Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE There’s Dying, and Then There’s Dying

Jack Stryker made himself at home. He sat in a comfortable chair at the dock and fished, letting the sun warm his face through the dappled shade of the mangrove canopy. He munched on dried venison jerky and dozed, torpid and satisfied, glad of his dry clothes and the AK-47 that Coyote McCloud had so generously left him.

The incision he’d made on his neck hurt, and was infected. Stryker was not concerned, though, and helped himself to the box of antibiotics McCloud had bequeathed him.

This was the life he should have made for himself to begin with, he decided. No people, no nonsense. He saw that he had been wronged by the world from his first breath. He’d been herded along every step of the way, prodded and poked and made to do things he would not have done. It wasn’t his fault. The world was mean and evil, and the only way to live was to kill or be killed by it. This forgotten place was as close to paradise as he would ever get.

He was sure his propensity for violence stemmed from others, not from within himself. If he’d been left unmolested, he could have been anything. A surgeon, perhaps. Or just a quiet hermit minding his own business here in the middle of nowhere. But they’d hurt him until he couldn’t hurt anymore, couldn’t feel anymore. The blood was on their hands, not his.

Maybe now, he could feel alive in the way others seemed to. He could fish and hunt and kill alligators with his bare hands if that’s what lit him up. He didn’t really need the private island and the yacht.

He’d never been in the game for those things in the first place. It was all about finding a reason to draw the next breath. A flickering moment of interest to extinguish a lifetime of lassitude and pain and numbness. He’d been a survivor for this long, and he was confident in his ability to continue an existence characterized by a flat horizon. He was intrigued by the possibility of something better and more meaningful. A way of living on the fringes of death and society without going through the motions of fitting in.

He’d never cared about the Directors or their money. That he’d never been taught how to fish did not worry him. He was a Ranger. He’d learn.

He daydreamed through the afternoon, content and in no hurry for anything in particular.

Jack Stryker’s eyes flashed open at the burble of an engine coming up the channel, and he grabbed the AK-47.

He’d never understood the expression “shooting ducks in a barrel,” because he’d never hunted ducks, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have thought to shoot them in a barrel. But he did anticipate killing Suzanne Wilkins and starting his life over again without anyone making him react or hurt again.

He put a knee to the dock and brought the solid wooden stock of the Kalashnikov to his shoulder, aiming down steel sights.

“McCloud,” a wrecked voice shouted, “Friendlies inbound. Don’t shoot! Ya hear? I’ve got some folks with me. So put that damn AK down.”

He already did. He gave it to me.

Suzanne was elated by the glimpse of Coyote McCloud’s fish camp through the tangle of branches swatting her face. The straight lines of order and humanity stood out in stark contrast to the twisted chaos of the swamp.

Bobby walked to the bow, shouting, while Suzanne slid over to the helm. She put the boat into neutral, allowing it to glide over the shallow water.

Beowulf stood and shimmied. The old dog was probably about to burst, since he’d steadfastly refused to urinate in the boat. Malamutes were not water dogs.

Taylor sat in Suzanne’s lap, perched on the captain’s chair with small hands tight on the wheel. She’s got to be exhausted. What a joy she is, a marvel. Through the bugs and the cold and the bullets, still smiling.

Ginnie, with an uncharacteristic burst of energy, and perhaps the desire to be the first in line, stepped around the center console to join Bobby. Ginnie’s face was streaked with mud and her hair caked with salt and silt, and she squeezed Suzanne’s shoulder in the way of an old friend who had been through the mud and the crud. She smiled a faint smile, as if to say ‘I can’t believe we made it.’

There were rapid shots then, angry terrible things, but not as awful as the spatter of blood and brains on the deck of the boat. It happened so fast.

Bobby was shouting, Ginnie standing just behind his shoulder. Bobby coughed and pirouetted, bullets tearing through his chest. Ginnie didn’t have time to swear. A round tore through her throat and she fl backwards onto the deck of the boat. There was blood on the deck and the snap of rounds around Suzanne’s head. She reached for the .38 on the console and she swept her daughter up in her arms and tumbled backwards over the side of the vessel. She was sure she heard hysterical laughter.

Taylor was screaming when Suzanne took her over the side of the boat. There was no way to calm a four-year-old child being spattered with brain matter.

Bullets popped against the boat and swarmed through the air. Suzanne was terrified and enraged. She pulled Taylor into the mangroves stroking backwards.

“You stay right here,” Suzanne told Taylor. “No matter what happens, right?”

