Текст книги "Fever Dream"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Pendergast whispered in her ear. "I think that light's on a pole."

"A pole?"

"Yes. Look at the curious way it's bobbing. It's a ruse. And that confirms there's a second shooter." Suddenly he grabbed her and shoved her down into the shallow water, her face in the muck. Half a second later she heard a shot just overhead, the dull thud of a bullet hitting wood.

With desperate movements, she followed Pendergast as he crawled through the muck and then wedged himself up behind a tangle of roots, pulling her next to him. More shots came, this time from both forward and behind, tearing through the roots in two directions.

"This cover's no good," gasped Hayward.

"No, it isn't. We can't stay here–it's only a matter of time until one of those bullets finds its mark."

"But what can we do?"

"I'm going to take out the shooter behind us. When I leave, I want you to count ninety seconds, fire, count another ninety, then fire again. Don't bother aiming–it's the noise I require. Take care your muzzle flash is concealed... and then, onlythen, after the first two fake shots, shoot out the light. And then charge him–and kill."

"Got it."

With a flash Pendergast disappeared into the swamp. A fresh burst of gunfire rang out in response.

Hayward counted to ninety and then, keeping the rifle muzzle low, fired. The .45-70 roared and kicked back, surprising her with its noise, the sound echoing and scattering through the swamp. In answer, a fusillade of bullets tore through the roots just above her head and she burrowed down in the muck, and then she heard Pendergast's answering fire to her left, his .45 blasting into the night. The fire shifted away from her. The light bobbed but did not advance.

She counted again, pulled the trigger, and a second roar from the heavy-caliber rifle split the air.

Once again, the fire came her way and was answered by a rapid tattoo of shots from Pendergast, this time from a different place. The light had still not moved.

Hayward turned, crouched in the muck, and took aim at the light with exquisite care. Slowly, she squeezed the trigger, the gun roared, and the light dissolved in a shower of sparks.

Immediately she was up and moving as fast as she could through the heavy, sucking mud toward where the light had been. She could hear Pendergast firing furiously behind her, pinning down the rearward shooter.

A pair of shots clipped through a stand of ferns next to her; she charged ahead, rifle at the ready, and then burst through the ferns to find the shooter crouching in a shallow-draft boat. He turned toward her in surprise and she threw herself into the water, aiming and firing as she did so. The man fired simultaneously and she felt a sharp blow to her leg, followed by a sudden numbness. She gasped and tried to rise to her feet, but her leg refused to move.

She worked the action frantically, expecting at any moment to be hit by a second, fatal shot. But none came and she realized she must have hit the shooter. With a supreme effort she half crawled, half stumbled into the shallow water and grabbed the gunwale, aiming the rifle within.

The shooter lay on the floor of the boat, blood streaming from a wound in his shoulder. His rifle lay in two pieces–the round had evidently struck it–and he was fumbling with one hand trying to pull out a handgun. He was not one of the swampers–in fact, she had never seen him before.

"Don't move!" she barked, aiming the rifle at him and trying not to gasp with pain. She reached over, snatched away the handgun, pointed it at him. "Stand up, nice and slow. Keep your hands in sight."

The man groaned, raised one hand. The other hung uselessly at his side.

Remembering the second shooter, Hayward kept as low as possible. She checked the handgun, saw it had a full magazine, took it and tossed the heavy rifle into the water.

The man groaned, a patch of moonlight draping his torso, the dark stain of blood slowly spreading downward from his shoulder. "I'm hit," he groaned. "I need help."

"It's not fatal," said Hayward. Her own wound was throbbing, her leg felt like a piece of lead. She hoped she wasn't bleeding to death. Because she was half immersed in water, the shooter didn't know she'd been shot. She could feel the slither and bump of things against her wounded leg–probably fish, attracted to the blood.

More shots rang out behind her, the massive sound of Pendergast's .45 interspersed with the sharper crack of the second shooter's rifle. The firing became sporadic, and then there was silence. A long silence.

"What's your name?" Hayward asked.

"Ventura," the man said. "Mike–"

A single crack. The man named Ventura jerked backward and, with a single grunt, collapsed heavily into the bottom of the boat, twitched, and was still.

Hayward, in sudden panic, dropped down low into the water, clinging to the gunwale with one hand. Vile water creatures were worrying at her wound, and she could feel the wriggling of countless leeches.

