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CHAPTER 10


After we got back from Oklahoma, I requested another meeting with the Select Committee. No answer. Too bad. I wanted to rub their faces in my succeeding where the MCB had failed.

For a little while life returned to “normal.”

* * *

A few days later I was back in the team room when Sam Haven fielded a call from the SIU.

“Giant pissed-off crocodile…” he said in a confused tone, looking at the note.

“In the 17th Street Canal,” I finished, sighing. “Bring a Barrett and some LAWs just in case.”

Why sobeks always chose the 17th Street Canal was one of those mysteries of life. They turned up every few months and were major pains in the ass. I hadn’t dealt with one since the new breed MCB had arrived and was sooo looking forward to it.

We didn’t know where they came from, how they got here, what they were doing here, or why a few times a year one tried to wander down the 17th Street Canal, but as per usual, the bipedal-Egyptian-crocodile-god thing had gotten itself stuck on the main pumping station and was trying to climb the levee. Their bipedal form made it hard for them to do anything, really. They weren’t pathetic, by any stretch of the imagination. They were seriously dangerous up close or if they got into the neighborhoods, but they fricking always got stuck at the pumping station.

When we arrived at the pumping station on Lake Avenue, there were some bystanders in the area watching the latest in New Orleans hoodoo. There weren’t very many because it was late and the rain was keeping most people indoors. MCB was trying to chase off the witnesses, and Agent Robinson was in a heated discussion with an old woman up on the railroad tracks. It was clear that MCB was trying to get the crowd to disperse but short of opening fire on them that was unlikely to happen. And SIU was being passive-aggressive about helping them out.

“Afternoon, Agent Robinson,” I said, sauntering up.

“You will go back to your home,” Robinson snarled at the old lady. “Or I will place you under arrest!”

“This is a free country, young man!” She shook her umbrella at him. “And I will go wherever I damned well please! Are you going to arrest all of us?”

“From what I’ve seen, they’re more likely to just machine-gun the civilians and be done with it,” Sam muttered to me.

“Lieutenant Wade,” Robinson shouted. “Place this woman under arrest!”

“What do I charge her with, Agent?” Wade said in a slow, somewhat dumb-sounding, Cajun drawl. Local law enforcement missed Special Agent Castro’s brand of leadership as much as I did. “I really need a solid charge, Agent. The DOJ is all over our ass lately for all sorts of violations of civil rights. I mean there’s a whole task force—”

“We are the DOJ! Just do it!”

“Well, I’d really like to see that in writing…”

I interrupted the shouting fest and addressed the old lady. “Mrs. Thevenet. How are you doing today?”

“These G-men don’t have no respect,” she said with a sniff. “Act as if you can pretend voodoo don’t exist in New Orleans! Sell that to the tourists, young man!”

“New brooms,” I said, shrugging. “You know they lost all their good people at Mardi Gras.”

“That is classified!” Robinson shrieked.

“He’ll figure out how it works sooner or later,” I said, ignoring him. “Right now, we really need to just play along. Figure you can get these people to sort of wander away? Nothing new here to see, anyway.”

“Well, if they’re going to do something, they should be finding out who keeps sending this hoodoo down here,” Mrs. Thevenet said angrily. “This is the fifth time in a year and a half!”

“I told you to place her under arrest!”

“And I said I’d need something in writing,” Wade said, crossing her arms. “Me and my department ain’t gonna get sued ’cause you’re all hot and bothered.”

“I totally agree, ma’am,” I said. “But in the meantime, do me a favor, okay? Try to get people to clear the area. Right now, we’ve gotta get started on clearing this up.”

“I’ll do it this once as a favor, young man,” Mrs. Thevenet said. “But I’m definitely going to call Congressman Bouvrier. I pay my taxes!”

“Any communication about this incident is a violation of federal law!” Robinson snapped. “If you so much as pick up the phone to call your congressman, I will, I guarantee you, arrest you. And you will spend the rest of your natural life in prison.”

She was so old that probably wasn’t that much of a threat. “You ain’t from around here, are you?” Mrs. Thevenet said, walking away. But she started chivvying her people to clear the area.

“Just an FYI, Agent Robinson, Congressman Bouvrier is the second most senior majority member of the Select Committee. And her third cousin. She grew up with the congressman’s mother. Might want to reconsider that threat.”

“Just stay out of this, Gardenier! And you can just go back to your shack! We’re going to clear this incident!”

“Excuse me? Since when does MCB clear incidents?”

“Orders of Special Agent Campbell. We’re taking responsibility for all yellow-level threats from now on. You cowboys make too much of a scene when you deal with something like this!”

