by Sam Jones
The yacht was now fifteen feet from the docks and topping out at forty-five knots, around fifty miles per hour.
It was ten feet away.
And then five…
Billy shut his eyes and tried to clear his mind and found that the image of Maria’s face was now burning his corneas like the sun.
He could hear her voice. He could see her smile. The impact that was now two seconds out wasn’t making his life flash before his eyes.
Just Maria.
Billy breathed, said his good-byes, jutted his jaw, and hoped for the best.
Here we go.
Hold on tight…
Then the boat made contact with the docks.
The crash that followed was one of the most spectacular displays of industrial destruction anyone present had ever witnessed.
61
RIPLEY’S RUN DIDN’T live up to her own name when she slammed into the dock.
She was practically flying.
The lofty, one-hundred-and-ten-foot luxury vessel rammed into Dock Five, toward the tip of the arrow-shaped marina, tearing apart the dock and totaling the dinghy and the daysailer parked in their slips on either side of its hull with a deafening crunch and a high-pitched shriek that made nails on a chalkboard sound like a trickling waterfall in a therapist’s office.
The yacht sliced through the dock like a razor blade, the wooden deck snapping and breaking and splintering into confetti as the bow of the boat lined up like a battering ram with the concrete wall where the parking lot stopped and the docks began.
End of the line.
She was going about thirty knots when she came to a hard and violent stop against the concrete wall and rang out a gong-like reverb from the metal hull slamming into the who-knows-how-many tons of concrete. The ship then canted on its left side into the water as a thick and debris-choked cloud began to settle over the marina, and a disturbing silence began to hold sway as everyone in the vicinity took a moment to check themselves over.
A few people were hurt.
A few people were dead.
But Kruger, Analena, and Billy were not among them.
Billy rode the crash out with nothing more to show for it than a bruised-up arm. When the ship made impact, he and Analena pitched forward, but the grip he had on the railing kept them in place. After the yacht crashed into the wall, he lost that grip, and they were thrown forward toward the opposite side of the U-shaped bar. Billy still had his arms tight enough around Analena that they fell and rolled and came to a hard stop against the wooden shelving of the bar, the back of Billy’s head hitting it and flashing a quick thought through his brain.
I’m going to need another CAT scan after this is over.
The ship then canted to the left, and Billy and Analena waited for what felt like minutes as a hush fell over the scene.
Billy held Analena’s head in his hands. “Hey,” he whispered. “Look at me. Are you all right?”
Analena looked at him. It was a vacant stare, but still a live one.
Billy ran his hand along the floor for the Colt—no dice. It apparently had gotten knocked from his grip when the boat crashed into the docks.
Kruger.
Billy slowly stood up and scanned the room. The scrawny guy’s body, tossed to the side like a rag doll, was the only other occupant in the room.
Then Billy heard shuffling.
He cocked his head to his right and saw Kruger sprinting awkwardly down the tilted steps and toward the docks.
“Stay here,” Billy said to Analena as he clenched a fist and ran after Kruger.
62
KRUGER WAS AT the stern, the boat’s rear end, about five feet from an intact part of the docks. The boat was leaning on its port side, the bow smashed flush against the concrete wall and cutting off any access from that area.
Kruger slid the last few feet toward the tilted stern, positioned his feet, and jumped onto the docks as a small platoon of law enforcement men and women converged on the sole access point to the boat from Marina Drive to his right, far enough away that Kruger could take a chance and take a dive into the water.
But then he heard feet hitting the docks to his left.
He turned.
It was Billy, fire in his eyes and a pearl-white shine to the knuckles on his balled-up fists.
Kruger looked at Billy, then at the police hustling toward the boat forty yards away to the right, and then at the other officials scrambling behind their government vehicles and lights in the parking lot in front of him, waiting for the uniformed chaps to bring him in.
There were a lot of them. Who knew how many.
Kruger laughed; his body went a little slack. He was now the epitome of a man who was coming to terms with being at the end of the line.
He gave a sideways glance at Billy, six feet away from him now, both of them squaring off and waiting for whatever was going to happen next.
“Reese!” a voice called out from the parking lot.
Billy looked to his left at the parking lot—it was Ferris, an FBI windbreaker on and a radio in her head, a pleading and desperate and angry look in her eyes that was clearer than day even in the dark and from a distance.
Billy gave her a look, a look she had come to know all too well. Ferris was, in a lot of ways, a surrogate big sister to Billy. Despite the tension they had, despite the setbacks they experienced, they knew each other well, and there were specific ticks and individualistic tells they both had that painted an entire picture to the other which required no words to clarify its meaning.
So Ferris knew exactly what Billy was saying from the intensity of his stare.
He’s mine.
Ferris took a moment.
And then she nodded.
Then she started scrambling, barking orders at different officials and dishing out orders on her radio.
Kruger smirked. “Ferris, huh? She cut her hair?”
Billy gave him nothing. He was waiting for the other cops to give him some space. Then he heard a voice come over the radios clipped to the officers now seventy feet from their position: “Back off! Now! Move back to the parking lot! FBI’s collar!”
