Mistake.
Without warning, his boot skidded off a mossy rock and he pitched forward into the water, arms extended. His knees slammed down into the rocks lining the bottom. His ankle took the torque from the fall and twisted unnaturally. For a moment, Lou feared it might have broken, but he got back to his feet, now totally soaked and beginning to shiver. After a few hesitant attempts, he managed to put decent weight on the foot. A sprain.
Once again, he was on the move, but traveling at a much slower rate this time. His lungs were again on fire, and the agonizing stitch had returned to his side. From behind, he heard splashing.
Keep moving … keep moving.…
The shivering had become ferocious now. Hypothermia was taking over. It probably wasn’t going to help much, but he had to get out of the river. At that instant, there was a gunshot.
“You out there?” The raspy voice called out, taunting him through the dark. “I’m gonna find you, an’ I’m gonna kill you.”
Two more pops. Though the gunman may have been shooting blindly, a branch to Lou’s right splintered. He was ten feet or so from the bank. Ignoring the numbing cold, he forged ahead. Now, without his support stick, he was slipping with each unsteady step. Ahead, he could make out what seemed to be a broad clearing of some sort—a field. Then he realized that the blackness wasn’t a field at all.
It was a lake.
CHAPTER 23
Lou hauled himself onto the bank of the frigid river and stumbled across to the shore to what seemed like a nearly circular lake, frozen as far out as he could see. It was impossible to be certain of the circumference, but Lou would not have been surprised if it were a mile or more. He tried to will himself to stop shaking. Was he better off with or without his freezing, water-soaked clothes?
To his right, twenty feet away, there was a dilapidated boathouse. Its roof had partially caved in and the windows were smashed out. Dense cobwebs filled what eaves there were, and tall weeds had taken over the surrounding ground. There was a rotting rowboat, long past any ability to float, propped up against the side of the shack closest to him. A basketball-sized boulder set on the upper gunwale held it in place.
The wind had picked up intensity, swaying the tall trees until they groaned like stiffly moving joints. The odds on there being something in the house to wrap himself in were small, but it was worth checking. He had to move quickly, though. The boathouse was the first place the man heading downriver to kill him would check. Incredibly, the door to the place was firmly closed and secured with a rusty bolt. Lou rejected the notion of forcing it open and instead peered into the darkness through what had been a window. After its prolonged submersion, his cell phone and its light were useless.
From what he could see, the place was empty.
Time was running out. Lou was shivering mercilessly. The only plan he could conceive of was to drag himself along the lakeshore and get shot.
At that moment, still some distance away, he heard branches cracking. It was almost over for him. Trying to run had as much chance now as having his cell phone light up. Then he glanced over at the rotting boat, and the glimmer of an idea began to take shape. A feint—one of the moves Cap loved to use in the ring.
Silently, using all his strength, Lou set the huge rock aside and flipped the rowboat upright, cushioning the landing with his shoulder. Some wood splintered off, but for the most part, the sorrowful craft remained intact. He shoved it to the lakeshore and slid it out onto the ice, which creaked but held firm.
Now for the feint.
Moving on his knees and pushing the boat ahead to keep his weight distributed, he eased across the ice. There was a restless cracking, and a strained creak, but again, no give.
“Hey, brother,” the voice called. “You’re running out of room. How about you don’t make it hard on yourself? I promise I won’t.”
Five more yards onto the ice. Then another five. He was twenty yards from shore now. The ice seemed set to give way, but his chips were on the table. Lou turned the boat ninety degrees, then gingerly removed his parka and threw it on the ice not far away. In the ring, the move would have been equivalent to dropping his right hand and dipping his right shoulder, announcing that the next blow was going to be an uppercut from that side, when the real punch was going to come from the left.
Then, crawling on his belly military marine-style, he eased back to shore. He hauled the boulder to the far side of the shack and tested that he could lift it. Knees … belly … chest. The rock was lighter than the 225 pounds he pressed in sets of ten at Stick and Move, but it was absolute dead weight, and it seemed like chest high was the limit here. When the final moment came, he would have to do better than that … or die.