“Well,” I said thoughtfully. “Since we are read in, mind if we stay and watch?”

“Feel free,” Robinson said. “We’ll show you how a professional deals with this sort of thing.”

* * *

“Oh, this is gonna be fun,” I said as we walked back to my car.

“That agent is the easily agitated sort, ain’t he? Now I’m wondering if he meant cowboys as a personal insult.” Sam thumped his knuckles against his ridiculous rodeo champion belt buckle. “I’m wounded.” He went to retrieve his gear bag.

“First off, no point to the armor. With a sobek, if you’re close enough for the gear to matter, it don’t matter. Thing will rip right through it or kill you by impact with its tail. So you get all hot for nothing.”

“So how do you kill it?”

“We’ve done it enough times we’ve got a system. There’s a kill spot on the back of the head that’s about a foot across,” I said, holding my hands up a foot wide. “You shoot it through there, with something big, at a certain angle. Angle’s important, too. What you do is get waaaay back and shoot it there. If you hit it at the wrong angle, or miss the spot, or hit it anywhere else on the body, it just pisses it off. If you hit it near the spot or at the wrong angle, you can cause it to thrash. As you can see, it’s already damaging the levee. Enough levee damage and New Orleans floods. So getting it right the first time is sort of important.”

“Only that jittery rabbit-ass agent won’t let us. Boy really needs to switch to decaf before he strokes out.”

“We make too much noise or something,” I said, disgusted. “So they get to kill it.”

“Isn’t that sort of stealing our PUFF money?” Sam asked.

“I’m just hoping they get the shot right.”

* * *

The crowd had been duly shuffled off by SIU, NOPD, and Mrs. Thevenet, and now the agent who’d been trailing Robinson was up on the railroad bridge with some sort of super-duper sniper rifle. The thing looked as if it had some sort of suppressor on the end. So, you know, they could pretend they weren’t shooting a fifty-foot bipedal crocodile.

The real problem, though…

“No, no, no, no,” I muttered.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

We were standing under the shade of a live oak, watching the proceedings, arms crossed.

“I’m pretty sure that’s a .308,” I said. “Something along the lines.”

“It is,” Sam said. “That’s an Accuracy International. It might be chambered in .300 Win Mag. Good rifle.”

“Whatever. Very much the wrong caliber. There’s no such thing as too large with a sobek. There is such a thing as too small. Fifty-caliber’s the way to go with one. Too small if anything. And I’m pretty sure they’re going to fire at—”

The sniper took the shot as I was saying that and the round hit the kill spot. But it was at the wrong angle, or maybe just didn’t penetrate enough, and the sobek began to thrash and bellow, tearing at the bank of the levee.

The local supervisor for Army Corps of Engineers ran onto the train bridge and started haranguing Agent Robinson as the sniper fired again. Having previously dealt with the guy, I knew he was understandably protective of his levee. Because much of New Orleans was below the water line and if the levee ever broke, most of the city would be flooded a story deep. He really liked to keep water out of the city. What he did not like was sobeks tearing up his dams. He was really definite on that subject. Which was what MCB was giving him.

This time the round bounced off the armored skull and the sobek got even angrier. It spun around in place looking for what was hurting it and decided that it must have something to do with the train bridge. Giant jaws clamped on one of the trestles and it tried to death roll.

The MCB sniper leaned over, rapidly working the bolt, and kept firing, bullets bouncing every which way. And from the looks of things, the bridge was probably going to have to be temporarily closed and surveyed to assess the damage. Assuming the pissed-off crocodilian didn’t pull it down.

I’d never seen someone as red in the face as the Corps guy. And from Robinson’s attitude, he was giving a senior member of the Army Corps of Engineers the MCB “if you don’t shut up I’ll arrest you” line.

That was going to go over just dandy. MCB might think it was powerful but you didn’t comprehend powerful until you dealt with Army Corps of Engineers.

“I’ve seen enough,” I said, shaking my head. “Let’s roll back to the team shack. I do not want to be here when this incident finally gets cleared and MCB is looking for someone to blame.”

* * *

We were about halfway back to headquarters when the phone rang.

“Gardenier,” I said.

“Who the hell did you call, Gardenier?” the voice on the other end snarled.

“No one. Lately. Who may I ask is calling?”

“This is Special Agent Campbell. So you’re not responsible for calls from the Army Corps of Engineers and half the Select Committee?”

“Nope. We rolled to the sobek. Robinson told us you guys were handling it. We watched the beginning of said handling, then left. Didn’t need to call anyone. Your guys did all the work.”

