The cold chill of the mountain water soaked through his clothing, freezing his skin like the promise of death. He reached down and scooped handfuls of dark mud off the bottom and quietly rubbed it all over his shaved white head. He rubbed it on his cheeks and chin, then submerged silently to his shoulders. He grabbed handfuls of moss in the shallow water and pulled himself quietly along, with only his mud-caked head above water, being careful not to send out a wake of moonlit ripples. He was still desperately trying to regain that sharp combat edge from years ago. That feeling that he was no longer a visitor in the environment, but part of it. Instead, he felt like a clumsy intruder, slow, loud, and easy to spot. He sank down to his ears, giving up his ability to hear in favor of better water camouflage. Now only his nose, eyes, and mud-caked head were above the water, moving toward the burned rubble that had once been the restaurant pier.
As he got closer, he saw that the metal pounding sound was coming from a man standing in a small boat tied to a piece of dock on the far side of a low piling. The man appeared to be tapping a small hammer on an outboard engine. He had the engine cowling off and seemed to be trying to dislodge something that had damaged the engine, perhaps a piece of flying debris from one of the dock explosions. Cris stopped moving and slowly brought his head up to clear the water from his ears. Suddenly, he could hear several men whispering in the dark behind him. Shit! he thought. I completely missed them. He had gone right past their position, overshooting them in the dark. A blunder he would never have made during his Ranger days.
"Okay, I think I got it," the man with the hammer whispered.
"Good," a man on the shore replied. "We're coming out." Cris was trapped between them.
Without warning, four men crashed into the water directly at him, not ten feet from where he was. Quickly, he submerged, cursing himself.
As one of the men moved to the boat he kicked Cris in the side. Cris heard the man call out, "Whaaa? Fuck!"
Cris reached up, grabbed the man's belt, and yanked him under. He had been trained in U. D. T. (Underwater Demolition Teams) and water combat. At one time he had had excellent underwater combat survival skills. He pulled the man under and tried to roll on top of him, but the man got his feet down and, using the bottom, reared up, bringing Cris with him. As they broke the surface the man hit Cris full in the face with a pistol gripped in his right hand. Cris momentarily blacked out, but the impact of the blow somehow knocked the gun from the man's hand. Cris hung on to him to keep from falling down, and the gun got pinned between them.
They struggled in four feet of water, thrashing awkwardly, as several other F. T. R. A. S ran to help their comrade.
The gun was slipping down between their bodies. Cris put his hand down and miraculously caught it, coming away with the stubby automatic. He turned and fired two shots at the charging men, then quickly hit the man in the face with his own gun. Cris grabbed the stunned man and yanked him under again. He could hear his victim choking through the water. Over his head, Cris heard voices screaming, but he could not make out any of it. He concentrated on taking his captive farther and deeper into the lake. Cris was now operating completely on instinct. The man was gaining consciousness, and began to struggle fiercely. Cris momentarily lost control, and the man shot up to get air. As he broke surface, he choked out, "Help me! Help me!"
Cris reached up and pulled him down again. In U. D. T., he had once stayed submerged for three and a half minutes. Back then he was in terrific shape; now he was a physical wreck. He wasn't sure how long he could stay under. Then, thankfully, he felt the thrashing of his victim turn to spasms, but his own lungs were exploding. Finally, Cris came up, rolling his mouth across the surface as he'd been taught in U. D. T., taking in a breath without completely breaking out of the water. He could hear chaos in the boat near him.
"He's got Cleve!" somebody yelled.
Then Cris dove again, keeping Cleve pinned under him, pushing him down lower and lower.
Cleve was not moving now, buoyant, unconscious below Cris. Cris wanted him alive, but was afraid if he surfaced, he would be target practice for the men in the boat. Then he heard the outboard starting. Cris was five feet under. The engine was a muffled whine, the prop stirring water and moonlight in a bubbling silver froth, as the boat slashed across the lake above him. Then the whine of the engine faded. After the boat left, Cris dragged Cleve to the surface, pulling the unconscious man toward shore.
He was exhausted as he pulled Cleve up on the sand. He tried to sling his captive over his shoulder, but didn't have the strength, so he just flopped him onto his back.
First Cris cleared the man's tongue, then he rolled him onto his stomach and tried to pump water out of him. Nothing. Cris rolled him onto his back again and began mouth-to-mouth. He blew air into Cleve's lungs. He felt the man's heart sputter and stop. Cris banged his fist on Cleve's breastbone, trying to shock the man's heart into starting.
"Shit," he whispered between breaths.
The CPR went on for almost five minutes. It seemed futile, but Cris continued. Then, unexpectedly, the man groaned. Encouraged, Cris kept going, blowing more breath into Cleve's lungs. It took Cris almost ten more minutes before he heard Cleve exhale, but the man still hadn't opened his eyes.
"Don't go brain-dead on me, asshole," Cris whispered. "I need you alive."
Cleve didn't open his eyes. He didn't twitch or move. It was then that Cris suspected that the groan, and later the exhale, was just his own breath coming back out. The man was dead. Cris lay back against a tree, exhausted. He tried to catch his breath. He knew he was incredibly lucky to be alive.
Chapter 28
Fannon Kincaid heard Cleve Robertson scream and saw him thrashing in four feet of water. Then, almost like a creature rising from the slimy lake floor, something reared itself out of the water, caked in black mud. The apparition attacked the Reverend's Acolyte like a monster from the deep.
Fannon pulled his nine-millimeter and aimed it at the roiling bodies, but couldn't make out who was who. So he held his fire, looking for a clean shot.
"Something's got Cleve," someone behind him shouted.
Then he saw the bald mud man clearly. His mouth was open in a silent scream, and he looked like a vision from hell. Blood was streaming down his face onto his shirt; an anguished look was on his face. Fannon finally had a clean shot. He squeezed off a round, but the gun didn't fire because the chamber was soaked with lake water. Then the bald man fired two shots in their direction, and Fannon panicked, afraid Dr. DeMille would be hit. "Get him in the boat!" the Reverend screamed at his men.
Dexter DeMille was wallowing along clumsily in shallow water, making no headway. He screamed when the gun was fired. One of the Choir grabbed the skinny scientist by the arm and dragged him. They clambered up onto the one small piece of dock that remained from the inferno. The section was held in place by a concrete piling that had protected the wooden float from the blast. An eighteen-foot metal boat was tied there. Fannon pushed Dexter into the craft, then jumped in along with the three surviving Choir members he had brought with him on the mission. "Let's go," Fannon shouted, deciding in that instant to leave Cleve to the mud demon that had risen from the watery depths and grabbed him.
"We can't leave him!" Randall Rader shouted, looking off at the area where the fight had taken place. Now there was no sign of the combatants. They had disappeared under the water's surface.
"He's in the hands of God. Move out, R. V.!" Fannon screamed at Robert Vail in the stern.
R. V. was the man who had been tapping on the engine. Despite his ropy build and long, stringy hair, his most distinguishing features were his two facial tattoos: "Fuck You" on the right side of his forehead and "Eat Shit" on the left. R. V. pulled the starter cord and the engine caught on the first try. Holding the handle of the seven-and-a-half-horse Evinrude engine, R. V. steered the boat right over the place where Cleve and the bleeding bald apparition had been struggling.