Doc Ford 19 - Chasing Midnight (7 page)

The man continued firing as I ducked limbs and hurdled roots into the mangrove thicket, then dived to my belly into sulfur-scented muck. One of the rounds made a bumblebee
buzzzzzzz
as it passed near my head—the distinctive sound of a slug whirling asymmetrically after nicking a leaf or twig.

It was impossible to continue running, though. Red mangrove trees grow as thick as reeds on rubbery, knee-high roots—prop roots that provide oxygen to submerged tendrils. Even by daylight, and
not under fire, traveling through mangrove swamp is slow going. It combines gymnastics with bulldozer determination.

On my belly, I snaked my way deeper into the trees when the gunman began to space his shots. As I did, I became aware of a sustained and rhythmic splashing from the shallows to my right. Not loud, but steady. It told me that Vladimir wasn’t dead. He had managed to get to his feet and was skirting the oyster bar, trying to put the line of trees between himself and the dock.

Apparently, the bodyguard succeeded because soon the firing stopped.

I stood… listened for a moment… then I angled toward what I hoped was an intersection point. If the gunman was determined to kill us both—and that seemed apparent—he would abandon the dock and wait for us on the shoreward rim of the mangroves.

Exit the trees and we’d be easy targets.

I admired the bodyguard’s tenacity, but his life meant no more to me than my life meant to him. He had information, though, and I wanted it. I wanted to intercept him before he cleared the trees and took a fatal round.

After two minutes had passed, I knew that the gunman hadn’t stopped firing just to reload. He was changing positions. As I lifted myself over a root, I checked the tree canopy. Yes, he was on the move. I could gauge his progress by the changing angle of his flashlight. Occasionally, a streak of red laser painted the treetops, too.

As anticipated, the gunman circled to the shoreward edge of the swamp to wait for us. When the beam of the flashlight blinked off, and after a couple more minutes of silence, I knew he was in position. Probably a comfortable place with cover nearby. For once, the man had done something smart. If he’d risked venturing into the mangroves after us, I might get an opportunity to jump him and use my knife.

I hoped it would happen. With all the noise Vladimir was making, it might. The night was a chorus of summer sounds—insects, faraway thunder, restless birds—but nothing so loud as the wounded bodyguard entering the mangroves off to my right.

I winced at every sound, but I knew he couldn’t help it. He was a big guy, with a bad arm, and he’d lost a lot of blood. Judging from what I heard, he propelled himself steadily from branch to branch, stumbling occasionally, stopping often to gulp air.

I’ve spent more time in mangrove swamps than most, but I made my share of noise, too. Impossible not to. I stepped on dead limbs. I leaned too much weight on more than one rotting tree trunk that snapped. And each time I gave my position away, I paused, expecting to hear shots.

But the gunman had become patient. Or he had run out of ammunition… or had abandoned the hunt entirely—a possibility that I entertained only because it gave me hope.

Finally, the moving tree canopy ahead told me that Vladimir was close. I knelt and waited, mosquitoes creating a whining veil around my head.

The sound of the man bulling his way through the underbrush was so loud, I probably could have yelled his name and it would have made no difference. Instead, when he was close enough, I stood, placed my hand on his good shoulder and whispered, “Get down.”

It startled him. Then, relieved, he knelt on one knee in the muck, breathing hard.

“I’m surprised you’re still alive,” I whispered.

The bodyguard replied, “I am more surprised—you make so damn much noise!”

Maybe he was attempting humor again. I stopped wondering about it when the man suddenly turned his head and vomited.

V
ladimir told me, “Is real name. Not Vladimir Putin, of course. But what matters my name if bleed to death?”

I hadn’t asked the man’s name. I had asked about the poison gas. A bomb was troubling enough, if it existed, but gas could kill everyone and everything on the island. Where had he gotten his information?

Either Vladimir didn’t want to tell me or his brain was muddled from shock.

