Chapter 32 Another Club

Chapter 32

Another Club

Clark Johnson once told me that leadership was like being beaten with a hundred clubs and trying to decide which of those clubs felt the best. His wisdom was far from conventional but rarely wrong, so I chose a club.

My first words were to Cory. “How far are you from the volunteer fire department?”

He sounded more confused than curious. “There ain’t nobody at a volunteer fire department.”

“Just answer my question.”

He said, “Maybe five minutes if we hurry.”

“In that case, hurry. There will be a black helicopter landing beside the station when you get there. Put the Cajun on the chopper.”

“You’ve got a helicopter, too?”

“Goodbye, Cory.”

Another glance upward into an empty sky left me calculating flight times, intersecting angles from every direction, and how many civilians we could stack aboard the Lori Danielle .

“Disco, I need you to put the team on the ground where Cecilia shot Gator and get to the volunteer fire station by Kenneth’s former house, double-quick.”

His one-word reply reminded me why my team was so efficient. Disco had a thousand questions, but dumping them on me in that moment would accomplish nothing more than adding clubs to my endless flagellation.

“Two guys are going to meet you at the station with Kenneth LePine. He’s injured, but I don’t know how badly. Triage him and make the call. Either deliver him to the ER in Houma, New Orleans, or back to the ship.”

“Roger.”

I shot a glance back at my newest prisoner, and the fear that had been in her eyes morphed into pain. “Gator lied to me.”

As much as I wanted to dive headfirst into that mud puddle, it would have to wait. Finding Cecilia’s liar had to come first.

The RHIB was slightly faster than the timber boat, so Kodiak was already on the beach when I ran Kenneth’s boat aground in the mucky sand. The sound of the Huey’s rotor blades in the distance told me Mongo and Singer were already on the ground and scouring the area for Gator.

My first call was to our sniper. “Sierra Six, Sierra One. Say position.”

His voice came interwoven with gasping breaths. “I’m about a click south…of the beach…where we…last heard from Gator.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m waist-deep in…water that feels like goo… So, no…I’m not exactly okay.”

I had little doubt that he’d claw his way out of the muck. “Any sign of Gator?”

He caught his breath. “I’m moving toward a plume of smoke to the south and dodging alligators.”

“I’m on my way in the RHIB.” I turned to our wounded SEAL. “Can you hang on for another half hour?” He nodded, so I said, “Stay here with the girl and figure this out. Just don’t kill her.”

If possible, Shawn eclipsed Disco’s efficiency by merely nodding once again and press-checking his Glock.

I leapt from the timber boat and onto the deck of the RHIB. “Make your way south and look for smoke.”

Kodiak spun the wheel hard over and powered away from the beach. Picking our way to the south was far easier said than done. The low-hanging trees, downed logs, and shallow water kept us moving at a snail’s pace, and my impatience doubled with every new obstacle in our way.

“There’s the smoke,” Kodiak said with an outstretched finger.

“Get us there!”

He stuck the bow in the sand a hundred yards from the smoke, and we bounded over the tubes into ankle-deep muck as we trudged toward the tree line.

I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “Gator!”

A trio of pistol shots sounded from somewhere near the smoke.

Singer rounded the bend to our left in a sprint, and Kodiak and I joined him.

To my indescribable relief, Gator came into sight, but my relief was short-lived. He was gasping as if he’d run a marathon, so I hit the sand beside him and immediately began my assessment. His pulse was racing, his face was bright red, and a bloody pressure bandage was wound around his left bicep. As bad as all of those signs were, most concerning was the tourniquet tied just below his knee.

“Talk to me,” I said. “Where are you shot?”

He gasped. “Left arm. Not bad. Through and through.”

As he tried to calm his breathing, he pointed toward his lower leg. “Snakebite. I don’t know what kind, but I killed it. It’s by the fire.”

Singer grunted. “It’s a water moccasin.”

“Is it deadly?” Gator groaned.

“It can be,” the sniper said. “But the tourniquet isn’t going to help. Get that thing off.”

Gator said, “I didn’t know what to do. I thought it would keep the venom from getting to my heart.”

Singer inspected the wound where the snake’s fangs had pierced Gator’s skin. “It’s not good, but it probably won’t kill you. You’re in shock and pretty scared.” He handed Gator a bottle of water from his cargo pants pocket. “Drink this, and try to stay calm. We’ll get you out of here.”

He took the bottle and downed half of it in one drink. “Did you find Cecilia?”

I said, “Shawn’s babysitting her back on the boat.”

“She’s dangerous,” he said.

I tried not to chuckle. “We figured that out.”

Kodiak took a knee beside me. “Disco’s ten minutes out.”

