Fever Dream

by Douglas Preston

  “A fat pig,” said Pendergast.

  Tiny drew back a meaty fist and smacked Pendergast in the solar plexus. The agent gasped and bent forward. Tiny hit him again in the same spot and Pendergast sank to his knees, the wind knocked out of him.

  Tiny looked down at Pendergast and spat on him disdainfully. “This is taking way too long,” he said. Then he grasped Hayward’s shirt and—with a powerful tug—tore the remaining buttons away.

  There was a roar of approval from the surrounding boats. Pulling a huge skinning knife from a pocket of his overalls, Tiny opened it, then pulled Hayward’s ruined shirt aside with its blade, exposing her brassiere.

  “Holy shit!” somebody said.

  Tiny gazed hungrily at Hayward’s generous breasts. She swallowed painfully and made a move to cover herself with her buttonless shirt but Tiny shook his head, pushed her hands away, and traced the blade of his knife teasingly along the topline of her bra. Then—very slowly—he inserted the tip of the blade under the fabric between the cups. With a jerk, he brought the knife toward him, slitting the bra into two pieces. Hayward’s breasts swung free to a hugely appreciative roar.

  Hayward saw Pendergast rise, stumbling. Tiny was too preoccupied to notice.

  Pendergast steadied himself, leaning heavily to one side. Then—with a sudden, almost imperceptible movement—he shifted his weight to the other side. The boat rocked, throwing Tiny and Larry off balance.

  “Hey, easy now—”

  Hayward saw a blur, a flash of steel; with a groan Larry doubled over, his clenched hand firing the gun blindly downward; there was a sudden gush of blood into the bottom of the boat.

  Tiny twisted around to protect himself, sweeping the TEC-9 through the air, letting loose a long burst of fire, but the agent moved so fast the spray of bullets missed him. A sinuous arm whipped around Tiny’s fat neck and jerked his head back, a stiletto at his throat; at the same time Hayward smashed the man’s forearm, jarring the TEC-9 loose.

  “Don’t move,” Pendergast said, sinking the knife partway into the man’s neck. With his other hand he neatly extracted his Les Baer from the man’s waistband.

  Tiny roared, twisting his huge bulk, pawing to get at Pendergast; the knife sank deeper, twisted, flashing; there was a small splatter of blood, and then a fresh stillness.

  “Move and die,” said Pendergast.

  Hayward stared, horrified, her own exposed condition momentarily forgotten: Pendergast had somehow managed to work the stiletto into the man’s neck, exposing the jugular; the knife blade had already slipped underneath it, stretching it from the wound.

  “Shoot me and it’s cut,” Pendergast said. “I fall, it’s cut. He moves, it’s cut. She’s touched again—it’s cut.”

  “What the fuck!” Tiny screamed in terror, his eyes rolling. “What’s he done? Am I bleeding to death?”

  A dead silence. All guns were still trained on them.

  “Shoot him!” Tiny cried. “Shoot the girl! What are you doing?”

  Nobody moved. Hayward stared, transfixed in horror, at the sight of the bulging, pulsing vein, slick over the gleam of the bloodied blade.

  Pendergast nodded toward one of the big side mirrors mounted on the gunwale of the boat. “Captain, fetch that mirror for me, please.”

  Hayward forced herself to move, covering herself as best she could and wrenching the mirror off.

  “Hold it up for Tiny’s benefit.”

  She complied. Tiny stared into it, at himself, his eyes widening in terror. “What are you doing… Oh, my God, please, don’t…” His voice trailed off into a quaver, his bloodshot eyes wide, his huge body immobilized with terror.

  “All weapons in Mr. Tiny’s boat, there,” said Pendergast quietly, nodding at the empty vessel next to theirs. “Everything. Now.”

  No one moved.

  Pendergast pulled the vein away from the bleeding wound with the flat of his knife. “Do what I say or I cut.”

  “You heard him!” Tiny said in a kind of terrified, squeaking whisper. “Guns in the boat! Do what he says!”

  Hayward continued to hold up the mirror. The men, murmuring, began passing their guns forward and tossing them into the boat. Pretty soon the flat bottom of the boat was filled with an arsenal.

  “Knives, Mace, everything.”

