He instantly raised his Glock and pointed it at the snarling beast.
Bang!
The first shot entered the animal midshank, knocking it away from Blount amidst a series of yelps. But Jones refused to stop. He wouldn’t be content until this creature had died.
Bang!
The next bullet ripped through Tornado’s hip, sending a spurt of blood into the air and onto the ground where the dog collapsed with a loud thud.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Tornado danced spasmodically as Jones pummeled its body with shot after well-aimed shot, making sure that this beast would never breathe again.
Jones sneered. “Tell Cujo I said hello.”
CHAPTER 56
WHEN
Payne opened his eyes, he was unable to see anything except two blazing orbs of light, one shining on either side of him. He tried leaning forward, using his good arm to lift him from the ground, but the front bumper of the truck restricted his movement.
“Wow!” he gasped, noticing that most of his body was underneath the frame of the vehicle. “Thank God for tall wheels.”
Using the grille for support, Payne scrambled backward, freeing himself from the undercarriage as quickly as possible. He realized he didn’t have time to plan anything elaborate-Holmes would be looking to strike hastily-so Payne decided to follow his gut. And it told him to attack.
With quiet confidence, Payne lowered his right hand to his hip and grabbed his Glock. As his finger curled around the trigger, Payne glanced under the motionless vehicle, looking for Holmes’s feet. If he had seen them, he would’ve blasted them immediately, but Payne’s search turned up empty.
That meant that Holmes was either inside the truck or on it.
Since the front windshield was missing, Payne knew he’d have an unobstructed shot if Holmes was in the front seat. He realized, though, that the windowless space would be far more beneficial to his opponent. The gap would give Holmes more room to maneuver inside the cab and an extra way to escape. But Payne wasn’t about to let
that
happen.
No, the only way that Holmes was going to get away was through Payne, not through a window. Unfortunately, that was what Holmes had in mind.
While recovering from the sneak attack, Holmes noticed Payne’s silhouette on the ground ahead, created by the headlights. The shadow gave Holmes all the information he was looking for: Payne was still alive and directly in front of the truck.
Without delay, Holmes slammed his foot on the gas, launching the truck forward at full speed. Payne, using his well-honed instincts, sensed what was about to happen before it actually did. With mongooselike quickness, Payne fell backward onto the hard ground. A split second later, the truck roared above him, its high undercarriage protecting Payne from injury.
The instant the truck had passed, Payne flipped onto his belly and burst forward like a sprinter at the start of a race, but he quickly realized that the vehicle was too far ahead for him to catch it. Stopping immediately, he aimed his Glock at the truck’s back tire and discharged three quick rounds in succession. The second and third bullets hit their mark, piercing the right wheel and causing Holmes to temporarily lose control of the truck. The vehicle fishtailed, skidding sideways on the dew-filled grass, but Holmes didn’t panic. He coolly compensated for the loss of air pressure, allowing the back end to straighten itself out, then continued forward as fast as the vehicle could carry him.
“WHERE the hell have you been?” Levon Greene growled. He had been standing by the boat for several minutes, impatiently waiting for Holmes’s return. “I was getting ready to leave you.”
With a look of annoyance on his face, Holmes stepped from the heavily damaged truck. “Where the hell have I been? I’ve been doing your dirty work, that’s where I’ve been!” He opened the back of the truck with a slam, then climbed onto the tailgate. “If it wasn’t for your selfishness, we’d already be far from this place, somewhere in the gulf by now. But no! You just had to have your pet slave, didn’t you?”
Greene moved forward, glancing into the back of the truck. He wanted to make sure that Holmes had returned with Nathan. “He’s gonna fetch you a lot of money, so I don’t know what you’re so pissed about.”
Holmes glanced down at the slave and gave him a swift kick in the midsection. He was completely fed up with Greene’s shit, and he needed to take it out on somebody.
“You don’t know what I’m pissed about? Well, let me tell you! You brought two MANIACs to my island, then when they got loose, you ran and hid while I was forced to deal with them!” Holmes pulled the slave toward the back of the truck and waited for Greene to take him. “I mean, this is
your
guest, not mine. So why did I have to risk my life to get him?”
Greene shook his head at Holmes’s ignorance. “Because I’m the one with money. If your name was on the bank account, then I’d be doing stuff for you. But I’m the one with the cash, so you’re the one with the job.”
PAYNE knew he had a lot of ground to make up-probably too much to do on foot-so he decided to take a chance. He wasn’t sure if his four-wheeler had survived the vicious jolt from Holmes’ truck, but he decided to run back to the crash site and find out. Thankfully, the gamble paid off. The Grizzly had overturned, but it worked just fine.
After putting it on its wheels, Payne jumped on the ATV and rocketed ahead with a touch of the accelerator. The green and black vehicle reached top speed as Payne urged the machine to catch Holmes. If Ariane was taken from the island, he knew the odds of finding her would go down significantly. It wouldn’t be an impossible task-hell, Payne would devote his entire life and all of his resources to finding her-but he knew it would be quite difficult.
