“Then give the slack to me,” Holden said in a low voice.
He wouldn’t be able to reach behind him to the knot on Grandpa’s chest or free his right hand to get his knife, but he could move his left hand enough to grab Farnsworth if he was foolish enough to step a little closer.
With the metal case securely closed, Farnsworth glanced around. When he saw Holden’s fierce golden eyes, Farnsworth closed the few feet between them, unable to resist the opportunity to rake the gun over the other man’s handsome face again.
Holden’s fingers shot up to lock around the pistol, shoving it toward to the ceiling. “Kate, go outside and hide! Don’t come back! Farnsworth is going to kill everyone he can see before he leaves.”
The slackened lines rode up on Holden’s bicep and bound tight. He thought he heard a metallic snicking from somewhere behind Farnsworth but lost it in the ring of the gunshot. Though the gun wasn’t a hand cannon like he’d seen in his time in the navy, the report was loud enough to set his ears to ringing.
Half stunned by the unfamiliar report, Farnsworth cursed and grunted, trying to twist free.
Grimly Holden held on to the gun. He felt a tug at his calf and swore silently. Instead of escaping, Kate had gone for his dive knife.
Farnsworth was smaller but had more freedom, leverage, and a leg that wasn’t immobilized by pain. Holden had only moments before he lost control of the pistol, and he hung on to each one.
Suddenly the lines around him went slack. He shoved off on his good leg and yelled at Grandpa to do the same while shots fired wildly around them. The knot was undone, but the loops of line were getting in the way of both men.
Inside and out, lightning flashed repeatedly, blinding Holden until all he saw were purple afterimages of the gun levering slowly down toward him.
“Give my regards to the AO,” Farnsworth said through clenched teeth as he managed to bring the gun to bear on Holden.
Kate lunged up off the floor and slashed at Farnsworth’s gun hand, trying to deflect his aim away from Holden. A shot came like thunder just as Grandpa shoved Holden to the side. Both men dropped in a tangle of orange line and blood.
There was a clatter of metal on metal followed by Farnsworth’s yell of shock and surprise as Kate’s knife scored across his knuckles. He knocked her off her feet, staggered as the ship took an unusually large swell over the bow, and aimed at Holden again.
In the silence between lightning and thunder came the dry sound of a trigger being pulled again and again.
Empty.
With a savage word, Farnsworth tried to bring the butt of the pistol down on Holden’s head, but tripped in the coils of safety line. When Farnsworth gave up and tried to grab Kate, she dove under the table and scrambled out of reach while the ship rose sullenly into another black swell.
Off balance, Farnsworth staggered. The metal case slammed into the rim of the table and white water rushed by on the deck like a cataract.
“Too soon!” he wailed, fear and anger fighting to control him.
He pushed himself upright and clawed his way to the outer door. It clanged against the wall, letting the storm pour in. With a desperate lunge, he disappeared.
The ship tilted and the door slammed shut.
“Kate,” Holden said as he rolled out from underneath Grandpa. “Are you all right?”
“You have blood all over you,” she said, horrified.
“Your grandfather took the shot meant for me.” As Holden spoke, he began checking the older man for injuries. “Neoprene split over the ribs.” He probed lightly. “Bloody, but no entry wound.”
Grandpa batted his hand away. “Help me to my feet. I have to get to the engine room and see what’s wrong with the bilge pump. I don’t like the way the ship is riding.”
The sound of the speedboat’s engine thrummed above the storm.
“I’ll check the pumps,” Kate said.
“Wait,” Holden said, grabbing her wrist. “Farnsworth said he left a little puzzle for me. From other things he said, it’s clear he had access to my files. I want to be certain the puzzle isn’t the kind that blows up.”
“You’re paranoid,” she said.
“I’m alive. Cut Larry free and see to your family.”
“Tools are in the storeroom right next to the engine room. Faster to go through the stern deck entry.” She pointed to another door. “I’m leaving Larry where he is. He’s too sick to keep himself on the couch without the ropes.”
