THE LAST OPERATION

PROLOGUE

ROUTE 41, NEAR THE EVERGLADES. MAY 2005

Blood spread down the back seat of the Lexus. It pooled in congealing clumps, gleaming black on gray leather. The victim's shirt was soaked in red splashings. His battered ruined face and lolling head looked like road kill. Little bubbles of gore flared from his swollen lips with each tortured breath. One eye was beaten shut, the other a white slit under a partially closed lid. His hands were behind him, held together with bailing wire that had cut deep into the wrists, coloring the steel a dark copper red.

A fat man sat next to him. He was bulky-muscled fat with a long beefy arm pressing on the victim's shoulder, holding him down on one corner of the back seat. The scarred-knuckled hand resembled a great shovel blade against the side of the bloodied shoulder. The fat man stared out the window as night shadows flew out from the twin circles of the headlamps. His eyes stared from deep craters in a face with skin like compressed raisins. They held no emotions, no curiosity and little intelligence. Certainly no pity for the demolished human being next to him. It's just a job, he thought.

The driver held the wheel loosely with his right hand; the left disappeared down his side to rest on the interior panel of the door. He kept the speed at a steady eighty; the deserted road straight and long and numbingly boring. Traffic didn't exist at this hour. Certainly no chance of getting pulled over. An occasional eighteen-wheeler, trying to make time toward an early morning delivery in Naples or Fort Myers, the only thing to break the monotony of Route 41, the Tamiami trail in the Everglades.

The driver was another hired hand, maybe higher up, but still a hired hand. His dark face shone in the reflected light of the instrument panel, his thin mustache a black line above the slash of a mouth. His eyes drew attention. Slightly bulging lids gave him a bit of a bug-eyed look. The nose with its flaring nostrils betrayed mixed blood of Cuban Latino and Miami African-American heritage.

The passenger next to him wore the uniform of a Collier County Sheriff's deputy. The tag above the brown pocket read "Smith.” His bulk filled the generous bucket seat. His stomach was beginning to build over the beltline, and a lower roll of fat rested against the regulation nine millimeter strapped in the holster at his belt. A crewcut with military style whitewalls topped a face partially hidden by the shaded glasses. Under the lenses, two small eyes peered out in a porcine face that screamed redneck. His hands fidgeted as he sat and darted quick glances in the rear view mirror at the fat man, with his victim. None of this bothered him. Dealing with Taylor is what made Smith nervous. He was glad Taylor didn't come tonight.

Smith believed William Taylor was the second scariest man he had ever encountered. The first being that damned Richard Daniels with his Special Forces and Karate shit. Best thing about Daniels; you rarely ever encountered him.

Taylor could be something else. Smith had dealt with him much too often for comfort since he got on his payroll. He smiled at the thought of the weekly envelope stuffed with six greenbacks, all with pictures of Grant.

"Left turn coming up" said Smith.

The driver slowed the car as the sign appeared, shining green and white in the headlights. EVERGLADES CITY, ROUTE 29, it read.

The Lexus turned left heading west between the Visitor's Center and the all night Texaco. The headlights cut a swath in the surrounding dense vegetation without penetrating its blackness.

"Fucking boonies out here, gives me the creep" said the fat man.

"Wha'd you wanna do, dump him in Miami Square? Heads up, there's a trail coming up, you're going to make a right" said Smith.

The Lexus slowed as the little trail appeared, nothing more then a lighter spot in the thick jungle. The Lexus turned into it, the suspension moving the car up and back as it negotiated the bumps and sand holes at walking speed. Branches rubbed against all sides of the car and wheels, making scratchy squealing noises. Smith thought it was like driving in an inkwell with ghosts on all sides.

The trail became wider as Mangrove trees seemed to spring around the Lexus. The vegetation and leaves twined above them in a black canopy that ended at the edge of a natural canal. Across the canal, no more then a dozen feet, the eyes of an alligator glittered like diamonds in the headlights.

The driver opened the door and got out. His feet sank a few inches in the unseen muck. It was so dark, it seemed dawn might never return. All around the car, cicadas, frogs and God-knew what chirped and chattered. Something screeched in the distance answered by a nearby splash in the canal. The alligator suddenly disappeared in a swirl of sooty black water, and a slight breeze carried the scents of wet tropical vegetation.

The fat man opened the rear door and dragged the passenger out. He fell to his knees and pitched down, face first in the grassy muck. A gurgled moan escaped from the swollen lips as he sprawled in the illuminated oval of the Lexus interior lights.

"Just do it now" said the driver.

"Where the hell's the Indian?” said the fat man.

"He'll be here, guaranteed" replied Smith.

