A Hard Death

by Jonathan Hayes

  When he reached the upper field, he climbed over the fence, then squatted. The enclosure was barely three hundred feet away, but there was a new problem: Bartley had vanished.

  Jenner hung back, suddenly realizing that not only might Bartley have moved, but if he were still there, Bartley might try to kill Jenner as he approached. Jenner swore under his breath.

  Movement.

  Beyond the bullet-riddled enclosure, Bartley was crawling across the slope to his men.

  Jenner moved again toward the farmhouse; he’d find Lucy, get her out. He climbed the fence, crossed the road again, and followed it up on the far side until he came to a parking area with a handful of farm vehicles, a couple of hundred yards from Craine’s Volvo. He moved between the cars, edging closer to the farmhouse.

  Jenner paused. It would take him a few seconds to cover the distance to the Volvo, during which he’d be in plain sight. If there was anyone in the farmhouse, he’d be cut to ribbons before he reached the station wagon.

  He scanned the windows, looking for movement, looking for light, looking for anything.

  But the lit windows stayed lit, and the dark windows stayed empty, and nothing moved.

  Jenner would sprint. He would count to ten, then he’d book it across that space, just keep his head down and run full-tilt.

  He counted, tense behind a pickup truck.

  Ten.

  Nine.

  Eight.

  To his right, the assault team across the field began to fire, shooting short bursts up at the windows. They were moving forward now, firing a burst, then running forward. Creeping up, sometimes moving behind shields, sometimes taking cover behind the carcasses of pigs.

  The shooters in the bunkhouses returned fire, but in the poor light, without the sniper to harass them, and now spread out across the width of the field, the cops were harder targets.

  Bartley was crawling up the slope; he’d move forward, then call an instruction to one of the other SWAT team members, who relayed the command with hand gestures.

  The teams had lost two men, and several had sustained superficial limb wounds, but their action was coordinated now, moving efficiently, really covering ground. It seemed to Jenner that they were meeting less resistance as they got closer. Someone with a machine pistol in the far bunkhouse was raking the field, but the cops kept on moving.

  Jenner stared up at the farmhouse. Judging from the firefight on the slope, Brodie had been expecting the cops, and had stationed shooters in the bunkhouses; no one had fired from or at the farmhouse. Craine would be keeping Lucy somewhere safe—maybe a bathroom, someplace deep inside.

  The cops reached the top of the slope, and were readying the bunkhouse assault; Jenner took advantage of the distraction. He crouched down again, then edged up on his toes and focused on the shadow behind the Volvo. He tilted forward, then thought, Oh, fuck it! Two, one…

  He dug in and sprinted full-tilt, eyes fixed on the Volvo; he’d made it about fifteen feet when Brodie punched the detonator.

  CHAPTER 128

  The bunkhouses exploded into a single curtain of orange flame, fire spraying out horizontally before rushing into the sky, shredding walls, blowing off the flimsy roofs, shattering the windows in a blizzard of powdered glass. The chemical tanks in the bunkhouses exploded, vaporizing gases howling through the twisted metal carcasses of the buildings, instantly igniting into huge geysers of fire.

  Seconds later, the big propane tank between the farmhouse and the bunkhouses detonated. The building disappeared in a vast ball of orange and blue, and shredded clapboard slats and roofing tiles rained down on the slope.

  The buildings at the top of the slope were all ablaze, an almost continuous line of billowing flame, melting tar paper, and blackening clapboard. Despite the damp ground, the burning gases turned the grassy slope into a tilted pyre, the bodies of men and pigs charring in the intense heat, thick, acrid smoke twisting up into the sky and floating to hang in a pall out over the swamp.

  The rain had stopped. The column of dense smoke rose into the night sky like a knotted black rope. Behind it, the silver moon turned the edges of the parting clouds luminous.

  There was no sound but the low roar of flame, the crackle of timber.

  Brodie walked out onto the slope, back toward the burning buildings, bemused and fascinated by the complete annihilation. Craine’s Volvo was charred and shattered, the windows blown out, the paint scorched and blistered, the car as riddled by wood and metal shrapnel as if it had been ambushed with a Gatling gun. Beyond it, the farmhouse lawn was showered with broken furniture—a refrigerator door here, the head-board of a sleigh bed there.

