The Flock

by James Robert Smith

  Well, this was no time to ponder. What she needed to do was get the hell out of Dodge. If she could, she would try to find Ron and Kate along the way, but if not she was just going to get out. She didn’t like being attacked and locked up. It went very much against her grain. There were things she wanted to see done to the ones who had put her in this position.

  At that point, she was facing yet another closed door and this was beginning to get on her nerves.

  Steeling herself, she paced quickly across the floor to the door opposite. This one had a large pane of glazed glass in it, and the hallways outside looked darker than the room. That meant that if anyone had been standing out there looking in, they would definitely have seen her silhouette and they’d be waiting for her to come out. Thinking of that, thinking of Kamaguchi standing there with that rifle, she stood at the door for more than a minute, gathering up the nerve to open it. Finally, she did it.

  There was a loud and, for her, tooth-jarring click as the bolt came free and the door swung inward. She stepped out into the hall and moving as fast as she could glanced right and then left down the long corridor before pulling herself back into the room. Once more, she allowed herself a sigh of relief. There had been no one in the hallway. All she had seen were some doors, all closed, and the corridor-turning north at either end. It was time to go on. She went out, decided to take the left side.

  At the next bend in the hallway she stopped, as she had each time before, and quickly peered down it. At the end of the hall, where it ended in a pair of double doors, each standing wide, she’d seen something.

  She ducked back, took a further step in the direction she’d come, and pressed her body to the wall. Her heart pounded against her ribs. At the edge of the door, near the floor, she’d seen something. The glance had been a quick one, and she was glad that she’d continued to be careful even though she’d been having an easy go of it. But what she thought she had seen was a shoe. It appeared that someone was standing, or perhaps sitting just at the end of the hallway, beyond those doors and out of sight.

  Mary had made virtually no sound, though. She doubted anyone had heard her, and the shoe had not moved. But it had been just a quick glance lasting a fraction of a second. Maybe it had moved, or maybe it wasn’t a shoe, at all. It was possible it was something else. But in her present situation she couldn’t be too careful. She’d have to take another look.

  Carefully, Mary bent down and went to one knee, inching closer to the edge of the hallway. She hoped that she would present less of a visual target if her head were low to the floor. Slowly, she crept out and looked down the hall. The dark object was still there, and it was a shoe, as she had thought.

  However, it was not the foot of a man standing, or even sitting in a chair and biding his time. The toe was pointed toward the ceiling. Mary could even see the ankle attached to that foot, black sock pulled down to show a smooth-skinned ankle. Whoever was in that shoe was lying on his back. She squinted, trying to see some movement, anything at all, but there was nothing. The foot was still, and she could see nothing casting a shadow onto the floor in there.

  Mary retreated to a kneeling position in which she was not visible from those double doors. She crouched there and thought. Who was it? And why was he lying there like that, not moving?

  She got up and calmly and carefully stepped into the other hallway and began to walk down it. The double doors grew and grew in her field of vision until they resembled something like the entrance to some gigantic coliseum, until that foot seemed like a boulder blocking her way out of a cave-in. A few seconds passed interminably, and Mary found herself there at the doorway. Without pausing, she went through it and looked down.

  Kamaguchi. It was the Japanese biologist. And he was lying there on the floor, a great fan of blood around the top of his skull. Tearing her eyes from the sight of the dead man, Mary looked at the wall against which Kamaguchi was lying, his arms splayed out dramatically, and she could see blood and bits of brain matter stuck there, drying like some kind of gory sauce. There was the rifle, partially propped against the dead man’s torso. Whatever had happened, it had happened some minutes before. Blood and brain matter didn’t just dry out on contact with the air. How long had she been trapped in that room? Mary wasn’t sure, but suspected it had been at least two hours, probably more. That meant that it was late afternoon, evening perhaps.

  And then, even though her gaze and attention were locked onto the face of dead Kamaguchi, Mary heard something. It was very slight, just the tiniest scuff of shoe sole against carpet. Someone was coming. Mary’s eyes took in the dead man, took in the gun lying there within her reach. Niccols was a damned good shot with a rifle, and she wanted that firearm almost more than she wanted anything. But if she took it and retreated, whoever had done this would know she was there, would know she was free of the ropes, would, perhaps, think that they had someone else to kill. It was possible the sound was coming from the approach of someone who was there to help her. But Mary did not want to bet her life on it. Especially when she noticed that the sound was increasing, that it was coming directly her way, and that it was not the soles of one pair of shoes, but of several.

  Quickly, she backed down the corridor, returning the way she had come, and she did not look back. As she retreated toward the place from which she had escaped, the footfalls kept coming her way.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “What’s wrong?”

  There was a great gulf of darkness between them. Each stared across the blackness, seeing only that.

  “How can you make that accusation against Mary? What evidence do you have?”

  Kate didn’t reply. Ron stood against a wall, and he wasn’t sure any more where the door was. Kate sat precisely where she had been when she and Ron had embraced. Short embrace.

