Part 6 (2/2)

”You saw the digital lock, right, Max?”

She couldn't feel her toes. I needed to get her out of here to a hospital.

”Yeah,” I said, standing up. ”I gotta check that out. Who the h.e.l.l does that out here, right?”

FIFTEEN.

Harmon was in his bedroom, going through the closet, his closet, the one he didn't share with his wife, the one in fact that he forbade her to use. He knew she probably had gone through it in years past, just looking. You don't keep secrets from your wife for thirty years. She would have looked at his gun collection, the electronics that the company had him keep there for emergency use, maybe even the multiple pa.s.sports he tucked away in a drawer. But if she had questions about those things, she didn't bring them up. She knew that he had been in the military and left unsaid any doubts she had now of the legality of his work. It was yet another reason he was always trying to find leverage against the men who employed him. He'd seen colleagues killed and wives left behind without a clue or a safety net. He knew the company would disavow any knowledge of him and see no obligation to take care of his family if something befell him. Harmon was not the kind of man to say, ”That just comes with the business.” If that were the case, he wouldn't still be in this dangerous business, no matter how well it paid. If he went down, his instructions for his wife and all the money he had hidden over the years and the evidence against the oil company would be at her disposal. He took care of his own.

”Arlene,” he called out to his wife, who was in the kitchen and still p.i.s.sed at the news that the boss had called. ”Where's that other jacket I had?”

He checked off his travel list in his head as he touched each item and stuffed it into his bag: the satellite phone, fully charged. The helicopter pilot would have the same model and they would be able to stay in touch regardless of the lack of power or cell towers in the area. His Nikon digital camera, which he'd been instructed to carry in and take detailed photos of any damage and the general disposition of the property, including any lack of foliage coverage, from the air. A couple of two-liter bottles of water because even if this was an easy hour-long drop-in, doc.u.ment, and get back out, he knew the danger of the humidity and the heat of the Everglades from experience. A radio frequency transmitter, routinely used to electronically unlock abandoned or sealed oil rigs and restart their power systems. His Colt revolver with the snub nose, the last one in his collection and an item he never went to work without.

”I've no idea. I thought you wore one on that last trip you guys took,” his wife answered, her voice growing as she approached down the hall.

”I lost that one,” Harmon said, thinking about the bullet hole in the fabric. He continued sorting through clothes hanging on a rod in the back of the closet.

”Well, I thought you said this was going to be a quick mission. You can hardly be going somewhere cold if it's going to be quick,” his wife said, her head looking around the corner of the bedroom door but not entering when his closet was open. Yeah, he thought, she's been in here.

”Doesn't matter if it's cold, honey,” he said. ”You know when I'm on a job I like to have pockets to put things in.” His wife walked away.

They had done this dance a hundred times. Vietnam, Granada, Nicaragua, Kosovo. When he'd retired and gone private he watched her breathe a sigh of relief but still felt her eye on him as he began to spend more time in his library and running the streets in an old pair of combat boots and generally driving himself and her crazy from inaction. When he started going on week-long ”security” trips for the company, missing the kids' games or some special ceremony, he knew she was unhappy with the s.h.i.+ft once again in his priorities. He was not a domestic man. She knew that. ”For you and the kids” was always his response when she gained the guts to outright ask why he did what he did. It pays very well, Arlene. I'm a pro. I'm not going to do something stupid and leave you guys hanging, you know that.

Harmon did not say those words just to mollify. He was a confident man, knew his abilities, even with age. Once set on course he did not believe he could fail. That was his life's playing card, the source of respect from others, the mind-set that had kept him alive through a dozen missions. He did what he did because his soul needed it. But he was not so dumb as to not provide, just in case. He'd left instructions for his wife, just in case. He covered his a.s.s.

”Here's your other jacket,” Arlene said, returning to the door with the short spring coat with the big seamed pockets that gave him easy access and room to maneuver whatever was in them.

”Thanks, honey,” he said.

”Bring that one back with you. OK?”

”Yeah, sure. You can bet on it.”

SIXTEEN.

”Whoa, check it out,” Marcus said from across the room, and Wayne seemed to be able to tell by the sound of his friend's voice he wasn't just s.h.i.+ttin' him. Wayne was staring, really staring, down into what looked to be a pile of oddly angled polished wood. Marcus stepped over some pots and pans and crossed the bare carpet that sat square and clean and seemingly untouched in the middle of the room.

”What?” Wayne said, watching Marcus kneel and stick his hands into the pile of wood. Marcus came up with a half a dozen CDs, spread in his fingers like a poker hand.

”Dude's got some music, man. Good stuff, too. Twista, Jay-Z, Tha Marksmen,” Wayne said, reading off the labels.

