by Zoe Sharp
“Jesus,” I murmured.
He told me the rest then, not that there was much to tell. They’d kept him and Keith in a darkened room not unlike this one and told him nothing. The only time he’d gleaned that something was happening was when Whitmarsh’s crew had suddenly tooled up and cleared out in a hurry yesterday. Their mood had been one of jubilation, he said, as though they’d set a trap for me.
Which, of course, they had. With Henry as the bait.
Sean had sat and sweated until their return and then the ill-tempered slamming of doors and kicking of walls and the morose snatches of conversation had made it plain that I’d somehow got Trey away from them again.
“I felt so damned helpless, just waiting for it to happen, and then the relief was just incredible,” he confessed. “Not just at your survival but my own too, I suppose. I don’t know what you did, Charlie, but it really pissed them off.”
So I told him my side of the story. The only part I glossed over was my real intention when I’d gone to face down Gerri. I wasn’t quite ready to admit that yet. Even to Sean.
Eventually we sat against the wall opposite the doorway, close together, unashamedly holding hands. The floor was hard and unforgiving, and occasionally things with more legs than I wanted to think about skittered across it but at least they weren’t rats. Besides, I was just so glad to be with Sean that I didn’t care about the minor problems of insect infestation and my backside going to sleep.
Outside, the sun finally began to lose its harsh edge as another day died in flawless, but largely-ignored tragic beauty. The light filtering through the vents turned mellow, almost misty, as the ferocious heat started to abate a little.
Sean and I sat without speaking as we watched the onset of the end of the day, my head tilted onto his shoulder. There was too much to say to know where to start and so it was better to say none of it than to say it badly.
“If you see a chance, Charlie, take it,” Sean said at last. “If I have to go I’d rather go out fighting than being caught with my bloody pants down again.”
“You never told me you were skinny-dipping in the pool,” I said.
Just for a moment he laughed and squeezed my fingers.
“I’m serious,” he said. “If you get an opportunity, don’t hesitate. They won’t, that’s for sure.”
He paused and when he spoke again his voice had lost any trace of amusement. “Do you remember you once told me that if I went out of my way to kill a man – even one who blatantly deserved it – you’d feel compelled to try and stop me?”
My mouth had suddenly gone so dry I had to peel my tongue away from the roof of it. “Yes,” I said. “I remember.”
“You know what you mean to me, don’t you, Charlie?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Good,” he said, cool and distant now. “So this time, don’t try and stop me.”
I should have made some response to that. How could I accept such a sinister statement of intent without argument? If you planned to kill in advance of needing to, it wasn’t self-defence any more. It was murder.
But I knew all about planning a murder, didn’t I?
And then we heard the footsteps approaching and it was too late for anything else but jumping to our feet, braced and ready.
The light gushed in like floodwater as the door was unlocked and swung wide. Beyond it stood Whitmarsh, now reunited with his Beretta. His jaw was set, determined. He waved us out with a jerk of his head.
“OK people,” he said, tense. “It’s time to go for a little ride.”
Twenty-four
I’d never been in an airboat before. Given other circumstances I might even have enjoyed the experience.
Each craft was around eighteen or twenty feet in length, with a flat-bottomed hull that sat less than six inches into the water. Rows of ridged aluminium bench seats for the long-departed day trippers filled the blunt forward part of the boat.
At the rear was the hulking great V8 Chevy motor. It looked like it had been lifted straight out of a Yank truck, leaving the better part of its exhaust silencer system behind in the process.
The motor was connected to a giant carbon fibre prop, mounted inside a mesh guard above the stern. Just in front of that, at the controls, sat Mason. He was wearing a Rolling Rock baseball hat with a pair of camouflage-coloured ear defenders jammed over the top and he watched our approach without any expression on his face. One of the Mossberg shotguns was slotted into a rack by his raised seat.
Whitmarsh brought us out first, then unlocked the door to retrieve Trey and his father. Keith came scurrying out, jerking to a stop when the rush of movement brought guns up in his face.
“Look,” he said, sly now in his desperation, “we can still work this out! Trey really might have something to offer, y’know? Take him and I’ll work on the rest of the program for you. For nothing! I—”
That was as much as I could take of that but Sean beat me to it. He took one quick step forwards and hit Keith in the face with a beautiful right hand, following it up with a left to the solar plexus that dropped the little weasel gasping to his knees. Neither Whitmarsh nor Lonnie made any moves to stop him.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see somebody do that to this piece of shit,” Whitmarsh said. “You’re a jerk, Pelzner. Now stop whining and get up.”
Keith regained his feet slowly, holding both hands to his bleeding nose. He glanced at his son for support but Trey wouldn’t even look at him.
Whitmarsh kept a hand on the boy’s shoulder as we walked single-file down to the waiting boat. It was a canny move on his part. Trey was probably the one person we’d all try to protect – all of us except Keith, that is.
By this time Mason had the motor cranked up and the prop had started to spin. The noise of it set a pair of gangling birds that looked like white herons to flight.