The clubs resumed pounding me as I tried to create a reasonable scenario in which we could get everyone and the RHIB back to the ship as quickly as possible. Sorting out the quagmire in front of me wasn’t something that could happen in the bowels of the bayou.

Mongo hefted Gator across his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and headed for the beach.

Singer hooked a finger inside my elbow when I stood to follow Mongo. “Hang on a minute. Gator’s in bad shape. He needs fluids and antivenin, now. He’s obviously having a reaction beyond the effects of the venom.”

That’s exactly what I need… Another club.

“Sierra One, CIC.”

I said, “Go for One.”

Skipper said, “We’ve got a situation. Mrs. Barbour is missing.”

“Missing? How? She’s on a ship at anchor.”

“We don’t know yet, but the ship’s on lockdown, and the crew is at general quarters.”

I palmed my forehead. “There’s nothing I can do from here, so handle it. Also, I need to know if Dr. Shadrack has antivenin for a water moccasin bite. We found Gator, and he’s been bitten.”

“Are you saying venin or venom ?”

“Either is fine. Just find out if he has it.”

She said, “Wait one.” A few seconds later, she came back. “He’s got it, and you were right. It’s antivenin.”

I said, “Tell him to prep for a severe reaction to the venom, a gunshot wound, and an alligator bite.”

“My God, Chase! How is he still alive?”

“Gator has only two of the three conditions. The alligator got Shawn, but Shawn won.”

The sound of the descending Huey caught my attention. “Gotta go. I’ll see you on deck.”

When I cleared the tree line, Disco was settling into a hover a few yards off the beach, and Mongo was wading through the shallow water. When the big man laid him on the deck of the chopper, Gator fell limply through the door, and my plan to sling load the RHIB vanished.

I pointed at Mongo and then into the chopper, and our giant stepped onto the starboard skid and propelled himself through the door as Disco pulled pitch and climbed away at full power.

As if I needed one more straw on my camel’s back, my sat-phone rang.

“Go for Chase.”

“Chase, it’s Fred. I’m at some godforsaken airport in a place called Houma, Louisiana. Can you send somebody to pick me up?”

Until that moment, I had forgotten I’d summoned Dr. Fred Kennedy—the psychiatrist from The Ranch where I’d learned the craft of covert operation—to spend some time with Skipper to get her head straight.

“Your timing couldn’t be worse, Doc. I’ve got snakebites, gunshot wounds, alligator attacks, a missing woman on my ship, an arsonist, a former Agency black operator in my brig, and I’m pretty sure my prosthetic just turned into a ten-pound block of melted electronics.”

Fred said, “Oh, that must make this a Tuesday. I’ll be here when you can send someone to get me. And one more thing…I think somebody just stole your Caravan after shooting out the windows.”

“That’s the only good news I’ve heard today. The thief is actually a mechanic ferrying it to Wichita for repairs. I’ll send the chopper for you as soon as I can.”

In Fred’s typical, unpredictable style, he hung up without another word.

Kodiak, Singer, and I mounted the RHIB and headed back for the beach, where Shawn was entertaining Cecilia. Kodiak cut the engine as we drifted alongside the timber boat.

“How much fuel do you have in that thing?” I asked.

Shawn said, “The gauge says it’s almost full.”

I checked our prisoner. “Is the gauge reliable, and how far will that take us?”

She said, “The gauge is good. I filled it up this morning. It’ll run for twelve hours on full tanks.”

I replaced Kodiak at the helm of the RHIB. “Good. Follow me. We’re running home to Mother.”

Shawn said, “Hey, wait a minute. Did you find Gator?”

“We did. Disco’s flying his body back to the ship, and your new best friend over there is going to spend the rest of her life in Angola Prison. Let’s go.”

I throttled up and couldn’t hear what Shawn said to Cecilia, but nothing about the exchange looked pleasant.

We wound our way through the bayous as they switchbacked through the landscape until the muddy waters turned to emerald green in the Gulf of Mexico. I checked across my shoulder to make sure Shawn hadn’t killed Cecilia yet, but she wasn’t in the seat. That made me sidestep and chop the throttles. As Shawn pulled alongside, he pointed to the deck where the woman he believed killed Gator lay on her side, still cuffed and squirming.

The run across the Gulf made Shawn’s decision to put Cecilia on the deck make sense. The water was choppy enough to send the RHIB airborne more than once until we fell under the lee of our ship. It took three minutes for the deck crew to hoist both boats onto the LD, and those minutes felt like eons as we rose from the surface and over the rail.

My boots hit the deck before the crane operator let the RHIB settle into its cradle, and Singer landed right beside me.

I took the sniper’s elbow in my hand. “Let Shawn know that Gator isn’t dead. I just wanted Cecilia to believe he was.”

Singer grabbed my shirt and locked eyes with me. “How do you know he’s not dead?”