Hunt at the Well of Eternity (3 page)

Gabriel rented a car at the St. Augustine airport, then found a motel room not far away and crawled into bed for a few hours of much-needed sleep. When he got up the next morning his muscles were a little sore from the battering they had taken the night before, but the stiffness went away after a half hour in the motel’s pool.

Over breakfast in the motel coffee shop he studied a map he had taken from a rack in the office that showed how to get to the Olustee battlefield and historical site. As the waitress paused by his table to freshen his coffee, she said, “You goin’ out to the battlefield, hon?”

Gabriel smiled. “That’s right.”

“That’s funny, you don’t look like a Civil War buff.”

“Get a lot of them through here, do you?”

“Oh, yeah, those reenactors come down to the battlefield all the time. You know, they’ve filmed some Hollywood movies there, durin’ the reenactments those fellas put on.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Gabriel said. Since the woman was talkative and the coffee shop wasn’t very busy, he asked her another question. “I suppose there are descendants of men who fought in the battle living around here?”

“Sure. Most of the fellas in the battle were Florida boys. On the Confederate side, anyway.”

“What about General Fargo? Any of his descendants in these parts?”

The woman frowned. “Who?”

“General Granville Fordham Fargo. He commanded a cavalry regiment during the battle.”

The waitress shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t know anybody named Fargo who lives around here. And I’ve been in St. Augustine all my life.”

“Well, it was a Georgia cavalry regiment,” Gabriel said.

“There you go. The general and his boys must’ve gone back home. Those that were lucky enough to make it home.” The woman leaned over the table and tapped a finger on the map. “You know you’re not gonna be able to get out there today, right?”

Gabriel shook his head and said, “No, I didn’t know that. Why not?”

“Road’s washed out. We had a tropical storm come through here last week, and all the damage hasn’t been repaired yet. Only way in is through the creeks and the sloughs and the swamps.”

That didn’t sound very promising. Gabriel had slogged through more than one swamp in his life. He didn’t like them. Didn’t like the mud, and the roots that wrapped around a man’s ankles, and the cottonmouths and the gators and the mosquitoes that sometimes seemed damned near big enough to carry you off.

But he hadn’t come to Florida to sit around a motel waiting for a road to be repaired.

“Any place around here I can rent a boat?”

“You’ll need an airboat to get where you want to go.”

“What about a place I can rent an airboat, then?”

“Just so happens you’re lucky today, hon.” The waitress pointed to a man sitting at the counter. “There’s the fella you’d need to talk to, right there.” She raised her voice. “Hey, Hoyt!”

The man looked up. “Yep?”

The waitress motioned to him. “Come over here. This fella wants to go out to the battlefield.”

Gabriel would have preferred not to have his business announced to the entire coffee shop, but it was too late to worry about that now. Hoyt got up from the stool at the counter and came over to the booth Gabriel occupied, taking his time about it. He carried his coffee cup in his left hand.

He was somewhere in his sixties, Gabriel estimated, although with a man who had obviously spent much of his life outdoors it was hard to tell his age. Hoyt was short and slender, with a lined, leathery face and a short gray beard. He wore a Jacksonville Jaguars cap, a work shirt with the sleeves rolled up over deeply tanned forearms, and faded jeans.

“You don’t look like one o’ those reenactors,” Hoyt commented as he came up to the table.

“I’m not,” Gabriel said. He put out his hand. “Gabriel Hunt.”

“Hoyt Johnson.” He shook Gabriel’s hand.

“I gather you have an airboat.”

“Sure do. Make my livin’ guidin’ huntin’ and fishin’ parties. You much of an angler?”

“When I get the chance,” Gabriel said. He motioned to the bench seat on the other side of the table. “Why don’t you sit down and join me?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Hoyt slid into the seat and held out his cup to the waitress, who still stood there with the coffee. “Hot that up a little, would you, Patsy?”

When they both had fresh coffee and the waitress had gone back behind the counter, he asked, “You’re not a drug smuggler, are you?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“It’s just that you look like a fella who knows his way around. Not the touristy type, if you get my drift.”

