U lysses Davis laughed hard from the top of the hill where he’d parked the Expedition. As soon as he saw the crew from the Sons of the South wearing night vision goggles and camouflage, he really started laughing his ass off. He smacked the steering wheel looking through his own binoculars and laughed a little more.
“You want to see?”
“Fuck ’em,” I said. “Let ’em play it out.”
“I tell you, Travers. This was one hell of an idea. What did you tell those boys?”
“Just told their commander that I knew where to find the folks who’d killed one of their finest men in arms, Bill MacDonald. Said those communists would be here in his state for a drug drop with a local gang of Jamaicans.”
“Jamaicans?”
“They needed an additional incentive.”
U shook his head and put down the binoculars. He took a big swig of water and watched the battle, sparks flashing from the muzzles of the automatic weapons. “Wasn’t that fancy with Beckum? Just told him that I’d sell your old tired ass out for a quarter.”
“How much, really?”
“I’m not sayin’. Let’s just say you were on special.”
We both laughed for a while and then he cranked the car and we started to pull away. For some reason, though, I decided to glance down the hill and maybe catch a bit of that fucker Ransom getting sliced in half. I wanted it. I did. But part of me also felt disgusted for following through on my fantasies. I’d killed those bastards, just as if I’d stalked them and knifed them in the gut.
We could only pray that the Sons of the South would take a hard hit for wiping them out. U planned on calling the police as soon as we got back on Poplar.
I couldn’t see much. As U turned the car and started to drive away, I saw more camouflage dudes running through a war that they thought they’d never fight. The chance for an actual mission had to have been irresistible.
One image did catch me, though. A person that sure as hell didn’t belong in the battle. A young girl was walking through the men – as if she was supernatural and impervious to bullets – head up and hands at her sides. Abby.
Chapter 61
U told me he’d meet me at the base of the bridge after I grabbed Abby; so I bolted from his truck searching. I tried to keep my footing on the steep weedy hill with my boots while I watched about half of the Humvees load up with soldiers and peel out, high beams scattered under the bridges and over the darkened dirt road. But several others remained, waiting to be loaded with wounded men. Among them, I found Abby again, she was walking, but kind of stumbling, over the broken ground near the place where I’d found Clyde James. A million years ago.
I ran after her, my Glock tight in my hand. Safety off. Seventeen shots ready to go.
I called her name.
She seemed deafened by all the gunfire from a few minutes ago. She stared straight ahead, still wearing my tattered blue jean jacket, looking stubborn and unwavering past a bunch of bodies. One of the dead men raised his head.
It was Jesse Garon in a white suit with an older man with a beard. The man yelled off something, fired at two of the SOS soldiers, and dropped them both to the ground. The crack of his gun sounded like a breaking whip. After the shots, Garon and the man got to their feet, saw me pointing my gun at them, then looked to the north at a cliff and then south at four more SOS soldiers racing toward them.
They launched into a run back onto the bridge; Abby didn’t even break stride as I yelled for her.
She reached down to one of the dead soldiers, grabbed his handgun, and began chasing the man and Garon onto the darkened bridge.
After waiting for a break in the firing, I ran onto the old bridge. My feet thumping and nearly tripping over the old wooden slats. Brown water swirled several hundred feet below. Cars passed on the new bridge to the south. I could hear their engines buzz and the whoosh of water under me.
Minutes later, I found Abby.
Running from behind, I grabbed a good chunk of the jean jacket like it was a quarterback’s jersey and pulled her into me. She was so determined to track Garon and the man she hadn’t even heard me follow. Her breath was loose and ragged.
She grunted and fought, but I twisted her close, trying to catch my breath, and at the same time hug her. She continued to wriggle and hit and finally I had to pin her arms to her sides and said, “Slow. We got ’em. Slow.”
She slowed the wriggling, didn’t hit me again, and her eyes began to register a little less wild light through her scattered blond hair. To the north, the humpbacks of the Hernando-Desoto Bridge burned in broken patterns of small white lights.
As her breathing slowed, I tried to take the gun from her hand.
But she fought back.
She stepped away and pointed the barrel at me. I raised my hands.
Over her shoulder, I saw lights moving closer to us from the Arkansas side. I thought it might be a train, but the rotted planks underneath my feet made me change my mind.
It was a truck. U’s truck.
I recognized the familiar pattern of the Expedition’s headlights and the solid familiar clack of his door closing. He was walking to us.
I could make out his hulking shape moving close and felt a bit of relief.
Then I heard a groan and rumble and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach as I saw that big truck drop from sight. A horrible groan of metal and the snapping of brittle wood. The truck was swallowed up in a huge black hole.
A mammoth splash of water erupted from under us.
Then it was silent for several seconds. A biting wind gnawed at my fingers resting on the rusted metal of the bridge. Wind whipped off the river and made a howling house as it flew through the crevices of metal.
I saw the cab of the truck, floating like a huge bubble, drift past and then dip, roll, and disappear into the bottom of the river.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see anything. Dust had kicked up from the broken bridge.
But then I saw U walking toward us, through the moonlight and dust, a look on his face that was pissed off as hell. A look, for once, I was glad to see.
“Goddamn it!” he yelled to me.
“You see them?” I shouted back.
“Must’ve dropped over the side before they got over water.”
Abby aimed the gun at U.
“Abby,” I said, reaching around her body to hold her arms down. “It’s fine. It’s U.”
“I heard him on the phone,” she said, holding on to the gun. “He made a deal with Ransom.”
U swaggered to a stop ahead of us. She looked up at him, eyes determined as hell, as I tried to pull the gun away.
“It was planned, Abby. We’re playing Ransom.”
She looked at me.
Then back at U.
Her body grew slack, the gun dropped to her side, and I slowly let my arms go from around her body. She looked up at the crooked rusted supports of the bridge.
“C’mon, Abby,” U said. “Let’s go home.”
“Where, U?” she said, not moving. Abby looked like she wanted to hit something.
Toward the Arkansas line, I saw a shapeless form emerge from the darkness that had swallowed U’s truck.
“Stay here,” I said. I gripped her arms pretty damned tight to get her attention. “Stay put.”
She nodded.
U branched off on the south edge and I took the north. More shapes were moving.
As soon as I walked to the big hole in the bridge, the shape had disappeared. I aimed my gun at one of the steel supports. I knew I’d seen a person moving but I thought maybe he’d fallen back through the hole. Made me uneasy as hell even being close to its rough form and the shadowed, black water moving below.
I walked backward and saw Jesse Garon scaling up one of the supports, trying to hide. Son of a bitch.
I ran over to follow him but then I heard a scream from Abby.