Night Game (GhostWalkers, #3)(49)

A second man rattled bushes to her left. He wiggled backward into a nettle bush and yelped. The third man was totally silent and that told her everything she needed to know about him. Flame began to work her way through the foliage toward the driver. His groans were loud and long. He interspersed the noise with inventive curses and pleas for help that were more growling and spitting than actual words.

“Shut up, Don,” the man to Flame’s left burst out. “I can’t see anything and you’re making so much noise I can’t hear anything either.”

The driver spat out more curses before managing to get a couple of distinct phrases out. “My jaw. She broke my jaw.”

“Who the hell is she?”

“Don’ know,” Don returned, the words slurred and accompanied by more groaning.

Flame shifted position again, worming her way through sedge and marsh grasses. Water soaked into her clothes as she eased through the marshy land, and carefully muted the sound of her movements as she displaced the water.

The driver of the Jeep crawled to the nearest tree, an ancient oak with wide sweeping branches. He sat with his back propped against it, holding his jaw and rocking back and forth. He nearly went right over the top of Flame, his hands and knees inches from her body as she slithered toward him. He began to move and she froze, lying prone in the muck, holding her breath as he shuffled past her. She remained motionless while he jerked out a knife and began stabbing at the dirt and tree roots around him.

For a moment she feared he saw her lying among the reeds and grass, and her hand tightened on the hilt of her knife. The driver continued to stab at the same ground over and over making strange animal noises as he hacked up the plants and sent mud into the air.

Flame eased her body over the plants and muck to get within a few feet of Burrell’s killer. The branches of the oak tree hung low to the ground, moss and ivy weighing them down. Catching movement, the driver tuned his head to stare at a snake hanging eye level to him. The long thick body curled along the limb of the tree. The snake was olive-brown, close to five feet in length with a tapering tail and a broad head much wider than the neck. There were no dark cross bands on the stout body, but there was a distinctive band extending from the eye to the rear of the jaw. The snake had a drooping mouth and protective eve shields making it look particularly glowering.

Mesmerized, the man stared at the snake, going suddenly silent as it drew its body into a loose coil, tilted its head upward and opened its mouth wide to reveal the whitish interior lining. His scream reverberated through the bayou as he threw himself sideways in an effort to get away from the snake. The driver’s cries stopped abruptly as his legs jerked and kicked, his body thrashing in the reeds before going still.

Silence settled over the swamp. Flame lay stretched out, the top of her head nearly brushing that of the driver, her gloved hands tight on the garrote around his neck. She breathed slowly and evenly, making certain not a ripple of grass betrayed her presence to the other two men who had guns trained on the exact spot. She waited, listening to her heartbeat, listening to the hum of insects. After a time, above her head, the snake slowly retracted its head to settle once more on the branch.

“Don? You snakebit?” The hoarse whisper came from several yards away. “Rudy? You think the snake bit him?” A slight shifting of the foliage straight ahead of Flame accompanied the voice.

Rudy didn’t reply. Flame waited. Rudy was the dangerous one, obviously highly trained and skilled in combat situations. He knew better than to give away his position and he obviously had been using Don as bait. He would have done better to spray the entire area around the driver with bullets and then move quickly to a new position. Flame would have taken the chance, but Rudy was more concerned with his safety. Most likely trying to puzzle out who was attacking them, he was lying low, waiting a clear shot while he let the third man, the talker, become the unwitting bait.

With her ear pressed to the ground and her hearing acute, Flame became aware of Gator’s approach. He was coming in from the east, through the interior of the preserve and fast approaching the marsh, sprinting at top speed. She couldn’t let him run into the waiting Rudy.

Flame slowly relaxed her grip on the thin piece of wire wrapped so tightly around Don’s neck. Keeping every movement snail slow and deliberate, so as not to disturb the vegetation around her, she used her elbows to push herself backward away from the body and into deeper cover.

Once she was screened by the root systems and twisted, knobby knees of several larger cypress trees, she emitted a sound pitched just above the level humans could hear. Using directional sound, she sent Gator as much information as possible, confident that he would hear her warning. She’d never used directional sound with a partner before, certainly not under such extreme conditions, but she had every confidence he, and he alone, would hear her. She waited, crouched in the small circle of trees, lying in the heavy cover of reeds and grasses.

She could no longer feel or hear the faint vibrations through the earth, signaling Gator was stationary or had, like her, begun a stealthy approach to the enemy. The third man, the talker, lit a cigarette, the smell drifting upward. The scratch of the match gave his position away. Flame skirted around a rotting log, making a face as several species of beetles and stink bugs scurried close to her. A snapping turtle was sunning himself on the log and she was especially careful not to disturb him. Concentrating her attention on him, she wiggled at right angles to the log. Immediately several Peeps lifted into the air.