Death Mark (Mason Dixon Thrillers Book 2)

by Nick Thacker

“Fine. Well we don’t have time to check, and they’re useless out here anyway. Let’s go.”

  He waited, no doubt wanting me to lead the way to my quarters and give him access to my safe. I thought about it for a moment, looked over at Frey, and then over at —

  Joey.

  I heard a yelp, a quick groan, and then a splash. All of it was louder than the sound of the speedboat’s engine, which the driver had smartly left running, but I knew that I’d heard it, they had, too.

  “What the —”

  No.

  I ran out from behind the bar, Frey by my side. My father and the man guarding him followed, then the two other men inside the living room. We all raced over the deck, dodging the deck chairs and furniture that sprawled out over the top of it.

  We were all too late. The boat’s engine revved up, loudly, and I saw the silhouette of the driver as he sped away. Joey.

  One of the men opened fire, but Joey was smart about his escape, turning rapidly and serpentine at random intervals. It was only a matter of seconds before he was completely out of range.

  I looked at my father, his head still hanging. I looked at Jet.

  “Well,” I said. “We’re only going to need two of those M4s now.”

  40

  THEIR BOATS WERE FAST. I had a hard time getting comfortable while sitting on the edge of the bow of the speeding watercraft. It was curved upward slightly, convex, making it even more slippery and difficult. I clutched the rail with my right hand, but prayed that a rogue wave wouldn’t hit beneath me and rip me straight up and into the water.

  Frey was doing the same thing opposite me on the port side of the boat. The guns were between us, but neither of us was going to dare letting go of our railing and try to fire on the men behind us.

  The boat Joey had taken had had one man on it, the driver. The other four, including my father, were on the Wassamassaw when he’d stolen it and taken out the pilot. One of the two remaining boats that had been hovering a quarter-mile away took off after Joey’s boat, so that meant that the four-man load of the last speedboat was now holding ten men. It was cramped in the back, and it was nearly impossible to hold on in the front.

  Still, the boat was impressively fast, and within minutes we were near the south jetty, aiming for the point we’d previously identified as a good chokepoint. The boat shot through the gap between Morris Island and the south jetty and out into the open waters of Charleston Harbor. We turned right, aiming at a spot slightly northeast, where the Rummer would have to be coming from.

  “They’re coming, just in front of the storm,” Jet said from somewhere in the back of the boat. “Guns up, get ready. Shoot at anything that moves. There shouldn’t be any civilian vessels out any more, but that’s not our problem.”

  I looked over at Frey. He gave me a shrug. We’re in it now, I could hear him thinking. Also: what’s the plan, Dixon?

  I was thinking the same thing. I had no idea what we were supposed to do now. I didn’t know if Joey was long gone, or if he’d been able to outrun the heavier boat and get to the Rummer. Or if he’d gotten through whatever forces Elizondo had thrown at him.

  I looked out at the water. An overcast sky, thick cloud cover, and the city was behind us. I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black, the line between the sky and sea completely smudged into a congl’omerate painting of blackness. Our speedboat, not surprisingly, was operating without running lights. They’d planned on a night attack apparently, and I wondered if Elizondo’s men had as well. If so, we were in for a long night — neither team would be able to see the other, and we were all racing around between two three-mile-long lines of rock trying to shoot at each other.

  We needed to do something. We needed to do something fast.

  I scanned the horizon, or what I thought was the horizon, once again. A thick layer of fog had settled now, further masking anything that may lay in front of us. I stared at it for a good three minutes, none of the men in the boat with me speaking.

  Finally, about a mile out in the distance, I saw a twinkle. A yellowish light, pale against the fog and smeared outward in all directions by a phenomenon of light. It grew, and then was joined by a few other lights. All were off the horizon a bit, raised up from the surface of the water slightly. They grew and rose, grew and rose, and suddenly I knew what I was seeing.

  The Rummer. It was directly in front of us, bearing down, steadily creeping along in the night. We were right in its path, and in another five minutes it would be on top of us.

  Then I heard it. Not the Rummer, but the boats it was traveling with. A steady roar, a gentle rising in volume, a low, dull note that sounded like the combination of a saw wave synth and a bass drum roll.

  “They’ve got a fleet coming toward us!” one of the men behind me yelled.

  “How can you see who it is?”

  “They’re all coming our direction,” he replied. “And they’re not shooting at each other.”

  I knew what he was implying. They were all Elizondo’s men, his entire fleet, bearing down on us. If the Rummer was going to be on us in minutes, these guys would be on us in seconds. We had very little time to do anything, and once again I realized my predicament was multifaceted: I was on an enemy’s boat, coerced into working for them, trying to fight off a navy of armed boats, and Joey was nowhere to be found.

  Frey would have been helpful if we were on our own turf, but out here, stuck between two hard places, he was little better than useless. I was useless.

  “What’s the play, Dixon?” Frey asked.

  “I was just going to ask you the same thing,” I said.

  “I’d suggest getting those weapons ready,” Jet said from behind me. “They’re going to be firing back, hard and fast.”

