Acts Of Nature Part 12

The man in the jacket still said nothing. Maybe he was pondering the offer. Maybe there was some hope to the situation. Then the man nodded his head as though he'd come to a decision.

"There's nothing Mexican about this standoff, my friend," Harmon said, his voice tired but succinct. "It's just humans being humans." Then he pulled the trigger and the powerful, small-patterned shotgun blast ripped Buck Morris's leg off just above the knee.

Harmon wished he was home. He wanted to be sitting in his protected den, reading his books, enjoying the quiet air- conditioning provided by his generator and sipping a cool drink and mildly gloating over how he had beaten nature this time. Instead he was in the middle of a bloodbath.

Harmon did not trust nature and this was exactly why. The whole way out here he'd looked down to see homes and cars and buildings and roadways all skewed off balance. At two thousand feet you couldn't see the details but everything in the wake of the hurricane looked different, the colors gone dirty, the normal flow of things stopped cold. At first it had almost seemed a relief when the landscape turned watery and open; then they'd found the cabin they were looking for and even in its own backyard nature couldn't be trusted.

As the pilot hovered and Harmon had waited for Squires to touch down on the deck, he had chuckled a bit at his partner's instant reaction to pull his weapon and sight the corners like they were going into Beirut again. But Harmon also noted the odd damage at the roofline of the simple shack: some missing tin panels and splintered wood that looked more like damage from a hungry animal than from the wide slap of a wind gust or falling limb. He was nervous when he slid down the fast rope and landed on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. When they'd unhooked, Harmon had given the pilot the high sign and then bent and pulled the electronic lock switch from his bag.

"OK, partner. Let's check out the inside of Crandall's mystery hole and then get the h.e.l.l back out of here," Harmon said. They started for the south side of the building and the instant he punched the b.u.t.ton on the switch an unholy scream seemed to fill the air and Harmon looked stupidly down at the b.u.t.ton like he'd done something wrong and could turn it back off.

Suddenly they were confronted by the sight of a young man, his face in agony, coming around the corner at them with an outstretched arm like he was offering them a bloodied portion of the devil himself. All manner of their mercenary past boiled up in Harmon's memory and he could only think now in retrospect that Squires must have relaxed his weapon when he realized the bloodied kid was unarmed because they were both staring at the boy and wincing at the pitch of his wailing when another voice erupted behind them.

This time Squires tensed and swung, his gun at the ready, and when he saw a second young man come running around the west corner with a shotgun, the big man fired two quick rounds, dropping the a.s.sailant in his tracks. Harmon watched as the boy pitched forward and, almost without thought, he stuck out his foot and stopped the shotgun as it slid across the wooden deck by stepping on its barrel. For a moment there was silence, the crack of Squires's pistol sucked out into the humid air around them. The only reason Harmon was not stupefied by the series of events was that he had never been stupefied by the actions of his friend or those of people in bad places and he now realized that's exactly where they were: in a bad place. Just as automatically as he had pinned the sliding shotgun, he crouched and searched the immediate area. He and Squires were not unfamiliar with flanking military procedure. So when his friend turned at an angle and shouted: "Don't move, a.s.shole!" with his gun still raised but pointed down toward the water, Harmon was not surprised that another unfriendly was in sight. He looked past the big man's legs at a bearded, scruffy-looking guy whose arms were now raised in surrender and without taking his eyes off the threat of the big handgun in the new player's lifted hand, Harmon reached down for the shotgun.

It was when he felt for the wooden stock of the gun that his fingers touched an uneven surface of warm goop and when he shifted eyes to his feet he realized he was touching the back of a bloodied hand, the digits cleaved off like a rack of short ribs, the white stumps of bone glowing through the red syrup and the intact thumb still twitching as it tried to grip the shotgun stock.

"Jesus," he heard himself say. And the gunfire began again.

