The alleged Skouras leaned close to speak over the engine noise.
“You think they’ve gone south?”
“No other place for them,” Bear said. “No place for them to hide from us on the upper bay. No place to off-load the bomb—unless they get their hands on a boat trailer, and I don’t think they’ve had time to do that. They can’t go out to sea with a load like that on a boat like that. No other place to go but south.”
“What would be down there?”
“Not much. The bay runs thirty-seven miles down to Chincoteague. Unless they took time to top off the tanks, I don’t think they can even get that far.”
The alleged Skouras leaned closer, nodding toward his boss. “I think he is becoming impatient.”
“Too fucking bad. We have to find these people first.”
The alleged Skouras sat back. “Find them fast.”
Westman rumbled on along past an extensive stand of trees to his right. At the end of them was a stretch of swampy meadow, and then he could see the lights of the airport. The water to starboard suddenly widened into a fair-sized cove. Cat had warned him not to turn here but to continue on to the next and more narrow opening, which would be the cut.
She was wrong. Rounding a flat peninsula, he came to another wide bay that gave little evidence of a waterway leading inland. Westman put the throttle in neutral and let the boat drift a little, keeping his eyes on the shoreline.
Then he saw it—a sharp depression in the distant marsh. Slowly edging the throttle forward, he steered the boat toward it, mindful of the buzzing of the PWCs in the open water behind him. He really needed a flashlight, but that would mean the end of everything.
A slap in the water to his left startled him. A fish. The buzzing of the PWCs began to fade.
With the alleged Skouras’s permission, Gergen had Mary Lou take the helm while he went forward to the bow. One of the Tangos raised a pistol—as though presuming Bear was about to jump overboard in an ill-considered attempt to escape. That was not the plan. That was death.
Still nothing on the horizon. The only lights were those on the channel markers. Far to the south, Bear could now see the span of the Verrazano Bridge—the northernmost of the only two road connections to Assateague. The other was down at Chincoteague, many miles away.
He sensed his little navy had gone too far. He’d been running at speed. The old pilot’s boat had not. If he had, Bear would have heard the sound or seen the wake.
Returning to the control console, he gestured to Mary Lou to keep her seat and reached past her for the flashlight in the storage bin. Going forward again, he signaled to Creed and the others on the PWCs to heave to. His mate responded immediately. The others followed suit—the Tangos getting the idea last.
“I think we passed them,” Bear said to Creed as he brought the PWC near. “I want to double back. Fan out and keep an eye to the shore.”
“You got it, Bear.” The PWC’s engine burbled back into life.
Westman’s boat slid into the cut much like a foot into a shoe. The waterway was narrower than he’d expected. The weeds and marsh grass seemed to press in equally on both sides.
He held the wheel with great care, steering almost by feel but taking his bearing on one of the airport lights. Cat had said the parking lot was on the north side of the field. Everything seemed to be lining up.
Westman had been in this situation before, taking a small motorboat into a mangrove swamp along Grand Cayman Island’s North Sound on a moonless night. Then he’d been after some narcotics traffickers who’d just made a substantial deposit at one of the tiny island’s five hundred banks.
Then, as he’d penetrated the thick undergrowth, he’d been moving ever nearer some exceedingly dangerous bad guys. Here, at least, he was moving away from them—toward friends.
Like that of an annoying insect, the noise made by his pursuers returned. They were coming back up the bay, bent on retrieving something they’d lost. Him.
He’d kept his eye on the watery path ahead, but the sound of the PWCs broke his concentration. There was a sudden “bonk!” and the pontoon boat came to a halt, its engine shuddering as it skewed to starboard. He quickly put the craft in neutral, wondering what he’d struck. He was a hundred yards or more from the airport grounds.
Burt had activated the mechanism that tilted the truck’s bed to the ground—a grinding crunch signifying the completion of the movement. He pushed the lever back and quiet returned.