“Turn around, go back, kill the sobek,” Campbell said as calmly as he could manage.

“No.”

“What?” Campbell shouted.

“The sobek is currently pissed off, agitated and very dangerous. It has been repeatedly wounded by your agents. MCB took responsibility for it, so you kill it. You want some advice on that, I can give it. But I already called Franklin and MHI is not going to be blamed for another Class Five incident.”

I got a click for my troubles.

“I hear those things are worth a really nice PUFF,” Sam pointed out.

“There’ll be another one in a few months. And they really would have used this to make us look bad. Campbell is a manipulative conniving bastard and his report would make us out to be ‘incompetent’ or at least ‘very indiscreet.’ There’s no clean way to kill that sobek now that it’s enraged.”

We were nearly back to the shack when the phone rang again.

“Gardenier,” I said as politely as I could. I figured it was Campbell again or someone else yelling at me.

“Chad! Congressman Bouvrier! How are you, young man?”

“Fine, sir, fine,” I said, sliding smoothly into Southern mode. “And how is Bambi?”

“Curvy and beautiful as always.” Nobody could ever remember the names of the various paramours and trophy wives of the seventy-year-old congressman so he insisted everyone just call them Bambi. Saves time. “Are you taking another sabbatical, son?”

“I earned the one after Mardi Gras, but if you’re referring to the sobek, no. Just not taking that one.”

“Is there a reason?” the congressman asked.

“MCB took responsibility for clearing it, sir. They are taking all large incidents from now on according to the agent on site. I wouldn’t wish to steal their thunder.”

“They bungled it,” the congressman said. “Mrs. Thevenet was watching the whole thing. I’m not sure if you heard but they missed the shot. It’s now out of the canal and rampaging through her neighborhood. She is rather unhappy. And since there is now a fifty-foot crocodile wandering through New Orleans, I can’t think of anyone who is happy.”

I hit the brakes, did a U-turn and hit the siren and lights.

“On it, Congressman. Mrs. Thevenet’s on the west side of the canal?”

“Yes, she is,” Congressman Bouvrier said. “I take it you’re on your way back?”

“Congressman, I really need a favor,” I said.

“If it involves getting MCB off your back, consider it done. When I’m done with this new special agent, his hide won’t be missing a single spot that hasn’t been scored.”

“There is no way, if the sobek is out, we’re going to be able to do it quietly. This is heavy-weapons time and no joke. Campbell has to be made fully aware of that. Through the chain of command. He won’t take it from you. And what we’re going to have to do at this point will piss him off royally.”

“I understand, son. I’ll make the calls.”

“We really need to get together again sometime soon, Congressman,” I said. “Dinner at my place?”

“You set a fine table, Chad,” Congressman Bouvrier said. “Why don’t you have Remi call my people, look at the schedule?”

“Will do,” I said, weaving through traffic. I made a left turn through a red light and hit my horn at someone who didn’t know what a purple flashing light meant. “Sort of need to hang up at this point, Congressman.”

“Understood. Good talking to you, Chad.”

“Sam,” I snapped, handing over the phone. “Call the office. Tell Franklin we need everybody. Full call out. Boots and saddles and every heavy weapon we’ve got!”

* * *

By the time we got back, the sobek was two blocks up Lake Avenue. Looking down the long boulevard, it was one continuous scene of flipped cars, torn-down power lines and crushed homes.

The crocodile was wandering from side to side, wreaking havoc in a more or less chaotic fashion but steadily heading southward on the road. It had always seemed that the sobeks had a destination in mind but none had previously made it past the pumping station. This one, though, was determined to get to wherever it was going and seemed equally determined to do as much damage as it could on the way.

We’d stopped at the intersection of Lake and Bordeaux and it was about a block up, just short of Narcissus. NOPD was trying to clear the area but people were being people. Gawking, fleeing, some of them in cars, some of them on foot. One guy was out in his front yard with what looked like an elephant gun shooting at the thing. Which was just pissing it off more.

“I’ll entertain suggestions here,” Sam said.

“We’re pretty well fucked,” I said, getting out of the car. “Crocodilians can soak up an unimaginable amount of damage before they die. That goes for just about every kind. You can shoot them in the body all day long. They’ll slowly bleed to death but not fast enough. The only really good way to kill them is hit them in their remarkably small brain. Which takes an angle you can’t get from the ground and especially from in front.”

I’d opened up the trunk and reached inside. “Time to read it the LAW,” I said, tossing him one of the rocket launchers. “Which is going to, at most, slow it down.”

