Acts of Nature (25 page)

“Freeman,” I said. “Max Freeman.”

“You’re a cop?”

“No. Private investigator working with a cop,” I said, maybe giving too much away if they were drug hunters following a rumor.

“OK, Freeman.”

Looking down through the circular hatch at an angle, I caught a glimpse of fabric.

“Here’s my ID.”

I sneaked another look. He only showed a forearm and hand, holding a wallet. I noted it was his left hand. Most people are righties. His gun hand was hidden.

“Toss it up,” I said.

He underhanded it high but I did not follow its trajectory and instead watched the circle of water. The man’s face, ruddy, middle-aged, slipped into the space and we made eye contact. If I’d had a gun I would have had the muzzle over the edge pointing down. I hoped that didn’t give him courage.

I moved around in a half circle and picked up the wallet: Edward Christopher Harmon. Florida private investigator. The photo was similar enough to the glimpse I’d just had. The lie about DEA didn’t surprise me. Admitting it did.

“So now we’re on the same field,” Harmon said from below. “Two PIs doing a job. You yours. Me mine.”

“It doesn’t exactly make us brothers, Harmon,” I said. “What’s your job and what the hell happened out there?”

I heard him slosh. But I’d been down there myself. There was no way to suddenly leap up off that mucky bottom. I was tall enough to reach up and just get my fingers over the edges. Unless he was seven feet, he wasn’t coming up until I let him.

“Your friends, I’m afraid, got a little trigger happy. Probably jumpy after that boy came screaming around the corner with half of his hand gone. I’ll assume that was your work, Freeman. Maybe he wasn’t your friend?”

“Never was,” I said.

“Won’t ever be now,” Harmon said.

“Since we’re assuming, let me take my turn,” I said. “Everybody out there is dead. Or everyone except your team?”

“My partner got his face blown off. He’s gone,” Harmon said and the tone was actually somber, like it meant something to him. “It’s just you and me, Freeman. Or is your cop alive?”

I looked up at Sherry, concentrated on her chest, thought I could see it rise and fall, but for a second I didn’t think I could truthfully answer him.

“What’s your job?” I said instead and again I heard him, or something, slosh in the water.

“My company owns this research facility. They sent me out to secure it after the hurricane, make sure it was still standing.”

“It’s illegal as hell to have a drilling field in this part of the Glades,” I said. You didn’t have to be an environmentalist to know that spoiling the Glades and threatening the water supply was a raw nerve in Florida. The profiteers would get a foothold any way they could. The computer systems behind me, the plotting desk, the seismic charts, the security lock on the door. No other explanation made sense.

“No one’s drilling that I know of, Freeman. You see a drill up there? Fucking thing would have to be six stories high on a metal platform. You know anything about oil drilling?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You set some charges down in the substrata first, doesn’t take a big drilling operation. Then you fire off explosions that no one hears or sees and you measure the underground reaction, sometimes with lasers and the sensitive kinds of computerized equipment you’ve got up here in your little den, Harmon. And that’s illegal too.”

This time the voice took a long break. Making a decision. Or making me think he was making a decision.

“OK. OK, Freeman. We can debate all day. It’s a fucking job for me and it ain’t worth this much shit. My partner’s dead. All the assholes who started firing on us when we came to check out a company project are dead. I have no knowledge of the legal status of this place. But I do have a satellite phone and I’m gonna call my pilot, have him do a pickup and I’m outa here.

“You wanna go with me or sit up there with your cop friend, who I’m assuming is a corpse by now or he would have said something. What I’m not going to do is stand here in this fucking soup any longer.”

This time I was the one hesitating. This guy might be our last chance. He leaves, Sherry dies. I’m certain of it. There’s not much of a choice left.

“Toss up the guns,” I said. “I’ll help you load your friend’s body.”

This time there’s no discussion.

“Stand away so you don’t think I’m trying to shoot you,” he said, and an over-under shotgun came up, stock first, and he pushed it hard enough for the gun to clear the opening and clack onto the floor. I dragged it away. Then an MK pistol flipped up out of the space and clattered to the floor.

“That’s what I got,” Harmon said.