I was inside the coc.o.o.n of the closed room but there was no mistaking the sound of gunfire outside. I heard Marcus's screams and already knew I was responsible. The image of those severed fingers on the floor will be in my dreams. But then came some indecipherable yelling and two quick reports. A medium-caliber handgun, I thought. Not Buck's big .45. And then I felt more than heard something or someone tumble onto the deck just on the other side of the wall and the sound of something metal skittering across the boards. I was standing, the generator inside was humming, the air conditioning clacked on, the computer indicator lights started popping on, glowing red and green. I took a step toward the window that showed damage from Buck and his crew's attempts last night to get in but then flinched at the sound of another shot. This time it was the .45 and it repeated itself twice more and there was another thud that vibrated the floorboards. I crouched down in exasperation. There was carnage of some form going on ten feet away from me that I couldn't see, could only hear, but I knew instinctively that its outcome was going to determine my fate and Sherry's.

Again there was silence and I was afraid to move but then I remembered the open hatch in the corner and sneaked to it, my ear to its edge, hoping to hear, to get some clue what the h.e.l.l was happening outside. Taking a chance, I moved my head into the opening, but the sunlight outside was still so new that very little penetrated under the raised decking and I could see little more than a black shimmer on the top of the water. When I strained, I heard nothing but a high-pitched keening like an animal in deep pain.

"Max?"

Sherry was trying to get up. She had somehow risen to a sitting position on the bed but her leg was locked straight and I needed to move to her, but hesitated. She tried to swing her damaged leg over the side and was just about to fall so I made a decision. I flipped the metal port closed with a clang and rushed to her side, catching her before she tumbled to the floor.

"Was that music that I heard, Max?" she said in a delirious whisper. "Are we home, Max?"

While the skinny p.e.c.k.e.rwood with the missing leg writhed around on the deck, Harmon let go of the boy and stepped over to kick the big .45 over the edge and into the swamp. He then looked down at the man who now had his stump of a knee in both hands and was kind of spinning on one hip like one of those break dancers on TV, though they didn't leave a smear of blood behind when they did it. He stepped over to his partner, who appeared to have lost part of the side of his head. Harmon had seen dead men before and you didn't have to take a G.o.dd.a.m.n pulse to tell. He did not mean to be callous. He and Squires had been through a lot together. But after what had been nearly a lifetime of war and violence, Harmon's nature was to care only about family. Squires was not family. He picked up the big man's Mk23, checked the load, and then realized, h.e.l.l, he hadn't even taken his own Colt out of his pocket yet. He took two more steps and looked down at the kid who had come sliding around the corner yelling, "Marrcussss!" until Squires shot him. The kid's skin was already going pale. Chest wounds will do that. Harmon shook his head. Neither of these boys was older than his kids, sitting in their dorm rooms at Notre Dame, probably having a party while the campus got it together to enjoy the weekend.

He avoided the blood pool and went back to the older hick, who was now emitting a high keening sound of serious pain. Harmon thought for a minute about what the guy had said about unarmed police officers being locked inside the shack. Why the h.e.l.l would he make something like that up? Then he thought about the idiot claim that there were drugs inside. The company didn't deal in drugs. They dealt in oil, which was much more lucrative, though sometimes the way they obtained it and bargained for it and set prices for it wasn't any more legal than the way drug suppliers did the same thing. In fact, Harmon had been working the company angle on this trip since the minute he'd gotten off the phone with Crandall. No doubt this place was clandestine as h.e.l.l. Harmon knew enough about the business to understand the company was always looking for supply. They had ways of studying deep rock formations, ways of setting off subterranean explosions and then measuring and tracking the echo effects and movement of sound waves to tell them where the oil and natural gas deposits were. That kind of s.h.i.t went on all the time all over the world. It's just that in most of this particular part of the world, in an environmentally designated part of the Everglades, such exploration was illegal as h.e.l.l. That's why you need security to check out a lonely outpost after a hurricane. That's why you would be ordered to check its infrastructure and report if it had been seen or uncovered by anyone. He stood and looked across the deck. That's why you clean up after yourself.

The older p.e.c.k.e.rwood was still crying when Harmon heard the clank of metal on metal. It seemed to come from under him and he felt the vibration in his shoes. Was that a door? Was it proof that this a.s.shole who had just killed his partner was telling the truth? Were there more men inside?

Harmon stood still for a moment, listening, a.s.sessing. He couldn't divide his concentration now. He was alone. You focus on one situation at a time and if you can eliminate a distraction, that's what you do.

