Doc - 19 - Chasing Midnight

by Randy Wayne White

  “Damn, man, if they look out the window now, they’ll see us!” Tomlinson was crouched low for balance, looking up at the vessel’s glowing superstructure, seeing stainless steel and a wall of maritime glass. Inside the steering room, one of the twins was clearly visible, twelve feet above us, and only twenty yards away.

  Then he said, “Doc? Marion—Jesus Christ, you’re going to ram her!” because we were still greyhounding toward the vessel and would soon T-bone just above the waterline unless I changed course.

  The noise of the diesels, of displaced water and of our own engine was so loud, I barely heard him. And I was concentrating too hard to respond or even glance up at the cabin. I’d known that we risked being seen during the brief time our two boats ran side by side. That’s why I wanted to shrink the distance so the yacht’s own girth would cloak us. It required us to motor so close to the Dragos that I waited until I sensed the flair of the upper deck looming overhead before I turned sharply to starboard.

  For a couple of seconds, I continued at high speed, the two vessels running parallel, but then backed the throttle as we neared the yacht’s bow. The abrupt deceleration caused the Whaler to rear like a wild horse, but then our hull teetered forward as I experimented with the throttle, trying to match the yacht’s speed. I didn’t want to pass the boat. I had something else in mind.

  Beside me, Tomlinson said something that sounded like “Wowie-fuckin’-zowieee” to signal his relief but kept his voice low because we were keeping pace with the yacht, near enough to reach up and grab a railing if one of us was willing to climb onto the Whaler’s console and give it a try.

  I was willing. In fact, that had been my original hope—to board surreptitiously and take the vessel by surprise and force. It had seemed so unlikely, though, that we could get this close without being seen, I’d abandoned the idea in favor of trying to drive the Dragos aground. But now, here we were.

  I gave myself a few seconds to think about it as I battled to hold our boat parallel, which was a job in itself. We were in flat water, ahead of the wake, but the yacht displaced tons of water that boiled from beneath the hull. It created a pressurized ridge that, alternately, tried to fling us away or suck us astern into a whirlpool created by two massive propellers.

  Dealing with the twins, however, was a more perilous vortex. Something I hadn’t considered earlier was the dangers associated with a wireless detonator. Surprise the twins and they might turn the yacht into an inferno with the touch of a button. That alone was enough to convince me it was safer to attempt to force the yacht aground—not easy but possible.

  The Dragos was thirty times heavier than the Whaler, but she was riding bow-high, which meant she was also bow-light. In combat driving courses—I’ve taken several—operators learn to use their car like a weapon. To pierce a roadblock, you steer for the enemy’s rear wheels and transfer the brunt of the impact to their vehicle by continuing to accelerate until you’ve punched through. The skill is counterintuitive, but I knew from experience that slowing after impact is suicide. That didn’t mean you collided with a vehicle—or a boat—at top speed. That, too, was suicidal. It meant you approached at a low speed, then accelerated.

  Hit the behemoth at the bow at the correct angle, then force myself to use the throttle—do it right and it was possible to turn the vessel enough so that it grounded itself in waist-deep water. Maybe less water, depending on how hard the diesel engines continued tractoring forward. The job would be easier, of course, if the damn steering computer didn’t automatically fight me by trying to compensate—which it would—but I was going to by God give it a shot, anyway.

  Yes, it was definitely doable. I might have to ram the boat two or three times to knock it off course, but so what? Once the Dragos was grounded, the twins would either detonate their bomb or they would try to escape through the shallows. They were cowards, not fighters, and the rest was up to them. After that, I had zero control, which I understood, but I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing while Umeko Tao-Lien died.

  I took a quick look around to get my bearings. The channel was wide here, but the autopilot was running precise lines, marker to marker, which put the yacht only a boat length from the shallows on her port side, which faced south. If I was going to ram, now was the time to do it.

  As I turned away to create some distance, though, Tomlinson confused me by saying, “Doc… hey! She’s coming this way.” With a glance, I confirmed that he meant the helicopter. But then he said, “Shit! He sees us! Get down!”