“Two LAWs is only going to slow it down?” Sam said.

“Fingers crossed.”

We both hit the sobek in the abdomen with the rocket launchers. This caused some of its guts to spill out on the road and knocked it down.

“Hell yeah!” Sam yelled in a satisfied tone.

Then the damned thing started struggling back to its feet.

“Back in the car. Get on the phone. Ask Franklin when he’s going to get here and how many heavy weapons he’s got.”

The crocodilian was not particularly smart, but it could put very big rocket signature together with very big hurt and count to two. So it was now concentrated on catching Honeybear. Which was fine by me. I wasn’t going to let it catch me, and chasing us, it wasn’t doing excessive secondary damage. The question was where to lead it to.

My first preference would be back into the canal. They’d always had a hard time getting out. Their bipedal form was bad for climbing, and there was less damage they could do to people in there. Problem being, there was a fence along the canal and no bridges in this area. If I went over to the canal we’d probably end up trapped up against it. That would be bad.

Lake Avenue did not continue forever. It ended at Metairie Road which was a fairly major cross street. There was a gas station at the corner. I vaguely considered luring it into the gas station then blowing up the pumps. Two problems. First, pumps don’t really blow up like they do in movies. Second, this was already a big enough incident and whoever was currently on their ass, MCB would flip the fuck out.

There was no place to lure it, no place to corral it that didn’t involve more loss of life or a much larger presence. Except the Metairie Bridge. That was a bigger incident but discreet had gone out the window when the fucking MCB sniper missed the fucking shot.

Sam was still talking to Franklin on the mobile phone. “Tell him to park on the Metairie Bridge, east side.”

To get it into a kill zone we needed to get it to follow us. I looked in the rearview mirror. The sobek was tiring and didn’t seem to want to chase us anymore. There was a large apartment complex at the corner of Lake and Bordeaux and I didn’t want it getting stuck in there.

“Lean out and shoot that thing again.”

“You’re serious,” Sam said. But he leaned back out the window and started shooting it with his CAR-15 popgun. The sobek didn’t seem to care.

“We need something it will notice.” I stopped the car and got out.

“It’s sort of meandering this way still,” Sam pointed out.

“SEALs,” I said. “Sheesh. Quit whining. Help me get Bertha out.”

We got the Barrett .50 caliber unpacked, the trunk closed, and the weapon in the front seat before the sobek caught up. Just. As I backed up, fast, it leaned over and clomped its jaws shut on where the car had been. But it also dropped on its face, so it took a bit for it to get back up. And it was pissed again. Then it tripped on some entrails and sprawled. I stopped to let it get up.

“Keep shooting it,” I said as I honked the horn and flashed the high beams at it. “Make sure it knows it’s us. And I’m going to take the next turn.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam said, taking the time to stuff some orange foam earplugs in. The Barrett is a huge, long, heavy, and generally unwieldy gun. Sam was a strong guy, but I suppose I couldn’t expect him to just hang Bertha out the window like with his carbine, but it still pissed me off when he turned around in his seat, levered Bertha about, and smashed out my back window with the muzzle.

“Hey! I just got Honeybear out of the shop!”

“Now who’s whining?” Sam said as he lined up the shot.

Realizing that the ejection port was right next to my head, I hurried and got my muffs off the dashboard and pulled them on. Sam fired. A big shell casing spun past my face. The muzzle brake tore up my upholstery. Stuffing flew into the air. Poor Honeybear.

But that got its attention. The sobek was back up and following us.

I drove slow enough the sobek could keep up. The big mobile phone started ringing, so I answered.

“Chad? It’s Franklin.”

“We’re sticking and moving on this thing getting it to chase us and ignore everything else.”

“Good. We’re—” As Franklin said that, Sam let go with another round of .50 right next to my head.

“What?” I yelled. The sound was deafening. And my ears were already ringing from the LAWs.

“We’re at the bridge!”

“I’m leading it back towards the canal. Going over to Orpheum, then I’m going to turn east on Metairie. I’m hoping it will jump in around there and just head uptown that way. We might be able to get a shot in on it if it’s down in the canal. Tell NOPD and SIU to close Metairie! Get set up on Metairie protecting the crossing if you can. We’ll try to drive it into the water there.”

“We’ve got the LAWs and the Ma Deuce,” Franklin shouted his answer. He could tell I was mostly deaf from the fire. “The MCB is going to shit a brick.”

“We don’t get this shut down quick we’re going to have hundreds of civilian casualties,” I yelled as Sam fired again. Check the mirror. Still following us. “This is their abortion. We’re just trying to fix it!”