Taylor nodded, blue eyes sad and grave in the way a child’s eyes should never be, and Suzanne kissed her on the forehead, cradling her face.

“I’m your momma, and I’ll always love you.” There was no time for a proper good-bye.

Suzanne took a deep breath and swam under the black water toward the dock with the revolver in her hand.

There was a rage and fury in Suzanne as she stroked to her doom, terrible and scathing and powerful. Instinct to protect her child propelled her forward.

The assault rifle hammered again and Suzanne could hear rounds zipping through the water. She pressed her belly into to the silt at the bottom of the pond.

She didn’t know who was shooting, but she was sure it wasn’t McCloud.

He would have recognized Bobby’s voice.

She swam to the stern of the boat and surfaced. There was no sound other than her breathing and distant splashes.

She brought the revolver up in a two-handed grip and stepped around the boat. The shooter was nowhere to be seen. She crouched beside the transom.

Off to her right, she could see Taylor’s face through the mangrove roots.

A burst of fire tore the water a few feet in front of her child. Taylor shrieked.

“Come on out,” said a male voice. “Hands on your head.”

Suzanne shook with fear and rage. Her fear was not for herself. How could she stop this man?

Another shot. “Last chance,” he said. He sounded neither angry nor sad.

She stuck the gun into the waistband of her cutoffs and put her hands on her head. She stepped around the boat and waded through the water, waiting to die.

“Momma!” Taylor cried.

“It’s going to be all right,” Suzanne said, choking back a sob.

A man with dark hair stepped out onto the porch of the shack with an AK trained at Suzanne’s head.

Suzanne kept walking. At least he was pointing the weapon at her now. The water was only up to her knees when she got to the dock. She thrust her chest out and put a swivel into her hips when she stepped onto the faded wooden dock.

But for the weapon pointed at her chest, this man was unremarkable. He was maybe five ten with a lean build and businessman haircut. In his thirties, she guessed. She caught him staring at her breasts. Her white shirt clung to her, and she was cold. Good.

“Turn around,” he said. “Nice and slow.”

“Let my baby live,” Suzanne said.

“Maybe,” the man replied. “Turn around.”

She clenched her jaw and turned. He lifted the revolver from her shorts, then patted her down, hands lingering on her chest.

“Tell Taylor to get into the boat,” he said.

How does he know her name? Oh, Lord.

“Honey, can you swim to the boat? Can you get in for Momma?”

She stood dripping on the dock, racking her brains for a way out, feeling the heat of a muzzle centimeters from her lower back.

Taylor climbed into the boat, which was drifting toward the dock on the gentle current.

“Tell her to wait there,” the man said. Suzanne did.

He took a step backwards and told her to turn around. She faced him. His eyes were hungry and he smiled at her, a chilling, grotesque gesture. He stepped to the side, the assault rifle unwavering. “Walk inside,” he said.

“Who are you?”

“Oh, we’ll have time for that later,” he said. He sounded pleased with himself.

The interior of the shack was dim. She saw the weapons on the walls, a filet knife on the table. She was going to have to act.

The blow to the back of her head sent her facedown on the floor. He’d cracked her over the head with the butt of his weapon.

Her vision blurred. He kicked her in the ribs. She tried to crawl under the table. Wood dug under her fingernails as she clawed ahead.

“If you behave yourself, I might think about letting the kid live. Maybe. Just to be sure, though, I’m going to have to tie you up. I hope you understand.” He kicked her again and the air left her lungs.

She rolled over onto her back as he turned to the corner of the room. She had nothing left in her. She was no match for him physically. She could try to bite him in the throat, maybe.

He leaned the assault rifle against a wall.

Taylor deserved better.

The man rummaged around and came up with some heavy fishing line in his hands, grinning at her, leering and predatory, walking with casual indifference, taking his time.

She pushed herself farther under the table with her legs, gasping for air.

Directly over her head, under the far edge of the table, was a sawed-off shotgun, mounted there, no doubt by a paranoid Coyote McCloud. The weapon faced the door. God bless him.

Suzanne reached up and pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening and her ears rang. Over the whine in her head, she heard the man screaming as he fell backwards. Suzanne crawled out from beneath the table, adrenaline surging, heart thudding with wild abandon, and newfound hope in her.

The man was trying to kick himself backwards toward the assault rifle. The floor was slick with his blood.

Suzanne got to her feet, almost slipping, and caught herself on the wall. She picked up the Kalashnikov.

“Bitch,” the man growled.

