Tahoe Hijack

by Todd Borg

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE HEAT

  “WILL KEEP READERS TURNING THE PAGES AS OWEN RACES TO CATCH A VICIOUS KILLER...”

  - Booklist

  “A RIVETING THRILLER... HARD TO PUT DOWN”

  - Midwest Book Review

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE NIGHT

  “BORG HAS WRITTEN ANOTHER WHITE-KNUCKLE THRILLER...A sure bet for mystery buffs waiting for the next Robert B. Parker and Lee Child novels”

  - Library Journal

  “AN ACTION-PACKED THRILLER WITH A NICE-GUY HERO, AN EVEN NICER DOG...”

  - Kirkus Reviews

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE AVALANCHE

  “BORG IS A SUPERB STORYTELLER...A MASTER OF THE GENRE”

  - Midwest Book Review

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE SILENCE

  WINNER BEN FRANKLIN AWARD

  BEST MYSTERY OF THE YEAR!

  ONE OF THE FIVE BEST MYSTERIES OF THE YEAR!

  - Library Journal

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE KILLSHOT

  “A WONDERFUL BOOK...FASCINATING CHARACTERS, HARD-HITTING ACTION”

  Mystery News

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE ICE GRAVE

  “BAFFLING CLUES... CONSISTENTLY ENTERTAINS”

  - Kirkus Reviews

  “A CLEVER PLOT... RECOMMEND THIS MYSTERY”

  - Booklist

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE BLOWUP

  “RIVETING... A MUST READ FOR MYSTERY FANS!”

  - Addison, Illinois Public Library

  PRAISE FOR TAHOE DEATHFALL

  “THRILLING, EXTENDED RESCUE/CHASE”

  - Kirkus Reviews

  “HIGHLY LIKABLE CHARACTERS”

  - San Jose Mercury News

  TAHOE HIJACK

  By

  Todd Borg

  Published by Thriller Press at Smashwords

  Copyright 2011 Todd Borg

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Thriller Press, a division of WRST, Inc. www.thrillerpress.com

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real locales, establishments, organizations or events are intended only to give the fiction a sense of verisimilitude. All other names, places, characters and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Thriller Press, P.O. Box 551110, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96155.

  Library of Congress Card Number: 2011924675

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-931296-59-5

  pbook ISBN: 978-1-931296-19-9

  Cover design by Keith Carlson.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  TAHOE HIJACK

  PROLOGUE

  When the yacht rounded Rubicon Point, the man lifted his flask of Irish whiskey, took a last sip of Celtic fire, and exhaled hard. Liquid courage, my ass, he thought. Anesthesia, nothing more. The Celts who sacked Rome didn’t imbibe before the charge for any reason other than emotional prophylaxis. Egregious tasks require serious mitigation. Numb the nervous system, full speed ahead.

  Time to begin.

  The man threw the flask overboard, then thrust his arms through the straps of his backpack. He reached down to the leather sheath that protruded from a thigh pocket on his jeans and pulled out his custom full-tang knife with the polished tanto point, rip teeth, and a handle engraved with the Celtic Cross. He palmed the knife, made a single nod to his partner, a smaller man at the bow of the Tahoe Dreamscape, then walked toward the closest passengers, two people who stood on the port side of the foredeck.

  The boat was coming down Lake Tahoe’s West Shore on a course that would bring it adjacent to the Rubicon cliffs. The Tahoe Dreamscape was one of Tahoe’s largest boats and was used as a private charter for large groups. An event planner in Reno had booked the Dreamscape for their Afternoon Appetizer Cruise to Emerald Bay. A bunch of consultants had come up the mountain to sample the lake views and the cool mountain weather of fall while Reno still baked in the desert heat.

  The man and his partner had gotten onboard with the rest of the passengers. They’d worked up a business story in case anybody asked. They ran back-country corporate retreats complete with power conditioning and attitude coaching, and they were on the cruise at the request of one of the consultants. But no one asked. They didn’t even have to show tickets.

  Some of the passengers were along the other side of the boat, crowded against the starboard rail, waiting to glimpse the entrance to Emerald Bay, a shallow, narrow opening to a deep fjord-like body that was tucked in among the mountains that lined the West Shore. As the Dreamscape cruised south, the passengers had their cameras out, eager to see the famous bay with its island and the Vikingsholm, the Norwegian-style castle at the head of the bay.

  But the man had no intention of letting the boat get past the rocks of Rubicon.

  The Rubicon shore was the top edge of a great underwater cliff, 1200 vertical feet of rock that descended three-quarters of the way toward the floor of the big lake. Because of the great water depth, sunlight entering the water traveled down until it was exhausted. With no bottom close enough to bounce the light back, the water off Rubicon Point was a deep indigo. It was the depth of this part of the lake that made it perfect for his needs.

  The crowd was nothing like the big groups of August, but it was a good-sized group for a September weekday: 47 consultants served by a crew of 4 and the 3-person catering firm.

  Earlier on the Dreamscape’s windy trip across Tahoe, many of the travelers stayed inside the salon or out on the wind-sheltered rear deck. For much of the journey, the two men had the foredeck to themselves. No one had noticed as they put their things in place. Their movements were casual enough that even the crew on the bridge above them was unaware of anything other than two men moving around, curious about the boat.

