by Mike Brogan
But Donovan’s gut told him Stahl had not docked, that the assassin was putting as much distance between himself and the police as possible. Eventually he’d ditch the yacht, steal another vehicle, and hide out in Amsterdam or Dusseldorf.
After ditching Maccabee.
The question was – alive or dead?
And dead was the smartest for Stahl.
Donovan was worried sick about her. The police found a lot of blood on her scarf and the Volvo’s driver’s side door. She was injured, in pain, and obviously terrified…
“White Hatteras!” the pilot shouted, pointing ahead.
Donovan looked down at a large white yacht, hidden beneath trees in a small inlet. The yacht seemed to be the right length, longer than fifty feet. And he saw a red white and blue French flag, hanging limp at the rear.
This is it!
He flipped the safety off his gun. The chopper swooped down to sixty feet above the yacht, flooding it in blinding white light. The rotor downwash unfurled the flag and Donovan’s hope sank. The red-white-blue stripes were horizontal, not vertical. He was looking at a Dutch flag. Below it was a painting of a girl in a bikini and the yacht’s name – Amster-Dame.
A terrified middle-aged couple peeked from the cabin window as the chopper swept up and away.
Four minutes later, Donovan saw two more white Hatteras yachts, one sixty-footer, another seventy-footer. Both flew Dutch flags.
“He can only be a few minutes ahead,” de Waha said.
“Or miles away in Germany… or heading to the Atlantic Ocean.”
* * *
Valek Stahl saw exactly what he was looking for. A perfect offshoot, a wide canal, just yards ahead. He turned into it, then steered around a commercial barge, the Erik Willems, N.V., and some moored sailboats, then turned onto the waterway.
He continued for another half-kilometer, passing small pleasure boats and homes behind them. Soon, he saw a row of windmills, their blades churning in the night sky, and behind the mills, a large forest.
He searched for a place to conceal the big yacht, a cove with overhanging trees, an empty boathouse, a shadowy inlet. He saw none. He cruised further down the channel.
Steering around a bend, he glimpsed the outline of an enormous windmill, its long blades groaning as they sliced through the thick fog. Next to the mill was a open, covered boathouse, large enough to hold several yachts. Large yachts had filled the first five slots and the seventh. The sixth slot was vacant.
He cut the engine to idle, drifted ahead, flicked the lights off and gently reversed the large craft into the open slot, tucking the rear deck tight against the dock so the cops couldn’t read L’étoile d’Uzès from the water.
He turned the engine off and listened. He heard only the waves slapping against the dock and the windmill blades creaking in the darkness.
Stahl moored the boat to the dock poles and looked behind the boathouse. Through the fog he saw a thick forest and a three-story mansion a hundred yards up the bank on a hill. Dim lights were on downstairs. He’d stay on the yacht.
Fog was creeping from the forest toward the canal, shrouding the yacht even more. Everyone was looking for him now, scouring the highways and byways, so he’d lay low until he felt it was safe to leave.
Meanwhile, he had a beautiful woman below.
He’d be less than courteous if he didn’t grant her one last wish.
The pleasure of his company.
FIFTY SIX
“HOOGENBOEZEM! Where the hell are you?”
Jerking awake, Officer Leo Hoogenboezem banged his knee hard on the steel frame of the police car radio from which Captain Ver Donk was screaming at him.
“Here sir!” Hoogenboezem said, rubbing his knee, trying to sound awake and shake off the knee pain and the pain from last night’s party.
“Any sight of the Hatteras?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“Re-check all yachts on the river and waterways up to three miles north of you.”
“I just checked them.”
“Check ‘em again!”
“Right, sir.”
They hung up.
Hoogenboezem yawned. He’d pulled two ten-hour shifts back-to-back, and gone to the party and drank too much. The party was a big bad mistake. He needed sleep.
Sometimes he wondered about the Captain. Smart guy, but anal as a tax accountant. Re-check this, re-check that, change that light bulb before it burns out. And the man demanded the impossible.
