by Mike Stewart
We were five miles into the swamp, still on solid logging roads, when Joey accelerated around a curve, cut his lights, and turned into a side road.
I started to speak, and Joey said, “Wait.”
Fifteen or twenty seconds passed, and one set of headlights passed by on the road behind us.
I asked, “Were they following us?”
Joey shrugged. “I’m not sure. People do live up in here. Not many, though.” I noticed his hands twisting nervously on the steering wheel.
I smiled. “I thought you were good at this.”
Joey turned the truck around and pulled back onto the road. He said, “I am good at it. But I’m a hell of a lot better in daylight. Out here at night, one set of headlights half a mile back look pretty much like the rest of ‘em. Just keep your eyes open.”
More than an hour after leaving the blacktop, Joey stopped the truck. “We gotta turn over that way through that field for a pretty good ways. Three or four hundred yards.”
I asked, “Is there a road?”
“You see the grass?”
I said that I did indeed see the thousand or so acres of grass extending out in front of us.
“That’s all there is. Saw grass. And it’s not like a field, really. The stuff grows in mud. And the mud can be a couple inches deep or it can be deep enough to swallow your ass up. Like quicksand.”
“You’ve driven over it before. Right? When you spotted Carpintero at the compound.”
“Yeah. That was daytime, and I was followin’ somebody, but… When you don’t have a choice, you just do it, right?”
The ground wasn’t a problem. Finding the turnoff through the brackish water surrounding the field was. But an hour later, as the first rays of sunlight preceded the sunrise, Joey spotted the machete marks on a pair of ancient cypresses that marked the entrance to the invisible road beneath the swamp.
As we moved from the field to the thick swamp, the beginning glow of sunlight we had been enjoying disappeared and was replaced by almost total blackness. Fifty yards in, the road descended into two feet of brackish water and disappeared from sight, and the machete marks on cypress trunks that Joey had followed in daylight were now invisible. The trees themselves were almost invisible.
I grabbed a flashlight and tried using it from the window. Twenty yards later, I crawled out through the passenger door and into the truck bed, where I moved the flashlight’s beam back and forth like a poacher spotlighting for deer. When I managed to find a machete mark high up on a tree, I’d bang on the top of the cab.
It worked pretty wellâright up until the truck pivoted right as if sliding on oil, and the rear axle dropped into four feet of water.
A loud thump echoed across the swamp, and I realized the sound was my back pounding into the metal truck bed. The jolt sent me rolling into the tailgate, where I did a one-eighty into the swamp. I was under. Cool, black water engulfed me. The fall had knocked the wind out of me, and I could feel my diaphragm spasming. Seconds passed when I couldn’t tell which way was up, until my feet hit the quicksand bottom. I pushed hard and felt the mud take hold of my feet and suck me down as I pushed away.
I pushed harder, and the cold suction of sludge reached up to my calves. Blood thumped in my ears, and I concentrated on choking off the hard spasms in my chest. I reached down to pull at my knee, and only pushed the other foot deeper. Mud and algae leaked into my mouth, and I gagged and gagged again.
Stretching to reach high over my head, I felt my fingers break the water’s surface. I turned my palms out and pulled two handfuls of water in hard, downward arcs, and my legs came free. Another sweep, and my head popped through the surface. I kicked hard and clamped one hand over the tailgate.
Joey was standing inside the truck bed. Black mud covered him from chest to toe, and the giant man’s eyes were bright with fear. He reached over the tailgate, and pulled me into the bed. I scrambled to my knees and sucked in a lung full of air; then I bent double and honked. Breathe, honk. Breathe, honk. And, all the while, Joey just stood there looking at me.
Finally, he said, “I couldn’t see where you went in.”
I nodded and breathed deeply. “How long was I down there?”
“I don’t know. As soon as we stopped, I jumped out on the roadbed and lost my feet and fell into this shit up to my armpits. I got up and climbed back here as fast as I could. You came up seven or eight seconds after I got back here and started looking.”
