First Drop

Twenty-four

I’d never been in an airboat before. Given other circumstances I might even have enjoyed the experience.

Each craft was around eighteen or twenty feet in length, with a flat-bottomed hull that sat less than six inches into the water. Rows of ridged aluminium bench seats for the long-departed day trippers filled the blunt forward part of the boat.

At the rear was the hulking great V8 Chevy motor. It looked like it had been lifted straight out of a Yank truck, leaving the better part of its exhaust silencer system behind in the process.

The motor was connected to a giant carbon fibre prop, mounted inside a mesh guard above the stern. Just in front of that, at the controls, sat Mason. He was wearing a Rolling Rock baseball hat with a pair of camouflage-coloured ear defenders jammed over the top and he watched our approach without any expression on his face. One of the Mossberg shotguns was slotted into a rack by his raised seat.

Whitmarsh brought us out first, then unlocked the door to retrieve Trey and his father. Keith came scurrying out, jerking to a stop when the rush of movement brought guns up in his face.

“Look,” he said, sly now in his desperation, “we can still work this out! Trey really might have something to offer, y’know? Take him and I’ll work on the rest of the program for you. For nothing! I—”

That was as much as I could take of that but Sean beat me to it. He took one quick step forwards and hit Keith in the face with a beautiful right hand, following it up with a left to the solar plexus that dropped the little weasel gasping to his knees. Neither Whitmarsh nor Lonnie made any moves to stop him.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see somebody do that to this piece of shit,” Whitmarsh said. “You’re a jerk, Pelzner. Now stop whining and get up.”

Keith regained his feet slowly, holding both hands to his bleeding nose. He glanced at his son for support but Trey wouldn’t even look at him.

Whitmarsh kept a hand on the boy’s shoulder as we walked single-file down to the waiting boat. It was a canny move on his part. Trey was probably the one person we’d all try to protect – all of us except Keith, that is.

By this time Mason had the motor cranked up and the prop had started to spin. The noise of it set a pair of gangling birds that looked like white herons to flight.

The black guy who’d burst into Brown’s office with Mason was waiting for us with the other Mossberg in the bow of the boat. Haines was further back, nonchalantly holding his usual Smith & Wesson pistol. He seemed to have it pointed as much at Whitmarsh as at the rest of us but it was hard to tell because his eyes were hidden behind those Oakleys again.

If Whitmarsh noticed this lack of trust, he gave no sign of it. Despite the fact that the burn had gone out of the day, he was still sweating heavily, his shirt sopping with it now.

What’s the matter, Jim? This too cold-blooded for you? Didn’t have any trouble at the motel, now did you?

The four of us, the condemned, ended up on one row in the centre of the airboat. Trey tucked himself in between me and Sean, leaving Keith to sit, sniffing loudly, on his own at the other side. Shunned even in his final moments.

Lonnie unhooked the bow rope from its post and jumped into the front section with the black guy. Whitmarsh climbed less nimbly into the row immediately behind us, with Haines lurking behind him, still smiling like this was the most fun he’d had with his clothes on in ages.

Mason cranked up the revs and moved away from the dock and I immediately understood why he was wearing those ear defenders. The V8 began to roar as the airboat glided across the small inlet and headed for the open swamp beyond, picking up speed all the while.

The surface of the swamp was coated in a thick layer of water hyacinths but, without any projections from the hull, the airboat scudded over the top of it. It hardly cut a swathe through the vegetation in its wake, leaving very little evidence to mark the trail to our final resting place.

Mason opened the throttle until we were really flying. He handled the airboat with easy confidence, banking into the turns as he skirted round the larger patches of weeds and semi-immersed trees. Insects of all descriptions splatted into us so hard you daren’t breathe with your mouth open or you would have swallowed enough of them to qualify as a last meal.

And all the time we were moving I was watching the men watching us, looking for a break, a weakness, a moment of inattention that would spell our opportunity.

It never came.

After ten minutes or so Mason eased back and the airboat’s speed dropped off until it was dead in the water, letting the motor idle lazily. The sudden reduction in noise was a deafening silence by comparison. Without the cooling breeze whipping past us, the temperature level also rose abruptly, so we almost seemed to be back to the high heat of the day even though the sunset was now in full swing.