You forget, Captain, there’s a shitload of boats along this stretch of the river!
Yeah, Stahl was top priority. And yes, Ver Donk was getting pressure from the heavy breathers in Amsterdam. Yes, Stahl damned near blew up eight world leaders. Yes, Stahl had killed innocent people for their cars. And yes, he was probably back in this part of Holland. But any moron with a room temperature IQ knew Stahl had dumped the yacht and stolen a car by now.
Hoogenboezem drove down the familiar narrow road that hugged the river. For two miles, he gazed at the same yachts, same homes, same cars and same windmills he’d gazed at earlier. Nothing had changed. Except the fog was thicker.
He yawned and felt the need for sleep creeping over him. He reached in the glove compartment, pulled out a 5-hour ENERGY drink and chugged down the bottle. It should give him at least one hour of caffeine alertness, until he got off duty.
He drove down another offshoot of the Maas, rechecking the vessel names… The My-tanic… Ray L…. Erna en Tony… Meuse Lambic. He saw no Hatterases.
A kilometer later, he turned down another canal. Even though he’d checked the vessels docked along the canal earlier, he would turn his spotlight on them anyway. Check them out. Do what the brass says.
Forget that the brass probably got the yacht’s brand and name wrong. And probably the length wrong. And probably which direction it took on the river. If he had fifty euros for each time those desk bozos were wrong, he’d be retired, sipping Margaritas with big-breasted ladies in the Caribbean.
He drove around the familiar big bend, crept past the smaller windmills, and then past the monster windmill. Through the fog, he saw the large, multi-berth open boathouse come into view. Behind it on the hills, he glimpsed the summer estates of business tycoons from Amsterdam.
He approached the boathouse and aimed his spotlight on the yachts. Yawning, he moved the light from one to the next.
He knew these yachts like the back of his hand, but read their names aloud to help stay awake.
“Maas Boss… NautiLust… Schiff’s Skiff… De Amstel…
He noticed the sixth slot and froze.
The slot was filled with a big white yacht!
A Hatteras!
Forty-five minutes ago the slot was empty. But the Hatteras had backed into the berth, tucking its name against the dock. He needed to drive to the other side of the canal to read the name. As he started to turn back toward a nearby canal bridge, his headlights hit the left front bow the yacht and what looked like small black script.
But he couldn’t quite read it.
He crept a few inches closer, leaned forward and squinting through the fog, read - “L’étoile d’Uzès!”
“Jezus, THAT’S IT!” he said, banging his knee against metal radio frame again.
He doused his spotlight and whipped out his handgun as though Stahl was crawling through the window.
Hoogenboezem saw a very faint light behind a yellow curtain.
Stahl and the woman were inside!
Did he see my spotlight?
Hoogenboezem phoned Captain Ver Donk. “I found the Hatteras!”
“Where?”
Hoogenboezem gave him the location.
“Stahl inside?”
“I think so. There’s a faint light on in the cabin. But the fog is getting thicker!”
“Did he see you?”
“My spotlight maybe.” Hoogenboezem felt a drop of cold sweat slide down his neck.
“Stay on this line. Any changes, tell me
. We’re on the way!”
“Right, sir!”
Hoogenboezem shoved a full magazine into his Glock and watched the Hatteras.
* * *
In the yacht’s master stateroom, Stahl sat in a plush leather chair and stared at Maccabee. A tiny nightlight illuminated her left leg and left wrist tied to the brass corners of the bed.
He sipped some Heineken and listened to a radio announcer report that police had established a global dragnet for him. He smiled. You fools are dragneting for someone who won’t exist in three days thanks to plastic surgery.
He’d lie low for another thirty minutes, then leave alone – after he watched the woman’s body sink to the bottom of the canal.
Then he’d head to a nearby farmhouse where he’d seen a grey Renault, hotwire it and drive to Amsterdam. From there, his colleague, Ali Bin Schothorst, would fly him to Iran.