  More things were tossed in.

  Pendergast turned toward the skinny man, Larry, lying in the bottom of the boat. He was bleeding from a knife wound in his arm and a self-administered gunshot to his foot. “Remove your shirt, please.”

  After a brief hesitation, the man did as ordered.

  “Pass it over to Captain Hayward.”

  Hayward took the damp, odorous garment. Turning away from the surrounding boats as much as was possible, she removed her torn blouse and ruined bra and shrugged into the bloody shirt.

  Pendergast turned toward her. “Captain, would you care to arm yourself?”

  “This TEC-9 looks suitable,” Hayward said, picking up the handgun from the pile of weapons. She looked it over, removed the magazine, examined it, slapped it back in. “Converted to fully automatic. Fifty-round magazine, too. Plenty of rounds left to smoke everyone right here, right now.”

  “An effective, if inelegant, choice,” said Pendergast.

  Hayward pointed the TEC-9 at the group. “Who still wants to see the floor show?”

  Silence. The only sound was Tiny’s choked sobbing. The tears streamed down his face, but he remained as immobile as a statue.

  “I’m afraid,” Pendergast said, “that you folks have made a serious error. This lady is indeed a homicide captain of the NYPD, and I am truly a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’re here on a murder investigation that has nothing to do with you or your town. Whoever told you we were environmentalists lied to you. Now: I’m going to ask a question, just once, and if I get an answer that isn’t satisfactory, I’m going to cut Tiny’s jugular and my colleague, Captain Hayward, is going to shoot you down like dogs. Self-defense, of course. Being law enforcement, who’s to contradict us?”

  A silence.

  “The question is this: Mr. Tiny, who called you to say we were coming?”

  Tiny couldn’t get the answer out fast enough. “It was Ventura, Mike Ventura, Mike Ventura…” He choked out the words in between stifled sobs, his voice reduced to a babble.

  “And who is Mike Ventura?”

  “A guy who lives over in Itta Bena, but he comes down here a lot, big sportsman, lots of money, spends a lot of time in the swamp. It was him, he came into my place, told us all you was environmentalists, you was looking to turn the rest of Black Brake into a refuge, take away all the work from us swampers—”

  “Thank you,” said Pendergast, “that’s sufficient. Here’s what’s going to happen. My colleague and I are going to continue on our way in Mr. Tiny’s excellently equipped and fully loaded bass boat. With all the guns. You all go on home. Understand?”

  Nothing.

  He tightened the knife beneath the vein. “May I have a response, please?”

  Murmurs, nods.

  “Excellent. You can see we are now heavily armed. And I can assure you that both of us know how to use these weapons. Captain, would you care to demonstrate?”

  Hayward pointed the TEC-9 at a nearby stand of saplings and opened fire. Three short bursts. The trees toppled slowly into the water.

  Pendergast slipped the knife out from under the vein. “You’re going to need a few stitches, Mr. Tiny.”

  The fat man merely blubbered.

  “I’d advise you all to discuss it among yourselves and come up with a nice, believable story as to how Mr. Tiny here cut his neck and how old Larry there shot himself in the foot. Because the captain and I have bigger fish to fry, and we don’t want any more disruptions. Assuming you don’t annoy us further—and assuming you leave my rather expensive car alone—we don’t see the need to bring charges or arrest anyone—do we, Captain?”

  She shook
her head. Funny how Pendergast’s way of doing things began to make sense—out here in the middle of nowhere, without backup, in front of a crowd who wanted nothing better than to serially rape her and murder them both and sink their bodies in the swamp.

  Pendergast stepped into the bass boat, Hayward following, picking her way among the assorted weaponry. Firing up the engine, Pendergast eased the boat forward; the surrounding boats unwillingly parted to give him passage. “We’ll see you all again,” he called out. “I regret to say that when we do, there might be more unpleasantness.”

  Then he throttled up and the bass boat headed into the widest inlet at the end of the bayou, heading south into the thick braid of vegetation under a dying evening light.

