Fever Dream

Parker sat back in his skiff. He took a small sip of Woodford to help him think. It was those two enviros, all right, but they weren't anywhere near where they were supposed to be. Everyone was in the west bayous but here they were, far to the north.

Another sip and he removed his walkie-talkie. "Hey, Tiny. Parker here."

"Parker?" came Tiny's voice after a moment. "I thought you weren't going to join us."

"I ain't joined you. I'm at the north end, fishing Lemonhead Bayou. And you know what? I just saw one a your airboats come on by, them two in it."

"No way. They're coming in through the west bayous."

"The hell they are. I just saw them go by."

"You see them yourself, or is that the Woodford Reserve seeing them?"

"Look here," Wooten said, "you don't want to listen to me, fine. You can wait in the west bayous till they're skating on Lake Pontchartrain. I'm telling you they're going in from the north and what you do with that is your business."

Wooten snapped off the walkie-talkie with a

66

THE CHANNEL TIGHTENED, AND PENDERGAST shut down the airboat engine. The silence that ensued seemed even louder than the roar of the boat had been.

Hayward glanced over at him. "What now?"

Pendergast removed his suit jacket, draped it over his seat, and slid a pole out of its rack. "Too tight to run the engine--we wouldn't want to snag a branch at three thousand RPMs. I'm afraid we have to pole."

Pendergast took up a position in the stern and began poling the boat forward along an abandoned logging "pull" cha

"I'll take over whenever you need a break," Hayward said.

"Thank you, Captain." The boat glided forward.

She consulted the two maps, laid out side by side: Tiny's map and the Google Earth printout. After two hours they had made it perhaps halfway to Spanish Island, but the densest, most maze-like part of the swamp lay ahead, past a small stretch of open water marked on the map as Little Bayou.

"What's your plan once we're past the bayou?" Hayward pointed at the printout. "Looks pretty tight in there. And there are no more logging cha

"You'll take over the poling and I shall navigate."

"And just how do you intend to navigate?"

"The currents flow east to west, toward the Mississippi River. As long as we keep in the west-flowing current, we'll never get dead-ended."

"I haven't seen the slightest indication of a current since we began."

"It's there."

Hayward slapped at a whining mosquito. Irritated, she squeezed some more insect repellent into her hands and slathered it on her neck and face. Ahead now she could see, through the ribbed tree trunks, a glow of sunlight.

"The bayou," she said.

Pendergast poled the boat forward, and the trees thi

When the bayou narrowed again--too soon--Pendergast slowed the boat. Minutes later, they stopped at a complicated series of inlets that seemed to go every which way, obscured by stickweed and water hyacinths.

Hayward peered at the map, then the printout, and then shrugged. "Which one?" she asked.

Pendergast didn't answer. The engine was still idling. Suddenly he swung the boat a hundred eighty degrees and throttled it up; at the same time Hayward heard a rumble coming from all around them.

"What the hell?" she said.

The airboat leapt forward with a great roar, back in the direction of the open bayou, but it was too late: a dozen bass boats with powerful outboards came growling out of the dark swamp from both sides of the narrow cha

Pulling his gun, Pendergast fired at the closest boat; its engine cover flew off. Hayward pulled her own weapon as answering fire tore into the propeller of their airboat; with a great whack the propeller flew apart, shattering the oversize cage; their boat slowed and swung sideways, dead in the water.

Hayward took cover behind a seat, but--as she quickly reco

"Stand up, both of you!" he said. "Hands over your heads, nice and slow!" This was punctuated by a warning spray of gunfire over their heads.

Hayward glanced at Pendergast, also crouched behind the seat. Blood was trickling from a nasty cut on his forehead. He gave a curt nod, then rose, hands over his head, his handgun dangling by his thumb. Hayward did the same.

With a growl, Tiny brought his boat up alongside, a ski

"Well, well." He gri

Hayward stared at him. "You're making a serious mistake," she said evenly. "I'm a captain of homicide with the New York Police Department. And I am going to ask you to put down your weapon or face the consequences."

An oleaginous smile bloomed on Tiny's face. "That so?"

"I'm going to lower one hand to show you my identification," said Hayward.

Tiny took a step forward. "No, I think I'll find it myself." Holding the TEC-9 to her head, he groped in her shirt pockets, first one, then the other, helping himself to a couple of generous feels in the process.

"Tits are real," he said, to a burst of raucous laughter. "Fucking monsters, too."

He moved down to her pant pocket, fishing about, at last removing her shield wallet. He flipped it open. "Well, lookee here!"

He held it up, showing it around. Then he examined it himself, pursing his wet lips. "Captain L. Hayward, says here. Homicide division. And there's even a picture! You send away for this from the back of a comic book?"