It never came.
After ten minutes or so Mason eased back and the airboat’s speed dropped off until it was dead in the water, letting the motor idle lazily. The sudden reduction in noise was a deafening silence by comparison. Without the cooling breeze whipping past us, the temperature level also rose abruptly, so we almost seemed to be back to the high heat of the day even though the sunset was now in full swing.
We had come far enough to be out of sight of the small dock and the building next to it and had swerved about so much I couldn’t even have pointed in the right direction to get back. We were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Cypress trees that towered out of the turgid water, draped with the Spanish moss that would eventually smother them.
I glanced with growing apprehension at the darkened water alongside the boat. There were snakes in there, I knew, as well as the alligators Livingston Brown was relying upon to dispose of our mortal remains.
A group of bubbles broke the surface close by. I tried to tell myself it was just gas from rotting down plants. I wasn’t particularly convincing.
Mason seemed to be looking around, too, with the advantage of his elevated position. After a moment he pointed over to his left and, following his direction, I spotted the long gnarly shape of the submerged ‘gator about a hundred metres away.
If the part of it I could see in the dusky light was anything to go by, it was a big one. I’d never seen anything like it in the wild before and had to admit to a certain stereotyped revulsion at the grotesque appearance, with those twin rows of bony plates along its back and the long flat skull. Maybe knowing we were the feature dish on its dinner menu for this evening had some part to play. As I looked, I caught another stealthy movement, close to the first, then a third.
My God, the place is crawling with them.
I glanced over at Sean. His face was taut, skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, brows pulled down. I could sense his body coiling like a pre-strike snake, alert to the slightest possibility, the faintest quiver in the air.
“This’ll do,” Mason said, offhand. “Any closer and the sound of the shots will scare ‘em off anyhow.”
I was at the end of the row and Haines waved me to my feet.
“Ladies first, I do believe,” he said.
I stood, trying to keep my knees soft, my arms loose by my sides. Trey looked up at me mutely, shock keeping him passive even though he was clearly on the edge of panic.
“You don’t have to do this, Jim,” I said to Whitmarsh, achieving an admirably level tone considering my heartrate was redlining, making it hard to draw breath. “You still have a chance to make this right.”
Whitmarsh shook his head rather sadly and moved further to the edge of the boat himself, the gun aimed square at the centre of my body. “You won’t change my mind, Charlie,” he said carefully. “It’s already made up.”
He was looking right into my eyes as he spoke and I could have sworn there was something at the back of his own that hadn’t been there before. The barrel of the gun shifted away from me just a fraction.
If you get a chance, take it! Sean’s words were roaring in my head. I bunched my muscles, felt rather than saw Sean do the same.
“No, you can’t do it!” Suddenly Trey was out of his seat next to me like a rabbit, the fear turning his voice into a shriek. “You can’t!” And he dived for Whitmarsh, latching onto his right hand like he was trying to save himself from falling.
Whitmarsh had already started to squeeze the trigger but Trey’s reckless act threw his aim off. The gun discharged but the shot went wild and wide.
Which was a damned shame really, because he hadn’t been aiming at us.
He’d been aiming at Haines.
At the same moment, by what must have been a prior arrangement, Lonnie swung the Remington up and round towards the black guy standing next to him. Without hesitation, he shot him in the chest.
Lonnie was standing so close to him when he fired that it was almost point-blank. The shot barely had a chance to begin its spread, punching into Brown’s security man almost as a solid slug.
Half the back of his shirt exploded outwards as his body ripped open, the centre of his torso disintegrating in a split-second. Debris splashed down beside the boat and then the man toppled backwards to join it. The last thing to hit the water, it seemed, was the Mossberg as it dropped from his fingers and sank like a brick.
Lonnie didn’t bother to watch him go over. As soon as he’d pulled the trigger he’d racked another fresh cartridge into the chamber and started to twist towards the stern.
Mason saw the move as it happened but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe he had the time to reach for his own gun. He just put the rudder hard over and stamped on the throttle, whipping the airboat into a vicious surging turn.
Everyone standing instantly lost their footing, including me. Trey thudded to his knees, almost bringing Whitmarsh down on top of him.
Haines skidded, grabbing at one of the engine supports to keep himself upright. His lips pulled back into a triumphant snarl as he began to bring the Smith & Wesson up to bear on the hampered Whitmarsh.
In the event, though, he never got a shot off.
One moment Sean was sprawled half on the floor beside me, and the next he’d put both hands on the back of the bench seat and vaulted over it, launching himself at Haines. As he leapt he pivoted his legs straight out to the side of him with the easy power of an Olympic gymnast.
One foot landed square in Haines’s ribcage, while the other connected with the side of his jaw. The man’s head snapped back. He staggered a second time and went down, dropping the semiautomatic into the bottom of the boat.
Like the rest of us, Lonnie had fallen when Mason made his violent manoeuvre but he’d landed badly. As he started to regain his feet I saw that he’d snapped his right forearm about halfway between wrist and elbow. The break was a nasty one and the lower part of his arm had taken on a rubbery, detached quality.
With a grunt of effort and pain he swapped the Remington into his left hand and pointed it at Mason, sitting exposed at the helm. Mason still hadn’t reached for his own gun, but he protected himself the best way he could. He wrenched at the controls again to send the airboat into a series of vicious turns like a gazelle jinking to outwit the pursuing lions.
Lonnie lost his balance again and started to go over backwards. He instinctively put his right hand out to catch himself but that action only served to compound the fracture. The arm collapsed under his own weight, sending him tumbling over the side of the boat and into the brackish opaque water of the swamp.
As he went over Lonnie’s finger tightened on the trigger and the Remington let go a second shot. Trey was down below seat level, still grappling with Whitmarsh, and Keith had yet to raise his head. Sean and I dived for cover and by some miracle the stinging spray of pellets missed both of us.
Mason wasn’t so lucky. He caught a peppering across the right-hand side of his body, little more than a glancing blow but bad enough, all the same.
But the bulk of the shot bypassed all the people on board and hit the mesh cage surrounding the propeller. It passed straight through like a magic trick, leaving the guard untouched but the prop inside shattered into fragments, sending shards of carbon fibre zinging across the back end of the airboat like deadly little flechettes.
With the throttle wide open, the prop must have been spinning at close to five thousand revs a minute when it blew. Mason lifted off immediately, but the resulting massive imbalance had already almost shaken the engine to pieces. He grappled with the rudder controls with both hands as it began to veer wildly. His arm and the side of his shirt were already wet with blood.