Darkest Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

Just then she saw Tauman—muscular, tall, ruddy- complexioned with wild hair blowing in the wind. He was armed now with a huge pistol.

  “Damnit, it’s a flare gun!” she shouted.

  Lansing took the warning, instantly pulling up, but at the same time Eriq leapt for the boat, and as Tauman’s fiery missile slammed into the chopper and bounced harmlessly away and into the sea, Jessica fired. But Lansing had jammed the chopper sharply to the right, sending Jessica’s shot astray.

  “Turn back! Get us around! Eriq’s on board with that maniac, and he’s got a flare gun!”

  Lansing didn’t hesitate, bringing the chopper back around in a tight arc, returning to the pursuit. “Now that sonofabitch’s tried to kill me!” he barked.

  The chopper skimmed straight over the water now, catch­ing up with Tauman’s boat. When they neared, they could see that Eriq had lost his gun in his mad jump onto the boat, but that he’d somehow managed to get hold of Tau­man before he could reload the flare gun. The two men were fighting for control of the gun now, and it was pointed overhead.

  Tauman viciously kicked Eriq in the groin, bringing him to his knees, but Eriq wouldn’t let go of the gun, and Tau­man, too, went to his knees, unable to free the gun and control it. “Is it loaded?” Lansing wanted to know. Jessica could not say. “I don’t know. Get me closer, and I’ll put a bullet in the bastard.”

  “You got it.”

  They dipped now over the boat, which the wind carried just ahead of them. The other boaters racing these waters had all slowed, staring, pointing, wondering what was go­ing on and who were the good guys and who the bad in this confusing set of circumstances. “Get on that radio and tell those others to stay back. Inform them we’re FBI,” she ordered Lansing.

  “Good idea,” agreed Lansing, who was about to find the necessary frequency when Jessica screamed and the sec­ond flare went sailing across the cracked glass bubble. “Sonofabitch!” Lansing shouted into the open frequency, the chopper rolling and banking again in response to his reaction to the near hit. But this time Lansing held on to his emotions and the controls, keeping the chopper fairly well in place.

  Jessica again leaned far out over the side, trying to draw a bead on Tauman, but Eriq was all over the monster now, pounding him and pummeling him, looking as if he might kill him with his bare fists. Tauman wouldn’t stay down, however. Then suddenly Tauman slumped into a heap, ap­pearing either dead or deeply unconscious. She watched as Eriq lifted Tauman by his hair and bat­tered his head against the gunwale. Satisfied that the crea­ture had finally been rendered harmless, Eriq went below to get the ship under control. Jessica took that as her cue to board the boat. She didn’t want Eriq turning his back on this serpent.

  She quickly holstered her weapon and breathed deeply in relief. It was over—finally over. They had the Night Crawler in custody, and the Night Crawler’s boat deck was painted in the demon’s blood. And somewhere aboard the boat, they would find incriminating evidence to prove this was indeed Patric Allain, indeed Warren Tauman, indeed the Night Crawler.

  “God, we were right in tracking him here,” she said as much to herself as to Lansing and the cockpit. “We’ve got him. We’ve really got him.”

  “It would appear so,” agreed Lansing, smiling, breathing easier now. “I guess that’s what you guys call probable cause, huh? I mean, the sonofabitch tried to kill us. So your boss had every right boarding the guy’s boat the way he did.”

  “Carte blanche. Now we start the long process of pros­ecuting this bastard carefully, by the book, so that we don’t violate his civil rights. He is, after all, innocent until proven guilty.”

  Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on Don Lansing, who replied, “Like those cowardly mothers who planted that bomb in Oklahoma City in ‘95?”

  “Yeah, how we had to look after their precious civil rights. Provide them with defense attorneys, provide them with a judge and a jury and a forum—as if they still had rights as American citizens, as if they were human. Bastards deserved to be stripped of any and all rights. You don’t give civil rights to murderers and baby-killers. They forfeit the right to be assumed human when they turn to taking human life, so far as I’m concerned.”

  “You... you were part of the force that tracked those guys in Oklahoma down, weren’t you?”