Stahl took another long swig of the beer. Despite being Muslim, he’d started drinking alcohol years ago so he could move unnoticed among the infidels. Now, he liked alcohol. And other Western things.
Like their women.
He looked at Maccabee Singh’s long, firm legs spread out… pointing toward all her good parts. A most bedable woman, he thought. Anglo-Indian. Half-breed. Like him. Hybrids were always more interesting.
He should probably feel some sympathy for what he was about to do to her, but he felt nothing. He didn’t feel things like other people. By their standards, he knew, that wasn’t normal. But then, what was normal? The answer was simple. Normal was a personal hallucination. And if in fact he’d once been normal, the Israelis ripped any semblance of it away from him when their bombs slaughtered his family. That crime, and many others against him, exempted him from following any rules but his own. Besides, rules were for morons.
He stood, walked to the window and peeked out through the curtain. Thick fog hovered over the water and forest. The more fog, the better. Praise Allah!
* * *
Through the police helicopter window, Donovan watched the rotors downwash ripple the canal water and flatten tall grass as the chopper touched down a kilometer from the Hatteras. He saw two police vans awaiting them.
He and de Waha deplaned and hurried over to a twelve-man Dutch anti-terrorist team standing beside a small raft. The team leader, Officer Koopman, made quick introductions, then showed Donovan and de Waha the Hatteras location on his iPad GPS.
De Waha and Donovan copied the yacht’s GPS location on their phones.
De Waha turned to the men. “Seven of you take positions in the forest behind the yacht. Block him that way. The other five set up on the canal bank across from the yacht in case he decides to swim over. We’ve already blocked off both ends of the canal. We have him contained. Questions?”
There were none.
“Donovan and I saw Stahl today. We know what he looks like, what he’s wearing. We’ve looked into his eyes. We’ll take this raft to the yacht and board it. We’ll enter the cabin and if you hear nothing, stay out. If you hear a problem, come in fast! If he tries to escape, apprehend him, and if necessary shoot to kill. But if Maccabee is with him, hold your fire, especially if her life appears at risk. Understood?”
Everyone nodded.
“There’s a slight problem,” Donovan said.
“What?” Officer Koopmans asked.
“We could use a bit more firepower.”
Koopmans nodded, opened the cargo area of a van and said, “Take your pick!”
Donovan looked down at an arsenal of six Heckler and Koch G-3s, powerful battle rifles similar to G-3s he’d given to an anti-Al Qaeda tribe in Turkistan. He also saw several Glock 18s with 33-round extended magazines… and a large metal chest chocked full of eighty RGD-5 antipersonnel hand grenades, each containing 100 grams of TNT.
He was looking at enough explosive power to divert the flow of the canal.
Donovan and de Waha selected Glocks.
“How about a flash-bang grenade?”
Donovan shook his head. “It could injure or burn Maccabee. Maybe spook Stahl into shooting her!”
Donovan and de Waha put on Spectra bulletproof vests and helmets.
They stepped into the two-man Zodiac raft. De Waha started the silent electric fishing motor and Donovan sat in front. They whooshed off into the misty night. Donovan looked at his phone’s GPS map and estimated they were four minutes from the yacht. Was that too long? Had Stahl heard the chopper and decided to leave the yacht?
He tried to calm himself by visualizing Maccabee as he rescued her.
But another visual kept pushing it away… a concrete block… tied to a rope… tied to Maccabee’s body as she struggled to free herself at the bottom of the canal.
FIFTY SEVEN
Stahl’s gaze felt like ice sliding between her breasts. He sipped his beer and stepped toward her, his eyes different now, hard, predatory, animal, lustful…
He was looking at her as a woman.
The thought of his hands touching her, the hands of a stone-cold murderer, nauseated her. He leaned close and she flinched, causing the gag around her mouth to dig in and unleash fresh blood into her throat.
Stahl sat down on the bed inches from her. He sipped more beer and patted her knee.
