Gone South (43 page)

“I killed a man.”

Train didn’t move or speak.

“He worked at a bank in Shreveport. There was a fight. I lost my head and shot him. The bank’s put fifteen thousand dollars reward on me. Murtaugh and Eisley wanted it.”

“Huuuuwheeee,” Train said softly.

“You can have the reward, I won’t give you any trouble. Can you call the law or somebody on that shortwave set?”

“I a’ready tell you, I don’t need no money. I’m rich, livin’ as I do. I love this swamp, I grew up in it. I like to fish and hunt. What I don’t eat, I sell. I boss myself. I get fifteen thousan’ dollar in my pocket —
poof!
There go my riches. Then I want another fifteen thousan’ dollar, but no more there is. No, I don’t need but what I got.” He frowned, the lines deepening around his eyes, and he rubbed his silvered chin. “If them bounty hunters after you, how come for you wanna he’p ’em? How come you even tellin’ me this?”

“Because they don’t deserve to be murdered, that’s why! They haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Hey, hey! Calm down. Flyin’ you head off ain’t gonna he’p nobody.” He motioned toward the porch. “Ya’ll go out there, set, and take the breeze. I’ll be there direct.”

“What about the shortwave?”

“Yeah, I could call the law way over to Gran’ Isle. Only ting is, they ain’t gonna find you … fella travelers,” he decided to say. “Likely they dead a’ready. Now go on out and set y’self.”

There wasn’t much of a breeze on the porch, but it was a little cooler there than inside the boat. Dan was too jumpy to sit, though Arden settled in a wicker chair that faced the cove. “You’re goin’ with me, aren’t you?” she asked him. “We’re so close, you’ve got to go with me.”

“I’ll go. I still don’t believe it, but I’ll go.” He stood at the screen, looking out at the water’s still surface. “Damn,” he said. “There’s gotta be somethin’ somebody can do!”

“Oui,
you can take a swaller of this here.” Train came onto the porch. He had uncapped a small metal flask, and he offered it to Dan. “Ain’t ’shine,” he said when Dan hesitated. “It’s French brandy. Buy it in Grand Isle. Go ahead, ay?”

Dan accepted the flask and took a drink. The brandy burned its flaming trail down his throat. Train offered the flask to Arden, and when she shook her head he took a sip and sloshed it around in his mouth before swallowing. “Now I gonna tell you ’bout them men, so listen good. They got a place ’bout five mile southwest from here. Hid real fine. I ain’t got an eye set for it, but I come up on it when I’m huntin’ boar near Lake Calliou. They been there maybe t’ree month. Set up camp, brung in a prefab house, build a dock, swimmin’ pool, and all whatcha like. Got a shrimp boat and two of them expenseeve cigarettes. You know, them fast speederboats. Then they put bob wire’ round ever’ting.” He swigged from the flask and held it out to Dan again. “I hear from an ol’ Cajun boy live on Calliou Bay them men be poachin’ ’gator. Season don’t start till September, see. Ain’t no big ting, it happen. But I start to windin’ in my head, how come they to poach ’gator? Somebody owns hisse’f two of them cigarettes, he got to poach ’gator? Why’s that so, ay?” He took the flask back after Dan had had a drink. “Ol’ boy says he seen lights at night, boats comin’ and goin’ all hours. So I go over there, hide my boat, and watch through my dark vision binocs ’cause I eat up with curious. Took me two night, then I see what they up to.”

“What was it?” Arden asked, pulling her thoughts away from the Bright Girl for the moment.

“Freighter in the bay, unloadin’ what look like grain sacks to the shrimp boat. All the time the two cigarettes they circlin’ and circlin’ ’round, throwin’ spotlights. And — huuuuwheee! —  the men in them boats with the like of guns you never did saw! Shrimp boat brung the grain sacks back in, freighter up anchor and went.” He had another swig of Napoleon’s finest. “Now what kinda cargo unloaded by night and be that worth protection?”

“Drugs,” Dan said.

“That’s what I’m figurin’. Either the heroin or the cockaine. Maybe both. All them miles and miles of swamp coast, the law cain’t hardly patrol a smidgen of it, and they boats in sorry shape. So these fellas bringin’ in the dope and shippin’ it north, likely takin’ it up by Bayou du Large or Bayou Grand Calliou and unloadin’ at a marina. Sellin’ some of it at St. Nasty, too. Burt’s the one found out fella named Doc Nyland was hangin’ ’round the poolhall, givin’ men free samples to get ’em interested. Peacekeeper tried to do somethin’ about it, he went missin’. Only ting is, I cain’t figure why they poachin’ the ’gators. Then — boom! —  it hit me like a brick upside my head.” Train capped the flask. “They worry somebody gonna steal them drugs away from ’em. Worry so much they gonna be hijack they gotta figure a way to move ’em safe. So what they gonna do, ay? They gonna put them drugs somewhere they cain’t be easy stole.” His mouth crooked in a wicked smile. “Like inside live ’gators.”

