Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX A Deeper Kind of Darkness

“Got it,” Wallace said from inside the shack, holding up an envelope. “A little water damage, but not much. A page full of random numbers. I’m uploading it now.”

“Any way we can get through to Colonel Bragg?” Henry said. “No. They’re dark. We’re on our own. That’s all right.”

“Let’s move out, then,” Henry said.

“Why the rush?” McCoy said, slapping a mosquito. “It’s getting to be dark.”

“Maybe,” Henry said. “But if Stryker was able to hack my friend’s GPS system and figure out where we were going, so could the Directors. They might be coming for him.”

McCoy arched his eyebrows. “Ah.” “Let’s get squared away.”

Henry wanted to be able to talk to Suzanne and relax. To say things that needed to be said. There wasn’t any time, and he had that hunted feeling in him he’d come to know well.

Henry took whatever fuel he could find from the skiff and the boat Suzanne had used to get to McCloud’s camp.

The bodies of his friends were still sprawled on the deck of the boat, Beowulf too. He focused on the tanks, promising to come back to this spot when it was all over and say some words and prayers.

“We’ve got a lot of weight in the boat,” Henry said, backing out of the inlet. “There’s going to be some pushing.”

Wallace smiled grimly. “Through the blood and the mud and the crud.”

Henry was more concerned with a drone strike than anything else. With the armistice in place and the unraveling conspiracy public, he hoped the Directors would have limited resources now. If they came, knowing where to look, there would be no escape. Thermal imaging would reveal heat signatures through any canopy of leaves or cover of darkness.

When he heard the whine of boat motors, he was tense. Either help was on the way, or they were in for a hell of a fight.

“I hear it too,” Carlos said. “What do you think?”

“Suzanne, take Taylor. Now. Head back to the shack. Grab that scuba gear and get under water, deep as you can. Stay down.”

“They’re coming right for us,” Wallace said. “More than one boat.”

“Let them come. Set up an ambush. I’m going to block this channel with the boat.”

Suzanne and Taylor splashed over the side.

“You want me to set up the SAW at the shack?” McCoy said. “Direct line of fire. I can light them up when they push through.”

“No. If they’ve got RPGs they’ll hit the shack first. Let’s stick to the mangroves and keep our heads down. We put them in a kill zone when they come all the way through. They can’t know how many of us there are.”

“Roger that,” McCoy said.

“Were you serious about that alligator?” Wallace said.

“Yeah. I didn’t really see him around, though.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Least of our worries. I’m thinking he’ll snack on Frosty before he comes after one of us, though.”

Henry pushed the boat so that it blocked the channel. The tide was slack, but it would turn soon. They split up, each soldier selecting a spot far underneath the hanging branches. Henry scooped up muck and smeared it over his face.

As he looked around the pond, he could not see his comrades.

Suzanne and Taylor were out of sight as well.

The sound of the engines ceased.

The boat eased back from the narrow mouth, slowly enough that it might have been pushed by the wind. Henry knew otherwise.

Henry could see two commandos at the stern of the craft. More coming behind them.

The soldiers waded ahead, weapons above the water. Henry put his sights on the nearest one, waiting. He thumbed the firing selector to semiautomatic. A fight, then.

He counted six men.

They crossed the pond, communicating with hand signals. They were spreading out.

Squeeze.

The stock of the assault rifle bucked against his shoulder. He put two rounds into the head of a man less than fifty feet away. A cloud of pink mist in the air, and a wash of blood on the side of the boat.

Gunfire erupted from the perimeter as Carlos, McCoy, and Wallace found targets.

McCoy, on the M249, cut a swath through the mangroves, branches and leaves falling under the torrent of hot metal.

The gunfire ceased. Blue smoke hung over the water and there was the smell of battle. Henry saw three bodies floating facedown.

He headed into the deeper water of the channel until it became too shallow to swim. He eased forward, digging in with his knees. He was exposed. He crawled ahead through the slime, his movements slow and deliberate to reduce the splashes, his elbows deep in the mud.

He did not see the boats the attackers used right away. They’d stowed a pair of inflatable Zodiacs under the canopy.

Two boats. Four men to a boat, most likely.

He scanned the shadows for movement.

Behind him urgent gunfire erupted again. He focused on what was in front of him.

A brief flash of metal caught the sun. Henry zeroed in, firing three rapid shots.

Pain rippled through his right arm and he heard another shot, close and off to the side. A round punched through his bicep and slapped the stock of his weapon, tearing it from his grasp.

Henry pushed himself backwards, reaching for the assault rifle. Another round sent up a geyser of water inches from his face.

He wished he had a grenade. He kept backing up, searching the swamp for the enemy. His right arm was on fire and his hand and forearm were slick with blood. He sought his weapon with shaking, urgent hands. There.

Another round snapped over his head. He caught the muzzle flash.

He switched to full auto, brought the weapon up to his shoulder. His arm was shaking and his hands were clumsy.