  He walked across the slope. The wreckage of the bunkhouses was less refined—dented pots, shredded jeans, the neck and strings of a guitar. The fire was snuffing itself out on the damp grass, but the debris field was scattered with all kinds of charred, smoldering objects, from mattresses to bodies.

  Brodie began to systematically search the slope for survivors, traveling back and forth across the field like a weaving shuttle, his pistol cocked and ready at his side; there would be no survivors tonight.

  He found Smith’s left arm, the idiotic tattoo of Mickey fucking Minnie immediately identifiable. Halfway down the slope, near the periphery of the debris field, he found the rest of him. The man was barely alive, the burned skin of his face and torso so pasted with soot that Brodie only spotted him when Smith opened his eyes and Brodie saw the whites. Smith seemed to recognize him, so Brodie muttered, “It’s okay, the ambulances are coming,” and, when Smith closed his eyes, shot him in the head.

  Brodie stood. That left Tarver, who should’ve been in Bunkhouse B, with all the Mexies; with a bit of luck, there wouldn’t be much of him left at all. He had a moment of satisfaction when he found Tarver’s mangled camcorder, but he needed to see Tarver’s corpse; as soon as he caught sight of that mop of stringy yellow hair, Brodie could pronounce the site cleaned, climb in his car, and go.

  He moved back up the slope, skirting the heat of the flames still pouring from the bunkhouse foundations. He was moving faster now. He should get going—it looked like he’d set half of Florida on fire. There was no way anyone, let alone Tarver, could’ve survived the explosion and fire.

  He was going to call it and head on home. He was crossing the ridge of the hill, thinking of his pool in Costa Rica, when he heard, “Yo, boss…”

  He turned to see Tarver, one hand raised in greeting, not thirty feet away. Brodie raised his pistol.

  “Wait! It’s me, Tarver! I got out!” He put both hands up and moved closer so Brodie could see it was, in fact, him. “I know you told me to stay and guard the Mexies, but I gone out the back window, to try and flank the cops again like Bentas, and then the whole fucking thing blew!”

  “Come closer.”

  Tarver took a wary step toward him. “You okay, boss?”

  “Closer still.”

  Tarver pointed behind Brodie and said, “Someone’s over there!”

  Brodie glanced quickly down the slope and saw Jenner, sprinting across the road toward the dock. He’d forgotten all about them.

  “Get him!”

  CHAPTER 129

  Jenner ran the length of the dock and dove, swimming out under inky water warm and thick as blood, away from the highway, away from the sea beyond it. He was swimming upstream, to the safety of the mangrove maze. He came up for air, a quick gasp before ducking underneath again. He’d have barely a minute before they reached the dock; the less wake he left, the safer he and Deb would be.

  He came up again, now swimming to the shallows of the nearer tributary, the channel he’d told Deb to take. The broad river was fed by many smaller streams through the mangrove forest: in the shadows and smoke haze, the men following would have a tough time tracking them, particularly if their pursuers were in the big airboat.

  He wondered how far upstream Deb had gone—she could go anywhere in the swamp with the kayak.

  Light j
erked out over the water from the dock. Jenner sank back under and pushed into the shallows, hiding among the cascading roots.

  The beam skidded across the surface; they seemed to be sizing up the situation at the dock more than looking for him. He recognized Brodie and another man, heard their voices across the water.

  “He got the Go-Devil!”

  “It’s slow, we’ll catch up. Start up the airboat, and let’s go.”

  The engine coughed twice, then rose to a deep, humming roar. The beam of light skittered over the surface toward Jenner, then bounced away, and then the airboat was sliding across the surface; it picked up speed, heading downriver toward the highway bridge and the sea.

