Manny nodded.
"Air what?" Bucktooth wanted to know.
"Airboat," Manny told him. "They use them in swamps. An airplane engine on a plank, practically. They'll float on a heavy dew. I've seen movies of them."
"What's the arrangement about the cash, Manny?" I asked him, not wanting him thinking I was going too easily.
The pair of them exchanged looks. "A three-way split," •Manny said. "IT it's all there." Bucktooth turned his head, but not before I saw his ugly grin. Not that I'd ever been in doubt about their ultimate plans for me.
There was only one bed in the room. Bucktooth motioned me to a chair. "Squat," he said to me. He produced
\ a length of manila line and efficiently roped me to the chair, arms, legs, and waist. Manny tested the job, then stretched out on the bed. Bucktooth soon joined him, taking off only his shoes. They left the light on.
The room grew quiet. I could hear my own breathing. My shoulder hurt. My neck hurt. My ribs hurt. My legs went to sleep. It was a long night, but my time was coming.
When I got these two city types out in the swamp, I'd leave them there, permanently.
I must have dozed off finally, because their stirring loused me. The light was still on, but I could see early-morning sunlight at the edges of the curtains. "Where do we get the airboat?" Manny asked me while Bucktooth was unwrapping me from his diamond hitch.
"We rent it. There's a place about seven miles east on Main Street." My arms weren't in too bad shape after my night in the chair, but I couldn't stand up. I massaged my legs. It was ten minutes before I could walk decently. Bucktooth glowered while I hobbled around the room.
When we got outside, I could tell from the sun and the haze that it was going to be a hot, humid day, a real stinger. We stopped for breakfast east of the traffic light in town. They took turns going inside while one stayed with me in the station wagon. Manny brought me out coffee and a sweet roll.
Outside of town I didn't have to say a word. Manny saw the shack with the hand-painted "Airboat For Hire" sign that I'd noticed my first day in Hudson. He pulled the wagon under a tree. "Bring him down when I signal to you," he said to Bucktooth before he walked down to a little dock. We could see him talking to a slatternly-looking woman, and in a couple of minutes a boy handpoled an airboat to the dock from behind the shack. Manny raised his arm.
"We won't need any conversation," Bucktooth informed me, nudging me with his gun. He slipped it into his pocket as we went down the path. Bucktooth looked distrustfully at the airboat's wide-planked, battered hull with its high, platform seats and the big propeller encased in wire mesh. Three of the planks were fresh where someone had ripped out the bottom on a snag.
I stepped up onto the boat and started the engine. It was old, with a hand throttle. A rudimentary tiller guided the lightweight craft. I revved the engine a few times, listening. I tested the plugs and battery, then checked the gas gauge and compass. I had no intention of being stranded in the swamp myself.
The kid who'd brought the airboat saw I knew what I was doing, and he wandered off. The woman had already disappeared with Manny's rental money. "Can't you run this thing?" Bucktooth demanded of Manny. "I don't like the idea of him runnin' it."
"Sure I can run it," Manny said. I was sure he couldn't. "But he's the one who's got to do the steerin' to the right spot. Just keep an eye on him."
He climbed up into one of the front platform seats. Bucktooth settled himself in the dishpan cockpit, facing me, his back braced against a platform strut. He could watch every move I made in the navigator's bucket seat. "You'll get wet there," I told him.
"Just sec to it I don't get wet, pal," he answered me. I would have preferred them in reversed positions. Manny had my .38 and the keys to the station wagon. "How long's this goin' to take us?"
I shrugged. "Hour and a half each way." It wasn't going to take a third of that if I had my way.
I eased the airboat away from the dock. Bucktooth stared nervously at the brackish-looking water lapping at the boat's low sides. I could see Manny flinch the first few times I rammed the airboat over deceptively solid-looking areas of sawgrass.
The sun beat down upon us. Dark patches of perspiration appeared on Manny's back and under his arms. Bucktooth was sweating freely, too. Shade, but no coolness, was under the gnarled cypress trees with their trailing moss. The swamp was a miasma of sticky heat.
I turned right and left through narrow channels, often enough to get them thoroughly confused. I kept one eye on the compass and the other watching for mangrove roots that might tip us over. The engine didn't sound as noisy beneath the thick, green jungle growth overhead. Mosquitoes and gnats hummed around us. Manny and Bucktooth swatted them busily. Once or twice Manny turned to look back at me. I could see he was beginning to have doubts about the expedition.
I gave them enough time to become relaxed, then began watching for a wide enough space between the trees bordering the channel, accompanied by a lowlying branch of the right height. I passed up a couple of places that almost, but not quite, filled the bill.
When I saw what I wanted, I didn't wait.
The opening was on the left, more than wide enough for the boat. "Alligator!" I yelled and pointed to the right.
"Where?" They bellowed it together. Bucktooth turned in the direction I pointed. Manny stood up to see better. I jammed the throttle wide open and steered hard left. The boat stood up on its port gunwale as it darted between the I roes. The lowlying branch caught Manny squarely in the chest. He shot off the platform like an ice cube from a •.pilled cocktail. He crashed into the right-hand tree, and even above the engine roar I could hear the squishy splash he made when he hit the mud below.
Two-thirds of the way around the tree I shut the engine oil' with the tiller still hard right. Bucktooth had grabbed with both hands to save himself from sliding overboard as the airboat tilted. I reached down and slipped the little .17 caliber from my shin holster. Bucktooth started to turn to check the shut-off engine as we drifted back into the main channel.
"Don't turn a thing but your head, man," I told him. My voice sounded loud in the sudden quiet.
His eyes bulged when he saw what I had in my hand.
Desperately he looked up at the platform for Manny. His gaze fled to the space between the trees, and he looked stricken anew at the sight of two feebly kicking legs visible above the watery, greenish mud.
"Drop your gun in the water," I directed. I didn't even blink while he did it. His nerve was gone. He was ashen, and his hands shook.
"Listen—" he began.
"You've got a choice," I interrupted him. "You can stay out here with the heat and the mosquitoes and the bugs and the snakes and the alligators." His whole face was wet as he stared at me. I showed him the handgun. "Or you can take one from this."
He couldn't make a sound for a second. "You'd—you'd shoot me?" he croaked.
I laughed. "What the hell were you planning to do to me? Come on, make up your mind. Which is it going to be?" His eyes darted wildly in all directions. "Take the bullet," I said. "You'll go out of your mind in twelve hours here." His chest was heaving as he tried to force air through his constricted throat. "Take the bullet."
"No!" It was wrenched from him forcibly.
"Okay." I ruddered the airboat to a little sawgrass island with ;t single half-grown scotch pine slanting up from it. "Jump."
"Oh, Jesus, no! You wouldn't—"
"Jump, you bastard. Or catch the bullet."
His voice soared to a shriek. "Just gimme a chance to—"
1 moved my arm.
Me jumped.
Mis scream echoed hollowly through the green tunnel as he went In up to his knees in the gelatinous ooze. He grabbed at the tree, then screamed again as something slithered away from under his hands. He kept trying to pull his legs up out of the muck.