Now, sitting up, he pulled a plastic bottle from his waist pack. “Need water. Feel like shit.” He swatted at the haze of mosquitoes descending on us, adding, “I cut his throat for do this to me. Son-bitch!”

Meaning the gunman.

I knelt, opened the bottle and handed it to him. “You know who he is?”

“Don’t know nothing no more. You sure not your longhair friend?” The man’s hands were trembling as he tilted the bottle to his lips.

I said, “No. Impossible.” Then, looking toward shore, I added, “He’s waiting for us to come out of the swamp. He won’t risk coming in, and our cover’s too thick to waste more ammunition. We can rest here for a little bit, I think.”

Vladimir grunted as he leaned his weight against a tree.

“Unless he radioed friends for backup,” I whispered. “With one, maybe two more guys, he can seal off our exits. Are these the same people who shot Kazlov?” I thought for a moment. “Do they have radios?”

Vladimir was shaking his head while he emptied the bottle and tossed it aside. “I maybe pass out soon. Lose too much blood.”

As I moved to check his wound, he added, “Radio, no. Don’t worry about radio. Everything jammed, nothing work. He cannot call—unless they stop jamming.”

To confirm it, Vladimir reached into his waist pack and produced a tangle of wires attached to a miniature transceiver. He tapped at the thing, touched a switch, and a tiny green LED light proved the radio was waterproof and still working. After a couple attempts to transmit, though, he pushed the radio into his pack, saying, “Son-bitches. See what I tell you?”

The demonstration was useful and disturbing. An explosion could have knocked out the island’s power, but it wouldn’t have affected radio communications. Jamming electronics on a small island wasn’t difficult, but it required specific technology—and
intent
.

I knew because I’ve used portable jammers twice while working overseas. The newest generation of jammer is the size of a paperback book. The device I’d used was water-resistant, it had a triad of antennas and it could disrupt multiple wireless frequencies for more than a mile.

If I’d wanted to shoot Kazlov and steal his beluga research, activating a sophisticated jammer would have been a priority. If those
were the objectives, however, his enemy had already succeeded, from what Vladimir had told me. So why were people still shooting?

More to the point, why was some persistent, untrained asshole trying to kill us?

Because the makeshift bandage was sticky with blood—and because I wanted the guy to trust me—I had my shirt off and was using my knife to cut a fresh compress. “Maybe it’s one of Kazlov’s competitors. Steal the man’s research, then kill him. What do you think?”

Vladimir didn’t reply, and it was too dark to see his reaction.

I tried another angle. “The smart thing for us to do is swim back to the marina. Take cover in one of the boats. He won’t expect that. Even if he figures it out, he can’t shoot worth a damn. And every move he’s made is wrong. Any chance he’s one of your people?”

The man made a sound that resembled laughter. “Idiot like him? I would kill him, then fire him.”

I had the old bandage off and was rigging the new one with a loop at each end. Add a length of wood for torque and it could be tightened like a tourniquet.

First, though, I packed the wound with crushed mangrove leaves. It couldn’t hurt. The leaf fibers might slow the bleeding, and I knew that mangrove bark and extract are used as folk medicine in the jungles of South America. In Colombia, the mountain people make a gargle to treat throat cancer by boiling mangrove bark.

As I worked, I told Vladimir, “He’s trying just as hard to kill me as he is you. Damn it, you know more than you’re saying.”

The man slapped at a mosquito, then looked at his arm. “Why you putting leaves and shit on my wound?”

“Because I’m a goddamn vegetarian—tell me who’s shooting at us!”

Vladimir leaned his good shoulder against a tree, silent for several
seconds, before he said, “That is problem. I don’t know. Is true. First, I think it is you—you and longhair friend’s asshole group—who make explosion. Then shoot Mr. Kazlov. Now I am not sure.”

I whispered, “That’s bullshit and you know it. Why would my own people try to kill me?”

“Is possible! You
know
that bitch woman from hippie group. I see you talking tonight. The men-boys with her, they remind me of—what is word in English? They remind me of small animals with teeth that feed at night. I tell them, ‘Get out before Mr. Kazlov come back and see you!’ Then bitch
slap
me.”