Kneeling by the boathouse, Lou felt his adrenaline rush begin to fade, and once again his teeth were chattering. He peered around the corner toward the woods. At that instant, a dark shadow moved cautiously from the forest, a flashlight in one hand, and a handgun in the other. Lou pulled back and flattened against the wall.
“You here, brother?” the man called out.
The ground crunched as the killer approached the wall where the boat had been. Through the window above him, Lou saw the flashlight beam scanning the inside. He clenched his jaws and willed his teeth to remain quiet.
More crunching. The beam swung toward the lake, then out onto the ice and onto the dark silhouette of the rowboat. Finally, the light stopped on Lou’s parka.
“You ain’t fooling me, bro. I know you’re behind that boat.”
He stepped out onto the ice and fired two shots. Lou could sense him checking around his feet, following the tracks he had left.
“I hit you yet? Don’t worry, I will. I’ll come right out there and shoot you between your eyes.”
It seemed like the gunman was firing a semiautomatic pistol, but Lou had no idea the number of rounds the weapon held. What he did know was that the diversion of the boat and the parka was occupying the man’s focus and confusing him. One cautious step at a time, the gunman moved onto the lake. A quarter of the way, Lou guessed.… Now maybe half.
Lou hoisted the boulder to his chest and moved forward. He could feel the adrenaline of fear pounding in the muscles of his chest and arms.
The gunman fired three more times.
Go ahead, big guy. Keep shooting … keep shooting.
Lou neared the lake’s edge. The huge rock was on his shoulder now. In order to make an effective throw, he had to venture onto the ice again.
But not too far.
Lou needed to close the twenty-foot gap between them by at least half.
“I hit you yet?” the man yelled, oblivious of the figure closing in behind. “I’ve got a lot of ammo, bitch.”
He inserted a fresh magazine and snapped off several more shots. Five feet.
The killer, whom Lou could now see was about his height and build, finally sensed something was wrong and began to turn. Lou brought the rock over his head and heaved it with all the strength he had. The momentum sent him sprawling backwards and landing heavily on the ice. He felt it crack beneath his weight, sending frigid water seeping up around him.
The gunman was spinning toward the commotion behind him when the rock landed precisely at his feet. The ice beneath him gave way instantly and before he could raise his weapon to fire, he vanished. Lou heard the splash, but scrambling for the shore, he could do nothing to help the man. The killer cried out once. Then there was silence. Desperately cold, Lou reached the bank and staggered along the wooded shoreline, tripping over roots and stumbling through skeleton-like, densely packed, leafless bushes.
He was alive, but only long enough, he knew, to freeze to death. He pulled himself to his feet and pushed ahead, unable to pull in a useful breath. Leaning against a tree trunk, he risked a glance behind him. He had put some distance between himself and the rotting boathouse, but what difference did it make? In the childhood debate with friends about the worst way to die—burning, drowning, or freezing—he ha
d always argued for burning. Now, he wasn’t at all sure.
Gasping for air and shaking violently, Lou sank down on a fallen tree. He bent forward to check his injured ankle, and was rolling down his sock when he felt the muzzle of a gun press firmly against the back of his neck.
“Don’t turn around,” a youngish man’s voice said. “Put your hands up and get facedown on the ground. Do it now, or I shoot!”
Teeth snapping like castanets, Lou did as instructed.
Strong hands wrenched his arms behind his back.
The last thing he felt before he lost consciousness were handcuffs being secured around his wrists.
CHAPTER 24
Lou came to slowly, carried into awareness by a pounding headache. He was handcuffed to a stretcher in a van equipped as an ambulance. His sodden clothes had been replaced by military fatigues, and he was covered by a pile of blankets. He guessed his core temperature to be somewhere in the eighties.
