It was hard to believe what they saw. The computers were all brand-new warp-speed, superhighway monsters from Toshiba. There were three of them, all placed neatly on a wooden desk pushed against the rusting hull. Also on the desk was an external 28.8 modem with a line-conditioner. There were hundreds of utility disks in disk holders on a free-standing wooden bookshelf. Malavida moved to them and started rummaging through the index tabs.
"He's got it all… various flavors of UNIX, crackers for UNIX, VMS, Novell, 'elite' addresses on the Internet, CERT security advries… He's fully locked and loaded." Malavida glanced at Lockwood, who was moving toward a coffin-sized freezer. He tried to open it, but it was locked. Over the freezer, taped to the wall, was a large blowup of an old photograph.
"The fuck is this?" Lockwood said. It was a picture of a woman with dishwater-blond hair. She was in a bathing suit, standing next to a tree. There was a portable pool out of focus behind her. The woman was holding a cat and smiling into the camera lens. Her body was muscular but trim; she had even rows of teeth and iridescent eyes. But her smile was mean, mixed with a defiant glare. The thing that was strange about the photograph was that certain parts of her body had been transected with a dark Magic Marker. The legs and arms were numbered and dated; so were both feet and the torso. Lockwood took a mental picture of the photograph.
Then the walkie-talkie erupted with two frantic blasts of static and went dead.
Lockwood looked at Malavida and they took off, climbing quickly up the stairs, running along the interior gangway, and exploding out of the barge into the evening darkness. The sound of night birds greeted them as they ran down the ramp. Malavida looked where they had left Karen, but she was gone. Then they heard her scream.
Lockwood and Malavida bolted in that direction. They were moving through a wall of heavy brush, crashing through thickets, tearing their skin on brambles and thorns. They plunged on blindly, Lockwood leading the way… until the ripping thorns became too painful.** then Malavida pushed past him and took the lead.
Finally, they broke out into a clearing and saw a blue house some distance away. Lockwood, gun in hand, moved in a low crouch toward the house, Malavida right beside him.
The sun was down but the horizon was a soft pink, lit from the afterglow in the western sky. They got to the front door. Lockwood found it ajar, kicked it wide, and ducked inside.
A huge man lumbered out of the kitchen. He was dressed only in baggy shorts. His pale white body had no definition. He had a cellphone in a holster on his belt. His bald head gleamed in the pink light coming through the living room window. Lockwood guessed he was almost seven feet tall. Heather had been right-he had no eyebrows, no hair on him at all.
"Get out of my house," he said, his voice was tight and high. "Where is she?"
"Get out…" he repeated.
Lockwood brought the gun up. "I'm John Lockwood, U. S. Customs. Put your hands up and get on your knees, facing the wall. Do it now, you cocksucker, or I'll blow you to fucking pieces!" It was all Lockwood could do to keep from shooting the man who had mutilated Claire.
Then the huge man bolted out a back door. Lockwood pulled the trigger and the gun jumped in his hand. A piece of the doorway splintered. The shot missed and the man was gone… out into the backyard.
"Find Karen, I'll go after him!" Lockwood commanded and took off after the seven-foot apparition.
When he got outside, Lockwood could barely see him. Then his eyes finally picked him out in the dim light. He appeared to be galloping, favoring his right side, running for all he was worth through the weeds. Lockwood covered the ground more easily and athletically, but the man was now out of sight in the reeds at the water's edge. Then Lockwood heard an engine start. He saw the path the man had taken and ran down it. When he came out at the water's edge, he saw the second tributary. An air-boat was skimming across the marshy lowland, cutting down swampy undergrowth as it went, moving like the wind, the doughy seven-foot bald psychopath at the helm. Lockwood crouched and fired twice but the airboat was picking up speed. He knew the old army.45 automatic was barely accurate at ten yards, let alone a hundred. The shots crashed out into the dense foliage, snapping leaves and branches, before whistling away uselessly into the night.
The Rat was flying, the air drying his teeth. He grabbed the cell-phone on his belt. Holding the wheel of the speeding boat with one hand, he dialed a number. Deep in the basement of the house he had just left, a phone rang…
Malavida had found Karen in the kitchen. She was dazed and almost unconscious. He picked her up and carried her out of the house. When he laid her on the grass, her eyes opened.
"Thanks," she finally said.
Then Malavida heard the distant sound of the phone ringing. He looked down at her. "It's him," he said. "I wanna talk to him." He started back into the house.
"No… don't…" Karen said. Malavida hesitated for a moment, unsure; the phone kept ringing; then he bolted for it, running up the steps and into the house.
He didn't get far. He was two steps inside the living room when the explosion took him. It started in the basement and erupted up through the floorboards of the old house, throwing concrete and plaster into the air like papier-mache.
The concussion rocked Lockwood, who was forty yards away, and caused him to go down on one knee.
Malavida Chacone was blown backward out the front door. He landed ten feet from Karen, his body broken and bleeding. Karen screamed in terror as she looked over at him… and the remnants of the house rained down around them.
Chapter 24
After the deafening sound of the explosion, the swamp went dead silent. Thousands of keening insects paused to listen as pieces of Leonard Land's house rained down on the wet ground or splashed into the swamp water hundreds of yards from where the house had been.
Lockwood was already back up and moving before the last pieces hit the ground. He could see Karen and Malavida not far away and he ran toward them. A huge piece of tin roof fell not three feet from him and stuck, edge down, into the wet ground, quivering like a thrown knife. The air was pungent with the smell of dust and cordite. By the time he got to them he could see that Malavida Chacone was critically, if not fatally, injured. He was bleeding from half a dozen serious wounds, but the thing that worried Lockwood most was the weirdly unnatural position of his broken body. Wide-eyed, Karen was staring down at Malavida when Lockwood arrived. Her eyes had the glassy look of desperation. "Oh, my God… I think he's dead," she said, her voice eerie as it pierced the unnatural silence.
"Go see if that truck over there has a key in it," he commanded. "If not, check under the bumpers for a hide-a-key box." He knew he could hot-wire it if necessary, but he wanted to get her in motion. If there was a chance to save Malavida, he'd need her help.
"We can't move him," she said, her voice shrill. "He could have spinal injuries… He could have internal bleeding. It could kill him."
"He's gonna be dead if we don't." He took a breath and talked to her in a calm voice. "There's nothing here we can use to help him. He's gonna pump himself dry if we don't move him. Do what I said. The truck will get us to a hospital faster than that boat. We move him or lose him."
She hesitated for a moment and then got up off her hands and knees and ran, stumbling toward the vehicle that was parked in the yard. The pickup was sprinkled with dirt and small chunks of the house. She opened the door and looked in at the ignition. There were no keys. Then, as Lockwood had instructed, she climbed under the bumper. Sliding on her back she felt around, looking for a hide-a-key box… and under the back bumper, she found one. Karen squirmed out with the box in hand, removed the ignition key, and started the engine.