Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Hells Bay

Stryker flashed his ID badge to the MPs at the entrance to the Nashville airport, and drove past lines of military vehicles choking the road. He parked in the garage across from the terminal and went inside. He needed a plane.

His superiors had provided him with written orders and identification that gave him the authority to commandeer a jet if he chose to do so. The problem was, if an officer decided to authenticate those orders, Stryker would be apprehended at best, shot on sight at worst. He decided to take a different course of action.

He wandered onto the airfield, smiling and chatting with the soldiers who were going about their business. There was a sense of relief on the base, and soldiers who might have been baleful and resentful a week ago were eager to help. The bandage on his neck helped, a war wound, he told them, a piece of shrapnel he caught in Colorado.

Removing that damn ICS chip by myself was more dangerous than getting shot at. The Iceman could have been a surgeon.

He caught a ride on a civilian jet bound for Miami, loaded with supplies and a few airmen. He slept on the plane.

At the airport in Miami, he found a helicopter pilot conducting a preflight inspection of his aircraft. When the rotors began to turn, Stryker approached the bird with his weapon drawn.

Stryker convinced the pilot it was in his best interest to fly him into the backcountry. The pilot, a man in his early twenties who told Stryker he had a wife and baby at home, pleaded for his life.

“If you do as I say, you will live,” Stryker said. “I just need a lift.”

“We could get shot down,” the man said.

“You’d better figure something out,” Stryker said.

“I’m supposed to be headed north to Fort Lauderdale.”

“Fly north and then drop down to the deck. Report engine trouble.”

“All right. There is a bad storm headed this way.”

“Perfect. Remember,” Stryker said, “if you cross me, you’re dead.”

“Copy that.”

The small aircraft took off and headed north, then due west. The smoking city below receded and gave way to the Everglades.

They flew just above the trees, the rain pounding the windshield and the wind buffeting the aircraft. The pilot gripped the stick tightly, working the levers with his feet and cursing under his breath. The engine was a roar and small vibrations rippled through Stryker’s chest.

“Where are we going, exactly?”

Stryker produced the GPS coordinates he’d written down. “Here, he said. Just north of Hells Bay,” he shouted.

“There’s nowhere to land the aircraft. It’s all water, from the looks of it.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Stryker said. “I know how to swim.”

With an airspeed of just over a hundred miles per hour, they arrived in the vicinity of the target in just over an hour.

Visibility was poor, and there was nothing to see but a tangled maze of mangroves. Stryker began to doubt the wisdom of this trip.

“Keep circling,” he told the pilot.

“There’s nothing here,” he shouted. “What are you looking for?”

“We’ll know it when we see it.”

“We’re right on top of these coordinates.”

“Put us closer to the water. There in that pond.”

“Roger that.”

Something snapped against the windshield, and a spider web of cracks appeared. A second later came plinking sounds against the light metal skin of the helicopter, and the pilot pulled hard on the stick, the bird lurching and spinning.

“We’re taking fire!”

The engine whined, sounding unhealthy, and Stryker saw black smoke through the rain. Deep booms of thunder crashed around the helicopter.

About thirty feet over the channel, with the helicopter struggling to right itself, Stryker grabbed his bag, opened the door, and jumped feet first, pulling his legs up close to his body.

The impact jarred him from his tailbone to his molars. He was lucky. The water here was deeper than he thought it would be, and he felt his feet slamming into the yielding silt below. He stood in brackish water up to his chest.

He ducked under the water and breaststroked for a tangle of mangroves, surfacing like an alligator, eyes just above the waterline.

The floundering helicopter righted itself and gained altitude. Smoke billowed from the engine behind the cockpit. Stryker watched the helicopter fall with the suddenness of a bird stripped of its wings, plunging into the swamp and exploding on impact.

Good. No time for a distress call. Whoever did the shooting just did me a favor.

Stryker scanned the trees for movement. The rain made dimples on the surface of the water and a fish jumped off to his right. He kept still, waiting.

Insects buzzed and bit his forehead. He ignored them.

A skiff, painted with camouflage, nosed into the channel. It edged into view, silent and slow like an animal emerging from its lair.

A man stood with legs spread apart and an assault rifle in his hands at the stern of the boat. Stryker smiled.

Less than thirty yards away, the boat glided on the current, swinging slightly. The man with the weapon was bearded and wild-looking. He wore a floppy green fishing hat on his head. He knew how to carry a weapon, though.

Stryker observed the way the swamp man scanned from left to right and back again, bending his legs to compensate for the motion of the boat, his aim steady and practiced.

The old man waited like that for thirty minutes before he put his rifle down and picked up a long pole, pushing the skiff in the direction of the downed helicopter.

Stryker held still until the skiff disappeared around a bend in the creek, and then he swam underwater in the direction it had come from. His lungs burned and he could see nothing in water darkened by tannins and silt.

He forced himself to exhale through his nose when he surfaced, careful not to splash. Cammie netting was strung over the tops of the mangroves here, and just ahead was a floating shack. The wood was gray and weather beaten, the roof tin. The entire structure floated on rusty drums. Wooden Appalachian chairs sat on a dock, and a few fishing rods rested in rod holders, lines out in the water.

He waded around the building. The open door and windows revealed a primitive, spartan interior. He could see no radio, television, computer, or anything requiring electricity. A wooden bed, neatly made with sheets tight on a skinny mattress, sat next to the main window. Stryker saw mosquito netting rolled up over the openings.

He waited in the water, shivering, and was glad when he heard the old man singing and splashing. The skiff came back toward the hidden creek.

He ducked under the water and lurked on the side of the shack while the old man docked his boat and tied it off to a cleat. The wizened man stood, hands on his hips, looking out at the channel.

“You just can’t leave him alone, can you? But he’s not going to let the FBI in his backyard, nope. No sir. Not Coyote McCloud.” The old man giggled. “Maybe you’re going to come out here looking for your G-man bird? Well, you’re not gonna find me, you sumbitches. This is a big swamp.”

Jack Stryker shot the man in the back twice from ten feet away.

Coyote McCloud toppled facefirst from his dock, and splashed into the water.

Stryker waded around to the body, just to make sure the man was dead. He pulled the corpse behind the shack, dragging the man by the arms, and pressed him into the shallows, half submerged in a tangle of roots. Stryker got out of the water then, found some rope in the shack, and tied the old man to the trees. It wasn’t pretty, but it would keep the body from drifting out with the tide.

Inside, he found some fresh fish filets, and put them on the woodstove, humming as he cooked.

The interior was surprisingly neat, everything stowed away, from tackle, to scuba gear, to a few rifles on a rack above the stove.

The old man had rigged up a water collection drum on the roof, and Stryker saw iodine tablets he presumed McCloud used to purify water when his drum ran dry. Stryker almost admired the way this crazy coot had lived off the land, off the grid. The more Stryker thought about it, the more he liked the idea for himself. This might be his ticket. He could stay out here indefinitely. All he had to do was get rid of Suzanne Wilkins.