  “Part of the BSU sent to Oklahoma, yeah.”

  “BSU?”

  “Behavioral Science Unit, part of a larger division. We profile killers, try to get into their heads, track them through understanding them as best we can.”

  He nodded. “So, maybe if we shipped the cretin back to England it’d be better all around. Isn’t he guilty over there until proven innocent?”

  “You might have a great idea there, Don. Imagine the Menendez trial in England. The defense would’ve had to prove innocence, and all the prosecution would’ve needed to do would’ve been to burn incense, blow smoke and hold up mirrors, rather than the other way around. As it was, it was just the opposite in California.”

  “Why not extradite this guy to England then?”

  “Good point. Maybe we’ll consider it, but I doubt the American public will stand for it. Everybody wants him fried in Florida. Trouble with that is the electric chair’s too good for the likes of this mother—”

  “Death row food for how long?”

  She shook her head, unable to answer.

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “We take the bastard back to the States to stand trial.”

  “Maybe we should let the Cayman authorities have him?” he wondered aloud. “Maybe their brand of justice would be swifter, surer?”

  “You got a point, Lansing... you have a point, but once again the U.S. isn’t likely to stand for it. Our government and the State of Florida’ll be looking to control this one, not to mention America’s Most Wanted.”

  Jessica took in another deep breath of the rushing, hur­ricanelike air all around her. “Bring the chopper in as low as you can. I’m going down to the boat.”

  Lansing was doing gyrations both in his seat and in his head, asking, “What? What’d you say?”

  “I’m going down there... on the ladder.”

  “Hey, we’re not talking child’s play here, Dr. Coran.”

  “I want to be with my partner, and I want on that ship, now, Don!”

  “But—”

  “No buts! Just do it.”

  Jessica snatched off her headphones and looked out over the side. The straight drop gave her renewed respect for Eriq. Tauman was still unconscious, but she hadn’t recalled his lying half on, half off the back of the boat where those thick, black nylon ropes were still draped. She wondered if any bodies dangled there now, but she rather doubted it. She also wondered if he’d moved, or if he had been moved. Had the boat simply shifted his deadweight? Had Eriq come back to kick him a few times?

  Or had the Night Crawler, she wondered again, moved himself?

  With the chopper lower now over the slowing boat, the bottom rungs of the ladder were loosely coiled aboard the ship when Jessica began her descent, doing so with one eye on the evil below her while the wind tore at her body, whipping wildly at her blouse and slacks. She thanked God she’d been wise enough to wear cotton pants and comfort­able sneakers.

  Each rung down the rope ladder brought her nearer Tau­man, and she couldn’t help but recall her father’s long-ago words to her when they were on a hunting trip once in Minnesota. Her father had had to kill a snake, and she went to pick it up, curious to examine it as closely as possible. It was beautiful in its size, and variegated color scheme and surprising in its dead heft. She was thirteen at the time.

  “Never assume a snake is dead until you cut off its head and feed on its heart,” her father had warned.

  “Oh, yuck. Dad. Whataya mean? Eat its heart?”

  “Old Indian proverb—American Indian, Lakota, I think. If you don’t cut off the head and eat the heart of your enemy, he will rise again to strike you when you least sus­pect
it.”

  Another glance at Tauman told her this particular snake was stone still. Maybe Eriq had indeed killed Warren Tau­man. It would certainly save the taxpayers a bundle if it were true; still, she wanted this devil alive. Florida had the death penalty, and she would conduct hundreds of hours of laboratory tests over the remnants of his victims to prove Warren Tauman more than just the “alleged” killer.

  Jessica was two rungs from the boat deck now, twirling uncontrollably around and about over the deck of a still moving ship, dangling from the chopper overhead, holding on tightly. Maybe Don Lansing was right. Maybe she was a fool to risk life and limb in this manner, but for so long now they had tracked this beast, and so she felt she had to get a closer look and be certain that her partner was all right.

