by PJ Manney
Still impaled by the harpoon, Baldy staggered to the control panel to realign the decks—beach deck down and aft wall up. He banged bloody fists and elbows at buttons and levers. Suddenly, the wall started to rise again. Peter scrambled madly, but lost his grip and slid to the metal floor. Baldy’s right foot came up to meet Peter’s chin, but not before Peter reached up and grabbed the harpoon still in his chest. Baldy knelt in agony as Peter plunged the shaft in and around the chest cavity, between the ribs and below the sternum. Within seconds, Baldy was on his back, mouth gushing blood. Dying.
Peter staggered back to the controls and reversed them. Armed with his tank and harpoon gun yet again, he scrambled up the deck. A bullet whistled past his ear. Josiah aimed again above him on the outer deck. Peter crashed to the metal and slid down the door, holding tight to the tank like a baby. He aimed the harpoon up and fired, driving Josiah away from the rail and back to the spiral stairs. Josiah would be in the control room in moments.
Carter hadn’t appeared. Peter wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or worried.
Pain only slightly subdued by adrenaline, he built up as much momentum as possible in a few giant steps and leapt off the top left corner of the pitched deck into the waiting speedboat, holding the steel tank vertically in front of his head and heart. But Big Biceps was ready. Bullets pinged off steel as Peter fell upon the shooter into the cockpit of the boat. He slammed the soldier in the head with the scuba tank, while his own legs crumpled in pain under him. Big Biceps toppled and Peter shoved him into the roiling sea.
Behind the wheel, Peter jammed the electronic throttle back as far as it would go and tore off to shore. The boat made a skull-shaking racket at full speed. He turned around. Blockhead was chasing on a Jet Ski, followed by the second high-tech tender, driven by a soaked Big Biceps with Josiah and Carter.
Peter zigzagged, jumping waves to evade Blockhead, but the mercenary was skilled on the military-grade Jet Ski. If the boat was going over eighty knots, the ski was pushing one hundred.
The Jet Ski weaved along the port side. Blockhead pulled his handgun from his shoulder holster. Peter turned the wheel, weaving back and forth and ducking to avoid the shots. He tried to ram the ski, but Blockhead was quicker. Peter was afraid a major evasive maneuver, like a three-sixty, might flip the boat. Blockhead decelerated and followed a safe distance from the rooster tail. Suddenly, he accelerated just in front of the tail, leaping from the ski onto the speedboat’s smooth, long stern deck that covered the motor and forward-rolled into the cockpit’s rear seats. He raised his gun to shoot . . .
No longer caring if they capsized, Peter spun the steering wheel hard to port, throwing Blockhead off balance as the tiny boat whirled topsy-turvy in the waves but remained upright. The mercenary’s arms slammed on the starboard gunnel and his gun flew into the sea.
Aiming at shore again, Peter unsheathed the golf club and jammed it in the steering wheel, braced between the seat, footrests, and the scuba tank to keep the boat on course.
Blockhead leapt over the front seats and threw himself on top of Peter to grapple for the steering wheel and throttle, while the second speedboat gained on them. Blockhead’s punches were laser aimed and merciless. A fist to the outer thigh wound, another to the left bicep, his right foot wrapped around Peter’s legs, sweeping him to the floor. All of Peter’s brainpower could not overcome the brute strength of the Special Forces fighter. With Peter wedged helplessly in the tight floor space, Blockhead reached for an ankle blade . . .
. . . just as the sun rose with a KABOOM!
Dulles’s yacht blew apart across the Pacific in several explosions. The bursts were so bright, Blockhead squinted into the artificial daylight, distracted. Peter kicked both legs with all his might into the killer’s groin.
Blockhead staggered, blinded by genital agony and pupil constriction. Peter scrambled over the seat backs, pulling the dive-weight bandolier from around his shoulder and clutching his golf club. But there were few escape options on a thirty-foot tender.
