Silencer (21 page)

Luck was going to get him out of this, bad luck or good. Maybe he could shade the odds a little, but no strategy had come to him yet. Keep moving in the same direction, try not to circle back on himself, and hope his path eventually intersected with some friendly circumstance. A public road, a house, a fellow traveler.

At the crunch of brush nearby Thorn stiffened. He swiped up the Glock and craned to the side and peered around the trunk of the palm. Twenty feet away one of the antelopes was nosing at some green shoots of grass on the edge of his oasis. It lifted its head and studied him for several seconds, its eyes so oddly large it seemed to be in a permanent state of amazement. Thorn held his position until the young buck made its evaluation, dismissed his menace, and resumed feeding.

Thorn eased back into place and delicately set the pistol aside. He was settling his spine against the tree when he felt a nudge at his rump, like a thick braid of rope tugged forward an inch. He held still, suppressing a groan. Before he looked behind him, he took a steadying breath. He already knew what it was and had gathered a sense of
its size. He was only hoping it was a dusky pygmy or maybe a rare indigo, not one of their more deadly cousins.

Holding his head still, he slanted his eyes to the right but couldn't make it out because its body was hidden beneath debris and fallen fronds. What he did see was the rabbit hole five feet off. The snake he was pressed against had been staking out the entrance to the rabbit's den when Thorn sat down.

So exhausted from his sprint, he hadn't paid attention. If he'd noticed the goddamn rabbit burrow he would've steered to a less risky spot. In woods like these, it was a common configuration. Snake guarding food source.

He inched his head to the right and finally made out the wedge of the snake's head. Not good, not good at all. Hexagonal pattern, white and tawny and black and as thick as his wrist. He didn't need to turn the other way to estimate its length. Five to six feet. Seven or eight rattles on its tail. A mature diamondback. In one bite it could deliver enough venom to kill six Thorns. The eastern diamondback was a perfect fit for this terrain. It absorbed humidity through its skin, could sleep for days in ambush, wake when it smelled its prey. Like most creatures in the wild, the rattler wasn't naturally aggressive, but trapped like this one was as it waited for the rabbit to appear, it would be royally pissed. Diamondbacks only bit for two reasons: fear and food. And Thorn had both of those covered nicely.

Luckily, the snake was as straight as a staff. Hard for it to attack from that position. It would take the rattler at least a couple of seconds to coil for a strike.

Thorn was picking the direction he intended to dive when he heard the distant grumble of an engine. At the same instant, the snake edged forward an inch as though the motor's approach had stirred it into action.

So there it was. Thorn had made one more bad move in a long string of them. This grove he'd chosen was way too obvious. He saw that now. He'd taken the predictable path and invited his own discovery.

To the west a plume of dust rose off the prairie behind a red ATV with oversize tires. Perfect for navigating the marshes and gullies of this harsh land. On most days, if a crafty hunter tacked with the wind to carry away the engine noise, that four-wheeler would be an excellent vehicle to stalk a nervous herd of antelope.

But not today. This hunter didn't give a shit who heard his approach. He was bouncing recklessly across the rough terrain, his engine at full bore.

The young buck who'd been feeding nearby pricked up its ears, bleated once, and broke into a gallop. Behind him his tribe followed in tight formation.

Thorn felt the diamondback seep forward another inch. A foot of its body was out in the open, and the rattles were humming against the base of his spine. The snake had turned its head and was flicking its tongue toward Thorn, trying to suss out his potential as nourishment or threat.

Thorn didn't wait for the creature to decide, but rolled right, rolled again, and twice more until he butted against a pine sapling. He came up in a crouch, searched for the snake, and located it finally, coiled in the leaves, pine needles, and decaying fronds, forming a perfect circle around the Glock.

A swirl of prairie dust filtered into the glen.

The motor shut off.

In the steady breeze, old seed pods and dry fronds chattered, and in the high branches of the canopy the dust cloud broke up and swirled away.

The diamondback continued to guard the pistol as if it were some prized kill it had dragged back to its nest. Its head hovered a few inches off the ground and that shiny tongue worked the air.

