***
It took hours. It took numerous times starting and stopping, backtracking, weaving through glade, swamp, muck, and mud as the air currents wove, splintered, and dissipated. It took Sarge and PP getting off the boat and padding across marshy land, through head-high scrub. It took an hour sitting on a wet bank as the temperature dropped and a lightning storm raged over us, the metal boat pulled up and tied to a stunted tree. It took hours in the unexpected cold and rain for us to get an idea where the stolen airboat had gone. The law enforcement helicopter that had buzzed us several times early on was a distraction, but the storm chased it away.
We made it far north of Lake Boudreaux before Sarge bumped my knee with his nose and stared hard at shore. I pulled in, beaching the airboat on a muddy bank, tangled with roots. On the still air I smelled fire and beef cooking over coals. The sun was going and a mist was rising off the water as icy air moved in. We were running out of time.
“I take it this is as far as we can go in the boat?” I asked. Sarge nodded once and nosed my cell phone. “You want me to make a call for you?” He looked away, indicating I was stupid. Staring at the fancy, bulletproof device, I said, “If I turn it on, they can find us.” Sarge dropped his head to his chest in agreement, lay down, and put his head on his paws. “Fine. Whatever you want.” I inserted the battery and booted it up. “Now what?”
He just stared at me, then tapped the floor of the airboat twice. I tried to remember all the stuff that the device could do, and combined with the tapped paw, I asked if he wanted our GPS. When he looked interested, I pulled up our current location. It took a few questions and more than a few interpretative decisions on my part, but eventually I pulled up a satellite map of our current location.
Not far from us, according to the sat map, was a small island with a fancy house on stilts. Except for a narrow beach and a boat dock, the island was surrounded by water like a moat, with a narrow ring of an islet circling protectively outside the moat. The house could be reached by boat or helo; both methods would give advance notice of our arrival. Parachute landing might go unnoticed. Or wings, if I wanted to go in as a bird and then change back to human—to fight weaponless and naked. Not.
I studied the sat photos. The water between the island and the circling islet was gated on two sides, with only the one area of the island open to the surrounding water, where we could manage a frontal attack. “Now, why would an escaped con head to a house in the middle of nowhere? Unless he was killing two birds with one stone?” I hadn’t really studied the file sent to me by Nadine. I opened and skimmed it again, finally finding a summary of John-Roy Wayne’s arrest history. The guy had been going for a world record in violence.
The info from my partners was more helpful. It contained a list of people who might assist John-Roy, and another list of people he might want to kill just for funzies. “Go, Alex,” I said to myself. “You get pizza for all this.” I thought about the info and about the house not far ahead, on stilts.
“Sarge? Do you know who lives in that well-secured house?” He nodded, his eyes suddenly tight on me. It was unnerving to be looked at with such intensity by any predator, but a werewolf was in a category by himself. I stifled my shudder, and assured myself it was only the cold and the damp that lent me a chill. I was lying but it made me feel better. I said, “If I read a list of names, can you tell me if any of them live here?”
Sarge nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving me. I started with the people John-Roy might want to kill. The wolf made no reaction to any of the names, but when I started on the list of people John-Roy would like to hang with, I got a response. Elvis Clyde McPhatter Lamont. I texted the name to Alex, along with the location of the island house. Moments later, Eli texted back, Kid says Elvis is bad news. Get close. Pick landing site. Keep cell on. I drop in 1900. Eli had already figured out he needed to parachute. He was close. Go, Rangers!
Alex sent me an arrest photograph of Elvis Lamont and a list of his priors, which included kidnapping and running a forced sex slave ring. The tat on his neck would make him easy to recognize. It was an oversized penis. I shared all this with Sarge, showing him the sat maps, and finished with “My partner will be here at seven o’clock. We need to be on that island by then. He’ll use my cell as a homing beacon to jump in.