Randy White - Shark River

Edgar Cordero was a few inches shorter than me. He had a pocked face beneath carefully sculpted hair. He stood close enough that I could smell the cologne he wore and the metallic stink of nicotine. He stood there, face up, his eyes boring into mine as if we were two boxers at a weigh-in, and then he touched the knife to my cheek… then placed the blade on the top of my left ear. He was probably expecting me to flinch, but I didn’t flinch because I knew there was no escaping what he was going to do.

I heard him say, “You attacked my son from behind, like a dog, and now he will never walk again.”

Feeling the strange and eerie calm of total resignation, I replied, “Sometimes the only way to catch a coward is from behind.”

I watched the man’s face go momentarily blank… then contort with rage as, behind him, Ransom yelled, “Don’t you hurt my brother!” and she lunged toward me… me feeling a searing pain in my ear as Edgar began to saw with the knife… and then I heard one booming gunshot… then a second gunshot as Ransom dropped to the sand.

Then, oddly and without reason, Cordero was on the ground near her, screaming, swearing in Spanish and holding his neck, which was gushing blood. Pumpkin-head was down, too. Motionless. He’d flung the Uzi far from him before burying his face in black sand.

What the hell had happened?

Goatee was suddenly in front of me, waving the pistol in my direction as he backed away toward the boats, yelling in Spanish, “What is doing this? Who is there?” but then he spoke no more as his head seemed to vaporize in a scarlet mist, his legs managing two more steps before his body collapsed near the water.

A microsecond later, I heard a third booming gunshot, the sound arriving long after the heavy grain cartridge, and I turned just in time to see a puff of smoke drift out of a royal palm canopy that had to be a half mile away.

“Doc, she’s bleeding!” Tomlinson was on his feet, kneeling over Ransom, who had her face covered with her hands. There was lots of blood there and she wasn’t moving.

I rushed to help, feeling a surreal and shuddering grief, but then she did move as Tomlinson lifted her, and Ransom stood shakily, hand still holding her bleeding nose. She was wide-eyed, trembling with shock, looking at Cordero who was now silent, eyes empty, staring at the sky, dead. Then she considered the other two faceless corpses before she touched fingers to her sacred beads and whispered, “God strike them dead, just like I pray for Him to do. It happened, my brother, it really happened. Don’t be telling me no more about what ain’t magic!”

In the distance, I could see a tiny figure dressed in ninja black climbing down the trunk of the palm. He had to be using climbing hooks and a belt from the way he moved. He was descending pretty fast.

I turned and said to Tomlinson, “Get in their boat and go. Now. They made you abandon the boat you rented, right?”

Not looking at me, looking at the dead men, he was shaking his head. “No, they got in our boat. Ours was a little bigger and seemed newer, so after they stopped us, they climbed aboard. I didn’t know who the hell they were.”

I said, “Perfect. Then get out of here. Fast! Go straight to the marina, get in the truck and drive back to Sanibel. And Ransom?” When she turned to me, I touched my hands to her shoulders and I hugged her close, patting her back, the only brotherly comfort I could offer. I whispered into her ear, “Promise me something. Don’t say a word to anyone about what happened here. Ever. Will you promise?”

The frightened and bewildered expression on her face changed slowly to resolve. It was good to see, a verification of something strong and important. She said to me, “Not talkin’ about this is what God already telling me to do.”

I helped them get the boat off the beach, aware that the figure dressed in black was getting closer, ever closer. I kept telling them they had to hurry. I meant it. If they saw him, found out who it was, he would have to kill them. That’s just the way it worked.

When Tomlinson and Ransom were safe, almost to the horizon, I turned and faced a man my size; a man in black nylon pants and a Navy watch sweater exactly like my own; a man wearing a black ski mask and carrying a Remington 700 sniper rifle with a cannon-sized Star-Tron Mark scope that I knew all too well.

“They’re gone?”

I told him, “Yeah.”

He looked at the three corpses before he looked at me. “I had to rush the first shot. Your long-haired pal was in my line of fire. Don’t think I wasn’t tempted to pop him, too. But why should I do your work for you?”

I said, “Nope, no way, you’re wrong. It’s no one’s job anymore. We have an agreement.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “Remember?”

He was standing over Edgar Cordero. I listened to him tell me that he was sorry he’d had to use me as bait, but it was the only way to isolate the Colombian, get him on neutral turf, before he said, “Throat shot.”

I felt like knocking the man on his ass, he’d cut it so close. Not that I knew he’d be there. I didn’t. Then I watched him strip off his mask and hold out his hand to me as he said, “You’re only the third or fourth Negotiator I’ve met. It’s an honor.”

I shook his hand, so much adrenaline in me that I was beginning to feel weak. I said, “You mean the third or fourth outside your own teammates, of course.”

He smiled. Said, “Very insightful,” as he nudged Cordero’s corpse with the toe of his worn jungle boot. “This sick bastard would’ve found a way to kill Lindsey. It’s the way he was. It’s what he did. He’d gotten her scent and he hated me. Kill your enemy’s children, his signature. He’d’ve never quit.”

Then Hal Harrington reached into his pocket and handed me a handkerchief. “That’s a nasty little cut you’ve got there on your ear.”

I began to daub blood from the side of my face as he added, “The kind of guys my daughter usually dates, they’ve got tattoos and piercings, not scars.”

We buried the three of them in the sand behind the dune where Harrington had hidden his rubber inflatable boat. We used our entrenching tools and buried the dead men deep. We spoke little, said less. I wanted no words nor exchange of information to be associated with the memory of dragging corpses and shoveling sand onto them.

Compartmentalization-something I’m very good at. Harrington had to be pretty good at it, too, and for obvious reasons.

Then we had our own private little ceremony. I tossed driftwood on the fire until it blazed. Got a couple of beers off the ice. We had a good talk, an enlightening talk. Discussed things and events that we both knew we could never discuss again. Ever.

At one point, he said to me, “What I’m seriously considering doing is going back to my home state and running for political office. The way this nation’s going, we need to get involved and stay involved.”

I told him that I found the idea of any of us going into politics unlikely.

He said to me, “Are you kidding? You didn’t know? A few years back, one of us ran for a governorship and won. We’re already into politics.”

I said, “Him?” and then a name.

Harrington was nodding. “Exactly.”

I stood there and listened to him laugh as he told me that he thought a cell phone that played the theme from The Lone Ranger was a nice touch. He laughed some more when he told me how he’d set up Cordero, fed him information about me, where I was, where I’d be. Charged him top dollar, too, as an anonymous informant. Made him send cash money to a post office box in Cartagena, and Cordero had paid it gladly, excited to be getting such excellent and dependable intelligence.