  She didn’t want to jump too soon, didn’t want to lose her balance as Eriq had. In the meantime, due to the buf­feting winds here, Don Lansing had had to bring the heli­copter a bit higher, and looking down at her feet, she realized there were no rungs lying on the deck any longer. In fact, she had reached the final rung, and there remained a three-foot drop, with the boat still going at quite a speed. She took a final look at the snake whose blood was dripping over the gunwale and into the salt sea.

  Tauman lay there like a broken granite statue; he hadn’t so much as flinched. He was exactly as she had seen him from the top. Maybe he was dead; maybe Eriq had used deadly force, which would mean a review of every moment of every second of this past hour. The Bureau and the at­torney general of the United States would be studying Eriq’s behavior instead of the killer’s, trying to determine if deadly force had been necessary, and the eyewitnesses to that deadly force would be Lansing and Jessica.

  She saw Eriq coming up from below, his wild, adrenaline- fed eyes meeting hers just as she jumped on deck, and he cried out, “Nooooo!”

  When she hit the deck, the momentum of the ship sent her directly back, and she fell into the grasp of Warren Tauman who’d gotten to his feet. Tauman snatched her gun from her shoulder holster before she could get at it, both of them fighting for balance, and now pointed her weapon at Eriq, focusing through blood that streaked from his fore­head and half blinded him. Eriq, in that same instant, surged forward, trying to react, but froze in place when he saw the gun pointed directly between his eyes.

  At that moment, Jessica half heard, half saw the flare which Lansing had suddenly fired across the boat; reacting immediately, she stomped on Tauman’s foot with all her weight and forced both Tauman and herself back toward the aft, until both of them again lost their footing.

  Together, they went over the back of the ship and into the water, the boat moving swiftly away from their fall­ing bodies.

  •TWENTY-FIVE •

  Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.

  —Elbert Hubbard

  Hovering above the boat now were two helicopters. Jim Parry had had Henri contact Lansing, telling him who they were. Lansing recognized Okinleye’s voice, Okinleye say­ing something to the effect that they were well within Cayman’s waters at this point and that the prisoner below was his prisoner now. Parry was simply yelling at Lansing for having allowed Jessica Coran to take the dan­gerous step of climbing down onto the boat from the mov­ing chopper. Everyone above had then seen the sudden standoff below.

  Parry had had an instinctual feeling that Tauman was not secured. He saw no handcuffs or anything else restraining the man, and earlier, he, Ja and Henri had seen the two flares sent up from the boat at the helicopter. Parry had prepared the flare he’d earlier seen, and he had had it poised and ready to signal those on the boat of their arrival the moment they came over. Instead, he’d used it to disrupt the Night Crawler’s plan when Parry saw him grab Jessica and take hold of her as his hostage. The distraction had worked, but only up to a point. Now it appeared Jessica was in the water with the now armed madman.

  Parry shouted for Henri to get them in closer, over the water, and as Henri worked to do so, he tore at the rope ladder below the seat in front of him, and shoved open the door, which came immediately back at him, closing on him as if to deny him his plan. Ja Okinleye, too, meant to deny him, grasping him by the arm and shouting, “Don’t be a fool! We already have two people in the water. Don’t add to the problem!”

  Parry snatched his arm away and pushed the door against the wind a second time, continuing with his plan, tossing the rope ladder out over the side.

  “You will only add to the casualties if—” But Ja saw that he was talking to an insane man. He threw his hands up and ordered Henri to give him the radio.

  Parry shouted through his headphones at Henri the same instant, “Locate her in the water! Bring us over Dr. Coran, Henri, until this ladder is within her grasp! Do you under­stand?”

  “I will do my best, sir!”

  Ja radioed Lansing, ordering him to pick up the prisoner using his chopper and rope ladder. Meanwhile, Parry tore off his headphones and his suit coat and climbed out onto the ladder, his body in the vortex of wind below the rotor blades now as rope and man swayed madly below the belly of the rattling old machine. He got a face full of exhaust and fuel from something that seemed abnormal, a leaking valve or fuel pump. Ignoring this, Parry worked his way down toward the surf as Henri and Ja searched the waters for any sign of Jessica.