With no more thought than that, Harmon stepped forward and shot the older man with the blown-off leg through the back of the head with Squires's pistol. The end of the annoying whimpering. The fingerless boy took it easier. He was still wrapped up around his disfigured hand when Harmon put a round into his ear hole. Those ch.o.r.es done, he carefully walked around to the entrance of the cabin, noted the crowbar blade under the door, and used a single blast from the shotgun to blow away a six-inch hole around the metal tip. The hinges creaked as the door swung free and he entered at a crouch, weapon at the ready. No one greeted him. The place smelled of jerky and antiseptic, sweat and wet wood. One bed was partially disa.s.sembled on the opposite wall. A cooler and some trash were over in the corner. Sunlight was leaking through a rough opening in the roof, the damage he had seen from the air. Someone might have dropped through it, but there was nothing near it to indicate a man could have climbed unaided back out. There was no place to hide.

On the western wall he studied the door to the adjoining room. The red light was glowing on the electronic lock, and in all the confusion, he'd forgotten where he left the remote switch. He noted the damage around the door frame where attempts had been made to break in, unsuccessfully. The company was hiding its secrets well. Harmon tried the latch. Then he actually knocked.

"h.e.l.lo?" he called out at the door, and even he realized how stupid he sounded. "Is anyone in there? This is the DEA, federal officers. Is anyone alive in there?"

TWENTY-SEVEN.

I was still at Sherry's side, easing her back onto the bed, repeating to her, "It's OK, baby. It's OK. We're almost out of here, Sherry. We're almost home."

Her eyes were open but the way they were twitching in her head, the irises never stopping long enough to absorb the light, made me wonder what she was seeing or what those images were telling her. I didn't think the pain was even registering anymore. She'd forgotten the leg, I thought. Now she was struggling with another demon and the only thing keeping her from it was her own internal strength.

Two more small-caliber gunshots sounded after I'd clapped the porthole door closed and both made me flinch. Then I heard the roar of the shotgun next door. But who was firing. Buck? Wayne? Was Marcus coming to pay me back for taking his fingers?

When I heard someone twisting the k.n.o.b on the door, I pulled my knife and moved to the hinges. They'd have to come through here. I might wound one; everything else would fall from there. My face was close to the metal when I heard a stranger's voice identify himself as a DEA agent.

"Is anyone alive in there?"

I let him wonder while I tried to sort out the possibilities. This place was obviously not a drug storage bin. Buck's dreams were just that, a small-time thief's dream of a big score. So why the h.e.l.l would DEA be out here two days after a hurricane? It might have been a good flush technique, but I wasn't going for it.

"Do you know Jim Born, the agent-in-charge for the Broward office?" I said, loud enough for him to hear it. There was a hesitation on the other side of the door.

"Yeah. But I just transferred in from Virginia. Look, you need to come out there with your hands raised, OK?" the voice said, exasperated. "If you're armed, you need to throw your weapons out first. Understand?

Jim Born was an FDLE agent I'd been introduced to by Sherry. He hadn't worked for DEA in several years.

"f.u.c.k you," I said. "There's an officer from the Broward sheriff's office in here so why don't you you come in come in here here with your hands up and toss the shotgun and the handgun in first." I was guessing the weapons based on the last sounds I'd heard. It might throw the guy, wondering how I knew. with your hands up and toss the shotgun and the handgun in first." I was guessing the weapons based on the last sounds I'd heard. It might throw the guy, wondering how I knew.

Would some of Buck's s.h.i.thead friends have joined him on their merry looting party, maybe even started a shootout to cut down on the number of shares in the proceeds? That'd be a lot of homicide for a little profit. Or was this another group altogether? I didn't have time to wait the guy out. Sherry was dying next to me. He didn't know that. But I wasn't taking the chance of having him come through the door with backup behind him. I'd be outflanked again. So I worked out logistics, coveted the high ground, and took a gamble. If it was someone with the ability to help us, friendly or not, I'd have to take the chance.

"You already know you can't get through these windows. People have been trying to chop into them all night.

"And you probably also know there's one other entrance. The escape hatch through the floor in here. So here's the deal. You go below. I open the hatch. You show me some kind of identification. I let you come up."

There was silence. A whispered discussion? A plan being prepared? I was flying blind but if I minimized the s.p.a.ce, made it impossible to be rushed by bodies and force, I might at least be able to put more information together than I could through a door. I was hoping this guy was cagey enough to be thinking the same thing.

