The Wraith- Welcome Home

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  By the time I reached the road, I was wet, exhausted, and raw from the cloths rubbing up against my thighs. This really sucked but I was in too deep now; there was no turning back.

  I walked along the road for a few minutes, catching my breath, looking for the right kind of tree. The rain picked up again and the mud road became more of a mud river as the it intensified. Typical New Orleans weather; if you don’t like it, wait five minutes, it will change.

  The tree I was looking for would be an old one with a multitude of branches, some even going over the road. SI passed several that nearly fit the bill but I needed one with enough mass and with low enough branches that I could leap from it to the truck with little problem.

  I still hadn’t found the right one when I heard the rumble of a diesel engine behind me.

  They’re here.

  I spotted one that would have to do. The lowest limb was fifteen feet up. It wouldn’t be a problem if my powers were working, but as it was… I had a hard fall coming. I ran over to the tree, lodging my foot in the knotty side and hoisted myself up. Hand-over-hand I climbed until I was lying horizontally on the lowest limb, my own limbs wrapped around the branch to minimize my silhouette.

  The first truck rounded the corner a few seconds later. No running lights or headlights to give away its position; nothing other than the noisy diesel engine. Special air intake pipes ran up the sides of the trucks and stretched up above the cabs; if I had to guess, I would say they were outfitted for fording. They were all massive GMC pickups, painted a flat black, with tinted windshields and hard shells over the cargo boxes. They looked almost twice as big as a normal truck. I didn’t know a lot about cars, but with tires that big these things could make short work of the swamp. The first one passed under me, then the second, and the third… I waited for the last one. It sucked because if I missed I was hosed. But I had no other choice.

  As the last truck was about to pass under me, I let go. I hit the cab top with a thump, rolling back along the hard shell, grinding my ribs into the vent dome as I passed by. I scrambled for a hold and managed to dig my fingers into the same vent that I was pretty sure broke a rib.

  I swore under my breath, trying not to give away my position as I rolled back on to the center line of the hard shell. Hopefully, they hadn’t seen me. They had to have heard me, but in the swamp I bet they got a lot of critters falling onto the top of the trucks from the trees. Just not one hundred and sixty-pound vigilantes. In any case, the truck didn’t pull over.

  Grinding my teeth together to help me deal with the pain, I crawled forward with as much stealth as I could. I would have loved to have a sword right now, but thanks to that gator I was down to one gun and some knives. More than enough.

  Now, if I were building a truck to drive through the swamp to pick up hundreds of millions in cash, I’d make sure the dang thing was armored like a tank. Which meant I couldn’t just shoot through the window; I had to get them to open the door.

  Easy enough.

  Wind and rain continued to pelt us as we moved on. For me, this was awesome, it reduced visibility to almost nothing and made them slow down to stay on the road. I seated myself on of the cab, bracing for balance with one hand on the hard shell and a foot against the rooftop antenna; then I started banging on it with my foot.

  The truck slid to a halt so fast I almost came flying off. I had to admit, I didn’t think they would respond that quickly.

  “What the hell,” I heard the driver yell as the door opened. He stuck his head out to look and I blew it off. I instantly rolled over and down, hanging from my waist and viewing the cabin upside down. The second guy had barely cleared his holster; as he brought the gun up I fired first.

  He slumped over, screaming, and I fired twice more to make sure he didn’t die slowly.

  As gracefully as I could, I fell off the truck into the mud. With my free hand I pulled the driver out and dumped him on the road then I climbed in, opened the passenger door, unbuckled the other one, and shoved him out with my foot.

  “Fransisco, why did you stop?”

  “Ah crap.” I muttered. They had GPS. Of course they did, Madi.

  I hit the gas, plunging the beast of a truck forward into the mud while trying to steer and close the door at the same time. Once those were accomplished I pulled on my seatbelt and picked up the handheld radio. “Sorry,” I muttered as indistinctly as possible.

  “Were on a time table here—don’t stop again.”

