The Inside Ring Read online

  “You and Taylor are insane,” DeMarco said. “I’m from Washington, Estep. I work for the United States government. People know I’m down here.”

  “Now that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about: who knows you’re down here and what they know.”

  “Estep,” DeMarco said, “I’m working with the FBI. If I turn up missing, you’re the first guy the Bureau will come looking for.”

  Estep stopped paddling and smiled at DeMarco—then he swung the oar at DeMarco’s head. DeMarco was able to get his arms up in time to block the blow, but the wood cracking against his left forearm hurt like hell.

  “Shit,” DeMarco said, rubbing his arm.

  “It’s not nice to lie to me, bucko. See, I already know you’re not working with the FBI. The FBI thinks you’re a looney. The only one you’ve been working with lately is some secretary named Banks. You and this Banks fella think me and Cousin Billy tried to kill the President.”

  DeMarco now had no doubt it was Donnelly who had talked to Taylor. The little son of a bitch.

  “Estep,” DeMarco said, “if you have a brain in your head, you’ll turn this canoe around and take me back to Folkston.”

  Acting as if DeMarco hadn’t spoken, Estep said, “You see, bucko, Uncle Max believes he knows how you tied me and him in with Billy. He heard all about you tailing Billy and listening to his phone calls. Shame on you.”

  That goddamn Donnelly must have told Taylor everything DeMarco had said during their meeting with the attorney general.

  “Now what Uncle Max needs to know,” Estep continued in his lazy drawl, “are the names of everybody you’ve talked to about all this, what you told ’em, and what it was that made you decide to come down here to Georgia.” Estep smiled, his teeth luminous in the night. “So we might be talkin’ quite a while.”

  Unless he did something, DeMarco was a dead man. This lunatic intended to take him into the swamp, torture him, and kill him.

  DeMarco studied his captor. Estep was in his fifties but he was also a combat veteran and he was armed. At least he didn’t look as strong as Morgan; given a chance DeMarco might be able to overpower Estep and take away his damn gun. The problem was the position he was in: flat on his back in the unstable canoe. By the time DeMarco pulled himself to a sitting position and lunged to the rear of the boat, Estep would easily be able to pull the gun and shoot him, or just do as he had done earlier and smack him with the oar.

  Off the port side of the canoe something heavy slapped the water and DeMarco jerked involuntarily.

  Estep laughed. “Big gator there, bucko. Damn big. Bet that baby was ten feet long. Just et something cruisin’ on the surface. Muskrat, I’ll bet. Think you’re faster than a muskrat, bucko?”

  DeMarco didn’t say anything. A moment later the boat passed through a curtain of Spanish moss. As the moss went over his head and arms, DeMarco let out an unmanly yelp. He was so jumpy he was coming out of his skin. This was not his environment.

  Estep laughed and said, “Creepy feelin’ shit, ain’t it? Sometimes snakes nest in that stuff.”

  DeMarco realized Estep had deliberately rowed the canoe into the moss to further unsettle him, and it had worked. He had to get a grip on himself.

  “Why did you try to kill the President, Estep?” DeMarco asked.

  Estep smiled. “Now that’s purely insultin’, sayin’ something like that. Gonna make you squeal for that, boy.” Estep rowed a few more strokes. “It’s gettin’ late, son, so let’s get started. Let’s start at the beginnin’. Let’s start with whatever that Banks fella told you that made you go after Cousin Billy.”

  What the hell did he mean when he said he had insulted him, DeMarco wondered. Estep seemed to be telling him he wasn’t involved in the assassination attempt and in the same breath he was admitting that he and Billy had worked together. Were he and Billy involved in something completely unrelated to the assassination? And why did he keep referring to Billy as his cousin?

  “I’m waitin’,” Estep said. “And I have to tell you, I’m not a patient man.”

  DeMarco tried to think. There wasn’t anything he could tell Estep that the man didn’t already know but he needed to tell him something just to stall for time.

  DeMarco took too long to make up his mind. “Well, I guess I just gotta get your attention, bucko,” Estep said, shaking his head as though disappointed. “You remind me of those gooks I interrogated over in ’Nam; they never figured you were serious till you cut a chunk off ’em.”