“Don’t worry. It’s almost over. You’ll be free soon.”
She didn’t believe him.
“This friend of yours, Rourke, you must like him a lot.”
She said nothing.
“Well, do you?”
She nodded.
“Do you love him?”
She saw no reason to tell Stahl and said nothing.
“Do you?”
She remained silent.
He grabbed her hair. “DO YOU?”
She nodded.
“And I’m sure he loves you, right?”
She shrugged and hoped he did.
“So he’d be sad, perhaps angry if you wanted to make love to another man. Say, an attractive man, right?”
Panic gripped her.
“Say a man like… me.”
Her stomach clenched.
“Oh, don’t worry, I would never take advantage of a woman who didn’t want to make love to me. Never!”
She exhaled slowly.
“But it’s so obvious you do. Your eyes follow me constantly, dare I say, lustfully even. Can’t take your eyes off me as the old song goes. So a reasonable man can only conclude that you are highly attracted to me, that you like what you see, that you, well, let’s just say it - that you desire me.”
She said nothing.
“Most women do.” He flexed his enormous bicep.
“But you’re a ‘Mushluhm!” she said through the gag, hoping religion might stop him.
“Yes… and the Koran teaches us that a woman must be subservient to a man - in all things! Such a wise religion.”
How can I stop him? she wondered. She saw nothing she could use as a weapon.
He moved closer and breathed out, reeking of sour beer breath.
She leaned away and realized her free hand was just inches from a heavy fishbowl on the bed table. If she could reach the fishbowl and slam it against his head, it might daze him long enough to untie her ropes and escape.
Or it might enrage him enough to kill her on the spot.
He unbuttoned his shirt, flexed his muscles and preened like a pro wrestler. “Nice, huh?”
She refused to look and leaned away, trying to inch her fingers toward the fishbowl without being noticed.
“Here, have some beer.”
She turned her face away, but he twisted it back.
“Speaking of beer, the ancient Egyptians had a wise proverb. ‘Never cease to drink beer or make love.’”
She said nothing.
“In that order. So, beer first.”
He poured beer over her gag and into her mouth. She coughed when the icy beer hit her dry throat. Then, on purpose, he spilled much more onto her white blouse, drenching her.
“
Now look what you’ve done!” he said.
She turned away. Again, he turned her head back and gazed down at her breasts and dark areolae pushing up through the thin wet silk.
She saw his gun on a table about ten feet away. If she could just daze him with the fishbowl and untie her hand, she might be able to reach the gun before he came to.
“Look at your blouse. I dare say Mr. Rourke would not like you wet and shivering, would he? You could catch your death. We should dry your blouse.”
She leaned away… closer to the fishbowl. When he wasn’t looking, she brushed its base with her fingers. But the rim was still too high to grab.
Slowly, Stahl undid the top button of her blouse. She tried to not feel his presence, not feel what he was about to do to her…
He guzzled more beer.
“By the way, forget the fishbowl. It’s mounted to the table.”
She felt all hope drain from her body.
He undid another button… and another.
She wanted to scream.
FIFTY EIGHT
Donovan squinted into the thick fog as de Waha navigated their raft down the pitch-black canal. Donovan feared the raft might hit unseen floating debris, maybe logs or a dock pole hidden in the murky mist.
Visibility was less than thirty feet.
“How far?” de Waha whispered.
Checking his GPS, Donovan said, “We’re should be getting close. Maybe two hundred yards.”
De Waha slowed the silent raft and phoned Officer Hoogenboezem who was still watching the Hatteras from across the canal.
“Any changes?” de Waha whispered.
“No,” Hoogenboezem said. “Stahl and Maccabee have not left the yacht.”
“Is the faint light still on inside?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let us know if anything changes.”
“Right sir.”
Donovan heard what sounded like the creaking of windmill blades.
Seconds later, the fog lifted a bit and he glimpsed a massive windmill along the left bank. Seconds later, he glimpsed the long open boathouse covering several yachts.