After a few heated exchanges over their radios, and some start-and-stops with their approach, the small army of officers began retreating back toward the south entrance behind them, shotguns and six-shooters still trained on Billy and Kruger as they slunk away to their superior officers like the good cops they were.
Billy waited for them to clear good and far away. All eyes were on him now. He was in deep shit and his future with the bureau—hell with being a free man—was now a giant question mark. But there was one thing they would give him first: they would let him take Kruger first.
Billy looked at his old friend, motioning around, waiting for him to take a good tally of the score. “What do you want to do, bud?” he asked.
Kruger already made his decision.
As did Billy.
He removed the Ka-Bar knife still in its sheath in the back of his waistband and held it up for Kruger to see.
“That’s how I go?” Kruger said. Unimpressed.
Billy threw the knife over his shoulder and let it scatter away along the deck.
“Nope.”
The Long Beach PD chopper was now directly overhead and casting the spotlight on the deck, illuminating the stage for Kruger’s upcoming bout with Billy. Kruger looked up at the chopper, gave them a polite wave, looked back at Billy and said, “Okay, slick. Let’s do this…”
He shucked off his jacket, tossed it on the deck, flexed his fingers, and balled up a pair of fists.
Billy did the same.
Kruger then marched toward Billy, Billy marched toward Kruger, and the two men went at it with nothing held back, a storm of emotions fueling them up for the fight of their lives.
63
ON THE RIGHT, weighing in at one hundred and eighty pounds and standing tall at a strapping six feet and one inches, and hailing from the sleepy little Southern Cali
fornia town of Eagle Rock, California: Billy Reese, a scrapper of a fighter with a solid hold on his legwork and a wicked right hook, trained by the good people over at the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the patriots at the US Marine Corps.
On the left, his opponent: Andy “Kruger” Sykes, clocking in at solid one hundred eighty-one pounds at six feet and three-quarter inches, with several years of training with the FBI, the USMC, and a few off-color personalities who specialized in killing people with their bare hands.
Ladies and gentleman, coming to you from the venue over at the recently razed Alamitos Bay Marina and presented by the FBI and the CIA: it’s Friday Night Fight Night!
And Kruger was already winning.
When the showdown commenced, Kruger quickly caught Billy in the cheek with a right jab. Billy’s head cocked back, and Kruger went to follow up with a left hook, but Billy quickly calibrated, blocked the blow, and rabbit punched Kruger in his ear with his left—sloppily, but it got Kruger off of him nevertheless.
The two men then lunged toward one another with their arms wide and fingers spread, aiming to get their hands around the other’s neck.
Like all fights, it got messy and unpredictable.
Their limbs began twisting and nudging and coiling, feet struggling to find their footing, their arms wriggling and wringing around each other’s necks.
Billy’s right arm was folded inward at a ninety-degree angle, his forearm pressed against Kruger’s neck. His left hand was gripping Kruger’s right hand, currently clenched tight around Billy’s throat, Kruger trying to dig and tear into Billy’s Adam’s apple as his left arm folded and drew back, ready to throw a blow at Billy’s temple.
And then Billy improvised with a little bit of Jailhouse Rock.
He cocked his head back and used the thick part of his crown to smash Kruger’s nose.
Not enough to break it.
But enough to leave a crack.
The blood trickled out of from Kruger’s nostrils as both men backed a few feet off. The roar of the helicopter overhead was now deafening, and the glow from its spotlight and the red-and-blue hues of the cruisers from the parking lot blended into a kaleidoscopic blur that made the dock now look like a dance floor.
Billy and Kruger dealt with the pain, put up their guards, and once again prepared to close in the distance.
Billy drew a breath.
Kruger spit blood on the deck.
They ran back in.
This time Billy got the first punch, a nice little left cross that made Kruger’s legs bend like rubber. Billy went for an encore performance with a right cross, but Kruger quickly bounced back and caught him with an uppercut and forced Billy to stumble a few feet backward.
Kruger then hit Billy with a shot to the stomach. Billy keeled over as he fought the urge to puke. Then Kruger knocked Billy flat on his ass when he used the meat of his right thigh to smash him in the nose. Billy saw stars as he sat on his butt and felt the blood flow.
Now they were even.
Billy didn’t stay down for longer than a half second. He was too high on the rage and adrenaline to slow down, too pissed to see that his nose was busted and red was now flowing from it, the copper taste in his mouth going unnoted as he gritted his teeth and growled out a primal war cry.
He kicked off the deck like a track runner on fire and tackled Kruger onto the docks like a linebacker; the wind was knocked out of Kruger with a sickly gasp as the back of his head hit the deck and made him see stars.
Billy jumped on top off him. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”
Then he started whaling on Kruger with his right fist. One. Two. Three punches to the face. Then Kruger got a grip on Billy’s striking arm when he came down for a fourth and caught him in the lip with a right jab. He then coiled his left leg around Billy’s right arm, bent up his right knee, shot out his foot and kicked his childhood buddy in the face with a sickening smack of his heel.
Billy could no longer pretend he couldn’t taste the blood.
He fell on his back. The world started to spin.
