The New Madrid Run (24 page)

“All right, let’s go!” yelled the preacher, snapping them back to attention. Guns ready, they moved out into the night, leaving the handful of shocked, gaping patrons at the bar.

As the doors closed, the sensei turned to Travis. “Entertaining, Travis-san. You learn in dojo?”

Travis grinned. “No, Fort Benning drill sergeant.” As they reached the street he turned to Christina. “Remind me never to ask you to dance. You must be hell on girl’s night out.”

She looked at him with just a touch of a smile. “If you can take no for an answer, we’ll be just fine.”

They moved at a trot through the dark streets, headed back to the docks. As the preacher put it: It was time to get the hell outta’ Dodge.

By the time they were a few blocks from the saloon, the preacher and LaFont had fallen behind. Suddenly, Lafont stumbled and fell to the ground. When the preacher bent to pick him up, he sprang forward, knocking the man’s gun aside and hammering the old shrimper in the jaw with a quick right. The preacher staggered to his knees, dazed, and Lafont was up and gone down a dark side street. Travis raised his gun, but Chad was out of sight before he could shoot.

“That rips it,” Travis muttered. “Ten minutes from now we’ll have every thug Lafont ever knew after us.” He went back to the preacher and helped him up. “You all right?”

“Yeah, son, I’m okay. He just tricked me, then sucker-punched me.”

“Okay, let’s get going. We’ve got to get to the docks and get out of here.”

As Travis and his crew ran toward the marina there was, unbeknown to them, another important scenario playing itself out in the evening fog offshore, about two hundred yards northwest of the docks.

Jefferson Miles Davis was in the process of negotiating his eighty-foot freighter into Monroe Bay, hoping to purchase lumber, which he intended to sell when he returned to Texas. He was, however, having a couple problems. First was the fog that had settled in early; secondly, Jefferson, named after that famous Southern president, was close to blind drunk. It had been a long, damned-near intolerable trip. The friggin’ lazy crew did only about half of what he told them, and the weather out of Texas had been a bitch, so he decided to celebrate making port just a little early. Half a bottle of scotch later, he was squinting drunkenly over the wheel into layers of fog and running his ship at a speed no sober man would have considered. He had no idea that a hundred and fifty yards ahead sat

The
Yellow Peril
, an aging, hundred-foot salvage boat painted a garish yellow. But that night, even the hull’s bright color wouldn’t save the ship from the course that fate had plotted.

The captain of
The Peril
, Ted Nickels, had survived the catastrophe in Mobile, Alabama, and had headed up the coast of Louisiana, looking for ships and equipment to salvage. In his hold was a large tank that held twenty-five hundred gallons of gasoline to run the onboard pumps and motors. In the last month, he’d been miserly in its use, fuel having become so valuable, so almost two thousand gallons remained.
The Yellow Peril
was anchored less than a hundred yards from the Lafonts’ docks.

Jeff Davis saw the huge yellow ship looming ahead in the fog far too late for his liquor-laden mind to react. He threw the wheel hard to port, and, with a jarring, grinding crash, the bow of the freighter plowed into the starboard side of the other ship, just below and to the right of the large gasoline tank, gouging a six-foot hole in the outer hull and a two-foot gash in the tank itself.

Even as Travis and his people reached the dock, gas was pouring out of the hole in the salver and the wind and tides were blowing it quickly over the surface of the water toward the docks.

The group made it to their boats just as Lafont returned to the bar and radioed his brother, Henry. His orders were emphatic, simple. “Stop them! Kill them if you have to, but stop them.” He would be there himself in minutes with more men.

The two trawlers that blocked passage out of the marina were anchored nose to nose, with their bows chained together. When they had reached the docks, and Travis had taken a discouraged look at the blocked waterway, the preacher yelled, “Don’t worry, son, me and
Jesus’ Love
can knock those boys apart.”

Travis looked over at him. “You’re crazy! You’ll crush your frigging bow getting through that!”

“There ain’t no damned alternative and you know it!” Shouted the preacher. “We’re up to our asses in Philistines!” Then, pausing, the preacher smiled strangely and put his hand on Travis’ shoulder. “Son, how often in a man’s life does he get a chance to part the waters and set his people free? Now you get the hell aboard your boat and stay close behind me.”