  Once the threat of discovery had passed I took a second to do an inventory. The passenger had a nice M4 carbine in a rifle holder, along with five mags of 5.56. He had also dropped his Glock 17 when he fell. The glove box had a roll of masking tape and two packs of Camels. Who the hell smoked anymore? I stuffed the gun into my back waistband and the tape into my jacket pocket. I looked back at the cargo hold and almost slammed on the brakes right there.

  I didn’t know about the rest of the cargo, but the window was obscured by shrink-wrapped hundred-dollar bills.

  I smiled, cold and predatory like. “Dolla-dolla-dolla bills,” I sang to myself.

  ***

  The airboat was loud; too loud. She had to plug her ears with both hands, and no one offered her hearing protection. It forced her to leave her cell tucked away in the waterproof pocket of her twenty-dollar jacket where it would do her no good.

  She took the time to study every aspect of these men. They were operators through and through. Unlike some of her colleagues, she hadn’t embedded with the military in any of the recent wars. There was always a conflict somewhere; a seemingly endless amount of man’s inhumanity to man in which the US could get involved.

  The last such war was in Russia; after the Th’un invasion they had seen the worst of the aftermath. Not only had their two primary energy plants suffered total catastrophe, most of their army was destroyed when the alien probes attacked, leaving them wide open for attack. Everyone from England to China took advantage; while it wasn’t an official war, the US found themselves in the unenviable position of trying to save Russia from total disaster.

  However, Krisan wasn’t as interested in foreign affairs or politics as other journalists. In the grand scheme, those meant next to nothing in the lives of actual people. Crime, on the other hand—crime impacted their daily lives. That was why she followed the stories she did. Why she was determined to follow The Wraith wherever she went. There would always be a meaningful story just behind her vengeful friend.

  The roar of the fan cut out suddenly and the boat settled into the water; the forward momentum ended so fast Krisan had to grab the side rail to keep from falling off her seat.

  “We’re here, boss,” Zim said as he turned the boat to hit a small muddy berm.

  “Rico, drones up, five mikes,” Bill ordered.

  Krisan had traveled with highly skilled men before, usually swat or other types of police; they didn’t hold a candle to Bill’s team. Wordlessly, Rico broke out the boxes with the hi-tech drones and began assembling them. The quiet one, Felix, opened up long boxes and handed out M4 rifles to the rest of the crew, who immediately pulled the slides back to check their loads.

  In less than five minutes Rico had four drones silently floating in the air, relaying images back to his handheld controller and another monitor in the boat. Everyone else was loaded for bear.

  “Krisan,” Bill said, turning to her with his serious face. “Don’t leave the boat, don’t make any noise. If we’re not back in four hours, call the police. Understood?”

  She nodded. “Be safe,” she replied.

  He smiled. “Safe is not part of the job.”

  As if they had telepathic communications the five-man team moved out, trudging silently through the swamp to their destination a mile away. Once they were out of sight, she watched their progress on the monitor and whipped out her cell phone to commit all her notes to the Internet.

  She looked up from her phone for a moment when she sensed movement but it was only an alligator sw
imming slowly along the surface, searching for prey. Please don’t let that be me this morning.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The trucks turned around an old gnarled tree and into a small clearing. Eloi Bay was a mess of swamp water and old trees. “Logs” moved in the water—clearly gators looking to eat. Whoever picked this place to exchange money was spot on; no one in their right mind would come here.

  I followed the lead of the three trucks in front of me as they turned around and backed up to the water’s edge. I parked my truck in the same line perpendicular to the beach and last in the row. No one else exited their vehicles so I didn’t.

  What happened next surprised the hell out of me.

  The lead truck disgorged an occupant; a tall, fat, man with greenish hair and skin, and—I’m not joking—wearing a neon-blue tracksuit. He walked right to the edge of the swamp… and then into the water. No fear of the gators whatsoever. Has to be a super.

  I was right. Once he was waist deep in the water, he raised his hands to his chest and pushed out his hands to the horizon.

