“Nicely done, Lester,” another said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Fender, I need that fifth canister,” Whitaker said.
“When we’re at the rendezvous, Colonel,” Fender said.
Keeping the light off, I groped my way forward as if reading Braille, feeling the walls of cattails to either side of me and almost tripping over the major’s body. A powerful outboard engine fired to life. Then another.
“Use the electrics!” the colonel said.
“Sorry, Colonel,” Hobbes said. “Fender and I are going for distance, not stealth. Come with us. Leave that raft for the others.”
“I’m right behind you,” Whitaker said.
The first raft roared off, and through the rain I could tell they were not far ahead of me. It sounded like Whitaker was stowing and strapping gear, and he was doing it with no discernible light source.
Night-vision goggles, I thought, and in my stocking feet I carefully stepped free of the reeds and onto a sand bar with an inch of tidal water on it.
The colonel grunted with effort. I heard the raft slide.
He grunted again, and I heard the raft slide a second time, gritty, like coarse sandpaper on soft wood.
Whitaker couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen yards from me, by the sound of it. So I eased into a crouch, raised my gun and flashlight, and whistled softly.
Then I flipped on the Maglite, trying to shine it right in his goggles.
103
COLONEL WHITAKER CRIED out in surprise and pain. He threw up his arms to shield the goggles from magnifying my already powerful light.
I charged into point-blank range then, still shining the beam on him as he cringed, tore off the goggles, and threw them down.
“I can’t see,” he said, bent over and rubbing at his eyes. “Christ, I’m blind!”
“Jeb Whitaker,” I said, taking another step closer. “Get on the ground, hands behind your head.”
“I said I’m blind!”
“I don’t care,” I said. “You are under arrest for murder, treason, and-”
Whitaker uncoiled from his position so fast I never got off a shot. He spun spiral and low toward me and delivered the knife hard and underhand.
I saw the Ka-Bar knife coming but couldn’t move quick enough to keep the blade from being buried deep in my right thigh. I howled in agony. My light and gun came off Whitaker long enough for him to continue his attack.
Two strides and he was on me. He grabbed my right hand, my pistol hand, and twisted it so hard, the gun dropped from my fingers.
The back-to-back shocks-being stabbed and then having my wrist nearly broken-were almost too much, and for a moment I thought I’d succumb. But before the Marine colonel could snatch my light from me, I swung the butt end of the flashlight hard at his head.
I connected.
Whitaker lurched and let go of my numb hand.
I kept after him with my good left hand, raising the flashlight to chop at him. The colonel dodged the blow and punched me so hard in the face I saw stars. Whitaker grabbed me by the straps on my bulletproof vest and punched me again in the face.
“You’re not stopping me, Cross,” he said, punching me a third and fourth time, breaking my nose. “Nothing’s stopping me from fumigating the bugs in DC that have destroyed this great country.”
My legs buckled. I sagged and began to swoon, heading toward darkness.
Fight, a voice deep down inside me yelled. Fight, Alex.
But I was barely holding on to consciousness, and I went to my knees in the water.
“You think you can stop a rebellion, Cross?” Whitaker demanded, gasping, after punching me a fifth time. “An uprising?”
The cold water against my legs roused me enough to mumble, “Using nerve gas?”
“It’s how you treat any cancer. Poison the body and cut out the tumors.”
“You’re insane,” I said.
He let go of my vest then and kneed me so hard in the face, I blacked out. I fell onto the flooded gravel bar, but even with the chill water against my skin, I lost time for a bit.
Then I was aware of Whitaker stepping over me. He stood there, straddling my chest. In a daze, I saw his silhouette above me in the beam of the flashlight I had managed to hold on to. He had my pistol.
“I’m tired of you, Cross,” the colonel said. “I’ve got to move on, stoke the next phase of the rebellion.”
He swung my gun up toward me.
I did the only thing I could think of.
I dropped the flashlight, wrenched Whitaker’s knife from my thigh, turned it skyward, and swung it in an upward arc, driving the blade into the back of his left leg, high under his buttocks, and burying it to the hilt.
I felt the tip strike bone and I twisted the knife.
Whitaker screamed and fired my pistol, missing my head by an inch. He flailed, attempting to pull the blade free.
I twisted the knife again. He dropped my gun and reached back, frantically trying to stop me.
I twisted the knife a third time, then wrenched it out of him and lay there on the flooded gravel, panting.
“Ha,” Whitaker said, stumbling back two feet, splashing to a stop. “See? I’m still standing, Cross. Artificial knee and I’m still standing.”
“You’re a dead man standing, Colonel,” I said with a grunt, dropping the knife and fishing for the waterproof flashlight still shining in the water. “I just put your knife through your femoral artery.”
By the time I got the flashlight beam back on him, Whitaker had gone from confident to confused. He was bent over slightly, his fingers probing the wound, no doubt feeling the blood that had to be gushing out of him. I thought the colonel would go for his belt to try to tourniquet his leg.
Instead, Whitaker went berserk. He charged, kicking me twice before diving on top of me and grabbing my neck with both hands.
As he throttled me, I tried to hit him with the flashlight again or trade it for the knife. But between my own loss of blood and the beating I’d taken, I couldn’t fight him. I just couldn’t.
My chest heaved for air and got none. Whitaker had this wild gleam in his eyes as my vision narrowed to blotchy darkness.
This is the end, I thought. The final…
The grip the colonel had on my throat started to weaken. I got sips of air, and my sight returned.
Whitaker was sitting on my chest, his head swaying to and fro right above mine.
“No, Cross,” he said. “John Brown, he… Mercury, he never…”
He panicked then, and tried to stand.
But halfway to his feet, Whitaker lurched off me, staggered, and then crashed into three inches of cold water, dead.
104
TWO DAYS LATER, my face was still swollen and bruised. The knife wound had been sutured but it hurt like hell. Bree had won a commendation for solving the murder of the late Thomas McGrath. And Jannie’s orthopedist had called to say that her latest MRI showed the bone in her foot healing nicely.
“We have lots to be thankful for,” I said as we sat down to dinner.
“Says a man who looks like he went four rounds with Mike Tyson,” Nana Mama said, and Ali giggled.
“A man who went four rounds with Mike Tyson and survived,” I said, smiling and wincing at my split lip. “Anyway, we’re all here. We’re all healthy. We’re all safe. And for that, I for one am grateful.”
We held hands and said grace and then dove into a chicken Nana Mama had roasted with Dijon mustard, pearl onions, and lemongrass. It was delicious, another triumph, and we showered praise on her.
My grandmother was pleased and in peak form as dinner went on, cracking jokes and telling stories I’d heard and loved long ago. As she did, my mind drifted to the aftermath of Colonel Whitaker’s raid on Edgewater 9. Five Regulators had died in the firefight trying to escape. Two had been taken into custody by army MPs and had lawyered up.