“Inside ’em?”

“Sans doute!
You wrap that cockaine up in metal foil good and tight, then you jam it down in them bellies with a stick! How you gonna get it out unless you got a big knife and a lotta time to be cuttin’? That’d be the goddangest mess you never did saw!”

“I’ll bet,” Dan agreed. “So what are they doin’? Shippin’ the ’gators north to be cut open?”

“Out,
puttin’ ’em on a truck and takin’ ’em to a safe place. Even if them ’gators die of bad digestion ’fore they get where they goin’, the cockaine still protected in there.”

“Maybe so, but I can’t understand how Murtaugh and Eisley got mixed up with a gang of drug runners. Is Doc Nyland their leader?”

Train shook his head. “I seen somebody else over there, look like he was bossin’. Fella don’t wear no shirt, showin’ hisse’f off. Standin’ by the pool, them irons and weight bars layin’ ever’where. His girlfrien’, all she do is lay there sunburnin’. I’m figurin’ he’s the honch.”

Dan looked out through the screen at the water. The sun was up strong and hot now, golden light streaming through the trees. A movement caught his attention, and he saw a moccasin undulating smoothly across the surface. He watched it until it disappeared into the shadows. It seemed to Dan that in this swamp the human reptiles were the ones to be feared most of all. He lifted his forearm and stared at his snake tattoo. Once, a long time ago, he had been a brave man. He had done without hesitation what he’d thought was the right thing. He had walked the world like a giant himself, before time and fate had beaten him down. Now he was dying and he was a killer, sick at heart.

He felt as if he were peering into a snake hole, and if he reached into it to drag the thing out, he could be bitten to death. But if he turned his back on it like a coward, he was already dead.

An image came to him, unbidden: Farrow’s face and voice, there on that terrible night the snipers’ bullets had hissed out of the jungle.

Go,
he’d said. It had not been a shout, but it was more powerful than a shout.

Go.

Dan remembered the glint of what might have been joy in Farrow’s eyes as the man — a citizen of Hell, one of the walking damned — had turned and started slogging back through the mud toward the jungle, firing his Ml6 to give Dan and the others precious seconds in which to save their own lives.

Farrow could not live with himself because he’d gone south. There in the village of Cho Yat, his simple mistake with the foil-wrapped chocolate bar had resulted in the death of innocents, and Farrow had decided — in the muddy stream, at that crisis of time — that he had found an escape.

Dan had once been a Snake Handler, a good soldier, a decent man. But he’d gone south, there in that Shreveport bank, and now
he
was a citizen of hell, one of the walking damned.

But he knew the right thing to do.

It was time to go.

“You braingears gettin’ hot,” Train said in a quiet voice.

“You have guns.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Two rifles. Pistol.”

“How many men?”

Train knew what he meant. “I count eight last time. Maybe more I don’t see.”

Dan turned to face him. “Will you take me?”

“No!” Arden stood up, her eyes wide. “Dan, no! You don’t owe them anything!”

“I owe myself,” he said.

“Listen to me!” She stepped close to him and grasped his arm. “You can still get away! You can find —”

“No,” he interrupted gently, “I can’t. Train, how about it?”

“They’ll kill you!” Arden said, stricken with terror for him.

“Oui,”
Train added. “That they’ll try.”

“Maybe Murtaugh and Eisley are already dead.” Dan stared deeply into Arden’s eyes. It was a strange thing, but now he could look at her face and not see the birthmark. “Maybe they’re still alive, but they won’t be for very long. If I don’t go after ’em — if I don’t at least try to get ’em out of there — what good am I? I don’t want to die in prison. But I can’t live in a prison, either. And if I don’t do
somethin’,
I’ll carry my own prison around with me every hour of every day I’ve got left. I have to do this. Train?” He directed his gaze to the Cajun. “I’m not askin’ you to help me, just to get me close enough. I’ll need to take one of the rifles, the pistol, and some ammo. You got a holster for the pistol?”

“I do.”

“Then you’ll take me?”

Train paused for a moment, thinking it over. He opened the flask again and took a long swig. “You a mighty strange killer, wantin’ to get killed for somebody tryin’ to slam you in prison.” He licked his lips. “Huuuuwheeee! I didn’t know I was gonna get dead today.”

