Kahn whispered something that sounded like “Oh my God” while I continued talking. “It’s set to go off at three a.m. But now they can probably detonate the thing with a remote because we’re out of jamming range. Which means, anytime they want, that boat will become a fireball. Are you with me so far?”
Kahn made a coughing noise. “I’m sorry to… uhh… to hear that, Winifred. Yeah, I’m definitely listening.”
I wanted to tell him to stop using the woman’s name so often—it was a dead giveaway, but I couldn’t waste the time. “Get Umeko, get your partner, then think up some excuse to go to the back of the boat. Tell the twins you want to look at the stars or something. Can you do that?”
Voice suddenly louder, Kahn surprised me by saying, “A… a meteorite shower, huh? That’s pretty cool, Winifred. Yeah, there’s a big open deck. Trapper’d probably like to see it, too.”
The guy was a terrible actor, but I said, “Good. Okay, don’t answer, just listen. In less than two minutes, you’re going to hear something hit the hull of your boat. It’ll sound like a sledgehammer. The moment you hear it, jump overboard. All three of you. Less than two minutes from now, so you’ve got to move fast. Make sure Umeko is with you. She has to be with you.”
In the background, Odus was now screaming at Kahn, so I raised my voice and kept talking. “Jump overboard, you hear me? Don’t hesitate or you’re going to die. Swim to the edge of the channel—water’s only a foot or two deep there. You’ll be able to stand up, so keep your shoes on. A boat will be there a few minutes later. But make sure the girl’s with you or we won’t stop.”
Kahn sounded dazed when he replied, “Are you absolutely sure that’s true?”
Phone wedged against my ear, I nudged the throttle forward so the boat would flatten itself in the light chop, a more responsive idle speed. “Your only other option is to throw that backpack overboard. Do you know where it is?” Which is when Kahn made a yelping sound of pain as if he’d been slapped, so I focused the monocular to see what was happening.
A few seconds later, a man appeared at the steering-room door while the autopilot turned the yacht northward as I knew it would. At the same instant, Geness Neinabor’s monster voice caused the phone to vibrate against my cheek.
“You neurotic old bitch!” he shouted. “Talk to me, Winnie! It’s about time we met.”
I put my hand over the mouthpiece, wondering if the man would keep talking if Densler didn’t respond. He did.
“If you hadn’t passed out, we’d have brought you along. As if God cares about drunken sluts! I can feel you listening, old woman. So listen to this!”
Through the lens, I watched the most dangerous twin step out onto the deck and draw his arm back. By the time he’d launched the phone into the air, I had the bow of the Whaler pointing at the yacht and had picked up the rifle.
“Take the wheel,” I said to Tomlinson. “Keep idling toward them, keep the chop off our stern.” Then I slid down the bench seat so we could change places before sharing the little bit I’d just learned from Markus Kahn.
When I’d finished, Tomlinson said, “But why the rifle? You’re not going to shoot anyone, right? I was pissed off at that lunatic earlier, but I didn’t really mean it. I can’t take part in killing a person, Marion, I just can’t.”
I used a look to remind my pal of what had happened at Armanie’s house earlier, then removed my glasses so I could use the scope. “We need a diversion so they have time to jump,” I explained, fitting my left arm through the rifle’s sling. “And maybe scare the twins into switching off that autopilot. If they don’t jump, we might have to force that big bastard aground. Which will be tough enough without fighting a robot at the wheel.”
“They’ll jump,” Tomlinson said. “They’re idiots if they don’t jump. After that, all we have to do is pick them up, right? We’re done chasing the Diablo triplets, right?” The man was amped up, jittery, but he was doing okay.
I rested the rifle’s forearm on the windshield frame and popped open the scope’s lens caps. “We’re getting as far from Kazlov’s yacht as we can, once they’re out of the water. I’d like to save those fish, but it’s not worth the risk. Umeko, she’s the one I’m worried about. I think they’re watching her a lot closer than the two guys. Or maybe her hands are still tied. Something’s wrong, I’m not sure what.”