The blast had caught him in the crotch. Suzanne cracked him in the jaw with the wooden butt of the weapon. She stepped to the door. The boat, with Taylor perched at the bow, had drifted next to the dock.

“Taylor, can you come up here?”

“Okay.”

Suzanne hugged Taylor tight, still holding the assault rifle.

“You sit in one of those chairs. Dry off. I’ll be right back.”

Taylor was crying silently, and she nodded her head.

Suzanne stepped back into the shack and stood over the man who lay bleeding on the wooden floor his feet splayed, and hands on his crotch over a spreading stain on his trousers.

His eyes were closed.

She put her foot on his groin and put her weight on it. The man opened his eyes, screaming. She took two steps back.

She pointed the weapon at his face.

“Talk,” she said. “Who are you? Why are you hunting us?”

“You know damn well,” he snarled. “Whatever Henry told you. Whatever your dead father told you. They…” He groaned, eyes rolling in his head.

Suzanne heard the whine of an engine.

“They what?”

“They couldn’t let you live. The Directors. You’ll never be safe.”

“How did you know we were here?”

“Water,” he gasped.

She stepped on his mangled balls.

“How?”

After he finished screaming, he said, “Bart’s GPS system.”

“We didn’t bring that boat. How did you track us?”

“Waypoints.”

“Where is my husband?”

“The Directors eliminated him in Tennessee.” The man smiled at her again.

Suzanne heard shouts outside. Someone hollering “McCloud? Suzanne?”

“Daddy!” Taylor said.

Suzanne smashed the killer in the face again and rushed outside to greet her husband.

Henry strode to his wife and child while his friends dealt with an unconscious Jack Stryker.

Henry held his family tight in his arms, shaking from gratitude and relief. For a time they did not speak. Taylor put her head on his shoulder, one arm around her father and the other around her mother, and they stood on the dock that way.

They were safe, and they were together, and that was the only thing mattered in the world.

“I’m so sorry,” Suzanne said to him, her blue eyes filled with hurt. Her hair was matted to her cheeks and streaked with mud and blood.

Henry put a finger to her lips and then kissed her.

“I never meant to hurt you,” she said.

“I’m just glad you’re both okay.”

“The papers I sent you,” she said. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Good,” Henry said.

“Can we start over again? Someplace far away?”

“Whatever you like,” Henry said. “Anything.”

There was a splash as the men tossed Stryker into the water.

“I need to talk with this jackass,” Henry said. “And we need to get the hell out of here.”

Death isn’t so bad, after all, Stryker thought. He was floating. That was nice. Everything was dark and he felt disembodied.

Then pain began to permeate his calm. Just the edges of it at first, a diffuse thing, until it became sharp and jagged, centered in his groin and sending howling, rolling waves throughout his body. He opened his eyes.

He was floating. He was on his back. Henry Wilkins peered down at him from the dock. There were other soldiers behind Wilkins.

Stryker flailed, and found he could not move his arms or his legs properly. He was bound. An orange life jacket kept his head above the water.

“We’re going to have a conversation,” Henry said, “about your bosses.”

“I don’t know anything,” Stryker said.

“Let me tell you something,” Henry replied reasonably, as if he were discussing the weather. “Old Man McCloud was a friend of mine. He’s an odd bird. Was. One of his eccentricities being his taste in pets.”

“What are you talking about?”

“See, McCloud’s been out here for about thirty years. He got lonely. He had one friend here, though, by the name of Rocky Balboa.”

“I told you I don’t know anything. They used cutouts. Encrypted comms. There’s nothing I can say you don’t already know.”

“Rocky is a fourteen-foot alligator,” Henry went on. “McCloud fed him. The gator kept the sharks out of the channel, kept other gators away. It was like they had some kind of unspoken agreement. I’ve never seen anything like it. I passed old Rocky on the way in.”

“You’re going to kill me either way,” Stryker said.

“True,” Henry said, nodding down at him. “But there’s dying and then there’s dying.”

Stryker floated in the water, trying to think past the pain devouring him. He was done. “Screw you,” he gasped.

“See, what gators do is they bite you and roll you under the water. Then they carry you around for a while until you get soft and ripe.”

Stryker slow blinked and clenched his jaw. “You’ll make it quick?”

“Yes.”

“In my ruck,” he said. “An envelope. Numbers. I don’t know what they mean. I took ’em from that guy. Oh fuck this hurts. Blackaby. One of them. In Houston.”

“Good dog,” Henry said, turning away.

“Wait! Shoot me. One soldier to another. You gave your word.”

“It might be quick,” Henry said. “Depends on how hungry Rocky is.”