“Right. Just make the message ‘Coyote.’ Henry will know what that means. I can maybe carve that into the dock, too, in case he does something dumb like try to come straight here.”
She thought about the maze of islands, sandbars, shifting channels, and mangroves that surrounded McCloud’s shack. If they wanted to get off the grid, the Everglades was the place to do it. Getting there without being seen was going to be hard. Putting up with Coyote McCloud, Bobby, Bart, and Ginnie might be even harder. She’d never been to the shack north of Hells Bay, but she’d heard plenty of stories. McCloud was a former operator who was convinced the government had him on a kill list. He claimed to be ex-CIA. Bart and Henry believed him.
Suzanne felt a sense of relief. At least they were going to do something other than sit around in this house. And Henry was alive, she was more sure now than ever. She spent the rest of the day putting on a show for the surveillance teams; she sunbathed topless by the pool, strutted around the front of the house in a bikini picking oranges and grapefruit from her trees. Bobby went off to find a second boat.
Maybe, we’ll all get a second chance.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Second Chances
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
Jack Stryker was a patient man, and right now he was intrigued more than annoyed by the fact that his quarry had eluded him again. He watched the video feeds from his new command post.
The images from the drones were black and white, and poor quality, but the video the news crew had uploaded was in living color.
The best drone feed came from a Reaper he’d tasked to the town. He’d gotten that directive from one of the Mr. Smiths. He watched it in slow motion again.
The news van locked on in red, a box around the target. A flash, which looked white to the camera. Targets fleeing into a crowd. The people get closer, as the Reaper descends, the camera zooming in to track two men, red boxes around them as they move through the crowd. Separating. Heading toward a store.
Stryker switched to a different view, this one from one of the helicopters he’d ordered into the town.
Tracers tearing apart the buildings, return fire coming from multiple locations. The original targets lost.
He’d requested more assets, but was denied.
The strike team gets cut down, then the feed goes dead. Damn jets.
Stryker watched the video the doomed news team had uploaded for the world to see, zoomed in on the faces of the men he had been ordered to hunt down and kill. The men appeared exhausted, frayed, yet determined. Emerging from a burning building carrying kids. Dangerous men because he did not fully understand them. He knew one of them personally, and now knew all of them intimately, from their deepest fears to their hopes and dreams to what searches they’d performed on the Internet. He could not wrap his head around what they’d done. Taking a calculated risk, with some benefit, that he could grasp. Simply rushing headlong into death for no reason other than to save some kid or fat housewife with no hope of gain? No. That did not compute. He knew people like that were everywhere; he felt uncomfortable because no matter how hard he tried, he grasped he would never understand them.
He had narrowed down their destination to several choices. He was patient. They had escaped, but he would complete his mission.
Jack Stryker switched to a live feed from Key West and toggled the comm. This image was in color. A pretty blonde woman picking fruit in a bathing suit. Henry Wilkins has done well for himself. I might enjoy a taste of that fruit myself.
“Status?” he said.
“Quiet. No change,” came the reply.
“Copy that,” he said, sighing.
Stryker was a realist. He knew his own life was forfeit once he’d done the Directors’ dirty work. He had an insurance policy they did not know about, however, in the legal pad he’d taken from the man he’d assassinated, Reince Blackaby, and Stryker was pondering how best to go about utilizing this. He was a sociopath, but he had no intention of dying.
I’m a pawn, a cog in the wheel. What gets men in this line of work dead is when they think they’re something more than that. Men like that Blackaby fool. They overestimate their value, and wind up shot in the back of the head. Not Iceman, though. Not Jack Frost. I’m going to see this through, and if I play my cards right, I end up with my own island. If I overplay my hand, well, I’m dead. God, I love it.
He realized he was grinning, not faking it in the way he’d grown accustomed, a genuine smile. His grin got bigger. Wilkins is going to come for her for sure. Divorce papers or no divorce papers. A peach like that and a Boy Scout like Wilkins? He’ll come.
BELLEVUE, TENNESSEE
Jessie was tired of Nashville. He was hungry, thirsty, and surrounded by a bunch of Mexicans who refused to shut the hell up. Them with their generator and heaters and cooking food on the propane grill every night, just to show Jessie how much they had and how they were better than him. He had to go somewhere.
He’d waited long enough. Hung over, and out of beer and things to trade for more beer, he clutched his daddy’s shotgun and stuck it in the gun rack of his truck along with an army bag he’d gotten from a surplus store, a sleeping bag, and some ripe clothing.
Everything smelled like shit. Without running water, the toilet was an open sewer. He’d cut a hole through the floor of his trailer and used that, and then the smell from underneath got to be bad. He couldn’t take it anymore.
He took back roads getting to the west side of town, with a vague notion that he’d wind up somewhere in Kentucky, maybe head up toward Cadiz where he knew a guy from the bar had a little boat on a lake. They weren’t friends, but they’d told some jokes together. He tried to remember the man’s name, but he couldn’t, then dismissed it. If the guy wouldn’t let him stay there, there’d be somebody else who would, one way or another.
He cut through yards and sidewalks to get around vehicles that were burned, out of gas, or simply abandoned on the road. He’d gotten used to that. He stopped to siphon gas from a few, and came up empty.
His hands were trembling at the worn steering wheel while he waited in an endless line of traffic before the checkpoint. He’d been stuck in this line for hours.
Damn government. They want to control everything. I hate them. I hate all of them. I hate these niggers in front of me and behind me and all around me. I hate these Mexicans looking at me. I hate Big Brother and the news and the banks and Christians and Jews and Muslims and damn it I need a beer and a cigarette or somebody is going to die.
His mind was caught in a loop, a well-worn tape of all the injustices inflicted upon him by the world. No part of this inner diatribe of vitriol included any acceptance of responsibility, for in his black heart, he was a victim of circumstance. Life had dealt him a shitty hand, and he was sick and tired of acting like that was all right with him. There’s only so much a man can take.
The line of cars and trucks inched ahead, and the red brake lights, streaked by the rain, dimmed, and Jessie, who wished fervently to be Marshall, hit the gas a bit harder than he’d intended to, and the car in front of him did not move forward as fast as he thought it should, and he smacked right into the rear bumper of that car. He twitched and swore, as the van behind him rear-ended him.
He looked over his shoulder. The guy was shaking his head at Jessie, hands on the wheel, looking angry, like he wanted to start something. The guy’s dark face was shadowy and red through the muddy window.
You hit me, you motherfucker. Here we go. I’m tired of laying down for it. You run into me and then act like it’s my fault? You disrespect me? I ain’t getting pushed no more. I ain’t getting hit again and not hitting back. And now you’re hollering out the window at me? Watch this. I’ve got something for you.