"Yea, but he ain't here now.”

The fat man reached into his pocket and pulled a small nickel plated automatic, a 22 Caliber Saturday Night Special. Cheap and accurate to a maximum of about twenty feet, it glinted in the reflected light like a snake's fang.

"Jesus, not now. Not when I'm here" said Smith.

The driver looked at him and laughed, a joyless barking noise.

"What do you think? You don't like, see it, it means you ain't involved Mister Deputy Fucking Sheriff? You'll fry with us, maybe worse. They expect this shit from people like us, not from you.”

Smith turned his head. His face flushed, and his eyes burned. He could feel his hands shaking, a nervous tremble that soon spread to his forearms. All around them the rich smell of decaying vegetation and tidal-flat mud bathed them in a miasma of alien scents. The driver leaned down and jammed the barrel of the .22 against the base of the man's skull and pulled the trigger. There was a loud wet plopping noise, like a champagne cork popping in a bag of jelly. The man's body settled into the black mud, inert as a sack of rocks. That was the beauty of the .22. Enough power to penetrate the skull and rattle around causing massive damage with no exit wound. A momentary silence enveloped them, as if all the night creatures of the great swamp had paused to watch.

The fat man reached down and put two fingers around a thick silver chain tight on the dead man's neck. He tugged, cursing when the chain didn't break.

"What the hell are you doing?” asked the driver. Don't take shit from the man we just whacked. You wanna carry evidence on you?”

He shrugged and took his hand off the corpse's neck.

The Indian came up out of nowhere. He had been part of the surrounding blackness, just another unmoving shadow upon shadows. He was tall, with rangy muscles like knotted steel cables, dark face hidden in the night and head covered with a formless bandanna.

"Shit, what the..." said the driver, jumping back. His hand went to the butt of the .357 Magnum in the shoulder holster. The Indian ignored him, stepped around the Lexus, picked up the corpse by both arms and dragged it away into the night. A human panther slinking off with its kill.

"Lets get the hell out of here. This is too fucking weird" said the driver.

The fat man shrugged and got in the back. Smith became aware of a stinging pain in the palm of his hand, and he realized he had gouged out a little chunk of flesh with his nails.

At that moment, Smith felt a tilt in his world, something running below his normal senses. Grateful for the darkness hiding the shudder passing through his body, he got back in the car.

**

In the dark across the canal, shards of pain penetrated every inch of Bobby-Ray's skull. He felt it especially in the tender areas behind and above his eyelids. His head was on fire as the remains of Mr. Jim Beam, fine Kentucky sipping Bourbon, avenged itself in his system. He groaned softly and ran a hand over his face, feeling the small raw bumps. Not good to fall asleep in the Everglades where the mosquitoes were the size of small helicopters and aggressive as mad pit bulls.

Godamm, he thought, as he sat up with a groan, this shit's going to kill me yet. Now that he was approaching the big Three-Oh, it seemed harder to recover. He didn't remember much about yesterday, barely remembered opening the quart bottle and the first drifting, beckoning whiff of fine sour mash. When the afternoon started that way, he never knew where it would finish, or whose bed he would end up in. This time, in the middle of the Everglades, passed out in his airboat with no idea how he got there.

It was black as the inside of a dead coal mine. Cloud cover had robbed away any starlight. He stood up, holding the center console and sniffed the air, senses alert as they could be under the vicious hangover. Something had wakened him. Something slight, something changing, picked out by his subconscious as he slept.

Off to his left, about two hundred yards, a moving glow of automobile headlamps appeared. Dimmed and reflected from the vegetation, the glow moved slowly with the difficulty of negotiating the primitive narrow path. It stopped at the canal's edge. The headlamps stabbed out over the water, the light absorbed into the viscous blackness.

From the position of the car, Bobby-Ray had a good idea of his location. Must beone of the main canals that ran off the sides of Everglades City, he decided. He noted that his airboat rested well under a large clump of overhanging Mangroves, invisible in the night swamp. The glowing dial of his watch read three AM. What the hell is a car doinghere at the edge of the canal at this time, thought Bobby-Ray. He picked a water bottle from its holder and splashed a little on his hands and rubbed it into his face as if it could chase away the pounding in his head. He frowned as the sound of a single shot washed over the canal and swamp. The noise, although muted, unmistakable as a 747 jet. It couldn't be poachers. There is no game so close to Everglades City. The deer were much further in the wooded areas. The most valuable thing in the Everglades, the big alligators, would be well into the bogs with their outlying canals and interconnecting ponds. Besides, that had been a pistol shot, small caliber he guessed.