  “Two minutes ago you were kissing me,” Kate said. “Two minutes ago I was the object of your desire. You were enjoying it, so don’t lie.”

  “I didn’t say anything about not enjoying it,” he told her. He repressed an impulse to draw his arm across his mouth. “It. It’s just. Hell. I can’t believe that about Mary. I’ve…We…”

  “You know, I’ll never be able to understand your kind. I tell you something that’s obviously the truth, then you’re scared and frightened and angry because you don’t want to hear it.” She shifted, let one of her long, long legs slide until it was flat against the tiled floor. Ron heard her booted heel squeaking along the way.

  “Angry isn’t what I’m feeling. I’m confused.”

  “Think about it.”

  “Why would she do that? That’s not like her. What evidence do you have?”

  “See? You are angry. I can hear it in your voice and I can hear it in the way you’re talking. You’re pissed off with yourself, for not realizing it, but you’re taking it out on me. Now don’t deny it, because I’ve seen it too many times to mention.”

  “Crap,” he said. Finally, he too slumped to the floor, the wall at his back as he came to a sitting position. “I just want out of here.”

  “That’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago. A few minutes ago you were probably hoping no one bothered us for an hour or so.”

  “Yeah. Well, maybe. But that was before you were accusing Mary of murder.”

  “Think about it, Ron! Who else was with you when Dodd passed you the disk? Who else knew about it?”

  “But she didn’t know what was going on there, what he passed on to me. She…”

  “But she was there. You even told her you were going in to town to see Dodd. And he never made it, did he? You don’t know what she saw when he gave you the disk. She’s a sharp young woman. Maybe she knew what it was before you did.

  “And you’re going to tell me it was just a coincidence that she showed up at your place just in time to save you? And I’m willing to believe a woman can defend herself. But come on, Ron! She bested two professional killers? Give me a break!”

  “I…I…can’t believe
it.”

  “You’d better start believing it. Or at least consider the possibility,” she said.

  There was a long pause. They sat there in the total blackness, each hearing the other breathing. From time to time Ron lifted his hand and passed it before his eyes, saw nothing, blinked, repeated the process. It had been a long time since he’d seen darkness this complete.

  “You okay?” she asked. “Your head, I mean. Where he hit you.”

  Ron reached back and felt the large but unpleasantly soft knot on the back of his skull. “I’ll survive,” he told her. “If we had any light, you could ask me how many fingers you were holding up.”

  Neither of them laughed.

  “We’ll be out of here soon,” Kate said, as if she were certain of it and could have announced the precise moment if only she could read her watch.

  “How do you know that? They haven’t seemed too anxious to check up on us.” He rolled his head on his neck, checking out the muscles there, and for any traces of dizziness.

  “I know Adam, and I don’t think he’ll leave us here for too much longer. Even if Vance doesn’t come right back in, I think he’ll let us out. At least out of this room. Kamaguchi won’t let him keep us cooped up in here. For a stoic Asian, he’s got a soft heart, and he’ll talk Adam into letting us out to use the facilities and get something to eat and drink.”

  “Well, you know ’em better than I do. Whatever they do, they’re up the creek, I can tell you that. You can be damned sure I’m going to have the lot of them arrested for this stunt.”

  Again, an uncomfortable silence settled in. They sat apart, facing one another across the pitch-blackness, the soles of their shoes perhaps six feet from the other. Ron coughed. Kate sighed, cleared her throat.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything. I just cleared my throat.”

  “Oh.”

  They blinked. Breathed. Rested. A few minutes creaked past.

  “When they let us out, we have to tell them about Mary. About what we suspect of her,” she said.

  “But we don’t know. Not for certain.”

  “Are you willing to risk your life on it? If she helped to deep-six Dodd, she can arrange for the rest of us to go, too. Think about it.”

  And even though he could not see her, could barely even hear her, Ron could feel a wave of anger emanating from where she sat. “But you still haven’t given a reason why would Mary do such thing.”

  “Why does anyone do such a thing? Money, Ron. And the folks who offered it to her have very, very deep pockets. Take my word for it. Even Vance is nothing more than a bump in the road to them. She’d do it for the cash. I mean, the gator trapping business can’t be that lucrative.”

  “But, Mary and I…”

  “What? You had a thing going? You made love to her? It’s sometimes not that big a deal, Ron. Not to someone who would cooperate in the murder of another human.”

  “That’s hard to take,” he told her.

  “Well, start considering the possibility really fast. I doubt we have a lot of time left if she’s able to get word out to whomever it is helped her take out Dodd. So stop being mad at me for bringing it to your attention.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I reacted that way. But there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s just natural for me to come to her defense. It would be cruel to believe that about her.”

  “And we have another possibility to worry about,” Kate continued.

  “And what would that be?” Ron asked.

  “She may have already gotten in touch with the other side.”

  “Other side?”

  “The bad guys.”