  68

  Malfourche, Mississippi

  MIKE VENTURA WATCHED FROM HIS PARKED Escalade, A/C going full blast, as the boats straggled back into the slips beyond Tiny’s. The sun had just set over the water, the sky a dirty orange. He began to feel uneasy; this did not look like a war party returning from a successful raid. It had more the sullen, dispirited, bedraggled appearance of a rout. When one of the last boats brought in Tiny—who staggered out onto the dock with a bloody, wadded handkerchief tied around his neck, blood caking one side of his shirt—he knew for certain something had gone wrong.

  A couple of men supported Tiny, one beneath each meaty arm, as he shuffled into his establishment and disappeared. Meanwhile, others in the crowd had seen Ventura and were talking and gesturing—and then began moving his way. They did not look happy.

  Ventura reached over and pressed the automatic locks on the doors, which shot down with a click. The men circled his car in silence, their faces red and streaked with sweat.

  Ventura cracked the window an inch. “What happened?”

  Nobody answered. After a tense moment, a man raised a fist and brought it down on the hood with a loud bang.

  “What the hell?” Ventura cried.

  “What the hell?” the man screamed. “What the hell?”

  Another fist came down and then, suddenly, they were pummeling the car, kicking the sides, swearing and spitting. Astonished and horrified, Ventura snugged the window tight and threw the car into reverse, backing up so fast those standing behind had to throw themselves to one side to avoid being run over.

  “Son of a bitch!” the mob screamed with one voice. “Liar!”

  “They were feds, asshole!”

  “Lying bastard!”

  Giving the wheel a frantic twist, Ventura threw the car into drive and gunned the engine, spraying dirt and gravel in a one-hundred-eighty-degree arc. As he accelerated, a rock smacked the back window with a dull thud, turning it into a spiderweb of cracks.

  When he pulled onto the small highway, his cell phone rang. He picked it up: Judson. Shit.

  “I’m almost there,” came Judson’s voice. “How’d it go?”

  “Something messed up. And I mean messed up.”

  By the time Ventura arrived at his neatly kept compound at the edge of the swamp, Esterhazy’s pickup was already there. The tall man stood next to the bed of the truck, dressed in khaki, unloading guns. Ventura pulled up and got out. Esterhazy turned toward him, his face dark.

  “What happened to your car?” he asked.

  “The swampers attacked it. Over in Malfourche.”

  “Didn’t they take care of things?”

  “No. Tiny came back with a neck wound and nobody had their guns. They wanted to string me up. I’ve got a big problem on my hands.”

  Esterhazy stared at him. “So those two are still heading to Spanish Island?”

  “It seems so.”

  Esterhazy looked past Ventura’s rambling whitewashed house and wide, billiard-table lawn to the private dock, where Ventura’s three boats were tied up: a Lafitte skiff, a brand-new bass boat with a hydraulic jack plate and a Humminbird console, and a powerful airboat. His jaw tightened. He reached into the pickup bed and removed the last gun case. “It would appear,” he said slowly, “that we’re going to have to handle the problem ourselves.”

  “And right away. Because if they reach Spanish Island, it’s over.”

  “We won’t let it get that far.” Esterhazy squinted toward the sunset. “Depending on how fast they’re moving, they might be getting close already.”

  “They’re moving slowly. They don’t know the swamp.”

  Esterhazy looked at the bass boat. “With that two fifty Yamaha, we might just be able to intercept them when they cross that old logging pullboat canal near Ronquille Island. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Of course,” said Ventura, irritated that Esterhazy might even question his knowledge of the swamp.

  “Then put these guns in the boat and let’s get moving,” said Judson. “I’ve got an idea.”

  69

  Black Brake Swamp

  A BUTTERY MOON ROSE AMONG THE MASSIVE trunks of the bald cypresses, spreading a faint light through the night-darkened swamp. The boat’s spotlight cast a beam into the tangle of trees and other vegetation ahead, now and then illuminating pairs of glowing eyes. Hayward knew most of the eyes belonged to frogs and toads, but nevertheless felt herself growing seriously spooked. Even if the strange stories she’d heard as a child about Black Brake were legends, she knew the place was nevertheless infested with very real alligators and venomous snakes. She poled the bass boat forward, drenched in sweat, walking the pole from the middle backward. Larry’s shirt felt coarse and itchy against her bare skin. Pendergast lay on the front deck, maps spread out, examining them intently with the aid of his flashlight. It had been a long, slow journey, full of dead ends, false leads, and painstaking navigation.