As Bobby-Ray watched, the car backed away and the headlight glow retreated until it disappeared over the rise that marked the beginning of the shoulders of US 29. A few minutes later he heard the bellowing roar of an airboat engine.

Bobby-Ray was the product of the public schools and culture of Florida's Collier County which encompassed, as much as it could, the Everglades. In the seventies and eighties, when Bobby-Ray attended, those schools had been notorious for their mediocrity. Bobby-Ray had dropped out at fifteen. There were only a few things that mattered in the life of young males in that Southern backwash country. Drinking, fishing, guns and pussy headed the list along with another biggie, cars. Six years with the US Special Forces had done nothing to dampen his enthusiasm for those things.

When Bobby-Ray heard the sudden roar of the unmuffled airboat engine, he recognized it immediately. Chevy big block, 327, bored and stroked. The deeper whoom on acceleration said dual Rochester Quads. Only one airboat engine like that in the Everglades. White Hawk

.What the hell is going on? Someone had met White Hawk on the edge of the canal, someone had fired a pistol shot and now White Hawk is taking off in that souped up airboat, all at three in the morning

Basic curiosity crowded out the little demons with stabbing pitchforks lurking behind Bobby-Ray's eyes. He reached into one of the side compartments and pulled out a helmet and goggles and a clip-on light attached by long wires to a power pack. Bobby-Ray knew every inch of the sixteen-foot platform of olive-drab stainless steel and aluminum. He had built it and equipped it all himself. In total darkness he clipped the light to the top of the propeller cage and flipped the switch. A dull red glow shone out of the face and seemed to be immediately swallowed by the voracious blackness of the night. He put on the helmet, adjusted the goggles and turned them on. The night immediately sprung bright and clear into the infrared goggles for fifty yards around him. It was like noon-time under a green sun, but visible only to Bobby-Ray.

He started the engine. That had been his special creation; a fuel injected Honda V-6, turbo-charged and muffled, driving a variable pitch aircraft propeller, facing the transom, enclosed within a stainless steel protective cage. He strapped himself in the console as he stood. The boat had no seats. He engaged the drive and stepped on the accelerator. The engine let out a low- pitched, growling whine as the airboat shot out of the little cove into the canal.

He drove at three quarter throttle, the infrared generator lighting the night all around him. Up ahead he could see the bobbing, dim light of the single beam on White Hawk's boat. There was no chance the Indian could hear Bobby-Ray's boat over the unmuffled din of his own boat. Still, if he made a sudden stop, he might be able to hear the Honda's whine over the Chevy's deep-throated idle.

The two boats flew over the water, past the Everglades National Park ranger station on the left and the tiny Everglades City airport on the right, then Billy's Marina a hundred yards or so further down. The spread between the boats widened as Bobby-Ray slowed periodically to hear White Hawk's engine noise. Light from the Indian's single beam headlight grew dimmer. The boats emerged into the widening bay that marked the beginning of the Ten Thousand Islands.

Aptly named, the Ten Thousand Islands consisted of an uncountable number of Mangrove islands interspersed by connecting ponds and natural canals, peat bogs, swamps and rivers of saw grass. Always shifting and changing, most of it poorly charted, the area brimmed with an amazing diversity of plant and animal wildlife, much of it dangerous. Locals claimed that the Everglades contained everything that could cure any illness as well as much that can kill in blindingly painful seconds.

Bobby-Ray's tachometer indicated 2400RPM. With the variable-pitch high performance propeller, it translated to a land speed of about forty miles per hour, and still White Hawk's boat outpaced him. Now he followed the signs of passage of the Indian's airboat, the crushed clumps of elephant grass and tamped down saw grass. Large sleeping Great Blue Herons flashed by in the green world of the infrared goggles, awakened by the noise, their eyes glowing phosphorescent white.

As the sky began to lighten just a shade with the coming dawn, he stopped the boat and took off the infrared equipment. He sniffed the air and listened. In the distance, dim as a muffled whisper, came the fading sound of an airboat engine. There was enough light now that he could be spotted. Better to wait until White Hawk left and then see what he had been up to. He had stopped long enough in that one spot up ahead. Bobby-Ray wanted to check it out. He could always catch up with the Indian if he had to.

A lifetime of running in the great swamp had taught him all the signs. He followed the thin reeds in the murky salt marsh, newly broken and crushed, the panicky wide trails of the big alligators, and the patches of muddied brackish water that would take hours to settle. Just past the trailing end of Lostman's River, he found the pond flanked by two deeper alligator holes. Half a dozen turkey vultures pointed the way from the apex of shallow lazy circles, the great wings riding low warm air currents, their buzzard heads fixed on the scene below with patient but ravenous anticipation.