“I can go in alone.”

“Well,” Train said, “it’s like this here: I knew a fella, name of Jack Giradoux. Parish ranger, he was. He come by, we’d have a talk and eat some cat. I don’t tell him about them men ’cause I know what he’ll have to do. I figure not to rock the boat, ay?” He smiled; it was a painful sight. The smile quickly faded. “If he don’t find ’em, I figure, he don’t get killed. He was a good fella. Few days ago fisherman find Jack’s boat on Lake Tambour. That’s a long way from where them men are, but I know they must’ve got hold of him and then towed his boat up there. Find his body, nobody ever will. Now I gotta ask myself, did I done wrong? When they gonna find out I know about ’em and come for me, some night?” He closed the flask and held it down at his side. “Lived forty-five good year. To die in bed,
non.
Could be we get it done and get out. Could be you my death angel, and maybe I know sooner or later you was gonna swoop down on me. It’s gonna be like puttin’ you hand in a cottonmouth nest. You ready to get bit?”

“I’m ready to do some bitin’,” Dan said.

“Okay, leatherneck. Okay. With you, I reckon. Got Baby to carry us, maybe we get real lucky.”

“Baby?”

“She my girl. You meet her, direct.”

“One more thing,” Dan added. “I want to take Arden where she needs to go first.”

“Non,
impossible. Them men five miles southwest, the Bright Girl nine, ten mile southeast, down in the Casse-Tete Islands. We take her first, we gonna be losin’ too much time.”

Dan looked at Arden, who was staring fixedly at the floor. “I’ll leave it up to you. I know how much this means. I never believed it … but maybe I should have. Maybe I was wrong, I don’t know.” Her chin came up, and her eyes found his. “What do you say?”

“I say —” She stopped, and took a deep breath to clear her head. So many things were tangled up inside her: fear and jubilation, pain and hope. She had come so far, with so much at stake. But now she knew what the important thing was. She said, “Help them.”

He gave her a faint smile; he’d known what she was going to decide. “You need to stay here. We’ll be back as soon as —”

“No.” It was said with finality. “If you’re goin’, I am, too.”

“Arden, it might be rougher’n hell out there. You could get yourself killed.”

“I’m goin’. Don’t try to talk me out of it, because you can’t.”

“Clock’s tickin’,” Train said.

“All right, then.” Dan felt the urgency pulling at him. “I’m ready.”

Train went into a back room and got the weapons: a Browning automatic rifle with a four-bullet magazine, a Ruger rifle with a hunter’s scope and a five-shell magazine, and in a waist holster a Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic that held an eight-bullet clip. He found extra magazines for the rifles and clips for the automatic and put them in a faded old backpack, which Arden was given charge of. Dan took the Browning and the pistol. Train got a plastic jug of filtered water from the galley, slung the Ruger’s strap around his shoulder, and said, “We go.”

They left the houseboat and Train led them to the vine-covered floating structure next to the pier. He slid open a door. “Here she sets.”

“Jesus,” Dan said, stunned by what he saw.

Sitting inside was Train’s second boat. It was painted navy gray, the paint job relatively fresh except for patches of rust at the waterline. It resembled a smaller version of a commercial tug, but it was leaner and meaner, its squat pilothouse set closer to the prow. The craft was about fifty feet long, and thirteen feet high at its tallest point, a tight squeeze in the oil-smelling, musty boathouse. It had not the gentle charm of an infant, but the armor-plated threat of a brute.

Though the machine-gun mounts and the mortar had been removed and other civilian modifications made to the radar mast, Dan recognized it as a Swift-type river patrol boat, the same kind of vessel Train had crewed aboard on the deadly waterways of Vietnam.

“My baby,” Train said with a sly grin. “Let the good times roll.”

T
HE SUN HAD RISEN
on a small aluminum rowboat in the middle of a muddy pond. In that rowboat Flint and Pelvis sat facing each other, linked by the short chain between their cuffed wrists.

At seven o’clock the temperature was approaching eighty-four degrees and the air steamed with humidity. Flint’s shirt and suit jacket had been stripped off him, Clint’s arm drooping lethargically from the pale, sweat-sparkling chest. Beads of moisture glistened on Flint’s hollow-eyed face, his head bowed. Across from him, Pelvis still wore his wig backward, his clothes sweat-drenched, his eyes swollen and forlorn. Dried blood covered the split sausage of his bottom lip, one of his lower teeth gone and another knocked crooked, tendrils of crusty blood stuck to his chin. His breathing was slow and harsh, sweat dripping from the end of his nose into a puddle between his mud-bleached suedes.