“Is that our only weapon?” Deal asked, nodding at the automatic pistol that Basil had slung by a strap at his shoulder.
Rhodes turned his hand over without comment, displaying a small-caliber pistol in his palm. Deal nodded. He was left with his hands, then, and he supposed there was some appropriateness in that. He’d made a life using his hands. Might as well try and save it with them.
Basil had his pistol ready as he pushed quietly through the fronds. He hesitated, surveying the shoreline near the dock, then finally motioned to Rhodes. “Nobody on the dock,” he said. “Not that I can see, anyway.”
“We’ll try to make it to the boat,” Rhodes said to Deal and Kaia. “If there’s shooting, take cover here.”
Deal nodded, sticking close on Rhodes’ steps as they moved out over the rocky shore. He turned to offer a hand to Kaia, but she was moving nimbly, even though her feet were bare.
Basil moved quickly across the rocky shingle of beach to a set of steps carved into the incline leading to the dark finger of dock. He glanced out over the deserted planks to his left, then back in the other direction, toward the house.
Deal heard the thudding of footsteps across the darkened swath of lawn then, and saw the big man tense, raising his weapon to fire. “Get down,” Deal whispered, spinning toward Kaia. She dropped into a crouch near the embankment.
Rhodes came up toward the embankment with his pistol braced, flanking Basil by a dozen yards or so. Deal stared out into the darkness, wondering what he was supposed to do. Throw a few rocks? Call out assurances to the men with the guns?
As it turned out, he was able to manage something. The fact that he hadn’t moved for cover yet gave him an angle on the man running toward them that the others didn’t have. “Don’t shoot,” he cried as he saw who it was.
Rhodes glanced back at him in puzzlement, but Basil never wavered. He had his weapon homed in on the direction of the sounds, ready to fire.
“It’s your brother,” Deal called, lunging for Basil’s arm. “It’s Frank.”
Basil jerked his arm away from Deal’s grasp. “You better hope it is,” he growled.
Another moment or two and the familiar silhouette was outlined against the starlit sky, clear enough for Basil’s reassurance. “Well, goddamn,” he said. He glanced at Deal, then stood up to call, “It’s us, little brother!”
Frank went sprawling for cover, his gun hand braced in reflex.
“Cut the shit,” Basil called again.
“Sonofabitch,” Frank said, scrambling to his knees.
They were all up the embankment then, joining him at the place where the dock spliced onto land.
“I thought I was history—” Frank began.
“You still could be,” Basil observed.
“What’s going on up there?” Rhodes cut in.
Frank shook his head. “They’re tearing through the house. I’m not sure how many, six or eight of them. I saw a couple lying by the front door.”
“Babescu’s men?” Rhodes asked.
Frank nodded. “There’s a boat put in by the caretaker’s place, the next cove around. Thirty-footer maybe, like one of those cutters the Bahamian cops use. Can’t be that many left, whoever they are.”
“You got the one with the rifle, that was shooting into the house?” Basil asked.
Frank nodded. “Sonofabitch sitting in a tree,” he said. “Shot him right up his ass.”
Basil grunted something that sounded like approval. Rhodes’ attention was still on the distant house. “They’ll be down here soon enough,” he said. “As soon as they realize we’re gone.”
Basil looked at his boss. “You want to wait, see if we can take them?”
Frank shook his head. “We’re a little short on firepower.”
Rhodes glanced at Kaia, then back at Basil. “We have the faster boat, don’t we?”
“They got a Bahamian police cutter?” Basil shrugged. “If we can beat them to the open water, we ought to be all right.”
“Then we’re out of here,” Rhodes said. And in the next moment they were all pounding down the dock.
***
Deal stood near the rear of the boat, listening with mixed emotions as the big engines of the Cigarette kicked into life. Plenty of power there, all right…but a roar like that would carry easily back to the house, no matter what was going on inside. He glanced toward the front of the cockpit of the boat, past Basil, who was working intently at the controls, to where Kaia stood at the opposite rail. Rhodes was beside her, his arm around her shoulders, saying something in her ear. Whatever it was, Deal hoped it was reassuring. He could use a bit of reassuring himself.