“Come on!” he implored, digging his heels into the ATV. “Go faster!”
But the vehicle was going as fast as it could, vibrating rapidly from the strain. The darkened scenery of the Plantation whipped by in a blur. The trees, rocks, and animals were all a part of the landscape that Payne ignored. His full concentration, every thought in his throbbing head, was focused on the love of his life and the bastards that had taken her away.
Oh, they would pay. They would fucking pay!
But he had to catch them first.
IT wasn’t until the hydroplane eased into the warm water of the inlet that Holmes was finally able to relax. Until that moment, he was certain that Payne or Jones would appear at the last possible moment to foil his escape. But as he glided from the marsh’s rugged shoreline, his anxiety started to fade.
He had faced two MANIACs in battle and lived to brag about it.
As the boat moved farther into the swamp, passing groves of cypress trees and several curious alligators, Greene noticed the difference in Holmes’s appearance. His partner’s face no longer looked haggard, and his body no longer looked beaten. In fact, he actually seemed to lose years as the boat continued forward.
“What’s your deal?” he wondered. “You look like a new man.”
“Feel like one, too.” A full smile crossed his lips for the first time in hours. “My gut told me we weren’t gonna make it. I don’t know why, but something warned me about Payne and Jones.”
“What did it say?”
“It told me that they were gonna be our downfall.” Holmes took his eyes off the water and cast a paranoid glance back at the shore. “But I guess I was wrong, huh? We beat Mr. Payne-in-the-Ass once and for all.”
Greene stood from his seat and looked back as well, but the hydroplane had traveled so far he could barely see the shoreline through the trees. “What does your gut tell you now?”
Holmes pondered the question as he increased the boat’s speed. There was a faint glow in the water up ahead that he had a theory about. “Actually, it tells me that we’re gonna make it to Africa, and something good is going to happen along the way.”
“Along the way?” Greene questioned. “Why do you say that?”
Holmes extended his
finger forward, causing Greene to glance in front of the hydroplane. When his eyes focused on the scene, he couldn’t believe their good fortune.
Paul and Donny Metz were standing on a fallen cypress tree, trying to push the boat into the center of the channel, but their effort was completely useless. The duo, weakened from days of labor in the field, didn’t have the strength to disengage the boat by themselves, and Robert Edwards didn’t have enough experience with the craft to assist them.
No, the slaves weren’t about to free themselves from the tree, and now that Holmes and Greene had stumbled upon them, they wouldn’t be getting free at all.
PAYNE
tried to follow the truck’s tire marks in the grass, but the rocky terrain near the eastern shore of the island limited his tracking ability.
Once he was on his own, forced to locate Holmes with nothing to guide him, he decided to scan the swamps in both directions, hoping to stumble upon a clue. With each passing minute, he knew the chances of finding Ariane on the island were getting smaller and smaller, but he refused to give up hope while there was still fuel in his gas tank and ground to cover.
It wasn’t until he saw Holmes’s truck, slowly sinking into the soft mud of the marsh, that he knew he was too late to make a difference.
The Posse had escaped from the Plantation.
“Son of a bitch!” he screamed while punching the leather seat in frustration. “I can’t believe I let them escape!” He took a deep breath, trying to calm down, but it didn’t work. The extra oxygen simply made him more agitated than before. “Fuck! Fuck!
Fuck!
”
After a moment of contemplation, Payne moved from his four-wheeler to the edge of the swamp. He was tempted to wade out to the sinking truck to search for clues, but the splashing of nearby gators quickly eliminated the thought.
“Think, goddamn it, think! What can I do?”
Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do except watch the vehicle-and his chances of finding Ariane-slowly disappear.
CHAPTER 57
Monday, July 5th
District Office for the FBI
New Orleans, Louisiana
JONATHON
Payne glared at the special agent across the table. He had already answered more questions in the past few hours than he had during his entire time at the Naval Academy, and it was starting to try his patience. He was more than willing to assist the FBI with their investigation, but enough was enough. It was time to speed up the process.
Payne stood from his chair and glanced at the large mirror that dominated the wall in front of him. If he was correct, the people in charge of the investigation were standing behind the glass, watching him give his testimony about the Plantation.
“That’s it,” he announced. “I’ve reached my limit. I’ve done nothing wrong, yet I’m being treated like a criminal. I’m not saying another word until one of you assholes comes into this room and answers a few questions for me. Do you understand? Not another word until I get some answers!”
Payne accented his request by slamming his hand against the two-way glass-his way of driving home the intensity of his message.
His point got through because less than a minute later the door to the conference room opened and the local director of operations walked in.
Chuck Dawson was a distinguished-looking man in his mid-fifties, and the power of his position showed in the confidence of his stride and the wisdom of his weathered face. He greeted Payne with a firm handshake and studied him for a moment before telling the other agent to leave the room. It would be easier to get things done alone.
“How’s the arm feeling, Mr. Payne? Can I get you something for it?”
Payne glanced at his injured biceps and shrugged. It wouldn’t get better without surgery, and he didn’t have time for a trip to the hospital. “A beer would be nice. You know, for the pain.”
