by A P Bateman
There was some respite while the woman changed magazines, but Stone kept the boat slicing through the water, matching the Sunseeker’s speed as the woman fired rapid bursts that mainly went wide or dotted the heavy prow of the boat. She casually took out the curved magazine of the Kalashnikov and bent down for another, and that was Stone’s cue to make his move. Holding his distance, he had a good amount of throttle in reserve and he slammed the lever forwards and swung the boat across the power cruiser’s wake and into the frothy water directly behind. The boat surged forwards, the aerated, agitated water offering less resistance to the craft’s twin propellers and the boat gained rapidly on the cruiser. With his increase in speed there was a closing difference of twenty knots, and Stone kept the throttle jammed forwards, even when the prow rode over the Sunseeker’s swim platform and powered up into the rear and higher onto the second platform. The man turned and looked, but it was too late. The wooden work boat rose out of the water, the swim platform and transom acting as a ramp, and slammed into the cockpit. The man had enough time to shield his face, but the boat hit him hundredths of a second later and crushed him against the wheel.
Marnie had got out of the way and fallen onto her back. She was scrambling for the Kalashnikov, but Stone had the Glock in his hand and shouted above the engines, which now clear of the water, whined in a high-pitched, frantic crescendo.
“Hold it!” he shouted. “Do not touch the weapon!”
She rolled onto her back, her eyes burning into him. “What did you do to my dogs, you bastard?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I’ll kill you…” she said coldly. Stone could barely hear her over the revving of the engines. Then the boat shifted slightly and dropped backwards, the propellers eating into the deck, chopping fibreglass and seat covers into pieces, the engines now overheating and smoking badly. But he was on the port side, his weapon aimed at her. He couldn’t switch the engines off and she was too close to the Kalashnikov. “Get up and put your hands on your head,” he ordered.
She rolled onto her side and pushed herself up, but as she did so, she swept up the weapon and rolled out of Stone’s line of sight. He lunged over the portside and found himself staring into the muzzle of the assault rifle. It was check-mate, because the barrel of the Glock in Stone’s outstretched hand was a mere eighteen inches from the woman’s face.
“I’ll kill you for what you’ve done to my…” she did not finish her sentence. Stone had pulled the trigger and the bullet smashed through her teeth and severed the synapse behind her throat. The point where the spine met the brain stem. There was no faster recorded method of killing somebody.
Stone got up and cut the engines. The power cruiser was still ploughing on at speed and Stone climbed down from the boat and made his way to the cockpit. There was blood on the deck, but the man was not there. It was impossible. But then again, he had history with him and he had survived the unthinkable once before. He pulled both of the chrome throttle levers back and the cruiser slowed quickly. He turned around, his arm half outstretched with the Glock in his hand, but it was too late. The heavy stainless pistol slammed down on his wrist and the Glock skittered across the deck. The pistol came back up with great force and whipped him in the face. Stone was falling, there was nothing he could do. His head went light and his feet felt like lead. His face burned and when he hit the deck, his cheek felt as if a sharp implement had been driven into the bone. He knew his orbit had been shattered, his cheekbone had cracked at the very least. He rolled over, his instincts telling him to keep moving, but as he looked up he saw that the pistol was aimed steadily down at him. The man behind it was contorted in pain, his shoulders sagged, but he still managed to hold the Smith & Wesson .500, his aim unwavering. This was an over-sized revolver that made the once infamous .44 magnum look like a peashooter. The man kicked out and Stone caught the blow thankfully just short of his groin. He winced, made the impact seem worse than it was. You could never show enough pain to your captor.
“Get up!” the man shouted. He rammed the handgun into Stone’s face. The barrel was still too hot to touch from firing and it sizzled on his perspiration. The weapon was a hand cannon. A toy for gun enthusiasts with no combat effectiveness. Except that it was looking pretty effective from where Stone was standing. “Walk to the side of the boat.” He switched off the engines using his left hand, and struggled to keep the weapon steadily aimed. But the muzzle was still too close to start heroics. Stone could see the man was badly injured. It was an effort to do just that simple task. “You’ve been a thorn in my side. Like your brother before you. He begged, you know…”
Stone yawned. “You’ve already told me.” The boat pitched and rolled in the swell, and he rolled on his feet unsteadily. He lowered his hands to keep balance.
“Well I’m telling you again!” he snapped. “I cut that bastard’s throat!”
“Get on with it.”
The man raised the enormous handgun, it hovered just in front of Stone’s face. Stone dipped with the roll of the swell, then swiped the barrel out of the way with his left hand, his right hand already scything towards the man’s belly. The gun clattered to the deck and Stone stood still. There was a look of confusion on the man’s face. He backed up a pace, his guard ready. Stone’s punch had amounted to nothing, he looked pleased they were going to fight it out. They’d been there before. Stone slowly raised the Spyderco knife with its wicked-looking diamond-sharpened serrated blade. There was blood on the blade, a few droplets had run over the back of his hand and dripped onto the gleaming white deck. The man looked down hesitantly, and that’s when everything inside him seeped out from between the folds of severed skin and muscle and fell out onto the deck. He fell forwards onto his knees, his expression one of disbelief.