“I
am
here on business,” Gabriel admitted.

“Not illegal business?”

The only crime he’d committed lately was tampering with evidence. Well, that and discharging a firearm illegally on the Queensboro Bridge. But he didn’t think the men in the SUV would be filing any complaints with the police about the incident.

“No,” Gabriel said with a shake of his head.

“Well, you don’t look any more like a crook than you do a Civil War buff, I guess,” Hoyt said. “I can take you out there to the battlefield. Not today, though. Have to be tomorrow.”

Gabriel didn’t want to wait. For one thing, that would give the men who wanted him dead more time to figure out where he had gone.

“It’s worth some extra money to me to go out there today,” Gabriel said.

“How much more extra?”

“I suppose that’s for you to decide.”

“Well…I’ll take you out there and back for three hundred bucks.”

Gabriel had a feeling that Hoyt would be disappointed—maybe even suspicious—if he agreed to the price right away. So even though Gabriel could have paid double without hesitation he said, “How about two hundred?”

Hoyt appeared to think it over, then said, “Split the difference?”

“Done,” Gabriel said and extended his hand again. The two men shook on the deal.

“When were you wantin’ to leave?” Hoyt asked.

“As soon as I finish breakfast.”

Hoyt pointed out the window. “Go right down this road half a mile and you’ll come to the marina where I keep my boat. I’ll go gas her up and see you in a little while.”

The old-timer left the coffee shop. Gabriel finished his eggs and toast, drained his coffee mug, thanked the waitress for her help, and went out to the rental car. He didn’t need to go back to his room for anything. The Colt was already tucked behind his belt at the small of his back, concealed by the bomber jacket. Until this mess was settled, he didn’t intend to go unarmed any more often than he had to.

He saw a sign pointing the way to Ponce de Leon Harbor and remembered reading that St. Augustine, in addition to being the oldest settlement on the continent, was also supposed to be the home of the legendary Fountain of Youth. Probably a lot more tourists came here because of that than did to see some Civil War battlefield, Gabriel reflected. But at least the battlefield you could see. Good luck renting a boat to take you to the Fountain of Youth.

A number of airboats were docked at the marina Hoyt had mentioned. The giant fans that propelled them were mounted at the rear of the boats, which were little more than rafts with seats attached to them. Gabriel spotted Hoyt on one of the boats, and the old-timer waved when he saw Gabriel coming along the dock.

“Come aboard,” Hoyt called.

Gabriel stepped from the dock onto the boat. Hoyt waved him into one of the seats.

“Ready to go?” he asked as he stood beside the motor.

Gabriel nodded. “Any time you are.”

Hoyt cast off the line that held the boat to the dock, then pulled the motor’s start rope a couple of times. The motor caught on the second pull. The giant fan was just a blur as the motor’s roar rose into the air above the marina. The boat eased away from the dock and out into the harbor, where Hoyt turned it toward an inlet and increased the throttle. The boat began to skim over the water.

Hoyt steered it skillfully into a wide watercourse that separated a narrow island from the mainland, then veered off into a smaller channel. Over the noise of the motor he called to Gabriel, “There’s so many rivers, creeks, and sloughs once you get inland that a fella’s got to know where he’s goin’ or he’s liable to wander around for days out there!”

Gabriel nodded, the wind of their passage ruffling his hair. “I’ve been in swamp country before,” he shouted back. “I know what it’s like.”

They soon left St. Augustine behind them. Penetrating the interior of northern Florida was hardly like venturing into the jungles of South America or Africa, but itreally didn’t take long to reach an area where there were a lot fewer signs of civilization. Great pine forests crowded against the stream banks in places, while in others the channel wound through mangrove swamps. The airboat glided past an occasional peanut field and vast expanses of saw grass.