Bobby-Ray idled the airboat up to the commotion at the edge of the pond. Three great bull alligators thrashed and sent mud splatters a dozen feet in the air as they fought and tore at something. Wide toothed jaws snapped and dismembered great gobs of flesh, bright white and red in the chalky pre-dawn light. Shreds of cloth bobbed in the red-tinged water, and off to the left, a shoe floated right side up, a human foot still in it, part of a white bone sticking up in the air like some sort of obscene mast.

Engaged in this harrowing feeding frenzy, the big reptiles ignored the airboat slowly drifting into their midst. Now he could see several smaller gators on the outskirts of the action, waiting for morsels to drift out and for their larger relatives to be sated. Next to the biggest gator, most of a human head, neck and part of one shoulder bobbed slowly in the roiling brown and pink water. Of course, they would go for the softer tissues first.

Bobby-Ray kicked open a side compartment with his foot. A slat came down with an assortment of a half dozen grenades held in plastic ties. Below that rested an Israeli-made Uzi with folding stock and a longer barrel modified for greater single shot accuracy. All he needed for the occasional work he did for Richard Daniels.

He chose a non-lethal flash-banger grenade. This type of weapon would normally be used in hostage situations. The grenade emitted an intolerably loud explosion and blinding flash. It was meant to stun without killing. With the notable exception of certain deserving humans, Bobby-Ray never killed anything he was not going to eat. As for the alligators, well, they just did what alligators do.

The flash-bang immediately ended the feeding frenzy. The big reptiles swam away with amazing speed. A ten-foot bruiser ran on the slight embankment and disappeared in the tall saw grass.

The temperature climbed rapidly and drops of sweat beaded on Bobby-Ray's face and dripped off his nose. He reached into the murky water tinged with fast dissipating whirls of blood. He pulled the head by a few intact strands of hair. Great chunks of flesh had been torn from the face exposing skull bones and upper teeth. As he turned the revolting bloody remains, he noted the back of the head had been spared and the half-dollar size entry wound clearly told him how the man had died.

Bobby-Ray felt a wave of sadness wash over him. He had seen plenty of violent death in four years of Special Forces covert operations. Much of it he had inflicted himself. But the end of this stranger, dumped as so much refuse to be devoured by reptiles, gripped him to the quick. He just hoped the poor bastard had been dead when White Hawk dropped him.

Sometimes, the sudden and surprising depths of his emotions, amazed Bobby-Ray. Yet, he welcomed and accepted their powers and accuracy. He never wanted to lose that human counterpoint to the violence and death of his years in special ops.

Bobby-Ray thought briefly about bringing the remains back for whatever family the guy had. But how would he explain it? The law already wanted to question him over those smuggling jobs with Richard Daniels. No way pal, he thought, It don't make sense to risk my ass just to get a couple pounds of your dead carcass to some coroner so he can say you're officially dead.

He noticed an amulet tight on a chain around the savaged neck. Somehow it had clung to its owner. He reached with his commando knife, cut the chain and placed the amulet in his pocket before gently lowering the grisly remains back in the water. Maybe he could track this guy's family, if he had any, and let them know it was over.

Bobby-Ray felt it then, in that moment of vanishing darkness, a few thin minutes away from the sunrise. It had been there all along but he had been so occupied by the corpse that he had been unaware of it. He stood and looked around, his head moving slowly as his eyes darted in trained movements, taking in the thickets of Mangrove and saw grass on islands that were nothing more then large clumps of mud and hardened clay. He saw nothing unusual, nothing out of sorts with the environment he knew so well.

But something was out there, something alien to the swamp. He could feel it in the marrow of his bones, in the deepest pit of his gut and the pounding of his heart. He pulled the Uzi from its rack and armed it. The metallic click seemed loud, incongruous in the thick silence.

Suddenly Bobby-Ray knew that's what disturbed him. The silence. The chirpings, splashings, croakings and countless noises of the swamp were gone. It felt like the jungle when the big predator cats hunt. Waiting, anticipating, holding its collective breath. He remembered his Grandmother's words from his childhood. His Grandmother whose world was populated by the spirits and legends of her tribe.

Like the shadow of a ghost, dancing on my grave.

A flaming corner of the sun peered above the horizon with surprising swiftness, the darting rays a hot breath on his face. Bobby-Ray looked around once more. He shivered and the spell was broken. He put down the Uzi, shook his head and started the engine.

As the noise of his airboat engine faded away, small crabs emerged from the mud and began nibbling on the tattered remains of flesh. Clouds of buzzing insects formed above the fresh carrion smell. But the alligators did not return.