For MamaBirdCat. A story challenge featuring Low Light.
The Usual Disclaimer: don't own not making a profit
The Road Goes on Forever: The Highwaymen
Chapter Thirty Eight
Angel of Death
1723
Vorona was breathless by the time General Hawk let her go. It took all she had to run the ten miles from the top of the limestone cairn to the starting line where the filming of American Sniper was taking place. She was muddy and scratched showing just how dangerous the journey was. Pine needles stuck to her clothes and tangled her hair. More importantly her face was a mass of bruises that left one eye shut. She was breathing so hard she had to lean her hands on her knees to keep from throwing up. Her heart was beating a mile a minute. Beachhead and General Hawk let her catch her breath.
He watched as she gulped in deep breaths of air.
"Vorona! Report!" General Hawk said.
"He took him! He took Trick Shot General Hawk!" She said.
"Who? Who took Trick Shot?" General Hawk said.
"God! It was God!" Vorona said.
General Hawk growled.
Behind him the director and his make-up artist Mary were being interrogated by Beachhead. Two of his best soldiers were missing and now Vorona was pointing at them. The blond director with the black goatee and diamond earrings crouched down making him less of a target. Beachhead could intimidate even the hardest seasoned soldier. This wasn't what he signed up for when he agreed to direct the last season of American Sniper. It took six loud strides before General Hawk stood in front of him. The man cowered holding his hands up. Hawk stepped closer. The director was holding his hands up backing away from him. General Hawk heard a quiet waterfall of urine spread down the director's leg that left his male skinny jeans black with piss.
General Hawk screwed his face up in disgust.
"I don't know what you're talking about, man. I was just sent out by P.J. I didn't know it was God! Fuck man you have to believe me! This wasn't in the script! Hell the man never said anything! How was I supposed to know he was Mother Fucking GOD!I didn't know it would be like this." He said. "I had nothing to do with it man, I swear! Please don't kill me."
He wiped snot bubbles on his sleeve before General Hawk called his soldiers over.
"Ehrenstein take this pathetic excuse away. Lifeline go see how Vorona is doing. Cover Girl keep a watch on that make-up artist. Beachhead you're with me. I need to know everything you know and I need to know it now. You're the only one that knows where Low Light is going. We have to stop him before he does something he regrets. That includes God and Knight." He said.
"Yes SIR!" Beachhead said.
They ran in double time to carry out his orders in a way most Generals would envy.
"Yo Joe!" They said.
But it was Beachhead that took the wheel.
They were in the Hum Vee heading towards Florida when the rain started again. The tropical depression gained momentum with the heat of the Florida Keys stretching along Fort Lauderdale to North Carolina. It dragged like a slow motion mechanical toy that sent weathermen from CNN and Fox News to cover every beach and sand dune this side of the East Coast. By that time Low Light could see his Harley Davidson Road King. The bike still flashed its flashers in the rain. He dumped the Hum Vee to the side of the road and kicked it in gear. He couldn't take the chance that the truck was bugged. He skidded on the oil slicked shoulder putting his blinker on towards the cut off at highway 95. He wouldn't stop until he hit Cape Canaveral. That was where God was holding Trick Shot. He just knew it. That was where they would meet.
Highway 95 skirted along the coast along the old A1A that ran from St Augustine to Key West. It would only end at mile marker zero. In that time Low Light reached the exit for Daytona, Cocoa Beach, and Kennedy Space Center. That was where he ended. The Space Coast consisting of Cape Canaveral and Titusville were across the bridge leading to the natural sanctuary. He merely had to cross the bridge and he would be in the wetlands of the Indian River. The silos of NASA were in front of him. They were blank and unused. Low Light slowed and stopped along an easement. God's white paneled RV glowed in the night. The rain hit the metal like a shower of sparks. Low Light walked slowly around it. He had his side arm out. When he opened the door he held it up at eyesight. It was empty.
Outside he could hear the calls of bull alligators groaning against the shreee shreee shree of tree frogs. A snowy egret took flight from the reeds in a flash of ozone. That was all the light he needed before he saw the drag marks leading to the water. He followed them until they disappeared. His boots sloshed when he stepped in the water giving slow gurgling bubbles as his feet filled with water. There was a moment of silence as the chirps and shrieks stopped until there was just the sound of rain on the water.
Low Light's face was just above the water line hiding in the thick roots of a mangrove swamp. From here he could look out at the river waiting for God to make his next move. His grey eyes flashed in the lightening only to be covered by the frond of palmetto. To the naked eye he was unseen and unheard. He stood absolutely still. The water ran down his face. Ahead of him was the factory of P.J. Knight. He didn't move until the chirps and shrieks started up again. He took a step. His boots sank to a bottom made of mud and leaves. Beneath that was a cover of sand that threatened to suck his boots off. He waded in a quiet swish with his sniping rifle held over his head.
The shot came out of nowhere. Low Light bent until his face was covered up to his nose in water.
"Olly Olly Oxen free!"
He heard.
It was Pete.
"Look what I have Mac!"
Low Light heard a body hit the water to his right side with a wave that spread in a circle towards the coast line. It would be Trick Shot. The water sound in a struggle as the kid fought to get to his feet. He sounded like a trapped fish. With that much noise he would attract every alligator in a five mile radius. Low Light cussed. He mentally willed the kid to stay still. They didn't have much time. Without his scope he was going in blind.
"Hold still Dixon!" He grit. Already the groans of bull alligators went silent.
"Don't worry about me! Get God unggghhh….."
