Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [147]
Stifling a cry, she ducked back down.
“Do not fire,” came Pendergast’s almost inaudible voice. “It might be a trap.”
Swallowing her surprise, she nodded.
“Follow me.” Pendergast turned and crawled up the rivulet, and Hayward did the same. The moon was temporarily hidden behind clouds, but the dying glow from the burning boat gave them just enough light to see by. The little channel narrowed, and soon they were crossing a mudflat covered with about a foot of water. The beam shot across the flat, moving toward them. Pendergast stopped and took a deep breath, sinking into the water as deeply as possible. He looked as mud-encrusted as she was. Hayward followed suit, almost burying her face in the muck. The light passed directly over them. She tensed, waiting for a shot, but there was none.
When the light had passed, she rose. Beyond the flat she could see a massive grouping of dead cypress stumps and rotting trunks. Pendergast was heading directly for it. Hayward followed suit, and within a minute they had taken up a position.
Hayward quickly rinsed and recleaned her gun. Pendergast plucked his Les Baer from its holster and did the same. They worked quickly and silently. The light came back, this time closer, moving directly toward them.
“How do you know it’s a trap?” Hayward whispered.
“Too obvious. There’s more than one gunman there, and they’re waiting for us to fire at the light.”
“So what do we do?”
“We wait. In silence. Unmoving.”
The light snapped off and darkness reigned. Pendergast crouched, immovable, unreadable, behind the great tangle of stumps.
She listened intently. There were splashes and rustles in the night, seemingly everywhere. Animals moving, frogs jumping. Or was it people?
The burning boat finally sank, the slick of burning gasoline rapidly dying out, leaving the swamp in a cool quasi-darkness. Still they waited. The light came on again, drawing ever closer.
70
JUDSON ESTERHAZY, WEARING SHOULDER WADERS, moved with infinite caution through the thick vegetation, a Winchester .30-30 in his hands. It was much lighter than the sniper rifle, far more maneuverable, and a gun he’d used for hunting deer since he was a teenager. Powerful but sleek, it was almost like an extension of himself.
Through the trees he could see Ventura’s light, shining about, steadily approaching the area where Pendergast and the woman must have gone to ground. Esterhazy was positioned about a hundred yards behind where they had been driven. Little did they know they were being squeezed in a pincer movement, as he worked up behind their position among the fallen trees while Ventura approached from the front. The two were sitting ducks. All he needed was for them to shoot once—a single shot—and then he could pinpoint their position and kill them both. And eventually they would be forced to shoot out the light.
The plan was working perfectly, and Ventura had played his part well. The light—on a long pole—moved slowly, haltingly, ever closer to their position. He could see its beam fitfully illuminating a tangle of cypress roots and a massive, rotting trunk—an old blowdown. That was where they were: there was no other decent cover anywhere nearby.
He maneuvered himself slowly to acquire a line of sight to the blowdown. The moon was higher in the sky and now it emerged from behind the clouds, casting a pale light into the darkest recesses of the swamp. He had a glimpse of the two of them, crouched behind the log, focused entirely on the light in front of them—and fully exposed to his flanking maneuver. He didn’t even need them to shoot the light after all.
Slowly, Judson raised the rifle to his cheek, peering through the Trident Pro 2.5x night-vision scope. The scene leapt into sharp relief. He couldn