I said, “It feels longer when you’re drowning.”
“Yeah. I guess it would.” He turned around to survey our mess. “You okay?”
“I’ll live.”
“You ready to get out of here?”
I stood next to Joey. “The engine’s still going. It’s a four-wheel-drive, and two tires are still on the roadbed. It’s worth a try.”
Joey reached forward and grasped the open driver’s door. As he stepped over the side of the truck bed and swung a leg inside the cab, he said, “Get your ass inside.”
And I thought that sounded like a hell of an idea.
While I scrubbed dark swamp mucus out of my eyes, Joey dropped the transmission into low and revved the engine. The roar choked and caught and the back bumper eased out of the muck, sending an oily gray cloud of exhaust into the still, dank air. Joey yanked on the parking brake to hold his ground while he spun the steering wheel to get us off a diagonal and headed back in the direction of the road. With the clutch engaged and the transmission in low, he gunned the engine again to build up torque and reached for the parking brake release as exhaust fumes billowed across the black water and the roar of the engine echoed through thick stands of cypress.
And if it hadn’t been for the fumes and the roarâif Joey hadn’t been looking back at the submerged rear tires and I hadn’t been rubbing muck out of my eyes and trying to shake off the delayed confusion of nearly drowningâwe might have heard the growing rumble of another monster truck hurtling toward us like a freight train.
chapter thirty-two
I heard Joey shout and cuss, and the world exploded into swirling bits of glass and flying metal. Every bone and joint, every muscle and organ seemed to smash in one crashing millisecond of pain, and I was flying against the open passenger door and somersaulting once again into the swamp. Penetrating cold enveloped me, and I fought against the black ooze like a drowning animal. This time, I came up fast and banged the top of my head on the truck’s undercarriage. I hooked throbbing fingers over rusted steel and hung on, not out of conscious thought but in the way a drowning man will grab another swimmer and pull him down with him into death.
So strong was my need for something solid to hold on to, if the truck had gone under in that hurt and dazed second after the crash, I would have held on and gone with it. But it stayed. It stayed bottomed out across the submerged roadbed with just enough air between the swamp and the rear axle for one scrambled head and ten locked fingers. I blew the swamp out of my nose and mouth and let go with one hand long enough to wipe at my eyes and face. And the world fell back into place.
Muffled voices carried across the water. I was on the left side of the roadbed, and my feet could touch something more solid than quicksand. My arms and hands worked; my legs and ankles ached but moved freely enough to rule out fractures or puncture wounds. I moved my neck to see if I could. And the voices came again, and I thought of Joey.
Using Willie’s oversized rear tire for cover, I moved hand over hand to the side of the truck facing the vehicle that rammed us. An old, two-tone Chevy Blazer, mounted, like Willie’s truck, on tractor tires, sat solidly on the roadbed. Its grill was smashed and separated by three or four feet from the decimated, left front quarterpanel of Willie’s truck. Above the Blazer’s buckled hood, two men were visible inside the cab. And they were screaming at each other.
The larger man sat in the passenger seat but had turned and leaned in toward the much smaller driver, whose shirtfront was gathered inside the big man’s fist. The win
dows were up, and the words inaudible. But the sounds of the two contrasting voices were fury answered with fear.
Turning away from the Blazer, I slid my hands along the rear axle to the other side to put the truck between me and what I assumed were a couple of homicidal Bodines. The passenger door I had shot through like a stream of tobacco spit was still open, and, if it hadn’t been spun into the swamp by the collision, my Browning was on the seat or in the floorboard or somewhere inside the cab. Moving around the right rear tire, I crawled up onto the roadbed and had raised up onto my knees in the shallow water when I heard one of the Blazer’s doors open.
Up on my toes and staying low now, I scurried to the open passenger door of Willie’s wrecked truck and popped my head up over the seat.