  Which was nonsensical. The chopper pilot couldn’t make out details from four miles away. Even if he did, why should we hide?

  When I followed Tomlinson’s wide-eyed gaze to the yacht, though, I understood. One of the twins was staring down at us, his face pressed to the window. There was enough peripheral light from the cabin to recognize us, apparently, because he slammed a pistol against the glass, but it wouldn’t break. He tried twice more before he shouted something over his shoulder, then disappeared.

  “Get down on the deck,” I yelled to Tomlinson. I shoved the throttle forward and spun the wheel to the right. “Brace your feet against the casting deck.”

  “We’re ramming her?” The man was smiling for some reason.

  “Just do it, damn it!” I was busy watching the yacht over my shoulder, gauging the distance that separated us. Seconds later, I spun the wheel to port, feeling the Whaler sideslip wildly as the engine cavitated. Finally, the starboard chine caught and flattened us. When our propeller found purchase and we began to regain speed, I used the Whaler’s bow chock like a rifle sight, holding it steady on the sleek black hull.

  Tomlinson, I realized, hadn’t budged. “Get your ass on the deck! You’ll go overboard when we hit!”

  My pal took a look at the helicopter, which had slowed to use its searchlight, then shook his head, now grinning like a madman. “I’ve always wanted to sink one of those stinkpots, oversized cock prosthetics! No way, man!”

  27

  Just before our boat gouged a hole in Viktor Kazlov’s million-dollar yacht, one of the twins materialized at the foredeck rail, then a spotlight blinded me.

  Tomlinson yelled, “That lunatic’s shooting at us again!” and tried to hide from the red laser beam by ducking beside the console. His voice was loud over the wind and grinding diesels, but the gunshots touched my ears as distant firecrackers, a series of three, then one more.

  Even at close range, the chances of a novice hitting a moving target from a moving platform were negligible, but it was still a tight-sphinctered few seconds. And the timing couldn’t have been worse.

  During our starboard approach, I had backed the throttle to a moderate speed, just as I’d learned on a Langley driving course. I wanted to hit the yacht at an angle that would cause us to ricochet toward the rear of the vessel, so I could circle away and ram it again. I suspected it would take a couple of tries to knock the beast into the shallows, just as I also knew that if we caromed forward we might be trapped under the yacht’s bow, then cut to pieces by the pair of bronze propellers.

  When the spotlight blinded me, though, I lost all orientation. But it was too late to stop our momentum, and I had already experienced the skull-jarring effects of a decelerating collision. So I hammered the throttle forward and steered from memory as the Whaler lunged for several yards, then slammed into thirty tons of wood and steel.

  I was prepared for the impact but not an implosion of paint and wood—and then a man’s howl as one of the Neinabors was catapulted over the railing into the water. Even so, I kept the throttle buried, expecting to be jettisoned away from the vessel at any moment.

  It didn’t happen.

  Not until Tomlinson shouted something and scampered forward, then began pounding at the yacht’s hull, did I understand. The Whaler’s bow, which was flat as a hatchet, had pierced the yacht’s skin between the carlings and had lodged there. Now we were being dragged at an angle that would soon either swamp us or dump us out of the boa
t.

  As the Whaler listed sideways, Tomlinson grabbed the port rail. When I lunged for it, too, my feet went out from under me, which somehow wedged me between the seat and the steering console. It’s the only thing that saved me from going into the water. For several seconds, it seemed, I hung there, my ability to move numbed by the debilitating sound of engines, water and splintering wood.

  When the brain is overwhelmed by a series of rapid events, it sometimes defaults into a lull of simplified awareness. It was dark, but I was conscious of the vascularity of my own forearm as it strained to hold me. The fumes of a two-cycle outboard are distinctive, a soup of gas and oil, so I knew the engine was still running. That was good. If we had power, we still had options—as long as the prop remained in the water.

  I got a hand on the throttle and pulled it into high-speed reverse. Behind me, the outboard bucked and screamed, yet the Whaler’s port side continued to ascend at an impossible angle. So I slammed the throttle forward. Maybe a sudden seesaw thrust would do some good.

