Jonathon King - Acts of Nature

He avoided the blood pool and went back to the older hick, who was now emitting a high keening sound of serious pain. Harmon thought for a minute about what the guy had said about unarmed police officers being locked inside the shack. Why the hell would he make something like that up? Then he thought about the idiot claim that there were drugs inside. The company didn't deal in drugs. They dealt in oil, which was much more lucrative, though sometimes the way they obtained it and bargained for it and set prices for it wasn't any more legal than the way drug suppliers did the same thing. In fact, Harmon had been working the company angle on this trip since the minute he'd gotten off the phone with Crandall. No doubt this place was clandestine as hell. Harmon knew enough about the business to understand the company was always looking for supply. They had ways of studying deep rock formations, ways of setting off subterranean explosions and then measuring and tracking the echo effects and movement of sound waves to tell them where the oil and natural gas deposits were. That kind of shit went on all the time all over the world. It's just that in most of this particular part of the world, in an environmentally designated part of the Everglades, such exploration was illegal as hell. That's why you need security to check out a lonely outpost after a hurricane. That's why you would be ordered to check its infrastructure and report if it had been seen or uncovered by anyone. He stood and looked across the deck. That's why you clean up after yourself.

The older peckerwood was still crying when Harmon heard the clank of metal on metal. It seemed to come from under him and he felt the vibration in his shoes. Was that a door? Was it proof that this asshole who had just killed his partner was telling the truth? Were there more men inside?

Harmon stood still for a moment, listening, assessing. He couldn't divide his concentration now. He was alone. You focus on one situation at a time and if you can eliminate a distraction, that's what you do.

With no more thought than that, Harmon stepped forward and shot the older man with the blown-off leg through the back of the head with Squires's pistol. The end of the annoying whimpering. The fingerless boy took it easier. He was still wrapped up around his disfigured hand when Harmon put a round into his ear hole. Those chores done, he carefully walked around to the entrance of the cabin, noted the crowbar blade under the door, and used a single blast from the shotgun to blow away a six-inch hole around the metal tip. The hinges creaked as the door swung free and he entered at a crouch, weapon at the ready. No one greeted him. The place smelled of jerky and antiseptic, sweat and wet wood. One bed was partially disassembled on the opposite wall. A cooler and some trash were over in the corner. Sunlight was leaking through a rough opening in the roof, the damage he had seen from the air. Someone might have dropped through it, but there was nothing near it to indicate a man could have climbed unaided back out. There was no place to hide.

On the western wall he studied the door to the adjoining room. The red light was glowing on the electronic lock, and in all the confusion, he'd forgotten where he left the remote switch. He noted the damage around the door frame where attempts had been made to break in, unsuccessfully. The company was hiding its secrets well. Harmon tried the latch. Then he actually knocked.

"Hello?" he called out at the door, and even he realized how stupid he sounded. "Is anyone in there? This is the DEA, federal officers. Is anyone alive in there?"

I was still at Sherry's side, easing her back onto the bed, repeating to her, "It's OK, baby. It's OK. We're almost out of here, Sherry. We're almost home."

Her eyes were open but the way they were twitching in her head, the irises never stopping long enough to absorb the light, made me wonder what she was seeing or what those images were telling her. I didn't think the pain was even registering anymore. She'd forgotten the leg, I thought. Now she was struggling with another demon and the only thing keeping her from it was her own internal strength.

Two more small-caliber gunshots sounded after I'd clapped the porthole door closed and both made me flinch. Then I heard the roar of the shotgun next door. But who was firing. Buck? Wayne? Was Marcus coming to pay me back for taking his fingers?

When I heard someone twisting the knob on the door, I pulled my knife and moved to the hinges. They'd have to come through here. I might wound one; everything else would fall from there. My face was close to the metal when I heard a stranger's voice identify himself as a DEA agent.

"Is anyone alive in there?"

I let him wonder while I tried to sort out the possibilities. This place was obviously not a drug storage bin. Buck's dreams were just that, a small-time thief's dream of a big score. So why the hell would DEA be out here two days after a hurricane? It might have been a good flush technique, but I wasn't going for it.

"Do you know Jim Born, the agent-in-charge for the Broward office?" I said, loud enough for him to hear it. There was a hesitation on the other side of the door.

"Yeah. But I just transferred in from Virginia. Look, you need to come out there with your hands raised, OK?" the voice said, exasperated. "If you're armed, you need to throw your weapons out first. Understand?

Jim Born was an FDLE agent I'd been introduced to by Sherry. He hadn't worked for DEA in several years.

"Fuck you," I said. "There's an officer from the Broward sheriff's office in here so why don't you come in here with your hands up and toss the shotgun and the handgun in first." I was guessing the weapons based on the last sounds I'd heard. It might throw the guy, wondering how I knew.

Would some of Buck's shithead friends have joined him on their merry looting party, maybe even started a shootout to cut down on the number of shares in the proceeds? That'd be a lot of homicide for a little profit. Or was this another group altogether? I didn't have time to wait the guy out. Sherry was dying next to me. He didn't know that. But I wasn't taking the chance of having him come through the door with backup behind him. I'd be outflanked again. So I worked out logistics, coveted the high ground, and took a gamble. If it was someone with the ability to help us, friendly or not, I'd have to take the chance.

"You already know you can't get through these windows. People have been trying to chop into them all night.

"And you probably also know there's one other entrance. The escape hatch through the floor in here. So here's the deal. You go below. I open the hatch. You show me some kind of identification. I let you come up."

There was silence. A whispered discussion? A plan being prepared? I was flying blind but if I minimized the space, made it impossible to be rushed by bodies and force, I might at least be able to put more information together than I could through a door. I was hoping this guy was cagey enough to be thinking the same thing.

"Yeah, OK," the voice said. "The surveillance intel shows that hatch. Open it and I'll toss my badge up."

I listened as intently as I could, heard one set of solid footsteps move away. The sound of the air conditioner drowned out anything once the voice moved to the outside. I got up, found the switch, and turned the machine off. I had not registered the coolness in the room until then. The chill in my skin had started with the first sound of gunfire and had stayed. I now moved to the hatch and yanked it open so I could at least hear or maybe see the ruffle of the water when one or three men sloshed under the decking. When I peered in over the edge there was already a telltale swirl, some kind of eddy on the dark surface that seemed to have been pushed up from the bottom. Then I heard the slosh of someone lowering themselves into the swamp.