Joey sat crumpled against the steering wheel. Blood covered the side of his face and neck and ran in a viscous stream from his right ear, and shiny bits of glass stuck to the splattered blood covering his head and shoulders.
I whispered his name. “Joey?”
Nothing.
His left arm appeared to be wedged between his ribs and the driver’s door; his right was tucked in front of him, pressed between his stomach and the steering wheel.
Water splashed as one of the Bodines stepped out onto the roadbed, and I could hear his voice clearly. “Okay, damnit. I’m going.”
Feet sloshed through water, and I began frantically scanning the inside of the cab for my Browning automatic. But nothing was where it had been. The seat where I had been was clear, except for thousands of diamond-sized shards of windshield glass. The floorboard was strewn with shattered bits of plastic and metal, with fragments of electronics and heating and air-conditioning parts. Even Willie’s riot gun was goneâshot through the rear window, taking the gun rack with it.
A door slammed, and I pulled up onto the side of the truck bed and peeked inside. Willie’s twelve-gauge Benelli lay propped against my dive bag like the hand of God had placed it there for me. All I had to do was get to it without catching a bullet in the process.
I caught a flash of color and dropped down as the smaller Bo-dine came around the front of his smashed grill and approached Joey’s window.
“This one, the driver, looks dead.”
I heard another door open, and the larger man’s voice came from inside the Blazer. “Which one is it?”
“It’s the big sonofabitch.”
Water sloshed as the bigger Bodine stepped out onto the road and then slammed his door shut. “What about the lawyer?”
The little man said, “He ain’t here. Looks like he got slung out when we hit ‘em.”
“No sign of him?”
“None I can see. Probably on the bottom of the swamp.”
“I told you to slow down. We didn’t need to wreck both goddamn trucks to stop ‘em.”
The little one wanted to argue some more. “You said ram ‘em. You didn’t say bump ‘em a little, and I’m tired of you riding my ass about it.”
The big man cussed and said, “Well, pull him out of there, and let’s get the road cleared.”
“The hell with that. This guy’s bigger than you are. You come up here and pull his big ass out.”
I heard the big man sloshing toward the truck. “You’re a useless little shit. You know that?” The water sounds stopped. “He is big, though, isn’t he?”
“I told you.”
The mechanical click of the door handle being lifted sounded unnaturally loud in the still swamp, and a deep moan came from inside the cab.
The small man yelled, “Shit! He’s alive.”
I reached up and grabbed the top edge of the truck bed and sprang up out of the water with all the power left in my aching legs. My knees caught on the side, and I spun into the truck bed and scrambled for the twelve-gauge.
One of the men screamed like a woman. My hands found the shotgun, and I jumped up to see the big man spinning my way with a short double-barrel. I lowered the Benelli to fire, but the double-barrel exploded first as Joey’s door flew open and slammed into both men, sending a load of buckshot straight up and knocking both men over backward into the water. The big man managed to lift up his shotgun and blindly blast one of Willie’s tractor tires before he sank out of sight.
I stood in the truck bed with the Benelli trained on the swirling water. I called out, “Joey?”
“Yeah.” His voice sounded tight and strained.
“You okay?”
“I’m not dead.”
Seconds passed before the two men surfaced ten or twelve feet from where they’d gone in. They had been trying to swim away underwater. Now they gasped in air and spun in the muck looking for me and the shotgun. I called out. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” They didn’t answer. “You’ve got nowhere to go.”
The smaller man yelled, “Help.”
Joey’s strained voice came again. “Help yourself, you little prick.”
I said, “I’m not going to shoot you. Swim to the road.”
The smaller man almost cried. “I can’t make it.”
I said, “Then don’t,” and jumped down out of the truck bed and sloshed up to Joey’s open door.
Joey was sitting back now. His pale gray eyes were shining through a mask of blood and windshield glitter.
I said, “I thought you were dead.”
“Thought same thing about you.” He spoke with his teeth clenched. “Better keep watchin’ the water.”