Travis and his compatriots were untying and shoving off as Henry came running out of his office, gun in hand, hollering to the guards.

The first thing the preacher did after they were untied and Carlos had started the engines was to grab one of the SAWs he had stored on his boat. Smashing open a box of ammo for the devastating weapon, he threw a couple of belts over his shoulder and headed for the forecastle.

Reaching the wheelhouse, the preacher turned to Carlos, who was watching the RPMs on the engines. “Get out of here, Carlos. Go get on board with Travis; this ain’t gonna be no ride at the county fair.”

Carlos looked at his friend. “Preacher, I can no leave you. You need help. Carlos stay!”

“Sorry, Carlos, no time to argue,” said the big man as he bodily picked up the Cuban, carried him to the starboard rail, and threw him into the water by the stern of the sailboat. Then he ran back to the wheelhouse, revved her up, and shot out of the slip.

By the time Carlos was pulled aboard the sailboat, the shooting had begun. They started up the small diesel engine and pushed out quickly. The sensei took the wheel while Travis, Carlos, and Christina opened fire with their rifles. In moments they had managed to take out three of the guards on the walkway, but Henry Lafont and his hoodlums were gradually moving in, continually returning fire. As the craft moved forward in the channel, they had to deal with the gunman on the trawlers at the mouth of the marina as well.

Everyone on both sides was so preoccupied that no one noticed the pervading smell of gasoline. Sheets of the flammable liquid were blanketing the water surrounding the north side of the docks, while the wind and the waves worked it into the berths and the inside of the marina.

The spark that gave the inert gasoline terrible new dimension came from a ricocheting bullet. In seconds the whole place was a scene from hell; the entire northern catwalk lit up in a flaming barrier as the fuel ignited. With an enormous whooshing sound, oxygen was sucked from the air, and a wall of fire swept across the fuel-slicked water. In moments, boats and catwalks were ablaze and being consumed. Huge patches of the flammable liquid were swept into the channel and exploded around the shrimper and the sailboat. Seared by the heat, and illuminated by the flames, they suddenly became even better targets, and were beginning to take serious fire from the shore and the trawlers.

The preacher, realizing that his friends were unprotected in the sailboat and couldn’t possibly survive the withering gunfire from the trawlers, decided to even it up a bit. Locking the wheel of the shrimper in place, headed straight for the bows of the two ships, he grabbed the SAW with several belts of ammo and climbed up on the forecastle.

As they sailed through the blaze of the manmade inferno, Travis heard the Squad Automatic Weapon open up. When he peered ahead, through the smoke and flames, he couldn’t believe his eyes. There stood the preacher on the top of his boat, legs straddled for balance, ammo belts flung over his shoulder like some hero in an old war movie, the gun cradled in his arms, chattering away. Flames licked up around the
Jesus’ Love
and part of its deck was already burning, but the preacher was pouring such ravaging gunfire into the trawlers, the effort directed at Travis and his crew had nearly ceased. The firepower from the trawlers was now directed at the preacher. Travis watched as the shrimper surged toward the bows of the two ships. Bullets ripped up the planking around the man, but he just stood there like a statue, illuminated by the fire that had begun to consume his boat and the flames in the water surrounding him.

Suddenly, a round hit him in the thigh and he was thrown to the deck by the impact. A shrapnel of splinters tore into his hands and legs as more bullets hammered into the wood around him. He grunted in pain as he rose to his feet again, and once more the chatter of his weapon cut the night. But a moment later, he was struck in the shoulder. The shot spun him, knocking him to the roof of the wheelhouse one final time, only seconds before the boat hit the trawlers. The preacher, on his hands and knees, blinded by the smoke, his blood-soaked clothes smearing the wood beneath him, slowly crawled for his gun when a final bullet found him. He shuddered, then collapsed as his pride and joy, the
Jesus’ Love
, smashed into the bows of the barricade.

Travis watched the impact and saw the preacher thrown from the top of the wheelhouse into the water as the boat crashed through the two trawlers, thrusting them apart, and crushing the port side of the shrimper’s bow. He could see the old man struggling feebly in the fiery water as the preacher’s boat passed through the opening and veered off to the left, leaving the passageway clear.

