I whispered his name. "Joey?"

Nothing.

His left arm appeared to be wedged between his ribs and the driver's door; his right was tucked in front of him, pressed between his stomach and the steering wheel.

Water splashed as one of the Bodines stepped out onto the roadbed, and I could hear his voice clearly. "Okay, d.a.m.nit. I'm going."

Feet sloshed through water, and I began frantically scanning the inside of the cab for my Browning automatic. But nothing was where it had been. The seat where I had been was clear, except for thousands of diamond-sized shards of windshield gla.s.s. The floorboard was strewn with shattered bits of plastic and metal, with fragments of electronics and heating and air-conditioning parts. Even Willie's riot gun was gonea"shot through the rear window, taking the gun rack with it.

A door slammed, and I pulled up onto the side of the truck bed and peeked inside. Willie's twelve-gauge Benelli lay propped against my dive bag like the hand of G.o.d had placed it there for me. All I had to do was get to it without catching a bullet in the process.

I caught a flash of color and dropped down as the smaller Bo-dine came around the front of his smashed grill and approached Joey's window.

"This one, the driver, looks dead."

I heard another door open, and the larger man's voice came from inside the Blazer. "Which one is it?"

"It's the big sonofab.i.t.c.h."

Water sloshed as the bigger Bodine stepped out onto the road and then slammed his door shut. "What about the lawyer?"

The little man said, "He ain't here. Looks like he got slung out when we hit 'em."

"No sign of him?"

"None I can see. Probably on the bottom of the swamp."

"I told you to slow down. We didn't need to wreck both G.o.dd.a.m.n trucks to stop 'em."

The little one wanted to argue some more. "You said ram 'em. You didn't say b.u.mp 'em a little, and I'm tired of you riding my a.s.s about it."

The big man cussed and said, "Well, pull him out of there, and let's get the road cleared."

"The h.e.l.l with that. This guy's bigger than you are. You come up here and pull his big a.s.s out."

I heard the big man sloshing toward the truck. "You're a useless little s.h.i.t. You know that?" The water sounds stopped. "He is big, though, isn't he?"

"I told you."

The mechanical click of the door handle being lifted sounded unnaturally loud in the still swamp, and a deep moan came from inside the cab.

The small man yelled, "s.h.i.t! He's alive."

I reached up and grabbed the top edge of the truck bed and sprang up out of the water with all the power left in my aching legs. My knees caught on the side, and I spun into the truck bed and scrambled for the twelve-gauge.

One of the men screamed like a woman. My hands found the shotgun, and I jumped up to see the big man spinning my way with a short double-barrel. I lowered the Benelli to fire, but the double-barrel exploded first as Joey's door flew open and slammed into both men, sending a load of buckshot straight up and knocking both men over backward into the water. The big man managed to lift up his shotgun and blindly blast one of Willie's tractor tires before he sank out of sight.

I stood in the truck bed with the Benelli trained on the swirling water. I called out, "Joey?"

"Yeah." His voice sounded tight and strained.

"You okay?"

"I'm not dead."

Seconds pa.s.sed before the two men surfaced ten or twelve feet from where they'd gone in. They had been trying to swim away underwater. Now they gasped in air and spun in the muck looking for me and the shotgun. I called out. "Where the h.e.l.l do you think you're going?" They didn't answer. "You've got nowhere to go."

The smaller man yelled, "Help."

Joey's strained voice came again. "Help yourself, you little p.r.i.c.k."

I said, "I'm not going to shoot you. Swim to the road."

The smaller man almost cried. "I can't make it."

I said, "Then don't," and jumped down out of the truck bed and sloshed up to Joey's open door.

Joey was sitting back now. His pale gray eyes were shining through a mask of blood and windshield glitter.

I said, "I thought you were dead."

"Thought same thing about you." He spoke with his teeth clenched. "Better keep watchin' the water."

I nodded and turned to watch the two men flail around in the swamp. I asked, "How bad are you? Looks like a broken jaw."

Joey's voice sounded even weaker than before. "Yeah. And something's wrong with my left leg. Can't move much."

I nodded. "We'll take the Blazer. Get you to a doctor."

"You gonna drive right over Willie's truck?"

Willie's monster truck was completely blocking the only way out. I said, "We could try to push it out of the way with the Blazer, but we could end up with both trucks underwater." Joey was quiet. "I guess there's probably somewhere to turn around along here, but..."

I looked back, and Joey just shrugged.

I went on, "...we don't know where it is."

"And we been having enough trouble just staying on the road in here."

"So, I guess we load you into the Blazer. And, since the road's underwater and we don't know anywhere to turn around, I get to try to drive backward through this mess until we hit dry land."

Joey tried to smile and grimaced instead. All he got out was, "Sounds pretty stupid."

"Yeah."

Joey motioned toward the Bodines, who had made it up onto the road and were sitting in water up to their chests and catching their breath. "What're we gonna do with those two?"