The rifle scope had an illuminator switch, I discovered. When I touched it, the crosshairs became two intersecting filaments, ruby red, that I tried to steady amidships on the yacht’s hull less than three hundred yards away, its bow visible as it angled toward us. The optics made the yacht appear ten times larger, but they also magnified the sea conditions as well as the hobbyhorse rocking of the Whaler. I’ve never been seasick in my life, but I felt mildly dizzy when I looked through the scope for more than a few seconds.
“Don’t worry about me trying to snipe one of the twins,” I told Tomlinson. “I’ll be lucky to hit the damn boat.”
The man had no idea what I was talking about, so laughed, “Sure, Annie Oakley, sure,” as if I were kidding.
I wasn’t.
He was looking over his shoulder to the north. “Oh, man, that really sucks. The chopper’s moving away from us, not getting closer. Maybe I should try to call the Coast Guard myself.”
I got to my feet. “Stand by,” I told him because I had switched to thermal vision and could see movement on the yacht. Two people appeared outside the steering-room bulkhead… stood there briefly as if looking at the sky… then climbed down the ladder to the aft deck.
“Kahn and the other guy are out,” I told Tomlinson. “They’re both too tall to be Umeko.”
“So you can’t shoot, right? There’s no point in shooting if she’s not free. Where’s the girl?”
“Stop leaning on the throttle,” I told him. “Just keep us flat… flat and steady.” With my thumb, I disengaged the rifle’s safety but continued to watch through the TAM.
The yacht was closing on us at an angle that gave me a better view of the helm area. There was at least one person inside the cabin, maybe two, but the autopilot was still steering the boat because there was no one at the wheel.
Belowdecks, the heat signatures of the diesel engines radiated through the hull, making it impossible to know if anyone was in the forward area where there would be sleeping quarters. The sturgeon were probably stowed aft where I’d seen a cargo elevator, which meant I wanted to hit the vessel somewhere amidships—but there could be sleeping quarters there, too. If I pulled the trigger now, the odds of me hitting the boat were fair, the odds of me hitting an unseen passenger astronomical, but just the thought of it made me cringe.
“Shit,” I said. “Where is she?”
Tomlinson told me, “Beta waves can pierce a boat’s hull like butter—I’ve done it before,” then began whispering, “Get your butt out of there, lady. Come on out, you little China doll,” repeating it over and over as if he were at a racetrack and horses were coming down the stretch. But then he stopped and said, “Doc. About twenty-five minutes. We’ve only got—”
“Quiet,” I told him. A third person had appeared on the upper deck. Not a tall person, so it might have been Umeko, but possibly one of the twins. At that distance, I couldn’t differentiate between female and male.
“What’s going on? What do you see?”
“Quiet,” I said again. “After I fire, get ready to change places fast. I want you down on the deck. Stay low in case we hit something when we cross that flat.”
“Bullshit, you’re worried the Diablo brothers will start shooting at us.”
I wanted the twins to take a few wild shots at us—they were low on ammunition—but I didn’t respond. The third person had grabbed a handhold and was looking down at the afterdeck as if conversing with Kahn and Trapper. If it was Umeko, her hands weren’t tied, which caused me to suspect it was one of the twins. Odus, probably. But then I changed my mind when the third person swung down the ladder, moving fast. Wh
y would Odus leave his brother alone to join two guys who had tormented and bullied him until tonight?
“I think she’s out,” I said, getting a tight wrap around the leather sling. “I’m not sure, but I think so.”
Now Tomlinson was whispering, “Jump and swim, jump and swim, jump and swim your radical asses off.”
“Keep us steady,” I told him. Bracing my knees against the console, my cheek and left hand pinning the rifle to the windshield, I got ready to fire… but then checked the cabin one last time—and was glad I did. Instead of one heat signature near the helm, there were now… two? I couldn’t be certain, but it looked like one person standing, one sitting. If true, there was no longer a chance of hitting Umeko when my bullet punched through the hull. If I hit the boat.