”And check out the machine, man,” he said, pointing at the stereo player still sitting in a slot in the wall cabinetry. ”That's worth some cash right there, unless we wanna keep it, you know.”

Wayne looked up to give his pal a wink that seemed to a.s.sure him they would do whatever they wanted on this little heist safari of theirs. It was a pact they'd come to after their first stop this morning, a moderately damaged fis.h.i.+ng camp just on the southern edge of Broward County and the closest GPS coordinate on the list. That camp had been nice enough in its time, a two-bedroom deal with a great room that had one of those big round metal fireplaces in the middle to warm the night in winter. But one wall was now completely gone, ripped away like a leaf of notebook paper, leaving some curtains blowing in the wind, off-white lace curtains that Marcus could tell were better quality than the ones his own mom had in their regular home, not their vacation getaway. They'd found some music there too. But it was mostly old-style R & B stuff, John Lee Hooker, Wilson Pickett, stuff his old man used to listen to before he left. He and Wayne had attacked the place like scavengers, picking up fis.h.i.+ng reels, an intact kitchen blender, and half bottles of Chivas and Van Gogh vodka all strewn around in the aftermath of the storm. That's when Buck stepped in and said he was laying down ”ground rules.” We only take s.h.i.+t we can sell: jewelry, real nice pieces of electronics like handheld GPS or shortwave radio stuff, or maybe portable TVs. Only take the sealed booze. Check the drawers and stuff for real money and don't ever pa.s.s on some tin container that might have a stash in it. ”These city a.s.sholes come out here to party like there's no rules. There's a lot of pot and c.o.ke and stuff they keep out in these places, so use your eyes, boys.”

Yeah, they'd use their eyes. And if they found any drugs, they were going straight into their pockets and he wasn't going to know any different. Wayne winked at his bud. After about an hour of sorting through the place, Buck called them in.

”Can't spend too much time in one place, boys,” he said. ”Not that we're worried about anybody coming by that we won't hear ahead of time, but if it ain't a rich site, we're gonna move on. There's bound to be a mother lode out here someplace.”

It was the flicker of excitement in his eyes that got the boys motivated. It wasn't often Buck got jazzed by anything. Even when they did the jobs in the suburbs when s.h.i.+t would get hinky or that time they found that coin collection that they'd sold for eight grand, Buck was still level, moving ahead, but never jumping, never showing emotion. But there was something different in the guy's eyes this time. He was liking this s.h.i.+t. They loaded up the airboat with a few things and got her started again. Buck had decided they'd go well north and east to one of the high spots on the map and then work their way down toward home ”just in case we find something heavy.”

This new place had some definite possibilities. But it was weird. Marcus again went to the middle of the big room and did a three-sixty, scanning the walls, where some of the shelves and cabinetry appeared absolutely untouched. But like the kitchen pots and pans that were jumbled on the floor about fifteen feet away from where they should have been, so too were some couch throw pillows and a lamp and a DVD player about fifteen feet from the den area where they matched. A bookcase on the eastern wall was empty, the books fifteen feet away, piled up against the refrigerator and kitchen island. And in the middle Marcus was standing on a pristine, pearl gray carpet. His eyes moved up the walls to the second floor, to the sheared-away beams that had once supported a cathedral ceiling, until he was staring straight up into the clouds pa.s.sing high above. It was like a tiny tornado, spinning within the chaos of the hurricane, had peeled away the entire roof and then dipped its finger straight down into the building and did a little twirl and then left.

It was disconcerting to Marcus, and he stood there thinking of the time when he was very young, maybe about the time his father had left. His mom had decided to make changes in their lives to forget the past and she'd completely redone his room; moved his bed to another wall; the dresser, the bedside lamp, even the posters, all s.h.i.+fted. He remembered now how it had confused and scared him when he would awake in the middle of the night and have that overwhelming feeling that he didn't know where he was. That fear came over him now, that he was someplace so foreign and unsafe that there was nothing familiar to hold on to.

”Marcus!”

Buck was leaning over a spiral, wrought-iron staircase that gave access to the bedroom upstairs.

”Marcus? What the f.u.c.k, son. You gonna help or just watch, boy? Get your a.s.s up here and go through this other bedroom.”

”I got it, Buck,” Wayne said, then turned to Marcus. ”Why don't you see if you can pack up that player with something waterproof, man.”

He nudged Marcus with the satchel he'd filled with CDs and had slung over his shoulder and on the way past whispered, ”Got us some booty here, brother.”

Wayne was sounding giddy too. ”Both you guys are f.u.c.king lost,” Marcus said.