No light came on at the airport. Nothing moved. There was a sound that might have been a voice calling out, coming from the direction of the two military cargo planes, but Burt wasn’t sure.
“You hear that?” he asked Cat.
She was looking down the cut. “I think I see him. Yes. He’s about halfway along.”
Cat had fighter pilot’s vision. Burt’s had been diminished by age. Finally, he made out Westman’s boat, noting the rectangular shape of its canopy. They might soon be out of this place, with the bomb secured. “He’s moving real slow,” Burt said.
She went to the edge of the grass that separated the parking lot pavement from the marsh. “No, Burt. He’s not moving at all.”
Gergen’s little fleet prowled back up the bay. He began to worry that he’d paid too little attention to the Assateague side of the channel and steered closer to that. The water was too shallow in most places along that dark shoreline, but back up by the north end of the island and the inlet it ran deep close in—five feet or more even at low tide.
The old pilot’s people might dump the bomb somewhere along that stretch to be retrieved later—just as they had plucked it from the ocean bottom by Cape Henlopen. Their main interest this night would be keeping it out of the hands of Bear and his crew.
But they couldn’t dispose of the pontoon boat they’d stolen so easily. It had to be somewhere.
Bear skirted the curving shore at the north end of Assateague, turning into the inlet with the accompanying PWCs trailing behind. Proceeding all the way to the open sea, fighting the heaving swells where outgoing tide collided with incoming waves, he kept on until he had a view down the ocean side of Assateague. Easing back the throttle, steering to keep the waves on the starboard quarter of the clumsy boat, he looked hard to the southern horizon, seeking the telltale rectangular silhouette of the craft.
There was nothing. Only the winking light of two fishing boats working far out in deep water.
“We go back,” he said.
Making the turn back into the inlet in the cross-currents of tide and surf required all the mariner’s skills he’d acquired in his years at sea. He had to time the maneuver perfectly, spinning the wheel to port on the backside of one wave and gunning the engine hard to get the stern on to the next.
The motor proved too sluggish. They were all but beam to when the following wave rolled into them, lifting the starboard pontoon and heeling the craft over so severely the alleged Skouras came out of his seat, sliding to his boss’s feet.
“Damn it, Bear, you’re going to drown us!” Mary Lou shouted.
He ignored her. The wave passed on, the boat thumped back down, and he was able to complete the turn easily in the ensuing trough. Holding the throttle full forward, he plunged on back into the inlet.
“Now we go back to the dock,” said the alleged Skouras, who had exchanged words with his chief.
“No, you don’t want to do that,” Bear argued.
“He does. My boss. Now.”
“You don’t want to let this slip through your hands just because you went through a little rough water.”
“You have searched up and down that bay and found nothing. You are wasting our time.”
“There’s a stretch of shoreline down there I didn’t search. Not carefully. It’s worth a second look.”
The alleged Skouras had an exchange with the chief in a language Bear did not recognize. “Okay,” said the alleged Skouras. “A last look.”
Cat got to Westman in water that
reached to her breasts. He was struggling with something beneath the surface and didn’t notice her approach, twisting around with some violence when she touched his shoulder and nearly clipping her with his elbow.
“Sorry,” he said upon recognizing her. “Jumpy business tonight.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Hit a log. Anyway, a big branch on a log. It’s stuck on the bottom of the hull.”
There was splashing behind them. Burt had come out. Westman repeated his explanation of his predicament.
Schilling went to the bow and submerged himself up to his neck, feeling around the craft’s port pontoon. Then he moved around to the side of the boat, exploring the length of the log. “We’re in luck,” he said.
“If this is luck …” Cat began.
“It’s afloat—not a bottom snag,” Schilling said. “Help me get aboard the boat.” They did so. Westman was struck by how light the old man was. “Okay,” Schilling continued. “Just give me a minute.”
He seated himself at the controls, listening to the still-rumbling engine.
“Can we help?” Westman asked.