We had come far enough to be out of sight of the small dock and the building next to it and had swerved about so much I couldn’t even have pointed in the right direction to get back. We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Cypress trees that towered out of the turgid water, draped with the Spanish moss that would eventually smother them.

I glanced with growing apprehension at the darkened water alongside the boat. There were snakes in there, I knew, as well as the alligators Livingston Brown was relying upon to dispose of our mortal remains.

A group of bubbles broke the surface close by. I tried to tell myself it was just gas from rotting down plants. I wasn’t particularly convincing.

Mason seemed to be looking around, too, with the advantage of his elevated position. After a moment he pointed over to his left and, following his direction, I spotted the long gnarly shape of the submerged ‘gator about a hundred metres away.

If the part of it I could see in the dusky light was anything to go by, it was a big one. I’d never seen anything like it in the wild before and had to admit to a certain stereotyped revulsion at the grotesque appearance, with those twin rows of bony plates along its back and the long flat skull. Maybe knowing we were the feature dish on its dinner menu for this evening had some part to play. As I looked, I caught another stealthy movement, close to the first, then a third.

My God, the place is crawling with them.

I glanced over at Sean. His face was taut, skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, brows pulled down. I could sense his body coiling like a pre-strike snake, alert to the slightest possibility, the faintest quiver in the air.

“This’ll do,” Mason said, offhand. “Any closer and the sound of the shots will scare ‘em off anyhow.”

I was at the end of the row and Haines waved me to my feet.

“Ladies first, I do believe,” he said.

I stood, trying to keep my knees soft, my arms loose by my sides. Trey looked up at me mutely, shock keeping him passive even though he was clearly on the edge of panic.

“You don’t have to do this, Jim,” I said to Whitmarsh, achieving an admirably level tone considering my heartrate was redlining, making it hard to draw breath. “You still have a chance to make this right.”

Whitmarsh shook his head rather sadly and moved further to the edge of the boat himself, the gun aimed square at the centre of my body. “You won’t change my mind, Charlie,” he said carefully. “It’s already made up.”

He was looking right into my eyes as he spoke and I could have sworn there was something at the back of his own that hadn’t been there before. The barrel of the gun shifted away from me just a fraction.

If you get a chance, take it! Sean’s words were roaring in my head. I bunched my muscles, felt rather than saw Sean do the same.

“No, you can’t do it!” Suddenly Trey was out of his seat next to me like a rabbit, the fear turning his voice into a shriek. “You can’t!” And he dived for Whitmarsh, latching onto his right hand like he was trying to save himself from falling.

Whitmarsh had already started to squeeze the trigger but Trey’s reckless act threw his aim off. The gun discharged but the shot went wild and wide.

Which was a damned shame really, because he hadn’t been aiming at us.

He’d been aiming at Haines.

At the same moment, by what must have been a prior arrangement, Lonnie swung the Remington up and round towards the black guy standing next to him. Without hesitation, he shot him in the chest.

Lonnie was standing so close to him when he fired that it was almost point-blank. The shot barely had a chance to begin its spread, punching into Brown’s security man almost as a solid slug.

Half the back of his shirt exploded outwards as his body ripped open, the centre of his torso disintegrating in a split-second. Debris splashed down beside the boat and then the man toppled backwards to join it. The last thing to hit the water, it seemed, was the Mossberg as it dropped from his fingers and sank like a brick.

Lonnie didn’t bother to watch him go over. As soon as he’d pulled the trigger he’d racked another fresh cartridge into the chamber and started to twist towards the stern.

Mason saw the move as it happened but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe he had the time to reach for his own gun. He just put the rudder hard over and stamped on the throttle, whipping the airboat into a vicious surging turn.

Everyone standing instantly lost their footing, including me. Trey thudded to his knees, almost bringing Whitmarsh down on top of him.

Haines skidded, grabbing at one of the engine supports to keep himself upright. His lips pulled back into a triumphant snarl as he began to bring the Smith & Wesson up to bear on the hampered Whitmarsh.

In the event, though, he never got a shot off.

One moment Sean was sprawled half on the floor beside me, and the next he’d put both hands on the back of the bench seat and vaulted over it, launching himself at Haines. As he leapt he pivoted his legs straight out to the side of him with the easy power of an Olympic gymnast.

