Текст книги "Lost"

Автор книги: Chris Jordan

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

So far this morning my count includes the victim of a gunshot wound and two would-be rescuers blown out of the air. It feels like we’re surrounded by sudden death and frankly it almost scares the pee out of me. Not quite, because I manage to get behind a clump of bushes to do my business.

My male companions avert their eyes and say not a word, for which I’m grateful.

“What happened?” I manage to stammer upon return. “Why did it blow up? Was there a bomb?”

“Surface-to-air explosive device,” Shane concludes. “Probably an RPG.”

My first reaction is that we lured them to their doom, homing in on our flare. Shane looks like he’s thinking the same thing.

“You couldn’t know,” I tell him.

“No, I couldn’t,” he admits.

“It’s like you call the fire department to report a fire and on the way somebody shoots at the fire truck. It wasn’t you who made them shoot.”

Shane looks rueful. “Not quite the same. I knew he was out there, I just never imagined he had the weapons to bring down a helicopter.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Makes you wonder,” Fish says, staring off at the black smoke. “We know he’s got a fully automatic shotgun and now a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. What else has he got, and why’s he need such an arsenal?”

“Must have big plans,” Shane suggests.

Fish nods agreement. “Revenge type plans. Who’s he mad at, besides the rich white man who helped him buy the casino?”

“His own people,” Shane responds instantly. “For kicking him out.”

At the top of a new steel fire tower, located not far from the forward deployment area, Special Agent Paloma Salazar backs away from her spotting scope. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. Bird down, no doubt about it.

Salazar gets on the radio, orders the remaining helicopters grounded. These are search-and-rescue craft, not equipped to defend against surface-to-air attacks, and she simply can’t risk keeping them on task. Thinking about risk management, there’s the problem of unarmed ground-search units who have volunteered to tramp through the grasslands. They lack body armor and would be vulnerable to gunfire. Should they be pulled back, too?

Not an easy decision, weighing two lives with known risk—indeed, they may already be dead—against possible risk to several hundred. On the other hand the volunteer units knew going in that an armed madman was out there.

For the moment the ground-search teams will remain deployed.

Salazar is about to phone Special Agent Healy, who is coordinating with the tribal police, when the fire tower begins to vibrate. Instantly she drops into a crouch, unholstering her firearm.

A head of thick black hair appears above the access ladder.

Salazar reholsters her firearm. “Good morning, Assistant Director.’

“‘A-Dick’ is fine,” says Monica Bevins, pulling her full, six-foot height to the top of the fire tower. “Nice view.”

“Not so nice, I’m afraid,” Salazar remarks, glancing at the wisp of black smoke spiraling up from the horizon.

“Sorry, of course,” says the A-Dick, chagrined.

“Am I being relieved?” Salazar wants to know. Well aware that having an assistant director on site in the middle of an operation is not exactly a vote of confidence.

“No, nothing like that,” Bevins says brightly, surveying the wide-open landscape. She folds her arms, an unconscious habit that slightly diminishes the width of her powerful swimmer’s shoulders. “I have every confidence in your organizational skills. Because of our, shall we say ‘delicate’ relations with Indian nations, the D.D. wants an eyes-on report.”

“You can assure the deputy director we’re fully cooperative with Nakosha law enforcement and responsive to their concerns.”

Monica towers over the smaller, lower-ranking agent, but she’s not the type to use her man-size body for intimidation, quite the opposite. She backs up a step to give the little lady breathing space. “I’ll do that,” she vows. “Now bring me up to speed, please.”

“Yesterday we initiated a full-scale search-and-rescue slash manhunt for fugitive Ricky Lang and two victims we believe he kidnapped. Said victims being the same as those identified in the shadow investigation of Edwin Manning, initiated by, I’m assuming, you.”

“Your assumption is correct. I initiated the investigation at the suggestion of former agent Randall Shane. Have you had the pleasure?”

