Blood Game: A Jock Boucher Thriller

by David Lyons

  “Yes, that’s true, and others may have had an opportunity. I did lose some sleep over it, but I kept coming back to you. Benetton told me you were on the same flight from Houston and that you had gone there to look at a rare Mercedes. I thought it odd that we had discussed a mutual passion for antiques but you had never mentioned automobiles, and your only vehicle is a rather ordinary Ford truck. I had your flight schedule traced. You flew to Houston from McAllen with no prior flight. ‘What on earth was he doing in McAllen?’ I asked myself. An investigator found out that a federal judge had negotiated a contract with a local salvage company to tow a boat into nearby Port Isabel for repairs. And where was that boat from? Right here. My, you were busy, weren’t you?”

  Dumont sipped his champagne and set the pistol in his lap. Boucher eyed it, his thoughts obvious. “Don’t even think about it,” Dumont said. “I could fire without even picking it up. And it would make a terrible mess of the upholstery.”

  “You know you’re going to have the whole U.S. government on your back, kidnapping a federal judge? Even your friends won’t be able to help you.”

  “You have no idea who my friends are. I assure you, I can get just about whatever help I need whenever and wherever I need it, and there will be little concern over the disappearance of a federal judge who has proved to be nothing but an embarrassment. There are those who are wishing for your disappearance even at this moment. To me, you’ve become more of a disappointment than an embarrassment. I brought you into my little circle of friends. I told them they could trust you. How wrong I was. I was ready to let you play a part in what will be the next great chapter in American history.”

  “You mean the next slaughter of innocent people; the next unnecessary shedding of blood; the provoking of hostilities with a neighbor, friend, and ally.”

  “Again, how I misjudged you. I thought you were a man of vision, a man who appreciated the lessons of history.”

  “What has history taught us recently? We’re finally learning that war without end can bankrupt an entire global economic system.”

  Dumont poured another glass of champagne and toasted. “Here’s to a war we can’t lose,” he said. “We need one. It’s been too long.”

  “You’re mad,” Boucher said.

  “If you mean that in terms of angry, you’re right. I’m angry that crime and anarchy reign all along our southern border. There is a vacuum down there. I propose we fill it before we start finding headless bodies on our side of the river. Yes, I’m angry. I hate waste, and there is an intolerable waste of resources there.”

  “It’s sovereign territory. The people there don’t want us.”

  “Those constraints didn’t keep us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a new world, Judge Boucher. We eliminate heads of state inimical to our interests. We send troops where our interests are threatened. A secure and tranquil northern Mexico is in our national interest.” Dumont took a sip.

  “Is the destruction of a democratic government in our national interest?”

  “We will be aiding a democratic government, not destroying it. Mexico has always had trouble controlling its northern territories. Pancho Villa came from the north. They were never able to control him; they had to massacre him. If old Pancho were alive today, he’d be the biggest drug lord of them all. He’d have his own country, like he did a hundred years ago. Did you know he even printed his own currency? Hell, if Mexico had been able to control its northern states, we wouldn’t have gotten Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California as easily as we did. It’s simple, Judge—lack of control is bad for business, and it’s bad for our national security.” Dumont set his champagne glass down and bent forward, his face so close that Boucher could smell the sparkling wine on his breath.

  “My son, Charles, God rest his soul, was a geologist, not a robber baron. He helped discover fields that rival those of the Middle East. What is being done with them? Nothing. My son was killed in Mexico while he was helping that country.” He leaned back in the seat. His shoulders slumped. “I see his death in nightmares. I see his murderer in my sleep and wake in cold sweats.”

  “Revenge,” Boucher said. “Revenge and greed. That’s how you honor your son?”

  “No. Seeing the discovery he gave his life for come to fruition: that’s how I will honor my son.”

  “I suppose you’re going kill me too. What’s another murder to you? You killed that man whose body I found floating in the gulf. You killed that trooper.”

