Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [151]
Again she nodded, clasping the gun.
“This is a good blind. You won’t be seen until you want to be seen. But listen to me carefully, now: you must stay awake. To lose consciousness is to die.”
“You’d better get going,” she murmured.
Pendergast peered into the darkness. A faint yellow glow was just barely visible through the ranks of tree trunks. He took out a knife and, reaching up, scored a large X on opposite sides of the biggest tree trunk. Leaving Hayward, he set off southward, approaching the distant lights in a tightening, spiral-like trajectory.
He moved slowly, extracting his feet from the muck with care so as to make as little noise as possible. There was no sign of activity, no sounds from the distant light that flickered and disappeared among the dark trunks. As he tightened the spiral, the trees thinned and a dull yellow rectangle came into view: a curtained window, floating in the blackness, amid a cluster of vague buildings with pitched roofs.
In another ten minutes, he had maneuvered close enough to have a clear view of the old hunting camp on Spanish Island.
It was a vast, rambling place, built just above the waterline on creosote pilings: at least a dozen large, shingled buildings wedged in among a massive stand of ancient bald cypresses heavily draped in curtains of Spanish moss. It lay right on the edge of a small slackwater bayou. The camp was built on marginally higher ground, surrounded by a screen of ferns, bushes, and tall grass. The heavy fringe of vegetation, combined with the almost impenetrable skeins of hanging moss, gave the place a hidden, cocooned feeling.
Pendergast moved laterally, still circling the place, checking for guards and getting a feel for the layout. At one end, a large wooden platform led to a pier with a floating dock projecting into the bayou. Tied to it was an unusual boat, which Pendergast recognized as a small, Vietnam-era brownwater navy utility boat. It was a hybrid species of swampcraft with a draft of only three inches and a quiet, underwater jet drive—ideal for creeping around a swamp. Although some of the outbuildings were in ruins, their roofs sagging inward, the central camp was in good condition and clearly inhabited. A large outbuilding was also in impeccable shape. Heavy curtains were drawn over the windows, diffusing the faintest yellow glow from inside.
As he completed his circle, Pendergast was surprised: nobody seemed to be on watch. It was quiet as a tomb. If the shooter was here, he was exceptionally well hidden. He waited, listening. And then he heard something: a faint, desolate cry, thin and birdlike, just on the threshold of audibility, such as from one that has lost all hope, soon dying away. When that, too, ended, a profound stillness fell on the swamp.
Pendergast removed his Les Baer and circled up behind the camp, wriggling into a dense clump of ferns at the edge of the supporting pilings. Again he listened but could hear nothing more; no footfalls on the wooden planks above, no flash of a light, no voices.
Affixed to one of the pilings was a crude wooden ladder made from slippery, rotting slats. After a few more minutes he half crawled, half swam toward it, grasped the lower rung, and pulled himself up, one rung at a time, testing each in turn for solidity. In a moment his head had reached the level of the platform. Peering over, he could still see nothing in the moonlight, no sign of anyone on guard.
Easing himself onto the platform, he rolled over the rough wooden boards and lay there, sidearm at the ready. Straining to listen, he thought now that he could hear a voice, exceptionally faint even to his preternatural hearing, murmuring slowly and monotonously, as if reciting the rosary. The moon was now directly overhead and the camp, deep in the cluster of trees,