Hell's Bay

by James W. Hall

  “Show you something.”

  Carter called from the other side of the house, “You coming, Sheriff? Everything all right?”

  “Make it quick,” Timmy said quietly.

  He drew the paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and tipped it toward the light from the pathway.

  She looked at it for a while and said nothing.

  “You recognize that?” Sugar said.

  “GPS coordinates.”

  “Yeah. It’s Thorn’s current address. I found it in your friend’s house. Sasha. You know, the one who didn’t tell you she was going to rob a gun shop, steal a boat, take her son off to the Everglades to kill an innocent guy named Thorn. Sasha Olsen, same lady who drowned an eighty-six-year-old woman because she blamed her for her husband dying and her son getting sick. Of course, she was mistaken. It wasn’t Abigail’s fault. It was her son’s, and a bunch of people deciding that making their quarterly targets was more important than a bunch of kids’ lives.”

  “You can stop right there, Sugarman.”

  She stepped back, put two yards between them. She had the pistol tipped toward his shoes. Not good procedure from a cop. A little slack. But not so slack Sugarman was ready to risk a lunge.

  “You make a good case,” she said. ’You’re a smart, thoughtful man. And your moral certainty is inspirational. I wish the situation were otherwise.”

  “You have the power to make it otherwise. You’ve had that power all along.”

  “Sheriff!” Carter Mosley was coming back around the house. In his hand he held a chrome .45. ’You having a problem? Don’t tell me you’re getting attached to that boy. I sure hope this hasn’t become a racial issue.”

  In the same motion, Sugarman swung on Mosley and drew the blade from his pocket. A pistol behind him, a pistol in front, Sugarman with a dull table knife. Not since he was a kid had he tossed a knife. Mumble-de-peg or something. Bury the blade in the sandy soil, stretch your opponent’s legs wide. He was good at it, but that was forty years ago. Been a long time since he did any knife throwing. None at all to save his life.

  It wasn’t bravery or some wild impulse. That was Thorn’s realm. Sugarman made the only logical, reasonable choice. A tactical decision. Present his back to an officer of the law who should have had an ingrained reluctance to fire on defenseless targets. A woman who an hour earlier had run her hands across his body with something other than professional briskness. It’s not that he trusted Timmy Whalen, but that he distrusted her some fraction less than the small man with the gaudy pistol in front of him.

  Sugar took a small step toward Mosley.

  “Sheriff,” Mosley said. “Sheriff, take him down.”

  Carter Mosley raised the .45 and aimed it in Sugarman’s direction, though his hand bobbed an inch up then an inch down. Twenty feet of shadows between them, the width of a master bedroom. Even practiced shooters missed at such close range and with such bad light, though Sugarman had also seen the damage a .45 could do and felt the jelly in his stomach quiver.

  “Sheriff!” Mosley took a step backward.

  “The sheriff is a public servant, Carter,” Sugar said, “not your butler. She’s not shucking and jiving to your tune anymore.”

  “Stand back, Sugarman. Last chance.” Mosley brought his left hand up to steady the pistol, and that’s when Sugarman wrist-flicked the knife, watched its end-over-end flight for a split second until it thumped hard against Mosley’s chest. Not enough to do damage, but it distracted the hell out of him. He yelped and staggered to the side, not knowing what struck him.

  Sugar came straight on, diving low at Mosley’s legs.

  And that kid who’d been bullied on the playground, the teased and taunted runt that Carter Mosley had worked so hard to rise above, grunted and fired and fired again. Blasts to wake the dead.

  For a second Sugar didn’t know if he’d been hit or not— the concussion so startled him, so numbed his senses.

  His arms tangled around Mosley’s thighs, and he gripped and twisted and slung the man sideways, the two of them tumbling together into a groaning heap. Not his finest tackle. Sugarman landed on his back, while Carter Mosley, a gristly little fuck, scrambled to his knees, bent forward, and rammed the barrel against Sugar’s chest. It should have been over then. The logical, orderly sequence Sugarman had mapped out had whirled into chaos. Stretching before him was that dark highway leading off to nowhere.