  “I killed no one. The body you found, that was a horrible accident. He fell overboard. I paid his family a fortune in benefits after he worked for me for just two days. The trooper? He died in a car wreck. Was it the accident, a heart attack, the chemo, or too many beers? See, I made the effort to learn a little about the unfortunate young man, but I had nothing to do with his death. Do I need to teach you the law, Judge Boucher? I have killed no one.”

  “The illegal arms you’ve transported certainly have.”

  “Show me. Show me one victim. I made a few shipments of substandard armaments. They killed only the criminals who bought them.”

  “A few shipments?”

  “Those were all that was necessary. The first established the relationship. The last shipment, you know what happened to it. The next, and final one, we will make tonight. It’s the bait. The trap is set. They will cross the border, and we will chase them to hell and back. I did not traffic in guns; I baited a trap.”

  “You’re an innocent man. So I’m going to be the first to die at your hands?”

  “For the moment I just want you secured and out of the way. I don’t want you playing Paul Revere. We’ll decide what to do with you later. It’s not my decision. My partners have a say in the matter. So lean back and enjoy the ride. Oh, I’d better put these on you. Don’t give me any trouble, Judge. I don’t want any bodily harm to come to you—not in my favorite limo.”

  Dumont placed blinders over Boucher’s eyes. The smell of Dumont’s wife’s perfume on the mask was nauseating.

  Boucher had no idea how long he’d been unconscious but guessed it was brief. He knew their starting point, the strip mall. Unable to see, he tried to picture their route, differentiating the sounds of the road. They came to a bridge; driving over the Mississippi, obviously. He figured the bridge was part of Interstate 310. They turned off the interstate on the other side of the river. That would put them on Route 90, which would make sense, he thought. They were heading to Houma. He estimated speed and distance. With a federal judge bound and blindfolded in the backseat, they were not going to go over the speed limit. It was an easy calculation: fifty-five miles to Houma at fifty-five miles per hour. He counted off seconds and minutes in his head. An hour passed. They were still traveling. They slowed to a crawl, then stopped. He heard what sounded like a garage door opening. The limo drove maybe twenty feet and stopped again. The door closed. The motor was turned off. The passenger door was opened, and Boucher smelled oil. Not motor oil, but something else familiar. Rough hands reached in and grabbed him by the shoulders. With resistance futile, he helped as best he could to exit the limo. He was pushed and prodded across a smooth concrete floor. The soles of his gym shoes squeaked as he walked. A key was placed in a lock, a door was opened, and he was shoved into a room. Or maybe it was a closet. Thrown off balance, he hit a wall that kept him from falling. The door was closed and locked. The space wasn’t large. His hands were still bound, his eyes still blindfolded.

  He heard the garage door open, the limo’s engine start, and the car drive out. The door closed. He walked around the small space. It was some kind of a storage closet. If it had been in use, it was cleaned out before his arrival. There was that oily smell he knew but couldn’t identify. It was from a long time ago. He sniffed the air. Of course. It was gun oil: solvent for cleaning and lubricating firearms—and storing them. He knew where he was—the warehouse where Dumont had kept his cache of smuggled weapons.

  Elise Dumont’s sleep mask was driving him
crazy. Her stale perfume and gun oil were a repellent mixture. With his hands still bound, he rubbed his head against the wall until the mask slid off and fell to the floor. It didn’t help; he was in total darkness. But at least her scent had been replaced with one more tolerable. Right up there with the manly odors of leather, pipe tobacco, and brandy, gun lubricant wasn’t all that bad.