The sobek, fortunately, was not particularly fast in normal circumstances and was having a lot of trouble with the spilled intestines. By the time I got off the phone we were just to the intersection of Grenadine and Orpheum. Orpheum paralleled the canal and had a high iron fence to keep people from falling or climbing in. The sobek could negotiate it easily but I suspected it wasn’t going to head straight for the water.

And it didn’t. It just kept following us as I made a slow turn south on Orpheum.

“You got any more ammo for this?” Sam said.

“There’s more mags in the trunk. We’ll can stop again, get out, and get the rounds.”

“Just because you can ride next to the edge of the cliff don’t mean you should, Chad.”

“What?”

“I’ll just space them out more. Anything that’ll soak up two LAWs like it wasn’t even hit has my full admiration.”

“They’re also tasty. Make a fine jambalaya.”

“I so don’t want to know how you know that,” Sam said.

“We used to have a Cajun sniper. Cajuns will eat anything.”

* * *

When we got to Metairie Road it had been blocked off by NOPD and Sheriff’s office. Good thing it was late at night because otherwise it would have caused one hell of a traffic jam. The Metairie Road bridge was the only way to cross the canal for a mile on either side.

Franklin and most of the rest of the team were in the middle of the road on the far side of the bridge setting up the M2 .50 caliber machine gun, generally called a “Ma Deuce.” The team van was parked to one side, more or less blocking the side street that paralleled the canal on the east side, back open.

I was pretty sure the Ma Deuce was, for once, spitting in the wind. You could pepper a sobek all day long with .50 cal and get nowhere. But they also had six light antitank weapons laid out.

I pulled up next to the machine gun on the same side as the team van and got out. Metairie Road curved at the bridge and I looked at the sightlines.

Franklin was shouting orders. “If we don’t force that thing to go in the water, we’re going to have to hoof it.” The sobek made the turn onto Metairie. “Damn. That is bigger and uglier than expected.”

I went over, picked up one of the LAWs and moved to the other side of the road to keep the backblast from interfering with the team.

The sobek was about halfway across the bridge. Franklin lit it up with the M2. We started hitting it with the LAWs. Each round from the rocket launchers knocked it down. But then it got up again. Down. Up. Down. Up.

If we’d been able to hit it from the rear, they might have had some effect—if we could hit it on the back of the head as it was swaying along in its ungainly walk. From the front, we were just tearing it up more but not really stopping it. Knocking it down and slowing it was the best we could do.

By the time we were out of LAWs, everybody switched to small arms. The sobek had taken a lot of damage at that point. It had been hit by eight weapons designed to take out light armored vehicles, the shots from the MCB sniper, and all the .50 that Sam had peppered it with. Speaking of which, Sam had gotten more ammo from the trunk and was adding to the carnage firing Bertha off-handed.

The sobek finally decided it had had enough. The water to the side was inviting. It clumped over to the side and more or less fell off the bridge.

“Bertha,” I said, holding out my hand.

Sam didn’t want to give her up but he handed her over.

I ran onto the bridge and spotted the sobek. It wasn’t moving much, but I could tell that was because it was sort of resting up. Not dead or even really dying quick. The amount of damage we’d done to it would kill it. Eventually. But it could be hours. I considered the angles and decided I was at a decent spot for a kill shot. I rested Bertha across a railing. I’d have preferred being about thirty feet up or that the sobek’s head was thirty feet closer. Or that it would…

The sobek struggled to its feet—again. It was ignoring us, clearly planning on continuing on to whatever its destination had been. But as it got to its feet, for just a moment the angle was juuust right for a…

I didn’t even realize the sear had released until the boom. And the sobek dropped deader than a doornail. It didn’t even thrash once. One shot, one kill, baby. Oorah for Marine marksmanship.

That is how you are supposed to kill a sobek.” I looked over at Sam. “The one shot, one kill thing. Not the shooting up half the city part.”

“Well, it took a while,” Sam said, “but nice shot.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

“Was it really necessary to use six rocket launchers?” Special Agent Campbell fumed.

“It was eight.” I was packing up Bertha and didn’t even bother turning around.

Eight?” Campbell was furious. “Are you completely insane or are you a moron? Why the hell were you shooting it with rocket launchers when you yourself said they didn’t work!”

“Because it was all we had.” I was weary, getting rained on, and getting tired of having to replace car windows. “Sobek stopped. Situation fixed. Scene cleared. Anything else, Special Agent?”

“Get out of my sight.”

“Have a nice day,” I said and left.



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