Natchez Burning by Greg Iles Read Free Book Online

walked up the sandbar toward the smoking grill, he had to admit Snake had a point. Only this wasn’t the Pacific or Korea—or even Vietnam, wherever the hell that was. This was America. Which meant Snake was talking about a civil war. As soon as this thought flashed through Sonny’s mind, everything came clear, and a feeling of peace spread through him. Appomattox hadn’t ended anything; it had merely heralded an intermission. The war itself was still raging across the country, right under the shiny plastic surface of the American Dream. Some people pretended not to notice, or made out like the Russians were the real enemy. But anybody who’d read any history knew that great civilizations always crumbled from within. And to prevent that eventuality, Sonny was willing to kill whoever Frank said needed to die.

CHAPTER 3
     
Four Years Later
March 31, 1968
Near Athens Point, Mississippi
     
    SONNY THORNFIELD STEERED the rusty green johnboat through the darkening swamp with his left hand and held a gun on Jimmy Revels with his right. After three days in Double Eagle captivity, the young Negro wasn’t much of a threat. Revels lay in the bottom of the boat, barely conscious, his hands bound behind him. The most he could do now would be to jump out of the boat and drown himself rather than be shot. Sonny had considered simply dumping him among the huge cypress trees, but there was some chance that a fisherman might find his body before the gators did, and Sonny didn’t want to take the risk.
    Sonny wasn’t sure he would survive the night himself. After four years of successful Double Eagle operations, things had finally gone about as wrong as they could go. Three days ago, they’d been on the verge of accomplishing phase one of the mission Frank Knox had outlined on the sandbar that first day back in the summer of ’64. But at 4 P.M. on Thursday, Frank had been killed, and five hours later the Eagles had been ordered to stand down. Sonny had no problem with this decision. In his opinion, the Double Eagles without Frank to lead them had no business taking on operations of national scope. But Snake had different ideas. Juiced on white lightning and stoked on speed, Snake Knox had seized upon the notion that if they didn’t go through with Frank’s original plan, then his older brother had died for nothing.
    The black boy in the bottom of the johnboat was the bait Frank had finally settled on, the bait that would lure in the big targets. They couldn’t have found a more perfect victim. A former navy cook and noted musician, Jimmy Revels had not only met Martin Luther King in person, but also had worked tirelessly to register black voters in Mississippi. He’d redoubled his efforts in the wake of Robert Kennedy’s announcement that he would run for president, which had earned him a personal phone call from Kennedy only a week ago. By an odd coincidence, Revels had also worked for Albert Norris before joining the navy. Stranger still, Revels was the younger brother of Viola Turner, Dr. Cage’s nurse, the woman Sonny had secretly lusted after for years. Sonny didn’t pretend to understand the mechanics of fate, but he felt that all these connections had somehow brought about Frank’s death and stranded them in their current predicament.
    Nothing had ever really been the same since Frank’s older son was killed in Vietnam. Sonny couldn’t remember a single day Frank spent sober after getting that news.
Two years drunk
. Frank functioned well enough, but he’d lost a step. When Frank had outlined his most recent plan, Sonny had worried that grief over his son might be blinding Frank to certain realities. Volunteering to carry out the will of a mob boss like Carlos Marcello was like dealing with the devil. When Sonny pointed out that almost everyone associated with the JFK assassination was now dead, Frank had told him he ought to apply for work in the ladies’ underwear section at Coles, the Jew department store