He'd gone to his knees and saw the handles and the lock. The pry bar he carried took care of the latter. When he pulled out the sliding drawer he was not exactly surprised, considering the boys he'd seen in the photos, to be met by the odor of gun oil and the sight of carefully wrapped firearms. But the five weapons he took out and arranged on the bed mattress were exceptional.
A 30-30 Winchester rifle, old style as far as he could tell, but in such pristine shape it had to be a collector's item. He couldn't help but pick it up, throw the lever action, and sight down the barrel, dreaming scenes of the Old West. Yee ha. He smiled. Born in the wrong century.
Then there was the Mauser, a German-made World War II classic, heavy, built to last, knock down a fucking mule with one shot. As he had already figured, these guys weren't real hunters, they were playboys, out here to make noise with their expensive toys. There was a twelve-gauge over-and-under shotgun there as well, the most utilitarian of the group and no doubt used to knock a few curlew out of the evening sky just for the hell of it.
Then there were two handguns: an old 9mm Glock, the one law enforcement gave up on after a couple of heavy-fingered cops said they fired prematurely, and a.45-caliber revolver of the style Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry might have carried but too fucking big for anyone to lug around these days except for some asshole drive-by gangbangers who thought the sound of it was cool because it was louder than their car stereos when it touched off.
Buck had stared at the collection for a few seconds. In his excitement over the total haul in the house, his natural wariness of the weapons was lost. No, he didn't like guns. He'd heard too many stories of their violence and how it inevitably came back on you. But there was something about this day that was feeling too easy, everything working out the way he'd envisioned it, the way he boasted on it to the boys. It was all going smoothly and Buck had spent nearly thirty-three years on this earth and nothing had ever gone completely smoothly for him. The guns were now stashed under the pile of other things they'd decided to take. Buck had slipped them there himself, not bothering to tell the boys what he'd found. He'd taken three boxes of ammunition from the secret drawer and wrapped them and the rifles and the big.45 in a blanket and covered that with some raingear he'd found to keep them as dry as possible.
Now he shook off the urge to torch the place and emptied the gas can into the tank and then tossed it onto the dock of the house. Fuck it, he thought. Don't overdo it just to get back at the assholes for trespassing on your life. This mission ain't about them. If you set the place on fire, you're sending up a smoke signal that anybody could respond to. Do the job, Buck. What you gotta do. Be smart.
"OK, boys. Let's move on. We're burnin' daylight," he said. Buck and the Duke. He reached into the seat trap and took out the GPS.
"Next on the list ain't but an hour south. If she's still standing we might be able to spend the night there."
Wayne and Marcus put a final knot in the line holding their newfound booty and climbed up into the backseats.
"You say so, captain," Wayne said, and when Buck hit the ignition and the big engine caught and the noise ripped into the heavy air, the boys looked at each other and grinned and passed the bottle between them. They'd already opened the Van Gogh vodka that they'd lifted from the kitchen and found they liked the espresso flavor.
SEVENTEEN
I was in the water, waist deep, sloshing around at the edges of the raised cabin deck, one eye peeking up under the two-by- eight stringers for some sign of a trap door, the other watching for Wally.
I had climbed back up on top of the structure when it became apparent that there was no way I was getting into the mysterious room from the inside. I'd already dismantled part of the metal frame of the other bed next to Sherry, an old prison trick inmates pulled to salvage strong enough chunks of metal to shave sharp and make killer shivs out of. I used one of the unsharpened chunks as a pry tool but it had been useless against the frame of the security door and after I worked for an hour to peel back a piece of baseboard and then chopped at the low corner of the wall, I gave up.
Outside, I even climbed back up on the roof where I'd found access before and scoured the panels for a ceiling entry to the other room. I found a vent that might have been for recirculated air. And a damaged edge I was able to peek into, only to find a secondary sheath over the room, some kind of fiberboard or waterproof polymer that was too tough to gouge through.
"You look too frustrated, Max," Sherry had said when I gave up and rejoined her. The aspirin from the medical kit had brought her fever down some. Her eyes were more alert. I'd opened a can of sliced peaches I'd found warm in the small refrigerator and used my fingers to fish out individual pieces and feed them into her mouth. The sugar and solid food had helped.
"Those are just my normal age lines," I said, tightening my face to make the look more severe. "You certainly know that by now."
Again the light grin came to her face, accented by the glistening smear of peach juice on her lips.
"No. That look is you grinding on something. The other is frustration at something that's beating you."
"OK," I admitted. "There's got to be a way into that fucking room."
I told her what I'd found through the roof, the change in materials that seemed only to surround that half of the building.
"Why would someone build one part of the cabin one way and the other so much more fortified?"
"Fortified or waterproof?" Sherry said.
"Both," I said. I had traced the electrical fines from the small refrigerator and a waterline from the sink. Both went through the floorboards in the direction of the other room. I'd taken another trip outside in search of a generator room I might have missed. Nothing. The electrical supply was in the other room as well.
"High-tech lock, waterproofed and fortified. There's something valuable inside," she said.
"Out here, in the middle of nowhere?" I tossed it back to her.
"Drug drop. Distribution point?"
"Cop thinking," I said, with a cynical twinge.
"Duh, yeah."
I might have thought of it myself. But it had been a while since I'd worked narcotics and only in the streets of South Philadelphia, never in the swamp.
"OK. It's isolated enough for drop-offs, but the only way you distribute from here is by airboat," I said. "Only way quick enough."
"Too piecemeal and too expensive," she said and ate more of the peaches.
I stared off toward the end of the bed, like I was thinking, but really looking at her toes, for discoloration. Though her mind was sharper and her mood higher with the food and rest, we were going to have to get her out of here soon. The chances of someone coming by or looking for us were minimal. Even if Billy started looking for me, which he would, or if Sherry's supervisors got anxious, would there be anyone dispatched to my river shack? And when they found it, if it were still standing, would they make a jump in reasoning that I'd been stupid enough to take us somewhere by boat? It could be days and we sure as hell didn't have days. I didn't see a way to patch my canoe with the materials we had. Whatever was in that room might be our savior if we were to have one.
"The Fisher Body plant in Lansing, Michigan," Sherry said. Her tone turned my head because she did not seem to be directing the odd and disconnected words to me but to the wall. She was looking off to a memory.
"I must have still been a teenager. It was one of those stories in the news that for the first time took my attention away from that bullshit in high school."
I knew Sherry had grown up in Michigan, the daughter of blue-collar parents, working class in an area and in a time where working class was a prideful tide.