  Cut a chunk off ’em! DeMarco tried to sit up again but Estep just jabbed him hard in the chest with the oar.

  “Yeah,” Estep said, his tone conversational, “I think we’ve gone far enough.” He reached underneath his seat and pulled out a green plastic garbage bag. Looking DeMarco in the eyes, he took the hunting knife from the scabbard on his calf and slit the garbage bag open. The stench of rotting meat poured out. Seeing the expression of disgust on DeMarco’s face, Estep laughed and said, “Ripe, ain’t it?”

  Sticking the knife into the sack, Estep stabbed what looked like a leg of mutton and flung it into the water, about ten feet from the canoe. Reaching down again, he stabbed another piece of meat and tossed it in. DeMarco watched the meat sink into the black water, then turned back to look at Estep, wondering what in the hell he was doing.

  Estep grinned at him. “I want you to hop in the water, bucko.”

  “What?” DeMarco said.

  “I said, I want you to hop in the water. Time for you to go swimmin’ with my friends.”

  “Fuck you,” DeMarco said.

  “Thought you might say that,” Estep said. He patted the holster on his hip and said, “Now, friend, you don’t have a lot of choices here. I can shoot you a couple times, someplace that won’t kill you right off, then throw you in bleedin’. Or you can get in the water on your own and hope the gators go for that ripe meat before they go for you. If you got a third choice, I don’t know what it is.

  “You see, bucko, the way this works is if you talk real fast, answer all my questions right away, I’ll keep the gators from you by throwin’ this chum in the water. They like rotten a whole lot better than fresh. Usually. Now I got a whole sack of chum here but you don’t want to dally. Now hop in.”

  DeMarco had read that most alligators weren’t man-eaters and he figured Ranger Dale knew that too. Nonetheless, there was no way in hell DeMarco was getting out of the canoe.

  “Look, Estep, I’ll—”

  “Too late for that now, bucko,” Estep said, and he stabbed DeMarco in the calf with his knife. DeMarco screamed in pain—one more screaming thing in the night, just as Estep had said. The knife had penetrated about two inches and the wound began to bleed heavily.

  “Now unless you want me to do that again, I’d suggest you jump on in like I told you. And I sure hope your blood don’t attract those gators.” Estep grinned and threw another piece of rancid meat into the water.

  DeMarco rose slowly to a sitting position. As he did, Estep slid the knife into its scabbard and pulled the revolver from the holster on his hip. Casually wagging the gun at DeMarco, Estep said, “Careful now, son. Stand up real, real slow. You try tippin’ the boat and I’ll gut shoot you. Swear to God.”

  DeMarco struggled to his knees and slowly rose to his feet. He stood with his legs apart, moving his arms slightly to maintain his balance and keep the canoe from rocking. He looked out into the swamp; he was surrounded by darkness. He couldn’t see anything in the water near the canoe but he didn’t know what was below the surface. Then he looked down into Estep’s eyes. Hunter’s eyes.

  “Go on, son,” Estep said softly. “Just hop on in. The water’s warm.”

  The next thing DeMarco did was not an act of bravery, but one of simple vindictiveness. Estep was going to kill him and he knew it. He was going to shoot him or knife him or let the alligators rip him apart. DeMarco decided then that he wasn’t going to suffer alone. He jumped up and came down as hard as he could
on the starboard gunwale of the canoe, tipping the boat over.

  Estep was caught by surprise. He squeezed off a shot, but even as good as he was with a gun, he was already off balance and falling toward the water when he fired. The bullet tugged at DeMarco’s shirt but missed his flesh.

  As soon as DeMarco hit the water he dove and swam as fast as he could away from Estep—and the garbage bag which was now spilling its rotten contents into the water. At one point something hard and scaly brushed against his leg, the one bleeding from the knife wound. DeMarco involuntarily opened his mouth to scream and his mouth immediately filled with fetid swamp water. He broke the surface, coughing. Estep heard him cough and fired a shot in his direction. The bullet slapped the water next to his head.

