The Last Family (44 page)

Then he heard something and looked down to see a diver surfacing near the
Shadowfax’s
stern. Tom waved. The diver waved back and started swimming toward the pier. Tom dropped to his haunches so he could speak to the man in the wet suit when he broke the surface again. Nelson was vaguely aware that the diver he had been watching earlier was black, and this diver was white. He was staring at the man’s blue eyes through the mask’s lens and reaching for his Uzi when Alton and the dog reached him. “Alton …” He started to mention the diver’s skin-color change.

At that point he saw that the man in Alton Vance’s coat wasn’t Alton and realized that the Uzi was in the wrong position. When Martin bowed to dispatch the agent, the dog seized the opportunity to pull free and ran off down the pier in a panic.

Martin wiped the blade of the ice pick and turned to make sure that the killing hadn’t been witnessed. He was
always amazed that men won’t scream, not even when they face certain death.

Close overhead, jet engines whined as a plane passed on its way to the airport to the east. Martin and Kurt Steiner looked up reflexively, but neither could see the landing lights through the soup.

48

T
HE
F
ALCON BOBBED AND WEAVED AS IT DESCENDED THROUGH AN
envelope of angry cloud. Rain ran in rivers over the windows, and the jet engines roared back at the thunder as the plane banked hard over Lake Pontchartrain and the flaps engaged.

“See, it ain’t so bad,” Paul said. “I can almost see the water. Hope we don’t see it up close.”

Rainey said, “God didn’t bring us all this way to drown us in a lake. We’ll make it.”

As the plane turned for final approach, the cellular phone rang. Paul was delighted because it took his mind off the impending zero/zero landing, coming in over the lake with no margin for error.

“Hello, Tod,” he said loudly.

“Tell him I said hi,” Rainey added, looking out the window at the passing whiteness. “…  And bye.”

“What’s up?” Paul said. “We’re trying to crash the
agency’s plane in zero/zero. We’re on final.” Paul listened, his face growing paler by the second. He put his left hand against his brow. “Okay, I got it.”

“What?” Rainey said. At that moment the plane pitched up violently, and Paul looked out to see hangars at oblique angles to the window.

“Looks like our boy blew it,” Paul said.

Rainey’s knuckles went white as he gripped the seat’s armrests and the jet shuddered.

“This is what you call a missed approach,” Paul said. “We’ll go around and try again. I’ve got a good feeling about these pilots.”

Rainey smiled at Paul’s calm exterior. He was sure Paul was as terrified as he was. “What did Tod allow?” Rainey asked through clenched teeth.

“Martin played pop goes the weasel with his mommy.”

“The bomb in Dallas?”

“Eve salad. Stephanie was forty or fifty feet away when it went off. Blast knocked her unconscious, but she’ll be all right. Shock, cuts, blown eardrums, broken leg, and a concussion.”

The plane’s wings finally leveled, and it started gaining altitude.

“That’s not good,” Rainey said. “Martin’s got nothing now.”

“He’s thrown his anchor into the drink.”

“He isn’t planning to survive.”

“I bet they’ll nail the landing this time,” Paul said, pulling the telephone’s antenna out again and dialing. “Let’s see if our ride’s here yet.” The plane banked and bucked right as it entered the base leg over the lake.

“Everybody wants to live, Rainey. Even Martin Fletcher.”

“Naturally,” Rainey said without conviction. He knew firsthand that some people didn’t care one way or the other. He felt excitement grow inside him as the plane bobbed and weaved.

•   •   •

Martin Fletcher crouched on the boat’s stern against the cabin wall, reached down, and opened the plastic-wrapped bundle with his knife. He looked at the Semtex and the detonators to make sure everything was ready. He connected the detonators and handed Kurt the bomb. Kurt, being very careful not to make any noise, disappeared into the aft door and closed it gently behind him.

Then Martin lifted Alton’s Uzi, checked the breech to make sure it was armed, and moved slowly toward the cockpit door.

As he walked silently forward on the port deck, the rain beat at him mercilessly. He poured the contents from a pair of white capsules into his mouth and shivered involuntarily as the awful taste hit his tongue. He was already a walking amphetamine vessel. It was a feeling well beyond the edge he was usually after.