I said, "I thought I'd tie them up and toss them in the back of Willie's truck and leave them here."

Joey said, "Now that's a good idea."

Three hundred yards and thirty minutes later, I backed the Bodines smashed and smoking Blazer onto dry land. After pulling up onto the sandy roadbed, I put the Blazer in park and turned to check on Joey, who was laid out on the backseat. When I turned, Joey had his hand down the front of his pants.

I said, "Bored?"

Joey just unzipped his pants and said, "Turn around."

"Would you two like some privacy?"

"f.u.c.k you. Something's trying to hook on to my unit."

"Leech?"

"Yeah."

"You okay?"

"Do I f.u.c.king look okay?"

"I don't know. You made me turn around. Not that I really want to get a good look at this." I heard Joey roll down the window and flick something out. "You get it?"

"Yeah."

I was laughing. "Well, can I turn around now?"

Joey said, "You know, it really ain't funny."

I turned around and said, "Actually, it kind of is."

"You know," Joey said, "you were in the water a lot more than I was."

I stopped laughing and got out of the Blazer. After a short inspection, I climbed back in and said, "I tried the flip phone. It's a goner. I don't know what else to do but try to get to a phone or maybe a CB at Carpintero's compound and see if I can get a Life-saver Helicopter or a boat to come out here and get you."

Joey just nodded.

"You got a better idea?"

Joey reached up to rub at his eyes. "Nope."

"How far is it to the compound?"

"Not far. You can keep driving until just before you get to this little bridge. There's a place there you can pull off and hide the Blazer." I guess he saw the worry on my face because he added, "I ain't gonna be any safer here than I am there, and you'll have the vehicle close by."

I turned around in the driver's seat and maneuvered the rickety gearshift into first. "So," I said, "I guess it's time to meet the Hammer."

chapter thirty-three.

It was almost eight o'clock when the little bridge came into sight. I pulled off into a stand of scrub pine, and Joey told me as much as he could about the compound's layout. I left my cut, bruised, and broken friend stretched out on the backseat of a stolen vehicle with Willie's Benelli twelve-gauge across his chest.

I took Joey's little Walther PPK and started out through the underbrush to the camp's perimeter. Joey told me there would be one guard at the entrance. So I circled around to the side of the compound and, keeping a huge Butler Building between me and the road, moved into the clearing.

Running low and feeling ridiculous, I checked out the buildings for communication equipment. One warehouse was just thata"full of machinery, firearms, and rum and more cigars than I thought were in the world. The cavernous metal building was stuffed with all the things the Bodines had been smuggling in, things in demand on the black market. The second warehouse was the weird one. Padlocks secured both doors, but large windows had been mounted in opposite walls, and morning light flooded the place. It looked like a high school chemistry lab full of long tables with beakers and test tubes and electronic machinery. From the window, I could see three desktop computers.

Besides the warehouses, there were two smaller buildings. One looked like a makeshift home, with a porch across the front and a vintage Mercedes and a new Explorer parked out front. An old air-conditioning unit droned in a side window.

The other smaller building had a porch, too, but looked emptya"if it's possible for a building to look empty from the outside. But that's how it looked; so that's where I went. And that's where I found an unlocked door, four filing cabinets, a metal desk, and one beige telephone.

I placed a long-distance call to Loutie in Mobile and made sure the first words out of my mouth were that Joey was going to be fine. As I was downplaying his injuries, Loutie interrupted. "Tom. I know you'll take care of Joey, but you need to know something. Joey's buddy at the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office called."

"About Willie?"

Loutie sounded scared. "Don't interrupt, Tom. Somebody could be after you right now. When the deputy got to your house, Willie was gone. And he didn't break out. Somebody had used your key to let him out."

I said, "So he wasn't there alone."

"Doesn't look like it."

"And they could have been behind us all the way. Is that what you're saying?"

Loutie said, "I'm saying they could be watching you right now."

I said, "Loutie. About Joey. We need to get somebody out here..."

I froze in midsentence as the door to the shack swung open and Willie Teeter pointed an autoloading shotgun at my gut.

I put the phone back in its cradle and said, "h.e.l.lo, Willie. I was just talking about you."

Then a strange thing happened. Willie pulled a silver whistle from his hip pocket and blew a shrill, piercing blast.

Through the door over Willie's shoulder, I saw three young mena"all about Willie's agea"sprint out of the woods and onto the cleared grounds of the compound, where they dropped to their stomachs and pointed guns at nothing in particular.

I asked, "Playing army?"

Willie was back to his tough-guy mode. "Let's go outside."

I said, "There's a guard out there."

Willie smiled. "Not anymore. Move."

As we pa.s.sed through the doorway, a big, baby-faced, football-player-looking kid stepped up onto the porch. I said, "So. I guess you're the young Turks."

Willie smiled again. "No. We're 'The Sequel.' You know, better, bigger, even more explosions."