Shark River

21

It was Cordero. Had to be Edgar Cordero. Pure fury has an energy that’s infectious, radiates, and the light-skinned man was in a rage.

I recalled a phone message from Harrington saying that Cordero had gone berserk, literally, prior to using a bat to beat a mother and child to death.

Now here he was, crazy with anger again.

I recognized it in the way he was brutalizing Tomlinson and Ransom. I could see it in the way his guy steered them hard toward shore, slowing only slightly, surfing down waves until the boat grounded itself on the beach, the hull lifting and heeling to starboard, spray pluming over the transom as first Goatee, then Pumpkin-head swung over the side into knee-deep water trying to steady the thing.

They either knew nothing about boats or didn’t plan to stay long.

Then I watched Cordero shove Ransom backward over the side into the water and Tomlinson leap immediately to help her, lifting her to her feet in the slow surf, her tie-dye T-shirt, red and blue, clinging to her body, her expression dazed as she touched her own face experimentally, then looked at her fingertips. A familiar interrogative: Was her nose bleeding?

I was already climbing down the tree, not even thinking about it, the Sig in the back of my pants, checkered grip secure against my spine, my brain scanning to make sense of what I was seeing. I remembered saying to Tomlinson that I might rent a boat in Chokoloskee; remembered him pressing for us to make the trip together, then Ransom’s dark assertion that they should not let me go alone.

“I’ve got a feeling someone’s going to die,” she’d told me, fingering her beads and her little bag of magic.

I’d done it. I’d put the idea of a rental boat into their heads and, somehow, the two groups had met on that tiny island and at that tiny marina. Ransom was a talker; so was Tomlinson. Both of them were easy sources of information; both easily followed. Both also easily overpowered.

I guessed that somewhere between here and Chokoloskee, probably hidden away in some small backwater, was a second tri-hull.

It was the boat Tomlinson and Ransom had rented before Cordero and his men had followed them, stopped them, then kidnapped them.

Halfway down the tree, I could still see the beach. I watched as Goatee, still holding the little palm computer, pointed toward the red tent. Saw Cordero make an impatient waving gesture with his right hand until the man with the pumpkin-sized head tossed him what looked to be an Uzi.

Under any other circumstances, it would have been an absurdly amusing sight: A distinguished-looking gentleman in gray slacks, black glossy shoes, and an expensive dress shirt holding a submachine gun at waist level. I watched him as he ripped the top-mounted cocking handle back and fired into the tent, holding the trigger on full automatic, the muzzle climbing high enough to spray stray rounds into the trees near me as the nylon of the red tent shuddered.

Reflexively, I pressed myself against the mangrove’s trunk, waiting. Then my ears strained in the abrupt silence of an empty magazine. I watched Cordero change magazines as Goatee walked cautiously to the tent, drew a nine-millimeter semiautomatic and fired several more rounds into it before he ripped the screen door open and peered inside. Then he kicked the tent and kept kicking it until the stakes finally pulled free, and the little red dome tumbled down the beach in the wind like tumbleweed.

I couldn’t hear, then, what Goatee said to Cordero. But I heard Cordero’s voice clearly as he grabbed Ransom and yanked her to his chest like a shield, then touched the barrel of the Uzi to her temple. I saw her jerk her face away from that hot flash arrestor as he called out in English, “You come out now or I kill your sister! You hear me? I blow her fucking head right off you don’t come out!” Then he screamed my name: “FORD!”

Feeling numb, helpless, I dropped down onto the sand and walked toward the beach, hands high over my head.

I still had the Sig Sauer in the back of my pants. Why not? What was the worst they could do if they found it?

They were going to kill us all anyway.

I watched the expression on Edgar Cordero’s face change when he saw me. Watched it change from rage to a slow demonic delight. He shoved Ransom roughly to the ground, absolutely focused on me, lifting the muzzle of the Uzi to chest level as he called, “So! The cockroach finally comes crawling into the sunlight! You are so seldom alone”-he turned and kicked Ransom viciously in the thigh-“that we brought you company! Does that please you, cabron? How does it feel to see a member of your own family in pain?”

I’d never seen Tomlinson attempt violence. Now he did. He went charging at Cordero as if to tackle him, all arms and jeans and Hawiian shirt, but Goatee intercepted. Hit him behind the shoulders with the butt of his pistol once… twice… then kneed him to the ground.

I continued to walk toward the little group, my mind working frantically, seeing the white beach and broad ocean beyond them, their rental boat rolling beam to the waves now, my skiff bucking at anchor nearby.

I had to come up with something. I had to at least try.

The pit I’d dug was about twenty meters to Cordero’s right. Still covered with palmettos, too. If Tomlinson or Ransom created some kind of diversion, maybe I could dive into the pit and come up firing. Take my chances because, the way things looked, it was the only chance we had. It might be even better to let Cordero’s men disarm me first, give them a false sense of safety. Dive and grab Tucker’s old revolver that I’d hidden in there. I could use the big. 44 to take out at least one of them. Then, hopefully, in the confusion, get off a couple more shots.

“Come closer! I want to look into the eyes of the filthy scum who attacked my son Amador when he wasn’t looking. Attacked him when he was not ready, like a woman fights!”

I kept walking. Watched as Cordero handed the Uzi to Pumpkin-head and, in Spanish, asked him for a knife.

I remembered Harrington saying that Edgar collected ears from his adversaries.

Kept them like trophies behind the bar to show his friends.