"Yeah, OK," the voice said. "The surveillance intel shows that hatch. Open it and I'll toss my badge up."

I listened as intently as I could, heard one set of solid footsteps move away. The sound of the air conditioner drowned out anything once the voice moved to the outside. I got up, found the switch, and turned the machine off. I had not registered the coolness in the room until then. The chill in my skin had started with the first sound of gunfire and had stayed. I now moved to the hatch and yanked it open so I could at least hear or maybe see the ruffle of the water when one or three men sloshed under the decking. When I peered in over the edge there was already a telltale swirl, some kind of eddy on the dark surface that seemed to have been pushed up from the bottom. Then I heard the slosh of someone lowering themselves into the swamp.

"OK. Where's this hatch?" The man's voice echoed up from the porthole.

"West side. In between the last two stringers," I said. There was more movement on the surface, expanding arcs of water like rings moving away from the plunk of a rock.

"Look. Tell me your name, friend. Let's make this easier," the voice said, loud now as if he was already in the room, his tone booming from the s.p.a.ce between water and wood like it was coming from a wet bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Freeman," I said. "Max Freeman."

"You're a cop?"

"No. Private investigator working with a cop," I said, maybe giving too much away if they were drug hunters following a rumor.

"OK, Freeman."

Looking down through the circular hatch at an angle, I caught a glimpse of fabric.

"Here's my ID."

I sneaked another look. He only showed a forearm and hand, holding a wallet. I noted it was his left hand. Most people are righties. His gun hand was hidden.

"Toss it up," I said.

He underhanded it high but I did not follow its trajectory and instead watched the circle of water. The man's face, ruddy, middle-aged, slipped into the s.p.a.ce and we made eye contact. If I'd had a gun I would have had the muzzle over the edge pointing down. I hoped that didn't give him courage.

I moved around in a half circle and picked up the wallet: Edward Christopher Harmon. Florida private investigator. The photo was similar enough to the glimpse I'd just had. The lie about DEA didn't surprise me. Admitting it did.

"So now we're on the same field," Harmon said from below. "Two PIs doing a job. You yours. Me mine."

"It doesn't exactly make us brothers, Harmon," I said. "What's your job and what the h.e.l.l happened out there?"

I heard him slosh. But I'd been down there myself. There was no way to suddenly leap up off that mucky bottom. I was tall enough to reach up and just get my fingers over the edges. Unless he was seven feet, he wasn't coming up until I let him.

"Your friends, I'm afraid, got a little trigger happy. Probably jumpy after that boy came screaming around the corner with half of his hand gone. I'll a.s.sume that was your work, Freeman. Maybe he wasn't your friend?"

"Never was," I said.

"Won't ever be now," Harmon said.

"Since we're a.s.suming, let me take my turn," I said. "Everybody out there is dead. Or everyone except your team?"

"My partner got his face blown off. He's gone," Harmon said and the tone was actually somber, like it meant something to him. "It's just you and me, Freeman. Or is your cop alive?"

I looked up at Sherry, concentrated on her chest, thought I could see it rise and fall, but for a second I didn't think I could truthfully answer him.

"What's your job?" I said instead and again I heard him, or something, slosh in the water.

"My company owns this research facility. They sent me out to secure it after the hurricane, make sure it was still standing."

"It's illegal as h.e.l.l to have a drilling field in this part of the Glades," I said. You didn't have to be an environmentalist to know that spoiling the Glades and threatening the water supply was a raw nerve in Florida. The profiteers would get a foothold any way they could. The computer systems behind me, the plotting desk, the seismic charts, the security lock on the door. No other explanation made sense.

"No one's drilling that I know of, Freeman. You see a drill up there? f.u.c.king thing would have to be six stories high on a metal platform. You know anything about oil drilling?"

"Yeah," I said. "You set some charges down in the substrata first, doesn't take a big drilling operation. Then you fire off explosions that no one hears or sees and you measure the underground reaction, sometimes with lasers and the sensitive kinds of computerized equipment you've got up here in your little den, Harmon. And that's illegal too."

This time the voice took a long break. Making a decision. Or making me think he was making a decision.

"OK. OK, Freeman. We can debate all day. It's a f.u.c.king job for me and it ain't worth this much s.h.i.t. My partner's dead. All the a.s.sholes who started firing on us when we came to check out a company project are dead. I have no knowledge of the legal status of this place. But I do have a satellite phone and I'm gonna call my pilot, have him do a pickup and I'm outa here.

