The Last Operation (The Remnants of War Series, Book 1)

The Last Operation

The Remnants of War Series

Book One

by

Patrick Astre

Award-winning author

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ISBN: 978-1-61417-507-0

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Prologue

Route 41, Near the Everglades.

May, 2014

Blood seeped down the back seat of the Lexus, pooling in congealing clumps, gleaming black on the gray leather. The man's shirt was soaked in red splashing, and his battered, ruined face looked like road kill on the lolling head. One eye remained swollen shut, the other a white slit under a partially closed lid. His hands were behind him, held together with bailing wire that cut deep into the wrists, coloring the steel like dark copper.

A fat man sat next to him—bulky-muscled fat with a long beefy arm resting on the victim's shoulder. A scarred-knuckled hand resembled a great shovel blade against the side of the bloodied shoulder. The fat man looked out the window as the night countryside flew out of the front circle of the halogen headlamps. His eyes stared from deep craters in a face with skin like compressed raisins. His eyes held no emotions, no curiosity and little intelligence, certainly no pity for the demolished human being next to him.

It's just a job.

The driver of the Lexus held the wheel loosely with his right hand, the left disappeared down his side to rest on the interior panel of the door. He kept the speed at a steady eighty on the night road, straight and long and numbingly boring. No traffic rolled at this hour. An occasional eighteen-wheeler, trying to make time toward an early morning delivery in Naples or Fort Myers, the only thing to break the monotony of Route 41, the Tamiami Trail cutting through the Everglades.

The driver was another hired hand, perhaps higher up, but still a hired hand. Dark features shone in the reflected light of the instrument panel, the thin mustache a black line above the slash of a mouth. The eyes caught your attention. Slightly bulging lids gave him a bit of a bug-eyed look. A nose with flaring nostrils betrayed the mixed blood of the Cuban Latino and the Miami African-American.

A passenger next to him wore the uniform of a Collier County Sheriff's deputy. The tag above the brown pocket read Schmus. The passenger's bulk filled the generous bucket seat. His stomach bulged over the beltline and a lower roll of fat rested against the regulation nine millimeter strapped in the holster attached to his belt. A crewcut flanked by military style whitewalls topped a face partially hidden by shaded glasses. Under the lenses, two small eyes peered out in a porcine brutish face that in these parts, screamed redneck. His hands fidgeted as he sat and darted quick glances at the driver and the fat man in the rear view mirror. Having to deal with Taylor and that big spade, Rollie rattled his nerves to no end.

Schmus believed Rollie was the second scariest man he had ever encountered. The first was that damned Richard Daniels and his Special Forces and Karate shit. Best thing about Daniels was that you rarely ever encountered him.

Taylor was something else. Schmus had dealt with him much too often for comfort since he got on his payroll. He smiled at the thought of the weekly envelope stuffed with six greenbacks, all with pictures of Grant.

Left turn coming up, Schmus said.

The driver slowed the car as a sign appeared, shining green and white in the headlights.

EVERGLADES CITY, ROUTE 29

The Lexus turned left, now heading west between the Visitor's Center and the all-night Texaco. Bouncing headlights cut a swath in the surrounding dense vegetation without penetrating the viscous dark.

Fucking boonies out here, gives me the creeps, the fat man said.

Wha'd you wanna do, dump him in Miami Square? Schmus replied, then to the driver, heads up, there's a trail coming up, you're going to make a right.

The driver braked as a little trail appeared, nothing more than a lighter spot in the thick, jungle night. The Lexus turned into it. Squeaking noises erupted as the suspension negotiated bumps and sand holes at walking speed. Branches and bushes rubbed against all sides of the car and wheels with scratchy, grinding noises. Schmus gave out a small shudder. It was like driving in an inkwell with ghosts on all sides.

The trail widened. Mangrove trees sprung around the Lexus. Branches and leaves twined above them in a black canopy that ended at the edge of a natural canal. Across the channel, no more than a dozen feet distant, the eyes of an alligator glittered like diamonds in murky water.

The driver opened the door and got out. His feet sank a few inches in the unseen ground muck. It was so dark that a man could believe dawn would never return. All around the car cicadas, frogs and God-knows-what chirped and chattered. Something screeched in the distance answered by a nearby splash in the canal. The alligator's eyes suddenly disappeared in a swirl of sooty black water and a slight breeze carried the scents of wet, tropical vegetation.

The fat man opened the door and dragged the passenger out. The battered man fell to his knees and pitched down, face first, in the grassy muck. Gurgled moans escaped from swollen lips as he sprawled in the illuminated oval of the Lexus' interior lights.

