Acts of Nature - By Jonathon King Page 0,88

than ten seconds.

“Out in my bag on the deck there’s a satellite phone. Pilot’s on the same frequency. Get me up out of here and get the phone. I’ll make the call.”

I had to give him credit; he was still working the advantages for himself, slim as they were.

“No, I’ll get the gun out of your pocket. Then we’ll get you up,” I said.

With the doorway jammed, I knew the only way to get outside now was through the hatch. I figured I’d have to get him up and tied securely to a stanchion before I could climb down and get to the phone. Then I’d be calling Billy. His pilot’s job was over. I circled him again, kept the MK in my hand, and then knelt down.

“I’m going to reach down into your pocket, Harmon. You move, I’ll put a round through the back of your head. It won’t make a difference to me. You’re out of my way regardless.”

I went down on the floor behind him, my face next to his back, and I could see the stain of blood spreading down the side of his pants where I’d shot him. I was hoping that I hadn’t hit the femoral artery, but the bleeding was already extensive enough that droplets were falling into the water below.

I extended my arm down and with a little trouble found the pocket opening and reached inside to touch the hard metal of a short-barreled pistol. I came up with a new-looking Colt revolver and slid it across the floor toward Sherry’s cot.

“All right, Harmon,” I said, standing. “Now I’m going to get you under the arms here and lift you up. From the looks of it you’re gonna bleed out if I don’t get you out of there now and get a patch on that wound. So don’t fuck with me. I’m the only one left here to save your ass.”

He grunted once and then said: “You think I’m afraid of you, Freeman? Don’t flatter yourself.”

“No. I doubt you’re afraid of anything,” I said and meant it.

First I put the MK in the waistband at the small of my back and then bent behind him, got him under both armpits and started to lift. He seemed surprisingly light at first, and I had his rump almost over the edge of the hatch when he suddenly got heavy and his eyes got suddenly big and the man who feared nothing started to scream.

They call them prehistoric, the alligators of Florida. And they have survived so many thousands of years because they are nature’s superior predators in their world. Their jaw muscles are machine strong when they are biting down and weaker but much quicker when they are opening the mouth. It’s the quickness that’s astonishing.

The first yank pulled Harmon back down through the hole and I almost followed him. Over his shoulder I could see one black eye, like a shiny marble, mounted on the rumpled, gray-green snout. Unemotional, limbic, it stared up at me with no recognition that a man’s leg from the knee down was in its mouth. The other eye was missing, the socket where it should have been was a bloody hole, as if it had been drilled or merely gouged out by the shaft of a sheared-off golf club. Then like a whiplash the gator flashed its tail and threw its thousand- pound body into an S shape and Harmon went down through the hole like he’d been flushed. I heard the crack of bone and snap of ligament over the man’s deep-throated scream and tumbled back, landing on my ass. I scrambled back to the edge only in time to see that classic roll of the big reptile’s spin, showing its light-colored belly and black, mottled back as it pulled its prey down under the water where it cannot breathe and will soon give up. It is all very natural. And nature is sometimes a terrible thing to watch.

TWENTY-EIGHT

They were all dead. Arms folded at impossible angles. Clothing unnaturally empty and stained in dark amber colors that they never would have worn for themselves. Human bodies are diminished by death. In a movie some alien called us bags of water and in death our life leaks out.

I stepped around Marcus, let my eyes skim over the head wound but they stopped on the outstretched hand, the missing fingers I was responsible for. I moved on to a jump bag, one I hadn’t seen before and assumed was

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