  It did. Instantly, I felt a jolt, accompanied by a wrenching sound of wood being torn from fiberglass. Then the bow of the Whaler dropped several feet and slammed hard on the water, which caused me to lose my grip on the throttle. With no one at the wheel and the engine racing, our boat slammed into the Dragos again, then began a series of smaller collisions as it tracked its way blindly toward the front of the yacht. By the time I was on my feet, we were almost under the vessel’s bowsprit and would soon be crushed by the hull and probably suctioned into its propellers.

  Tomlinson was on his knees, arms outthrust, trying to fend off as he yelled, “You okay?”

  I told him, “Pull your hands in!” while, simultaneously, I grabbed the wheel and slammed the engine into reverse, which spun us toward the rear of the vessel, then safely away.

  No… not safely because a massive spotlight mounted on the bridge found us, then I heard the keen of displaced air molecules that signals the trajectory of a bullet passing close to the ear. An instant later, the muted reports of a handgun reached me, three . . four… five rounds. Instead of slowing to retrieve his brother from the water, the remaining twin was shooting at us while the vessel continued on its robotic course toward the Regency Hotel.

  It’s Geness, I thought. Or Odus doesn’t know his brother went over.

  Tomlinson also realized we were taking fire because he pressed himself against the casting platform and yelled, “Get us out of here!”

  I did. Crouched behind the steering console, I turned north toward the helicopter, hoping it would remind Neinabor that the Coast Guard was after them, too.

  The copter was still using its searchlight, now in the area where Trapper and Kahn had jumped, so maybe the men had been found. Even so, the remaining twin got the message. Soon, the spotlight went out, the cabin went dark, so I circled back into the slow lift and fall of the yacht’s wake and was soon gaining on it—but not as fast as we should have because the Whaler’s deck was awash with water.

  I called, “Take the wheel!” but Tomlinson waved me off, saying, “I’ll do it!” understanding instantly what needed to be done to drain the boat. He knelt near the outboard, reached into the transom well and unplugged the bottom scupper, which lay below the waterline. Like ramming a car off the road, it was another counterintuitive move—when a vessel’s swamped, you open the transom to the sea, then accelerate until the propeller wash has suctioned the hull dry.

  When the water was gone and we were through the chop, I retrieved the Smith & Wesson, then the TAM unit, from the storage locker. The pistol I wedged between steering console and windshield, then fitted the monocular over my left eye.

  “Do you see the twin? We’ve got to find him!” Tomlinson’s head was pivoting as he scanned the water. “Slow down, I can’t see a damn thing!”

  Yes, I saw the twin—his heat signature, anyway. His head was a lucent white orb thirty yards away and his hands slapped the water like a dog that had never swam before.

  Shit.

  I yelled, “How much time do we have?” I wanted to continue after the Dragos. Collectively, the Neinabors had just fired ten or twelve rounds at us, so maybe they were out of ammunition.

  Tomlinson knew what I had in mind. “We can’t go off and leave him, for Christ’s sake! Do you think he went under?”

  I checked my watch. We had less than fifteen minutes—ten if I stuck to what I’d told Tomlinson about pulling out.

  Loud enough for the twin to hear, I said, “All he has to do is swim out of the damn channel! Then he can stand up!”

  Tomlinson wouldn’t have it. “He can’t be far, man, we can’t let him drown. Goddamn it, Doc, do you see him or not?”

  I veered to the left and backed the throttle until the Whaler dropped off plane. Soon, I could hear Neinabor alternately swearing and screaming for help. He sounded hysterical, yelling, “Please, over here! Dying… don’t let me die!” Then he gagged and began to either choke or sob, I couldn’t tell.

  When we were a boat length away, I called, “Close your mouth and breathe through your nose.” Then I shifted into neutral and swung the stern so it glided toward him.

  Before I could get to the twin, though, Tomlinson did something very un-Tomlinson-like. He slipped past the steering console, grabbed Neinabor by the hair and hollered, “You tried to shoot me, you evil little troll! Give me one reason we shouldn’t drown your bipolar ass!”

