Slagget’s hand and wrist were sprayed with blowback. Blood mostly. The body twitched in his grasp. Nervous impulses with no guiding volition. Old fashioned death throes.
Chalk raised a hand. “Hold on there.” He drew his gun again, and blasted a round of his own through Clynch’s head. The coup de grâce it was his duty as leader to perform. The twitching stopped.
Slagget pulled the body inboard to prepare it for disposal. Chalk throttled back until there was just enough thrust to keep the boat headed into the wind. At a dead stop, they were even more vulnerable. Scouring the surrounding waters for the enemy, he said, “Hurry it up, Slagget! We’ve got shit to do!”
Chalk was pissed that he had to kill and dispose of one of his own men to prevent the clients from slaughtering his entire team. This was not a moral stance. It was a question of numbers, and right now he needed more able-bodied men, not fewer. He scanned the gray black waters for the clients, but with a new idea in mind. His boldest yet, he believed.
Slagget dropped the Danforth into Clynch’s lap, flukes and shaft pointing up toward his bloody chin. He faked the chain in loops around Clynch’s abdomen, and tied the line around the corpse. He bent on a large constrictor knot, bragging he’d learned it in summer camp when he was eight. Slagget gave the body a shake. Good and tight. Nothing even rattled.
Slagget looked at Chalk. “Would you like to say a few words?”
Chalk’s brows shot up with surprise. “Fuck him.”
They both reached for Clynch’s ankles. Hoisted as high as they could. The body toppled into the water, and disappeared immediately.
In a surreal moment, three entangled decoys went over the side after Clynch, and swirled down into the Chesapeake’s murk. It looked as if Clynch was the reincarnated Konrad Lorenz, trailed by his imprinted ducklings.
The boat throttled up faster without the anchor and Clynch’s body on board. Now Chalk needed to get on shore. The firefight with those Iranian shit-birds he’d stumbled into, and barely escaped, was on reflection, exactly the skirmish he now needed to win and to complete this damn deal. The next meeting with them must happen on his terms. With his strength in numbers chewed down to just himself and one man, somehow he had to eliminate this new threat. There was only one way to do it as quickly as it needed to get done.
CHAPTER 31
Miss Dotsy's ride back to Smith Island from the lighthouse was punishing. A stormy assault with intent to drown. Ben stayed forward in the cuddy tending to LuAnna. Knocker Ellis manned the helm.
The two men played an odd game of catch, tossing wet rags back and forth from warming on the Atomic Four, to the cabin where Ben applied them to LuAnna. Aside from bundling her up in blankets they had stowed, he was actively restoring her core temperature as best he could. LuAnna no longer looked Smurf blue from the abuse and her involuntary skinny dip. Regardless, she had clearly been the Everlast heavy bag for a man with deep-seated rage.
Between hot rags, Ben gave her a clinical assessment. There were no grossly broken bones, which did not rule out smaller fractures. No abdominal bloating or tenderness. No obsessive thirst, or pallid gums to hint at shock, hypothermia, or internal bleeding. She had radial and dorsalis pedis pulses, so her pressure was decent. Double-checking her perfusion, he pinched the tip of her index finger, and was relieved to see the nail bed return from white to pinkish-purple in under two seconds. Good capillary refill.
He dressed the gash on her hip as best he could without stitches. He prayed that what he saw was all she got, with no masked fatal complications. He said a prayer to no one in particular for the little Blackshaw inside LuAnna. Perhaps nothing more drastic than stitches, bandages, and time would do the trick. Perhaps they’d still make a family.
Ben called back to Knocker Ellis, “Thank you. For back there.”
“Shucks. ’Tweren’t nothing.”
Ben clarified, “No, Ellis. That was one hell of a shot you made. I mean, off a moving boat. I know what it costs to kill a man.”
Ellis shook his head no. “Credit where it’s due.”
Ben was cold, tired, not tracking this. “You shot the first sentry at the lighthouse.”
Knocker Ellis said, “I know I touched-off that virus back at Deep Banks. The Kid, you called him. But this other guy just now? You were talking all non-lethal, like Gandhi, so I just winged that guy in the shoulder so he'd mind his manners. I didn’t kill him. Credit where it’s due, Tiger.”
It sunk into Ben’s slowly moving mind. He had released the kerosene. He had popped the flea bombs. Then he had pulled the signal gun’s trigger, and shot the flare true. Ben had done these things. Not Ellis. Ben had killed in cold blood.
Had he only been trying to rescue LuAnna, and deny Chalk useful assets to keep him off balance and on the move? No, somewhere inside, Ben knew his enemy, this pack of mad dogs, was never going to jail for what they’d done. They would have immunity from justice under some secret protective legal clause; like a warped rendering of Ron Paul’s post-9/11 Marque and Reprisal Act, which would permit God knows what offshore perversions of American rule of law in the name of Homeland Security. What was Ben’s defense? He didn’t have one. Just the core imperative to save the love of his life. He wondered if that was enough.
Ellis tried to ease Ben’s conscience. “Look at it like this. The lighthouse needed fumigating, right? So you killed yourself a flea.” Ellis smiled.
Ben did not. This was not killing on an overseas deployment for God and country. This was civilian murder in home waters. Had he redeemed himself from what he had done in the war? No, Ben could not smile over this, despite possessing a fair measure of the well-worn coping mechanism of gallows humor. Instead, he crossed the threshold he had sworn to avoid. He entered that last dark house on the block. And with a fresh ache of remorse, he felt completely at home.
LuAnna was coming to. When Ben was sure she could swallow, he gave her warm canned chicken broth from his Thermos. He’d microwaved it in his one concession to the modern kitchen back at the saltbox. It was deliciously salty. Her mouth was raw where chipped teeth had flayed her tongue and the insides of her cheeks. She sipped anyway, the sting helping to wake her. Ben cocooned her in a third blanket.
There was a lot going unsaid between them. She offered, “I don’t think they got frisky on me.” As if suddenly aware of how numb she felt all over, she added, “Do you?”
Ben said, “Hard to tell. You got a good rinse in the bay. I believe you’re okay. If you say you are.” God, that sounded terrible. “Meaning I’m not a doctor.” Worse! “Meaning I’m just glad you’re alive, LuAnna. It’s all that matters to me.”
“Nice try. You get a 3.7 on the Nadia Comaneci Bullshit Scale. Obliged for the effort. Damn, I’m lithping. Must look like a Jack O’Lantern.”
“No Hon. You’re beautiful.”
“Obliged again, liar. Now, how come I’m all busted up?” That was LuAnna. To the point.
Ellis yelled over the wind. “Go ahead. That girl’s paid dear for the truth.”
Ben told LuAnna everything. About his father’s death. The gold. About Chalk. The Kid. The Harrises. Tug Parnell. The flaming human cannonball at the lighthouse. And the bomb that lay buried with the gold. He finished, confessing, “It’s my fault. I didn’t tell you everything from the start. That’s why your guard was down. That’s why this happened to you. I’m so sorry, LuAnna.”