The van jounced over a rutted road, each dip firing off a howitzer shell in his head. The young man sitting next to him wore a red cross armband. The driver, considerably more grizzled, had one that read MP. Neither man seemed in the mood to speak with him. There was no reaction when Lou told them who he was and how he came to be in this situation.
“I’m telling you one of your own guys was shot,” Lou said. “Hector Rodriguez. He could still be back there someplace. Don’t you care?”
“What we care about is our orders,” the driver said finally, “and our orders are to bring you to the base. Whatever story you have to tell, you can tell it there.”
That’s not going to help anybody, Lou thought.
Lou had little doubt that Brody sent men to kill him and Hector—perhaps members of the Palace Guard Hector had spoken about. Somehow the contents of the missing CD had to have gotten back to him. No other explanation he could think of made sense. The ambulance slowed and came to a stop at a security checkpoint manned by a team of heavily armed marines.
The MP and medic flashed their security clearance, and a razor-wire gate slid open on a narrow track. A minute later, the van was on the move once again. When Lou craned his neck and looked back, he saw the fence closing. He wondered if he would ever be getting out.
They traveled along some dirt streets, past two long buildings Lou assumed to be barracks. Off to the right there was a target range lit by a series of powerful floodlights, and to the left was the start of what appeared to be an obstacle course. They came to a hard stop at a dirt courtyard that housed three single-story buildings—clapboard siding, tiled roofs. The largest of them was up on short stilts with a porch running across the length. A sign at the center of the group read:
MANTIS COMPANY
WHATEVER IT TAKES
“Just remember, I’m a civilian,” Lou said as the men released him and guided him out of the van. “I’ve got rights.”
“Not when you trespass on military land, you don’t,” the MP replied.
The men took hold of Lou’s elbows and escorted him into the center and largest of the three buildings. They stopped in front of a shuttered wood door, upon which, painted in perfectly rendered black lettering, were the words:
MANTIS COMPANY
COL. WYATT BRODY, COMMANDER
The fierce praying mantis painted beneath the lettering looked as if it could eat a cow. The MP knocked and waited until being invited to enter. Then he set Lou’s soggy wallet on the austere wooden desk. Only a few neatly arranged files were set atop the unvarnished surface. Wyatt Brody glanced at the wallet disdainfully. The dimly lit office was rustic, with exposed beams and wooden bookcases filled with memorabilia and military tomes. No photos, no artwork, no awards, no certificates of merit.
The most impressive aspect of the office was two huge, beautifully crafted glass display cases covering the wall behind Brody’s desk, and the one opposite it. Inside the well-lit cases was a museum of polished handguns—more than Lou had ever seen in one setting. The guns were mounted on green felt, and labeled with brass placards detailing the make, model, and year of the weapon, as well as some text. Through a partially opened door behind the commander, Lou could see more cases and more handguns.
“Impressive, isn’t it, Dr. Welcome,” Brody said from his seat behind his desk. “Several of them are one of a kind.”
Lou wasn’t startled to hear his name. The MPs obviously searched his wallet and called ahead.
Brody nodded toward the door, and the two men left.
“One of your men has been shot,” Lou said as soon as the door clicked shut. “He may be badly injured.”
“I’ve already got a search party looking for him,” Brody said. “Just as I had several looking for you.”
Lou scanned the man’s expressionless face, but could not fathom a guess at his level of truthfulness. Brody, dressed in a beige shirt and tie underneath an olive green jacket, was in his late fifties, distinguished in every way, with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair that rested high on a creaseless forehead. There was a Slavic quality to his appearance—narrow face, aquiline nose, pronounced cheekbones, glacial blue eyes. Yet of all Brody’s features, it was his mouth that troubled Lou the most. His thin lips seemed to frown and grin simultaneously, as if to suggest he derived the same satisfaction from administering pleasure as he did from inflicting pain.
“Take a seat,” Brody said, motioning to the plain wood chair set in front of his desk.
