territory and survival, half dreaming of green water and the pale dead faces of children.
I heard the motors first, deep downriver, the sound burbling and groaning through the trees and slipping through the dense fern and slowly growing loud.
Then I saw the flashes of light through my windows and heard their careful voices. I felt the thunk against the dock piling and the tread of feet, more than a few, coming up.
“Max?”
It was Diaz, unsure of my sanity, not wanting to put himself or his people in danger if he’d totally misjudged me.
“Max? You in there?”
“I’m here,” I called out, my voice weak and watery.
I heard him whispering.
“It wasn’t me, Diaz. You’re going to have to trust me,” I said, trying to reassure him.
I lay still, knowing movement would only spook them. Diaz finally came through the door, low, following the muzzle of his own 9mm. I didn’t move. Sudden movement only makes them shoot you.
“Sorry I can’t get up and spread ’em,” I said, looking yet again at the wrong end of a gun.
“Christ, Max,” Diaz said, holstering his gun.
Richards was the second cop in. The kerosene light caught several strands of blond hair that had come loose under her baseball cap. Behind her was an officer I’d never seen before. He was carrying an MP5 assault rifle, standard issue for SWAT teams. All three of them were wearing bulletproof vests.
“We’re clear inside,” the SWAT officer said into a radio microphone that was Velcroed to his shoulder. “Looks like we’re gonna need an evac litter and a med tech up here.”
Richards popped on a flashlight and sat down in the chair next to me. She did a once-over with the light, stopping at the crude splint and then moving it on to the blood-soaked pants leg.
“Bullet wound?” she said, probably knowing the answer. I could smell her perfume, so odd in this setting that it didn’t take much to stand out.
“Yeah.”
“You’ve got some bad habits, Freeman,” she said, but I could see the small smile at the corners of her mouth.
More SWAT officers appeared in the door, their night- vision goggles hanging loose around their necks. They called Diaz over and spoke in low voices.
“Christ!”
He gave them some instructions and came back to stand over me.
“They found another body upstream. This one looks like a knife to the throat.”
He said it as information to her and a question to me.
“Blackman,” I said and then went into a spasm of coughing from the effort.
“He the shooter?” Diaz said.
All I could do was nod.
“All right, Max, let’s get you out of here. Hammonds is going to have to hear this firsthand.”
They loaded me onto a litter, got me down the steps and then into a Florida Marine Division boat. A med tech had cut away the backwoods splint and encased my arm in an inflatable cast. My leg wound was bandaged and wrapped tight. I heard them say something about blood loss. I was drifting in and out again. I thought I heard other boats but the rocking set my head sloshing even more. Spotlights were slashing through the trees. Radios were crackling with traffic. There were too many people in my shack, too many on the river. I heard the grumble of engines and watched again as the canopy sailed by.
Sometime down the river, I thought I recognized the spot where Cleve’s boat had been. The trees around it were draped in yellow tape. From low in the boat I had lost the moon and I asked where it was and my voice sounded like I was speaking into the bottom of a pail.
“What?” It was Richards.
“Where’s the moon?” I said again.
“What?” She bent her cheek to my lips.
“The moon. Where’s the moon?”
“Save your strength, Max,” she said, and squeezed my hand.
I thought I saw red and blue lights flashing at the boat ramp, spinning like a carnival ride. I thought I saw people standing in line to see. I thought I saw a black Chevy Suburban and I was sure that I was lost.
CHAPTER 26
Richards was right about my bad habits, hospitals and gunshot wounds among them. This time I stayed at least half conscious through most of it; watched the paramedics hover over me in the ambulance, taking vital signs and pushing IVs, felt the rocking back and forth with the turns and stops and slow-downs and accelerations through every intersection, heard the siren whining and then chattering through traffic.
I was awake when they wheeled me into the