Just do it now, the driver said.

Where the hell's the Indian? the fat man replied.

He'll be here, guaranteed, Schmus said.

Yea, but still, he ain't here now.

The fat man reached in his pocket and pulled a small nickel-plated automatic, a .22 Caliber Saturday night special. Cheap and accurate to a maximum of about twenty feet, it glinted in the reflected light like a snake's fang.

Jesus, not now, not when I'm here, Schmus said.

The driver looked at him and laughed, a short barking joyless noise.

What do you think? You don't like, see it, it means you ain't involved Mister Deputy Fucking Sheriff. Well you know what? They'd fry you right with us. They expect this shit from people like us, not from you. Makes it worse, don't it, deputy?

Schmus turned his head. His face flushed and his eyes burned. He felt a tremor in his hands that soon spread to his forearms. All around them the rich smell of decaying vegetation and tidal-flat mud bathed them in a miasma of alien scents.

The fat man leaned down and jammed the barrel of the .22 against the base of the beaten man's skull and pulled the trigger. A loud, wet plopping noise, like a champagne cork popping in a bag of jelly, disrupted the night. The body settled into the black mud, inert as a sack of rocks. That was the beauty of the .22. Enough power to penetrate the skull, and rattle around causing massive damage with no exit wound. A momentary silence enveloped them, as if all the night creatures of the great swamp had paused to watch.

The fat man reached down and put two fingers around a thick silver chain tight on the dead man's neck. He tugged and cursed as the chain refused to break.

What the hell are you doing? asked the driver. Don't take shit from the man you just whacked. You wanna carry evidence on you?

The fat man shrugged and took his hand off the corpse's neck.

The Indian came out of nowhere. He'd been part of the surrounding blackness, just another unmoving shadow upon shadows. Tall with rangy muscles like knotted steel cables, dark face hidden in the night and head covered with a formless bandanna.

Shit, what the... said the driver, jumping back. His hand went to the butt of the .357 Magnum in his shoulder holster. The Indian ignored him, stepped around the Lexus, picked up the corpse by both arms and dragged it away into the night like a human Panther slinking off with its kill.

Let's get the hell out of here. This is too fucking weird, the driver said.

The fat man shrugged and got in the back. Schmus became aware of a stinging pain in the palm of his hands. He'd gouged out a little chunk of flesh with his nails.

It was there, in that moment, that Schmus felt a tilt in his world, a sentient feeling that ran below his normal senses. He was grateful for the darkness hiding the shudder passing through his body as he got back in the car.

In the stillness of the luxury auto's interior, they didn't hear the roar of an airboat engine starting as the Lexus backed out of the narrow trail.

Chapter 1

In the dark across the canal, shards of pain like lances of glass penetrated every inch of Bobby-Ray's skull. He felt it especially in the tender areas behind and above his eyelids. His head was on fire with the remains of Mr. Jim Beam, fine Kentucky sipping Bourbon, avenging itself in his system. He groaned softly and ran a hand over his face, feeling the small raw bumps. Not good to fall asleep in the Everglades where the mosquitoes were the size of small helicopters and aggressive as mad pit bulls.

Goddamn, he thought, as he sat up with a groan. This shit's going to kill me yet. Now that he was approaching the big Three-O, it seemed harder to recover. He didn't remember much about yesterday, barely recalled opening the quart bottle and the first drifting, beckoning whiff of fine sour mash. When the afternoon started that way you never knew where it would end, whose bed he'd wound up in, or this time, in the middle of the Everglades, passed out in his airboat with no idea how he'd gotten there.

It was black as the inside of a dead coalmine as a cloud cover snuck in and robbed away any starlight. He stood, held the center console and sniffed the air, senses alert as they could be under the vicious hangover. Something had wakened him, picked out by his subconscious as he slept.

Off to his left, about two hundred yards away, a moving glow of automobile headlamps appeared. Dimmed and reflected from the vegetation, the glow bobbed along slowly, bouncing with the difficulty of negotiating the primitive narrow path. It stopped at the canal's edge. Headlamps stabbed out over the water, promptly absorbed into thick darkness.