Stone walked around him and stamped on the prosthesis. It wrenched off, held on only by suction and rubber. Stone bent down and yanked it easily out from the man’s pant leg. He looked at it, hefted it for weight and balance, holding it by the metal ankle. “Hey,” Stone said down to him. “Caught out by me twice, and both times with a knife.” The man grunted, but he was fading fast. “Remember when I said I’d beat your head in with your own leg?” The man grunted as Stone raised the leg high above his head. He brought it down as hard as he could. He did it twice more and the man stopped moving on the last blow, the thudding sound of impact giving way to a wetness much like the sound of breaking eggs. Stone looked at the body, a sense of relief washing over him. He’d had history with him, and now it was over. Stone looked out across the ocean to the island. He could see another in the distance. He turned, swaying unsteadilyas the boat rocked with the swell. There were two large shark fins in the water. They popped up and down, occasionally covered by a swell or some chop. Stone realised it wasn’t two sharks, but one big one. He thought back to what the clean-up guy had said to him after he had killed The Saracen: The west coast of the island gets Great Whites passing through in spring and fall. I think they head somewhere to breed in the summer but hang around here for a few weeks. There’s bull sharks, hammerheads, white-tips and tiger sharks off the coast all year round. You get some blood and chunks in the water and when there’s enough sharks competing for it you drop the bodies off the boat…
He looked down at the man who had killed his brother. The man who had made millions from killing. Who had taken money to kill the President’s family and film it like a reality show. The man who had treated lives as commodities. The man who had fed another man’s family to the black caiman and forced him to watch.
And it gave him an idea.
39
Kathy had been tied to a fixed table in the galley. Her eye and lips were swollen from the slaps Marnie had brutally administered back in the bunker. She had been shaken and scared, and as pleased as it was possible to be to see Stone standing in the sliding glass doorway.
Stone cut her loose and she hugged him tightly. The hug lingered for a long while, relief was an exhausting emotion
to move away from. After relief came the unknown, and Kathy had not wanted to leave this moment and move forward. Stone knew how she felt and had been happy to reciprocate.
Back outside, there was a considerable amount of blood on the deck. Kathy stared at the patch and Stone asked her to fetch water from the galley and sluice the area clean. She had to be involved, had to be a part of it. Not only would the action keep her busy, but she would own it. She would move forward after this experience and she would have a filter when she came to write about it. There would be a line she would not cross because of her involvement.
Stone looked at the water where he had dumped both the man and his entrails and Marnie’s body. He had seen the shark, a beast of about eighteen feet in length and as wide as a European hatchback car. The shark had rammed the man’s body, torn into it and taken it below the surface. Stone had not stopped long to look. He didn’t want to be a voyeur, just needed to know it was over and that the man had gone for good. Marnie’s body had simply sunk below the surface. Stone was in no doubt as to what was happening under the boat at that moment.
Stone tried, but could not shift the work boat from the deck. The Sunseeker did not seem to be suffering from the damage caused to the stern. He took control in the cabin cockpit, put the engines into reverse and the boat lurched backwards. He increased the power until he was at maximum revs, then slammed the throttles forward and the engines wailed at the transferal of power and the inertia made the workboat shoot off the stern. It slid down the shattered swim platform and plunged into the water. The angle was steep and the heavy outboard engines entered the water first and water flowed over the transom and filled the stern. The boat started sinking and within a minute had disappeared, lost to the sea.
Kathy stood at Stone’s side as he looked at the navigation display. Stone took out the USB he had retrieved from the man’s pocket. “When we get to Panama City I’ll find somewhere to get this copied. I’ll give you a copy for your story,” he said. “I need a copy to investigate this, and another two for both the Secret Service and the FBI.”
Kathy rubbed his shoulder. “I get the impression you’re not coming back with me.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m on the back foot now. I need to get out in front. I’ll be the most wanted man in the world right now. And there’ll be a lot of people who want to take me down. Dead or alive. I need information. That’s the only power I’ll have to fight this and clear my name.”
She rested her head against his chest, her body swaying with the motion of the boat as it ploughed through and over the swells. “I’ll help in any way I can,” she said.
Stone smiled. “I’ll contact you somehow. Take it as read, your phones will be tapped. Especially when your story is published and the world finds out what happened here and why the President’s family were assassinated.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe what was going on, what they did for the money.”
Stone shrugged. “I’ve come to realise that there are people in this world who have no limits.”
“And what are you limits, Agent Stone?” she asked, her head resting back against his chest.
Stone thought for a moment, his mind awash with images of the past few days that he knew he would never forget. “I suppose if it’s a matter of personal survival, or perhaps knowing morally I’m on the right side…” he paused, images of black caiman taking a man into a death roll, of shark fins thrashing, white teeth slashing and tearing and water turned crimson on the bubbling surface. “Then I have no limits either.”