I replied, “I didn’t meet those idiots until tonight. And we didn’t exactly part on friendly terms.”

It was the truth.

“Weasels,” Vladimir said. “That is animal. Or it could be…
anybody
shooting. Tonight, is true! When power is off, everyone go crazy. Not at first. At first, we all at reception, eating, drinking. Best caviar and vodka in world, Mr. Kazlov serving. Then explosion, and lights go out. People laugh, they make jokes. No big deal, understand?”

I could picture it because I had been in the fishing lodge an hour before the explosion. The lodge had been built in the ornate days of the Rockefellers and industrialist royalty. Polished wood and brass, chandeliers illuminating a formal dining room and bar, men in sports coats, the few women in summer dresses.

On the walls were skin-mounted tarpon—taxidermy masterpieces—and photos of overheated anglers in old-time suits, women in elegant hats, posing by their game-fish trophies. Background music was kept low: swing band classics from the 1940s, which added to the illusion that Vanderbilt Island had stopped in a time warp of its own choosing.

Electrical outages are common on private islands. People in the little dining room and bar handled it calmly—for the first fifteen minutes or so, Vladimir told me.

“But then someone mention their cell phone not working. Everyone check and they begin get nervous because no one has cell phone that working. Restaurant manager try regular phone and that not working, either.

“It was dark in lodge. Not enough candles. And you maybe understand this: Mr. Kazlov’s businesspeople are sometimes his business enemies. So people get suspicious. Get scared, I think.”

That, at least, made sense. I’d seen the unusual mix of people at the reception. Kazlov’s guests had good reasons to be nervous. Along with Vladimir, there were two other bodyguard types in the dining room, both wearing baggy shirts, shirttails out.

It’s the way men dress when they are carrying concealed weapons.

A
s Vladimir talked, I was combining what I remembered and what I had seen with what Kazlov had told me earlier that day. The Russian had rented the entire lodge for the week, which was the same as renting the whole island, since it was the summer off-season.

It was an extravagant gesture for such a small group of guests. Just over a dozen people, not counting the island’s small staff, yet the lodge had felt crowded because groups had isolated themselves in cliques. Each clique had staked out its territory, as far from the others as possible—invisible barriers but palpable.

In the formal dining room, the Iranians had a table to themselves, Abdul Armanie and his bodyguard. That was it. Maybe a secretary, too, but I wasn’t sure about that.

Armanie had been holding court when I stopped to say hello. His face had a sandstone angularity that dated to the Persian Empire. Heavy black eyebrows, dense mustache and the cold, insolent eyes of a man whose wealth had neutralized most legal boundaries so that he recognized few boundaries of his own.

Armanie had been suspicious of me during the first of two conversations we’d had that afternoon. I’d sat with him on the outdoor patio, near the pool, asking questions about the Caspian’s sturgeon population while he drank an espresso and smoked expensive Moldavian cigarettes. His answers were empty and patronizing. The man pretended not to know that I knew the truth about how his organization—and most black marketeers—operated. Harvesting sturgeon roe is illegal, and it can’t be done without killing the female. To say the details are unsavory would be an understatement.

Despite his regal gray hair, Darius Talas, from Turkmenia, looked like a man whose body had been assembled from pumpkins. Huge head, swollen belly and a double-sized butt. He sat at a table near the back of the room with one man and two women—neither wearing a burka, so they weren’t orthodox Muslim. Not while vacationing in Florida, anyway.

I had spoken with Talas twice that day—the second time when I had surprised him and Armanie arguing about something near the swimming pool. In our first discussion, Talas had shown more interest in what I’d learned from Kazlov than discussing the Caspian Sea. But he had, at least, been charming in the way some fat men are: laughter, and sly references to food and drink and women. When I had entered the dining room, though, stony looks from Talas’s bodyguard told me I wasn’t welcome, so I didn’t bother stopping.