  Mosley’s hand quivered, his face full of grim elation. He’d won a rare physical victory, and crossing into that unfamiliar territory must have made him dizzy with delight. He fumbled his grip on the pistol.

  Sugarman lashed out, seized the barrel, twisted it to the side, and tore it from the man’s hand.

  He scrambled up, yanked Mosley to his feet, and turned to face Timmy Whalen. But she wasn’t there.

  Sugarman dragged Mosley into the shadows of the lawn where she’d been standing, and after a minute’s search, he found her lying on her back in the weeds. One arm was extended out to her side as if she meant to flag down a passerby, the left hand cradling her lower gut where one of Mosley’s slugs had torn into her. She was drawing deep humming breaths.

  Sugar kneeled beside her and found an angle that put her face in light.

  Her eyes held his. Those pretty eyes, looking sleepier than ever.

  “Go,” she said. “Save your friend.”

  “No, I’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

  “My phone.” She closed her eyes, got another breath. “Give it.”

  Sugarman drew her cell from the holster on her belt. Laid it in her open hand.

  “Go on, hurry,” she said. “Your friend.”

  “I can’t leave you,” Sugarman said.

  “I’m okay now. I’m good. I’ll make it.”

  Sugarman couldn’t speak.

  “I’ll call it in,” she said. “Go, goddammit. Do what’s right.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sick of weapons, sick of their noise, the jarring kicks, and of what they did, the percussions and repercussions, Sasha slid the rifle overboard. She dropped the .45 and the remaining rounds. She stripped off the camouflage jacket. Stood there for a moment thinking. Then she peeled out of her jeans and shirt, her bra and panties. She reached behind her, peeled the band off the end of her braid, unraveled it, and shook her hair loose.

  She took her time, smoothing her hands across her hips, breasts, nipples, her soft white belly, the black coarse triangle of hair. Gliding palms across her flesh to wake herself, revive her senses. For a moment something sexual stirred, then was gone.

  She bent at the waist, ran her hands up and down her legs. Bristly, untended. She felt a bruise near her knee. Felt an ache and puffiness in her left ankle. Arthritis she’d inherited from her dad, that man who’d hungered for a son and got only her. She thought of him and saw once again that afternoon on Nightmare Creek, stranded as the tide ran out. How good the fishing was, how scared she’d been, and how well she’d hidden it from her father.

  Here she was, stranded again. Stranded worse than ever. No one left to hide her feelings from.

  Griffin urged her to flee. He called her beautiful, said she still had a chance at life. Go to California, Spain, Switzerland, the Alps, someplace distant. Be his eyes, see the far-off lands. Travel, take him with her.

  She could start over. Find a man who’d sweep her into his arms. Marry him, cook his food, eat, watch sunsets, talk and listen. She was still young enough, just barely, to have more children. That’s what Griffin wanted for her, and it’s what C.C. would’ve said, too.

  Disappear from this and reappear somewhere else.

  Like getting new orders. Open them, read them through. Where she was being sent next. Her mission, her destination. Put on her uniform, pack, and go. Protect her buddies. Kill those trying to kill her. Good death, useful death.

  She’d done it all before. Done it once as well as it could be done.

  Sasha Olsen stood naked in the night. She look
ed out at the dark bay. A mile due west was the houseboat. Close enough that she could swim.

  She didn’t know who was still alive. She’d killed Milligan, held him under like his mother; she’d killed the retarded guy, the one claiming he was Thorn. She’d shot two others, a young man and young woman. Shot them down and watched them tumble. She’d fired so many rounds her body ached. She was half deaf from the noise.

  But the others could still be alive. They could be hurt and dying. Or if she left them, they might survive and someday they’d resume what they’d been doing. Pine Tree School, the Peace River. Nothing would have changed.

  From the first she’d had her doubts. Head of the snake.

  She was never a true believer, though she’d hidden it from Griffin. She knew enough of the world to have those doubts. She could kill every Bates and every Milligan, and the corporation would survive. The draglines would still be carving giant pits, stacking up the waste. Some other group of men with different names would arrive and fill the offices and chairs and sit behind the desks. Some faceless people in rooms off in big cities. There were always more snakes to replace the snakes, and more snakes to replace those. Where they came from she didn’t know, but they came and they came.