This time when I peered over the edge he was standing in full view, empty palms raised, fingers spread wide.

“Give me a hand,” he said.

I braced myself on either side of the porthole and reached down. He locked on with a grip on each of my wrists and I did the same. It was an old climber’s technique I learned long ago and it surprised me that he knew it.

“OK,” he said and I yanked him up and over the edge of the hatch. While he was still on all fours I picked up the Mk23 and held it loosely in one hand. He stood and did not seem to care that I was now armed. He was a man of medium build, probably in his early fifties but in good shape. His grayish hair was matted from the moisture, his clothes soaking wet. He first looked me in the face, seemed to study my eyes until he’d made some kind of assessment, and then scanned the rest of the room, nodding, like it was familiar and he was pleased that everything appeared to be in shape. He stopped when he sighted the cot and Sherry behind me.

“How’s your officer friend, if she is indeed an officer?” he said.

“She needs help,” I said.

“Then it’s a good thing we made a deal.”

“Did we?”

He refocused on my eyes. It is an old cop trick that was probably taken from the art of magicians. Most people, even shy people and especially criminal people, will try to be brave and look you in the eye when you first start talking to them. And if you are engaging, with a smile and a purpose, you can hold their attention for the second it takes to do the sleight of hand you need to do.

“Actually, I’m going to have to take a little time here to do some documenting. Simple tasks like pulling some computer memories and such,” he said, turning just slightly to his right, but with his feet still planted, a solid foundation. His move might have even worked if his jacket had not been so wet, the heft of the soaked fabric pulled just hard enough to expose a hard edge in his right pocket, and when I saw his shoulder raise to slip his hand inside I shot him.

The round hit him in the hip and must have made solid contact with bone because he spun, just a quarter turn, but when he stepped back to gain his balance, he put his foot directly into the hole of the open space of the escape hatch and went down. Trying quickly to straddle the void, he landed with one leg hanging and the other spread out at floor level. His rib cage and right underarm scraped hard against the inside edge of the hatch and then came to a hard halt. He was wedged in the hole, looking suddenly like a human pair of scissors, doing a painful split. He was awkwardly stuck; his right arm pinned and left one flailing. I changed position and circled. I had to give the guy credit. He hadn’t cried out, though I knew it had to hurt, both the bullet into bone and the fall. I looked down at him and his lips were pressed tight into a hard line. Might have been pissed, might have been pain. The look said either. Through the space between his back and one edge, I could look down and see the lump in his pocket was still there, hanging heavily in his pocket and impossible for him to reach.

“Is that a pistol in your pocket or did I just shoot you for trying to get a two-pound pack of cigarettes out of your jacket?” I said.

“Fuck you, Freeman.”

The strain in his face increased. His breathing started to go ragged. He might have broken some ribs going down, possibly punctured a lung. But still his eyes were flashing left and right, trying to figure a move. Guy like him had probably saved his own ass a dozen times and was still confident he could do it again.

I heard Sherry moan behind me, the first sound she’d made since Harmon started banging on the door, and we were wasting time.

“OK, Harmon. Now you’ve got a reason to work with me here. You gotta get to the hospital, my partner has to get to the hospital,” I said. “You tell me how to call back your helicopter pilot and all three of us fly out together.”

He looked up and saw me pointing the gun in his face and thought about the alternatives for less than ten seconds.

“Out in my bag on the deck there’s a satellite phone. Pilot’s on the same frequency. Get me up out of here and get the phone. I’ll make the call.”

I had to give him credit; he was still working the advantages for himself, slim as they were.

“No, I’ll get the gun out of your pocket. Then we’ll get you up,” I said.

With the doorway jammed, I knew the only way to get outside now was through the hatch. I figured I’d have to get him up and tied securely to a stanchion before I could climb down and get to the phone. Then I’d be calling Billy. His pilot’s job was over. I circled him again, kept the MK in my hand, and then knelt down.

“I’m going to reach down into your pocket, Harmon. You move, I’ll put a round through the back of your head. It won’t make a difference to me. You’re out of my way regardless.”