  DeMarco sucked air into his lungs, dove, and swam, kicking with his legs, using a breaststroke. He couldn’t see where he was going and was surprised when his right hand struck something hard and slippery. His left hand, then his head, struck similar objects. DeMarco realized immediately that he was tangled in the root-ball of a tree. There were at least a dozen roots, each about two inches in diameter penetrating the water and he was on the outer edge of the root-ball.

  He stopped swimming, forcing himself to be calm, and grasped the roots and began to pull himself upward. He kept pulling on the partially submerged tree roots until his head was above water and he could feel the trunk of a good-sized tree. He put both arms around the slippery trunk and pulled himself up, his feet struggling for purchase on the tree roots. One shoe came off as he climbed which helped him get some traction, so he kicked off his other shoe. He kept pulling himself upward until he was finally standing on the exposed roots of the tree, holding tightly to the trunk. He swung around the tree so the trunk was between him and Estep’s last position, then looked back to where he thought the overturned canoe was. He couldn’t see Estep in the dark, but he could hear him. Estep was laughing.

  “You got me that time, boy. I thought you was a broke dick, and you surprised me. Goes to show what can happen when a man gets overconfident. But them gators are gonna get you, bucko. They can smell that blood comin’ from your leg. They’re gonna chew your nuts right off.”

  DeMarco tried to pull himself higher up the tree, but the trunk was too slippery. He didn’t like standing with his feet in the water, on top of the root-ball, the blood running from his leg down into the water, but he didn’t have a choice. And where he was, was hell of a lot better than being in the water swimming.

  DeMarco didn’t know what he was going to do next. Estep would eventually right the canoe then all he had to do was wait until daylight to find him. He wished he could see what was near him. He could be just a few yards away from land where there might be bushes to hide in. But he wasn’t willing, not yet, to jump back into the water and go swimming in the dark.

  With perfect timing, Estep said, “I’m gonna get you, son. I could survive in this swamp buck naked but you don’t know what the hell to do. And when I get you, I’m gonna make you suffer like God’s worst enemy.”

  Sound carried oddly in the swamp. DeMarco didn’t know how far he was from Estep but he doubted he was more than thirty or forty yards away. Estep then uttered a muffled curse. It sounded to DeMarco like he was struggling to flip the canoe back over. The next thing he heard was a grunt but not the kind of grunt a man makes when he’s trying to move something. This sounded as if Estep had been hit in the gut and had had the wind knocked out of him.

  Then he heard Estep scream.

  That scream was the worst sound DeMarco had ever heard coming from another human being: the sound of unbearable pain combined with heart-stopping terror. DeMarco thought of what Estep had said about the swamp, about strong things killing weak things, fast things eating slow things. Of things screaming in the dark.

  Estep screamed again, but not as loudly as the first time, then all DeMarco heard was black water churning as the alligators ripped him apart.

  And then there was silence.

  DEMARCO STOOD ON the root-ball for four hours, clinging to the trunk of the tree. Every time something touched him—a drop of moisture, a falling leaf, the water lapping up against his feet—he had to bite his lower lip to keep from crying out. DeMarco was a city boy and this wasn’t his natural habitat. His imagination was spinning in overdrive with thoughts of water moccasins crawling down the tree trunk toward him, of poisonous insects stinging him, of leaches sucking his blood. Mostly he was worried that an alligator was going to rear up at any moment and grasp his bleeding leg in its jaws and pull him into the water.

  During those four hours, when he wasn’t thinking about getting bit or stung or eaten, he thought about the wound in his leg. He remembered that just before Estep stabbed him, he had stuck the knife into the rotten meat. DeMarco wondered what long-named organisms were swimming through his bloodstream toward his vital organs.

  His one consolation was that the knife wound had stopped bleeding; Estep had hit muscle but no major blood vessels. The wound was throbbing and it felt like his leg was starting to swell, but at least DeMarco’s blood wasn’t continuing to pour into the water.

  While DeMarco clung to that tree in the dark he even prayed. He had long ago stopped going to church and when asked his faith would joke that he was a retired Catholic. But now he asked for divine help. And since he had not been a steady churchgoer, and knew God knew it, he didn’t ask for much. He didn’t ask God to save him outright, to miraculously transport him to dry land, or to make the alligator extinct. All he asked of the Lord was to make the sun come up. He wasn’t asking for much at all, DeMarco figured. Just for something He did every day of the year.