Doubled over, Blockhead dived for the throttle. Peter swung the club at his hands to stop him from slowing the boat. Blockhead grabbed the club midswing, wrenched it out of Peter’s grip, and chased him over the seat back. Peter scrambled for the stern deck. Blockhead leapt on Peter’s back, and the two slid across the glass-smooth decking toward the watery rooster tail. To stop his slide off the stern with his palms, he let go of the club and the weight belt, and they slid into the ocean. The killer’s hands went around Peter’s neck and killer’s knee pinned Peter down by his hip. Peter tried to pull the chokehold away, but Blockhead grabbed both his hands and wrenched them up and over Peter’s head to meet.
Brant screamed so loudly into Blockhead’s earpiece, Peter could hear the order through the wind and engines’ roar, “Get that processor—or else!”
It lay stuffed down his front pocket. He pulled his knees to his chest to make access harder. Blockhead tried to rip open the right front pocket, leaving only his left to keep Peter’s hands crushed on the deck. Peter wiggled his left hand free from under the killer’s single grip and yanked the stern tie line attached to the boat’s stern cleat.
The boat jumped a wave and both men’s bodies lifted into the air. Peter torqued his body over, wrapping the rope around his middle into a quick knot, while pushing Blockhead away. The killer grabbed for Peter, the rope, the boat, anything, but missed, falling through the rooster tail into the sea.
Peter hung off the starboard stern, bouncing with the rooster tail’s high-powered waterspout. Avoiding the propeller, he pulled himself up the rope, back onto the stern of the boat. Safely on board, he yanked open the knot and staggered to the bow to aim again for land.
Behind him, Josiah’s speedboat hit a bump. The engine’s rpms dropped down several musical tones as the clogged propeller sushied Blockhead into shark chum.
He had only a split second to hear the excruciating sound of scraping carbon fibers traveling eighty knots over unseen jagged rock, before . . .
KABOOM!
A fiery explosion blew his launch into hundreds of pieces, lighting the night once more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
His scalded body sank in frigid water. Searchlights from Josiah’s launch ringed the dark hull, like a planetary eclipse surrounded by a corona of light and wreckage. The water above looked cloudier and darker than it should. It was his blood. He sank enough to cease seeing anything but inky blackness. His eardrums ached with pressure.
And he needed air. It was time to strip off his clothing and swim for his life.
He kicked off sneakers and socks and struggled to the surface out of the ring of light for a quick breath.
He dipped beneath the surface again and removed the processor from his jeans pocket. He had to get rid of the heavy, waterlogged jeans and put the processor somewhere. He lashed the processor with its cord to his upper arm. Then he peeled the pants off his legs, but burnt skin ripped away with burnt fabric, saltwater cauterizing the lot. Holding his breath, he held in his scream. Peter left his shirt on, afraid to remove any more burnt skin than he had to.
Pain should have overwhelmed him, but the cold was his friend. He fought tormented nerve endings and swam as hard and as fast from the boat and wreckage as he could. Amanda’s life depended on his concentration of body and mind. He had to get to her before the club did. It was the only thought that kept him going as unconsciousness threatened everything. He had no gauge of the passage of time with his internal clock variably slowed. He figured he must be a mile from shore. And the current was with him, increasing with the tide.
Two helicopters rose from behind the dark, empty hillsides to rush the oceanfront, covering the area with searchlights. He guessed they had infrared sights, but hoped they couldn’t see him if he was deep enough. He focused on calming his terrified, racing pulse, thus requiring less oxygen and fewer surfacings, so he might evade them. He needed to swim deep . . . Surface, gasp, submerge, swim deep . . . There was
a rhythm to it, but he hurt too much to hear music.
WHOOMP! With the impact of an underwater bus, ribs collapsed, lungs spewed air. He folded in two and spun like a gyroscope, with no idea which way the surface lay.
It was a depth charge. Even though his consciousness fought it, his primitive brain refused not to breathe, involuntarily expanding his lungs. Seawater rushed into the vacuum. With slow-time, he had the luxury of realizing the big mistake.
It was over. He’d never find the surface in time to expel the seawater from his lungs. Revolving slowly, he was dumbfounded that he had failed Amanda, but was still cursed with thinking. He’d die analyzing his end. To the end.
He felt a nudge. He imagined a gray mass with a fin flashing near his face, but it was too dark to see. More fins bumped him . . .
