?Are they truly safe, Kelly??
?Absolutely. I?'ve checked on them twice today.?
?It looks like things are changing fast.?
Kelly squats beside me, his eyes intense. ?Personal protection is what Blackhawk was founded on. They?ve never lost a client, and they can?t afford to now. Especially people related to someone who can make as much noise as you can.?
?I don'?t feel reassured.?
?Me either,? says Caitlin.
Kelly squeezes my shoulder. ?I know the guys guarding them, Penn. Both shifts. Even if someone at the company gave out information, these guys would take out anybody who made a move.?
?What if Blackhawk people showed up at the door??
Kelly licks his lips, then seems to take a silent decision. ?Look, they'?re not even where the company thinks they are, okay? Not anymore. As soon as I got the call about that bounceback on the Sands query, I told the guys to move them.?
My heart begins to race. ?So you
worried.?
?No. I just don'?t take chances. Annie?s fine, man. I told you how to make her truly safe. Stick to the plan. When you get this deep in, only one thing can get you out. Leverage.?
?You made that plan before you got the text message.?
?The message changes nothing.?
?
You?re ready to lose your job over this??
Kelly?s blue eyes are as steady as a man?s can be. ?I took that risk the minute I moved Annie and your mother. I don'?t know who?s protecting Jonathan Sands, but I know this: They?re on the wrong fucking side.?
CHAPTER
31
The river is black glass tonight, and I'm thankful for it. It?s been three months since I?'ve been on water in anything but a ski boat, and then only on a lake. We put in our kayaks a half mile above the city, on the Louisiana side of the river. The western shore is dark except for the digital depth markers the push boat pilots use to find the main channel. The sky to the south glows from the ambient light of Natchez. The air over the water is chilly and calm, but high above us black clouds are scudding across the face of the moon.
Kelly paddles beside me with smooth assurance, like a wingman flying escort. He learned his moves when his Delta team did an exchange program with Britain?s Special Boat Squadron; their commandos taught him the mysteries of handling small craft of all types. Our kayaks are Seda gliders, nineteen-foot touring boats with razor bows that move through the water like Kevlar arrows. With a seasoned paddler in the cockpit, they can do twelve miles an hour going downstream. The steamboats of the 1870s moved only slightly faster than this. I'm a recreational paddler, but I?'ve mastered the art of powering the boat with my torso and hips, using the rudder pedals as braces for my long touring stroke. Kelly uses a power stroke, keeping his offset blades close to the kayak throughout his movement.
We can easily talk as we paddle, as long as he stays within ten or
fifteen feet of me, which he has made a point of doing. Kayaks are inherently unstable, and push boats can throw up four-foot waves in their wake as they drive their barges up and down the river. I can almost feel Kelly tensing to perform a rescue every time our boats hit a boil in the otherwise smooth river.
We almost scrubbed tonight?s mission five minutes before we put the kayaks in the river. That was when I confessed to Kelly that I?d contacted my closest friend in the FBI about Jonathan Sands. I probably wouldn'?t have risked it if it weren?t a Sunday, but I knew Peter Lutjens would be home with his family, and not in the Puzzle Palace?FBI headquarters?where he works in the IT department of the National Security Division. The result wasn'?t what I?d hoped for. In less than two hours, Lutjens called back and told me that no information could be given out about Sands under any circumstances, and I should be very careful whom I questioned about him.
I was about to hang up when Lutjens asked about Annie. I answered briefly, and then we chatted for a while about his son, who was having trouble with a science project. Lutjens told a lengthy anecdote about a next-door neighbor who?d turned out to be a retired physicist, who?d helped the boy finish the project. ?Sometimes,? Lutjens concluded, ?help comes from the most unexpected places.? I thanked him for his time, wondering what he could mean by that. Whatever he meant, it?s unlikely to help us on the river tonight.
Our kayaks glide past the northern reaches of Vidalia and Natchez almost without sound, the lights of the houses on Clifton Avenue glittering above us. Three-quarters of a mile to our left, the casino boats line the foot of the bluff, spaced about evenly for almost a mile. First comes the
then the
the
and finally the
I think of Tim as I pass the
because the cemetery sits on the ground high above it, but guilt will not help me tonight. Kelly didn't even want me along, and I mean to prove that I won'?t slow him down.
Danny McDavitt and Carl Sims are somewhere in the sky to the south of us, shadowing the VIP boat. Danny must be flying very high or very low because I can?t hear his helicopter. Our journey has been a milk run so far, but that will soon change, and knowing that Carl is riding shotgun in the chopper with his sniper rifle gives me a sense of confidence I might otherwise lack.
?Looking good,? Kelly says, his voice coming clear over the water. ?You feeling okay??
?Yeah. Trying to get used to working the rudder again.?
?The real work?s below the waist.?
?I feel it.?
As the twin bridges slide past high above our heads, Kelly stops paddling and adjusts the ear bud connected to the Star Trek in his pocket.
?Any word from Danny and Carl?? I ask.
?The VIP boat?s still cruising south, but not in any hurry.?
He pulls back a piece of canvas and checks the GPS unit Velcroed to the coaming of his boat. ?We?'ve been doing six miles an hour. Not bad, but let?s see if we can find some faster water.?
His kayak shoots forward without apparent extra effort on his part, then turns toward the middle of the river. I grip my two-bladed paddle and pull as strongly as I can, trying to stay up with him. On a river as broad as the Mississippi, the surface moves at different speeds in different places. Soon we?re moving at a steady nine miles per hour, and the lights of the town fall quickly behind us.
The land beyond the levee to our right is all former plantation land, and most of it?s still farmed today. From faintly silhouetted landmarks such as grain silos, I can tell we?re passing the old Morville Plantation, the one my father mentioned as a den of white slavery and gambling in the 1960s. Remembering this gives me a feeling of futility, as though Tim?s effort to stop what he saw as the rape of his hometown was nothing more than a vain quest to fight vices that will always be with us. The ironies are almost unbearable, if I think about them. Kelly and I are paddling this river to photograph men committing illegal cruelty upon animals, in order to ?save? a city built upon the