She heard a splash, swung around with the gun–only to see Pendergast moving toward her through the water, low and slow. He gestured at her to remain silent, then grasped the gunwale, looked around intently for a moment, and in one swift movement swung himself into the boat. She heard him moving about, then he was back over the side, sinking back into the water next to her.

"You all right?" he whispered.

"No. I'm hit."

"Where?"

"Leg."

"We've got to get you out of the water." The agent grasped her arm and began to tow her to shore. The silence was profound; the shooting had frightened all life in the swamp into a standstill. There were no splashes, no croaks or chirps and rustlings.

She felt a faint current, and then something hard and scaly brushed her underwater. She stifled a scream. The surface of the water dimpled in the moonlight, and two reptilian eyes rose, along with a pair of scaly nostrils. With a terrifying explosion of water it lunged at her; Pendergast simultaneously fired his gun; she felt something sharp and massive and inexorable clamp down on her injured leg and she was yanked underwater, the pain spiking excruciatingly.

Struggling, Pendergast still gripping her arm, she tried to twist away, but the huge alligator was pulling her down into the mud at the bed of the channel. She tried to scream, her mouth filling with stagnant water. She heard the thud of his shots above the surface. She twisted again, jammed the handgun into the thing gripping her leg, and fired.

A huge report; the concussion of the shot and the violent, spastic reaction of the alligator combining into a single huge explosion. The terrible biting pressure was released and she clawed her way out of the muck, gasping.

With an almost violent motion Pendergast hauled her to shore, pulling her into the shallow water and onto a bed of ferns. She felt him tear up her pant leg, rinse the wounds as best he could, and bind them with the strips of cloth.

"The other shooter," she said, feeling dizzy. "Did you get him?"

"No. It's possible I winged him–I routed him from his hiding place and saw his shadow flitting back into the swamp."

"Why hasn't he started shooting again?"

"He may be looking for a new spot from which to improve his fire discipline. The fellow in the boat was killed by a .30-30 round. Not one of ours."

"An accident?" she gasped, trying to keep her mind off the pain.

"Probably not."

He slung her arm around his shoulders and hauled her to her feet. "There's only one thing we can do–get you to Spanish Island. Now."

"But the other shooter. He's still out there, somewhere."

"I know." Pendergast nodded at her leg. "But that wound can't wait."

71

HER ARM AROUND PENDERGAST'S NECK, HAYWARD stumbled through the sucking mud, slipping constantly, at times almost dragging him into the muck with her. With every step, pain shot through her leg as if a red-hot rod of iron had been embedded from shin to thigh, and she had to stifle a cry. She was keenly aware that the shooter was still out there, in the dark. The very quietness of the swamp unsettled her, made her fear he was waiting. Despite the stifling heat of the night and the tepid swamp water, she felt shivery and light-headed, as if all this were happening to someone else.

"You must get up, Captain," came Pendergast's soothing voice. She realized that she had fallen yet again.

The curious emphasis on her title roused her somewhat and she struggled to her feet, managed a step or two, and then felt herself crumpling again. Pendergast continued to half hold, half drag her along, his arms like steel cables, his voice soft and soothing. But then the mud grew deeper, sucking at her legs almost like quicksand, and with the effort of staggering she felt herself merely sinking forward into the mire.

He steadied her and with a great effort she managed to free one leg, but the wounded leg was now deep in the muck and throbbed unbearably at every effort to move it. She fell back into the swamp, sinking almost to her thighs. "I can't," she said, gasping with pain. "I just can't do it." The night whirled crazily about, her head buzzed painfully, and she could feel him holding her upright.

Pendergast glanced around quietly, carefully. "All right," he whispered. He was silent for a moment, and then she heard him softly tearing something up–his suit jacket. The dark swamp, the trees, the moon were all turning around, and around... Mosquitoes swarmed her, in her nostrils and her ears, roaring like lions. She sank back into the watery muck, wishing with all her might that the clinging mud was her bed back home, and that she was safe and warm in Manhattan, Vinnie breathing quietly beside her...

She came to as Pendergast was tying some sort of crudely contrived harness around her upper arms. She struggled for a moment, confused, but he put his hand on hers to reassure her. "I'm going to pull you along. Just stay relaxed."

She nodded, comprehension slowly dawning.