  Jenner knew they’d soon realize he didn’t have the swamp boat. He moved deeper into the mangroves. The tributary was shallow enough for him to stand, the water reaching his mid-chest. The smell was stale and vegetal, the dark, muddy reek of rotting plants and brackish water, the air humid and sweat-salty under the thick canopy. The banks were not earth, but the hard, tangled roots of the trees, big knots of spindly rootlets leaping off the mangrove trunks to plunge into the water. Under the surface, the roots knit together into a wall as dense as the branches above; the going was slow and hard.

  Jenner kept moving. Swimming was no easier—the dark waters looked still but were moving quickly, swollen with the rains; he found himself standing and walking, pushing forward into the stream, holding the mangrove roots like handles. He called out for Deb; by now, Brodie was far enough for it to be safe. In any case, even if they were just a hundred feet away, the cacophonous airboat engine would drown out all sound.

  But there was no answer. He was moving deeper and deeper into the mangroves, the branches and leaves and mud and water slowly swallowing him. When he called her, the sound died out within a few feet, stifled by the thick baffle of the low canopy.

  He’d kept the river to his right, but had now lost sight of it as he followed the channel. Particularly in her condition, how far could Deb have gone?

  Jenner stopped, let his feet down, cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify the sound, and yelled her name again. He didn’t know how far he’d come, how fast he’d been swimming and walking. He couldn’t see the orange light of the burning farm, he couldn’t even smell the fire in the trapped air of the swamp.

  He should just stop. Stop and wait in the shadows, wait it out. Eventually the cops would come.

  He just needed to find Deb first. The men in the airboat wouldn’t keep looking downstream much longer.

  CHAPTER 130

  Fifteen minutes later, Jenner still hadn’t found her. He was getting desperate. Where was she? The effort of forcing his way deeper into the swamp had been exhausting; sweat pouring down his face, his mouth parched and bitter, sunk to his chest in muddy water, nothing to drink.

  He pressed forward. He felt the full burden of his fatigue now; when he shouted for Deb, his voice cracked and broke from the strain.

  Light swung through the undergrowth, the brilliant white beam of a spotlight, diffracting through the maze of pale trunks and branches, the mangroves a shifting kaleidoscope of silver roots and black shadows. Now Jenner heard the low throb of the airboat as it came nearer.

  He pulled up against the edge of the stream, in among the roots. The sound was louder now, the light brighter. The spotlight operator was moving it slowly, sending the beam through the mesh of mangroves, trying to pick him out.

  Jenner lay against the roots, gasping, smelling the black fetid swamp mud, feeling moisture—sweat, water, he couldn’t tell—trickling down his face.

  It hadn’t taken them long to turn around and come back to look for Deb and Jenner. He was exhausted now, his muscles burning, his joints on fire, his sodden clothes weighing a ton. He didn’t know how much farther he could go.

  The light moved past him, and as the airboat moved forward, he saw his channel through the mangrove forest taper and die two hundred yards upstream, the dense curtain of trunks and leaves sealing off his escape.

  Deb must have taken the tributary on the far side of the river.

  To reach her, Jenner would have to make his way back toward the dock, somehow get past the airboat, swim across the river, and head back up the tributary on the other side.

  Impossible.

  CHAPTER 131

  Deb held still as the bright light cut through the mangroves. The airboat had moved up the river and was now much closer than she’d expected—fifty, sixty yards at most. She’d thought she’d moved far away from the river, but she saw now she’d been simply rowing parallel to it.

  The airboat was idling, not moving forward, not moving back, hovering while the spotlight beam crept slowly through the undergrowth, picking its way through the stunted trees like a steel dental hook, poking in the crevices to winkle her out.

  Why weren’t they moving? They must have seen something—her silhouette, maybe, the yellow of the kayak.

  The light crawled toward her. Deb made her mind up quickly.

  She pressed her hand to her wounded side to brace it, then tipped to her right to roll the kayak. Her torso slipped into the water; she struggled to extract her legs, to kick out of the cockpit silently. The salt water screamed into her wounds, a red-hot poker jabbing into her flank.

  She could barely stand. She pushed the kayak down, opened the front deck hatch, and dragged the little boat under until water flooded into the cockpit and hatch. She let the kayak half-fill, then shoved it over into the mangrove roots, wedging it there.

