by Ted Bell
Snay bin Wazir eyed the little man narrowly, all of his vivid dreams of cities and mushroom clouds going up in smoke. Replaced by legions of scabrous American zombies, rioting in the streets. For the first time since leaving the hotel, he allowed himself a smile. Two whole weeks before the first case was diagnosed. It could work.
“You say ten million of the Americans will die?”
“Yes, indeed. At least.”
“It is not without a certain appeal,” he said.
Chapter Forty-Three
The Ragged Keys
STOKE GUNNED THE INFLATABLE ACROSS THE SHALLOW SAWGRASS flats, grabbing a hard southwesterly angle towards the northernmost tip of the Florida Keys, taking a route the big Cigarette couldn’t possibly navigate. The new angle narrowed the distance between the two boats rapidly. Stoke got just close enough, eased back on the throttles, and let the black rubber boat settle. He scratched the stubble of beard on his chin, thinking it over.
“Ross, you can manage it, I think maybe you ought to be up on the bow with Pepe’s AK. We get much closer, Scissor is going to put up a big fight. We ain’t ready yet.”
“You may not be, Stokely, but I am. This is the bastard who murdered Vicky.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, man. I want to talk to his ass before he’s dead. Tell him face-to-face my emotional reaction to what he did back in England. Get up close and personal with him about the sacredness of the house of the Lord. Know what I’m saying? Talk to him about my religious convictions. You think he’s got that Fancha aboard still?”
“I do. Wouldn’t you?”
“One fine chick. Notice how she was smiling at me back at Vizcaya? I got the feeling she was only with Scissor because she was under—something. You know what I mean.”
“Duress?”
“That’s it. Duress. Thinking about her under all that duress. Be kinda nice to save her sweet ass. You know, for the benefit of all mankind.”
“Ever the humanitarian.”
“Natural born do-gooder.”
Stoke smiled, and eased the throttles back as the speedboat slipped through the razor-sharp sawgrass into the outskirts of the mangrove swamps. Scissor was poking his nose here and there, scoping it all out. Casual. Like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“See? Look at him. He thinks he’s smart, that’s his problem. Simply does not understand I’m hip to his stupid self.”
“Stupid? Rather considerate, Stoke. For a murderous psychopath.”
“What? C’mon, flyboy. That man is a born loser.”
“He didn’t kill us. That was nice of him.”
“Losers got time to be nice.”
Ross had no comment for that observation.
“Besides, he killed the Preacher,” Stoke said, seeing the kid when he said it.
“Right,” Ross said, after a beat. He, too, saw the smiling Jamaican boy, so delighted with the game of cops and robbers. “You’re the SEAL, Stoke. How do we play this quagmire game?”
Stoke knew exactly how to play it. Fact was, he’d played enough war games down here in the Keys to have a very good idea. Namely, keep pushing him. Force him deeper and deeper into the mangroves. Limit his options. Close. Eliminate.
In the mid-sixties, a secret Navy operation down at the old Key West Station had trained his squad back in here for a coupla months. Heat ’n Skeet, his knucklebusters had called this bug-infested swamp, where paradise is hell. Twisty-turny channels snaking this way and that, no rhyme or reason. Nothing on the charts. Some of them lead to open water, but most don’t. So, if Scissor just happened onto one that goes straight out to sea, Stoke knew he was shit out of luck.
Stoke said, “I’m betting I know a lot more about this swamp than he does. Maybe his horsepower advantage ’bout to run out.”
Ross limped forward to the bow with the heavy automatic weapon and Stoke eased the throttles forward once Ross was comfortably situated up there, one hand on the grab rail, gun in the other. The inflatable’s hull wouldn’t provide Ross much in the way of protection, but it was a definite plus to post a stone warrior up front with an AK-47, you running up on somebody’s ass in a little rubber boat.
Diablo II was moving slowly now, because of the shallow water and all. The man was trying to feel his way along the Ragged Keys using his depth sounder and his GPS, trying to find an escape route without running aground. Stoke kept his distance, knowing the guy most likely had an RPG tube aboard, not wanting to get anywhere near inside the grenade launcher’s thousand-yard range.