The way Monica is smiling—kind of a Mona Lisa deal—makes Salazar wonder if she’s had the pleasure. Not an image Salazar cares to linger on, having seen large animals mating on the Nature Channel. “We met with Mr. Shane after he’d been assaulted by the suspect.”

“Two black eyes, I heard.”

“Yeah, and a broken nose. Caught him by surprise, apparently.”

“You can be sure of that,” Monica says firmly.

“Anyhow, it was the right call, getting a jump on the missing girl. Manning folded, gave us everything he knew about Lang.”

“What’s your take on the suspect?”

“May I be candid?”

“Please.”

“He’s a full-blown nut-job with berserker tendencies. I doubt he’ll be taken alive. Recent reports indicate he’s delusional, possibly hallucinating. He’s already killed or been responsible for the deaths of his three children, his common-law wife, and his own father, and he’s a suspect in another suspicious burning death.”

“Wait a minute,” Monica says, looking startled. “The father? When did that occur?”

“Just happened in the last hour, A-Dick. I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently there is surveillance footage of him breaking into a rest home here on the reservation. Went in through a screen door unimpeded. Location not far from where we stand, actually. There was no interior surveillance, but Lang’s father was found in his bed, smothered with a pillow.”

“Right under our noses, so to speak.”

“Right under our noses, most definitely. To be fair to my people, it was the tribal police who had the rest home under surveillance. If you don’t mind another candid observation, A-Dick, the tribal cops are scared to death of Ricky Lang. They’re going through the motions, giving us access and so on, but frankly I’m not expecting much from that quarter.”

“Noted,” says Monica. “Anybody know how he managed to get his hands on an RPG?”

“Not yet, no, but this is South Florida. Plus various well-armed Cuba Libre militias have trained in the area. Who knows what they left lying around?”

“I thought ‘Cuba libre’ was a drink?”

Salazar’s eyes get slightly hot. “It’s a way of life in Miami, A-Dick. As I’m sure you know.”

“Sorry, Agent Salazar, it slipped my mind that your father was at the Bay of Pigs. No offense intended. Have the Nakosha been apprised that we think the suspect has access to heavy assault weapons?”

Salazar nods curtly. “Gentleman by the name of Joe Lang, he’s running the show. Relative of the suspect, obviously. Agent Healy advised him the suspect has rocket grenades, maybe worse.”

“What was the response?”

“These folks don’t exactly talk your ear off, A-Dick, but Healy said Lang—that’s Joe Lang, the new tribal president—he’s already assuming that the suspect will come in with guns blazing, possibly targeting the village.”

“The berserker segment of your nut-job diagnosis.”

“I never claimed to be a profiler, A-Dick.”

“No, but you might make a good one. I agree, everything about this guy, including the recent murder of his father, indicates he intends to go down in a hail of bullets. That’s the endgame scenario.”

“Yes, A-Dick.”

“And if it comes to that, the deputy director would prefer that the hail of bullets come from tribal authorities. Has the tribal president indicated how they intend to respond?”

Salazar shrugs. “He told Agent Healy that they’d be ready, but declined to provide details. Which, pardon me, A-Dick, but that’s typical of this operation. They’re polite and all, but they don’t share.”

“Not a surprise, Agent Salazar. My report to the D.D. will indicate you’re doing all that can be done in a difficult situation.”

“Thank you. I do appreciate that.”

“Any word from Randall Shane?”

“Nothing recent. Last I heard, he was planning to hire a backcountry guide.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Salazar’s cell phone starts to vibrate. She flips it open. “Yes? Go ahead. What?” The diminutive agent’s eyes get big. “Holy shit, I’ll be right there.”

“What happened?” Monica wants to know.

“It’s Edwin Manning. He’s missing and his bodyguard has been found, drugged with animal tranquilizer.”

“Holy shit indeed,” says the A-Dick.