He slung the two strips of the harness over his shoulders and began to pull. At first, she didn't move. Then the swamp slowly released its sucking embrace and she found herself sliding forward over the water-covered muck, half bobbing, half slipping. The trees loomed overhead, black and silver in the moonlight, their interlocking branches and leaves above forming a speckled pattern of dark and light. Weakly, Hayward wondered where the shooter was hiding; why they had heard no further shots. Five minutes might have passed, or thirty; she lost all sense of time.

Suddenly Pendergast paused.

"What is it?" Hayward groaned.

"I see a light through the trees."

72

PENDERGAST LEANED OVER HAYWARD, EXAMINING her closely. She was in shock. Given the sloppy, mud-drenched state of her person, it was difficult to tell how much blood she had lost. The moonlight slanted across her face, ghostly white where it wasn't smeared with dirt. Gently, he pulled her up to a sitting position, loosened the harness, and propped her back against a tree trunk, camouflaging her position with a few fern leaves. Rinsing a rag in the murky water, he tried to clean some of the mud from her wound, pulling off numerous leeches in the process.

"How are you doing, Captain?"

Hayward swallowed, her mouth working. Her eyes blinked, unable to focus. He felt her pulse; shallow and rapid. Bending over to her ear, he whispered, "I have to leave you. Just for a while."

For a moment, her eyes widened in fear. Then she nodded and managed to speak, her voice hoarse. "I understand."

"Whoever is living at Spanish Island knows we're here; they undoubtedly heard the shots. Indeed, the remaining shooter may well have come from Spanish Island and is awaiting us there–hence the silence. I must approach with great care. Let me see your weapon."

He took the handgun–a .32–examined the magazine, then slapped it back in place and pressed it into her hands. "You've got four rounds left. If I don't come back... you may need them." He placed the flashlight in her lap. "Don't use it unless you have to. Watch for the gleam of eyes in the moonlight. Look at the distance between them. More than two inches, it's either a gator or our shooter. Do you understand?"

Again she nodded, clasping the gun.

"This is a good blind. You won't be seen until you want to be seen. But listen to me carefully, now: you muststay awake. To lose consciousness is to die."

"You'd better get going," she murmured.

Pendergast peered into the darkness. A faint yellow glow was just barely visible through the ranks of tree trunks. He took out a knife and, reaching up, scored a large X on opposite sides of the biggest tree trunk. Leaving Hayward, he set off southward, approaching the distant lights in a tightening, spiral-like trajectory.

He moved slowly, extracting his feet from the muck with care so as to make as little noise as possible. There was no sign of activity, no sounds from the distant light that flickered and disappeared among the dark trunks. As he tightened the spiral, the trees thinned and a dull yellow rectangle came into view: a curtained window, floating in the blackness, amid a cluster of vague buildings with pitched roofs.

In another ten minutes, he had maneuvered close enough to have a clear view of the old hunting camp on Spanish Island.

It was a vast, rambling place, built just above the waterline on creosote pilings: at least a dozen large, shingled buildings wedged in among a massive stand of ancient bald cypresses heavily draped in curtains of Spanish moss. It lay right on the edge of a small slackwater bayou. The camp was built on marginally higher ground, surrounded by a screen of ferns, bushes, and tall grass. The heavy fringe of vegetation, combined with the almost impenetrable skeins of hanging moss, gave the place a hidden, cocooned feeling.

Pendergast moved laterally, still circling the place, checking for guards and getting a feel for the layout. At one end, a large wooden platform led to a pier with a floating dock projecting into the bayou. Tied to it was an unusual boat, which Pendergast recognized as a small, Vietnam-era brownwater navy utility boat. It was a hybrid species of swampcraft with a draft of only three inches and a quiet, underwater jet drive–ideal for creeping around a swamp. Although some of the outbuildings were in ruins, their roofs sagging inward, the central camp was in good condition and clearly inhabited. A large outbuilding was also in impeccable shape. Heavy curtains were drawn over the windows, diffusing the faintest yellow glow from inside.

As he completed his circle, Pendergast was surprised: nobody seemed to be on watch. It was quiet as a tomb. If the shooter was here, he was exceptionally well hidden. He waited, listening. And then he heard something: a faint, desolate cry, thin and birdlike, just on the threshold of audibility, such as from one that has lost all hope, soon dying away. When that, too, ended, a profound stillness fell on the swamp.

Pendergast removed his Les Baer and circled up behind the camp, wriggling into a dense clump of ferns at the edge of the supporting pilings. Again he listened but could hear nothing more; no footfalls on the wooden planks above, no flash of a light, no voices.