The two boats moved south like that for a good ten minutes, Stoke stalking him, taking Sands Key on his port side, still way east of the Intercoastal Waterway. Diablo II accelerated now, sensing deeper water and Stoke sped up too. Cat and mouse all right, but who was who?
Sand Cut was coming up fast now, just off the port bow. This was the cut which separated Sands Key from Ragged Key to the south. Stoke swore under his breath. Rodrigo gets through there, he’s out in the open Atlantic and gone adios, muchachos. Problem he had, though, unless the Corps of Engineers had widened it since he was down here, no way the big Diablo could squeeze through that channel. Which the cat had obviously just figured out, because he suddenly hung a hard left and blasted into a wide opening in the mangroves. Okay, Stoke thought, grinning like a barracuda, here we go.
Now, we in it, boy.
Stoke slowed the engines to a crawl entering the swamps. It was a twisting maze, seagrapes and mangroves you could reach out and touch on either side of the boat. Plenty of deep water back in here, though, and Diablo disappeared around a sharp bend. Stoke heard him throttle back. The Cigarette’s big motors made a deep rumble no matter how low the RPMs. This was good. He could just track the sound, stay out of sight but stay with him, turn for turn, wait for his chance. On the bow, Ross suddenly held up his hand. Halt. Then, a slashing motion across his throat.
“Kill the engines,” Ross turned to him and whispered, “He’s stopped.”
Ain’t that interesting, Stoke thought, hitting the two red kill switches on the console that instantly shut down the outboards. He listened carefully to the swamp sounds. Crickets, tree frogs, skeets, that was it. Must’ve, what, run aground? Fouled his props in mangrove roots maybe? Or, he’s up to something. Playing games. Either way, old Stoke was not about to be going around any corners blind.
Stoke left the console and stepped aft, stooping to grab another one of the confiscated Glock nines stowed in the stern lazarette. He popped the clip, saw it was full, rammed it back into the grip. He jacked a round into the chamber and shoved this second pistol inside the black cummerbund still wrapped around the waist of his nonresplendent dirt and grease and bloodstained white satin trousers. Fountainbleau Hotel seemed long ago and far away.
“You know—” Stoke started to say something but Ross held up the flat of his hand, signaling for silence. Stoke edged his way forward and crouched beside Ross in the bow. The current had moved the inflatable to the right side of the narrow channel and they’d drifted up under some overhanging sea grape and mangrove branches.
“Listen,” Ross whispered.
“Yeah. I hear it.”
A woman crying, sounded like. Yeah, that’s what it was. Fancha. Begging, maybe. He could see the guy doing that. Bait. Using the woman, hurting her, trying to draw him in.
Damn.
“He’s playing games, all right,” Stoke whispered, ripping off his torn and ruined pleated formal shirt. “Motherfucka think he playing Cat and Mouse.”
“He is.”
“No. He ain’t.”
The ex-SEAL swung his legs silently over the side and lowered himself feet first down into the warm black water. He gripped an overhanging mangrove root with one hand and used the other to slice off a thick cattail reed with an assault knife. Then he looked up at Ross.
“Ever try this? Works great. I stayed submerged, breathed through one just like this for over an hour one time, Mr. Victor Charlie stalking my squad up some Meko
ng backwater.”
“You were riverine, Stoke. I was the Navy flyboy. Remember?”
“Yeah. I forgot. Rocket man. You okay? You too doped up to do this? I don’t want alligators sneaking up on you.” He’d felt kinda bad earlier, not leaving Ross at Vizcaya where the Dade County EMS guys would have fixed his leg up. Not that Ross would have ever in a million years let himself get left behind, they going after the man who killed Vicky, hot on his trail now.
“Come on, Stoke. Who do you think you’re talking to? I eat morphine for breakfast.”
“You’re right. Sorry. Tell you one thing, though, Ross,” Stoke said, easing himself soundlessly deeper into the brackish water until only his head was visible.
“Yeah?”
“Like I say, this boy, he thinks he playing Cat and Mouse, but he ain’t,” Stoke said.