20. Run, Jane, Run

Crouching in the muck of the Everglades, the mud that gave birth to his people, Ricky feels the power of the earth entering his body through the soles of his bare feet. He will come to them as avenging warriors came to the Nakosha in the old times, streaked with gray mud. The righteous wrath of an unseeable ghost may be what his people deserve—death from the sky, falling upon them like bolts of lightning—but the mud will make him visible, so they can gaze upon the instrument of their destruction.

Delicately he strokes three fingers of mud upon his left cheek, three upon his right. Using a razor-sharp KA-BAR killing knife, he saws away his black bangs, exposing a broad forehead.

There, with a single index finger, he paints a dollar sign.

They’ll see him coming for sure, a creature of mud and vengeance, with the white man’s sign upon him. Sign of greed and corruption. Sign of the great forgetting. Sign of the end.

Out of the rising sun he will come, wielding the white man’s terrible weapons, leaving all of his people behind. The old and the young, the guilty and the innocent, none shall be spared. As a tribe of ghosts he will lead them away from temptation, into the perfect wilderness of a new and better world.

In the great river of grass his children hover like fireflies, glowing from within.

He calls them. “Alicia! Reya! Tyler! Come to your father!”

The girls obey, glorious in their incandescent white dresses. Tyler, ever the impish wayward boy, hangs back, hiding in the deep grass. Peeping at them with eyes like little candle-flames. Now you see him, now you don’t.

“Wait for me here,” he tells them. “The house is forbidden, do you understand? It was paid for with the white man’s filthy dollars, and must be turned to ash. It must be erased from the earth. Tyler! Pay attention, son, this is important. Keep with your sisters, they’ll protect you until I get back. Understood? Very good. Your father loves you, children. He loves you to death.”

Before he gathers his weapons, Ricky strides along the shore, dripping with the rich black silt of the Everglades. There, in an area that once served as a boat ramp, on sloping ground a few inches above water level, he has arrayed his sacrifices. Three being the sacred number, the number of his dead children.

The sacrifices have been camouflaged with fresh cut palm fronds, to hide them from the air. The white man’s helicopters, the white man’s satellites—their cold mechanical eyes can’t see the life beneath the green and the grass.

Ricky crouches, gently parts the fronds until he can see a frightened blue eye looking out at him.

“Your blood will not be wasted,” he assures the frightened blue eye. “Before my people came from the mud, the alligator gods ruled the water and the grass. It is said that they walked upon two legs, and spoke in a tongue that not even the sun could understand. My people made them walk upon four legs, but gave them tails so they could swim, and teeth so they could eat.”

The blue eye blinks furiously, swinging violently from side to side.

“Struggling is good,” he says, patting at the palm fronds. “Struggling will bring them more quickly. Don’t worry, you will not be eaten alive. The alligator first drowns his prey, and if the prey is large he will keep it hidden and consume it at his leisure. This time next year, my dear, you’ll be a purse and a pair of shoes.”

Ricky leaves them staked to the ground and goes to gather up his weapons.

Some people are made for running. Slender bodies with long skinny legs and narrow hips. You can tell they like it, running through the pain or whatever. Not for me. I’m small waisted and fairly long legged for my size, but these child-bearing hips were not engineered with marathons in mind.

Even if I had been a runner, one of those moms who race along pushing special three-wheeled baby carriages, it’s doubtful I could keep up with Randall Shane. One stride and he’s past me, three and he’s heading for the horizon.

A mile, Fish tells us. The site of Ricky Lang’s house, the one he burned to the ground, is located roughly a mile along the shoreline. Half a mile beyond it, the new residential village constructed by the Nakosha. Traditional chickee huts built on stilts, as well as a new school, health clinic, and elder hospice, all of which may be his targets.

If he wants to kill a lot of people, his own people, that’s where he’d go.

Shane, already out of sight, can obviously run a mile. For all I know he can run a hundred. Whereas I’ve never run a mile in my life. I’m a Long Island girl, we drive.

Fish isn’t even trying. Bad knees. He’ll pole his way along in his little boat, meet us there in twenty minutes.