They were cutting across country, avoiding the sprawling metropolis of Jacksonville, but there were still planes flying overhead and power line towers jutting up into the blue sky. When you kept your eye on the water and the surrounding landscape, though, with fish jumping and flamingos standing around mangrove roots and moss hanging from the trees, it was easy to see that some things hadn’t changed much over the years. Much of this territory looked the same as it had when Seminole Indians paddled dugouts along these same creeks and sloughs.

“How long will it take us to get there?” Gabriel asked.

“Be about an hour!” Hoyt replied.

Gabriel sat back. He didn’t know if he would find what he was looking for at the battlefield. He wasn’t even sure just what he was looking for. He’d know it if he found it. And if he didn’t find anything, he’d know that, too. In that case he’d have to find some other place to pick up the trail.

The one thing he wouldn’t do was to entertain any notions of failure. He would find Mariella Montez, and he would find out what was behind her kidnapping and the attack at the museum, and he wouldn’t stop looking until he did.

Splinters suddenly jumped from the wooden armrest of his seat. Gabriel stared at the raw place on the armrest for half a second before he realized that a bullet had done the damage. He jerked around to look behind them. The fan blades were moving so fast that it seemed unlikely a bullet could have made it through them.

“What’s wrong?” Hoyt shouted.

Before Gabriel could answer, a bullet struck the outboard motor’s housing, whining off into the hot and sticky air. Hoyt jumped. “Son of a bitch!”

Twisting in his seat, Gabriel saw that another airboat had emerged from the mouth of a slough they had just passed. The tall saw grass had hidden it until now. It surged across the water after them, and the man standing on its bow with a rifle in his hands brought the weapon to his shoulder and leveled it.

“Get down!” Gabriel shouted.

The old-timer flung himself against the tiller and sent the boat slicing to the side in such a sharp turn that Gabriel thought for a second it was going to overturn. He looked back and saw that the rifleman had lowered the gun. Now he was urging the man at the controls to go faster.

“Can you lose them?” Gabriel shouted at Hoyt.

“Damn sure try!” the old-timer replied. He increased the throttle until the airboat was going so fast Gabriel felt like it might leave the water at any time.

The other airboat fell behind for a moment but then increased its speed as well. Gabriel didn’t want to try firing his Colt through the fan because the bullets might bounce back from the blades. Anyway, the range was a little too much for a handgun.

Not for a rifle, though. Gabriel heard ringing sounds as bullets panged off the fan blades. If it was hit enough times it might be damaged and stop running. Then the other airboat could overhaul them with no trouble and he and Hoyt would be sitting ducks for the rifleman.

The bad guys had gotten out here in the swamp in a hurry. Gabriel wondered if a member of the gang had been in the coffee shop, keeping an eye on him, and had heard the waitress announce that he was going out to the Olustee battlefield.

With a huge spray of water, the airboat turned from the channel it had been in and began weaving through some mangroves. Gabriel’s jaw tightened. He thought that at any second one of the underwater roots might rip the bottom out of the airboat or flip it into the air, but Hoyt seemed to know where he was going.

“This ought to throw ’em off our trail,” he called to Gabriel. He didn’t appear to be all that flustered by being shot at, and Gabriel wondered just what sort of things the old swamp rat had been mixed up with in the past.

The boat emerged into another long channel between fields of saw grass. It was empty in both directions as far as Gabriel could see. Hoyt turned to the right, proceeding at a less breakneck pace now.

They hadn’t gone a hundred yards when, with a roar, the other airboat surged out into the channel behind them.

“Son of a gun!” Hoyt exclaimed. “That fella must have a pretty good man at the tiller to get through those mangroves.” The airboat jumped ahead again as he goosed the motor. He looked back at Gabriel. “Don’t you worry. I know a place where we can lose ’em for sure!”

“You’d better find it fast,” Gabriel said, pointing. A couple of men on Jet Skis had appeared in the channel in front of them and were racing toward the airboat, firing guns as they came.

At least he had some suitable targets for the Colt now. Gabriel reached behind his back and whipped out the revolver. He leveled it and squeezed off two shots at the man on the right as Hoyt shouted, “Give ’em hell!”