Thorn scanned the area for a fallen branch but saw only brown and crumbling fronds. Maybe one of the palm stems would serve his purpose, but he discarded that. Too unwieldy for what he needed. He
looked down at the sapling he'd collided with. Six feet tall, an inch thick at its base.

Not perfect, but it would do. He picked a spot as far down its trunk as he thought he could snap, gripped it with both hands and bent it until it broke. Filaments of the green wood held on, dozens of pine strands as tough as ligaments. He rolled the sapling back and forth against the grip of the rubbery fibers, but they didn't give. He took a step away from the base, threw his weight into it, and jerked the sapling free.

“You in there, Thorn? That you back in the shadows?”

Jonah's voice was off to his right, thirty, forty feet away.

Thorn stepped closer to the diamondback, extending the sapling's ragged end. The snake bobbed its head and glided forward a few inches, tracking the movement of the stick. Three-quarters of its length still circled the pistol, but its focus had shifted to this new intruder.

Thorn feinted the stick left, drew the rattler's head that way, then poked the blunt end of his lance beneath the diamondback's coil, hooked the snake as close to its midpoint as he could, then lifted and slung it five feet into the brush.

He snatched up the Glock and flattened himself behind the closest palm.

Maybe Jonah saw him move or heard the snake landing.

He started firing. His automatic weapon tore chunks from trees nearby, kicked up plugs of soil, put a scent in the air of pine and muck and a flowery residue. Jonah raked the cabbage palms from right to left, then back the other way. The gray rabbit that the diamondback had been waiting for darted across the glen, brushed Thorn's bare ankles, and ducked into its hole.

Jonah worked closer, spraying bursts of five or six. Tearing away branches, spinning up tiny cyclones of bark and leaf and moss, meaty chunks exploding from long-leaf pine, oak, and saw palmetto. A gash opened a foot from Thorn's face. Then more silence.

Thorn squatted down, ducked a look around the edge of the palm. He could hear Jonah tramping nearby but couldn't spot him. From the sound, he might be ten feet away or five times that. Hard to tell with his eardrums throbbing.

With only two rounds in the Glock, there was no future in a full-scale shoot-out. He'd have to be frugal. Take nothing less than a perfect shot.

The rising wind was Thorn's only ally. Kicking up leaves and broken bits of foliage, hundreds of small distractions tumbling across the ground, while overhead there was a screech of limb and the clatter of brush, and on the forest floor the sunlight and shadows flickered and flashed like some disco dance club.

Directly across from his position, he saw an old slash pine with a patch of bark rubbed away about two feet off the ground. It had the look of a scent post, a tree used by a wild hog to rub its bristly body. One of its prehistoric grooming habits. A few inches above the barkless patch were several scars in the soft wood. Another of the wild hog's endearing traits was to gash its tusks into the most prominent trees. Both the scent and the gouges were left to mark wild hog's territory, warn off rivals.

Thorn decided, all in all, to move. The scent post and the diamondback were part of it. But he didn't much like the cabbage palm where he was hiding, either. It was too exposed, and all the shooting angles in Jonah's direction were obscured. He glanced around and chose another tree ten feet away across mostly open space. He set his feet and skipped out into the clearing, staying low. Halfway to the tree, he caught a flash of movement to his right and dodged behind the trunk of a good-sized oak.

Jonah let off a burst of fire that shredded the fronds of a palmetto and dug up a trail in the forest floor ten feet from Thorn's new location. He fired another half dozen rounds. No way to count how many he'd used up and no way to calculate when he was running low on ammo. He might have brought a month's supply.

“Can't we just get along?” Jonah called out. “Just be friends.” His voice was neither loud nor troubled. “You hear me, Thorn? Can you hear me?”

Thorn saw him clearly now. Close. Twenty feet to the east. He was stooped forward, aiming his weapon into the densest part of the grove. Unaware of Thorn.

Thorn stepped from behind the tree. He had no qualms about shooting Jonah in the back. Whatever moral restraint he'd possessed twenty-four hours before, he'd left behind at the bottom of that sinkhole, bearing down on a dying man's throat, watching his arms flutter at his side.

He angled his pistol slowly to the left, but with so many trees and shrubs and saplings between them, there wasn't an open shot.