  The breeze from the north ran its hands across her flesh. Sexy.

  A ghost of what C.C. could do to her. Those whispery things that never got routine or lost their flame.

  That joy—could she ever have anything close to that again?

  Did she want to try?

  California? What was there? What was anywhere?

  The night was darker than dark could be, and the breeze was steady across her flesh. There were night sounds, twitters and squawks and splishes in the mangroves she couldn’t identify. Creatures prowling, reptiles on the move.

  Who was Sasha now? Stripped of everything. What nub of self was left that might sprout and grow into a new thing?

  She inhaled the Everglades and let it go. What she’d had and lost was more than she could imagine regaining. Her emptiness had no bottom. Timmy was another loss. Sasha had asked of her the unthinkable. To betray her sacred pledge. Sasha corrupted her, destroyed the only friend she had.

  The walkie-talkie trilled.

  She picked it up from the console and pressed the button and, though it was barely true, she said, “I’m still here.”

  And the voice on the other end said, “He’s coming for you. Thorn is coming in his kayak. Fifteen minutes and he’ll be there. Do him and it’s over.”

  It was blacker than black. Everglades dark, with a sky cloaked by layers of clouds. A place so distant from man-made light, I could’ve been buried in a coffin a mile beneath the earth. A solid darkness I could feel against my skin, like a velvet hood, a suffocating gloom.

  Human eyes don’t adjust to that level of dark. Maybe some million-years-ago ancestor could’ve made his way just fine, but we moderns had lived too long in the dazzle of twenty-four-hour radiance. It was never ever really dark. Never ever as dark as that moment on the black water with the black sky above and the black black air before me.

  In the last minute before pushing off from the Mothership, I climbed the spiral stairs to the wheelhouse, feeling my way through the blindness. The wind vane was unbroken, still mounted alongside the cluster of weather sensors on the roof. The electronic stuff was dead, but the vane still swiveled with the breeze.

  I read the Braille etched into the base with my fingertips. Wind out of the north by northwest. I spent a minute up there taking readings to be sure it was steady enough to trust.

  And now the wind was my only compass. I steered east, keeping the breeze at my left shoulder, the slightest oblique push from behind.

  Even the smoldering red glow of Miami that was usually visible from fifty miles away was smothered by cloud cover. This was darkness that drank light. Absorbed it, and didn’t give it back.

  Not a glimmer on the water as I paddled. Not a flicker of raccoon eyes, or possums in the woods. No stars, no moon, not even a passenger jet circling over the Glades to make its approach.

  Just the wind to tell me I was still on earth.

  Blackness. No horizon, no up, no down.

  The throb in my neck kept me company.

  If I was bleeding to death, if I was about to die, then this was the place for it. The best place I could imagine.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Sugarman read out the coordinates, and Carter Mosley, compliant as a whipped pup, punched them into his GPS.

  They lifted off, went west, then south. Neither spoke through the headsets. Sugarman rode shotgun, holding Mosley’s .45 in his lap. He was just about pissed off enough to use it. Leaving Timmy Whalen bleeding back in the dark ran contrary to every value he had. Never abandon a fallen comrade. And he liked that woman, despite her moral failing. She’d acted out of love. Love of friend. The same emotion driving Sugarman at that moment.

  They followed the lights of the coastline. Venice, Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda, Cape Coral, Ft. Myers, Estero, Bonita Springs—that narrow strip of illumination, the thriving Gulf Coast. At Naples they turned southeast to Marco Island, flew on, passing above the sprinkle of lights that was Everglades City, then ahead of them was darkness. A hundred miles of solid black.

  Sugarman watched the numbers change on the blue screen of the GPS receiver. He tried to use that inner sonar system that sometimes worked for him, sounding the depths of his intuition. Was Thorn okay? Still alive? Still sending out pings?

  It worked sometimes, but not tonight. He was not picking up anything.