The man Gabriel had targeted went backward off the Jet Ski, which shot into the air as it went out of control. The other man veered away as Gabriel swung the Colt toward him. Gabriel triggered one shot but then held his fire as the man circled and retreated.

“Son of a—” Hoyt exclaimed. Gabriel jerked his head and saw that smoke was coming from the airboat’s motor now. Hoyt shouted, “Bullet must’a nicked an oil line! We can’t keep runnin’ full out like this!”

“Can you fix it?” Gabriel asked.

“Yeah, if folks’ll quit shootin’ at us!”

Gabriel thought for a second. “You ever play chicken?”

“Now you’re talkin’!” Hoyt said as a grin creased his leathery face.

His hands moved with assurance on the controls. The airboat wheeled to the left—to port, Gabriel corrected himself; this was a boat, after all—and kept turning until it was headed straight back at the airboat that had been pursuing them.

“Get behind the seats!” Gabriel called to Hoyt. That meager cover probably wouldn’t stop a high-powered rifle bullet, but it was better than no cover at all.

He had extra bullets in a pocket. He stretched out on his belly on the bottom of the airboat and thumbed fresh rounds into the Colt’s cylinder, loading all six chambers.

The other airboat wasn’t backing off. The two craft leaped at each other, the gap between them closing in a matter of heartbeats as the men at the controls held both throttles wide open.

Gabriel braced his gun hand with the other hand around his wrist and began firing. He felt the wind-rip of a bullet near his head but didn’t hear it because the roar of the airboat’s motor drowned out the slug’s whine.

The rifleman had bellied down, too, to make himself a smaller target. As the airboats roared toward each other, the space between them narrowed to the point that Gabriel could make out the man’s face. It was no surprise that he recognized it.

The rifleman was the ugly bastard who had carried Mariella Montez out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Who’s gonna blink?” Hoyt called. Black smoke continued to trail behind the motor, but so far it hadn’t missed a beat.

“Better be them,” Gabriel said. The other airboat loomed in front of them, mere feet away. If neither pilot’s nerve broke, this was going to be one hell of a crash.

But then the other airboat suddenly juked to the left as the man at its controls shoved the tiller over. Hoyt’s boat shot past so close that Gabriel almost expected the two vessels to scrape against each other. He twisted his neck to look behind them and saw that the other boat had turned so sharply that it left the water entirely, soaring several feet into the air and tipping to the side. The rifleman and the pilot both had to leap for their lives as the boat went over.

The out-of-control airboat was almost upside down as it slammed into the water with a huge splash and broke apart. The fan was still whirling madly and stirred up the water even more in the second or two before the motor stopped. With all the silvery spray in the air, Gabriel lost sight of the two men.

He said to Hoyt, “Get us out of here and find a quiet place where you can repair that engine.”

“Sure thing. I think I’m gonna have to charge you the whole three hundred, though.”

“We had a deal,” Gabriel said with a grin.

“I charge extra for gettin’ shot at.”

“Fair enough,” Gabriel said.

Hoyt found a shady slough where the thick, overhanging mangrove limbs gave them some concealment in case anybody else came looking for them. While Gabriel swatted at mosquitoes and watched snakes wriggling past in the water, Hoyt repaired the oil line.

When Hoyt was done, he slapped the engine housing and said, “We’re ready to go. You still want to head for the battlefield?”

“That’s right,” Gabriel said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, it seems to me that those fellas with the guns didn’t want you goin’ out there.”

“I don’t let little things like that stop me.”

Hoyt chuckled. “I didn’t really figure you would. Just thought I’d ask.”

It was quiet and peaceful under the mangroves, but Gabriel was glad to get moving again. The wind kept the mosquitoes off and cooled him down some. His shirt was dark with sweat.

About thirty minutes later Hoyt brought the airboat to a stop next to a dock that extended a short distance into the stream they had been following. An asphalt road started at the dock and led off through a thick stand of pines.