Dawson smiled at the comment. “If I had some in my office, I’d offer you a cold one. But I was thinking more along the lines of bandages or a pillow.”
“Nah, your doctors patched me up pretty well when I first came in. I don’t think I’m ready for the golf course yet, but I’ll be okay for our chat.”
“If that changes, be sure to let me know. I don’t want anything to happen to a national hero while you’re under my care.”
Payne raised his eyebrows in surprise. The recent line of questioning suggested that he was more of a suspect than a hero. He had been drilled on everything from the murder of Jamaican Sam to his possible involvement with the Posse, and now he was being praised? “On second thought, I might need a hearing test. I could’ve sworn you just called me a hero.”
“I did,” Dawson asserted. He opened the folder that he had carried into the room and glanced at its information. “From what I can tell, you and David Jones saved the lives of eleven prisoners-actually twelve if you include Tonya Edwards’s baby-while killing more than twenty criminals in the process. At the same time, you managed to prevent the future abduction of countless others by shutting down an organization that we didn’t even know existed until yesterday.”
Dawson spotted Payne trying to read the FBI data and hastily closed the folder.
“That makes you a hero in my book.”
Payne leaned back in his chair. “Well, Chuck, that seems a bit surprising. I don’t feel like a hero. In fact, I feel like a second-class citizen around here. What’s up with all the questions and accusations?”
Dawson smiled, revealing a perfect set of teeth. “Come on, Jon. You’re ex-military. You know the way things work.”
“Yeah, you like to burn up a bunch of manpower by asking tons of worthless questions just so you have something to put in your files.”
The FBI director shrugged. “It’s the government’s way.”
Payne grinned at the comment. “Well, at least you’re willing to admit it’s worthless. That’s more than the last agent was willing to do.”
“Don’t be putting words into my mouth. I never said it was worthless. The questions weren’t worthless. . . . Okay, I admit some of them were a little far-fetched, but they weren’t without worth. We often gather more information from a person’s reaction to a question than we do from their actual answer.”
Payne rolled his eyes. He couldn’t believe his entire morning had been wasted on psychological games. There were so many other things he could have been doing with his time. “And that’s why you’ve been harassing me? To see if my answers and facial expressions were consistent during the baiting process?”
“Something like that. But it isn’t just self-consistency that we look for. We also check your claim against the claims of others.”
“Like D.J.?”
“And Bennie Blount, and the slaves, and anyone else we can dig up. We make sure that everything checks out before we’re willing to accept things at face value. It’s the only way to guarantee in-depth analysis.”
“Well, Chuck, now that I’ve passed your little test, would you please answer some questions for me? I’ve been trying to get some information all morning, but I keep getting shot down by your flunkies.”
Dawson nodded. His men had been instructed to keep Payne in the dark, but now that they were confident in Payne’s innocence, he was willing to open up. “As long as the questions don’t involve confidential data, I’d be happy to fill you in. Fire away!”
It was a poor choice of expressions, but Payne was willing to overlook the faux pas if it meant getting some answers. “You just mentioned Bennie Blount. How’s he doing?”
“Mr. Blount is in serious but stable condition. He lost a lot of blood from the crash and the animal attack, but your buddy did a great job keeping him alive until help arrived.”
“What about his legs? Is he going to be able to walk again?”
Dawson shrugged. “I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know all the facts. From what I was told, he did sustain a spinal cord injury. They don’t think it’s a devastating one, so,
God willing, he’ll be as good as new after some rest and rehab.”
Payne closed his eyes in thought. For some reason, Payne was always more devastated by his partners’ injuries than his own. “And what about the twenty-plus prisoners we saved? Are they all right?”
“Maybe I should ask you the same question. Are
you
all right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Twenty-plus prisoners? You must have double vision or something. Like I mentioned before, you helped save the lives of eleven captives.”
“Yeah, I heard you. There were eleven people on the island when you showed up and ten on the boat that I set free several hours before. If my math is correct, that would mean over twenty.”
“Shit,” Dawson mumbled. He suddenly realized that Payne hadn’t been informed about the missing vessel. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but we never found the slave boat that you and your partner talked about. The Coast Guard is currently conducting an all-out search of the gulf, but as of right now, we don’t know what happened to it.”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me!”
“I wish I was. But it hasn’t turned up.”
Payne tried to process the new information as quickly as possible, but it threw him for a temporary loop. “So the slave boat could be on the bottom of the gulf? What about Robert Edwards? Did you find Robert Edwards anywhere?”
Dawson shook his head. “He’s one of the missing slaves. His wife and future baby are fine, but he’s still unaccounted for.”
Payne tried to make sense of the information. When he left the island, he thought he had rescued everyone except for Ariane and the unknown captive from the truck, but now he realized that he might have sent a boatload of inexperienced sailors to a watery grave.
“Jon?” Dawson whispered in a comforting voice. “Not to change the subject, but when you pounded on the mirror and called me an asshole, you implied you had a bunch of questions. Did you want me to answer anything else, or is that all for now?”
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