Kruger stood up. He waited for Billy to follow suit. Once Billy was halfway off the deck, Kruger roundhouse kicked him in the face with a hard and wet crack.
Billy spun and rolled along the deck.
He got back on his feet.
Crack! Kruger caught him with another spin kick to the left side of his face.
Billy spun like a top and fell to his hands and knees as blood began to seep out of his forehead like maple from a tree and caused him to go blind in his already bloodshot left eye.
Kruger planted his foot and prepared to mount another spin kick as Billy got back up, but halfway through the spin, Billy caught Kruger’s leg, punched him in the groin, and threw him onto his back.
Billy waited for Kruger to stand up.
Then he dove at him and tackled him into the water with a cannonball splash.
The two men were raw, sore, exhausted, and running out of gas.
But someone still had to die.
And neither one of them was willing to throw in the towel.
They were completely submerged underwater, their hands once again around each other’s throats. They jerked, punched, and kicked one another as they sank toward the bottom of the ocean, everything turning black the further they descended into the void.
Billy, both hands around Kruger’s neck, squeezed as hard as he could.
Kruger did the same.
They stared into each other’s eyes, cutting through the murkiness of the marina’s waters with a hate-saturated fury that would continue to burn as long as they had breath in their bodies.
The searchlight from the helicopter overhead pierced through the water above and once again illuminated the two friends trying to choke the life out of each other, the water around them now visibly tainted and cloudy with their blood as they did whatever they could to survive.
It was anybody’s game now. Both of them were evenly matched.
And then Billy had a thought.
Use it…
As the abyss of the ocean floor began to envelope them, Billy closed his eyes, thought of Maria, and began wringing his hands around Kruger’s throat with an intensity that Kruger was now unable to match.
Billy squeezed.
And squeezed.
And squeezed…
Fuck you.
Fuck! You!
Kruger’s eyelids fluttered. His eyes rolled back. His grip on Billy went limp and the consciousness started to fade.
Die, you son of a bitch.
Die!
Billy knew he was only a few more seconds away from completely twisting the consciousness out of Kruger, a few seconds away from closing the chapter to a life ill lived, a few seconds away from the epilogue of a friendship now shattered and destroyed.
Kruger would die.
Maria would have her justice.
Billy would have his vengeance.
But above Billy, beyond the waters, past the marina, and somewhere way off in the distance where things were calm and the crickets were chirping, Billy thought of one person: Tommy Sykes.
Kruger’s son.
Sykes’ son.
He knew that there was a tumultuous and heavy future awaiting the kid after all this was over. His father was alive. Deceptions had been crafted. Lies had been told. Nothing was what it seemed, and Andy Sykes wasn’t the man he used to be.
He was a thief. A cheat. A liar.
A murderer.
But in that moment, Billy knew he couldn’t go through with it. As much as he wanted to kill Kruger, the notion of having to get down on one knee to tell Tommy that he was the one who took that murderer’s life, his father’s life, was something that he just couldn’t bear.
Billy could already see the despair in Tommy’s eyes and the anger and the guilt and the uncertainty in Heather’s when he told them he killed the man they loved.
I can’t.
I just can’t…
An
d then Billy Reese made a decision, perhaps one of the most telling he had made in the past few days.
He let Kruger live.
He released his grip on Kruger, grabbed him by the collar, and began swimming toward the surface. Moments later they emerged under the bottom of Dock Four, both of them taking huge gulps of air as they bobbed like corks in the water and prepared to call the whole thing a night.
From the parking lot, radio chatter became audible and frantic. “Go! Go! Go! Move in! Go!”
Footsteps began clambering in from the south. Rounds being chambered into weapons rang out like an a cappella choir. The searchlight from the helicopter remained steady on Kruger and Billy like a kid’s finger pointing out the bullies on the schoolyard.
Billy, grip still on Kruger’s collar, waited for the cavalry to arrive and pull them out, treading water pretty much for the both of them now that Kruger was half in and half out of consciousness.
“Sempir Fi, boy…” Kruger barely managed to grumble, smiling through the pain, struggling to keep the water out of his mouth as the blood continued to flow from his many wounds.
Billy looked up at the foot-and-a-half gap between themselves and the wooden dock. Then he looked back at Kruger, tightened the grip on his collar, and said, “Oorah.”
He submerged Kruger into the water, lifted him up, slammed the crown of his head against the wood of the docks, and knocked the prick out cold.
Billy waded for a few seconds before the booted feet of several dozens of law enforcement officers assembled on the deck. Moments later, both men were pulled from the water and placed on the deck as a barrage of rifles and revolvers were aimed at them from point-blank range. Handcuffs were produced, Billy’s hands were pulled behind his back, and the clink of the cuffs locking into place around his wrists had put an end to the antics over at the Alamitos Bay Marina.
Four Weeks Later Washington, DC
64
IT HAD BEEN a long few weeks for Billy Reese. After he and Kruger were pulled out the water, he sat in an empty room the size of a large closet inside the security office for the marina, behind a locked door with his hands cuffed behind his back and nothing but the patrolman guarding the door and the bland cream color of the walls keeping him company.