Affixed to one of the pilings was a crude wooden ladder made from slippery, rotting slats. After a few more minutes he half crawled, half swam toward it, grasped the lower rung, and pulled himself up, one rung at a time, testing each in turn for solidity. In a moment his head had reached the level of the platform. Peering over, he could still see nothing in the moonlight, no sign of anyone on guard.

Easing himself onto the platform, he rolled over the rough wooden boards and lay there, sidearm at the ready. Straining to listen, he thought now that he could hear a voice, exceptionally faint even to his preternatural hearing, murmuring slowly and monotonously, as if reciting the rosary. The moon was now directly overhead and the camp, deep in the cluster of trees, was speckled with moonlight. He waited one moment more. Then he rose to his feet and darted into the shadow of the nearest outbuilding, flattening himself against the wall. A single window, shades drawn, cast a faint light across the platform.

He inched forward, around the corner, and ducked to pass below a second window. Pivoting around another corner, he reached a door. It was old and dilapidated, with rusted hinges, the paint peeling off in strips. With exquisite care he tried the handle, found it locked; a moment's effort unlocked it. He waited, crouching.

No sound.

He slowly turned the knob, eased the door open, then ducked quietly through and covered the room with his weapon.

What greeted his eye was a large, elegant sitting room, somewhat dilapidated. A massive stone fireplace loomed over one end, dominated by a moldering stuffed alligator on a plaque, with a rack of briar pipes and a bulbous gasogene set on the huge timbered mantel. Empty gun cases lined one wall, other cases filled with decaying fly and spinning rods, display cases exhibiting flies and lures. Burgundy leather furniture, much patched and cracked with age, was grouped around the dead fireplace. The room appeared dusty, little used. For such a large space it seemed remarkably empty.

The faintest tread of a foot sounded directly above his head, the murmur of a voice.

The room was illuminated with several hanging kerosene lanterns, their light set at the dimmest possible setting. Pendergast unhooked one, turned the wick to brighten it, and moved across the room to a narrow enclosed staircase, heavily carpeted, on the far end. Slowly, he ascended the stairs.

The difference between the second and first floors was remarkable. There was none of the heavy scattering of objects here, the confusion of colors and shapes and patterns. As he reached the top of the stairs, a long hallway greeted his eye, lined on either side with bedrooms, evidently from the days when the camp had paying guests. But the usual decorations, the chairs and the paintings and the bookcases, were completely missing. The doors were open, displaying barren rooms. Each window had been covered with gauze, apparently to filter out light. Everything was in muted pastel, almost black and white. Even the knotholes had been carefully filled in.

At the end of the hall, a larger door stood ajar, light illuminating its edges. Pendergast moved down the hall like a cat. The last set of bedrooms he passed were evidently still in use, one very large and elegant although still quite spartan, with a freshly made bed, adjoining bathroom and dressing room–and a one-way mirror, looking into a second, adjoining bedroom, smaller and more austere, with no furniture other than a large double bed.

Pendergast crept up to the door at the end of the hall and listened. He could hear, for the first time, the faint throb of a generator. No sound came from the room: all was silent.

He positioned himself to one side, and then in a swift motion pivoted around and kicked the door in with one powerful blow. It flew open and Pendergast simultaneously dropped to the floor.

An enormous blast from a shotgun ripped through the door frame above him, taking out a chunk the size of a basketball, showering him with splinters, but before the shooter could unload another round of buckshot Pendergast had used his momentum to roll and rise; the second blast obliterated a side table by the door but by then Pendergast was on top of the shooter, arm sliding around her neck. He wrenched the shotgun from her hands and spun her around–and found himself grasping a tall, strikingly beautiful woman.

"You can unhand me now," she said calmly.

Pendergast released her and stepped back, covering her with the .45. "Don't move," he said. "Keep your hands in sight." He rapidly scouted the room and was astonished at what he saw: a state-of-the-art critical care facility, filled with gleaming new medical equipment–a physiologic monitoring system, pulse oximeter, apnea monitor, ventilator, infusion pump, crash cart, mobile X-ray unit, half a dozen digital diagnostic devices. All powered by electricity.

"Who are you?" the woman asked. Her voice was frosty, her composure recovered. She was dressed simply and elegantly in a pale cream dress without pattern, no jewelry, and yet she was carefully made up, her hair recently done. Most of all, Pendergast was impressed by the fierce intelligence behind her steely blue eyes. He recognized her almost immediately from the photographs in the Vital Records file in Baton Rouge.