Frank, meantime, had untied the last of the lines and jumped down into the cockpit even as Basil was swinging them away from the dock. “You trying to leave me, big brother?” Frank called as he hit the deck and rolled.
“You want to hang around till you see the whites of their eyes?” Basil gunned the engines then, making conversation all but impossible as they hurtled down a moonlit channel marked by stone breakwaters on either side.
Less than a hundred yards out, the breakwaters fell away behind them, and Basil cut the engines abruptly. “What’s wrong?” Kaia called from her place at the rail They were still making headway, but compared to that initial burst of speed, they might as well have been crawling.
“The reefs,” Deal told her as he made his way forward. “We’ll have to pick our way out to deep water from here.” He didn’t know how far it was, nor how tricky this particular set of shallows might be, but the grim possibilities were many: they could shear off their props on a rocky outcrop, run aground on a sandbar where they’d be sitting ducks, or simply tear out the bottom of the boat and sink.
Over the rumbling near-idle of the Cigarette, came a distant echo of other engines, these of a slightly higher pitch.
“Fucking Turks,” Basil muttered, glancing over his shoulder.
“We can’t use the spotlight to check the reefs,” Rhodes said. “They’ll home right in on us.”
“You have a hand-held?” Deal asked the big man behind the wheel.
Basil glanced at him. “You’re the ‘red-right-returning’ guy, right?”
“Come on, Basil,” Deal said as the sound of the distant engines grew. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Basil rummaged inside a compartment on the console and came up with a rubber-coated marine flashlight. Deal reached for it and snapped it on. Nothing you’d want to mount a search-and-rescue mission with, he thought, but it would be a hell of a lot harder to spot at a distance. In any case, it would have to do.
Deal kicked off his leather-soled shoes, then pulled himself up over the low windshield onto the glossy foredeck of the slow-moving Cigarette. He made his way out to the prow in a hurried duckwalk and flattened himself on the deck, dangling his chin over as far as he dared. When he was steadied, he snapped on the light and angled the beam down toward the water.
Directly in front of them, the water held a satisfying dark-green cast. Ditto to the left. On the right, however, the color was trending toward a silty white. He made a frantic motion with his left hand and felt Basil swing the boat around accordingly. It would work, he thought. He could get them out to deep water this way, given enough time.
But time was the very problem, wasn’t it? He craned his neck and glanced back to see the running lights of the cutter as it rounded the shoulder of the cove that had separated them only moments before. The engine noise of the cutter had redoubled suddenly, and he made out the beam of a powerful searchlight sweeping the waters close to the dock. Another minute or two and they’d make the dock channel, a couple more after that and the cutter would be on their heels.
It was hopeless, he thought, glancing out toward the darkness of the open sea. They’d never make it that far without being overtaken.
“Better get back here,” Basil shouted. “I’m just going to open her up, we’ll
have to pray we don’t hit anything.”
Another hopeless prospect, Deal thought. It would be like drag-racing across a mine field.
“Wait,” he called back, sweeping the water frantically with his light. That underwater ridge line was still trailing along their starboard side. Here and there he caught glints of jagged outcroppings, glinting in the beam of the flashlight like giant fangs.
He switched off the light and scrambled back over the deck to the windshield. “How much water does this thing draw?”
Basil shrugged. “Couple feet maybe, a little more if the screws are all the way torqued.”
“And the cutter’ll draw three, three and a half?”
“I suppose. Hard to know for sure.”
Deal nodded, glancing back at the prow of the Cigarette. That was the way boats of this class achieved their speed on plane: nose high up in front, tail digging down behind, till hardly anything was dragging water but the stern and the screws. “Let’s get everybody out here on the prow,” he said. “The weight will help keep the nose down. Even if it makes an inch of difference, it’ll help. You keep us going as fast as you can without planing.”
“I can do that,” Basil said. “But I don’t know what good it’s gonna do.”