Index finger riding parallel the trigger guard, I put my eye to the scope. Instantly, I was isolated in a tunneled world of amplified light and motion that the luminous crosshairs struggled to convert into quadrants. At first, I couldn’t even find the damn yacht, let alone focus on it. But then I realized the vessel’s black hull, two hundred yards away, had flooded the lens with a darkness that I wrongly interpreted as water or night sky.
I lifted my head from the lens, blinked the dizziness away, then tried again.
Breath control and focus—components of a clean kill. As the Whaler moved over the bottom, my lungs tried to find the rhythm of our boat’s slow-motion greyhounding. I kept the rifle still and allowed each passing wave to drop the scope onto a bow section of the Dragos. The crosshairs would pause momentarily at the yacht’s waterline, then rocket skyward again. But the timing was unpredictable. The yacht filled the circumference of my eye, riding and wallowing bow-high while our own boat slapped water, the wind swirling a mix of salt spray and exhaust fumes from behind.
“A little more throttle,” I told Tomlinson. “A little more… there—good.”
A scope with a gyro stabilizer is what a shooter would have been issued for an offshore mission like this. But even if I was properly equipped, my confidence would have only been proportional to my skills. I’m an adequate marksman with a long gun but not in the same league with those elite snipers who tune their weapons like instruments, then tap their targets from a mile away.
One thing I can do, though, is pull the trigger when I choose.
When the front of the Whaler lifted toward the stars, I began to exhale evenly, anticipating the inevitable descent. My index finger had found the steel scimitar that linked brain and firing pin, so when the Whaler paused at star level I was already applying a fixed pressure. First, the yacht’s flybridge soared into view… then an electronic forest of antennas… then, in blurry slow motion, the forward windows of the steering room… the cabin… the starboard rails…
That’s when I fired—BOOM—squeezing the trigger just before the crosshairs touched the yacht’s hull. Like a quarterback throwing to a receiver, I’d tried to anticipate where two objects in motion would precisely intersect.
How precisely, though, I didn’t have a damn clue.
Immediately, I lowered the TAM-14 over my left eye while, beside me, Tomlinson rubbed at his ears. “Shit-oh-dear, that was loud!”
Not really. At sea, a gunshot rings like a hammer hitting stone but is instantly dispersed, so it doesn’t echo in the ears or the conscience. Drowned by the yacht’s engines and air-conditioning, it was unlikely the twins had even noticed my muted report.
“You didn’t kill anybody, did you?” Tomlinson’s head was pivoting from me to the yacht, which was still coming toward us, plowing an eight-foot wake. “You’d tell me if you killed somebody, right?”
I said, “Hang on, I’m trying to see what’s happening.” Scanning the Dragos, I ejected the brass casing, shucked in a fresh round but didn’t lock the bolt because I couldn’t look to confirm the safety was engaged.
“Those little pricks, I’ll follow them to hell if they’ve made me a party to murder. Doc, you would tell me.”
Without turning, I pressed the rifle into his hands. “Hang on to this. You’ve overestimated my shooting skills, pal, so stop worrying.” Then I said, “Hey—you see that?”
Yes, Tomlinson saw it. “Someone turned on the cabin lights!”
A lot more than that was happening. The three people on the yacht’s afterdeck were moving erratically, one of them making wild arm gestures before turning and racing up the ladder toward the steering room. When I saw that, I felt a sickening tightness in my gut. It had to be one of the twins.
I banged the console with my fist. “Son of a bitch. I screwed up again.”
“What’s wrong, man? The lights prove you hit their boat, right? Good shooting!”
“Umeko’s still in the cabin. No! Christ, there’s only one person in the cabin, not two. I was wrong!”
“She has to be aboard somewhere, we’ll go after her. We still have time. Maybe run them aground, like you—”
I put my hand on Tomlinson’s arm to quiet him, and said, “Switch spots, I’m taking the wheel.”
I was watching a person on the afterdeck—Kahn, probably—climb over the transom, then drop down onto the swim platform. Trapper hesitated for several seconds but then followed.
I told Tomlinson, “Grab something! Stay low,” then pushed the throttle forward.
By the time both men had cannonballed into the darkness, we were banging across the shallows on a collision course as the yacht made its final turn toward the bridge… or the dolphin pool at the casino.