From the position of the car, Bobby-Ray had a good idea of where he was, anchored in one of the main canals that ran off the sides of Everglades City. He noted that his airboat was well under a large clump of overhanging Mangroves, invisible in the night swamp. The glowing dial of his commando watch read three AM. What the hell is a car doing here at the edge of the canal at this time, he thought. He picked a water bottle from its holder and splashed a little on his hands and rubbed it into his face as if it could chase away the pounding in his head. He frowned as the sound of a single shot washed over the canal. The noise, although muted, was distinctive and unmistakable as a 747 jet. It couldn't be poachers. There was nothing here so close to Everglades City. Game animals were much farther in the wooded areas. The most valuable thing in the Everglades, the big, protected alligators, would be well into the bogs, outlying canals and interconnecting ponds. Besides, you don't hunt them with a popgun. That had been a pistol shot, small caliber he guessed.

As Bobby-Ray watched, the car backed away and the headlight glow retreated until it disappeared over the rise that marked the beginning of the shoulders of US 29.

A few minutes later he heard the bellowing roar of an airboat engine.

Bobby-Ray was the product of the public schools and culture of Florida's Collier County that encompassed, much as it could, the Everglades. In the seventies and eighties, when Bobby-Ray attended, those schools had been notorious for their mediocrity. Even then, he'd dropped out at fifteen. There were only a few things that mattered in the life of the young males in that Southern backwash country, and education wasn't one of them. Drinking, fishing, guns and pussy were king, right up there along with another biggy: Cars and engines. Six years with the US Special Forces had done nothing to dampen his enthusiasms for all those things.

When Bobby-Ray heard the sudden roar of the airboat engine running straight pipes, he recognized it immediately: Chevy big block, 327, bored and stroked. The deeper whoom on acceleration told him dual Rochester Quads. Only one airboat engine like that in the Everglades.

White Hawk, AKA The Indian.

What the hell is going on, thought Bobby-Ray. Someone had met White Hawk on the edge of the canal, and a pistol shot had been fired. Now White Hawk was taking off in that souped up airboat, all at three in the morning.

Basic curiosity crowded out the little demons with stabbing pitchforks lurking behind Bobby-Ray's eyes. He reached into one of the side compartments and pulled out a helmet, goggles and a clip-on light attached by long wires to a power pack.

Bobby-Ray knew every inch of the sixteen-foot platform of Olive-Drab stainless steel and aluminum. He'd built it and equipped it all himself. In total darkness he clipped the light to the top of the propeller cage and flipped the on switch. A dull red glow shone out of the lamp and seemed to be immediately swallowed by the voracious blackness of the night. He put on the helmet, adjusted the goggles and turned them on.

The night immediately sprung bright and clear into the infrared goggles for fifty yards around him. It was like noontime under a green sun, but visible only to Bobby-Ray. He started the engine. That had been his special creation, a fuel injected Honda V-6, turbo-charged and muffled, driving a variable pitch aircraft propeller. The power plant faced the transom, enclosed within a stainless steel protective cage. He strapped himself in the console as he stood. The boat had no seats. Bobby-Ray engaged the drive and stepped on the accelerator. The engine let out a low pitched growling whine as the airboat shot out of the little cove into the canal.

He drove at three quarter throttle while the infrared generator lit the night all around him. Up ahead he could see the bobbing dim light of the single beam on White Hawk's boat. There wasn't a chance the Indian could hear his boat over the din of his own boat. Still, if he made a sudden stop, he might be able to hear the Honda's whine over the Chevy's deep-throated idle so he had to be careful.

The boats flew over the water, past Everglades National Park ranger station on the left, the tiny Everglades City airport on the right, and Billy's Marina a hundred yards or so farther down. The spread between the boats widened as Bobby-Ray slowed periodically, listening for White Hawk's engine noise. The Indian's single beam light grew dimmer and finally vanished. Now Bobby-Ray's boat emerged into the widening bay that marked the beginning of the Ten Thousand Islands.

Aptly named, the Ten Thousand Islands were an uncountable number of Mangrove islands interspersed by connecting ponds and natural canals, peat bogs, swamps and rivers of saw grass. Always shifting and changing, most of it poorly charted, the area was home to an amazing diversity of plant and animal wildlife, much of it dangerous. It's been said that the Everglades contain everything that can cure any illness and also much that can kill in blindingly painful seconds.

The needle on Bobby-Ray's tach hovered around 2400RPM. With the variable-pitch high performance propeller, it translated to a land speed of about forty miles per hour and still he was losing White Hawk's boat. Now he followed the signs of passage of the Indian's airboat, the crushed clumps of elephant grass and tamped down saw grass that had not had time to straighten. Large, sleeping great Blue Herons flashed by in the green world of the infrared goggles, the eyes glowing phosphorescent white.

The boats, now several miles apart, burst through the edge of the Ten Thousand Island regions.

