Mud sucked our shoes off in the first hundred yards, but we kept after them, Major Lacey calling in our location and direction of travel over a two-way radio.
“Coast Guard has birds in the air,” Lacey said with a gasp as we fought to stay somewhere in range of Whitaker’s band of fleeing Regulators.
“Here’s big blood,” said Sampson, shining light on a splash near a tan reed. “And more there. She’s really starting to throw it now.”
Chapter
101
Cass was struggling. Colonel Whitaker could hear the liquid building in her lungs with every breath.
“Leave me, Jeb,” she said. “I don’t think I can make it.”
Squinting to adjust the fit of his night-vision goggles, Whitaker grabbed her under the elbow. He ignored the fire in his knee and fought forward through the muck, following their back trail through the reeds as well as Hobbes and Fender, who’d gotten ahead of them.
“We just have to make the Zodiacs, Cass,” Whitaker said. “Even if they bring in a Coast Guard cutter, they can’t cover the whole mouth of that creek. We’ll sneak out running electric. We’ll disappear in the storm.”
Cass stumbled and went to her knees. She coughed, and through the night-vision goggles, Whitaker saw black sprays of blood blow from her lips.
“Jesus,” he said, starting to panic. “Jesus.”
“Leave me, Colonel.” Cass gasped.
“Can’t do that, Captain,” he said, trying to get her up.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll find me. They’ll make sure I live.”
After a beat, Whitaker let her go. He took one long last look at Cass in the green hazy light of his goggles, pointed his rifle, and shot her through the head.
Chapter
102
We heard the rifle shot loud and clear, so close it helped get us back on the track when we’d lost it. I cupped my hand over the Maglite to keep it from being seen and pushed on until I heard a sudden choked cry behind me.
I twisted around and saw Sampson about six yards back, struggling, his right leg buried to the thigh in the muck.
“I’m stuck,” he said, grimacing. “Shit. Some kind of root. Go!”
“We’ll come back for him,” Lacey said, pushing by me.
The rain began again, and the major and I forged on through the sea of reeds, seeing blood every six or seven yards until we came upon the woman we’d seen in the images from the Guryev massacre. Blond now. There was a bullet hole in her skull.
“Whitaker can’t be far,” Lacey said and took off in front of me again.
I wanted to tell him to slow down, not to let his headlamp dance so far ahead of him. But the major was a man on a mission, driven to stop that nerve agent from leaving his army base.
After another hundred yards of slogging on, Lacey disappeared around a dogleg bend in the stomped-down trail through the marsh.
I reached the turn and heard the major yell, “Put
down your weapons, or I’ll shoot!”
I ran forward in time to hear close gunfire and see Major Lacey knocked off his feet. He landed in the trail ahead of me and lay there, unmoving.
I shut my light off and listened.
“Got that bastard,” I heard one of them say.