Fever Dream (49 page)

Black Brake Swamp

A
BUTTERY MOON ROSE AMONG THE MASSIVE
trunks of the bald cypresses, spreading a faint light through the night-darkened swamp. The boat’s spotlight cast a beam
into the tangle of trees and other vegetation ahead, now and then illuminating pairs of glowing eyes. Hayward knew most of
the eyes belonged to frogs and toads, but nevertheless felt herself growing seriously spooked. Even if the strange stories
she’d heard as a child about Black Brake were legends, she knew the place was nevertheless infested with very real alligators
and venomous snakes. She poled the bass boat forward, drenched in sweat, walking the pole from the middle backward. Larry’s
shirt felt coarse and itchy against her bare skin. Pendergast lay on the front deck, maps spread out, examining them intently
with the aid of his flashlight. It had been a long, slow journey, full of dead ends, false leads, and painstaking navigation.

Pendergast shone his light into the water and dropped a pinch of dirt from a cup overboard, testing the current. “A mile or
less,” he murmured, going back to the maps.

She poled, walked back to the stern, pulled the pole up, walked forward, stuck it into the muddy bottom again. She felt as
if she were drowning in the greenish black jungle that surrounded them. “What if the camp’s gone?”

No answer. The moon rose higher, and Hayward breathed the deep, moist, fragrant air. A mosquito flew into her ear, buzzing
frantically. She smacked it, flicked it away.

“Up ahead is the last logging channel,” Pendergast said. “Beyond that lies the final stretch of swamp before Spanish Island.”

The boat nosed through a patch of rotting water hyacinth, the sour vegetative smell rising from the water and enveloping them.

“Turn off the spotlight and running lights, please,” Pendergast said. “We don’t want to alert them to our approach.”

Hayward switched off the lights. “You really think there’s a ‘them’ there?”

“I’m quite sure
something
is there. Why go to such lengths to stop us?”

As her eyes adjusted, Hayward found herself surprised at just how much light there was in the swamp under the full moon. Ahead,
through the tree trunks, she could see a lane of shimmering water. In a moment the boat had slipped into the logging channel,
now half overgrown with duckweed and hyacinth. The branches of the cypresses knitted together overhead, forming a tunnel.

Suddenly the boat stopped dead. Hayward lurched forward, using the pole to keep herself steady.

“We’ve snagged something beneath the surface,” Pendergast said. “Probably a root or a fallen tree branch. See if you can’t
pole around it.”

Hayward pushed herself against the pole. The stern of the boat swung around, impacting heavily against a cypress trunk. The
vessel shuddered and swayed, then came loose from the obstruction. As Hayward leaned into the pole, preparing to launch them
back into the logging channel, she saw something long, glistening, and black slip from the branches overhead and fall across
her shoulders. It slithered around the skin of her neck, cool and dry, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out
in surprise and revulsion.

“Don’t move,” said Pendergast. “Not a muscle.”

She waited, willing herself to stay still, as Pendergast took a slow step toward her, then stopped and balanced himself carefully
on the arsenal that lay in the boat’s bottom. And then one hand shot forward, grabbed the thick coiling presence from her
shoulders, and flung it away with a vicious snap. Hayward turned to watch the
snake writhing through the air, easily more
than a yard long, before landing in the water astern.

“Agkistrodon piscivorus,”
Pendergast said grimly. “Cottonmouth water moccasin.”

Her skin tingled, and the nasty slithering sensation refused to go away. Taking a deep breath, she shuddered and grasped the
pole. They moved back into the channel and continued deeper into the overgrown fastness. Pendergast took a look around, then
returned to his maps and charts. As she poled, Hayward kept a cautious eye on the braiding of tree trunks above her. Mosquitoes,
frogs, snakes—the only thing she hadn’t yet encountered was an alligator.

“We may have to get out and travel on foot soon,” Pendergast murmured. “There would appear to be obstructions ahead.” He glanced
up from the map, looked around once again.

Hayward thought about the alligators.
On foot. Great
.

She placed the pole, gave the boat another shove. Suddenly, in a silent flash of black, Pendergast lunged at her, tackling
her at the waist, and they both tumbled over the gunwale of the boat into the black water. She righted herself underwater,
too surprised to struggle, her feet sinking into the muck below. As she pushed off and her head broke the surface, she heard
a fusillade of shots.

A
clang
sounded as a round struck the engine, and a gout of flame erupted.
Clang! Clang!
The shots were coming from the darkness to her right.

“Get a weapon,” Pendergast whispered in her ear.

She grasped the gunwale and, waiting for a lull in the shooting, hoisted herself up, grabbed the closest gun—a heavy rifle—and
slid back down. Another fusillade of shots tore into the boat, several striking the engine. A trickle of flame ran down the
bottom of the boat: the gas line had been hit.

“Don’t return fire!” Pendergast whispered, giving her a push. “Get to the other side of the boat, head for the far side of
the channel, and take cover.”

She half swam, half waded through the water, keeping her head as low as possible. The burning boat erupted into flames behind
them, casting a yellow glow over the water. There was a muffled
crump!
and she felt the pressure-wave of the explosion wash over her,
a ball of fire rising orange and black into the night. A series
of smaller explosions crackled from the burning pile of firearms.

Suddenly shots were striking all around, sending up gouts of water.

“We’re spotted,” Pendergast said urgently. “Immerse and swim!”

Hayward took a deep breath, ducked below the water, and, rifle awkwardly gripped in one hand, began to propel herself forward
in the watery darkness. As her feet sank into the muck, she could feel hard—and sometimes not-so-hard—objects and the occasional
slimy wriggle of a fish. She tried not to think about the water moccasins, or about the nutrias and eight-inch leeches and
everything else that infested the swamp. She could hear the
zip zip
of bullets entering the water around her. With her lungs almost bursting she rose, gasped in another breath, and submerged
again.