“No? What’s he playing?”
“Cat and Cat,” Stoke said, and, flashing a huge white grin, he disappeared beneath the surface.
“Boo!”
Stoke popped up right next to the Cigarette. He’d been underwater, breathing through the reed, treading water and watching for movement of the hull above. See where everybody was up there. The hull hadn’t moved in sixty seconds. Before that, he’d swum for eight minutes without taking a breath. Hell, it wasn’t even a record. In his old SEAL Team Six days, they’d called him the Human Draeger. Draeger was the German underwater breathing apparatus used by SEAL insertion teams to swim great distances without a telltale trail of bubbles.
He surfaced, took a gulp of air, and swung the Glock back and forth above his head, expecting to see Scissor peering down at him over the gunwale. The sun was up now, and the temperature back in the deep severe was climbing fast. He banged the muzzle of the pistol on the hull a couple of times. A loud, hollow thud. Then rapped it a couple more times, harder. Still nothing.
“Hey! Ahoy, there, Captain! Big black dude down here in the water about to blow a big fat hole in your yacht!” He aimed the pistol just where he expected Scissor’s head to appear.
Nothing.
He kicked his legs, lunged up and grabbed a shiny cleat, rocking the boat side-to-side, singing one of his old favorites to himself.
“Rock the boat, don’t rock the boat, baby…rock the boat, don’t rock the boat, baby!”
That’s when the drop of blood plopped down, splat, right in the middle of his forehead.
Scissoring his legs hard, he shot up out of the water, grabbed the stainless rail with one hand, and hauled himself up and over into the cockpit in a single move. The deck was sticky under his feet. Whole mess of confused bloody footprints. Fancha was sitting with her back to the transom, head down. Blood matted in her hair. Stoke stared hard at the blood spatters and footprints until he could begin to make it all jell.
He’d been right. Scissor had used her for bait. Lure them in on his own terms. But she put up a fight. Guy fights girl. Guy wins. Guy ties girl up, hands and feet with anchor chain, hurts her with scissors, and then goes over the stern.
He pressed two fingers on the side of the naked woman’s neck. Strong pulse. Out cold, though. Big contusion on her forehead, like she’d hit her head on the gunwale going down. Going to the stern, he stared at the footprints, then saw more blood smears on the big overhanging mangrove, the one Rodrigo must have grabbed in order to haul himself over the side and climb ashore.
Stoke was ticking off the possibilities as to what Rodrigo might be up to when he heard a low moan from Fancha. Girl was going to wake up in a world of hurt from what he could see. He knelt down beside her, scooped her up in his arms and quickly carried her below. The whole interior was done in creamy white leather and he lay her down on a long sofa, getting a lot of blood on the man’s custom upholstery.
He got the ropes and chains off, talking softly to her and trying to get her to come around.
She was whimpering now, saying something he couldn’t understand but could guess at, rolling her head back and forth. He ducked into the head and stuck a couple of hand towels in the sink, turned on the cold water. Wringing them out, he returned and sat down on the floor beside the sofa where she lay. He wiped off a lot of the blood, saw where the guy had slashed her with the scissors.
Mostly superficial. Upper torso. A long thin wound that started below her belly-button and disappeared into her pubic hair. He found a blanket and covered her, then stepped back into the head and ripped open the medicine chest looking for the first aid kit. There was a good one and a couple of minutes later, he’d mostly cleaned her up and swabbed her with the bacitracin cream and applied gauze bandages. Her eyelids were fluttering but she was still way out of it.
Suddenly, an explosion cracked the air. A thousand birds lit out from the surrounding swamp and the noise and concussion of the blast rocked the Diablo. Stoke knew instantly what had happened.
“Aw, goddamn it,” he said, and bolted up the steps to the cockpit. He could see and smell the flames licking up through the mangroves. Burning gas. Rubber. Smoke was rising out of the swamp into the pink dawn sky. It was coming from back downstream, right where he and Ross had tied the inflatable.