One foot landed square in Haines’s ribcage, while the other connected with the side of his jaw. The man’s head snapped back. He staggered a second time and went down, dropping the semiautomatic into the bottom of the boat.

Like the rest of us, Lonnie had fallen when Mason made his violent manoeuvre but he’d landed badly. As he started to regain his feet I saw that he’d snapped his right forearm about halfway between wrist and elbow. The break was a nasty one and the lower part of his arm had taken on a rubbery, detached quality.

With a grunt of effort and pain he swapped the Remington into his left hand and pointed it at Mason, sitting exposed at the helm. Mason still hadn’t reached for his own gun, but he protected himself the best way he could. He wrenched at the controls again to send the airboat into a series of vicious turns like a gazelle jinking to outwit the pursuing lions.

Lonnie lost his balance again and started to go over backwards. He instinctively put his right hand out to catch himself but that action only served to compound the fracture. The arm collapsed under his own weight, sending him tumbling over the side of the boat and into the brackish opaque water of the swamp.

As he went over Lonnie’s finger tightened on the trigger and the Remington let go a second shot. Trey was down below seat level, still grappling with Whitmarsh, and Keith had yet to raise his head. Sean and I dived for cover and by some miracle the stinging spray of pellets missed both of us.

Mason wasn’t so lucky. He caught a peppering across the right-hand side of his body, little more than a glancing blow but bad enough, all the same.

But the bulk of the shot bypassed all the people on board and hit the mesh cage surrounding the propeller. It passed straight through like a magic trick, leaving the guard untouched but the prop inside shattered into fragments, sending shards of carbon fibre zinging across the back end of the airboat like deadly little flechettes.

With the throttle wide open, the prop must have been spinning at close to five thousand revs a minute when it blew. Mason lifted off immediately, but the resulting massive imbalance had already almost shaken the engine to pieces. He grappled with the rudder controls with both hands as it began to veer wildly. His arm and the side of his shirt were already wet with blood.

“Jump!” Sean shouted to me.

I didn’t have time to argue with him about the wisdom of that one. Lonnie was already in the water, half-swimming half-wading for the cover of the nearest clump of Cypress trees about sixty metres away to our left. If he could make it with only one arm working . . .

I reached over the back of the seat and grabbed Trey by the collar of his shirt. The adrenaline pumping through my system had the effect of making him weigh almost nothing as I heaved him away from Whitmarsh and all but threw him over the side of the boat. Sean kicked a squealing Keith into the water on the opposite side and jumped in after him.

Hitting flat water, even when you’re not travelling that fast is an unpleasant business, not unlike coming off a motorbike and bouncing along the road surface until you’ve scrubbed off some speed. The only difference was the lack of protective leathers and the fact that you’re unlikely to die by drowning at the end of your average bike crash.

Not that drowning was the biggest of my fears right now.

Even so, I was coughing like a consumptive as I surfaced, spitting out gouts of foul-tasting swamp water and scraping at the wet hair that was plastered across my eyes. Then I looked around me, frantic, but in the rapidly encroaching gloom I couldn’t spot Trey or Sean anywhere close by.

Just for a second I was assailed by all manner of terrors. Not least of which centred on the presence of the alligators. I splashed in another quick circle but there were no telltale lumps bearing down on me and eyeing me up with a view to dinner. Then I remembered about the poisonous water moccasin snakes.

Oh nice one, Fox.

The airboat thundered on past for a short distance after we’d bailed out of it, describing a big curving turn. Half the rudder system was shot away, too, and Mason wrestled for some semblance of control. The engine sounded raucous in the extreme, barely holding together under the incredible strain of trying to spin the lopsided propeller. It was protesting its mechanical agony loudly in the only way it knew.

I could just about see Whitmarsh up on his feet again now, struggling hand-to-hand with Haines as the airboat bucked and shuddered underneath them.

Whitmarsh had weight on his side but Haines was clearly the stronger party. As I watched he ducked and got a shoulder into Whitmarsh’s expansive stomach, ramming him backwards and toppling him over the side. He made considerably more of a splash when he hit the water than any of the rest of us had done.