Now Cordero was walking toward me, opening the knife as he approached, his eyes glittering. I stopped, waited. I began to lower my hands, wanting to get into position to grab my pistol, but raised them again when Pumpkin-head poked the Uzi at me and yelled, “Hands up! I shoot!”

Edgar Cordero was a few inches shorter than me. He had a pocked face beneath carefully sculpted hair. He stood close enough that I could smell the cologne he wore and the metallic stink of nicotine. He stood there, face up, his eyes boring into mine as if we were two boxers at a weigh-in, and then he touched the knife to my cheek… then placed the blade on the top of my left ear. He was probably expecting me to flinch, but I didn’t flinch because I knew there was no escaping what he was going to do.

I heard him say, “You attacked my son from behind, like a dog, and now he will never walk again.”

Feeling the strange and eerie calm of total resignation, I replied, “Sometimes the only way to catch a coward is from behind.”

I watched the man’s face go momentarily blank… then contort with rage as, behind him, Ransom yelled, “Don’t you hurt my brother!” and she lunged toward me… me feeling a searing pain in my ear as Edgar began to saw with the knife… and then I heard one booming gunshot… then a second gunshot as Ransom dropped to the sand.

Then, oddly and without reason, Cordero was on the ground near her, screaming, swearing in Spanish and holding his neck, which was gushing blood. Pumpkin-head was down, too. Motionless. He’d flung the Uzi far from him before burying his face in black sand.

What the hell had happened?

Goatee was suddenly in front of me, waving the pistol in my direction as he backed away toward the boats, yelling in Spanish, “What is doing this? Who is there?” but then he spoke no more as his head seemed to vaporize in a scarlet mist, his legs managing two more steps before his body collapsed near the water.

A microsecond later, I heard a third booming gunshot, the sound arriving long after the heavy grain cartridge, and I turned just in time to see a puff of smoke drift out of a royal palm canopy that had to be a half mile away.

“Doc, she’s bleeding!” Tomlinson was on his feet, kneeling over Ransom, who had her face covered with her hands. There was lots of blood there and she wasn’t moving.

I rushed to help, feeling a surreal and shuddering grief, but then she did move as Tomlinson lifted her, and Ransom stood shakily, hand still holding her bleeding nose. She was wide-eyed, trembling with shock, looking at Cordero who was now silent, eyes empty, staring at the sky, dead. Then she considered the other two faceless corpses before she touched fingers to her sacred beads and whispered, “God strike them dead, just like I pray for Him to do. It happened, my brother, it really happened. Don’t be telling me no more about what ain’t magic!”

In the distance, I could see a tiny figure dressed in ninja black climbing down the trunk of the palm. He had to be using climbing hooks and a belt from the way he moved. He was descending pretty fast.

I turned and said to Tomlinson, “Get in their boat and go. Now. They made you abandon the boat you rented, right?”

Not looking at me, looking at the dead men, he was shaking his head. “No, they got in our boat. Ours was a little bigger and seemed newer, so after they stopped us, they climbed aboard. I didn’t know who the hell they were.”

I said, “Perfect. Then get out of here. Fast! Go straight to the marina, get in the truck and drive back to Sanibel. And Ransom?” When she turned to me, I touched my hands to her shoulders and I hugged her close, patting her back, the only brotherly comfort I could offer. I whispered into her ear, “Promise me something. Don’t say a word to anyone about what happened here. Ever. Will you promise?”

The frightened and bewildered expression on her face changed slowly to resolve. It was good to see, a verification of something strong and important. She said to me, “Not talkin’ about this is what God already telling me to do.”

I helped them get the boat off the beach, aware that the figure dressed in black was getting closer, ever closer. I kept telling them they had to hurry. I meant it. If they saw him, found out who it was, he would have to kill them. That’s just the way it worked.

When Tomlinson and Ransom were safe, almost to the horizon, I turned and faced a man my size; a man in black nylon pants and a Navy watch sweater exactly like my own; a man wearing a black ski mask and carrying a Remington 700 sniper rifle with a cannon-sized Star-Tron Mark scope that I knew all too well.

“They’re gone?”

I told him, “Yeah.”

He looked at the three corpses before he looked at me. “I had to rush the first shot. Your long-haired pal was in my line of fire. Don’t think I wasn’t tempted to pop him, too. But why should I do your work for you?”

I said, “Nope, no way, you’re wrong. It’s no one’s job anymore. We have an agreement.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “Remember?”

He was standing over Edgar Cordero. I listened to him tell me that he was sorry he’d had to use me as bait, but it was the only way to isolate the Colombian, get him on neutral turf, before he said, “Throat shot.”

I felt like knocking the man on his ass, he’d cut it so close. Not that I knew he’d be there. I didn’t. Then I watched him strip off his mask and hold out his hand to me as he said, “You’re only the third or fourth Negotiator I’ve met. It’s an honor.”

I shook his hand, so much adrenaline in me that I was beginning to feel weak. I said, “You mean the third or fourth outside your own teammates, of course.”

He smiled. Said, “Very insightful,” as he nudged Cordero’s corpse with the toe of his worn jungle boot. “This sick bastard would’ve found a way to kill Lindsey. It’s the way he was. It’s what he did. He’d gotten her scent and he hated me. Kill your enemy’s children, his signature. He’d’ve never quit.”

Then Hal Harrington reached into his pocket and handed me a handkerchief. “That’s a nasty little cut you’ve got there on your ear.”

I began to daub blood from the side of my face as he added, “The kind of guys my daughter usually dates, they’ve got tattoos and piercings, not scars.”