“Battlefield’s a couple hundred yards that way,” Hoyt said, pointing up the road. “Want me to come with you?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Gabriel said. He stepped from the boat up to the dock.

“I’ll tinker with this motor some more, then. Make sure the repair job I did will hold up until we get back.”

Gabriel walked along the road until it merged with another road leading from the highway. This was the road the tropical storm had washed out, he assumed. To his left was the battlefield site’s parking area, and just beyond it the visitor center and museum. Behind the visitor center Gabriel could see a long open field bordered by swamp on one side and a pine forest so thick as to almost be impenetrable on the other. That was the battlefield itself, he supposed.

This was a state park, he reminded himself, so it was probably illegal for him to be carrying his Colt. But he figured breaking the law was the lesser of evils when people were out to kill him.

With the road closed and few, if any, tourists arriving by airboat, he knew the visitor center might be closed, in which case the trip out here could well have been for nothing. But he had come this far and wasn’t going to turn back now. He walked on toward the building.

A man pushed open the glass door and stepped out as Gabriel approached. The man was wearing a butternut-colored Confederate army uniform, complete with a campaign cap and brown pack. He carried a long muzzleloading rifle with a bayonet attached to the barrel. With no one in modern dress around other than Gabriel himself, it felt a little like stepping back in time.

Then he heard a ringing noise and the Confederate soldier took a cell phone out of his pocket and answered it. So much for time travel.

By the time Gabriel reached him, the man had finished his conversation and was putting the phone away. He was wearing modern wire-framed glasses, too, Gabriel noted, instead of old-fashioned spectacles. He said, “Sorry, sir, we’re closed today. Most of the staff and volunteers can’t get in because of problems with the road.”

“You’re here,” Gabriel pointed out. “Or have you, ah, been here since the battle?”

The man looked puzzled for a second, then laughed. “You mean the uniform? I’m one of the reenactors here. I was just trying on a new uniform when I saw you walking up the road. Did you come by airboat?”

“That’s right.”

“I suppose I could let you take a look around, since you went to that much trouble. I’m Stephen Krakowski, by the way.”

“Gabriel Hunt.” Gabriel shook hands with the man.

“Come on inside.” Krakowski led Gabriel into the visitors center, which had the usual exhibit cases, gift shop, and snack bar that most such tourist attractions sported. “Are you interested in the Battle of Olustee in particular, or the Civil War in general?”

“I’m interested in this battle,” Gabriel said as he headed for the glass display cases. In one, he saw there were flags spread out. “One cavalry regiment in particular.” He studied the flags, looking for a match to the one Mariella Montez had brought to New York. He didn’t see one.

“Which regiment?”

“The Fifth Georgia.”

“Ah. General Fargo’s regiment.”

Gabriel tried to keep from looking too eager. “You’re familiar with it?”

“Of course. I even played General Fargo in a reenactment one time.” Krakowski leaned the rifle he’d been carrying against the display case, then went into the gift shop and came back with an oversized leatherbound book. “This isn’t for sale, but we keep it on hand for reference. The local historical society had it printed up around the turn of the century.”

“You mean the turn of the twentieth.”

“Of course.” Krakowski set the volume on one of the display cases and opened it. “This is a history of the battle put together from the accounts of several officers who participated in it. It lists all the units and officers who took part and includes biographical sketches of most of them.” He flipped through the book, found the page he was looking for, and rested a finger on it. “There’s General Fargo. You can see that I don’t look much like him.”

That was true, Gabriel saw as he studied the old, sepia-toned photograph reproduced in the book. Krakowski was rather moon-faced and balding under his campaign cap. General Granville Fordham Fargo had been a lean, intense-looking man with deep-set eyes, a lantern jaw, a mane of salt-and-pepper hair, and a close-cropped beard. Even in the photograph, he had an air of command about him, which wasn’t surprising considering that he had led a cavalry regiment.