He checked his watch.
Give Kurt time to plant the Semtex in the engine room against the fuel cells
. He had taken a dozen of the amphetamine pills over the past few hours. As he stood in the rain, waiting, he closed his eyes and followed a line of thought. He thought of his wife, Angela—his Angel—and his son, Macon.
Today is their day
. He thought about that night in the jungle when the rain fell in heavy sheets, washing the grave dirt from his hands, turning it into mud on his clothes.

It had been just after his escape from prison, and at that point in his life all he had wanted was to give normalcy a try. He had thought it might be possible for him to spend the remaining years of his life taking it easy—enjoying the fruits of his labors. He was healthy, wealthy, and wise, and he was tired of life on the edge. He knew he could no longer live as he had. Men like him usually ended up quick-dead or in prison, but almost never retired. He planned to retire because that’s where the shortest odds were.

He had already struck out at Masterson and the team, and even though word had reached him that he had failed to kill Paul, the man had been marked for life, assuming he survived. Martin had decided that he had made one hell of a point.
Look in the mirror, Masterson, and
you’ll always think of me
. The others were just following their leader like hungry puppies.

Had it not been for the plans of others, he might have lived out his life differently, spent his golden years with his own family, safe and rich in South America. Angel’s attention and the presence of his son had quenched his thirst for revenge on Masterson. Or so he had thought at the time.

The escape from prison had been masterful. Two freelancers, posing as the FBI agents who had been scheduled to arrive later that night to move him to Marion, had plucked him from prison and delivered him to a hangar. There a pilot whose normal cargo was arms for the contras and cocaine on the back haul had waited with an airplane. Angel had been waiting there with Macon in her arms and three suitcases at her feet. Angel had been with him since he had trained troops at the Democratic College. She was Latin, raised in New York. Small, almost boyish, and beautiful. Her skin was deep olive and her eyes the soft brown of a doe. She had been a dutiful mate. In fact, she had satisfied his requirements as no one else had. He could sit and look at her for hours. She moved like a ballet dancer, and she loved him beyond reason—just as his mother always had. He had dreamed of the day Eve would join them in South America.

The trip down was pleasant even if the plane was riding less than forty feet off the waves in order to skirt radar. It was a clear night when the Navaho touched down on the small strip hewn from the lush Guatemalan jungle.

The pilot had kept the props turning, lingered on the ground just long enough to see his charges handed over to the three young men who were dressed in T-shirts, sneakers, and baggy jeans. Then the plane turned amid a flurry of dust, took a loud roll to the end of the strip, turned again, built speed, and was up and stuck in a long, lazy curve toward the north. Martin and Angel and their son, Macon, stood against the canopy of trees, touching each other. Freedom had never held meaning for Martin before that moment.

The young men had lifted the suitcases into a battered Jeep Wagoneer, placed them on the rusted floor. The men were quiet, and their young faces quick to smile. They were like armed servants. Martin asked for a gun, but they protested that they were paid to watch over him and there was no danger. Martin relaxed. They were just kids. As the Jeep bounced along on the way to the compound, he and Angel sat shoulder to shoulder. The men, unused to female company, chattered like monkeys and took every opportunity to turn their gaze on Angel and the child. The jungle road was a rutted path, and the Jeep bucked like a young stallion as they sped along.

There were three houses among the storage buildings and power shed hidden in the lush foliage. The guards put the family in the largest dwelling, a low concrete house. It was dusty but comfortable. There were the normal sounds of jungle joined by a mufflerless diesel generator, which powered the ceiling fans, the refrigerator, and the electric bulbs. The refrigerator was well stocked with food and ice. The cabinets held bottles of liquor, but neither Martin nor Angel had a taste for anything but each other’s company.

The men who’d sprung Martin had given him traveling money and passports. Macon, his son, was light-skinned, and his hair was curly and soft. Martin Fletcher had never liked small children, but Macon proved an exception. This child created something warm and real in Martin’s heart. He saw himself and his mother reflected in the large blue eyes, Angel in the lips and nose. For the rest of that day they relaxed and became a family in the jungle.