"June Brodie," he said.

Her face paled, but only slightly. In the tense silence that ensued, a faint cry, of pain or perhaps despair, came muffled through a door at the far end of the room. Pendergast turned; stared.

When June Brodie spoke again, her voice was cool. "I'm afraid your unexpected arrival has disturbed my patient. And that is really most unfortunate."

73

PATIENT?" PENDERGAST ASKED.

Brodie said nothing.

"We can discuss the matter later," Pendergast said. "Meanwhile, I have an injured colleague in the swamp. I require your boat. And these facilities."

When nothing happened, he waved his gun. "Anything less than full haste and cooperation will be seriously detrimental to your health."

"There's no need to threaten me."

"I'm afraid there is. May I remind you who fired first?"

"You came bursting in here like the Seventh Cavalry–what did you expect?"

"Shall we bandy civilities later?" Pendergast said coldly. "My colleague is badly hurt."

Still remarkably composed, June Brodie turned, pressed the tab on a wall intercom, and spoke into it with a voice of command. "We have visitors. Prepare to receive an emergency patient–and meet us with a stretcher down on the dock."

Brodie walked through the room and exited the door without looking over her shoulder. Pendergast followed her back down the hallway, gun at the ready. She descended the stairs, crossed the main parlor of the lodge, exited the building, and walked across the platform to the pier to the floating dock. She stepped gracefully into the back and fired up the engine. "Untie the boat," she said. "And please put away that gun."

Pendergast tucked the gun in his belt and untied the boat. She revved the engine, backing it out.

"She's about a thousand yards east-southeast," said Pendergast, pointing into the darkness. "That way," he added. "There's a gunman in the swamp. But of course, you probably know all about that. He may be wounded–he may not."

Brodie looked at him. "Do you want to retrieve your colleague, or not?"

Pendergast indicated the boat's control panel.

Saying nothing else, the woman accelerated the boat and they sped along the muddy shores of the bayou. After a few minutes she slowed to enter a tiny channel, which wound this way and that, dividing and braiding into a labyrinth of waterways. Brodie managed to penetrate the swamp in a way that Pendergast was surprised was possible, always keeping to a sinuous channel that, even in bright moonlight, was almost invisible.

"More to the right," he said, peering into the trees. They were using no lights; it was easier to see farther in the moonlight–and it was safer as well.

The boat wound among the channels, now and then threatening to ground in the shallow muck but always sliding across when the jet drive was gunned.

"There," said Pendergast, pointing to the mark on the tree trunk.

The boat grounded sluggishly on a mud bar. "This is as far as we can go," Brodie murmured.

Pendergast turned to her, searched her quickly and expertly for concealed weapons, and then spoke in a low voice. "Stay here. I'll go retrieve my colleague. Continue to cooperate and you'll survive this night."

"I repeat: you don't need to threaten me," she said.

"It's not a threat; it's clarification." Pendergast climbed over the side of the boat and began making his way through the muck.

"Captain Hayward?" he called.

No answer.

"Laura?"

Still nothing but silence.

In a moment he was at Hayward's side. She was still in shock, semi-conscious, her head lolling against the rotten stump. He glanced back and forth briefly, listening for a rustle or the crack of a twig; looking for any glint of light off metal that might indicate the presence of the shooter. Seeing nothing, he gripped Hayward under the arms and dragged her through the muck back to the boat. He lifted her over the side, and Brodie grasped the limp body and helped set it in the bottom.

Without a word she turned and fired up the engine; they backed out of the channel and then returned at high speed to the camp. As they approached, a small, silent man wearing hospital whites came into view, standing at the dock with a stretcher. Pendergast and Brodie lifted Hayward out of the boat and placed her on the stretcher; the man then rolled her along the platform and into the main parlor of the lodge. He and Pendergast carried the stretcher up the stairs, down the hall, and into the bizarrely high-tech emergency room, positioning it beside a bank of critical care equipment.

As they moved her from the stretcher onto a surgical bed, June Brodie turned to the little man in white. "Intubate her," she said sharply. "Orotracheal. And oxygen."

The man leapt into action, passing a tube into Hayward's mouth and delivering oxygen, both of them working with a swift economy of action that clearly attested to years of experience.

"What happened?" she asked Pendergast as she cut away a mud-heavy sleeve with a pair of medical scissors.