Kelly may not have twenty minutes, which is why I’m running with Shane, racing along the shoreline, kicking through the saw grass. More like I’m kicking through it and he’s leaping over it. Long arms pumping, long legs eating up the yards, what an amazing man. That big and he runs like a gazelle.

He wants to save the world. I want to save my daughter. God help me, that’s all I care about, just the one life.

Let her live, let her live, let her live, that’s the mantra that keeps my legs pumping, my heart pounding.

Glancing down as I run, my thin linen trousers are in tatters, shredded below the knee by the blade-sharp grass. Grass that can cut you to pieces, who invented this stuff?

Lawns are better. Roads are betters. Malls are better.

Run, Jane, run. Run for her life. You can do it. Anybody in reasonably good shape can run a mile if they absolutely have to. Ignore the blood running from your knees to your ankles. You can bleed to death later, after you’ve found Kelly.

Alive or dead, she must be found. Alive or dead you’re going to take her home.

Let her live let her live let her live, that’s the song in my heart, what keeps me running when my burning lungs beg me to stop.

No stopping. I won’t stop until we get home, both of us. Alive or dead, both of us.

The mad mud ghost yanks back the tarp, exposing his cache of weapons. First thing he loads up is the famous Breda machine gun, draping a full belt of ammunition over his shoulders. A thousand rounds. The weight of that alone is enough to make an ordinary man’s legs buckle, but Ricky Lang was no ordinary man even before full-blown psychosis doubled then tripled his strength.

Next, the fully loaded AA-12 automatic shotgun with the custom sixty-four-round drum magazine ready to fire, and a spare drum hooked to his belt. Thirty pounds of lethal firepower and he holds it in one hand.

Ricky slings the three remaining RPG launchers over his left shoulder, a crushing load he doesn’t even notice. He thinks about carrying a pistol for close work, decides his KA-BAR killing knife will do. The KA-BAR can be held in his hand or in his mouth, whichever gives him the most dexterity when firing the automatic weapons.

A panting dog watches from the charred ruins of the house he burned down six months ago.

“Get away!” he shouts, placing a shot at the dog’s feet, watching it scamper away with a startled whimper. Calling back over his shoulder, he says, “Tyler, you leave that puppy alone! Girls, keep hold of that boy! Grab him by the ankles if you have to! Daddy’ll be back soon!”

He follows a path familiar only to him.

Half a mile later, draped with bullets and lugging enough explosives to bring down a fleet of 747s, Ricky Lang strides into center of the Nakosha village. The native-style elevated huts that are really perfectly constructed homes with every modern convenience. The two-room schoolhouse open to the air, so the children do not fester and mold. The clinic where white medicines are dispensed, and herbal remedies, too. The hospice where Tito Lang, once a hero to his son, wasted away. All of it bought and paid for with the wealth Ricky brought to his people, laid at their feet like a gift.

Love me, the gift said. Love me and we shall all of us prosper, we shall all of us live forever, one people, forever and ever amen.

Ricky stands in the middle of the village, ammo gleaming in the sunshine. If the devil designed a perfect killing machine it would need to resemble Ricky Lang, part flesh, part steel, all muscle, and fueled by the urge for death.

“Joe Lang!” he bellows. “Show yourself!”

Not a sound from the village. They’re all hiding, he tells himself. Under the beds, in the closets, hiding and ashamed.

“Joe Lang!” he screams. “You’re the big man now! Be brave!”

A shadow moves on the porch of the biggest hut. Joe Lang must be hiding. Too scared to face him.

Ricky hefts the grenade launcher, drops to one knee, bracing himself. He fires. The blowback scorches the side of his head, but all he cares about is the red streak followed by the satisfying WOMP! of the fuel-air warhead detonating inside the chickee hut, vaporizing it in a ball of howling flame.

Ignoring the blowback, he fires the two remaining RPGs, exploding the schoolhouse and the clinic. His right ear sizzles and his black hair melts against the side of his skull, but he feels no pain.