He cast a glance backward. The cutter had reached the dock channel now. The scream of its suddenly revving engines cut clearly across the quarter-mile of water separating the two craft.
“They’re just gonna follow us wherever we go,” he added.
“That’s what I’m counting on,” Deal said. “Let them come. When I give you the signal, make a hard right, take us right over the reef line we’ve been skirting.”
Basil gave him a dubious look. “You want to take us into the shallows?”
“And I want you to switch on the running lights, the searchlight, everything,” Deal continued. “Let’s make sure they see us.”
“Why don’t we just shoot ourselves right now and be done with it?” Basil said.
“Do as he says,” Rhodes cut in. “I see where he’s going with this.”
“Man—” Basil said, but he wasn’t used to arguing with his boss.
Deal switched his glance back to the cutter. Their pursuers had come out of the dock channel now and had throttled back slightly. “Come on, Basil. Hit the lights, let them see us. Everybody else out here with me.”
As Basil flipped switches on the console illuminating the running lights, Kaia came over the windshield, followed by Rhodes and Frank. “Find a cleat and hang on,” Deal called to the others.
“Put the searchlight at about two o’clock starboard,” Deal called to Basil. “Get our speed up as much as you can.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Basil called, but he snapped on the powerful beam. In the next moment, Deal felt the Cigarette’s engines surge, and they were moving rapidly forward.
He heard the answering roar of the cutter’s engine and saw the beam of their pursuers’ searchlight sweep over them. There was a rattle of automatic gunfire in the distance, and Deal knew that it was only a matter of time until the bullets found their mark.
“Can you go any faster?” he called to Basil.
“It’s your funeral,” Basil called, notching the throttle higher.
The cutter was closing in now, its engines stoked flat-out, no need for caution with the Cigarette showing the way, lit up like a careening birthday cake. There was another burst of fire, and the windshield of the Cigarette exploded in fragments. Deal saw men rushing to the forward rail of the cutter, bracing automatic weapons as they ran.
“Now,” he cried to Basil. “Hard to the right. Everybody hang on!”
Basil swung the wheel and the Cigarette cut toward the milky line of the reef. Deal felt his weight shift toward the port side behind him, but he held fast to one of the cleats anchored in the foredeck, ignoring the pain as the metal points dug into his hand.
“I’m falling,” Kaia cried, grasping wildly for Rhodes’ hand as she slid backward over the smooth fiberglass surface.
Deal reached out with his free hand and caught a fistful of her pajamas. Even as he steadied her, there came an ominous grinding sound beneath them, the sound of the Cigarette’s hull scraping one of those treacherous outcroppings.
The cutter was looming ever closer: now seventy-five yards…now fifty…
Another burst of gunfire ripped a line of fiberglass a foot from Deal’s shoulder.
“He’s going to ram us,” Basil called. He drew his pistol from his belt and squeezed off several rounds toward the looming cutter. One of the gunmen went down, but the others fired undeterred.
The pilot was willing to ram them, Deal saw. Would send his much heavier boat right through the middle of theirs if he could, blast them to smithereens…
Forty yards, thirty—a steady rattle of gunfire from the prow of the cutter now. Maybe Basil was right, it was his funeral, and theirs as well…
Basil and Frank both emptying their weapons at the speeding boat behind them…
And suddenly there was a terrible, rending crash that sent the gunmen at the prow of the cutter sprawling, the bottom of the cutter torn open on the reef, twisting crazily on its side, teetering, ready to flip…
When the explosion came, a blast that obliterated the cutter in a boiling ball of flame, sending shards of ruined boat and God knows what raining down upon the Cigarette.
“Cut the engines,” Deal cried to Basil then, and that is what the big man did.
Chapter Thirty-four
Strange how nearly being pulverized into shark food could alter your sense of loyalties, Deal thought, as the Cigarette cleared the last of the reefs and Basil shoved forward on the throttles of the powerful twin engines. The boat rose up almost immediately in the water like a big cat that had taken notice of something interesting on the gloomy horizon. There was a moment’s hesitation, then the craft began to hurtle across the waters at a breathless speed.