"Gunshot wound and alligator bite."

June Brodie nodded, then listened to Hayward's pulse and took her blood pressure, examining the pupils with a light. The movements were practiced and highly professional. "Hang a bag of dextran," she told the man in scrub whites, "and run a 14g IV."

While he worked, she readied a needle and took a blood sample, filling a syringe and transferring it to vacuum tubes. She plucked a scalpel from a nearby sterile tray and, with several deft cuts, removed the rest of the pant leg.

"Irrigation."

The man handed her a large saline-filled syringe, and she washed the mud and filth away, plucking off numerous leeches as she did so and tossing everything into a red-bag disposer. Injecting a local around the ugly lacerations and the bullet wound, she worked diligently but calmly, cleaning everything with saline and antiseptic. Lastly, she administered an antibiotic and dressed the wound.

She looked up at Pendergast. "She'll be fine."

As if on cue, Hayward's eyes opened and she made a sound in the endotracheal tube. She shifted on the surgical bed, raised a hand, and gestured at the tube.

After briefly examining her, June ordered the tube removed. "I felt it was better to be safe than sorry," she said.

Hayward swallowed painfully, then looked around, her eyes coming into focus. "What's going on?"

"You've been saved by a ghost," said Pendergast. "The ghost of June Brodie."

74

HAYWARD LOOKED AT THE VAGUE FIGURES IN turn, then tried to sit up. Her head was still swimming.

"Allow me." Brodie reached over and raised the backrest of the surgical bed. "You were in light shock," she said. "But you'll soon be back to normal. Or as close as possible, given the conditions."

"My leg..."

"No permanent damage. A flesh wound and a nasty bite from a gator. I've numbed it with a local, but when that wears off it's going to hurt. You're going to need a further series of antibiotic injections, too–lots of unpleasant bacteria live in an alligator's mouth. How do you feel?"

"Out of it," said Hayward, sitting up. "What is this place?" She peered at June. "June... June Brodie?" She looked around. What kind of hunting camp would contain a place like this–an emergency room with state-of-the-art equipment? And yet it was like no emergency room she had ever seen. The lighting was too dim, and except for the medical equipment the space was utterly bare: no books, paintings, posters, even chairs.

She swallowed and shook her head, trying to clear it. "Why did you fake your suicide?"

Brodie stepped back and gazed at her. "I imagine you must be the two officers investigating Longitude Pharmaceuticals. Captain Hayward of the NYPD and Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI."

"We are," said Pendergast. "I'd show you my badge, but I fear the swamp has claimed it."

"That won't be necessary," she said coolly. "Perhaps I shouldn't answer any questions until I call an attorney."

Pendergast gave her a long, steady look. "I am not in any mood for obstructionism," he said in a low, menacing voice. "You willanswer any questions I put to you, attorney and Miranda be damned." He turned to the man in surgical whites. "Stand over there next to her."

The short man hastily complied.

"Is that the patient?" Pendergast asked Brodie. "The one you mentioned earlier?"

She shook her head. "Is this any way to treat us, after we helped your partner?"

"Don't irritate me."

Brodie fell silent.

Pendergast looked at her, a terrible expression on his face. His Les Baer still hung ominously by his side. "You will answer my questions completely, starting now. Understood?"

The woman nodded.

"Now: why this extensive medical setup? Who is your 'patient'?"

"I am the patient," came a cracked, whispery voice, to the accompaniment of a door opening in the far wall. "All this largesse is for me." A figure stood in the darkness outside the door, tall and still and gaunt, a scarecrow silhouette barely visible in the darkness beyond the emergency room. He laughed: a papery laugh, more breath than anything else. After a moment the shadow stepped very slowly from the darkness into the half-light and raised his voice only slightly.

"Here's Charles J. Slade!"

75

JUDSON ESTERHAZY HAD GUNNED THE 250 Merc and aimed the bass boat south, accelerating to a dangerous speed down the old logging pullboat channel. With a supreme effort of will, he drew back a little on the throttle, quieted the turmoil in his mind. There was no question it had been time to cut his losses and run. He had left Pendergast and the injured woman back in the swamp, without a boat, a mile from Spanish Island. Whether they made it there or not was not his most pressing concern; he was safe and it was time to beat a strategic retreat. He would have to act decisively, and soon, but for now the wise course was to go to ground, lick his wounds–and reemerge refreshed and stronger.