  * * *

  Sasha slid into the ink.

  Going swimming with the crocs, the gators, the cotton-mouths. Just another killer naked in the silky water.

  She lazed on her back, floated, looking up at the godless night. Her hair brushed along her back. She swam toward the houseboat, the only direction Thorn could use to reach her.

  She knew nothing about him except he was one of them, a kin to Bates or Milligan. She knew his face from earlier in the day but had formed no opinion. She could have slain him and Milligan this morning along the Wood River except for Griffin sleeping on the deck. Knowing Milligan was armed, she didn’t want to risk a gunfight that might injure the boy, shorten his life by so much as an hour.

  On that pass she’d seen nothing in Thorn’s face that troubled her. One enemy was no different from the next. She’d never been one to scout the opposition, to put much stock in the pre-ops in Iraq, or back in wrestling days when the coach warned of an opponent’s dirty tricks. The best things she’d ever done required no thinking. Her finest moments were to-tally unplanned.

  She coasted backward through the dark. The water was thick as motor oil. Raising her head from time to time so she could listen, Sasha Olsen rode the tide, doing just enough to stay afloat. Waiting like the other killers, the crocs, the gators, the sharks, the spiders in their perfect webs, with patience that knew no end. Waiting for the twitch, the slightest quiver.

  I knew damn well it had been thirty minutes. No wristwatch required. Maybe forty-five. I was sweating from the short, hacking strokes, taking painful care to make no noise. More paddling in one day than I’d done in years had knotted the muscles in my shoulders and back.

  I’d always wondered how a pilot could lose his place so badly that he didn’t know an upturn from a dive. Now I understood. No sky, no earth. Only the wind and gravity.

  Ever-faithful gravity. The same planetary pull that weighted a body, kept the moon in flight. Unseen, it tugged at us, every atom, every second. And though I had tried and tried again to defy its authority, any act of revolt was a joke. Gravity wrote the rules. The best I could do was paddle, stroke by stroke, move forward through the dark.

  A minute or two later, I set the paddle across my knees. Listened to the slosh inside nearby mangrove roots, though I couldn’t see them, and couldn’t tell if I was about to ram into their midst or was gliding past. I touched the Maglite in my pocket and was tempte
d. Just one quick blink to get my bearings. But I resisted. Even a flicker might be fatal.

  I bent forward and felt between my legs for the reciprocating saw. It was a stupid idea to bring it. No idea at all.

  A saw. A battery-driven saw. It would short out with the first splash of water. It was useless weight. But I’d brought it with a single scenario playing in my mind, a plan that might work if the little ball fell exactly in the right spinning slot. I liked the other scheme better. Rusty in the kayak, me towed behind. A flanking move, a two-on-one pincer attack. But that choice was gone. Now I had the saw. A reciprocating saw with a six-inch blade. Good for plunge-cutting holes in a wall, but little else.

  A kayak. The dark. A woman with a rifle and a handgun. And me with a saw. In my haste and confusion, I hadn’t thought to grab the dive knife or a steak knife or even a but-ter knife. I had brought the fucking saw.

  I scanned the gloom and could distinguish nothing. I knew I’d traveled east at least that same mile I covered earlier in the day. It was possible I’d gone too far and passed by the inlet entirely. It was also possible I’d been betrayed by the wind—a slight shift might have steered me north of where I wanted to be, out into the open bay. Hell, it was possible I’d paddled right up to the edge of Sasha Olsen’s bass boat and at just that moment she was reaching out to stroke my cheek.

  I was lost.

  So I did what anyone who’s lost is warned never to do: I forged on.

  Five minutes, ten. I was stopping to take another breather when somewhere off to my left I heard an unnatural squawk. So dim I could barely separate it from the other night sounds. I held still.

  Then out of the blackness I heard my name. I sunk the paddle in and turned the kayak on a swivel and began to push myself toward the human noise. Fifty yards, a hundred? The voice was so faint, nearly impossible to pinpoint in the void.

  My name again. My name one more time. It was the handheld radio, the transmission so scratchy it sounded like the batteries might be going.