“Not yet.” Leaving the gear in neutral, Schilling pushed the throttle forward until the rumble became a roar. “Stand back!”
Westman put his arm around Cat as they retreated a few feet back up the cut. She pulled very close to him as they waited. A moment later, Schilling jammed the gearshift into reverse. The outboard’s propeller churned up a huge froth of water. There was a long squealing sound, and then a loud bang as the boat sprang free, lunging backward into the marsh until Burt was able to get the shift back into neutral.
The log bobbed up with a splash, a thick, broken branch sticking up like a mast.
“Okay,” said Westman. “Home free.” He took hold of the branch and used it to push and steer the log into the marsh on the other side of the cut. The pontoon boat now had a clear channel to move in. Westman signaled Burt to come forward, then turned to join Cat in wading to shore.
Turko could tell from Pec’s silence and icy demeanor that the Kosovar would like to kill him and the salvage-tug men at the very first opportunity. This trolling up and down the bay was accomplishing nothing but increasing their risk of getting caught. The likelihood of their coming away from this folly with a two-thousand-pound nuclear weapon was diminishing proportionately. The only thing staying Pec’s hand, Turko supposed, was the presence of Gergen’s three armed crewmen on the PWCs—as nasty a gang as any of the homicidal Chechen rebels Turko had fought with. They would not respond kindly to a gunshot or two aboard this pontoon boat. If Pec tried to use a knife on the big, bearded American, Turko had no doubt who would win that fight.
So Pec sat stiffly silent, waiting. Turko guessed he would try to kill them when everyone returned to the Ocean City dock. Surely they would do that soon, as this folly of a search would soon be over.
Traveling at a slow speed, Bear heard the snap and bang of injured metal over the noise of his engine. He idled it quickly, concentrating on the direction of the sudden sound. It had come from ahead and to the right—exactly where he was intending to go—the marshy shoreline fronting the local airport. He wasn’t sure how they could get the bomb onshore there, but if they could, and had a vehicle that could carry it, they’d be long gone before Bear and the Tangos could do anything about it.
Gergen turned his craft toward the patch of open water where the bang had come from, easing the throttle forward. Steering with one hand, he took up the flashlight and quickly signaled to the PWCs on either side to join him.
Spotting a long cut running through the marsh, he idled the engine again. Like all Navy SEALs, he had excellent night vision. He couldn’t quite make out any people, but the other pontoon boat was about two hundred yards ahead.
“What is it?” the Tango chief asked.
“Quiet,” Bear whispered. He leaned close. “It’s them. They have the boat. They’re bringing the bomb onto shore at that airport.”
The chief and the alleged Skouras stared into the darkness, probably not able to discern much.
“I see them,” said the alleged Skouras. “Why are they going to that airport?”
“I’m guessing they have a vehicle—or know where they can get one.”
“Then we must stop them at once,” said the chief Tango.
“We’ll take them out soon enough,” Bear said. “I want to see how many they are—and where they are. And if they do have a truck or whatever, I want to wait until they get the bomb on it.”
“That is crazy,” said the chief.
“No. It’ll save us a lot of trouble. You can drive the bomb away on it.”
“Easy as that,” said the alleged Skouras.
“Maybe easier. I was a Navy SEAL, Mr. Skouras. My crew are all ex-military. We know what we’re doing.”
“Okay, so what will you do?”
Schilling mushed the bow-heavy pontoon boat against the grassy shore, coming forward to gather up the anchor and its line from a storage bin. Tossing it to Westman, he affixed his end of the line to a stanchion as the Coast Guardsman dug the anchor blade into the earth.
“We have to bust off this forward railing,” Burt said. “We’ll use the winch.”
“That will make too much noise,” Westman said. “Do you have a crowbar on the truck?”
“A big tire iron.”
“Let’s use that.”
Cat froze. “Quiet.”
“What is it?” Burt asked.
“Shhh. I think there’s something out there.”