Gabriel scanned the biographical sketch of Fargo that accompanied the photograph, but nothing unusual jumped out of it. Fargo had been born and raised on a Georgia plantation and had been a planter, surveyor, and college professor before the war. Seemed to have spent his entire life happily within the confines of the state—until the war, at least. He had helped form the Fifth Georgia when the war began and had risen to command it by the time of the battle at Olustee in 1864.

There was nothing in the brief account to explain the events of the past day. Gabriel felt a twinge of frustration.

“Did Fargo contribute one of the accounts of the battle that are in this book?” he asked.

Krakowski shook his head. “No, that wouldn’t have been possible.”

“Why not? Was he killed in the fighting?” Gabriel glanced at the biographical sketch again and saw that it listed no date of death.

“Oh, no, General Fargo survived the battle and the war itself. But then…he disappeared.”

Gabriel frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Most people think that the war was completely over once General Lee signed the surrender terms at Appomattox,” Krakowski said. “But that’s not actually the case. There were Confederate army forces spread out all over the South, and some of them refused to concede defeat. That’s what happened with General Fargo and some of his men. Most of the regiment went home once they got word of Lee’s surrender, but General Fargo wasn’t ready to give up. Instead of going back to Georgia, he and the other holdouts went west instead, across Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The last anyone knows for sure, they were in Texas, heading south to the Rio Grande.”

“They were going to Mexico,” Gabriel guessed.

“Probably. A number of Confederate officers believed that if they fled to Mexico or even further, to South America, they could keep the dream of the Confederacy alive down there. General Fargo was one of that group.” Krakowski shrugged. “Most of them eventually gave up and came home, but not General Fargo. He was never heard from again.”

If the man had ended up in Mexico or South America, that might at least be a tenuous link between the Fifth Georgia Cavalry and Mariella Montez, Gabriel thought. If she was from that area, her family could have wound up somehow with the general’s battle flag and passed it on down through the generations. Fargo might well have had that bottle of Old Pinebark whiskey with him, too, and the empty bottle could have become another family keepsake.

This theory didn’t answer a hell of a lot—it didn’t explain why she’d thought Michael would be interested in these relics, or why anyone else would be willing to kill over them—but it was a start.

“Would you happen to know anything about the Fifth Georgia’s battle flag?” he asked Krakowski.

“Which one?”

“They had more than one?”

Krakowski nodded. “They had two. They had the standard regimental battle flag, the one I’m sure you’ve seen, the flag known as the Stars and Bars.” The man made a face, as if a bad taste had suddenly filled his mouth. “You know, the one that everyone hates because all the skinheads and white supremacist groups like it so much.”

“Of course.”

“They’ve got the Fifth Georgia’s regimental in a museum in Mexico City. That’s one of the reasons people are fairly sure General Fargo made it at least that far. We’ve been in contact with the museum to see if perhaps they might be willing to return it to us, but so far that arrangement hasn’t been worked out.”

“Got it,” Gabriel said. “And the other flag?”

“That’s one I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen,” Krakowski said, and Gabriel restrained himself from saying,
Don’t be so sure
. “That one was General Fargo’s personal standard. I’ve seen a drawing of it made during the war, but the actual flag itself has never been found.”

“What did it look like?”

“I wish I could draw it for you,” Krakowski said, “it was really quite impressive. But I’m no good at all with a pencil. It had a red background with crossed sabers in the corners, and a circular painting in the middle with a cavalryman on a rearing horse in the foreground. Very striking. It must have been something to see, flying at the front of the regiment as they went into battle. You can hardly imagine.”

“I think I can,” Gabriel said. “Do you know how the museum in Mexico got hold of the flag they have?”

Krakowski shook his head. “I’m afraid you’d have to ask the director down there. It’s not unusual for American artifacts to turn up in Mexico, however. The two countries are side by side, after all, and there’s always been a lot of traffic both ways across the border.” He paused. “I must say, it’s unusual for anyone to be so interested in a figure as obscure as General Fargo. Hereally doesn’t have much historical significance. And to be asked about him twice in the course of one month—”

Gabriel looked up sharply from the book containing the general’s portrait and biography. “Twice?” he said.