He looked back at the girl. Still out. He removed one of the two automatics jammed in his cummerbund and jacked a hollow-point into the chamber; then he wrapped the girl’s right hand around the grip and stuck her finger through the trigger guard. Left her like that. Said, “Stay cool, Fancha, I’ll be right back,” and bolted up the steps to the cockpit. If she’d been awake, he would have told her to definitely not wait until she saw the whites of his eyes—all this guy had was white. White with little black pinpoints.
There was a secondary explosion. Whoompf. Whatever munitions Pepe and his boys had been carrying in the inflatable’s stern storage just went sky-high.
“Ross!” he screamed, and leapt onto the bank, ripping mangroves out by the roots as he clawed his way through the dense under-growth. Leaping over roots and saltwater pools, he couldn’t stop seeing that hinky little smile on Ross’s face when he’d left him. Pupils dilated with morphine, lopsided grin. How’d you get to be so stupid, Stokely, man your age? All this time, all the crazy shit you saw Charlie pull down in the Delta; and all the gangsta stuff up in the Bronx? Man, you are supposed to know by now how this shit goes down!
He’d been a damn fool.
Cat one. Mouse zero.
Chapter Forty-Four
The Emirate
FUDO MYO-O WAS WIELDING THE SWORD OF INSTRUCTIVE wisdom and holding a coiled rope to bind any evildoers who failed to heed his message.
“He looks very powerful, Ichi-san,” Yasmin said to the sumo. He was lost in concentration and didn’t look up. She was draped in peacock blue silk. She plucked another bright green grape from the bunch she had brought into the garden, and asked, “Who is it, in the painting?”
They were sitting in Yasmin’s private meditation garden. Ichi had been working there every morning for some days now. He was putting the finishing touches on a painting. Yasmin had promised to smuggle it out to his beloved Michiko. The beautiful Yasmin had made a surprise appearance this morning, settling herself upon the marble bench and watching quietly while he painted.
“It is a rendering of Fudo Myo-o,” Ichi said, smiling. “I am pleased that you like it. I have great respect for the feminine eye.”
“Is Fudo your God?”
“One of them.”
Yasmin and Ichi spoke quietly. Discretion was always their habit, ever since the night he had first come to her here in the garden; the night he revealed her husband’s sexual betrayal with the treacherous Rose. They had to whisper because, even here in Yasmin’s most private garden, there was no privacy. Eyes and ears were everywhere.
Behind the thick stone walls of her opulent prison, Yasmin sometimes wondered if there was any privacy left at all, even within the walls of her own mind.
“You have many gods, Ichi-san?”
“Fudo is an old one,” Ichi said. “Since I was a boy. He is the patron
saint of Budo. Budo in my country is the way of brave and enlightened activity. For the warrior, Fudo represents steadfastness and resolve. He who is immovable.”
“And, Myo-o?”
“Myo-o means ‘King of Light.’ ”
“So, Budo is—your religion?”
“Perhaps. Budo has three essential elements. The timing of heaven, the utility of the earth, and the harmonization of human beings. I suppose for some that is a kind of religion.”
He returned to his painting and the silence between them stretched out, languorous and comfortable. Morning sunlight dappled the garden with shadows. The scent of the climbing yellow jasmine was heavy, soporific. Yasmin would have loved to lay her head upon Ichi’s lap and drift away beyond her walls. But she could not. She had bad news.
“I have just heard from my husband, Ichi-san. His plane will shortly leave Suva Island. He will be here late in the evening.”
Ichi did not reply. He just absorbed. And harmonized.
“I am so sorry,” Yasmin said. “I thought we had more time.”
There were large elephant and camel caravans departing at first light the next day. Yasmin had arranged for Ichi to be smuggled outside the walls in one of many large baskets even now being stacked just inside the walls. Tonight, with the palace security forces once more under the ever-watchful eye of bin Wazir and his inner circle, the guards would be sure to check every container leaving the Blue Palace.
Ichi closed his eyes and lifted his head so that the sun struck him fully on his upturned face.
“Do not mistake my heart. It is steadfast. Another day of hope will come,” Ichi said. He opened his eyes. “Look. The light. It is still visible in the valley beyond the wall, is it not?”