26
As we closed within fifty yards of the Dragos, the Neinabors still hadn’t discovered that Kahn and Trapper were gone nor had they seen us—but they would. It was inevitable. It had been under two minutes since a bullet had slammed into their hull and they would soon recover from their surprise.
As of yet, though, nothing had changed. The yacht hadn’t slowed its wallowing pace and it was still on autopilot, although we could look into the lighted cabin and see the brothers standing near the wheel. They were more concerned with the helicopter than some phantom boat. I could tell by the way they paused every few seconds to use binoculars. I also got the impression they were arguing while they studied the boat’s electronics, trying to figure out what had made that sledgehammer sound.
It was just a guess. I was too busy steering the Whaler to give them my full attention. And I was also keeping an eye on the progress of Markus Kahn and his partner. It was so dark, the two men were invisible specks, even when I swooped in close enough to yell, “We’ll be back!” but their heat signatures confirmed they heard me. They were already standing in knee-deep water, waving their arms and shouting words that faded as we left them behind.
“They’re okay!” I told Tomlinson. He was on the bench seat beside me, the rifle in one hand, the other white-knuckled as he clung to the console to keep from bouncing out of his seat. It was because of the yacht’s rolling eight-foot wake. The closer we got, the larger the waves.
My friend nodded, but his eyes were locked on the cabin. “I still don’t see her. Are you sure she was up there?”
He meant Umeko and he was right: the girl was no longer visible inside the steering room. Maybe the twins had sent her below or told her to lie down—or possibly had done something worse.
I didn’t reply. The seconds were ticking away; I felt a palpable pounding inside my head yet I was now wondering about the three a.m. deadline. I had warned Kahn about the twins using a wireless detonator, but the significance of my own words hadn’t hit me until now. Maybe because I wanted to believe it, my brain was piecing together evidence that the deadline no longer mattered.
No… it was more than just wistful thinking. My suspicions had substance. From the moment I’d realized the twins were carrying a second explosive device, I had believed a mechanical engineer would build a dual triggering system. The importance of redundancy systems is a tenet of the profession. If something happened to the Neinabors, a clock would close the circuit and detonate the explosives at thr
ee a.m. If not, they could martyr themselves whenever they wanted.
But did that guarantee the clock could be disengaged?
As I watched one of the twins reaching for the cabin door, I had to admit the truth. Nope. There was no guarantee that I was even right about a dual detonator. Yet if I was wrong, the way the twins were behaving made no sense. With only minutes to live, they wouldn’t bother to check on the helicopter—which the second twin was now doing—nor would they care about what had slammed into the boat they’d stolen. A pair of psychotics who wanted to vaporize themselves would be outside on the flybridge, closer to heaven, praying to God for a painless passage.
It turned out, Tomlinson was thinking the same thing. Sort of.
We were approaching the yacht from the aft starboard quarter, close enough now I had to finesse the Whaler through troughs of waves. Make one small mistake, the wake would pitchpole our boat end over end or dump us sideways. Without taking my eyes off the cabin, I leaned and asked, “How much time?” but kept my voice low.
The man checked his Bathys dive watch, then cupped his mouth to talk. “It’s not looking good, Doc.”
Apparently, he didn’t want to scare me by saying.
I insisted by motioning with my hand.
He stood so he didn’t have to yell. “About twenty minutes. But I’ve been watching those two. From the way they’re acting, they’re more worried about getting caught than dying. I’m starting to think there is no goddamn bomb.”
I was putting the TAM and the pistol inside the console as I told him, “Maybe, but we can’t risk it. At five till three, we’re pulling the plug. No matter what, understand? Keep an eye on the time.” Then I banged the locker door closed, saying, “Grab something,” and throttled the Whaler up the back of a wave… surfed momentarily… turned away from the yacht and finally broke through into a starry plateau ahead of the wake. When we were clear, I banked the Whaler to port, running side by side for several seconds, then angled southwest. Now we were on a collision course with the Dragos, heading for cleaner water that glanced off the yacht’s hull amidships.
Doc - 19 - Chasing Midnight Page 24