Ricky Lang smiles with the unburned part of his mouth as he goes from door to door, blowing through the thin walls of the huts with the twelve-gauge. Finger locked on full-auto, barely any recoil, launching Frag-12 explosive shells at a rate of three hundred per minute, ka-wump-ka-wump, steady as a driving piston.

Having emptied the spare drum magazine, he drops the auto shotgun, shrugs his big shoulders and continues with the Breda M37 machine gun.

Raking the huts, the wreckage of school, with eight-millimeter slugs.

In his head the machine gun is stuttering die-die-die-die-die-die-die.

The M37, a real classic, is normally fired with both hands from a tripod, not freehand. Wicked, bone-jolting recoil, and it heats up after less than a hundred rounds, but Ricky is having fun, he’s getting into it, and when the machine gun finally jams with a few hundred rounds still to go, he peels the glowing metal stock from his boiling hands and drops it to the ground.

Where did he put the KA-BAR? Right, between his teeth.

Ricky figures most of his people died in the initial explosions or the lethal gunfire that followed, but there may be a few survivors and he doesn’t want them to suffer.

This isn’t about inflicting pain, it’s about getting things right.

Knife at the ready, he ducks into the smoking remains of one of the chickee huts. With bare feet he kicks though the wreckage, looking for bodies or parts of bodies. Looking for familiar faces, frozen with regret for the great sin of banishing their leader.

Screaming wordlessly, he runs to the next hut. And the next.

Nobody. Nobody. The village is empty.

21. The End Of The World As She Knows It

When I stagger into the clearing Randall Shane is already there, staring at the blackened remains of what must have once been a house. He looks utterly defeated, and gazes at me with an expression of such intense sorrow that I immediately burst into tears.

In the distance another rifle shot, one of hundreds popping off in the last few minutes. Another muffled explosion, then a terrible, lingering silence.

“I’m so sorry,” he says.

“Where is she?” I blubber. “Where’s Kelly?”

“Not here,” he says. “I was so sure she’d be here, at the place it all began. I was wrong.”

He does not flinch when I beat my fists on his chest. It feels like I’m the rain and he’s a rock, and the world is ending, and nothing will matter ever again. Then I start running in circles, splashing through the ash of the ruined house, screaming her name.

“Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!”

Shane watches, doesn’t try to stop me. He looks like he wants to die, and at the moment I don’t care if he does.

“Kelly! Kelly! Kelly!”

There is no echo in this place. The landscape is too wide open, nothing to throw back my voice as I scream my daughter’s name, again and again, as if saying it will bring her back.

Something stops me in my tracks. A small sound, one I’d recognize anywhere.

“Mom!”

Very faint. As faint as a memory.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Shane asks.

It comes again, smaller still. He can’t hear it, but I can.

“Over there, by the water.”

Shane glides to the shore, to a place where the ground slopes gradually away.

“Oh my God,” he says.

He’s staring at the water’s edge and my blurry eyes finally focus on what he’s seeing. A ragged pile of palm fronds scattered along the shore, as if by the wind. Extending out from under the green fronds, a long dark thing that seems to be pointing toward the water. A tree trunk—no, it’s not.

The thing twitches.

A tail.

I dive at the fronds, ripping them away, and find myself staring into the anthracite eyes of an immense alligator. It’s so close the pink wrinkles on its ugly, pebbled snout are clearly visible. So close I can smell its rancid, reptile breath.

Startled, it roars. A bellow to shake the earth, ancient and menacing. Its breath moist on my face. This time I really do wet my pants a little. The beast shakes its great nobbed head from side to side and then backs slowly into the water and sinks, vanishing from sight.

Frantically I rip away the rest of the fronds and there they are, spread-eagled and staked to the ground.

My daughter. Edwin Manning. Seth.

Manning is breathing, barely, but Seth looks dead.

Kelly locks eyes with me and tries to speak. Nothing comes out.