“Go start the engines,” Grandpa said to her.
“No,” Holden said from the doorway. “Don’t touch any buttons or levers until I’ve checked things out.”
Rain hit him like fists and wind tried to shove him off balance. He used the rail as a crutch while he worked his way to the engine room. The footing was uncertain and the hatch handle slippery, but he managed to wrestle the hatch open. He went partway down the ladder, using the strength of his arms more than anything else because he didn’t want to use his bad leg until he had to.
He pulled the hatch shut. Light gleamed weakly behind him.
Thanks for leaving a light on, Farnsworth. Wanted to make it easy to find, didn’t you.
The corridor was narrow enough for Holden to brace himself with his hands, sparing his leg. Since walls, ceiling, and floor were in constant, unpredictable motion, he was grateful for the support. The engine room door was open, latched to the side wall, yellow-green light spilling out the doorway. A gray canvas satchel of tools lay where Farnsworth had left it. Ear protectors were perched on top.
He really enjoyed setting this up. I can practically hear him giggling at his own cleverness.
Holden ignored what could have been bait. The generator rumbled like the workhorse it was. The room was warm with the small engine’s heat. If the main engines had been running, it would feel like the deafening anteroom of hell.
Without moving any closer, he braced himself in the doorway and surveyed the area. Even if Farnsworth had brought a device from shore, he hadn’t had time to set up anything elaborate before Holden and Kate arrived. While they were underwater, Farnsworth must have spent most of his time rounding up the lift sacks. Whatever he had devised for Holden couldn’t be too intricate.
The device will be placed where an explosion could take out the fuel system or controls. Holden knew he could drop a match into diesel and the flame would just go out. Given a cold day and a steady hand, he could do the same with gasoline. So to be effective, the device would have to have both an explosive and an accelerant for the diesel.
Ignoring the shift and slide of the ship, he stood and looked for something irregular in the twin giant engines, something tucked among the long cylinders and wires and tubes. His eyes darted between the engines, comparing them, seeking any anomaly.
There.
The fuel pump on the port engine was a translucent plastic dome filled with diesel swirling around a large conical filter. The device was a small brick of paper-wrapped explosive, studded with a series of wires, some attached to the detonator cap, some leading to a gutted clock radio.
Internet special, Holden thought. Any twit with a computer can find the directions. Hope that C4 isn’t homemade.
I hate amateurs. Ninety percent of what they make doesn’t work.
But finding out if this device was part of the murderous ten percent took time and the kind of careful attention and probing that a ship at anchor being tossed around by tropical storm didn’t allow.
It will take time, a lot of time, and I’d be as likely to set off the device as to disarm it.
He looked for anything that could receive a radio transmission. Garage door openers were a favorite.
I hope Farnsworth is stupid enough to try to activate it at a distance. The atmospherics of the storm and all the metal of the hull and the engine room will baffle any simple means of reception.
Easing closer, bracing himself against the boat’s constant, eccentric motions, Holden studied the device and remembered F
arnsworth’s cheerful voice telling everyone that they would be able to get to shore, even if they had to swim the last bit.
Like everything Farnsworth worked on, the bomb was anal-retentive perfect. The device could have come from a textbook for anarchists and jihadists. Every weld was signed with a teardrop of solder. The wrapping for the C4 retained its sharp corners. It certainly looked like one of the ten percent of devices that would actually explode.
The amount of C4 is smallish. Yes, it could kill any luckless chap standing next to it, and would likely blow out the fuel system, but . . .
For a few long moments, Holden frowned. The device didn’t make sense, and the silvery tube that was part of it kept nagging at him. Then he understood.
Thermite.
Holden’s Pashto phrases competed with the other sounds in the engine room as he cursed Farnsworth and his ancestors back to the beginning of time. Thermite would transform diesel into a raging demon. No place to go. Nowhere to survive. A fast death by flame or a slower death by drowning.