  Never in his life had he wanted to see a sunrise so badly.

  Dawn finally broke and in the first pink light of morning DeMarco saw the most wondrous thing: the overturned canoe was only a few feet from the tree he was in. He reached down and pulled the sodden sock off his right foot, then carefully moved around the trunk of the tree until he was as close to the canoe as he could get. He reached out with his bare foot until he could touch the canoe, and being careful not to push it away, drew it slowly toward him with his toes.

  When it was close enough, he squatted down on the root-ball and started to put his hand in the water to turn the canoe over. He hesitated, thinking about an alligator turning him into Captain Hook, then realizing he had no choice, shoved his hand beneath the water, grasped the gunwale of the canoe, and flipped it over. As he eased himself gently into the canoe, he felt safe for the first time in hours.

  Now that he had a canoe, he needed a paddle. He looked around but in the dim light he couldn’t see the oar that Estep had been using. It had to be floating somewhere nearby. There was no current and there had been no wind to speak of during the night. He decided to wait until it became lighter to see if he could locate the oar. It would be hard enough paddling out of the swamp with an oar; without one it would be impossible.

  Half an hour later it became fully light, and twenty yards from him, caught in the roots of another tree, was the oar. Somebody up there loved a fool. Forcing himself not to think about the alligators in the water, he used his hands to paddle the canoe over to the oar and retrieved it.

  He looked around for some sign of Estep but saw nothing on or in the water. Not even Estep’s camouflage hat floated on the surface. DeMarco hoped the bastard was in Hell in very small pieces.

  He sat in the canoe a minute, the oar across his knees, doing nothing. He had paddled a canoe before—there was a place on the Potomac where you could rent them—and was certain he could make it out of the swamp. His problem was that he didn’t know which way was out.

  Then he remembered that last night Estep had said they were heading due west. Due west was good. DeMarco was no Eagle Scout but he knew the sun rose in the east—the opposite of west. He pointed the canoe in that direction, squinting into the lovely bright light, and started to paddle.

  AT THE BEST of times, DeMarco would not have described h
imself as a wilderness buff; his idea of “roughing it” was a cabana on the beach with slow room service. With the dull ache persisting in his leg from the knife wound and the constant buzz of insects in his ears, he would have placed the Okefenokee right near Death Valley on his list of favorite getaways.

  The wildlife was interesting though. He spotted several kingfishers and one bird he thought was a blue heron, balanced on one thin leg, looking as if it were posing for Audubon. At one point a snapping turtle appeared off his starboard side and he flicked water at it with the paddle until it dived. He wasn’t being playful; he just didn’t want anything nearby that might lure alligators toward the unstable canoe.

  For the first half hour, he was in an open stretch of waterway surrounded by marsh grass and wildflowers. He knew from reading the tourist brochures in the motel that the grassy stuff was growing on peat—or maybe it was peat. Hell, who cared? He also knew from his motel room literature that the name Okefenokee meant “trembling earth” because when one walked on peat—Lord knows why one would want to—it moved underfoot.

  He felt relatively comfortable in the open area, but ahead of him he could see the waterway becoming a narrow lane with large trees on either side. He didn’t want to enter the tree-banked passage but he needed to keep going east, and east was toward the mouth of the green funnel. Soon he was no longer able to move in a straight line as he had to keep detouring around tree trunks.

  The swamp was becoming claustrophobic, with the suffocating humidity and the oppressive sensation of dense vegetation closing in on him. Blue Spanish moss hung down from the limbs of cypress trees like thick organic cobwebs, intensifying the sensation that he was being cocooned. The plants in this section of the swamp were alien in appearance and had names like purple bladderwort and climbing heath.

  And mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe.

  The fucking place was giving him the willies and he could hear himself breathing more rapidly. He began to paddle faster, while at the same time telling himself not to panic, to quit acting like a kid afraid of the dark. Calm down, calm down, he told himself, muttering the words like a mantra.