  His wrists were tightly bound with flex-ties. He pulled against them but gave that up when the plastic edges began cutting into his skin. Though he was not into pointless suffering, he could endure pain with purpose. It would hurt, but there was a way. He kicked off his shoes, then leaned against the wall and lowered himself to the floor till he was sitting. Then he leaned sideways, slowly, till gravity pulled him down to the concrete. He landed hard on his shoulder and tried to keep his head from snapping onto the floor. He failed. His head hit hard, and he was dazed for several seconds, but he was lying on his side, his objective. Boucher stretched his arms as if trying to pull them from their sockets, lowering his bound wrists down to his buttocks. He brought a knee to his chest. He pointed the toe, trying to flatten his foot against his butt cheek. His muscles and joints were flexible for a man his age, but Boucher was not a teenager. He strained, pulling and stretching, the pain almost unbearable. Then he felt the flex-tie slide over his toe and up his instep. He wanted to scream with pain but didn’t know if he was under guard. The plastic cuff flayed skin off his bare shin as he scraped it toward his knee, that pain exceeded by the pain in his shoulder joints. Further movement was impossible. The tie was stuck at his knee and wouldn’t budge. In an effort to snap the plastic, Boucher tried pressure, leg muscles being stronger than arm muscles, but it held. He was trussed up like a roasted chicken, panting, sweating . . . and surrendering. It couldn’t be done. They would find him like this and have a good laugh. No, he decided, one more try. He expelled every last molecule of air from his lungs, gritted his teeth, and pulled. The tie slipped over his knee. One leg was through the loop. Now the other.

  It was no less painful slipping the second leg through, but he was bolstered by the knowledge that it was possible. With both legs through and his hands in front of him, he broke through the cuffs. His hands were free.

  He was still in the dark in a locked room. He felt for the doorknob and twisted it. Maybe it was nothing more than optimism, but it felt like a cheap doorknob, and a cheap doorknob meant a cheap lock. But it was still a lock, and unless he planned to ram the metal door with his throbbing shoulder, he was still imprisoned in a dark room. He brushed his hands along the length and breadth of the floor, feeling for anything, anything at all, but the surface was clean. He ran his fingers under the door, then laid his head on the floor. There was no light coming from the other side. The warehouse was deserted. He sat down, his back against the wall, and thought of his shoes, the well-worn Nikes he had slipped off before contorting out of the flex-ties. They were so used that he’d even worn out a pair of shoelaces, replacing them with the steel-tipped variety because an attractive young saleswoman had told him they expressed personality. He had admired her spunky salesmanship. Personality in shoelaces? He unlaced the shoes. His dentist would have cringed, but Boucher stuck the end of a lace in his mouth and pulled the metal tip off with his teeth. Then the other end. Then the other pair. The four tips, placed end to end, were about four inches in length. Again using his teeth, he crimped the end of one into another till the four tips were one length of metal. This he flattened, biting down hard with his molars. A half inch at one end he bent to a ninety-degree angle. He fingered his creation in the dark. It felt like a skeleton key—of course darkness heightened imagination. He felt for the doorknob, then the keyhole. He stuck the crude piece of metal in the lock and jiggled, determining the direction of the cylinder, feeling for the pins, pushing them up till they set. He took a deep breath and turned the knob. The door squeaked open.

  Boucher put his shoes back on, inserted and tied the laces, then stepped out of the storage closet. In the pitch black, he walked like a zombie, his hands in front of him and feeling the air in a wide arc, his shoes sliding along the floor so as not to bump into anything. He took ten steps and saw a hint of light. It was coming from higher up. He carefully walked toward the light. His foot hit something, and his hand touched something metal—a bar or rod. A stairwell with a banister. There was a second story, probably some kind of an office with a window. The dim illumination was ambient light from outside. Boucher climbed the stairs. He reached the second landing. There was an office. He could see desks, chairs, and filing cabinets. The door was locked, but the screened windows were open. A screen held no risk of noise or lacerations. He broke through with his fist, ripped it out, and climbed in. A desk was situated right under the window, and he climbed onto it, then stepped to the floor. He felt the desktop. Nothing. No computer. No phone. Nothing. This room had ceased functioning as an office. In the far wall was a window about eight feet up from the floor; the source of the ambient light. It was for ventilation only, about three feet long and maybe two feet wide. It was open, and he could see that it was awning-style, hinged at the top and opening inward. He picked up the desk and moved it under the window, stuck his head under the open glass, and looked out. The moon and stars lit up the sky but didn’t do much for the earth below. He couldn’t see a thing.