The black guy who’d burst into Brown’s office with Mason was waiting for us with the other Mossberg in the bow of the boat. Haines was further back, nonchalantly holding his usual Smith & Wesson pistol. He seemed to have it pointed as much at Whitmarsh as at the rest of us but it was hard to tell because his eyes were hidden behind those Oakleys again.
If Whitmarsh noticed this lack of trust, he gave no sign of it. Despite the fact that the burn had gone out of the day, he was still sweating heavily, his shirt sopping with it now.
What’s the matter, Jim? This too cold-blooded for you? Didn’t have any trouble at the motel, now did you?
The four of us, the condemned, ended up on one row in the centre of the airboat. Trey tucked himself in between me and Sean, leaving Keith to sit, sniffing loudly, on his own at the other side. Shunned even in his final moments.
Lonnie unhooked the bow rope from its post and jumped into the front section with the black guy. Whitmarsh climbed less nimbly into the row immediately behind us, with Haines lurking behind him, still smiling like this was the most fun he’d had with his clothes on in ages.
Mason cranked up the revs and moved away from the dock and I immediately understood why he was wearing those ear defenders. The V8 began to roar as the airboat glided across the small inlet and headed for the open swamp beyond, picking up speed all the while.
The surface of the swamp was coated in a thick layer of water hyacinths but, without any projections from the hull, the airboat scudded over the top of it. It hardly cut a swathe through the vegetation in its wake, leaving very little evidence to mark the trail to our final resting place.
Mason opened the throttle until we were really flying. He handled the airboat with easy confidence, banking into the turns as he skirted round the larger patches of weeds and semi-immersed trees. Insects of all descriptions splatted into us so hard you daren’t breathe with your mouth open or you would have swallowed enough of them to qualify as a last meal.
And all the time we were moving I was watching the men watching us, looking for a break, a weakness, a moment of inattention that would spell our oppor
tunity.
It never came.
After ten minutes or so Mason eased back and the airboat’s speed dropped off until it was dead in the water, letting the motor idle lazily. The sudden reduction in noise was a deafening silence by comparison. Without the cooling breeze whipping past us, the temperature level also rose abruptly, so we almost seemed to be back to the high heat of the day even though the sunset was now in full swing.
We had come far enough to be out of sight of the small dock and the building next to it and had swerved about so much I couldn’t even have pointed in the right direction to get back. We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Cypress trees that towered out of the turgid water, draped with the Spanish moss that would eventually smother them.
I glanced with growing apprehension at the darkened water alongside the boat. There were snakes in there, I knew, as well as the alligators Livingston Brown was relying upon to dispose of our mortal remains.
A group of bubbles broke the surface close by. I tried to tell myself it was just gas from rotting down plants. I wasn’t particularly convincing.
Mason seemed to be looking around, too, with the advantage of his elevated position. After a moment he pointed over to his left and, following his direction, I spotted the long gnarly shape of the submerged ‘gator about a hundred metres away.
If the part of it I could see in the dusky light was anything to go by, it was a big one. I’d never seen anything like it in the wild before and had to admit to a certain stereotyped revulsion at the grotesque appearance, with those twin rows of bony plates along its back and the long flat skull. Maybe knowing we were the feature dish on its dinner menu for this evening had some part to play. As I looked, I caught another stealthy movement, close to the first, then a third.
My God, the place is crawling with them.
I glanced over at Sean. His face was taut, skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, brows pulled down. I could sense his body coiling like a pre-strike snake, alert to the slightest possibility, the faintest quiver in the air.
“This’ll do,” Mason said, offhand. “Any closer and the sound of the shots will scare ‘em off anyhow.”
I was at the end of the row and Haines waved me to my feet.
“Ladies first, I do believe,” he said.
I stood, trying to keep my knees soft, my arms loose by my sides. Trey looked up at me mutely, shock keeping him passive even though he was clearly on the edge of panic.
“You don’t have to do this, Jim,” I said to Whitmarsh, achieving an admirably level tone considering my heartrate was redlining, making it hard to draw breath. “You still have a chance to make this right.”
Whitmarsh shook his head rather sadly and moved further to the edge of the boat himself, the gun aimed square at the centre of my body. “You won’t change my mind, Charlie,” he said carefully. “It’s already made up.”
He was looking right into my eyes as he spoke and I could have sworn there was something at the back of his own that hadn’t been there before. The barrel of the gun shifted away from me just a fraction.
If you get a chance, take it! Sean’s words were roaring in my head. I bunched my muscles, felt rather than saw Sean do the same.
“No, you can’t do it!” Suddenly Trey was out of his seat next to me like a rabbit, the fear turning his voice into a shriek. “You can’t!” And he dived for Whitmarsh, latching onto his right hand like he was trying to save himself from falling.
Whitmarsh had already started to squeeze the trigger but Trey’s reckless act threw his aim off. The gun discharged but the shot went wild and wide.
Which was a damned shame really, because he hadn’t been aiming at us.
He’d been aiming at Haines.
At the same moment, by what must have been a prior arrangement, Lonnie swung the Remington up and round towards the black guy standing next to him. Without hesitation, he shot him in the chest.