The bastardized timer isn’t counting down in any obvious way, but that doesn’t mean anything. Flashy timers are for the cinema.
Farnsworth wasn’t in a hurry to get away from anything but us, and there was no way to predict how long recovery of the lift balloons would take, so he must have a wide margin of safety built in for his escape.
Mentally Holden went through the steps he would take in defusing the device, but he found it hard to concentrate. Something Grandpa Donnelly had said kept picking at him, demanding that he add it to the equations of device and ship and storm and time.
Bilge pumps.
Sinking.
The ship staggered in a series of big swells. It met each one more sluggishly than the last, as though the Golden Bough was slowly, slowly settling deeper into the sea.
The device is a red herring. The real danger is foundering, but Farnsworth expected me to be so fixated on his pretty device that I wouldn’t notice his other sabotage until it was too late.
Abruptly Holden realized that there was water sloshing around his neoprene-covered feet. He bent down quickly, skimmed a finger through the liquid and tasted it, hoping it was simply coming from the machine that converted seawater to drinking water. He touched his fingertip to his tongue.
Salt.
The engine room hadn’t been wet when he entered and the neoprene had prevented him from noticing the slow, inexorable rising of water—water that would kill much less dramatically but just as finally as any explosive devised by man.
Ignoring the pain in his thigh, Holden went outside as fast as he could and checked that the workboat was still tied to the ship. It would need some bailing, but it was safe. Ignoring his twitching thigh, he went up the stairs as fast as the wallowing ship would allow. By the time he opened the main cabin door, he felt like he’d been in a particularly nasty rugby scrum.
“We’re abandoning ship immediately,” he said.
“What?” Kate looked up from tying off a final strip of cloth over her grandfather’s ribs.
“That’s crazy!” Grandpa said over her.
“No,” Holden said flatly. “Crazy is staying aboard a sinking ship. Water is at least a centimeter deep in the engine room and rising as we speak. The bilges are flooded and the pump has packed it in.”
“Sabotage?” Grandpa asked, his face flushed, furious.
“It doesn’t matter.” Holden grabbed his dive knife off the table that was still awash in a pirate’s private hoard and headed for Larry. “The workboat is alongside. The silly sod took the flashy speedboat. Hope it swamps in the following sea on the way to St. Vincent.”
“Let me up,” Grandpa sputtered. “I can save my ship.”
“No time. We could founder in the next big set of waves.” Holden began cutting through Larry’s bindings. “Get your grandfather to the workboat, Kate. I’ll be along with your brother.”
Methodically he set about slapping Larry into consciousness.
More than anything else, the sharp sounds of flesh on flesh told Kate how much trouble they were in. Holden wasn’t the kind to smack around a helpless man.
“Let’s go,” she said Grandpa. “You can lean on me.”
“But—my ship—the treasure.”
“Sod the treasure,” Holden snarled as he sheathed the knife and hauled Larry upright. “The only thing worth saving is our lives.”
The Golden Bough staggered as she struggled to meet more black cliffs of seawater rushing toward the bow. Tears ran down the old man’s face as he felt the ship he loved struggling for her life, fighting every wave.
Losing.
“I can make it to the workboat myself,” he said gruffly to Kate. “Help with Larry.” Grandpa stepped through the open door and into the storm.
She turned and grabbed one of her brother’s arms. He was on his feet, responding in the manner of a child wakened from a deep sleep by an adult and guided toward another bed. He could walk when ordered, but he wasn’t truly aware.
“Wait with him near the door,” Holden said to her. He bent and scooped up the safety line that had recently imprisoned him.
“The stairs,” she said.
It was all she said. It was enough.
“I know,” Holden said. “My leg’s too dodgy to carry him.” His hands moved quickly, surely, fashioning a makeshift harness from one end of the safety line.
She saw what he was doing and worked with him to put the harness on Larry. Her brother neither struggled nor helped. She understood the cause of his passivity, but it clawed at her just the same.