  I put my hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “I like the way you think, but we don’t have time right now. Okay?” Ahead of us, I could see the animate darkness of the yacht only a hundred yards away. The remaining twin was escaping but at slow-motion speed.

  My pal held up an index finger, which meant he knew what he was doing. To Neinabor, he said, “You’re going to answer our questions. What your brother is doing is wrong and you by God know it!”

  The twin nodded eagerly, then grabbed the boat’s gunnel when Tomlinson finally released him. When he did, I took Neinabor’s wrists with crossed arms and lifted him aboard, which caused his butt to spin toward the boat. He was sitting with his back to me when I asked, “Do you still have the gun?” I was looking to the southeast, where the helicopter had dipped its nose but was still hovering—yes, they had found Kahn and Trapper.

  The twin’s teeth were chattering out of fear because the night air still radiated midday heat. “No, no gun. I swear. I don’t know what happened… then Geness left me and… and all those sharks—”

  Just because he claimed he was Odus didn’t guarantee it was true. I cut in, “Stop talking. Just nod or shake your head. Understand?”

  No response, which was okay because the twin was thinking about it. I wanted to save time, but it was also an interrogation technique. If allowed to respond silently, subjects will sometimes share secrets they have sworn not to reveal verbally. It provides them a moral loophole.

  I tried again. “Is the girl still alive?”

  The man nodded—Yes—but also began to cry.

  I patted the pockets of his soggy shorts, checking for weapons, then returned to the controls, asking, “Is there a bomb aboard?”

  Once again, Neinabor nodded, then turned to look at me. “But I didn’t want it to do it! All I want is to save those fish, but Abraham doesn’t think—” He lost the words and continued bawling.

  That was all I needed to know—for now, anyway. I punched the Whaler into gear, telling Tomlinson, “Put him on the seat between us. If he lies even once, or tries to interfere, I’ll throw him overboard.” Then, because we might need a bad cop, I added, “You saved his ass once. I won’t let you save him twice.”

  I took another look at the chopper—it was still hovering over Kahn and Trapper—then levered the throttle, accelerating toward the Dragos Voyager.

  28

  The twin we’d rescued actually was Odus Neinabor. I knew from his manic behavior as we questioned him: aggressive and rambling one moment, then wailing a confession the next. Because I’d cau
ght him in an early lie, though, I trusted nothing he said.

  We were closing on the yacht fast, the outboard was noisy, so I fed my questions through Tomlinson. When Odus yelled, “Even Abraham wouldn’t hit a woman, you asswipe—and he hates the whole worthless race!” I was tempted to lift the guy out of his seat and lob him into our propeller stream.

  Darius Talas had had no reason to deceive me when he’d described what Geness had done to Umeko. Geness had tied the woman, which was despicable in itself, but then he’d also assaulted her while she was defenseless.

  “I think the twins were afraid she’d fight back,” Talas had told me, or something close to that.

  Instead of reacting, though, I feigned indifference. We needed a lot of information in a hurry and harsh words or a pointed accusation might catalyze another crying jag. So I listened and concentrated on what was transpiring around us.

  A lot was happening fast.

  Behind us, the helicopter had finally locked onto our position and was rocketing toward us. It wasn’t one of the big Seahawks, a flying platform of electronics. The craft was the smaller medevac variety—an Augusta Stingray, I guessed. So they had probably used search radar or forward-looking infrared to find us. Something else, I suspected: the small search crew had no reason to carry firearms.

  But the chopper had definitely received our call for help. We knew because someone aboard the craft had called Densler’s cell phone, but Tomlinson hadn’t heard the damn thing ringing. Then, when he’d called back, he couldn’t be sure how much the crewman had understood because reception was poor and there was a hell of a lot of racket on both ends. Even so, the chopper was three miles away and closing at low level.

  Ahead of us, on the yacht, I kept an eye on Geness Neinabor by using my own TAM system. The most dangerous twin had left the steering room, binoculars around his neck, and was watching the chopper descend on him, although our boat would be visible, too. His erratic movements told me he was scared and undecided about what to do next.