Lonnie was standing so close to him when he fired that it was almost point-blank. The shot barely had a chance to begin its spread, punching into Brown’s security man almost as a solid slug.
Half the back of his shirt exploded outwards as his body ripped open, the centre of his torso disintegrating in a split-second. Debris splashed down beside the boat and then the man toppled backwards to join it. The last thing to hit the water, it seemed, was the Mossberg as it dropped from his fingers and sank like a brick.
Lonnie didn’t bother to watch him go over. As soon as he’d pulled the trigger he’d racked another fresh cartridge into the chamber and started to twist towards the stern.
Mason saw the move as it happened but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe he had the time to reach for his own gun. He just put the rudder hard over and stamped on the throttle, whipping the airboat into a vicious surging turn.
Everyone standing instantly lost their footing, including me. Trey thudded to his knees, almost bringing Whitmarsh down on top of him.
Haines skidded, grabbing at one of the engine supports to keep himself upright. His lips pulled back into a triumphant snarl as he began to bring the Smith & Wesson up to bear on the hampered Whitmarsh.
In the event, though, he never got a shot off.
One moment Sean was sprawled half on the floor beside me, and the next he’d put both hands on the back of the bench seat and vaulted over it, launching himself at Haines. As he leapt he pivoted his legs straight out to the side of him with the easy power of an Olympic gymnast.
One foot landed square in Haines’s ribcage, while the other connected with the side of his jaw. The man’s head snapped back. He staggered a second time and went down, dropping the semiautomatic into the bottom of the boat.
Like the rest of us, Lonnie had fallen when Mason made his violent manoeuvre but he’d landed badly. As he started to regain his feet I saw that he’d snapped his right forearm about halfway between wrist and elbow. The break was a nasty one and the lower part of his arm had taken on a rubbery, detached quality.
With a grunt of effort and pain he swapped the Remington into his left hand and pointed it at Mason, sitting exposed at the helm. Mason still hadn’t reached for his own gun, but he protected himself the best way he could. He wrenched at the controls again to send the airboat into a series of vicious turns like a gazelle jinking to outwit the pursuing lions.
Lonnie lost his balance again and started to go over backwards. He instinctively put his right hand out to catch himself but that action only served to compound the fracture. The arm collapsed under his own weight, sending him tumbling over the side of the boat and into the brackish opaque water of the swamp.
As he went over Lonnie’s finger tightened on the trigger and the Remington let go a second shot. Trey was down below seat level, still grappling with Whitmarsh, and Keith had yet to raise his head. Sean and I dived for cover and by some miracle the stinging spray of pellets missed both of us.
Mason wasn’t so lucky. He caught a peppering across the right-hand side of his body, little more than a glancing blow but bad enough, all the same.
But the bulk of the shot bypassed all the people on board and hit the mesh cage surrounding the propeller. It passed straight through like a magic trick, leaving the guard untouched but the prop inside shattered into fragments, sending shards of carbon fibre zinging across the back end of the airboat like deadly little flechettes.
With the throttle wide open, the prop must have been spinning at close to five thousand revs a minute when it blew. Mason lifted off immediately, but the resulting massive imbalance had already almost shaken the engine to pieces. He grappled with the rudder controls with both hands as it began to veer wildly. His arm and the side of his shirt were already wet with blood.
“Jump!” Sean shouted to me.
I didn’t have time to argue with him about the wisdom of that one. Lonnie was already in the water, half-swimming half-wading for the cover of the nearest clump of Cypress trees about sixty metres away to our left. If he could make it with only one
arm working . . .
I reached over the back of the seat and grabbed Trey by the collar of his shirt. The adrenaline pumping through my system had the effect of making him weigh almost nothing as I heaved him away from Whitmarsh and all but threw him over the side of the boat. Sean kicked a squealing Keith into the water on the opposite side and jumped in after him.
Hitting flat water, even when you’re not travelling that fast is an unpleasant business, not unlike coming off a motorbike and bouncing along the road surface until you’ve scrubbed off some speed. The only difference was the lack of protective leathers and the fact that you’re unlikely to die by drowning at the end of your average bike crash.
Not that drowning was the biggest of my fears right now.
Even so, I was coughing like a consumptive as I surfaced, spitting out gouts of foul-tasting swamp water and scraping at the wet hair that was plastered across my eyes. Then I looked around me, frantic, but in the rapidly encroaching gloom I couldn’t spot Trey or Sean anywhere close by.
Just for a second I was assailed by all manner of terrors. Not least of which centred on the presence of the alligators. I splashed in another quick circle but there were no telltale lumps bearing down on me and eyeing me up with a view to dinner. Then I remembered about the poisonous water moccasin snakes.
Oh nice one, Fox.
The airboat thundered on past for a short distance after we’d bailed out of it, describing a big curving turn. Half the rudder system was shot away, too, and Mason wrestled for some semblance of control. The engine sounded raucous in the extreme, barely holding together under the incredible strain of trying to spin the lopsided propeller. It was protesting its mechanical agony loudly in the only way it knew.
I could just about see Whitmarsh up on his feet again now, struggling hand-to-hand with Haines as the airboat bucked and shuddered underneath them.