“I’ll go down first and belay him on the stairs,” Holden said. “You keep him aimed right.”
She waited until Holden had rigged a rough belay on the stair railing. Larry might get banged around, but he wouldn’t fall and break his neck.
“Belay on!” Holden shouted above the storm.
Kate did what she could to guide her brother on the first step while the deck tilted and swayed crazily. Holden threw his weight against the belay line, allowing Larry to descend in a more or less controlled fall.
The ship rose to another wall of water, but not far enough. A wave broke over the bow and washed in a wild black-and-white river over the lower deck.
“Holden!” she screamed.
Holden kept himself and Larry from washing overboard by leaning against the belay line and hooking one arm through the railing. When he felt the weight of the water falling away, he called up to Kate.
“Down!”
She shot down the stairs with the speed of a child who had grown up on a ship. Together she and Holden held, pushed, and bullied Larry over the deck. Even with its special grip coating, the footing was treacherous, especially during the torrent of the larger waves breaking over the lower deck. Holden used the rough belay to get Larry into the workboat, then all but fell into it himself. Kate came in on his heels.
Grandpa had already started the engines. “Cast off!”
Untying the line despite the jerk and shudder of the boat against the larger ship would take too much time. Holden pulled the dive knife from its sheath and slashed the lines. With a bob and a shake, the workboat sprang free of the slowly sinking ship.
“I programmed a course to Lee Harbor,” Grandpa said to Kate as he guided the workboat away from the Golden Bough, his hands sure despite the steady fall of tears down his leathery cheeks. “Take the wheel, Kate. Nobody surfs a small boat better than you do. And that’s what we’ll be doing most of the way in, surfing.”
While they switched places, Holden stuffed Larry into a life jacket and braced his slack body under the dashboard. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was safer than slamming about the boat. Grandpa pulled out more flotation gear and handed it to Holden. He put his on quickly and helped Kate into hers while she kept her attention on timing the swells.
“If you get tired, I’ll take it,” he said against her ear. “I have had some experience.”
“Rest your leg as much a
s you can. I used to do this for fun.”
But when lightning came, there was no pleasure on her starkly illuminated features. It took attention and skill to catch the following waves that surged up beneath the stern of the boat, lifting and thrusting it forward. Too much throttle and she would overrun the wave and end up burying the bow in the water and flipping the boat. Too little throttle and the next wave would break over the workboat, swamping it.
For a moment Holden watched her, admiring her skill and courage even as he wanted to spare her. If the wind and current had been going in contrary directions, the workboat would have been riding the edge of its design capabilities just staying afloat. As it was, they made good progress toward shore, thanks to Kate’s steady hands.
He took a plastic bailing container off its clip and went to work bailing despite the white-hot star that was eating its way through his flesh.
It will pass. It always does.
So did life, but Holden didn’t dwell on it. Right now, survival took every bit of his will and concentration.
CHAPTER 24
KATE LOOKED OUT the rear window of the old pickup and saw Lee Harbor washed by curtains of rain and wind. She stared for a long, frustrated moment.
“I told you to stay with them,” Holden said.
“The ambulance is on its way,” she said, starting the pickup. “I can’t do anything for Grandpa and Larry, but I can drive a manual shift vehicle more easily than you right now.”
They had already had this argument on the way into the harbor, so Holden saved his energy for what was coming. The sky outside was black with only loose tendrils of clouds showing when inky purple lightning stabbed in the distance. Wind skated across the water, making moored boats toss and rigging wail. Even away from the sea, the taste of brine was in the air.
Or maybe it’s just the salt crust running down from my hair, he thought, licking his lips.
It took his mind off his thigh, which was settling down more slowly than a spoiled child.
Lightning flashed nearby, bleaching everything white, leaving incandescent afterimages. Simultaneous thunder hammered down, shaking the world. Debris from the streets and then the forests cracked against the truck at unpredictable intervals.
Night Diver Page 27