All three of them listened. Insects and birds, and a strengthening breeze.
“We have to keep moving,” Westman said. “We have to get this done.”
“Right.” Burt went to the truck.
“We heard those PWCs go by,” Cat said.
“They came back again.”
“Nobody rents those things out at night. They’re danger-bus enough in broad daylight. And there were a lot of them.”
Westman took out his Beretta and checked the clip. “Do you still have your pistol?” he asked.
“Yes. Survival-kit issue.”
“Do you have any extra ammunition?”
She shook her head.
Burt returned with the crowbar. Westman took it from him and climbed aboard the pontoon boat. The right-hand portion of the front railing opened as a gate. There was a post in the center, and then another on the port side where the railing connected. He’d need to uproot only the center one.
As best he could tell in the dim light from the high lamps farther along the parking lot, the posts were bolted to the fiberglass decking. He worked the angled blade of the tire iron underneath the flanged base of the post, then pushed down hard.
There was a squeaking sound in response, but the flange barely budged. He worked the blade in again, then turned the main bar of the tire iron parallel to the deck and jumped on it.
The iron went flying and he barely managed to keep it from going overboard. But the opening between flange and deck had substantially increased. Inserting the blade once more, he shoved it deep. Positioning the rod with care, he set one foot on it, then stepped squarely on its full length.
This time it gave. He needed only two or three more quick pries to loosen it completely. The railing itself moved an inch or more when he pushed on it, but no farther.
“Burt. We’ll need the winch after all. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Okay. You’ll have to carry off the line. I’ll put the winch in neutral.”
A hundred feet of rope and cable, plus chain and hook, proved a sizable weight, but Westman managed, slowly unspooling the line until he had brought it to the water’s edge. His muscles were shaking from the effort when he bent to affix the hook to the boat railing’s lower bar.
Climbing to the other side, Erik backed up, then signaled to Burt to start the winch. Schilling did so with a loud clank, and then an increasing roar as the machine struggled with the fixed aluminum. Slowly, the w
inch began to win the tug-of-war. The rail began to bend backward, then with another, louder bang, jerked completely forward—its mounting on the port side broken completely.
Schilling stopped the winch with a rasping shudder. The front of the boat was completely open, the rear of the bomb waiting, reminding Westman oddly of a bull hesitating at the gate of a corrida.
He retrieved the hook and returned to the boat, as Burt paid out more slack. Examining the bomb’s tail assembly carefully before deciding upon the best placement for the hook, Erik set it on a steel cross member, then asked Burt to slowly pull the line taut. It was inch-thick line, plus twenty or so feet of cable. This would be something of a gamble.
Burt said nothing. At Westman’s signal, he put the winch into gear.
The bomb moved freely forward along the deck. It was so long that there was no dipping of the tail as it came out over the edge of the bow. Coming onto the ground, however, it dug into the earth. Burt’s attempt to pull it free only dug it in deeper.
“You’re going to have to back up the truck.”
“It’s soft ground for this kind of load,” Burt said.
Westman looked to the bay. “We have no choice,” he said.
Bear waited impatiently for the Tangos and his own crew to get into position. He’d had to explain his plan to the chief and the alleged Skouras twice. Their idea of an ambush was to cut a target vehicle off on a road and spray it with automatic-weapons fire—or simply blow it up with a remote-control bomb. Blowing up things was out of the question here. And you didn’t want to shoot up the vehicle.
What was called for here was a basic U.S. military ambush—an attacking force and a blocking force. The first would drive the adversary into the guns of the second. It was standard practice for U.S. special operations units and it almost always worked.
The Tangos understood the attacking-force part, and happily assumed that role. The problem was coordinating their effort with the blocking force, which was Roy Creed and Bear’s other two crewmen. He had sent them ashore to set up in the trees by the airport access road, presuming their targets would try to exit the situation by that route. It was the only way they could get the heavy bomb out of there.
Deepkill Page 35