40
Eight months later
There are few places on earth that rain as much, or at least as frequently as Seattle. Few metropolitan inhabited places at least. Most people stick around, decide whether it’s worth investing the time and money in before they get a township up to city status, but the settlers in the Pacific Northwest decided there was much to Seattle that outweighed the near constant precipitation. The gateway to Alaska, shipping hub to Asia and the Pacific Rim and the third largest port in the United States had sprung up and grown thanks to mining and logging and the opportunity to exploit it. Stone guessed the pioneers could cope with the weather, and so could the people who had flocked there ever since.
A cultured city, arguably famous for its coffee houses and the chains and franchises that had been conceived there. Stone preferred independent coffee houses, and it was in one of these that he had sat most afternoons for the entire week. He had taken a window table in a sofa booth, and he had worked his way through the largely Java and Columbian blends and seen his way through many oversized cookies and brownies. He would need to abstain and hit the gym when he was finished here. Or maybe just run. He’d been running a lot lately, but not to work out. He was the FBI’s most wanted. He was running for survival. He was a step or two ahead, but those steps were getting shorter. He had engineered it that way.
Stone had grown out his hair more than usual. He had grown a beard too. Seattle favoured beards – a place where hipsters and full mountain-men met ironic facial art. There was a beard on every other man under the age of forty-five. Stone’s spoke of mountaineer more than hipster. He had pulled off the look with cargo pants and a checked shirt, hiking boots and a windcheater. He neither stood out nor entirely blended in, which was the key to undercover work. And being on the run as America’s most wanted criminal and terrorist was as good as undercover work.
Financially, Stone was comfortable. His assets had been either frozen or seized, and he did not have a possession to his name, apart from the watch on his wrist, but he had accessed an account on the USB drive he had taken and stashed the hard currency in various rented lockers at bus stations around the country. He had also buried some in locations he knew he could find again and access easily and discreetly. He wasn’t intending on living a luxurious lifestyle, although he was sure there was enough for him to do that for the rest of his life, but the money helped him towards getting back his name, his freedom. And he was closer to that now than he had ever been since leaving the island. Identification had been an issue at first but he had secured a fake driving license for two-thousand dollars in Chicago and cash spoke at cheap motels around the country, especially in the small cash-strapped towns, the towns that were still victims of America’s ongoing recession and poverty. Bus journeys gave him anonymity and the train was an easy way to travel vast distances. He had bought some junk second-hand vehicles, usually choosing family mini-vans or station wagons – nothing flashy or in any way similar to the cars he would have driven in his previous life. Staying under the radar meant he had to sever any behavioural or habitual ties he had once had. He abandoned the cars each time he arrived somewhere new. That was until this morning. This morning he had rented a vehicle from Hertz. The car hire company was even offering a deal on the new Corvette Stingray. A 6.2 litre, V8 beast. American muscle capable of taking on Italian supercars. He had taken the opportunity, given the car a good thrashing up to Snoqualmie Falls then driven back crossing Mercer Island and through most of Seattle and parking it two blocks away in a public car park. He had fed the meter and called into The Gap and spent five hundred dollars on a new outfit. Like the hire car, he had presented his own credit card, and almost smiled when it was declined. He knew it would be. He tried his debit card next and then gave the sales assistant some story about payday problems at work. When that too was declined, he used cash. He made sure he took his time when he left the store, checked the buildings, even stared up at the CCTV when he crossed over the street and headed for the coffee shop across the road from the building he had been watching for a week.
Stone looked at his watch. Eleven-fifty-five. Each day the receptionist came down the steps to the Georgian brownstone building at twelve. Each day she had taken one-hour and five minutes’ lunchbreak. The target did not take a lunch hour. He had seldom been in all week, his work taking him all over Seattle and Washington State. But Stone knew he would be in for the next hour because he h
ad made an appointment. Or rather, he had paid a waitress who he had built up a rapport with, one-hundred-dollars to make the appointment for herself.
He walked to the counter and handed over his debit card. The sales assistant pulled a face when it was declined. Stone told her it was a pay issue, that he could go across the street to the offices where he had a meeting and get some money. She pulled a face again, and he made a thing of patting himself down and smiled, acting surprised and relieved when he took a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. He walked out into the foyer and into the men’s room. He ran the sink with hot water and splashed it over his face. He used the travel shaving gel and foamed his entire beard. Shaving was uncomfortable and even though it was a new triple-bladed razor, it pulled and pinched the facial hair. He soaped up again, a trick he had learned after patrols in Afghanistan, and with another new blade he had a comfortable and effective shave. Nobody else came into the men’s room, but he went into the cubical and changed into a shirt, trousers and a retro leather jacket. He swapped his boots for brown leather brogues and stuffed his old outfit into the carrier bag. He checked himself in the mirror, smoothed his hair down and walked out through the foyer and crossed the road, dumping the bag into the bin he had noticed earlier in the week.
He figured he’d have twenty-minutes, maybe less.
The building housed six offices, all separate businesses. The one he wanted was on the second floor. He looked at the plaques and pressed the buzzer for Dwight & Engle Law Firm, on the third floor. They were a firm of lawyers and would take special deliveries all day long. A voice came back. “Yes?”