They were drawing out of range of the men on the shore, and the impact had slowed the return fire from the decks of the two ships for a moment, but it was picking up again. Just then, Carlos yelled and stumbled against the cabin, a crimson patch spreading across the upper arm of his shirt. He staggered to his feet, grabbed his gun with the other hand and continued firing as blood ran down his arm and dripped onto the white deck. They had to get past the opening in the trawlers quickly or they would be shot to pieces at such close range.

“Take us through!” Travis yelled to the sensei, who pushed the throttle full forward and centered the craft on the breach.

Thick billows of oily smoke swirled in, choking and blinding them, while the flames surrounding
The Odyssey
bubbled the paint on the fiberglass hull. Bullets smacked into the cabin and deck all around the crew, shattering portholes and ricocheting off the metal rails, but they held their ground and returned the fire, as the boat raced toward the gap.

Through the nightmare of smoke, fog, and flames, Travis glanced over for a moment and watched Christina slap a fresh magazine into her rifle, raise the weapon to her shoulder and drop another man from the bow of the closest trawler. Carlos knelt on the deck, balancing his gun on the cabin, firing one-handed, his bloodied arm dangling at his side. The sensei stood rock solid at the wheel, eyes centered on the break in the two boats ahead. Bullets slashed and hammered the fiberglass cockpit around him; he never even blinked. Todd, who had been told to stay below, was dodging rounds and running clips of ammo to the crew.

The boat finally surged past the breach. They were still surrounded by flames and taking fire, but before them lay open water. As they cleared the opening, Travis once again caught sight of the preacher, floundering in the water about twenty yards forward of the bow and perhaps ten yards to the starboard side.

Travis pointed and yelled to the sensei over the gunfire, “I’m going for him!” as he dropped his gun and kicked off his shoes.

The Japanese grabbed his arm. “You cannot save him! Let him go. You will die, too!”

Travis swung around fiercely, an angry determination in his eyes. “I don’t give a damn what you say. He’s still alive and I’m
not
gonna leave him. Slow down a little and throw out the stern line. I’m gonna get him and swim over to the line as you drag it by. If I miss, you just keep going. It’s your show then.”

Travis hesitated one last moment and glanced over at Christina. Their eyes met for just a second, then he ran to the bow and jumped into the flaming water.

Travis swam below the surface as far as his breath would allow. Fortunately, the water outside the mouth of the passageway was not totally covered with gas and fire, and he managed to come up in an area free of flames, get his bearings, and take a breath. The preacher was only a few yards from him, struggling desperately to stay afloat. There was fear in the old shrimper’s eyes. Travis battled straight through the last of the flaming water to avoid losing sight of his friend. The patches of fire seared his skin, and singed his hair and eyebrows.

Despite his efforts, he was still ten feet away when the last of the preacher’s strength failed and with a final look at his rescuer, the old man disappeared into the water. Travis watched helplessly as his companion’s wide-open eyes, filled with terror, sank beneath the surface. A single hand reached up out of the depths, grasping desperately for the salvation that wasn’t there. Then it too was gone.

Travis cried out and thrashed his way the final distance. He spun around, treading water, desperately looking for any sign of the man. He took a deep breath and dove. Struggling in the depths of the inky-black water he flailed about, grasping nothing but cold emptiness until he thought his lungs would explode. He rushed to the surface and gasped in life-giving air. There was a part of him that already knew he was wasting his time, but Travis gathered another breath and dove again. Once more he thrashed about in the dark water, reaching out desperately, begging for the touch of something solid; and once more he ran out of oxygen. But this time, as he turned to surface, his foot kicked something firm. Instantly he jackknifed and reached down below him. Travis knew he only had one shot, his lungs were on fire, he was only a moment away from passing out himself. His hand touched the water-soaked flannel of the preacher’s shirt. He grabbed a handful and frantically kicked upward, feeling the weight of his friend beneath him. When they burst to the surface, Travis drew a few badly needed breaths then grabbed the preacher and swung him around into a cross-chest carry, reminiscent of his lifeguard days. The old man, his burned face streaked with oil and etched with pain, coughed up several mouthfuls of water and whispered hoarsely, “Leave me, son. Get outta here.”