  Pendergast shone his light into the water and dropped a pinch of dirt from a cup overboard, testing the current. “A mile or less,” he murmured, going back to the maps.

  She poled, walked back to the stern, pulled the pole up, walked forward, stuck it into the muddy bottom again. She felt as if she were drowning in the greenish black jungle that surrounded them. “What if the camp’s gone?”

  No answer. The moon rose higher, and Hayward breathed the deep, moist, fragrant air. A mosquito flew into her ear, buzzing frantically. She smacked it, flicked it away.

  “Up ahead is the last logging channel,” Pendergast said. “Beyond that lies the final stretch of swamp before Spanish Island.”

  The boat nosed through a patch of rotting water hyacinth, the sour vegetative smell rising from the water and enveloping them.

  “Turn off the spotlight and running lights, please,” Pendergast said. “We don’t want to alert them to our approach.”

  Hayward switched off the lights. “You really think there’s a ‘them’ there?”

  “I’m quite sure something is there. Why go to such lengths to stop us?”

  As her eyes adjusted, Hayward found herself surprised at just how much light there was in the swamp under the full moon. Ahead, through the tree trunks, she could see a lane of shimmering water. In a moment the boat had slipped into the logging channel, now half overgrown with duckweed and hyacinth. The branches of the cypresses knitted together overhead, forming a tunnel.

  Suddenly the boat stopped dead. Hayward lurched forward, using the pole to keep herself steady.

  “We’ve snagged something beneath the surface,” Pendergast said. “Probably a root or a fallen tree branch. See if you can’t pole around it.”

  Hayward pushed herself against the pole. The stern of the boat swung around, impacting heavily against a cypress trunk. The vessel shuddered and swayed, then came loose from the obstruction. As Hayward leaned into the pole, preparing to launch them back into the logging channel, she saw something long, glistening, and black slip from the branches overhead and fall across her shoulders. It slithered around the skin of her neck, cool and dry, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out in surprise and revulsion.

  “Don’t move,” said Pendergast. “Not a muscle.”

  She waited, wi
lling herself to stay still, as Pendergast took a slow step toward her, then stopped and balanced himself carefully on the arsenal that lay in the boat’s bottom. And then one hand shot forward, grabbed the thick coiling presence from her shoulders, and flung it away with a vicious snap. Hayward turned to watch the snake writhing through the air, easily more than a yard long, before landing in the water astern.

  “Agkistrodon piscivorus,” Pendergast said grimly. “Cottonmouth water moccasin.”

  Her skin tingled, and the nasty slithering sensation refused to go away. Taking a deep breath, she shuddered and grasped the pole. They moved back into the channel and continued deeper into the overgrown fastness. Pendergast took a look around, then returned to his maps and charts. As she poled, Hayward kept a cautious eye on the braiding of tree trunks above her. Mosquitoes, frogs, snakes—the only thing she hadn’t yet encountered was an alligator.

  “We may have to get out and travel on foot soon,” Pendergast murmured. “There would appear to be obstructions ahead.” He glanced up from the map, looked around once again.

  Hayward thought about the alligators. On foot. Great.

  She placed the pole, gave the boat another shove. Suddenly, in a silent flash of black, Pendergast lunged at her, tackling her at the waist, and they both tumbled over the gunwale of the boat into the black water. She righted herself underwater, too surprised to struggle, her feet sinking into the muck below. As she pushed off and her head broke the surface, she heard a fusillade of shots.

  A clang sounded as a round struck the engine, and a gout of flame erupted. Clang! Clang! The shots were coming from the darkness to her right.

  “Get a weapon,” Pendergast whispered in her ear.

  She grasped the gunwale and, waiting for a lull in the shooting, hoisted herself up, grabbed the closest gun—a heavy rifle—and slid back down. Another fusillade of shots tore into the boat, several striking the engine. A trickle of flame ran down the bottom of the boat: the gas line had been hit.

  “Don’t return fire!” Pendergast whispered, giving her a push. “Get to the other side of the boat, head for the far side of the channel, and take cover.”