  The man approached the two passengers. He grabbed the elbow of one, a person dressed in a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up against the wind. He held out his knife.

  “Come with me.” The man spoke with a ragged voice as if to disguise it. “Don’t say a word, or you die.”

  The passenger gasped, but stayed silent. The other person started to speak, a rising shout.

  “Quiet!” the man said in a harsh whisper, “or I start cutting!” He flicked his hand like a trick shooter spinning his 6-gun, and the shiny knife twirled in the air. The man caught it and made a thrusting motion with his knife. “If you make another sound, if you say anything, talk to anybody, blood will flow.”

  The man walked his hostage across the deck toward the bow of the boat. He kept his knife low and out of sight. Even if the captain on the bridge above saw him, it would look like he was escorting someone to a better view.

  When they got to the bow, he spoke to his hostage.

  “Lean on the rail. Now swing your leg up and over to the outside of the rail. Do it! Now your other leg.”

  The hostage did as he demanded, feet on the very edge of the bow. The hostage gripped the rail to keep from falling into the lake. The man positioned himself between his hostage and the Dreamscape’s crew on the bridge so that they could not see that the hostage was standing outside the railing.

  The man pulled three short cords from his pocket. He used one to tie the hostage’s wrists together as the hostage gripped the railing. Near the hosta
ge’s feet were two lengths of heavy rusted anchor chain that the man’s partner had pulled out of his backpack and piled at the edge of the bow. The chain lay just in front of a gear locker, out of sight of the crew. The chains attached to nothing and merely served as twenty-five-pound weights in the form of heavy metal links.

  The man bent down, and used the second cord to tie one of the chains to the hostage’s ankle. He straightened and, threatening to cut the hostage’s fingers with his knife, pried the hostage’s hands from the rail.

  “Turn away from the boat,” he said. “I’ll hold the back of your belt to keep you from falling overboard. Do it!”

  He forced the struggling hostage to turn away from the rail and face the water. Because the rail projected out six inches beyond the edge of the deck, it forced the hostage to lean out at an angle from the boat as the hostage taker held onto the belt. The man squeezed the hostage’s belt against the boat railing and tied the third cord around them.

  The man pulled a fourth and longer cord out of his pocket. With a few simple and well-practiced knots, he attached a line between himself and the hostage and created an arrangement that allowed him to dump the hostage into the lake with a single jerk on the cord.

  “You’re being held to the rail by the cord,” the hostage taker said. “If you stay still, you will be safe. But the knot is a slipknot, and I can pull my cord to release it. If you try to turn around to grab the railing, I will send you into the water with the anchor chain. That chain will pull you to the bottom like an elevator on high-speed descent.”

  Facing out toward the lake, with the sweatshirt hood up, the terror on the hostage’s face was not visible to anyone.

  The hostage taker pulled out a cellphone that he’d lifted in the salon from the purse of a woman who briefly looked away during the excitement at the beginning of the cruise. The man looked up at the boat’s bridge above him and dialed the number of the Tahoe Dreamscape’s captain.

  “Ken Richards, Tahoe Dreamscape,” the captain answered.

  “Look down at your foredeck. I have a hostage who is outside of the bow rail, kept from falling into the water by a cord. My hostage is tied to a heavy chain. I have a release cord. If I pull on the cord, the hostage and the heavy chain will fall into the water.” He paused to let his statements soak in. “Cut your engine power, or I will send the hostage to the bottom of the lake.”

  There was no immediate response from the captain. The boat didn’t slow. The captain was probably in shock, the hostage taker thought. Time to elaborate.

  “The hostage has no chance and will be dead twenty-five or thirty stories down, about the depth where the last of the sun gives way to blackness! Do you understand? THIS IS A HIJACKING! CUT YOUR POWER IMMEDIATELY, OR I PULL THE CORD!”

  The boat immediately slowed as the engines wound down. Within seconds, the boat coasted to a crawl, on its way to a stop. Without power, it began to rotate as it drifted, its bow turning clockwise toward the shore cliffs.

  Captain Ken Richards covered the phone, and yelled at his chief mate. “Call nine-one-one! We’ve got a hijacker!”

  He put the phone back to his mouth. “Stay calm,” Richards said to the hijacker. “We’ll do whatever you say.”

  Richards watched the hijacker from above. He was large, or maybe it was just the man’s bulky jacket. He had big hair, a bushy beard and moustache, and his eyes were covered by large sunglasses. On the man’s back was a large blue backpack. The man looked frantic, turning from the tourists on the starboard side, to the bridge, to the cliff shoreline fifty yards away.

  As with all of the tour boats, Richards and his crew had been previously briefed by the FBI as a routine caution. He remembered the basics of the drill should someone take hostages on the boat. Stay calm. Buy time. Make the hostage taker believe that they were trying to do what he wanted.

  Richards was about to speak into his phone when he saw a tourist point to the hostage taker. The tourist yelled something. A group of other tourists turned to look. One of them shouted, his voice tense. More tourists focused on the hostage taker. A cacophony of raised voices came through the windows of the bridge. Four words carried above the din.

