Their shifty-looking guide, answering to Jethro, no last name, expelled another stream of murky fluid from between pursed lips and checked the eastern sky, where gray dawn had begun to show itself.
"We best be going," he said, and moved off toward the cabin cruiser they had rented.
Sweet Sixteen was stenciled on the stern, but Maynard Grymsdyke would have bet that twenty years or more had passed since this tub had its sixteenth birthday party. It was still afloat, and that was something, but he was relieved that they wouldn't be putting out to sea, where sudden squalls blew up from nowhere and the depths were full of sharks. If Sweet Sixteen went down, he'd find himself in quiet, brackish water filled with alligators, water moccasins and leeches.
What a break.
"You ready, Maynard?" Elmo asked him, putting on a crooked smile he never showed the TV cameras.
"Yes, sir," said Grymsdyke. Adding to himself, As ready as I'll ever be.
LUKE SEVERIN HAD BRIEFED his team while they were checking out their hardware, stripping automatic weapons down and reassembling them with practiced ease, loading the magazines, a couple of them sharpening long knives for close-up work. They heard him without seeming to, absorbed the sparse details and gave them back almost verbatim when he quizzed them.
The boss had filled him in on how important this job was, both parts of it. First up, they were supposed to find four people-one of them a rat who had rolled over for the Feds and sent Armand to prison. They were somewhere in bayou country southwest of Westwego. Once those four had been taken care of, Severin's crew was ordered to proceed and take out Leon Grosvenor.
It was the second part that troubled Luke the most. If anyone had asked, he would have said that he was no more superstitious than his fellow Cajuns, less so than his daddy or his granddaddy before him. Lounging in a comfy booth at Cooter's, in the Quarter, sipping bourbon on the rocks, Luke might have said that he didn't believe in loups-garous. It was another story, though, when you were out in the bayou, shaded from the sun by looming trees and veils of Spanish moss, the smell of death and rot filling your nostrils.
In the bayou country, Luke may well have said that anything was possible. But he would never have admitted he was scared.
They had sufficient firepower to do the job, God knew. Two M-16s, three Uzis and a 12-gauge shotgun with extended magazine that held nine rounds. In addition to the long guns, each man had at least one pistol. Florus carried twin .45s in double shoulder holsters. Little Remy set the record for their hunting party, with a Glock slung underneath one arm, a sleek Beretta on his right hip and a Colt .380 Mustang tucked into his boot.
No silver bullets, but Luke didn't think they would need any. Put enough rounds into some guy-any guy-and he'd go down, werewolf or not.
"Don't like this much," Jesper said, moving up beside him at the cabin cruiser's starboard rail. They had been chugging over stagnant water for the best part of an hour, scenery scarcely altered by the passage of their boat or time. For all Luke knew, they had been traveling in endless circles.
"What's to like?" he asked Jesper. "We do a job, go on home, get paid."
"I reckon you know exactly what I'm talkin' about," Jesper replied.
"Leon?"
Jesper brought up one hand to cross himself, an awkward gesture that revealed a lack of practice during recent years. "Damn foolish sendin' us to kill ol' Leon. How we supposed to kill a loup-garou?"
"First thing," Luke said, "you best forget them fairy stories. Keep your powder dry and hit what you be aiming at."
Jesper wasn't convinced. "My grandpa try to kill a loup-garou one time, before I was born. Got right up close and let him have both barrels. Damn thing mauled him anyhow, got clean away. Grandpa weren't good for much of nothing after that."
Luke was almighty tempted to suggest that Jesper's grandfather had belted too much moonshine, maybe sneaked up on a panther in the swamp and missed his shot before the damn thing turned on him, but he wasn't about to start an argument with Jesper when he needed every man behind him, giving 110 percent.
"Do like I told you," Luke instructed. "When we got him, take good aim and just keep shootin' till he don't get up no more. That's all you gotta do."
"I surely hope you right."
I hope so, too, Luke thought.
A NERVOUS CAJUN BROUGHT the word to Leon shortly after noon. The bitch was first to smell him coming, and she was in no mood to take prisoners, but Leon warned her off and listened to the man. The Cajun got his regular twenty dollars and left unmolested-he was the closest thing Leon had to a telephone and Leon needed him.
Four people were coming for him, looking for him on his own home ground. One of them was the witness he had failed to kill in two attempts. The sawed-off Chinaman was with him, and the Gypsy woman. Plus another man, the one who had pursued him like a demon through the streets of the Quarter and killed more of his dogs.
It seemed impossible to Leon that the outsiders would find his lair. That meant he would be forced to scour the swamp himself and run them down, but that was fine.
He needed to do something, and damn quick, before the surviving members of his pack began to think he was completely ineffectual. Their trust had already been shaken, and one of the older males was casting little sidelong glances back and forth, between the bitch and Leon, trying to decide if it was time to make a challenge to be leader of the pack.
Just try it, Leon thought. He wasn't done yet, no matter how it looked.
But he was getting there. Another failure like the one on Tchoupitoulas Street, and he would have no pack to lead. It wouldn't even matter if they trusted him at that point, since they'd all be dead.
He missed his brothers who had died on the abortive mission to Desire House. He would find the ones responsible and punish them, share their destruction with the pack.
But not share too much. He wanted the pack to see him bring down the hunters. A show of force such as that would put to rest any ambitions the other males had to take him down and assume the leadership of the pack.
He was top dog around here, and he was going to prove it.
He was looking forward to taking out the white hunter, but especially the little Oriental.
It had been years since Leon ate Chinese.
Chapter 15
Darkness didn't descend upon the bayou country by degrees, but rather closed in like massive velvet curtains drawn across the sky. If you were sailing open water, stars were sometimes visible between the treetops. But on what passed for dry land in the swamp, the canopy blocked any but the most persistent moonbeams, cloaking all in blackness more akin to midnight at the bottom of a coal mine than to any forest glade. A campfire drove back some of the shadows, but at the same time attracted swarms of insects.
Remo was sitting back from the circle of the fire, leaving Jean Cuvier to curse and swat mosquitoes as they settled on his skin. When the Cajun noticed that none of the insects were pestering Remo he tried sitting back from the fire, too. It didn't make a difference.
"They just don't like how I taste, I guess," Remo said.
Chiun had opted to remain aboard the cabin cruiser, tethered to a mangrove root some fifty yards downstream. His explanation-that a night of sleeping on the sodden ground was "detrimental to these ancient bones"-fooled Remo not at all. He knew about the Casio handheld TV the Korean carried, and decided from the angry tone of Chiun's voice, audible across the water, that reception in the swamp was nothing to write home about.