Which, of course, they had. With Henry as the bait.
Sean had sat and sweated until their return and then the ill-tempered slamming of doors and kicking of walls and the morose snatches of conversation had made it plain that I’d somehow got Trey away from them again.
“I felt so damned helpless, just waiting for it to happen, and then the relief was just incredible,” he confessed. “Not just at your survival but my own too, I suppose. I don’t know what you did, Charlie, but it really pissed them off.”
So I told him my side of the story. The only part I glossed over was my real intention when I’d gone to face down Gerri. I wasn’t quite ready to admit that yet. Even to Sean.
Eventually we sat against the wall opposite the doorway, close together, unashamedly holding hands. The floor was hard and unforgiving, and occasionally things with more legs than I wanted to think about skittered across it but at least they weren’t rats. Besides, I was just so glad to be with Sean that I didn’t care about the minor problems of insect infestation and my backside going to sleep.
Outside, the sun finally began to lose its harsh edge as another day died in flawless, but largely-ignored tragic beauty. The light filtering through the vents turned mellow, almost misty, as the ferocious heat started to abate a little.
Sean and I sat without speaking as we watched the onset of the end of the day, my head tilted onto his shoulder. There was too much to say to know where to start and so it was better to say none of it than to say it badly.
“If you see a chance, Charlie, take it,” Sean said at last. “If I have to go I’d rather go out fighting than being caught with my bloody pants down again.”
“You never told me you were skinny-dipping in the pool,” I said.
Just for a moment he laughed and squeezed my fingers.
“I’m serious,” he said. “If you get an opportunity, don’t hesitate. They won’t, that’s for sure.”
He paused and when he spoke again his voice had lost any trace of amusement. “Do you remember you once told me that if I went out of my way to kill a man – even one who blatantly deserved it – you’d feel compelled to try and stop me?”
My mouth had suddenly gone so dry I had to peel my tongue away from the roof of it. “Yes,” I said. “I remember.”
“You know what you mean to me, don’t you, Charlie?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Good,” he said, cool and distant now. “So this time, don’t try and stop me.”
I should have made some response to that. How could I accept such a sinister statement of intent without argument? If you planned to kill in advance of needing to, it wasn’t self-defence any more. It was murder.
But I knew all about planning a murder, didn’t I?
And then we heard the footsteps approaching and it was too late for anything else but jumping to our feet, braced and ready.
The light gushed in like floodwater as the door was unlocked and swung wide. Beyond it stood Whitmarsh, now reunited with his Beretta. His jaw was set, determined. He waved us out with a jerk of his head.
“OK people,” he said, tense. “It’s time to go for a little ride.”
Twenty-four
I’d never been in an airboat before. Given other circumstances I might even have enjoyed the experience.
Each craft was around eighteen or twenty feet in length, with a flat-bottomed hull that sat less than six inches into the water. Rows of ridged aluminium bench seats for the long-departed day trippers filled the blunt forward part of the boat.
At the rear was the hulking great V8 Chevy motor. It looked like it had been lifted straight out of a Yank truck, leaving the better part of its exhaust silencer system behind in the process.
The motor was connected to a giant carbon fibre prop, mounted inside a mesh guard above the stern. Just in front of that, at the controls, sat Mason. He was wearing a Rolling Rock baseball hat with a pair of camouflage-coloured ear defenders jammed over the top and he watched our approach without any expression on his face. One of the Mossberg shotguns was slotted into a rack by his raised seat.
Whitmarsh brought us out first, then unlocked the door to retrieve Trey and his father. Keith came scurrying out, jerking to a stop when the rush of movement brought guns up in his face.
“Look,” he said, sly now in his desperation, “we can still work this out! Trey really might have something to offer, y’know? Take him and I’ll work on the rest of the program for you. For nothing! I—”
That was as much as I could take of that but Sean beat me to it. He took one quick step forwards and hit Keith in the face with a beautiful right hand, following it up with a left to the solar plexus that dropped the little weasel gasping to his knees. Neither Whitmarsh nor Lonnie made any moves to stop him.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see somebody do that to this piece of shit,” Whitmarsh said. “You’re a jerk, Pelzner. Now stop whining and get up.”
Keith regained his feet slowly, holding both hands to his bleeding nose. He glanced at his son for support but Trey wouldn’t even look at him.
Whitmarsh kept a hand on the boy’s shoulder as we walked single-file down to the waiting boat. It was a canny move on his part. Trey was probably the one person we’d all try to protect – all of us except Keith, that is.
By this time Mason had the motor cranked up and the prop had started to spin. The noise of it set a pair of gangling birds that looked like white herons to flight.
The black guy who’d burst into Brown’s office with Mason was waiting for us with the other Mossberg in the bow of the boat. Haines was further back, nonchalantly holding his usual Smith & Wesson pistol. He seemed to have it pointed as much at Whitmarsh as at the rest of us but it was hard to tell because his eyes were hidden behind those Oakleys again.
If Whitmarsh noticed this lack of trust, he gave no sign of it. Despite the fact that the burn had gone out of the day, he was still sweating heavily, his shirt sopping with it now.
What’s the matter, Jim? This too cold-blooded for you? Didn’t have any trouble at the motel, now did you?
The four of us, the condemned, ended up on one row in the centre of the airboat. Trey tucked himself in between me and Sean, leaving Keith to sit, sniffing loudly, on his own at the other side. Shunned even in his final moments.
Lonnie unhooked the bow rope from its post and jumped into the front section with the black guy. Whitmarsh climbed less nimbly into the row immediately behind us, with Haines lurking behind him, still smiling like this was the most fun he’d had with his clothes on in ages.
Mason cranked up the revs and moved away from the dock and I immediately understood why he was wearing those ear defenders. The V8 began to roar as the airboat glided across the small inlet and headed for the open swamp beyond, picking up speed all the while.
The surface of the swamp was coated in a thick layer of water hyacinths but, without any projections from the hull, the airboat scudded over the top of it. It hardly cut a swathe through the vegetation in its wake, leaving very little evidence to mark the trail to our final resting place.
Mason opened the throttle until we were really flying. He handled the airboat with easy confidence, banking into the turns as he skirted round the larger patches of weeds and semi-immersed trees. Insects of all descriptions splatted into us so hard you daren’t breathe with your mouth open or you would have swallowed enough of them to qualify as a last meal.
And all the time we were moving I was watching the men watching us, looking for a break, a weakness, a moment of inattention that would spell our opportunity.