crossed the ground at ankle height, poorly camouflaged by some cut pine boughs. Trip the rope and the log would smash down, crushing whoever had triggered the deadfall trap.
“That’s some rinky-dink, amateur-hour bullshit,” Duck sneered, turning to the left. “Come on, boys, we can circle around the rock and pick up the trail on the other side.”