And then, not far behind me I heard a strangled cry that could only be Trey. I spun round towards the sound and saw the kid thrashing in the water. I hoped those long shadows closing on him were just a product of the failing light but I knew I was wrong.

“Trey, for Christ’s sake keep still!” I yelled at him. He froze almost instantly, sinking until barely more than his nose and the top of his head was visible out of the water.

Without any clear idea of what the hell I was going to do when I got there I headed for him in a fast crawl. I arrived at just about the same time as an alligator that must have been twelve feet long, its body a dull greyish black like a slightly scaly nuclear submarine, only not so friendly.

Trey was terrified, incoherent with fright as the reptile approached in its sinuous way through the water. I put myself between it and the boy. My brain inconveniently fed me with an old nature programme snippet that an alligator’s jaws had the crushing power of 3000 pounds per square inch. I braced myself, still with no idea how to go about winning such an uneven fight.

But then, almost at the last moment, the ‘gator swerved around us, almost graceful in its evasion. I swear the end of its tail brushed past my bare arm in the water but it could have been one of those damned snakes. Another smaller alligator swam by on the other side, moving fast enough to leave a wake.

It was only when I looked at the water that I realised why they hadn’t bothered with us.

There was blood in it.

Not from Trey and certainly not from me. It was leaching out of the guy Lonnie had blown away in the front of the boat. His body now floated face down less than twenty feet away, leaving a greasy trail of blood in the water like oil from the wreck of a rusting Panamanian tanker.

The alligators converged on the man’s body with a purpose, squabbling over who got first bite of the prize. As I looked one of them seemed to rear up, its massive jaws wide open to show a mouth that was a surprisingly delicate shade of pink inside. A scrap of cloth had snagged on the beast’s teeth and flapped when it shook its head. I didn’t look too closely at what else might have been in there.

“Come on!” I grabbed Trey’s arm, tugged at him. “We’ve got to get away from here.”

Getting him to shift wasn’t easy, even though every ounce of logic should have told him that getting away from the vicinity of the corpse – or buffet as the alligators viewed it – was a good idea. Fortunately, Trey was easy to tow through the water, even if the vegetation did seem to constantly tangle round our limbs.

Suddenly, my feet hit the muddy bottom and then I, like Lonnie, was half-swimming half-staggering with my burden towards the relative safety of the trees.

I still hadn’t caught sight of Sean or Keith and that in itself scared me. Not that I cared what happened to Keith, which I recognised wasn’t the best attitude for a bodyguard. It was always Trey who’d been my responsibility and I was determined to do my damnedest to save him now.

I glanced behind me. The light levels were dropping fast but I could still make out the collective hump in the water where the alligators were feeding. More of them were gathering all the time until I couldn’t count the numbers.

Christ, aren’t they supposed to be a threatened species or something?

And, even though I couldn’t see it, I could certainly hear the airboat circling back towards us. The trees were almost within reach now. I shoved Trey on faster, slipping in my haste, going down on my knees and taking in another lungful of rancid gloop.

Blinded and gasping, I felt a pair of hands grab hold of the back of my shirt and the seat of my trousers and lift me clear of the water. I began to struggle instinctively until Sean’s voice said, “Be still!” in a savage whisper.

He dragged me through a small gap in the trees, and Trey after me. I got to my feet slowly, coughing and retching until there was only air in my lungs again. And not much of that.

On the other side of the trees the area opened out slightly into a pool of fly-blown water with shallow-sloping muddy banks. The trees were close in on all sides, making it darker in there than out on the open swamp.

I squinted suspiciously at a number of dark knobbly stumps protruding out of the pool until I realised they were part of a root system. They stuck up about six inches out of the water and would, at least, be enough to stop the airboat being able to force its way into our sanctuary.

Then, on the other side of the pool, I noticed the elongated shapes of three medium-sized alligators, drawn up on the far bank like beached canoes, watching us unblinkingly.

Keith and Lonnie were standing up to their knees in the water, watching the reptiles and brandishing ripped-out branches just in case any of them decided to make a move. Not that the rotting timber would have lasted long against something with the speed and agility of a hungry ‘gator. For the moment, though, both sides seemed willing to accept the uneasy standoff.