I nodded and turned to watch the two men flail around in the swamp. I asked, “How bad are you? Looks like a broken jaw.”
Joey’s voice sounded even weaker than before. “Yeah. And something’s wrong with my left leg. Can’t move much.”
I nodded. “We’ll take the Blazer. Get you to a doctor.”
“You gonna drive right over Willie’s truck?”
Willie’s monster truck was completely blocking the only way out. I said, “We could try to push it out of the way with the Blazer, but we could end up with both trucks underwater.” Joey was quiet. “I guess there’s probably somewhere to turn around along here, but…”
I looked back, and Joey just shrugged.
I went on, “…we don’t know where it is.”
“And we been having enough trouble just staying on the road in here.”
“So, I guess we load you into the Blazer. And, since the road’s underwater and we don’t know anywhere to turn around, I get to try to drive backward through this mess until we hit dry land.”
Joey tried to smile and grimaced instead. All he got out was, “Sounds pretty stupid.”
“Yeah.”
Joey motioned toward the Bodines, who had made it up onto the road and were sitting in water up to their chests and catching their breath. “What’re we gonna do with those two?”
I said, “I thought I’d tie them up and toss them in the back of Willie’s truck and leave them here.”
Joey said, “Now that’s a good idea.”
Three hundred yards and thirty minutes later, I backed the Bodines smashed and smoking Blazer onto dry land. After pulling up onto the sandy roadbed, I put the Blazer in park and turned to check on Joey, who was laid out on the backseat. When I turned, Joey had his hand down the front of his pants.
I said, “Bored?”
Joey just unzipped his pants and said, “Turn around.”
“Would you two like some privacy?”
“Fuck you. Something’s trying to hook on to my unit.”
“Leech?”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“Do I fucking look okay?”
“I don’t know. You made me turn around. Not that I really want to get a good look at this.” I heard Joey roll down the window and flick something out. “You get it?”
“Yeah.”
I was laughing. “Well, can I turn around now?”
Joey said, “You know, it really ain’t funny.”
I turned around and said, “Actually, it kind of is.”
“You know,” Joey said, “you were in the water a lot more than I was.”
I stopped laughing and got out of the Blazer. After a short inspection, I climbed back in and said, “I tried the flip phone. It’s a goner. I don’t know what else to do but try to get to a phone or maybe a CB at Carpintero’s compound and see if I can get a Life-saver Helicopter or a boat to come out here and get you.”
Joey just nodded.
“You got a better idea?”
Joey reached up to rub at his eyes. “Nope.”
“How far is it to the compound?”
“Not far. You can keep driving until just before you get to this little bridge. There’s a place there you can pull off and hide the Blazer.” I guess he saw the worry on my face because he added, “I ain’t gonna be any safer here than I am there, and you’ll have the vehicle close by.”
I turned around in the driver’s seat and maneuvered the rickety gearshift into first. “So,” I said, “I guess it’s time to meet the Hammer.”
chapter thirty-three
It was almost eight o’clock when the little bridge came into sight. I pulled off into a stand of scrub pine, and Joey told me as much as he could about the compound’s layout. I left my cut, bruised, and broken friend stretched out on the backseat of a stolen vehicle with Willie’s Benelli twelve-gauge across his chest.
I took Joey’s little Walther PPK and started out through the underbrush to the camp’s perimeter. Joey told me there would be one guard at the entrance. So I circled around to the side of the compound and, keeping a huge Butler Building between me and the road, moved into the clearing.
Running low and feeling ridiculous, I checked out the buildings for communication equipment. One warehouse was just thatâfull of machinery, firearms, and rum and more cigars than I thought were in the world. The cavernous metal building was stuffed with all the things the Bodines had been smuggling in, things in demand on the black market. The second warehouse was the weird one. Padlocks secured both doors, but large windows had been mounted in opposite walls, and morning light flooded the place. It looked like a high school chemistry lab full of long tables with beakers and test tubes and electronic machinery. From the window, I could see three desktop computers.