Tucking back behind the oak, he pressed his cheek against the rough bark, brought the pistol up, extended it, and focused his aim on a break in the understory about ten paces ahead of Jonah. He waited, trying to time the man's gait as he disappeared behind a dense stand of palmetto and tall grasses. He estimated it would be five or six seconds before Jonah reappeared in the clearing.

Thorn counted them off, then counted off twenty more. No Jonah.

Half a minute passed. Thorn lowered the pistol. He heard only a squirrel chittering on the high branches above him and the creak of the wind through the old growth.

He was rattled. Not sure of his next move. Was he the hunter still, or had Jonah faked him out? The kid didn't seem savvy enough, but then again, this was his home turf. Maybe he knew this glen, knew its escape routes, its shortcuts and switchbacks. Or maybe it was all a bluff and he was stopping at every stand of woods and throwing out the same bait, trying to lure Thorn into the open.

Thorn was stepping away from the oak to pick his best path when a crash came from the brush to his left. He slid back behind the tree, brought the Glock up, poised to take his shot.

But the huff and grunt came so fast and from such a startling level,
Thorn had no time to fire. The feral hog was low and squat with a reddish-brown mottled coat, three feet at the shoulders, more than two hundred pounds. It was trundling directly at him, coming so fast there was no way he could dodge or outrun the thing.

It squealed at Thorn and squealed twice more at a higher pitch. The five-inch tusks jutting from its lower jaw were almost hidden by a froth of slobber. Ten feet away, the hog slewed to a stop, and beheld Thorn with its tiny eyes, red and crazed. He'd heard stories of hogs charging humans, but for all he knew, they could've been tall tales. He'd never stumbled onto one, so had no idea how much danger he was in. Still, just the look of the thing was so fearsome, his instinct was to shoot.

Thorn brought the pistol up and aimed between those demented eyes. The boar, however, had another plan. He stumbled awkwardly to his right then steadied himself and set off again, careening through the tangle of low-hanging branches. As he passed not more than a yard away, Thorn caught its trailing smell, as foul as sewer gas. Along its left flank a bloody gash ran from its front shoulder to its hip. A stray round from Jonah's weapon must have strafed him and sent him into this frenzy.

The boar plowed into the undergrowth, sent twigs and leaves spinning, and hurtled ahead until it was out of sight. Seconds later more gunfire erupted from the direction the hog had taken. Deep within the brambles, the animal screeched and squealed and screeched again. After another spurt of gunfire, the hog was silent.

Thorn listened to the branches moan and scrape against one another. He saw an owl sitting serenely on a high limb like some weary judge who has seen it all and is no longer fazed by the follies of humankind. Thorn watched the owl and waited for something to happen. Nothing did.

He stepped away from his hiding place, ready to resume his easterly marathon, when fifty feet away Jonah emerged from the dense scrub, clawing through the snag of branches and limbs, and lurched into a clearing.

His face was smeared with blood, blood on his lips, blood coated both hands and arms, and blood drenched his gray sweatshirt. He was bathed in blood. He had wallowed in blood and wallowed some more.

Overhead the sunlight brightened, putting a harsh shine on the brushstrokes of Jonah's work. Boar blood smeared on his throat and boar blood gleamed in the spiraling canals of his ears and blood glazed his skinned head. Pinwheels of light spun in the branches, and a half-dozen squirrels chased one another up and down the limbs of the oak, shrieking like a mob of ghouls celebrating one of their own.

For a full thirty seconds as Jonah stumbled past, Thorn had an unobstructed shot, but when he raised his pistol, his hand was so unsteady he couldn't bring himself to fire.

 

 

WHILE SUGAR WAS FILLING HIS
gas tank in Clewiston, a few miles south of the turn off to Coquina Ranch, Rusty headed into the station to use the john. At the pumps across from him, two bikers with Santa Claus beards were filling the teardrop tanks on their choppers and eyeing Sugarman like he might be just the guy they'd been looking for.

They both wore black leather vests over black T-shirts and identical ratty blue jeans and black leather boots. There was mud on their boots, and the yellow stains of bug spatter and bird shit on their vests.