  Then she swam out across the tributary, her eyes desperately searching for a hiding place in the thick wall of mangroves opposite.

  From the river, the airboat searchlight was still combing the undergrowth.

  Deb was almost halfway across when the airboat engine revved up loud, and the light swung around. The boat flew off back in the direction of the dock.

  Had they given up? Were they on the run now, not her?

  She let herself slow down, rolling onto her back to look up at the sky, her breathing easier. On her back, she could float better, let her arms do the work; it hurt less than when she kicked.

  She let her neck tip back into the water, and as she did, she heard a high-pitched metallic grinding. She knew instantly: they’d doubled back into her tributary, and were now flying toward her at high speed.

  She swam hard. Each time she came up for breath, the bright searchlight seemed to shoot a straight silver line right at her, right up the middle of the water from the airboat to her; no matter how hard she swam, it followed.

  But it was an illusion of her focus; the searchlight operator hadn’t spotted her, she had spotted the searchlight.

  Afraid they’d catch her splashes, Deb dipped below the surface, tried to make herself go deeper, pulled herself under, clutched the submerged roots to hold herself down until her lungs were bursting. Finally, when she could take it no more, she let her mouth and nose break the surface.

  They were a hundred yards downstream. The searchlight was now picking its way along the opposite bank. They must have seen the kayak earlier—they were looking right where she’d been.

  She swam under the branches of a clump of young buttonwoods lodged among the mangroves. Deb clutched a thicker branch, and pulled herself up, gasping with pain as the muscles of her left side tightened to steady her. She rolled into the undergrowth, falling backward onto the branch-ribbed carpet of rotten leaves and roots and shrubs, wriggling until she was hidden by the dense boughs.

  The airboat drew nearly level; she pressed her back down into the leaves in the shallow depression behind the buttonwoods.

  There was the crack of a gunshot, then the airboat jumped forward, and there were two more quick shots as they pulled up on the kayak. There were two men on the boat, the older man on the stick, the younger one in the bows near the kayak; she’d seen neither before. The younger one tugged loosely at the kayak’s yellow hull with the gaff in his left hand; he held a .45 in his right.
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br />   He put the gun down on the seat, stretched on the floor of the airboat to reach out and unsnag the kayak from the mangroves. The kayak bobbed free, then quickly sank.

  He stood to speak to the older one, then sat back down behind the searchlight. The engine powered up again, and they crept slowly along the far bank, raking the dark trees with the light, hunting Deb like a heron hunting a frog.

  She lay back. If she kept this position, they wouldn’t see her; all she had to do was just keep still until they left.

  She was safe.

  Deb breathed slowly. She couldn’t get comfortable, roots and branches prodding her back, each movement of her hips or shoulder twisting her wound.

  She tried to distract herself by making a list of things that made her happy, but the fear kept cutting in, so she focused instead on each sensation she felt—the root under her left calf, the torn stump poking her back, the dull burn of her injuries when she moved. She told herself four or five minutes tops, and they’d move on: time would be tight for them, too. She just mustn’t budge, or they’d see her.

  Something moved across her leg.

  In the dark, Deb couldn’t see it, but she was sure she’d felt something. It wasn’t just the scratch of a branch, or a fold in her clothing settling—something had actually moved across her leg.

  Her breathing came faster. Light gilded the leaves around her as the airboat swung around and started searching her side of the river, moving closer to her hiding place.

  There was more movement, a slow rustle, a light, twitching pressure as something else wriggled across her thigh.

  Now there was one on her leg, and another inching along the skin of her flank, where her shirt had ridden up. She was afraid to touch it, afraid to see what it was. It’s too small to be a snake, she told herself, it’s too small to be a snake.

  The light was close now, flooding the trees, a tungsten-bright dawn enveloping her. She had to hold still now—any movement, any jostle of a branch and they’d spot her. She breathed in, and tried to ignore all the things slithering over her body. There was one under her shirt now, crawling up her belly; her wound burned at the thought of it moving across her stomach, attracted by blood, finding the hole, worming into the wound, penetrating her…