He fired two bursts as he retreated. His weapon jammed. He tried to reach for his sidearm, but his arm was turning into a dead thing. He was faint from blood loss. The round might have nicked an artery.

Wallace hauled him backward with strong hands, pulling him into deeper water.

“He’s hit,” Wallace said. “McCoy, on me. Carlos, take Wilkins to the shack. Check on Suzanne.”

“Copy that.”

“Enemy at three o’clock,” Henry mumbled, darkness pushing down at the edges of his vision.

Moments later, Henry heard the sound of explosions and the whump of an M203 grenade launcher, but that was the last thing he heard.

Suzanne, holding Taylor by the wrist, took the regulator from her own mouth and put it to Taylor’s, their faces inches apart.

The water stung her eyes and even this close, Taylor was a blur.

Suzanne held her breath while Taylor breathed through the reg. Air bubbles burbled around them.

Gunfire rolled over the water, muffled, lethal, and angry, and she could hear the zip of rounds cutting through the water. A hissing thing.

She squeezed Taylor’s arm to let her know it was time to let Suzanne breathe. Her chest burned. Taylor squeezed back.

Suzanne took the regulator from her child’s mouth, hating herself for it. Taylor liked to use scuba gear in the pool, and she’d stay at the bottom using a SNUBA rig for half an hour. This was different.

Suzanne had taught Taylor how to buddy breathe in clear, clean water. Now it was life and death. Taylor had to stay calm. Panic would kill them both.

Something brushed against her foot. Suzanne froze, aware of the bubbles tickling her face. She could not see through the murk.

There was a lull in the gunfire. It had been going on an eternity, it seemed.

What just bumped my leg?

She put the reg back in Taylor’s mouth, and still holding the child with her left hand, reached behind her to remove the .38 from her shorts.

She pulled Taylor slowly to the surface, gasping for air.

Five feet away, a soldier wearing jungle fatigues crept around the dock of the shack, a submachine gun in his hands. He spun to face her.

Suzanne shot him in the neck.

He toppled backward, dropping his weapon and reaching for his throat. Suzanne took two steps forward and pulled the trigger until it made clicking sounds. Lifeless eyes stared back at her, and the soldier slipped into the water.

She hauled Taylor onto the dock, leaving the tank in the water, and picked up the dead soldier’s weapon.

Another wave of gunfire echoed over the water, and she crawled into the shack on her belly.

“Stay low to the floor,” she whispered to Taylor. “Keep right in front of me.”

They crawled under the table and Suzanne kept the weapon pointed at the front door. There were explosions and then there was no more fighting.

“Suzanne?” she heard Carlos say.

“In here.”

“Let’s get out of this shithole,” he said.

“Henry?”

“He’s hit. Lost a lot of blood.”

The enemy attackers were all dead.

They piled into the Zodiacs the commandos used because the Fish and Game boat was riddled with bullet holes.

Henry was unconscious for the journey; Carlos applied a field dressing to the wound.

Suzanne put her husband’s head in her lap. His face was an unnatural gray and his breathing was shallow. He moaned in his sleep sometimes. Taylor held his hand. It seemed unfair. Unjust. He can’t die now. Not after all of this.

“Come on, Ranger,” Suzanne whispered in his ear. “Fight.”

It was dark when they pulled into Flamingo.

Stryker faded in and out of consciousness. He thought he heard gunfire, but that might have been his imagination. Maybe it was thunder. He floated. Sometimes the pain was worse than others, and he could retreat into a deeper kind of darkness.

Mosquitoes and sand fleas bit his face and crawled on his exposed skin. He opened his eyes again and saw the Milky Way. So many stars. He tried to count them to keep his mind from focusing on the agony he was in. He could feel fish nibbling away at his fingers. Something was crawling up is pant leg. Maybe a crab.

The night was alive with mysterious splashes, skittering sounds in the mangroves, and the call of insects. He was terrified.

His hands were bound behind his back. Maybe, he thought I can push back to the dock and get a knife and cut loose.

He tried to raise his head enough to look around. The dock was gone. The tide had taken him and he was floating somewhere in the middle of a channel. He kicked down with feet bound tight, trying to feel the bottom, waves of pain rolling through his body. The water was deep here.

Near dawn, he felt a sharp pain in his calf and something jerked him under water. He bobbed at the surface for a time. A black fin cut the water, just the tip visible.

Sharks fed on Jack Stryker. They were juveniles, three and four feet long. They took small pieces from his buttocks and legs, while he screamed and thrashed. He was weak with blood loss. The sharks let him go, though, and he was relieved for a moment.

The alligator glided through the glassy water leaving a soundless wake behind a sinuous tale, cold-blooded eyes locked on Stryker.

When the eyes slipped below the water, Stryker’s blood was ice in his veins. He knew death was coming, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

His legs in a toothy vise, he gulped air and water at the same time and went down into the black water, rolling and rolling until the pain and darkness were all one thing and it lasted for an eternity.