  Boucher thought he’d been brought to a warehouse in Dumont’s compound in Houma. His calculation of the distance while blindfolded in the limo seemed to indicate so, but the compound would have had security lighting, and outside, it was pitch black. There were no other buildings near. It didn’t matter. What was important was that there was an escape, through the awning window. Boucher tried to lean out but couldn’t. The open windowpane was in his way. He got off the desk and began feeling around the room in the dark but soon gave up the foolish task of looking for tools conveniently left behind. He climbed back up, took the window in both hands, and pushed it up till its hinges broke. There was a loud crack. If they had left a guard, he would come running now. Boucher didn’t wait. He climbed through the window. It was too small to bring his legs through and slide out sideways. There was no choice but to climb through and drop headfirst. It didn’t matter what was below; hard ground or soft, he’d break his neck. But there was no choice. He went through, head, shoulders, chest, waist. Halfway out. The exterior was corrugated metal, and the ribs fit into his hands. He spidered down the wall as his thighs, then shins, slipped through the window. He was hanging by his insteps, the muscles in his legs and feet straining. He kicked away from the window ledge. He gripped the ribs of corrugated metal for a fraction of a second, then pushed away, attempting a reverse somersault upside down from the side of the building.

  It was a three-point landing; right heel, leg fully extended; left foot with knee flexed; and rump. Both cheeks. Make that a four-point landing. It knocked the wind out of him, and pain shot through his body, but he did not fracture his skull or break his neck. Breathing heavily, he felt around. He’d landed on grass, wet grass, maybe moss. He blessed his home state of Louisiana, where hard, dry earth was so rare.

  The blessing was brief. Dumont could return any minute. Boucher stood up, leaning against the building for support. He tried to walk. His left ankle hurt, but the pain would have to be endured. He crept around to the front of the building. There was a blacktop surface in front of the warehouse and a two-lane road. There were lights to his left. To his right, the road led into darkness. It led, Boucher knew, deeper into the bayou. He turned toward the lights and began to walk. After a minute, the pain in his left ankle subsided, and he began to jog. He was properly attired for it.

  CHAPTER 29

  BOUCHER RAN ALONG THE two-lane blacktop. There was bayou on both sides of the road, built on a levee. He could smell the bayou, could see the reflection of the moon on the water and hear frogs croaking all around him. A moonbeam penetrated the branches of mangroves hung with drooping Spanish moss that glowed white in the night’s light. Another bea
m pierced through the canopy and illuminated several turtles resting on a half-submerged branch. They looked like huge brown cabochon star sapphires with the glint of moon on their moist shells. Several hundred yards later, he could see the lights of an oncoming car. It was approaching fast. Boucher jumped from the road, sliding down the embankment. Hunched over, he continued running at the water’s edge. He was running blind—if you could call it running. No illumination from any source filtered down to the muddy waterline, and he sank in sludge above his ankles with each step, laboriously lifting his feet. Then something grabbed his left ankle. It tightened its grip and pulled him down. Boucher lay for a second in the muck, then whatever had a hold on his leg began pulling him into the water. He fought, grabbing whatever he could, but his fingers only clawed at mud. Boucher flailed his arms, splashing as he was tugged away from the bank into deeper water. He gasped as he was pulled under the surface, but in his panic he had failed to draw a complete breath. Submerged and being pulled deeper, he reached down for his left ankle. Already there was no sensation in his foot. He felt along his leg, expecting his hands to be severed by whatever had him in its death grip. The ringing in his ears seemed linked to the searing pain in his lungs. Deprived of air, the sacs in his chest seemed to be unnaturally expanding, as if ready to explode. In contrast, his head seemed light, his cognitive organs shrinking in his skull as he surrendered to the void. His extremities went limp as he lost consciousness.

  • • •

  A viselike grip held the top of his head and turned it roughly to the side.

  “You prob’ly gonna puke now. Keep your head turned so’s you don’t swallow ’n’ choke.”

  The prediction proved accurate. Boucher tried to take a deep breath and vomited. Dry heaves. There was nothing in his stomach to throw up. He heaved again, gasped for air, and knew from the musk he sucked into his mouth that he was still on the bayou. The hand that had held his head helped him to sit. He sat up and began a paroxysm of dry heaves, coughing and gasping for air, interspersed with none too gentle slaps on the back.