  And although he didn’t like what he was hearing and the suspicions that were creeping into his mind, he couldn’t deny that Kate was onto something. Mary had been there when Dodd had passed him the disk. She had become a familiar face in Salutations—at least in certain quarters. There had been the surprise that she and Tatum were acquainted. She’d even known Dodd.

  It was possible.

  He had decided that he would not say another word until their captors returned to release them, or someone appeared to rescue them. Ron would just sit there and keep his mouth shut. It would be best all around.

  And that was when the first shot rang out.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The fire team came down the approach road to the Eyesore as if they were merely a group of lost tourists. That was the way it had been planned, and that was the way it was supposed to have played out with the mole. They were in a plain white Astro van, four years old and completely untraceable. The tag was legit, but it would become invisible and lost for all time as soon as the job was done. The Colonel himself had taken care of most of the fine details, and what he had not accomplished himself he had left to men who were well versed in such misdirection. The last thing on the minds of the five assassins was whether their vehicle could be traced back to anyone who worked with Grisham.

  Silently, they sat hunched in the van and all of them merely surveyed the new territory. Their mouths were closed. They had said everything that needed saying before they’d left Grisham’s property. The lay of the land and the interior of Holcomb’s compound were parts of an open book to them. The outside of the place had already been a faux target to them for months; the Colonel liked to use it in his games and drills and had never seriously thought of it as a legitimate mark. But the interior of the collection of buildings was another matter. One could conjecture, based on the exteriors, what lay inside. But of course they didn’t have to guess, for a certain traitor was waiting to let them inside, and make things a little easier.

  The sandy road leading down to the Eyesore had been deceptively long. Grisham had warned them that it would seem longer than its mile and a half due to the closeness of the vegetation. And because of the twists and turns it took due to Holcomb’s reluctance to cut any of the larger trees that would have stood in the way of any sane man laying out a road. Again, they had been prepared for the illusion of remoteness that lay about this place. Logic told them that these buildings were visible from the center of Salutations, from the windows of any buildings there that were higher than the treetops around the Eyesore. But at ground level you would think you were in the midst of the wilderness. Trees and brush pressed in all around, which was a good thing. Because all of that vegetation would muffle the sounds of gunfire, of which they were all certain there would be.

  Mel Waters was the head of the fire team. It was his job to direct his men and see to it that this job went as smoothly as possible. None of them really knew why they were being ordered to do this, but they all realized that there must certainly be a fine reason for it. There were supposed to be at least five people inside Holcomb’s compound, and only one of them was marked to walk out of there alive. Again, aside from the fact that this person had delivered up the blueprints of the buildings to them, Waters didn’t know why he was ordered to spare this one life. If he’d bothered to think about it, he would have thought it best to kill that one, too. But Waters wasn’t in charge and so had wasted almost no time thinking about it. It was his job to be a killing machine, to be precise, and that was all. He was certain that the rest of his team thought the same, if they thought at all.

  Coming out of the forest, they were surprised at the sheer size of the compound. Of course they had heard that Holcomb was a very wealthy man, one of the wealthiest in the state of Florida, and that was saying something. Perhaps these buildings had been pocket change to him. Whatever it had cost Holcomb, Waters knew that it was costing Colonel Grisham some amount of concern: all the more reason to just put an end to Vance Holcomb’s socialistic environmental crusade. He pulled the van up to the gated entrance of the Eyesore and stopped. As soon as he shut down the engine and turned off the air conditioner, the summer heat began to infiltrate the cab of the van. A line of sweat instantly appeared across his red, sunburnt forehead and began to advance down the slope of his bro
w.

  He got out of the van and took two steps to the west of it. There was a truck parked outside, as he had been told to expect. It was a government vehicle, and it would be a pleasure for him to kill its driver. He hoped that he would receive the honor of putting a bullet through the Wildlife officer’s stinking skull. A dragonfly whizzed past, an almost machinelike burr to the clacking of its amazing wings. It was a flash of blue and gray, a retreating sound vanishing into the shrubs.

  Waters looked at the watch strapped firmly to his freckled wrist. The gates were supposed to be open. But he could plainly see that they were locked. This wasn’t right. Something had obviously gone wrong with the plans, blame lying at the feet of the resident Benedict Arnold inside. Well, they had a backup plan. It wasn’t finesse and it wasn’t pretty, but it was a plan. They had a schedule to keep.

  The soldier climbed back into the van and started the engine, revving it a couple of times. He knew the resumption of the air-conditioning was a welcome relief to the uncomplaining members of his team, but of course none of them said a thing; they just sat stoically and waited for the moment they’d be allowed to act. He put the van into gear. Stomped the gas pedal.

  And rammed the ridiculous excuse for a gate, tearing one side of it completely off its hinges. The block of chain link bounced against the hood of the van, smashing the left headlight and pulled free of its moorings to go sailing over the roof of the vehicle. At the front door of the compound, Waters brought the van to a halt, scattering sand and fine dirt that clouded into the air and provided them with unexpected cover.