Buck was filling the gas tank of the airboat when a hot, dangerous urge came into his head and he stopped to wonder where the h.e.l.l it came from. He could suddenly see himself: the red five-gallon can in hand, slos.h.i.+ng the contents in a careful path along the first floor baseboards of the entire place they'd just looted. Make sure you get it on all sides and in the corners so that every remaining wall would go up in flames. f.u.c.k 'em. a.s.shole city boys and their seaside mansions out here, he thought. He could especially see the now broken photos curling up and going black in the flames. He'd picked one up in the den area: four guys no older than him, big-a.s.s grins on their faces, the two on the ends holding trophy-size mangrove snapper, the two on the inside holding half-full bottles of p.i.s.s yellow Corona beer. One actually had on a polo s.h.i.+rt, probably with his country club logo on it but Buck couldn't tell. One had a ring on his right hand with a rock as big as the eye of the fish he held hooked in the gills. Buck was not normally a jealous sort. He didn't look at fancy sports cars at the casino or on trips into Naples and l.u.s.t after them. The big plasma television sets he saw when he was creeping one of those suburban homes did not have any allure to him. He'd go down to the bar at the Rod & Hunt Club and watch their big screen game for the price of a few beers.

But for some reason this monstrous, yellow-painted structure built like an a.s.s pimple out here in the middle of the Glades and filled with all the comforts of those homes had put him in a p.i.s.sy mood. h.e.l.l, he ought to be thanking the owners. He'd found their stash of booze, a case of some kind of imported rum, back in the corner of a pantry closet. He'd picked up a fine pair of binoculars upstairs in one of the bedrooms; six hundred bucks retail, probably unload them for two hundred to Bobby the Fence. Then he'd pulled out the drawer that he almost missed in what was probably the master suite. The thing was actually built into the bed frame. He'd stubbed his toes on it, expecting his foot to slide under the mattress when he'd stepped up close to the bed and instead kicking the solid frame below.

He'd gone to his knees and saw the handles and the lock. The pry bar he carried took care of the latter. When he pulled out the sliding drawer he was not exactly surprised, considering the boys he'd seen in the photos, to be met by the odor of gun oil and the sight of carefully wrapped firearms. But the five weapons he took out and arranged on the bed mattress were exceptional.

A 30-30 Winchester rifle, old style as far as he could tell, but in such pristine shape it had to be a collector's item. He couldn't help but pick it up, throw the lever action, and sight down the barrel, dreaming scenes of the Old West. Yee ha. He smiled. Born in the wrong century.

Then there was the Mauser, a German-made World War II cla.s.sic, heavy, built to last, knock down a f.u.c.king mule with one shot. As he had already figured, these guys weren't real hunters, they were playboys, out here to make noise with their expensive toys. There was a twelve-gauge over-and-under shotgun there as well, the most utilitarian of the group and no doubt used to knock a few curlew out of the evening sky just for the h.e.l.l of it.

Then there were two handguns: an old 9mm Glock, the one law enforcement gave up on after a couple of heavy-fingered cops said they fired prematurely, and a .45-caliber revolver of the style Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry might have carried but too f.u.c.king big for anyone to lug around these days except for some a.s.shole drive-by g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers who thought the sound of it was cool because it was louder than their car stereos when it touched off.

Buck had stared at the collection for a few seconds. In his excitement over the total haul in the house, his natural wariness of the weapons was lost. No, he didn't like guns. He'd heard too many stories of their violence and how it inevitably came back on you. But there was something about this day that was feeling too easy, everything working out the way he'd envisioned it, the way he boasted on it to the boys. It was all going smoothly and Buck had spent nearly thirty-three years on this earth and nothing had ever gone completely smoothly for him. The guns were now stashed under the pile of other things they'd decided to take. Buck had slipped them there himself, not bothering to tell the boys what he'd found. He'd taken three boxes of ammunition from the secret drawer and wrapped them and the rifles and the big .45 in a blanket and covered that with some raingear he'd found to keep them as dry as possible.

Now he shook off the urge to torch the place and emptied the gas can into the tank and then tossed it onto the dock of the house. f.u.c.k it, he thought. Don't overdo it just to get back at the a.s.sholes for trespa.s.sing on your life. This mission ain't about them. If you set the place on fire, you're sending up a smoke signal that anybody could respond to. Do the job, Buck. What you gotta do. Be smart.

”OK, boys. Let's move on. We're burnin' daylight,” he said. Buck and the Duke. He reached into the seat trap and took out the GPS.

”Next on the list ain't but an hour south. If she's still standing we might be able to spend the night there.”

Wayne and Marcus put a final knot in the line holding their newfound booty and climbed up into the backseats.

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