THE BOATMAN STOOD WAITINGin the cold fog, a ragged apparition resting against a long oar that disappeared into the black water. He smelled of death, and his robe pulsed in the stiff wind. “Do you have another one?”
“No. Not this time.” Kyle Swanson recognized the five silent passengers seated in the low craft, for he had brought them all here, one by one. They stared at nothing, with empty and lifeless eyes, and did not know him.
“Then I still have an empty seat,” said the Boatman. “Will you furnish someone else soon?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Maybe not.” Over the Boatman’s shoulder, he saw tongues of fire raging along the far shore.
“No.”
The spectral figure shook its head and exhaled a foul odor. “I cannot leave with an empty seat.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Swanson looked about, but there was no one else around. He carefully put down his fully loaded M40A1 sniper rifle, unsnapped the web gear, and let the pack fall away. He took off blocks of C-4 explosive and tossed them aside. Two razor-sharp knives, gleaming blades streaked with blood. A silenced 9 mm pistol. A sawed-off shotgun. An M-16 and an AK-47 and a Claymore mine and its clacker. Smoke, fragmentation, and thermite grenades. A small satellite radio. All the tools of the sniper’s trade. He wanted to hold on to something. “Can I keep my boots?”
“You will have no need for boots, but it does not matter.”
“They’re comfortable. I just got them broken in good.”
“Keep them.” A favor. Bare, cracked teeth showed in the skull. The Boatman usually had little to say, but he and Kyle Swanson had known each other for a very long time.
Swanson took off his boonie cover and put it on top of the stack, tucking it so that the eagle, globe, and anchor emblem of the United States Marine Corps remained visible. Then he removed the plastic-laminated photograph of a beautiful young woman with dark hair and eyes, kissed it, and placed it on the pile.
“Is there anything else?”
“No.”
“Very well.” The Boatman extended a long, bony hand. Swanson grabbed it for support as he stepped aboard and took a seat among his latest five kills. Ali bin Assam, looking gray and with a big hole through him, was beside him.
Swanson felt the small vessel rock gently as the Boatman shoved off, pushing hard on the oar to begin the passage across that black river to whatever was over there where the flames danced along a brimstone beach.
At least I still have my boots, he thought. At least I still have my soul.
Then the hand grabbed his shoulder.