"You wanna go with me or sit up there with your cop friend, who I'm a.s.suming is a corpse by now or he would have said something. What I'm not going to do is stand here in this f.u.c.king soup any longer."

This time I was the one hesitating. This guy might be our last chance. He leaves, Sherry dies. I'm certain of it. There's not much of a choice left.

"Toss up the guns," I said. "I'll help you load your friend's body."

This time there's no discussion.

"Stand away so you don't think I'm trying to shoot you," he said, and an over-under shotgun came up, stock first, and he pushed it hard enough for the gun to clear the opening and clack onto the floor. I dragged it away. Then an MK pistol flipped up out of the s.p.a.ce and clattered to the floor.

"That's what I got," Harmon said.

This time when I peered over the edge he was standing in full view, empty palms raised, fingers spread wide.

"Give me a hand," he said.

I braced myself on either side of the porthole and reached down. He locked on with a grip on each of my wrists and I did the same. It was an old climber's technique I learned long ago and it surprised me that he knew it.

"OK," he said and I yanked him up and over the edge of the hatch. While he was still on all fours I picked up the Mk23 and held it loosely in one hand. He stood and did not seem to care that I was now armed. He was a man of medium build, probably in his early fifties but in good shape. His grayish hair was matted from the moisture, his clothes soaking wet. He first looked me in the face, seemed to study my eyes until he'd made some kind of a.s.sessment, and then scanned the rest of the room, nodding, like it was familiar and he was pleased that everything appeared to be in shape. He stopped when he sighted the cot and Sherry behind me.

"How's your officer friend, if she is indeed an officer?" he said.

"She needs help," I said.

"Then it's a good thing we made a deal."

"Did we?"

He refocused on my eyes. It is an old cop trick that was probably taken from the art of magicians. Most people, even shy people and especially criminal people, will try to be brave and look you in the eye when you first start talking to them. And if you are engaging, with a smile and a purpose, you can hold their attention for the second it takes to do the sleight of hand you need to do.

"Actually, I'm going to have to take a little time here to do some doc.u.menting. Simple tasks like pulling some computer memories and such," he said, turning just slightly to his right, but with his feet still planted, a solid foundation. His move might have even worked if his jacket had not been so wet, the heft of the soaked fabric pulled just hard enough to expose a hard edge in his right pocket, and when I saw his shoulder raise to slip his hand inside I shot him.

The round hit him in the hip and must have made solid contact with bone because he spun, just a quarter turn, but when he stepped back to gain his balance, he put his foot directly into the hole of the open s.p.a.ce of the escape hatch and went down. Trying quickly to straddle the void, he landed with one leg hanging and the other spread out at floor level. His rib cage and right underarm sc.r.a.ped hard against the inside edge of the hatch and then came to a hard halt. He was wedged in the hole, looking suddenly like a human pair of scissors, doing a painful split. He was awkwardly stuck; his right arm pinned and left one flailing. I changed position and circled. I had to give the guy credit. He hadn't cried out, though I knew it had to hurt, both the bullet into bone and the fall. I looked down at him and his lips were pressed tight into a hard line. Might have been p.i.s.sed, might have been pain. The look said either. Through the s.p.a.ce between his back and one edge, I could look down and see the lump in his pocket was still there, hanging heavily in his pocket and impossible for him to reach.

"Is that a pistol in your pocket or did I just shoot you for trying to get a two-pound pack of cigarettes out of your jacket?" I said.

"f.u.c.k you, Freeman."

The strain in his face increased. His breathing started to go ragged. He might have broken some ribs going down, possibly punctured a lung. But still his eyes were flashing left and right, trying to figure a move. Guy like him had probably saved his own a.s.s a dozen times and was still confident he could do it again.

I heard Sherry moan behind me, the first sound she'd made since Harmon started banging on the door, and we were wasting time.

"OK, Harmon. Now you've got a reason to work with me here. You gotta get to the hospital, my partner has to get to the hospital," I said. "You tell me how to call back your helicopter pilot and all three of us fly out together."

He looked up and saw me pointing the gun in his face and thought about the alternatives for less than ten seconds.