Another round snapped over his head. He caught the muzzle flash.
He switched to full auto, brought the weapon up to his shoulder. His arm was shaking and his hands were clumsy.
He fired two bursts as he retreated. His weapon jammed. He tried to reach for his sidearm, but his arm was turning into a dead thing. He was faint from blood loss. The round might have nicked an artery.
Wallace hauled him backward with strong hands, pulling him into deeper water.
“He’s hit,” Wallace said. “McCoy, on me. Carlos, take Wilkins to the shack. Check on Suzanne.”
“Copy that.”
“Enemy at three o’clock,” Henry mumbled, darkness pushing down at the edges of his vision.
Moments later, Henry heard the sound of explosions and the whump of an M203 grenade launcher, but that was the last thing he heard.
Suzanne, holding Taylor by the wrist, took the regulator from her own mouth and put it to Taylor’s, their faces inches apart.
The water stung her eyes and even this close, Taylor was a blur.
Suzanne held her breath while Taylor breathed through the reg. Air bubbles burbled around them.
Gunfire rolled over the water, muffled, lethal, and angry, and she could hear the zip of rounds cutting through the water. A hissing thing.
She squeezed Taylor’s arm to let her know it was time to let Suzanne breathe. Her chest burned. Taylor squeezed back.
Suzanne took the regulator from her child’s mouth, hating herself for it. Taylor liked to use scuba gear in the pool, and she’d stay at the bottom using a SNUBA rig for half an hour. This was different.
Suzanne had taught Taylor how to buddy breathe in clear, clean water. Now it was life and death. Taylor had to stay calm. Panic would kill them both.
Something brushed against her foot. Suzanne froze, aware of the bubbles tickling her face. She could not see through the murk.
There was a lull in the gunfire. It had been going on an eternity, it seemed.
What just bumped my leg?
She put the reg back in Taylor’s mouth, and still holding the child with her left hand, reached behind her to remove the .38 from her shorts.
She pulled Taylor slowly to the surface, gasping for air.
Five feet away, a soldier wearing jungle fatigues crept around the dock of the shack, a submachine gun in his hands. He spun to face her.
Suzanne shot him in the neck.
He toppled backward, dropping his weapon and reaching for his throat. Suzanne took two steps forward and pulled the trigger until it made clicking sounds. Lifeless eyes stared back at her, and the soldier slipped into the water.
She hauled Taylor onto the dock, leaving the tank in the water, and picked up the dead soldier’s weapon.
Another wave of gunfire echoed over the water, and she crawled into the shack on her belly.
“Stay low to the floor,” she whispered to Taylor. “Keep right in front of me.”
They crawled under the table and Suzanne kept the weapon pointed at the front door. There were explosions and then there was no more fighting.
“Suzanne?” she heard Carlos say.
“In here.”
“Let’s get out of this shithole,” he said.
“Henry?”
“He’s hit. Lost a lot of blood.”
The enemy attackers were all dead.
They piled into the Zodiacs the commandos used because the Fish and Game boat was riddled with bullet holes.
Henry was unconscious for the journey; Carlos applied a field dressing to the wound.
Suzanne put her husband’s head in her lap. His face was an unnatural gray and his breathing was shallow. He moaned in his sleep sometimes. Taylor held his hand. It seemed unfair. Unjust. He can’t die now. Not after all of this.
“Come on, Ranger,” Suzanne whispered in his ear. “Fight.”
It was dark when they pulled into Flamingo.
Stryker faded in and out of consciousness. He thought he heard gunfire, but that might have been his imagination. Maybe it was thunder. He floated. Sometimes the pain was worse than others, and he could retreat into a deeper kind of darkness.
Mosquitoes and sand fleas bit his face and crawled on his exposed skin. He opened his eyes again and saw the Milky Way. So many stars. He tried to count them to keep his mind from focusing on the agony he was in. He could feel fish nibbling away at his fingers. Something was crawling up is pant leg. Maybe a crab.
The night was alive with mysterious splashes, skittering sounds in the mangroves, and the call of insects. He was terrified.
His hands were bound behind his back. Maybe, he thought I can push back to the dock and get a knife and cut loose.
He tried to raise his head enough to look around. The dock was gone. The tide had taken him and he was floating somewhere in the middle of a channel. He kicked down with feet bound tight, trying to feel the bottom, waves of pain rolling through his body. The water was deep here.
Near dawn, he felt a sharp pain in his calf and something jerked him under water. He bobbed at the surface for a time. A black fin cut the water, just the tip visible.
Sharks fed on Jack Stryker. They were juveniles, three and four feet long. They took small pieces from his buttocks and legs, while he screamed and thrashed. He was weak with blood loss. The sharks let him go, though, and he was relieved for a moment.
The alligator glided through the glassy water leaving a soundless wake behind a sinuous tale, cold-blooded eyes locked on Stryker.
When the eyes slipped below the water, Stryker’s blood was ice in his veins. He knew death was coming, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
His legs in a toothy vise, he gulped air and water at the same time and went down into the black water, rolling and rolling until the pain and darkness were all one thing and it lasted for an eternity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Redemption Song
The July sun slipped below the western bank of the St. Johns River. The glassy water shimmered orange and pink, and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” floated down the dock from the patio speakers.
“I had a bite,” Taylor said. Her bare feet dangled over the side of the wooden dock.
Henry grinned at Taylor. “Better check your line,” he said.
She cranked her little blue rod, and the hook came up clean, bereft of the shrimp Taylor put there.
“He got me,” she said.
Henry heard footsteps and felt the dock shudder. He glanced over his shoulder.
“Margarita?” Suzanne said, armed with a pair of glasses clinking with ice. Her hair was short now, and dyed red. She was beautiful and radiant, and Henry felt his heart swell when he saw her, a feeling of amazement and gratitude in him.
“You read my mind.”
She sat down next to him and handed him a chilled glass. The lights of downtown Jacksonville winked beyond the Buckman Bridge.
“I like it here,” she said, slipping an arm around his waist.
“Me too.”
“Tell me honestly,” she said. “Do you miss it?”
“Are you joking?”
“Come on, Henry, I know you, remember? Be honest.”
“I miss the brotherhood,” he admitted. “I’d rather be here with you and Taylor.”
“I’ve seen you training,” she said. “If you’re thinking about going back, you can tell me. It’s all right.”
“I’m just trying not to get fat,” Henry joked. “A little bit of PT is good for a man of my advancing years.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Seriously,” Henry said. “I’m done. After what we’ve been through as a family? No. I’m content being a househusband.” He chuckled.