Douglas Preston: Cold Vengeance

“All right, men,” Balfour called. “Pack away your kits and let’s drag the pool.”

Esterhazy felt a shiver of both anticipation and revulsion. Gruesome as it was, it would be a relief to see his adversary’s corpse dragged up from the muck; it would provide that final act of closure, an epilogue to a titanic struggle.

On a piece of graph paper, Balfour had sketched out the dimensions of the pool — a small area twelve feet by eighteen — and drawn a scheme of how it would be dragged. In the glare of the lights, the team clipped a claw-like grapnel to a rope, the long steel tines gleaming evilly, and then fixed a lead weight to the eye. Two men stood back, holding the coil of rope, while a third balanced himself on the pool’s edge. With Balfour consulting his drawing and murmuring directions, the third man gave the hook a toss over the shivering bog. It landed in the muck on the far side, the weight carrying it down. When it finally came to rest on the bottom, the other two behind began hauling it back in. As the grapnel inched through the bog, the rope straining and tightening, Esterhazy tensed involuntarily.

A minute later the grapnel surfaced, trailing muck and weeds. Balfour, clipboard in hand, examined the tines with a latex-gloved hand, then shook his head.

They moved eighteen inches along the shore and gave another toss, another pull. More weeds. They moved again, repeated the process.

Esterhazy watched every emergence of the muck-coated grapnel, a knot of tension growing in the pit of his stomach. He ached all over, and his bitten hand throbbed. The men were approaching the spot where Pendergast had gone down. Finally the grapnel was tossed over the very spot, and the team began to retract it.

It halted, arrested by a submerged object.

“Got something,” one of the men said.

Esterhazy held his breath.

“Easy, now,” said Balfour, leaning forward, his body tense as bowed steel. “Slow and steady.”

Another man joined the rope-line and they began to haul it in, hand over hand, with Balfour hovering over them and urging them not to rush things.

“It’s coming,” grunted one.

The surface of the bog swelled, the muck running to the sides as a long, log-like object emerged — mud-coated, misshapen.

“Take it slow,” Balfour warned.

As if they were landing a huge fish, the men held the corpse at the surface while they ran nylon straps and webbing under it.

“All right. Bring it in.”

With additional effort, they eased the corpse up, sliding it onto a plastic tarp laid on the ground. Mud drained away in thick rivers from it and a hideous stench of rotting meat suddenly washed over Esterhazy, propelling him a step back.

“What in blazes?” murmured Balfour. He bent over the corpse, felt it with his gloved hand. Then he gestured at one of the team members. “Rinse this off.”

One of the forensic team came over. Together they bent over the misshapen head of the carcass, the man washing the quicksand off with a squeeze bottle.

The stench was hideous, and Esterhazy felt the bile rise in his throat. Several of the men were hastily lighting cigars or pipes.

Balfour abruptly straightened up. “It’s a sheep,” he said matter-of-factly. “Drag it off to the side, rinse this area down, and let’s continue.”

The men worked in silence, and soon the grappling hook was back in the water. Again and again they dragged the pool; again and again the claws of the hook emerged from the muck with nothing more than weeds. The reek of the suppurating sheep, lying behind them, covered the scene like a pall. Esterhazy found the tension becoming unbearable. Why weren’t they finding the body?

They reached the far end of the pool. Balfour called a discussion, the team conferring at one side in low tones. Then Balfour approached Esterhazy. “Are you sure this is where your brother-in-law went down?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Esterhazy said, trying to control his voice, which was on the edge of breaking.

“We don’t seem to be finding anything.”

“He’s down there!” Esterhazy raised his voice. “You yourself found the shell from my shot, found the marks in the grass — you know this is the right place.”

Balfour looked at him curiously. “It certainly seems so, but…” His voice trailed off.

“You’ve got to find him! Drag it again, for God’s sake!”

“We intend to, but you saw how thorough a job we made of it. If a body was down there…”

“The currents,” said Esterhazy. “Maybe the currents took him away.”

“There are no currents.”

Esterhazy took a deep breath, desperately trying to master himself. He tried to speak calmly, but could not quite get the tremor out of his voice. “Look, Mr. Balfour. I know the body’s there. I saw him go down. ”

A sharp nod and Balfour turned to the men. “Drag it again — at right angles this time.”

A murmur of protests. But soon the process began all over again, the grappling hook being tossed in from another side of the pool, while Esterhazy watched, the bile cooking in his throat. As the last of the light drained from the sky, the mists thickened, the sodium lamps casting ghastly bars of white in which shadowy figures moved about, indistinct, throwing bizarre shadows, like the damned milling about in the lowest circle of hell. It was impossible, Esterhazy thought. There was absolutely no way Pendergast could have survived and gotten away. No way.

He should have stayed. He should have waited to the bitter end… He turned to Balfour. “Look, is it at all possible someone could manage to get out — extract themselves from this kind of mire?”

The man’s blade-like face turned to him. “But you saw him go down. Am I correct?”

“Yes, yes! But I was so upset, and the fogs were so thick… Maybe he could have gotten out.”

“Highly doubtful,” said Balfour, staring at him with narrowed eyes. “Unless, of course, you left him while he was still struggling.”

“No, no, I tried to rescue him, just as I said. But the thing is, my brother-in-law’s incredibly resourceful. Just maybe—” He tried to inject a hopeful tone into his voice, to cover up his panic. “Just maybe he got out. I want to think he got out.”

“Dr. Esterhazy,” said Balfour, not unsympathetically, “I’m afraid there isn’t much hope. But you’re right, we need to give that possibility serious consideration. Unfortunately the remaining bloodhound is too traumatized to work, but we have two experts who can help.” He turned. “Mr. Grant? Mr. Chase?”

The gamekeeper came over, with another man whom Esterhazy recognized as the head of the forensic team. “Yes, sir?”

“I’d like you both to examine the larger area around the bog here. I want you to look for any evidence — any at all — that the victim might have extracted himself and gone off. Search everywhere and cut for sign.”

“Yes, sir.” They disappeared into the darkness, just the beams of their flashlights remaining visible, stabbing about in the murk.

Esterhazy waited in silence, the mists congealing into fog. Finally, the two men returned. “There’s no sign, sir,” Chase said. “Of course, we’ve had very heavy rains that would have destroyed anything subtle. But a wounded man, shot, perhaps crawling, bleeding profusely, covered with mud — he would have left some evidence. It’s not possible the man escaped the Mire.”

Balfour turned to Esterhazy. “There you have your answer.” Then he added: “I think we’ll be winding up here. Dr. Esterhazy, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to remain in the area until the inquest.” He removed a handkerchief, dabbed at his running nose, put it away. “Do you understand?”