I went down on the floor behind him, my face next to his back, and I could see the stain of blood spreading down the side of his pants where I’d shot him. I was hoping that I hadn’t hit the femoral artery, but the bleeding was already extensive enough that droplets were falling into the water below.

I extended my arm down and with a little trouble found the pocket opening and reached inside to touch the hard metal of a short-barreled pistol. I came up with a new-looking Colt revolver and slid it across the floor toward Sherry’s cot.

“All right, Harmon,” I said, standing. “Now I’m going to get you under the arms here and lift you up. From the looks of it you’re gonna bleed out if I don’t get you out of there now and get a patch on that wound. So don’t fuck with me. I’m the only one left here to save your ass.”

He grunted once and then said: “You think I’m afraid of you, Freeman? Don’t flatter yourself.”

“No. I doubt you’re afraid of anything,” I said and meant it.

First I put the MK in the waistband at the small of my back and then bent behind him, got him under both armpits and started to lift. He seemed surprisingly light at first, and I had his rump almost over the edge of the hatch when he suddenly got heavy and his eyes got suddenly big and the man who feared nothing started to scream.

They call them prehistoric, the alligators of Florida. And they have survived so many thousands of years because they are nature’s superior predators in their world. Their jaw muscles are machine strong when they are biting down and weaker but much quicker when they are opening the mouth. It’s the quickness that’s astonishing.

The first yank pulled Harmon back down through the hole and I almost followed him. Over his shoulder I could see one black eye, like a shiny marble, mounted on the rumpled, gray-green snout. Unemotional, limbic, it stared up at me with no recognition that a man’s leg from the knee down was in its mouth. The other eye was missing, the socket where it should have been was a bloody hole, as if it had been drilled or merely gouged out by the shaft of a sheared-off golf club. Then like a whiplash the gator flashed its tail and threw its thousand- pound body into an S shape and Harmon went down through the hole like he’d been flushed. I heard the crack of bone and snap of ligament over the man’s deep-throated scream and tumbled back, landing on my ass. I scrambled back to the edge only in time to see that classic roll of the big reptile’s spin, showing its light-colored belly and black, mottled back as it pulled its prey down under the water where it cannot breathe and will soon give up. It is all very natural. And nature is sometimes a terrible thing to watch.

TWENTY-EIGHT

They were all dead. Arms folded at impossible angles. Clothing unnaturally empty and stained in dark amber colors that they never would have worn for themselves. Human bodies are diminished by death. In a movie some alien called us bags of water and in death our life leaks out.

I stepped around Marcus, let my eyes skim over the head wound but they stopped on the outstretched hand, the missing fingers I was responsible for. I moved on to a jump bag, one I hadn’t seen before and assumed was Harmon’s. Inside I found the phone he’d spoken of before the gator took him away in pieces. I turned it on and dialed Billy Manchester’s number. He would be the one person I knew would have the technological ability to take the call even if the power and the cell towers were down in West Palm Beach. He was my friend, my attorney, and since I often worked for him as a private investigator, he was also my boss. He listened as always in absorbed silence until I was done describing where Sherry and I were and the GPS coordinates, her medical condition, and a quick synopsis of the carnage lying around me.

“I will be on a med flight in thirty minutes, Max, with a crew and an evacuation basket,” Billy said. “I will also inform the Broward sheriff’s office of the situation. Are you OK?”

“Yeah, Billy. Just get here.”

I punched the off button and stepped out past the hand with one thumb. Buck was facedown, the ripped left leg of his jeans was empty. Farther along the deck was the body of a big man I did not recognize. As I walked around him, I glimpsed a clump of bloodstained gristle against the nearby wall that I barely recognized as an ear. At the corner was Wayne, lying on his side, his arm extended out in the direction of his friend as if offering the four fingers he had left from an accident long ago to match his partner’s lonely thumb.

The sun was partway up now, smoldering behind an overcast sky, dimly glowing. A humid wind stirred and blew through the broken Glades trees and ferns, momentarily sweeping away the stink of blood and cordite and humans. Sometimes nature cannot stand us. And sometimes we cannot stand our own nature. I carefully made my way back inside to Sherry’s side and waited for the sound of a rescue.