The splashing stopped.
"You know your kid isn't exactly the quietest one in the field. You'll have to do something about that. Why I bet he can be heard from here to Sierra Gordo. You remember Sierra Gordo right Mac?"
The splash came to his left side.
Low Light crouched down and made a one hundred and eighty degree mark. The water slid up from his abdomen to his armpits. The splashing came closer before it stopped. It was loud to his right. Low Light focused. The image of two white legs filled his vision before the grey heron lifted to the sky.
"Yeah I remember Pete. I remember everything." Low Light said.
The only chance he had without his night vision goggles and his scope was to keep Pete talking so that he could locate him by sound. The noise came from his left side. God knew that Low Light was partially deaf in that ear and he took advantage of it. The approach caught him by surprise.
He held onto Trick Shots neck with his Barrett M90. The kid was battered and bruised but still alive. It was all Low Light could do to keep from watching him suffocate.
"Well what about that." God said.
"I always thought you would be the one. From the minute I saw you twenty years ago I knew it would be you. It took everything I had to watch you throw it all away. You have no idea how many times I watched you Mac. And each time you gave it up. It was either booze or some easy pussy but every time I thought it would be different before you went back at it. The Boy Scout knew though. That friend of yours would lay down his life for you. With someone with as good of a pair of eyes of yours I'm surprised you didn't see it."
He pulled harder at Trick Shot's throat before he jerked his chin to the darkness.
He started.
"Then came the kid. A talent like his only comes around once in a lifetime. The kid's a real natural. I got lucky to see it twice. I tell you what you give me that scope of yours and I'll give you your kid back."
"He's not my kid Pete." Low Light said.
"Good. Then this will make it easier." God said.
Dixon didn't have a chance to think about it before he was shoved under the water. The only thing he could think of was to take a deep breath. There was a roar in his ears that swallowed his senses making every point of direction upside down. He thought his lungs would explode from inhaling river water. His eyes burned with a mix of fresh and salt water. He could feel the silt of leaves and mud through his fingers as he clawed at the bottom. He heard the drop of an alligator coming right at him.
He didn't have time to think about it. He was drowning.
His head grew foggy.
There was the time he was just a lowly green shirt standing guard on day shift on top of the Pit. Low Light barely acknowledged him. Trick Shot was so nervous around him he missed the security door three times before it opened. He was an idiot. Then there was the time he was playing poker with Clutch and Shipwreck before he was sent out with him. The night sniper gave him the creeps and he said so. It was Shipwreck that told him otherwise. He was sent out for three long nights. That was when he saw the jaguar in the jungles of Sierra Gordo. It was also where he earned his name Trick Shot.
He grimaced. That night would follow him until the day he died.
Trick Shot heard the roar in his ears fade to an echo. From the echo the roar became a distant drum. The distant drum became a silence so profound that when he heard the shot it made a ringing under the water that left a deafness in his right ear he couldn't shake away.
There was a yank on his shirt before he was upright again. Above him Low Light held onto his collar. To the side a large alligator floated belly up with a bullet hole in its eye. Its white abdomen looked like a ghost floating on water. Already there was a steady wake of scales and tails heading towards it. The alligator bobbed once and then twice before it was taken beneath the surface. It didn't come up again.
By then Low Light was on the move. At once he was in front of him and in the next instant he was gone. Trick Shot didn't have Low Light's stealth but what he did have was better than both God and Low Light. He had his eyes. He looked out at the night and concentrated. He didn't have the privilege of a scope or night vision goggles out here. He didn't know he was going to be the one placed on the board as a pawn. He didn't see the minor manipulations and vague adjustments that put him on this road. In the darkness of the swamps everyone was a target. And in the darkness Trick Shot could see his mentor silhouetted before God with one impossible shot to go.
Each had the other in their sights in a kill shot neither one could take. Their figures lit up temporarily against the sky every time the lightning flashed. It crisscrossed with a flare of electricity like a thousand pointing fingers before leaving a thunder as loud as a crash. It didn't stop. For each boom of thunder there was a crack of lightning until the men stood face to face. They were a thousand yards apart and twenty years in the past looking through a blanket of rain at each other.
God dropped his rifle. He held it in his right hand staring upwards at the sky. He seemed to hesitate as if he saw something in the Heavens no one else could see.
"Don't do it Pete!" Low Light yelled.
The palm fronds behind him glared in a flash leaving a negative of a man holding what appeared to be a sword in his left hand and the wings of the Angel of Death at his back.
It cast Pete Anderson's face with the brightness of sunlight. He seemed to smile. He raised his rifle but his eyes were gone. The bullet he would shoot would never make its mark. It lay in the chamber dormant and unused unlike Cooper MacBride's.
The prodigy of a legend could only watch as God fell backwards shot by one of his own.
End Chapter Thirty Eight
Angel of Death
By Hank Williams Sr.
In the great book of John
You're warned of the day
When you'll be laid
Beneath the cold clay
The Angel of Death
Will come from the sky
And claim up your soul
When the time comes to die
When the Angel of Death
Comes down after you
Can you smile and say
That you have been true
Can you truthfully say
With your dying breath
That you're ready to meet
The Angel of Death
When the lights all grow dim
And the dark shadows creep
And then your lived ones
Are gathered to weep
Can you face them and say
With your dying breath
That you're ready to meet
The Angel of Death
When the Angel of Death
Comes down after you
Can you smile and say
That you have been true
Can you truthfully say
With your dying breath
That you're ready to meet
The Angel of Death