As the sky began to lighten just a shade for the coming dawn, Bobby-Ray stopped the boat and took off the infrared equipment. Like a primitive bloodhound on the hunt he sniffed the air and listened. In the distance, dim as a muffled whisper, came the fading sound of an airboat engine. Dawn waited a couple of heartbeats away. There was enough light now so he could be spotted. Better to wait until White Hawk left and then see what he'd been up to. He had stopped long enough in that one spot up ahead. Bobby-Ray wanted to check it out. He could always catch up with the Indian if he had to.

Chapter 2

A lifetime of running in the Everglades had taught Bobby-Ray all the signs. He knew the great swamp like his favorite tee shirt. Following the thin reeds in the murky salt marsh, newly broken and crushed, he saw the wide trails of the big alligators and the patches of muddied brackish water that would take hours to settle. Just past the trailing end of Lostman's River, he found a pond flanked by two, partly concealed, alligator holes. Half a dozen turkey vultures pointed the way from the apex of shallow lazy circles. The giant birds' great wings rode low, warm currents, their buzzard heads fixed on the scene below with patient but ravenous anticipation.

Bobby-Ray idled the airboat to the commotion at the edge of the pond. Three great bull alligators trashed and sent mud splatters a dozen feet in the air. They fought and tore at something, the wide toothed jaws snapping and dismembering great gobs of flesh, bright white and red in the chalky pre-dawn light. The great reptiles liked what the Indian had dropped off. Shreds of cloth bobbed in the red-tinged water and off to the left, a shoe floated right side up. Remains of a human foot stuck out of it. A splintered white bone protruded in the air like some sort of obscene mast.

As the boat drifted closer, Bobby-Ray saw long, blue-gray ropes of intestine looped in the mouth of the largest reptile. Engaged in this harrowing feeding frenzy, the big gators ignored the airboat slowly drifting into their midst. Now he saw several smaller alligators on the outskirts of the action, waiting for morsels to drift out and for their larger relatives to be sated. Next to the biggest one, most of a human head, neck and part of one shoulder bobbed slowly in the roiling brown and pink water. Of course, they would go for the softer tissues first.

Bobby-Ray kicked open a side compartment with his foot. A slat came down, weighted with an assortment of a half dozen grenades held in plastic ties. Next to the explosives rested an Israeli-made Uzi. Everything he needed for the occasional work he did for Richard Daniels.

He picked a non-lethal flash-banger grenade. This type of weapon was normally used in hostage situations. The grenade emitted an intolerably loud explosion and blinding flash. It was meant to stun without killing.

With the notable exception of certain deserving humans, Bobby-Ray never killed anything he wasn't going to eat. As for the alligators, well, they just did what alligators do.

The flash-bang immediately ended the feeding frenzy. The big reptiles swam away with amazing speed. A ten-foot bruiser ran on the slight embankment and disappeared in the tall saw grass.

The temperature climbed rapidly. Drops of sweat beaded on Bobby-Ray's face and dripped off his nose. He reached into the murky water. Wisps of fast-dissipating tendrils of blood dripped away as he pulled the head by what was left of the hair. Great chunks of flesh had been torn from the face exposing skull bones and upper teeth. The lower jaw was gone. As he turned the revolting bloody remains, he saw the back of the head was intact. A half-dollar size entry wound clearly told him how the man had died.

Bobby-Ray felt a wave of sadness wash over him like a forlorn spirit. He'd seen plenty of violent death in four years of Special Forces covert operations. Much of it he had inflicted himself. But the end of this stranger, dumped as so much refuse to be devoured by reptiles, gripped him to the quick. He just hoped the poor bastard had been dead when White Hawk dropped him among the alligators.

Sometimes, the sudden and surprising depths of his emotions, rising like Leviathans out of the abyss of his psyche, amazed Bobby-Ray. Yet he understood their power and essential rightness in ways he would deny and could never try to explain.

Bobby-Ray thought briefly about bringing the remains back, but for what? How would he explain it? There were already some law enforcement agencies looking to question him about some incidents with Richard Daniels and that Mexican psycho associate of his, Carlos. No my friend, thought Bobby-Ray. I can't risk the problems just to bring a couple of pounds of your poor dead ass to some coroner so they can write down you're officially dead.

He noticed an amulet on a chain around what was left of the neck. Somehow it had clung to its owner's neck with a life of its own. He reached with his commando knife, cut the chain and placed the amulet in his pocket. He gently lowered the grisly remains back in the water. Maybe he could track this guy's family, if he had any, and let them know it was over.

It was then,