  “HE’S GOT A BOMB!”

  People screamed and ran toward the stern of the Tahoe Dreamscape. Two people fell. Others tripped over them.

  The chief mate got through on his 9-1-1 call. He began explaining in earnest.

  Richards turned back to his phone.

  “What do you want?” he said, his voice raised and tense. He realized that he’d already broken the first rule of staying calm. Richards stared down at the man and saw for the first time what looked like a thin black wire arcing from the man’s pocket to the backpack. Christ, the guy really was wired. The pack could easily hold enough explosives to sink the Dreamscape.

  “I’m very disappointed in you, Captain Richards!” the hijacker shouted into the phone. “I asked you to cut your engine, but you hesitated! You don’t seem to realize that I am now in charge of this boat. Do you understand me?!”

  “Yes, of course,” Richards said.

  The hijacker was outraged “I don’t think you do,” he said into his stolen phone. He pocketed the phone, took three steps over to his partner. The cord to the hostage was now stretched tight. The man spoke to his partner.

  “The captain of the boat said there is something in the water,” he said to his partner. He gestured toward the water directly below the bow. “Do you see anything?”

  The man’s partner turned, bent down and stared out at the water. “I don’t see any...”

  The partner’s words were cut off as the man with the backpack grabbed his partner by the hair and slammed him forward, crushing his throat against the railing.

  The smaller man reached for his neck. His mouth opened wide, but no air flowed. The hijacker picked up the second pile of chain. He looped the chain around the neck of his suffocating partner, made a crude knot with the chain, then, leaning the man against the railing, lifted up the man’s feet and dumped him and the chain over the rail and into the lake.

  The man and the chain created a small splash.

  The hostage saw it and made a guttural, choking howl.

  The hijacker pulled the phone from his pocket. “NOW DO YOU BELIEVE THAT I’M IN CHARGE?!” he screamed into the phone.

  “Yes,” came the captain’s weak voice. Almost a whimper.

  “We could have made this simple, Captain Richards,” the hijacker said. “But you complicated things with your delay. Are you ready to do as I ask?”

  “Yes.” The captain’s voice in the phone sounded fragile and desperate. “Please... please don’t hurt anyone else. We’ll do whatever you want.”

  “I want a meeting with a man. Your crew is probably talking to law enforcement as we speak. Tell the law to find him and get him out to this boat as fast as you can. If you drag your feet, I drop the hostage into the lake to join the other man twelve hundred feet below!”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain said. “Who is the man you want to meet?”

  “He used to be a homicide inspector in San Francisco. Now he’s a private investigator in Tahoe. His name is Owen McKenna.”

  ONE

  A loud ring. Something wet and cold on my cheek. In my eye. Ouch. Another ring. A bad way to wake up from a rocking-chair nap.

  Spot’s nose. Insistent. A Great Dane’s nose in your eye is like a cold stick of butter. I pushed him away, wiped my eye with my sleeve. Another ring. I squinted. Something sparkled through the blur. Spot’s earring catching the light coming in the window. I looked at the clock. 2:47 p.m. Another ring. I stood up, blinking my eye. My eyelashes were glued by doggie nose juice. A fifth ring. I walked over to my kitchen nook and grabbed the phone. The caller had hung up. I only heard dial tone.

  “Why can’t you let me sleep when I’m finally out?” I said, knowing that it was the phone that made Spot prod me in the eye.

  Spot wagged.

  I wasn’t a nap taker
, but I’d been awake a good part of the last three nights, trying to puzzle out a phone caller’s claim that he knew who killed Grace Sun, a murder that went unsolved during the last month of my career as Homicide Inspector with the San Francisco PD. I’d gotten a call at midnight each of the previous three nights.

  The readout on my phone had said the caller’s number was private. Probably not a telemarketer at midnight, so I had answered.

  “I know who killed Grace Sun,” the caller said.

  “Who is this?” I said.

  The caller ignored me. “I read how you got some DNA evidence but no suspect to match. Check out Thomas Watson. Just bought a condo on the West Shore. The Blue Sky, Blue Water development.” The caller hung up.

  The next night he called again and was even more agitated. Did I go arrest Watson? Why not? The guy was a killer! Did I want murderers to go free?

  I told him that a tip from an anonymous caller did not constitute probable cause. Told him that I was now a private investigator, that I had no authority to do police work. He swore and hung up.

  The next day I passed the information on to cops I know in several of the various law enforcement jurisdictions that cover Lake Tahoe.

  The third night, the man called again. I told him that I’d passed on his info to the authorities involved, that there was nothing else I could do. He strung a bunch of insults together, told me I’d be sorry, and hung up again.

  This morning, I’d called Street Casey. She came up the mountain to have breakfast with me. We chatted about the phone calls while I cobbled together some scrambled eggs. They tasted a bit rubbery, but you work with the skills you have, limited as they are. We ate out on my deck, a modest expanse of weathered cedar with an immodest view of Lake Tahoe, one thousand feet below. Across the lake, the Sierra crest still had accents of snow even though the last serious accumulations were four months earlier in May.