I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “He went into the water but I didn’t see what happened after that.”
Sean didn’t comment, just kept low and peered out through the undergrowth at the airboat. He had mud on his face as makeshift camouflage cream and was blending in to his surroundings perfectly. Something about his movements had changed, gone feral.
“Sean.” I put my hand on his arm and he turned his head just enough to look at me. His eyes were as cold and expressionless as those watching us from the far bank. I took my hand back in a reflex, as though he would have bitten me if I hadn’t moved. Whatever words I’d been about to say died in my throat.
Sean nodded out into the swamp. “There he is,” he said, clipped, and when I looked I saw him too. Whitmarsh must have been disorientated by his submersion and it had taken him a while to get himself together enough to head for cover. He was making slow progress through the congested water in the rough direction of our hide-out.
At that moment, the airboat came into view again. It seemed that Mason had managed to regain some small measure of control by this time. I don’t know what happened to Haines’s pistol, but he’d taken the Mossberg from its rack and had moved forwards to the bow. Even in the low light he spotted Whitmarsh’s white shirt against the murky water straight away and signalled Mason to change direction.
“Shit,” I whispered. “He’s going to lead them right to us.”
If he lived that long.
As if doing us a favour, Haines brought the shotgun up to his shoulder and fired. The muzzle flash was a bright spout of flame in the encroaching darkness. Whitmarsh cried out and began to flail in the water. Haines was still too far away for it to have been a killing shot. Maybe that was what he’d intended.
I felt a hand slip into mine and hold on tightly. It was Trey.
“For God’s sake, you can’t just leave him out there,” Lonnie said, his voice hoarse. “He saved your goddamn lives.”
Sean shot him a vicious glance but said nothing. There wasn’t much he could say, not when Lonnie was right.
Mason began to circle Whitmarsh, passing within a dozen metres of us as he did so. The wash broke over the trees roots and swept into the pool so we had to brace to keep our feet. The Chevy engine sounded almost on its last legs. Mason was having to coax it along and, after Lonnie’s wild shot, it was clearly costing him.
“Leave him and let’s go back,” he called to Haines, his voice scratchy with pain. “We need to go get the other boat. This one’s gonna die on us any minute and then we’ll be stuck out here. And I need to get fixed up. Jesus man, this hurts.”
“If we don’t finish this now, we’ll lose ‘em,” Haines shouted back. “Just keep driving the damned boat.”
“Wait until they come round again, then we’ll go out behind them,” Sean said quietly to me.
I nodded, disengaging my hand from Trey’s with some difficulty. Whatever Whitmarsh might have done, we couldn’t sit back and let Haines slaughter him.
“Wait a minute, you can’t go out there!” Keith protested. “You’ll get us all killed.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Dad, shut up,” Trey hissed. “They’re professionals.”
Keith opened his mouth, shut it again, and fell silent.
Haines fired another shot at Whitmarsh. He was close enough for it to have been a final one, close enough to make the water erupt and boil near his head, but Haines was playing with him now, making the older man suffer for his crimes. The airboat came round again and this time Sean and I slipped into the water in its wake.
I struck out for Whitmarsh, reaching him in half a dozen strokes. Haines’s first shot had taken him in the side and shoulder and he was losing blood fast enough to be fading. I rolled him over onto his back to stop him drowning, trying not to think about the irresistible taste of meat he was putting into the water.
Haines spotted me and gave a cry of triumph.
“Still trying to play the bodyguard, huh, Charlie?” he jeered, leaning out towards me over the side of the boat. “Well, you can’t save everybody. In your case, you can’t save anybody.” And he started to bring the shotgun up.
But just as he took aim the V8 gave its final rattling splutter and stalled. In the unearthly silence that followed I realised I could hear another engine. It could only be another airboat. Close and closing.
Haines realised it too. He whirled round, eyes scanning the darkness of the swamp.
And, as if waiting just for the split-second of his distraction, a dark shape burst out of the water next to Haines. It knocked him straight off his feet and dragged him over the side of the boat.
Twenty-five
The element of surprise Sean achieved was absolute. Haines didn’t even have time to gasp as he went under. Mason was the one who got to shout but, wounded and unarmed, there was little more he could do.
A moment later the two of them broke the surface again, fighting over the shotgun which Haines had kept a tight hold of despite the shock of the attack. He was putting up a ferocious struggle but he’d been trained as a policeman, where Sean had been trained as a soldier and there was a big difference.
Besides, Sean had passion driving him on. A cold hard flame of rage that made him far more deadly and more dangerous.
I heaved Whitmarsh closer to the tree-line, then abandoned him to Keith and Trey’s care and waded back towards the two men. I was in time to see Sean yank Haines close and headbutt him. Haines’s nose broke with an audible crunch and he let go of the Mossberg, falling back into the water.
For a second I expected Sean to turn the gun on him, to force him to surrender, but with a snarl he threw the weapon away behind him and went for Haines with his bare hands.
And that’s when I got really scared.
“Sean!” I yelled. “For Christ’s sake don’t do this.”
Sean turned his head and looked straight through me.
It was like staring at a man turned vampire and realising that although the face was familiar, the soul had been taken. That what was left was cold and empty and not quite human any more.
The sound of the second airboat was growing louder by the minute. A high-wattage searchlight beam flashed across Mason, making him wince and put up a hand to protect his eyes.
“Don’t move!” boomed a megaphone-enhanced voice. “This is the FBI!”
We were shielded from their approach by the hull of Mason’s boat so I ignored the instruction, lurching closer to Sean. He was holding Haines under the water now, forearms rigid with the effort of keeping him there as he thrashed and twisted. I couldn’t tell from the position of his hands if Sean was strangling the man or simply drowning him.
Either way, it was murder now.
I thought again of Haines calmly pulling the trigger on the woman in the theme park. I remembered the satisfaction in his voice when he’d admitted torturing and killing Henry. I could well imagine him standing behind Sean’s kneeling figure with the Smith & Wesson aimed at the back of his skull. And I could just see him smiling while he did it.
But it wasn’t Haines I was trying to protect.
“Sean,” I said again, more quietly now. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
For a moment he didn’t respond, then he relaxed his shoulders and brought his hands out of the water and I thought I’d got through to him.
But as he did so I realised that Haines had ceased to struggle. He bobbed to the surface and floated lifeless between us, eyes and mouth wide. The swamp water lapped gently into his open throat.
“Sorry Charlie,” Sean said tightly. He sounded weary, but there wasn’t a hint of regret in his voice. “You’re too late.”
And I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry, either.