Ted Bell - Spy

To his left, he saw, there was what had to be a split-rail fence under a mound of fresh snow and then a white wooden sign coming up that said Morning Glory Farm.

The drive came up fast and he braked too hard. The rear end fishtailed, caught up with the front end and then he was spinning, headed straight for the ditch. He eased his foot off the brake and slid around to a stop, the headlight beams aimed at a weird angle. Well. Bad start. He put the thing in low and gunned it. Tried reverse. The wheels just spun like he was on oily glass.

He cursed under his breath, shut the engine off, swung out of the car, and started climbing the hill on foot. Cowboy boots made the walking trickier than it had to be. No fresh tracks in the drive, but it was snowing so hard a car could have driven up this road twenty minutes ago and you wouldn’t know it.

There was a long sloping white meadow to his left as he climbed. Up on the summit, a pretty two-story white farmhouse with dark shutters on all the windows. Nice views of the woods and town to the west and down to the river to the east. It would be pretty dark in the house now, sun was almost down behind him, but there were no lights in any of the windows. No movement around the house, no smoke coming from the two tall brick chimneys at either end of the roof peak.

There was a heavily wooded area to his right.

He figured Homer’s vehicle to be parked deep in those woods, just over the ridge. Some kind of river access road maybe. A public boat launch? He angled off the drive into the woods as he got close to the top, moving slowly through the trees now, expecting to come upon Homer or his car at any moment. The footing here was more difficult, big drifts piled up beneath the trees, and by the time he’d reached the top of the hill he was breathing pretty hard.

He saw Homer’s car.

It was parked in the trees down near the black, slow-moving river and covered with snow. He started down toward it, an unreasonable uneasiness suddenly pinging at his brain. He’d last spoken to the boy, what, five hours ago? Still, that was a long time to sit in your car, waiting, snow blanketing your windows.

Homer had the bone in his teeth now, and Franklin knew how it felt. You wanted to see how it ended. You wanted to end it. Still, the sight of that car made him uneasy. He quickened his pace, slipping and sliding, holding onto branches to stay on his feet.

Homer was not in the car. The driver’s side door was hanging open. There was a lot of snow on the seat. On the dash and on the floor. Something was missing besides Homer. Yeah. The Mossburg shotgun was not in its mount under the dash.

Franklin stood up, breathing hard. There had been a small access road to the river, he’d crossed it coming down the hill. He started moving back up in that direction, the only one that made any sense, until he reached the road. The road angled through the woods down to the river. And there was the boat ramp. And there was the trailer truck they’d stopped that night outside of Prairie. Homer’s ghost rider, the Yankee Slugger. The trailer was backed down the incline, the rear wheels a few feet from the water’s edge. The tractor was facing this way, uphill, and the headlights were on. A few feet away, an idling forklift was parked on the slope.

On the ground in the pool of light was his deputy.

He was on his back, staring blindly up into the light from the truck’s headlamps. The snow on the ground around him was soaked bright red. About a foot from his outreached hand, the Mossburg was almost buried but still visible. This had happened just before he’d pulled off the road. Within the last fifteen minutes or so. Maybe while he was spinning into the ditch.

Homer was still breathing.

Rapid, shallow breaths, but he was alive.

“Homer?” he knelt down and cradled the boy’s head in his arms.

“You made it.”

“Don’t talk. We have to get you to a hospital.”

“Too late for that, Sheriff. Don’t worry about it.”

“Who did this?”

“It was—the son. I was watching them unload the truck. Putting the thing in the river. Tried to stop them. The older one, on the forklift, saw me come out of the woods. He—he yelled something and the son just turned around and shot me. I shot back. I think I killed him. That’s all there is to it.”

Homer’s eyes were going far away.

“You’re going to be okay, Homer. You hold on, son.”

“No, listen. You have to…wait. You have to hear about the thing they put in the river. It’s—bad.”

“What is it, Homer?”

“Some kind of—what. I don’t know. A baby submarine. High tech. Nobody inside. Leastways nobody got in the damn thing. Just like the truck…remote control.”

“Still there? The thing in the river?”

“Hell, no. Hit the water and started to submerge. Headed upriver. Going pretty fast, too, and it—it—”

“Which way? Which way was it headed?”

“North I think.”

“Towards Washington?”

“I can’t…I’m not…”

“Don’t talk, Homer. Stay with it. Stay with me.”

“Can’t. I got to go.”

“Homer?”

FRANKLIN SAT in the snow with the dead boy for a good five minutes. Just let the tears come since they wouldn’t stop no matter how hard he tried. Teardrops and snowflakes fell on the boy’s cheeks, still tinged pink with the icy cold. Then Dixon got to his feet and took his duster off. Covered his deputy with it. Watched the snow softly falling on the still form of his deputy for a minute or so. Bent down to grab a handful of the white stuff and rubbed it all over his face, knuckles digging into his eyes.

He stood and saw Homer’s hand sticking out under the duster. Boy’s pistol still in his hand. Franklin gently pried the gun from Homer’s cold fingers and stuck it in the small of his back, inside his jeans. He stood for a second, breathing deep, put his head back and looked straight up into the dark sky full of snow. There was maybe a half hour of daylight left.

After a minute, he picked up the Mossburg and walked around the truck to where a dead Arab kid lay face down in the snow. There was a wide pool of blood similar to the one spreading beneath Homer’s body. Bright red, but that’s where the similarities ended.

He jacked a fresh round into the shotgun’s chamber and looked up at the farmhouse on the hill. He smelled smoke. They must have a fire going inside now. It was certainly cold enough outside.

69

RIVER OF DOUBT

H awke stood alone at the stern, hands clasped behind his back. It was early afternoon, just half past one, local time, and the sun was blazing overhead. He gazed at the twisting wake trailing behind his stern, his feet planted wide against sudden yaw or pitch. He was thinking on how matters stood aboard his vessel. It was now twelve hours since they’d departed Manaus.

He’d managed a few hours sleep in his small cabin, then gone once more into the tiny and hastily organized “war room” to confer with Stokely, Gerard Brownlow, and his Fire Control Officer, a Welshman named Dylan Allegria. One problem, now remedied, had been the engines. Minor mechanical issue with one of the three, overheating, but troubling all the same. With two engines, the performance parameters of this boat went to hell.

The bloody River of Doubt was living up to, even beyond, expectations. The mood aboard Stiletto had degenerated from restless to apprehensive. Now, it was tense. They were late, that was part of it. Some aboard would argue privately they were lost as well. The sheer density of the forest and the endless uncharted tributaries spiking off the cocoa-colored river was creating confusion and sensory overload among his men.

This was certainly not abnormal for men going into battle. It was, Hawke knew, unusual for this handpicked group of warriors.