  When Jessica surfaced, she didn’t know where Tauman was or where the boat was. Twisting about in the water, she located first the chopper and next the boat, both trying desperately to turn around and retrieve her and Tauman. She glanced around now for Tauman, fearful he might’ve held tight to her weapon. Even wet, it could do a hell of a lot of damage. But Tauman hadn’t surfaced. Was he a non- swimmer?

  The waves here were not terribly high, but Tauman, she knew, could easily be just beyond the next wave, just out of her extremely limited perspective and sight. Or he might at any moment pop up beside her and place a bullet in her head. She reached down to her ankle for her second gun, a .38 Police Special. Thus armed, she felt a bit safer, until she saw the huge, gray-blue fin streaking along the surface some seventy or eighty yards off.

  Shark, she thought, her pulse racing, knowing Tauman’s blood had baited the shark for some time now. She saw a second fin break the surface, a third and a fourth. Then she made out Tauman’s head bobbing about in the sea some fifty yards from where she’d spied the first of the sharks, which for the moment seemed content with the morsel be­fore them.

  Jessica held more tightly to the gun than ever. She wondered if she’d use it to fire at the sharks as they neared or if she’d use it on herself before being eaten alive by the beasts. She recalled Islamorada, imagined herself—or part of herself—returning there through no fault of her own, found in the belly of a great white. She thought how mad her life had been, how much she had given up over the years to become who she was; she questioned who she was, what she was, and wondered if it had all been worth it...

  Lansing and the chopper got to her much more quickly than she had thought possible, and far more quickly than Eriq possibly could with the boat. She waved and shouted, but Lansing went by her, going for Tauman, who was in far graver circumstances. Still, she cursed Lansing his choice.

  Then she saw the second—and from this distance nearly identical—chopper and realized it must be Ja Okinleye. He’d come through for her after all. A rope ladder trailed below his chopper, too, and amazingly enough, someone was dangling on the ladder. Okinleye?

  No, it was not Ja. The clothes were not island uniform or wear; rather, it was a man in a gray flannel suit. She could not make out who the man was, but she thanked God he was coming for her.

  The second chopper and rope ladder were now her only hope, her lifeline. She grabbed out at the ladder once, twice, missing as the helicopter hovered above. She missed a third pass, then finally snagged the ladder and held firm with one hand until she could safely put the .38 into her shoulder holster. The man above her had descended almost to where he could reach d
own and help her up, but not quite. He was wearing expensive dress shoes—totally wrong foot­wear for this work—and having some difficulty holding on, and she began to fear for him. She was in no position to see his features, only his size and predicament. If he should fall over into the water, she knew, the sharks could easily feed on him, too. She had not dared watch the sharks, but she still didn’t feel completely safe so long as any part of her remained in the water.

  Quickly now, Jessica tugged and pulled and powered her wet weight and the weight of her wet clothing onto the ladder. It was an exhausting struggle to do so, and when she slipped and fell back a rung, she felt a hand grasp her by the wrist, and then heard Jim Parry’s voice repeatedly calling her name.

  “Jim? Jim, it’s you!”

  He wasn’t satisfied with her heels dangling in the sea, and so he dragged himself up, tugging her along with him until she was firmly on the bottom rung. The chopper was having trouble with the weight, first rising, then dipping, her ankles teasing the surf as it did so.

  Parry remained calm, although he saw two sharks head­ing straight for them, responding no doubt to the slap and fray in the surf here. “Higher, Jess. Pull yourself up along­side me! Come on ... come on... “ he said, managing to keep the sheer terror from his voice. “Hell of a party you’re throwing here.”

  Jessica fought against the weight of her own cloying clothing, which seemed in a conspiracy to keep her in the water, but with Jim’s strong hand and help, she managed to pull her way to come alongside him on the ladder, pant­ing wildly, finally able to breathe. Face-to-face with Jim Parry for the first time since she’d last left Hawaii, she said to him, “Hell of a way to surprise a girl.”

  Again the chopper jarred them downward, dipping their legs into the spray, and for the first time Jessica saw how close the pair of sharks were. They had come within ten feet. She involuntarily screamed while Jim shouted to God and waved madly at the chopper pilot, screaming, “Get us the hell out of here!”