Suddenly, a zap passed through his head, as though his brain heard an electric shock without using ears. Was he having an aneurysm? Or did his injuries create a short in the implants? The past flickered by: Pop walking with him between the river and the railroad tracks, telling him he wasn’t allowed to get seriously involved with his high school sweetheart, Tammi Wanamaker, because a serious relationship would derail him from his dreams. His father’s stern voice, the smell of fuel, dead fish, and the funky mud of the intertidal zone gave way to autumn wind chilling him through his thin denim jacket. Memories and moments were jarred from his neurons, like falling fruit from the highest branches of a shaken apple tree . . .
Was this life flashing before death?
Pressured water rushed toward him. A narrow snout poked him gently. It was the dolphin pod. He hoped those rumors that DARPA trained killer dolphins were just rumors.
ZAP!
His brain twinged again, the tingle shooting down his spine . . . After a swish ’n’ spit of Listerine while bopping to a decent live-cover of Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party,” Carter punched his arm as encouragement during their sophomore Full Moon on the Quad, Stanford’s annual mass-kissing ritual. Amanda grooved nearby among the three thousand students, lost in the music. Peter hadn’t kissed her yet . . .
The pod closed in, encircling him. At some cetacean cue, they rushed him, pushing his body to the surface. Two dolphins let him use them as floats as he hauled himself over their backs and coughed and coughed and coughed as much of the seawater out of his lungs as he could, gasping at life-giving air. His lungs and ribs seared like frying steak. The pair of helicopters flew away from him as they scoured the water’s surface. American Dream II was gone—sunk to the bottom. Josiah’s launch was beached, and a third helicopter sat on the pad, presumably to take the remaining men to Palo Alto to kill Amanda.
The search copters turned around and headed back toward his savior pod. He let go of the backs and slipped under the waves, but it was impossible to swim again. Between soaked lungs, oxygen deprivation, and injuries, he couldn’t get up enough energy to move his limbs.
ZAP! Amanda lay naked in his arms in his dorm-room twin bed, her silky waist-length black hair covering his torso.
His brain felt so jangled and the memories so disorienting, he would have massaged his head underwater if he could. Then it hit him. It was the dolphins’ echolocation! Pumped full of adrenaline and endorphins and who knew what hormones from battering and drowning, he still had a corner of his mind clear enough to hope those stories about dolphins cavitating cellular molecules—shaking them so much with their sonar they stimulated chemical production to promote healing—were true. Maybe the stories of dolphins recognizing and helping injured or “different” humans were true, too. He certainly was both.
This time, the dolphins grasped his dilemma. One sidled up, and he grabbed its dorsal fin and let the dolphin tow him quickly toward the shore. The dolphin felt him try to surface for air and helped him up, only to carry him back down again. The pod formed a phalanx, moving at a fast clip and zigzagging through the icy waters. His grip weakening, the dolphin slowed down to let him gain purchase on its fin again.
The pod slowed as they neared a rocky outcropping, and with a gentleness that amazed and humbled him, they nudged him carefully onto the slippery stone. Out of water’s weightlessness, gravity did its worst. Any body part that hadn’t hurt before cried out in a sensation that couldn’t be called “pain.” There was no word for what he felt. He crawled on all fours along an outcropping, skinned legs scraping jagged rock, and slipped down into the blackness of a cave.
It was full of water at the bottom, rising with the tide. He felt along the wall for something to climb up.
He needed light . . . Unconsciously, he looked at his watch. He pressed the light of his sports watch to see the numbers display. It was almost 4:00 a.m. The wall was lit ever so dimly before him.
He saw a small outcropping just over his head. Trying to lift his legs to gain a foothold, he noticed the coloration and sediment showed the highest tidemark came to the edge of the ledge. That wasn’t good news, because tonight was the new moon. While probably chosen to keep the events on the yacht under the cover of darkness, it also meant it was time for the spring tides, the highest of the month. He hoped the moon wasn’t at perigee, the period it orbits closest to Earth, which brought the highest tides of the year.
Dragging his body onto the ledge, he ripped waterlogged hands, knees, and feet against the stone, leaving a bloody trail. He tried to squeeze in as tightly as possible, so if unconsciousness overtook him, he wouldn’t fall into the water and drown.