  The water solidified…

  At first, I thought it was frozen, but no, it was just solid, like a dock. The rest of the little bay filled in with ocean water and in a few seconds it was clear of gators, debris, and as clean and clear as a Caribbean inlet.

  Swamp control? That was a strange power.

  I couldn’t imagine how long it took them to find someone who could do that. Then again, they probably had no problem recruiting him. It wasn’t like the superhero teams would clamor for a guy who could control swamps.

  I checked my phone; ten minutes. Swamp-boy changed as he continued to work. Vines and wood circled him, growing on his body until I couldn’t see him anymore—just a giant swamp thing standing in the water. It was almost as if he were absorbing all the crap in the water onto his body.

  I pulled out my Storm, loaded a fresh mag, and racked the slide. The pistol had a neat trigger system and it took me a minute to familiarize myself with it when I first picked it up. Joseph always said you were only as good as the equipment you carried; I made sure I knew how to work the action backward and forward.

  I really needed to create some kind of armory. Mine was dangerously low but I had no idea how to buy black market weapons or who to buy them from—all I had were the people I took down and whatever weapons they had stashed around. After this I was pretty much out. It was certainly something I needed to look into.

  Ten minutes later the dock was fully formed. It looked just like a regular dock stretching out fifty feet into the blue sea bay—except it was made of solid water. The leader of this little team walked out to the end of it, pulled out a flare gun, fired it once into the air, then waited. Swamp-boy finished his work and trundled over to the beach and sat down. He still looked like him but fifteen feet tall and half that wide, made of swamp stuff. He moved pretty slow, I hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with him.

  Over the sounds of the swamp I heard the roar of high-performance engines. It was time. I pulled the C4 from my coat pocket and went to work. I attached my homemade detonator and set the timer for twenty minutes. After I was sure it was operating I opened the cargo window, pulled out a knife and cut a hole in the plastic wrap. From there it was easy enough to dig out fifty grand in dirty money, stuff the bomb in, pile the money on top of it, and then use a few strips of masking tape to hold the whole thing together. I didn’t know if I would have the time later, so I counted out almost a hundred grand in hundreds and stuffed $50k in each cargo pocket. It made my jacket a little heavy but I was running low on funds. Besides, I didn’t think they were going to miss it.

  Once the boats rounded the peak, I made my move. I had the M4 around my back, and with the three mags that came in my pockets—which were starting to fill up to the point of being cumbersome. I eased open the door, slipped out onto the ground, then shut the door as quietly as I could—which was pretty quiet. I figured the C4, especially with the explosion compressed by the cash, should be more than enough to take out my truck and the one next to it.

  I made it to the berm that marked the tree line and slid to the ground, rolling over as I did and unslinging the rifle. I put the collapsible buttstock to my shoulder, charged a round and scanned the horizon.

  I didn’t know what the thing pretending to be Sara really was, but I had trained for this. ISO only cares about money and power, not people; I cared about my family. I wanted to make amends with them. I wanted to be daddy’s little girl again, the way I had been before Charles died. I had waited too long, and they stole that chance from me. They stole the wonderful life Spice had ahead of her. They stole Mom’s chocolate chip cookie recipe. The way she made everything better just by giving me a hug and smiling. If money was all they loved, then I was going to take it all from them.

  I did some mental math; it wasn’t my strong suit, but assuming a stack of hundreds five feet tall, twenty-two wide, and eleven long…

  Oh hell. One-point-three billion? BILLION.

  Times two. I grinned so wide I thought my face was going to split. They can consider this a down payment on what they owe—which is everything that have. I reached down to my neck and pulled up my scarf over my nose and waited, my eyes free to look around. I had to time my attack perfectly; I just hoped I set the timer right. I wanted to catch them in the middle of the job. Too soon and the boats would take off. Too late and I wouldn’t get all of it. And I wanted all of it.

  ***

  Bill raised his hand in the standard Army closed fist halt signal. Instantly, the five-man squad hunkered down, each member turning a different way than the man in front of him as they scanned all sides for an ambush.

