Crooked River(90)
With the jeep still idling, he reached back and unzipped his traveling bag. He pulled out the marine “butt pack” in woodland green camo he’d prepared for the trip to Guatemala, his FBI radio, Ka-Bar knife, and a pair of cuffs. Working fast, he yanked off his jacket, checked his Browning, found it clean, and reholstered it. He slipped two additional magazines into the knapsack, along with the knife, cuffs, water bottle, parachute cord, flashlight, binocs, and a rain shell. On second thought, he removed the cuffs—unnecessary weight.
The place was likely to be fenced and gated. Damn, if only he had wire or bolt cutters. He felt his heart racing as he thought about what might be happening to his partner—assuming he was still alive. But he tried to reassure himself by focusing on Pendergast’s resourcefulness. The man had as many lives as a cat: he’d seen it for himself.
He lowered the windows, breathing deeply of the muggy air, trying to clear his head. A storm was coming for sure, but he hoped to make good time before it hit.
If you go in there without me, you’re going to regret it—regret it severely. Constance’s words, spoken with conviction, still rang in his head. Was that a threat? It sure sounded like one. Coldmoon had heard a million threats in his life…but this one, he sensed in his bones, wasn’t idle at all. That outrageous bitch would carry it out—he knew she would.
Those thoughts were for later; right now, he had to focus on one thing: saving his partner. Leaving the radio on the seat next to him, ready to call off any cops who tried to pull him over, he gunned the engine, spinning the wheels in the gravel as he rejoined the road. He picked up speed, accelerating steadily, the wind roaring in the open window. The map said an hour and fifteen to Carrabelle, but he had to do better. The only problem was that the Jeep, designed for off-road travel, wasn’t nearly as fast as he liked. He was able to push it up to about a hundred, but at least the traffic on Route 319 south was light and he could maintain that speed in the fast lane.
The land on either side of the road was flat and featureless. Lightning flickered on the distant northern horizon behind him. Within forty minutes, making good time, he bypassed Carrabelle, blew past a gigantic prison, and merged onto Highway 67. This was an even lonelier road, a straight-as-an-arrow two-lane highway running through a scrubby area of abandoned slash pine plantations, interspersed with cypress swamps. The sky was now covered with dark clouds and the wind was picking up, the trees on either side of the road thrashing and swaying.
He passed a weather-beaten sign indicating he was entering Tate’s Hell State Forest. And hell was exactly what it looked like—swampy, dense, and unsettlingly dark. In another ten miles he would have to start looking for a road going west into the forest, toward the old sugar plant. He slowed down, passing a couple of logging roads blocked with berms and dense brush. Finally, he came to what appeared to be a better-maintained road, heading off at right angles to Highway 67. It, too, was blocked—this time by a metal pipe gate, too heavy to ram through, with a barbed wire fence running on either side. He stopped and, shining his headlights down the old road, examined the ground. It was covered with weeds, but it nevertheless looked drivable. And it was headed in the direction he wanted.
He got out and walked along the barbed wire fence to a spot where the trees were spaced wide enough for him to drive through. He returned to the Jeep, put it in four-wheel drive, eased it down the highway shoulder, and then put the hammer down. The car hit the fence, which sprang apart with a satisfying twang. He maneuvered the Jeep through the trees until he reached the road. It ran in a broad curve into the dark forest.
He stopped to check his GPS. He only had one bar and felt pretty sure he was going to lose that, too, so he took screenshots of the Google Maps images showing the web of old logging roads leading in the direction of the sugar plant and stored them for future reference.
As he drove on, the road became a nightmare, gullied by rain, with loose rocks, potholes, and stretches of weeds taller than his Jeep’s hood. He drove as fast as he dared, hardly able to see where the road went, half-blinded by the glare of his own headlights reflecting off the wall of weeds in front of him. A few times he almost got caught in muddy spots, but thanks to the Jeep he bulled his way through even the worst muck holes. Growing up on the rez, Coldmoon had experienced his share of horrendous dirt roads, and he had an innate sense of how to handle them. It wasn’t that different from driving in fresh snow. The number one rule was to keep going, never stopping or easing up, powering through.
The abandoned slash pine plantations soon gave way to a swamp of cypress trees with knobby trunks and feathery branches. As expected, he lost his GPS, but he continued navigating using the screenshots, estimating his position with dead reckoning and keeping his cell phone’s compass always pointed west. Where logging roads crossed or divided, he tried to take the better one, but he sometimes found the roads completely washed out and was forced to backtrack. And then, quite unexpectedly, he came out on a freshly graded road—one with recent tire tracks. It was well hidden beneath tall, arching cypresses. This was it, he felt sure—the road to whatever had taken the place of the old sugar plant. He turned onto it, heart pounding; then stopped, killed his headlights, and stepped out to reconnoiter. Far off, where the road headed, he could see a faint glow in the night sky, reflecting off the gathering storm clouds. He estimated it was four miles ahead.
That was where they had taken his partner.