So much for the difficulty with the screws, Deal thought. And so much for all the troublesome nighttime navigation. And wasn’t he glad that it had been just so much bullshit.
He glanced back toward the island they’d left, now little more than a low and ragged silhouette ranged against the moonless sky. A glow had sprung up in the middle of the cay, however, a glow that grew even faster than the Cigarette’s ability to carry them away. At first, Deal wasn’t sure where the light was coming from, but eventually he understood.
“The bastards,” Kaia Jesperson said beside him. She’d come up from the cabin of the Cigarette, her pajamas traded for a T-shirt and shorts she’d found below, her feet in a pair of Top-Siders that seemed a size or two too big. Someone else might have looked faintly absurd, he thought, studying her in the glow from the running lights.
“They’ve torched it,” Deal said, joining her backward gaze. He thought of ancient books curling up, centuries-old furniture flaming into cinders, photos and paintings and vats of smuggler’s hooch, all of it transforming into featureless atoms that would drift back down to the sea as soot.
He glanced at Rhodes, who stood at the opposite corner of the open deck, bracing himself against the pounding of the wave tops, his gaze steadfast on the darkness that lay ahead. Not a thing out that way to see, Deal thought. And supposed that was the very point.
“All he wanted was a life,” Kaia said, shaking her head sadly.
Deal glanced at her. They could virtually shout a conversation here and have none of it be audible a few feet away. The throb of the engines, the roar of wind and spray—what she’d just said had already been flung halfway back to Quicksilver Cay.
“You think it’s that easy, just dial the clock back, ask for ‘do-overs’?”
She looked up. “That’s how you see it, Mr. Deal? Things are cast in stone, just grin and bear it?”
Deal hesitated. What was he supposed to say—you don’t like the way things are going in life, just press a button, chang
e the channel? “I believe in consequences,” he told her. “You do certain things, they never go away.”
“And you?” she asked. “You’ve got nothing to live down? Nothing you’d want to take back?”
He stared at her for a moment. “I didn’t say that.”
She was watching him carefully. “Things you’ve done that wake you up at night, you wish they were only dreams?”
Her standard deadpan stare came with it, but there was something in her eyes, he thought. “You sound like the expert,” he said.
She gave him a humorless smile. “Oh, I’m expert, all right,” she said. Her gaze held his for another moment. And then she went to join Rhodes at the front of the cockpit.
***
“You’ve got that key?” It was Rhodes’ voice at his shoulder.
Deal had been at the back of the boat, staring out into the gray mist that had rolled into the cove where they’d anchored. The sound of the dinghy motor was nearly lost already, Frank on his way to shore to fetch a car and make whatever other arrangements Rhodes deemed necessary, Deal supposed.
Basil leaned against the control panel, his arms folded, idly watching the two of them through the predawn haze. “Maybe I lost it,” Deal said, staring back at Rhodes. “Or maybe I threw it overboard.”
Rhodes gave him a tolerant smile. “I’d like it back, if you don’t mind.”
Deal heard the whine of the electric pump as the toilet flushed below. “Excuse me,” he said to Rhodes. He turned away, unzipped, relieved himself over the transom. When he’d finished, he turned back to Rhodes, zipping up. “You took that key from me in the first place. What do you mean, you want it back?”
Rhodes stared at him, puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“For chrissakes,” Deal said, thrusting his hand into his pocket. “This is what I’m talking about—” He stopped then, feeling the expression freeze on his face. He brought out his hand, opened it.
Both of them stared down: two very similar keys lay in the palm of Deal’s hand. The one he’d retrieved from his father’s stash, the other that Rhodes had tossed at him just as the shooting broke out the night before, or so it seemed. Deal cupped his palm and jiggled it so that the two keys fell together with a tiny clink. Point to point, ridge to ridge, valley to chiseled valley. A perfect match.
Deal with the Dead Page 26
