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't get a line on both at once, but if he took down Pendergast first, the woman would not present much of a challenge.
Shifting slightly, he maneuvered the scope so that Pendergast's back was centered on the crosshairs, and readied himself for the shot.
Hayward crouched behind the rotting trunk as the light swung back and forth in the darkness, moving erratically.
Pendergast whispered in her ear. 'I think that light's on a pole.'
'A pole?'
'Yes. Look at the curious way it's bobbing. It's a ruse. And that confirms there's a second shooter.' Suddenly he grabbed her and shoved her down into the shallow water, her face in the muck. Half a second later she heard a shot just overhead, the dull thud of a bullet hitting wood.
With desperate movements, she followed Pendergast as he crawled through the muck and then wedged himself up behind a tangle of roots, pulling her next to him. More shots came, this time from both forward and behind, tearing through the roots in two directions.
'This cover's no good,' gasped Hayward.
'No, it isn't. We can't stay here--it's only a matter of time until one of those bullets finds its mark.'
'But what can we do?'
'I'm going to take out the shooter behind us. When I leave, I want you to count ninety seconds, fire, count another ninety, then fire again. Don't bother aiming--it's the noise I require. Take care your muzzle flash is concealed... and then,
'Got it.'
With a flash Pendergast disappeared into the swamp. A fresh burst of gunfire rang out in response.
Hayward counted to ninety and then, keeping the rifle muzzle low, fired. The .45-70 roared and kicked back, surprising her with its noise, the sound echoing and scattering through the swamp. In answer, a fusillade of bullets tore through the roots just above her head and she burrowed down in the muck, and then she heard Pendergast's answering fire to her left, his .45 blasting into the night. The fire shifted away from her. The light bobbed but did not advance.
She counted again, pulled the trigger, and a second roar from the heavy-caliber rifle split the air.
Once again, the fire came her way and was answered by a rapid tattoo of shots from Pendergast, this time from a different place. The light had still not moved.
Hayward turned, crouched in the muck, and took aim at the light with exquisite care. Slowly, she squeezed the trigger, the gun roared, and the light dissolved in a shower of sparks.
Immediately she was up and moving as fast as she could through the heavy, sucking mud toward where the light had been. She could hear Pendergast firing furiously behind her, pinning down the rearward shooter.
A pair of shots clipped through a stand of ferns next to her; she charged ahead, rifle at the ready, and then burst through the ferns to find the shooter crouching in a shallow-draft boat. He turned toward her in surprise and