Macon had been born after his father’s arrest and was already toddling when Martin had held him for the first time. Macon liked him, or seemed to. Martin watched the child teeter around the small house that first evening—walking a few steps and sitting hard on the tiles. Then repeating the maneuver again and again without ever crying. After Macon tired, Martin and Angel made love for the first time since his arrest. As they made
love, his son slept beside them in a drawer Martin had taken from the chest and padded with a bedspread. It began raining, and they had fallen asleep, locked on to each other, when the young bodyguards hit the house. Maybe they were emboldened by the storm or the money they had been offered for the job. Maybe it was the grass and the thought of rape after the man was dead. They never said.

Martin awoke to a loud crash as the louvered door exploded open under the force of a boot. Martin, whose reflexes were automatic, pushed Angel to the floor by the crib and rolled in the opposite direction, because a machete used for gardening was propped against the wall near the headboard. He moved toward the door as the tall man burst through the bedroom door and began firing at the empty bed. Martin put the heavy blade through the man’s forehead, and he collapsed into himself, the thin blade locked into the skull to the bridge of the boy’s wide nose. There were fast footsteps in the living room, and the second man hit the door expecting to find the room’s inhabitants dead. The shotgun was half-lowered. As Martin had moved beside the door, Angel had grabbed up Macon and was heading for the window and freedom.

Martin wrenched the blade free as the man with the shotgun entered the room. The boy looked at Angel and then at his dead friend and was raising the weapon when Martin stepped in behind him and pushed the blade’s wide tip down into the torso at the place between the neck and the collarbone, severing the blood pipes that ran into the right side of the brain and back out, as well as opening a lung and the heart. As he pulled the blade out, the big gun went off. The shotgun blast caught Angel in the back, and she fell hard, her head hitting the wall and then the concrete floor. There was the dull, wet sound of crunching bone and mashed tissue.

The guard who had been left to cover the window pushed the shutters open as Martin pulled free the nine-millimeter Browning Hi-Power that had been stuffed into the shotgunner’s waistband. Martin opened up, and
round after round hit home as the youthful guard stumbled backward into the foliage like a man who was being electrocuted. Then it was silent; Martin’s ears were ringing, and clouds of cordite swirled like wood smoke in the air above the killing floor. Martin had moved across the room, dropped to his knees, and turned Angel to him. Her nose was bloody and strangely flattened. There was a strange smile on her lips and a look of abject terror in her coffee-brown eyes. She squeezed his arm.

“Martin, where’s Macon?” she whispered, touching his cheek with a trembling finger.

“He’s fine,” Martin said of the still child.

“Take care of him for—” She gripped his arm for a second, went through a death rattle, and her body jerked itself stiff and then relaxed. Then Martin turned his attention to Macon.

The buckshot had passed through Angela’s delicate frame, and the child’s abdomen had been opened like a dropped melon. After what felt like a great deal of time had passed, Martin had wrapped Angela’s and Macon’s bodies in blankets and carried them one after the other outside. The rain fell in torrents, but he managed to dig a four-foot-deep hole and dropped them in as gently as possible. Then he knelt over the bulging mud and screamed his rage at the clouds. He was answered with thunder.

After he had dragged the dead
pistolero
inside, he set the house on fire using a jerrican of gasoline from the Jeep. Then he drove to the nearest town and left it there. He rode on a bus for hours and then caught another. It was days before he took notice of where he was.

The three men, who looked like boys, had been contract killers. Contra soldiers, probably. They must have been better than they looked, or they wouldn’t have been given the task. Martin knew that old associates in the CIA had decided to make sure he was silent about what he knew about whom. That was a business decision he understood. He cursed himself for not seeing it coming. He had overestimated his value to people who never got close enough to the help to understand how lethal one
man could be. It didn’t matter in the least who had pulled the trigger, though. Paul Masterson and his Green Team had used manufactured evidence to take him down. If he hadn’t been arrested, he reasoned, he would not have represented a risk to the people who had hired the three assassins.