“He don’t look like a cop,” said Trinity in a stage whisper.
“And those aren’t government plates,” said Daniel.
From the stern, Pat said, “Can you see my front door?”
“Just a little further,” said Daniel. “OK, stop.”
Pat jammed the long pole deep in the muck, held the boat fast.
There was a man crouched below Pat’s living room window, gun in hand. Two more men stood by the front door. The white guy holding a pistol, the black guy a tactical shotgun.
The black guy was Samson Turner.
“Shit,” Trinity whispered to Pat, “that’s the guy who tried to kill us. Let’s get the hell out of here!”
Pat shook his head. His face was unnaturally calm. “They’re already dead, they just don’t know it yet.”
Trinity’s eyes were wide with fear. He whispered, “No, no, we should just leave.”
“And they’ll just come after you again,” said Pat. He handed the pole to Trinity. “Now shut up, take this, hold us in place.” Then he gestured to Daniel. “Switch with me.”
As Daniel crept to the stern, Pat knelt in the bow and brought his assault rifle into position, clicked off the safety, and looked down the sight. He spoke under his breath, “Come on, look in the window, you know you want to…” The man crouching beneath the living room window started to raise his left arm. “That’s it, just pull yourself up for a little peek…”
The man started to rise, reached up to grab the security bars outside the window. He jerked against the bars, convulsing violently as a high-voltage crackle shattered the quiet. He convulsed again, his mouth open in a silent scream, and finally let go of the bars and collapsed to the ground, smoke rising from his dead hand.
The white guy on the porch said, “What the fuck?” and squared his body to the front door. He lifted his right leg and pivoted on his left foot and kicked the door handle. After a quarter-second of silence, there was a muffled
Pat clicked the safety on, handed the gun to Daniel, and took the helm, cranking the airboat’s motor to life.
“Leave it,” he said to Trinity, and Trinity let go of the aluminum pole that was holding them in place. Pat gunned the throttle and they took off down the bayou, the flat hull of the airboat skimming over thick vegetation, Daniel and Trinity holding onto the gunwales with each turn, wind whipping their hair.
A few minutes later, Pat cut the throttle and pulled up to another narrow spit of land, this one overgrown foliage and a rickety old cedar-shingle fishing cabin that listed to one side, braced from falling by three four-by-four beams that angled up from the ground.
Edgar jumped ashore first, followed by the men. Pat tied the boat to the exposed root of a cypress and led them to the cabin. “My safe house,” he said.
“Doesn’t look so safe,” said Trinity.
“That’s the whole point,” said Pat, digging a key ring out of his pocket. He put out a hand and stopped Trinity. “Wait.” He pressed a button on the key fob remote, and the entire front wall of the cabin began to rise like a garage door.
Behind the decrepit facade was a cinderblock structure with a metal garage door. Inside, another green Subaru Forester. Large metal cabinets lined one wall, and a Fort Knox gun safe stood in the corner.
Pat tossed the keys to Daniel. “You’ll find clothes and bottled water in the cabinets. I’ll go home and clean up the mess, meet you in New Orleans tomorrow.”
“There could be another guy or two waiting for you. We didn’t see if someone went around back.”
“Be dead by now. Once I set the defense system, nobody gets off my property alive.” Pat let out a grim smile. “Gotta go feed the gators.”
“OK. I’ll call your cell.”
Pat took the pistol off his belt, handed it to Daniel. “You’ve shot this one before, you know how it works.”
Daniel stared at the gun in his hand. The same gun he’d killed three men with in Honduras.
It felt better in his hand than it should have.
“Tim, there hasn’t been another car on the road for eight miles,” said Daniel. “Put it in the glove box.”
“Oh,” Trinity sounded distracted, “OK, good idea.” But he didn’t.
“Or keep fidgeting with it until you accidentally shoot one of us.”
“Right. OK.” This time he put the gun away. “Sorry. Guess I’m a little rattled, now it’s sinking in. That was… that was pretty close back there.”
“Yes it was.”
Trinity lit a cigarette. “Those men sure died ugly.”
“Yes they did.”
They rode in silence for a while. Trinity turned on the radio and found a talk station.
Trinity turned the radio off, shaking his head. “Memphis? What the hell would I be doing in Memphis?”
“Hey, it’s good news,” said Daniel. “The more people think you’re in Memphis, the better.”
They fell back into silence for a minute. Trinity shifted in his seat. “Danny, I, uh…” He gestured to the glove box. “I asked Pat about Honduras.”
“He tell you?” Daniel kept his eye on the road, but caught Trinity’s nod in his peripheral. “Good. Not my favorite story to tell. He tell you I freaked out?”
“He said you kept your shit together like a pro, and he wouldn’t have survived without your help.”
Daniel smiled. “Yeah, I did all that. And then I freaked out.”
“Probably a healthy reaction,” said Trinity, “certainly a normal one. You were almost killed.”
“Wasn’t that kind of freak-out.”
“Moral crisis?”
“Identity crisis,” said Daniel. “When it happened I was terrified of course, and the killing was horrible…”
“But?”
“But beyond the normal stress reaction, I was actually OK with it. I couldn’t convince myself that I’d done wrong.”
“You hadn’t,” said Trinity. “What, you’re supposed to turn the other cheek?
“Yes.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I was a priest. We’re supposed to emulate Jesus.”
“Even if it means dying.”
“Especially if it means dying.”
Trinity threw his hands up. “What can I say? You Catholics have some crazy ideas.”
“Everybody’s got crazy ideas, Tim.”
“True.” He gave Daniel an avuncular wink.
“Anyway, it’s in the past where it belongs. But you were right, what you said before in Atlanta. I was a priest for the wrong reasons…and I’ve known it a long time. But every morning I woke up and made the decision to be a priest. And now…Now I just can’t keep making that decision anymore.
