At first, he made pretty good time. The sedge was compact and springy; he’d heard it had been a pretty dry season, and he wondered if the irrigation pumps dropped the water level near the fields. But as he continued, it got wetter, and Jenner found himself slowing, each footstep sinking deeper into the thick mat of grass and mud.
Soon, he had to lean into his step, the marsh sucking at his feet and ankles as he clambered forward, struggling to keep his scene bag up out of the damp. The Miccosukee and Seminole had lived in the Glades for centuries, but they had to know their way, had to have had trails through. And they did it during daylight, without twenty pounds of camera equipment and swabs and tape lifts.
Most of all, he thought glumly, the Miccosukee could tell a clump of bushes from an alligator nest.
Jenner stopped, the sweat pouring down his face, his shirt soaked, the rubber waders keeping in as much moisture as they kept out. Now the insects caught up with him; despite his chemical reek, the air around him was suddenly furred with tiny gnats. Swatting them away was pointless—more insects instantly gushed back into the bug vacuum he’d just created.
He gulped down water; the gallon jug seemed heavier with each pace. But ahead, the flashing signal looked brighter.
Then he heard a slow, dry rustling somewhere to his left, the noise of something large moving through undergrowth. He jerked his torch beam around, but saw nothing in the dense knot of bushes covering the low mound.
Jenner pushed forward faster now, and behind him he heard the quiet splash of something slipping into the water.
He didn’t wait to see what it was, just kept going, heading toward the hammock. The water was deeper now, sometimes reaching his knees; he splashed through it loudly, hoping the commotion would drive away anything that might find him interesting.
Now the hammock loomed over him, a hulking black shadow, a ghost ship at anchor. He shone the torch ahead and saw that the banks rounded up to a solid wall of undergrowth, a dense tangle of vegetation that blocked any sight of the interior, the tree canopy overhead thick and dark. But he could see the signal clearly now, and it was bright.
How had they made their way to the island to set up the signal? Boat, airboat? A swamp buggy seemed unlikely—he doubted Weiss’s contacts would do anything that flashy if they were, in fact, illegals. Or that expensive. Beyond the bushes, toward the far side of the island, Jenner could make out a slough or a small channel, standing water probably deep enough for a canoe or an outboard.
Nearing the hammock, he saw small gaps in the thick mesh of plants that surrounded it, areas of exposed mud where some animal had slid off into the water.
Jenner was close enough now to see that the signal was a bicycle safety light, its strap Velcroed to a thin tree trunk. He grabbed the trunk with relief, and tried to pull himself up to land. But he slipped, and struggled for a second on the steep incline, his waders smearing across the slick mud as he fought to drag himself onto the drier land. He rolled up onto the edge of the hammock, swinging the bag across his chest and into the bushes.
He lay there panting, chest heaving, sweaty and filthy.
And then he smelled it, that familiar stench, the nauseatingly sweet fog rolling in under the reek of brackish mud and swamp grass.
No. Weiss hadn’t been lying about the bodies.