Randall Shane, knife in hand and grinning like he’s just won the lottery, helps me cut away the rawhide ropes binding them to the deeply driven wooden stakes. We get Kelly’s arms free, but something’s wrong, terribly wrong. It’s as if she’s partially paralyzed, unable to move on her own. Is it the effect of being staked down, held immobile, or is it something worse?

Her beautiful blue eyes are trying to communicate something and her jaw is working, but no words come out. How did I hear her calling me? Not that it matters. Nothing matters but the fact that she’s alive.

“Some sort of powerful tranquilizer,” Shane theorizes, sawing at the ropes. “We need to move her limbs, stimulate her circulation. You do Kelly, I’ll work on him.”

He means Seth, who, although cut free, remains as still as death, one arm and part of his face strangely swollen. Shane starts to pump on the young man’s inert chest.

“I’ll get to you in a moment,” he says to Edwin Manning, who is struggling and failing to speak.

Manning’s tear-filled eyes blink rapidly. We both know he’d want his son saved first.

Kelly’s eyes become frantic. Has she figured out that Seth is dead or dying? Or is it something else? She seems to be trying to look behind me. Wanting me to look, too.

I’m about to turn when a pair of huge, bloodied hands grab Shane by the throat.

Before I can fully react, or understand what’s happening, a muddy foot connects with the side of my head, knocking me into the water.

There’s nothing quite so stimulating as falling into water very recently occupied by a twelve-foot alligator. I’m out of there like a scalded cat, but even so by the time I crawl back onto the shore, Shane and Ricky Lang are rolling on the ground, hands locked around each other’s necks.

Neither man speaks. Except for a few wheezing grunts, the battle is conducted in total silence. Shane is taller, but pound for pound his opponent is more muscular, and has the uncanny strength of the insane.

Shane’s face is getting blue and his eyes are bugging out.

Find the knife, I’m thinking frantically, find the knife! But there’s no time for that because the mud-covered madman is pounding Shane’s head into the dirt.

Shane struggles, kicks at him, pumping his knees up into Lang’s midsection to no avail.

I look around for something to use as a weapon. A rock, a two-by-four. In the movies there’s always something handy. But out here in the middle of godforsaken nowhere there’s nothing but floppy palm fronds.

No weapons available, so I do what any hundred-and-twenty-five-pound woman would do in similar circumstances—I leap on his back and try to gouge out his eyes.

Bad idea.

With a roar that made the startled alligator sound timid, Ricky Lang instantly leaps to his feet, whirls around and throws me into the bushes. The whole move takes less than a heartbeat and I land flat on my back with a force that knocks the wind out of me and cracks a few ribs.

I can’t breathe and my ears are ringing, muffling the world in silence, but my eyes are still functioning. I can see what happens next.

Shane on his knees, drooling blood.

Ricky Lang methodically kicking away the palm fronds and recovering a knife. Not Shane’s knife, something bigger and uglier.

Then my ears pop and I can hear again. Birds chirping, bugs buzzing, peepers peeping, and my heart banging against my broken ribs.

Ricky Lang looks at me with eyes from another world. He looks at Shane on his knees. He says, “Gator needs blood,” and he strides toward Kelly, knife raised.

Shane lunges, grabs his ankles.

Lang grunts with irritation and is about to plunge the big knife in Shane’s back when he changes his mind and slowly sits down on the damp and bloody ground.

It’s like watching a sturdy building collapse. His huge shoulders slump. He sighs deeply, the big knife falling from his open hand.

He looks around, as if searching for someone.

“Kids?” he says, his throat gurgling.

Lang smiles and tries to lift his arms, as if to embrace an invisible someone, and seems satisfied, relieved of a great burden. The air leaves him. His dark eyes stare up at the bright vastness of the deep blue sky and then glass over, gone forever.

“Everybody okay?” asks Leo Fish, standing there in his little boat, lowering a smoking rifle.

I never even heard the shot.

“Sorry it took so long,” he says sheepishly. “I can’t run like you young folk.”