  “Felix, you hear that?”

  The spec-ops soldier nodded. “High-speed boats. Prop kind—but in the swamp? They wouldn’t get a hundred feet before the blades were fouled.”

  Bill shrugged. Regardless, it was what they heard. “Rico, drones ahead.” He jumped up and moved out, signaling his men to follow. With a horizontal wave of his hand he signaled them to spread out. They did so instantly, each one separating by twenty feet, moving forward a step at a time with their weapons shouldered. This is what they trained for, what they lived for. No worry about civilian targets or collateral damage. Taking out targets with no fear of hitting the wrong thing was the ideal situation for troops.

  Each man was more than just training and weapons; they had grenades, state-of-the-art communications gear, special armor piercing ammo only available to them, and hi-tech glasses that allowed them to check their six with a glance.

  “Boss, three hundred meters. I’m going to cut left and find an overwatch position,” Felix said in his ear.

  “Roger. Go.”

  Bill strained to hear his sniper depart but only picked up on the growing roar of engines and the sound of swamp life. That man is a damn ghost, I’m glad he’s on our side.

  They regrouped a hundred meters from the target, a small inlet called Eloi Bay. What Bill expected and what was there were two completely different things. Having spent a good part of his life in the south, he knew what was before him couldn’t exist in nature. A brilliant blue inlet with water as clear as a Caribbean cruise commercial. The rain had let up, but the sky was still covered in dark, angry clouds. And the inlet looked like it belonged on a different continent entirely.

  “That’s not something you see every day,” Zim said.

  “Check the moving tree,” Felix broke in on the comms. Bill took a knee next to a large gnarled tree and brought up his 1.5x ACOG scope. Sure enough, sitting on the edge of the bay with his feet in the water was some kind of swamp elemental. Great. I’m glad we loaded for bear.

  “What’s the word?” Rico asked.

  “We wait. I want it all—not just the dirty money, but the clean money too. Once we have them, we can figure out where our C4 is, not to mention winning about two million points with the Coast Guard for doing their job,” Bill said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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  I forced my breathing to slow down. Waiting was always nerve-wracking. The boats appeared on the horizon and slowed down as they approached the artificial dock. Clearly, they had done this before since they didn’t hesitate to drive them right to the dock where they pulled to a stop, two on either side. There were four boats, three men on each boat, all armed with either pistols or SMGs. That was okay, I could handle eighteen armed combatants. Probably.

  “This would be a lot easier with powers, Spice.”

  Nothing.

  “When this is over, we’re going to have a come to Jesus moment, and I don’t think you’re going to like the way it goes.”

  Nothing.

  Whatever.

  I made sure my rifle was ready. I had great sight lines on the boats and the trucks. I made a mental note of who had the keys to the boats. The drivers were only armed with pistols, while the guards had some kind of AK47 variant with folding stocks. I’m sure they thought they were badass for carrying the world’s most prolific rifle. I would take range over brute force, especially since I determined the rules of this engagement.

  Once the boats were docked, Swamp-boy stood up and yawned, making a great show of laziness. He made his way to the first truck. The leader of the party keyed in a security code then pulled the tailgate down and the cargo cover up. Swamp-boy reached forward; vines, twigs, and living branches grew out of his hand and wrapped around the money. With no more effort than I would use to take a beer out of the fridge, he pulled the stack of money out of the truck.

  Impressive.

  He walked with great ground shaking stomps, his wide feet looking more like tree trunks at this point, and put the first pallet of money down on the dock. He then turned back and unloaded the second truck, stacking the cash on top of the first pile. I smiled evilly, this was perfect.

  When he put down the fourth pallet, I checked the time; three minutes on the dot. The two men in charge exchanged a few words and typed in some information on funky looking cell phones. I needed to add binoculars to my list of carrying equipment. I also made a mental note to grab one of the phones. They were larger than normal cell phones, with red cases and noticeable antenna. Sat phones maybe?