Keith was shaking so hard I’m amazed he could keep hold of his branch, let alone manage to remain at his post. Lonnie looked calmer, cradling his mangled right arm carefully across his body.

“Where’s Jim?” Lonnie asked over his shoulder.

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “He went into the water but I didn’t see what happened after that.”

Sean didn’t comment, just kept low and peered out through the undergrowth at the airboat. He had mud on his face as makeshift camouflage cream and was blending in to his surroundings perfectly. Something about his movements had changed, gone feral.

“Sean.” I put my hand on his arm and he turned his head just enough to look at me. His eyes were as cold and expressionless as those watching us from the far bank. I took my hand back in a reflex, as though he would have bitten me if I hadn’t moved. Whatever words I’d been about to say died in my throat.

Sean nodded out into the swamp. “There he is,” he said, clipped, and when I looked I saw him too. Whitmarsh must have been disorientated by his submersion and it had taken him a while to get himself together enough to head for cover. He was making slow progress through the congested water in the rough direction of our hide-out.

At that moment, the airboat came into view again. It seemed that Mason had managed to regain some small measure of control by this time. I don’t know what happened to Haines’s pistol, but he’d taken the Mossberg from its rack and had moved forwards to the bow. Even in the low light he spotted Whitmarsh’s white shirt against the murky water straight away and signalled Mason to change direction.

“Shit,” I whispered. “He’s going to lead them right to us.”

If he lived that long.

As if doing us a favour, Haines brought the shotgun up to his shoulder and fired. The muzzle flash was a bright spout of flame in the encroaching darkness. Whitmarsh cried out and began to flail in the water. Haines was still too far away for it to have been a killing shot. Maybe that was what he’d intended.

I felt a hand slip into mine and hold on tightly. It was Trey.

“For God’s sake, you can’t just leave him out there,” Lonnie said, his voice hoarse. “He saved your goddamn lives.”

Sean shot him a vicious glance but said nothing. There wasn’t much he could say, not when Lonnie was right.

Mason began to circle Whitmarsh, passing within a dozen metres of us as he did so. The wash broke over the trees roots and swept into the pool so we had to brace to keep our feet. The Chevy engine sounded almost on its last legs. Mason was having to coax it along and, after Lonnie’s wild shot, it was clearly costing him.

“Leave him and let’s go back,” he called to Haines, his voice scratchy with pain. “We need to go get the other boat. This one’s gonna die on us any minute and then we’ll be stuck out here. And I need to get fixed up. Jesus man, this hurts.”

“If we don’t finish this now, we’ll lose ‘em,” Haines shouted back. “Just keep driving the damned boat.”

“Wait until they come round again, then we’ll go out behind them,” Sean said quietly to me.

I nodded, disengaging my hand from Trey’s with some difficulty. Whatever Whitmarsh might have done, we couldn’t sit back and let Haines slaughter him.

“Wait a minute, you can’t go out there!” Keith protested. “You’ll get us all killed.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Dad, shut up,” Trey hissed. “They’re professionals.”

Keith opened his mouth, shut it again, and fell silent.

Haines fired another shot at Whitmarsh. He was close enough for it to have been a final one, close enough to make the water erupt and boil near his head, but Haines was playing with him now, making the older man suffer for his crimes. The airboat came round again and this time Sean and I slipped into the water in its wake.

I struck out for Whitmarsh, reaching him in half a dozen strokes. Haines’s first shot had taken him in the side and shoulder and he was losing blood fast enough to be fading. I rolled him over onto his back to stop him drowning, trying not to think about the irresistible taste of meat he was putting into the water.

Haines spotted me and gave a cry of triumph.

“Still trying to play the bodyguard, huh, Charlie?” he jeered, leaning out towards me over the side of the boat. “Well, you can’t save everybody. In your case, you can’t save anybody.” And he started to bring the shotgun up.

But just as he took aim the V8 gave its final rattling splutter and stalled. In the unearthly silence that followed I realised I could hear another engine. It could only be another airboat. Close and closing.

Haines realised it too. He whirled round, eyes scanning the darkness of the swamp.

And, as if waiting just for the split-second of his distraction, a dark shape burst out of the water next to Haines. It knocked him straight off his feet and dragged him over the side of the boat.