The water seemed to be alive with the buzzing sound of bullets. She had no idea where Pendergast was but she kept going, rising
every minute or so to gulp air. The mud under her feet began to rise. Soon she was crawling in ever-shallower water, the trees
on the far side of the canal looming up. The shooter was still firing to her right, the bullets striking the tree trunks above
her. The shots were more intermittent now. He had evidently lost her and was simply shooting into her general vicinity.

She dragged herself onto the slippery bank, rolling onto her back amid the hyacinths and fighting to catch her breath. She
was completely covered with mud. It had happened so fast she hadn’t had time to think—but now she thought. Furiously. It wasn’t
the swampers this time, she was sure of that. It appeared to be a lone shooter. Someone who knew they were coming and had
time to prepare.

She ventured a look around but saw no sign of Pendergast. Cradling the rifle with one hand, she half crawled, half swam up
a shallow rivulet into the cover of the trees. She grasped an old, rotting cypress stump and settled herself behind it. As
she did so, she heard a faint splashing sound. She almost called out, thinking it was Pendergast, when a spotlight abruptly
went on in the channel, illuminating the swamp to her left.

She ducked down, trying to make herself as small as possible behind the stump. Slowly, with great deliberation, she shifted
the rifle in front of her. It was covered with mud. Immersing it in the
water of the rivulet, she agitated it slightly, letting
the mud dissolve away, then brought the weapon up and felt along its length, trying to figure out what it was. Lever-action,
heavy, octagon barrel, big caliber. It seemed to be a .45-70, a modern replica of an Old West rifle, maybe a Winchester reproduction
of an old Browning—which meant it would probably still fire despite the immersion. The magazine would hold between four and
nine rounds.

The spotlight lanced through the trees, scanning the swamp. The shooting had stopped, but the light was moving closer.

She should shoot out the light. That was, in fact, her only target, as everything else was invisible in the glare. Moving
slowly and silently, she raised the gun, shaking out the last of the water. With infinite care she cocked the lever, feeling
a round slip into the chamber. So far, so good. The light was now very visible, moving slowly along the canal. She raised
the gun to take aim—and suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder.

Stifling a cry, she ducked back down.

“Do not fire,” came Pendergast’s almost inaudible voice. “It might be a trap.”

Swallowing her surprise, she nodded.

“Follow me.” Pendergast turned and crawled up the rivulet, and Hayward did the same. The moon was temporarily hidden behind
clouds, but the dying glow from the burning boat gave them just enough light to see by. The little channel narrowed, and soon
they were crossing a mudflat covered with about a foot of water. The beam shot across the flat, moving toward them. Pendergast
stopped and took a deep breath, sinking into the water as deeply as possible. He looked as mud-encrusted as she was. Hayward
followed suit, almost burying her face in the muck. The light passed directly over them. She tensed, waiting for a shot, but
there was none.

When the light had passed, she rose. Beyond the flat she could see a massive grouping of dead cypress stumps and rotting trunks.
Pendergast was heading directly for it. Hayward followed suit, and within a minute they had taken up a position.

Hayward quickly rinsed and recleaned her gun. Pendergast plucked his Les Baer from its holster and did the same. They worked
quickly and silently. The light came back, this time closer, moving directly toward them.

“How do you know it’s a trap?” Hayward whispered.

“Too obvious. There’s more than one gunman there, and they’re waiting for us to fire at the light.”

“So what do we do?”

“We wait. In silence. Unmoving.”

The light snapped off and darkness reigned. Pendergast crouched, immovable, unreadable, behind the great tangle of stumps.

She listened intently. There were splashes and rustles in the night, seemingly everywhere. Animals moving, frogs jumping.
Or was it people?

The burning boat finally sank, the slick of burning gasoline rapidly dying out, leaving the swamp in a cool quasi-darkness.
Still they waited. The light came on again, drawing ever closer.

J
UDSON ESTERHAZY, WEARING SHOULDER WADERS
, moved with infinite caution through the thick vegetation, a Winchester .30-30 in his hands. It was much lighter than
the sniper rifle, far more maneuverable, and a gun he’d used for hunting deer since he was a teenager. Powerful but sleek,
it was almost like an extension of himself.

Through the trees he could see Ventura’s light, shining about, steadily approaching the area where Pendergast and the woman
must have gone to ground. Esterhazy was positioned about a hundred yards behind where they had been driven. Little did they
know they were being squeezed in a pincer movement, as he worked up behind their position among the fallen trees while Ventura
approached from the front. The two were sitting ducks. All he needed was for them to shoot once—a single shot—and then he
could pinpoint their position and kill them both. And eventually they would be forced to shoot out the light.

The plan was working perfectly, and Ventura had played his part well. The light—on a long pole—moved slowly, haltingly, ever
closer to their position. He could see its beam fitfully illuminating a tangle of cypress roots and a massive, rotting trunk—an
old blowdown. That was where they were: there was no other decent cover anywhere nearby.

He maneuvered himself slowly to acquire a line of sight to the blowdown. The moon was higher in the sky and now it emerged
from behind the clouds, casting a pale light into the darkest recesses of the swamp. He had a glimpse of the two of them,
crouched behind the log, focused entirely on the light in front of them—and fully exposed to his flanking maneuver. He didn’t
even need them to shoot the light after all.

Slowly, Judson raised the rifle to his cheek, peering through the Trident Pro 2.5x night-vision scope. The scene leapt into
sharp relief. He couldn’t get a line on both at once, but if he took down Pendergast first, the woman would not present much
of a challenge.