But as soon as he relaxed and his soaked, ice-cold body stopped moving, his heart rate and respiration decreased rapidly. He shook violently while he examined his wounds by watch light. They still seeped blood, but the bleeding slowed with the pulse rate. He could hear his surgeon joke, “All bleeding stops sometime.” Yeah, sometimes it all runs out and you die . . . He would have been glad for coagulation, but he didn’t want the flow to stop because his body was shutting down from hypothermia. Or blood loss.
Time sped up. The water came in faster, more violent waves. The cave would fill up before daylight.
He fought to stay conscious, repeatedly pressing the watch light to illuminate his corner of the cave, but it didn’t help. All he could think about was Amanda. He had failed her. What was she doing right now? She’d have no idea either of them was in peril. Was she asleep? Was she dreaming? The crash and boom of the rising tide made it hard to imagine her . . . hard to think . . .
He could only fight overwhelming odds so long before his body refused to listen to his willful brain, and the void overwhelmed him. The thought that after all this, Amanda was going to die would have made him cry, if he’d had tears to shed and energy to shed them.
“What’s wrong, love?” asked Amanda. She was sitting next to him on the rocks, in that pretty white sundress she wore for his last birthday.
“I’m dying, baby. I tried, but I can’t help you . . . Mandy? Forgive me? Please forgive me. I love you so much . . .”
“Forgive you for what?”
“I don’t know . . . everything?”
He didn’t hear her reply. He fell into a warm, black abyss of delicious, welcoming unconsciousness. To die. A tiny part of his mind was grateful for the release. The rest of him fought in fury all the way down.
And then there was nothing . . .
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Peter woke moaning, thrashing weakly in the dark water. Men in black amphibious commando gear and balaclavas waded through waist deep, floating Peter out of the cave. With his last bit of strength, he tried to fend off his enemy. It was dark and he couldn’t see. His captors were everywhere and innumerable.
A woman’s voice came from the smallest commando. “Stop . . . It’s Talia . . . Peter . . . It’s Talia . . . I’m here to save you . . . Please, stop fighting!”
Disoriented, he felt a stinging in his arm and only had a moment to realize he didn’t hear the helicopters anymore before he felt very mellow.
She spoke quietly, but urgently. “Sorry, I had to calm you down
. You have to help me. They’ll be back in a few minutes!”
At the water’s edge, they laid a waterproof tarpaulin under him and half dragged him up the rock side, each bounce and jar into stone an explosion of pain. They carried him to a blacked-out, camouflaged SUV and hefted his body into the back. It looked military grade, with all the bells and whistles of special ops.
Before they covered him with another tarpaulin, he croaked out, “How’d you find me?”
“I’ll tell you later . . .” Talia soothed. “What happened to Dulles?”
“He’s dead . . .” mumbled Peter.
The tiny figure froze for a moment. But Peter couldn’t continue, because once again the void sucked him up into the moonless sky.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
First, there was sound. The beeps of heart and brain monitors, the wheeze of respirators. Distant voices. His right eye opened. His left couldn’t, but he didn’t know why. A woman with shoulder-length blond hair, wearing a yellow T-shirt, sat at his right.
A man in a white lab coat hovered to his left. Peter tried to say, “Amanda . . .” but nothing intelligible came out. His jaw was immobile. Something was choking him.
The woman said, “Steve,” and motioned to Peter’s open, moving eye. Peter knew that voice. It had to be Talia. With makeup. And a wig?
He tried to scream again. “Mandy? Carter!” It sounded like gargling.
The doctor moved closer to the good eye. He was of medium height, mostly bald, with a fringe of black hair, large brown eyes, and handsome, like a young Stanley Tucci. He spoke loudly and slowly, as if to a deaf person. “I’m Dr. Steven Carbone. You’re at Sacramento General Hospital. I need to ask you some questions. Can you blink once for yes and twice for no?”
He was disembodied, a brain afloat. Was he at Sacramento General? Were those monitors hooked to him? Did they work for the club? Was Carter controlling all this, like he had everything else? Was he their prisoner? He wanted to tell the idiot to stop yelling, he wasn’t deaf, but he felt light-headed again and . . .