“I prefer to stand,” Lou said.
“It wasn’t a request. I haven’t arrested you for trespassing yet,” Brody continued, “but all that could change with the push of a button. The cells in our brig become unbearably small after just a few hours. Now, take a seat.”
Lou hesitated, then acquiesced.
Brody interlocked his fingers and assessed Lou with his ice blue eyes. When he finally spoke, Lou sensed how Brody’s dominating voice, stern yet without much inflection, could have a hypnotic effect on the men under his command.
“Why don’t you tell me what you were doing trespassing on the property of the United States Marines,” the commander began.
“I’m a taxpayer. Doesn’t that make me a part owner? How can I trespass on my own property?”
“Look, Dr. Welcome, and yes, the MPs radioed ahead, and I had my people run you. Where you work. What you do. Even where you box. Let me be clear about something: Cute and evasive is the fast track to getting yourself locked in one of those cells. So let’s try this again. Why were you on Mantis property?”
“Is running for my life a good enough reason?” Lou said. “There were at least four guys trying to kill Hector Rodriguez and me. And I think I know who they were, too.”
“And exactly who where they?” Brody asked.
“Have you ever heard of the Palace Guard?” Lou asked. “Rumor has it they work for you.”
He studied Brody’s cryptic face, looking for an extra blink, a slight tic that might tell him something. A corpse would have given him more information.
“Never heard of them,” Brody said, his smile conveying many meanings. “Are they a gang of some sort? Members of nearly every major gang have been identified on military installations throughout the world. It’s pervasive in all branches and across most ranks, especially the junior enlisted men.”
“So, do you want to explain why your men tried to kill me and Hector?”
“My men? We don’t hunt civilians. We go after the other side—the bad guys. If you were attacked, it wasn’t anybody directly connected to Mantis.”
Brody’s eyes never wavered from Lou’s face, and Lou wasn’t at all sure he would enjoy facing those eyes in the ring.
“Well, why don’t you tell me,” he said, “since you seem to be an expert on gangs in the military, why the Palace Guard, or whoever those men were, would want me dead?”
“I told you, Doctor, I don’t know who this Palace Guard is. I can tell you that gangs have their own agendas. Maybe it wasn’t you they were after. Maybe you were just
in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Maybe I could accept that if you could explain why they would want to kill Hector.”
Brody continued to size Lou up. “If you have to know,” Brody said finally, “Hector Rodriguez was not the most well regarded soldier on this base. You’ve heard of the Thin Blue Line?”
“In association with the police, sure,” Lou said.
“Well, we have a line of our own here in the military, and Hector Rodriguez had crossed it many times over. He was about to get kicked out of Mantis, in fact, for performance reasons, and as retaliation, he started spreading lies about the company, about me, and about guys in his own platoon. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Staff Sergeant Rodriguez stepped on the toes of the wrong person with the right connections. So, Doctor, that’s your answer. Now it’s time for you to do the answering. What were you doing talking with Hector Rodriguez in the first place?”
Lou tried for an inscrutable look of his own, but felt certain he missed. He thought of bobbing and weaving with the man à la Muhammad Ali, but finally decided to hit him with a couple of straight-on body blows, just to see what he might jar loose.
“I came here to speak with Mark Colston’s best friend,” he said. There, he’d put it on the table—the first hint that his visit to Hayes had something to do with Elias Colston’s murder. But there was no reaction from Brody at all, not one tell, as poker players called it.
“And why would you be doing that?” Brody asked.
“Well, some things have come to light, and I’m following them up as a favor for the guy accused of killing Congressman Colston.”
“Tragic what’s happened to that family,” Brody said.
“Funny thing is,” Lou continued, “the more digging I do to help out my friend, the more your name keeps coming up as a possible reason the congressman is dead.”
“Me?” Brody’s laugh was unrevealing. “I can only tell you what everyone knew—that Elias Colston and I were never the best of friends.”
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