  And they did fire, but they didn’t wait for us to fire first. The sky just above the horizon lit up like a pop concert and I could almost feel the energy flying our way. There must have been a thousand dots of light, all dancing on and off like Christmas lights on narcotics. The muzzle flash of the guns was followed shortly after by the sound, a terrifying wave of noise that totally consumed me.

  The shots were wide and short, hitting the water in front of us in a field that spread about a hundred feet wide and maybe twenty across. It was covering fire, the type used to tell us to get the hell away.

  But it didn’t stop. It advanced, as if ammunition was no concern for these folks. The rectangular field of bullet impacts on the water’s surface shrank, narrowing at the sides and growing smaller still on the horizontal, all while pushing closer to our boat.

  And I was going to be the first casualty.

  I did the only thing I could think of.

  “Frey, get off!” I shouted. I didn’t wait to see if he’d heard me. I rolled sideways and off the edge of the speedboat just as it took off. My head bounced against the silicon bumper behind me, but I barely felt it.

  I hit the water. Colder than I’d remembered from earlier. I wondered if the storm had anything to do with that, if it could change the water temperature that quickly.

  I opened my eyes underwater, but my head quickly broke the surface and I saw Frey there, across from me, wiping the saltwater out of his eyes.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I’m not dead, if that’s what you mean.”

  I treaded water, looking for the boat that had just taken off without us and with our guns.

  “What now, Dixon?”

  “Hey, we’re alive.”

  “And we’re sitting in the middle of the ocean with a hurricane about fifteen minutes away.”

  As if on cue, the skies opened up and a burst of lightning cracked around us. I saw the storm, even more evil and far larger than I could have imagined, coming in from the southeast. It was close. Too close.

  “Yeah, I’m not exactly sure about that.”

  The boat that we’d jumped off of was heading toward the fleet, a last-ditch suicide effort that would undoubtedly end in all eight men, including my fa
ther, dead.

  The fleet was now interspersing their fire, taking potshots in three-round bursts from whatever automatic rifles they were using. I couldn’t see if any of the shots had hit, but it was only a matter of time before they turned their single competitor into one of the hundreds of lost wrecks, forever interred beneath the waters.

  Another lightning blast, another crack of thunder, and another boat. Another boat.

  “Frey,” I said.

  He looked at me. I pointed to the north, toward the jetty.

  “Who is it?”

  It was a speedboat, just like the one we’d been on before. Just like the two we’d sunk, and just like the one Joey had stolen.

  It had a single driver, and he was heading directly toward us.

  Joey.

  The kid was a maniac, heading directly for us full speed. I wasn’t sure if he’d seen us or not, but I raised my hands up and yelled at the top of my lungs.

  Suddenly the air and water in front of me blew up in an explosion of daylight. I winced, covering my eyes, and saw that it was a light. The guy on the boat had pointed a huge flashlight at us, slowed down, and was now making an approach.

  “That you, Dixon?” I heard Joey ask. “Damn, that was lucky.”

  “Lucky that you found us, or lucky that you didn’t slice our heads off?” I shot back.

  “Yeah,” he said. He offered no other explanation. “Here, let me help you guys up.”

  We swam to the back of his boat and let him pull us up and over the edge onto the back deck. It was colder now, not just from being wet but from the tempest building in the air. I knew it was here, maybe minutes away, and I knew it would be bad. Unlike many storms that come up this way, this hurricane had been building and building and had not yet had landfall, meaning it was raging for some destruction.

  I was about to ask what had happened, how he had fared, when a crackling sound came from the tiny speakers near the wheel. A voice came through, asking for support. Gunshots punctuated the distress call, which came through the speakers just after I heard them in the distance in real life. The battle was raging, and there was no telling how long Jet’s single boat would be able to fend off the fleet of Elizondo’s men.

  “That’s the radio,” Joey explained. “They were all chattering on it when I took this boat. Then I heard a bunch of gunshots and more calls for help. It was kind of surreal, actually. I think their entire force is gone.”

  Frey and I nodded simultaneously. “We jumped ship when we figured that out. Jet’s guys are the only ones left. My dad’s with them, but they’re facing a massive onslaught from Elizondo.”

  “Yeah,” Joey said. “I heard each boat going down. They called in their position, then said something to the effect that Elizondo’s got way more firepower than they were prepared for.”

  “I knew it,” Frey said. “I knew it.”

  “And I heard something else, too,” Joey said.

  I raised an eyebrow. Joey’s face was lit up with a grin, but it looked terrifying in the flashing lightning happening all around us.

  “I heard one of them say ‘they’ve got the girl,’” he said. “It’s Shalice. She’s alive. And she’s with Elizondo’s men.”

  41

  WE FLOATED FOR A BIT, taking a brief respite from the wild insanity that was playing out just to the north of us. The speedboat my father was on was somehow still alive, judging by the sporadic back-and-forth shots I could hear between the bursts of thunder. I still couldn’t see anything at all, save for the moments of brightness from the flashes of lightning now surrounding us.

  I wanted out, to head into Charleston and then home and just make it all go away. I wanted to ignore the fact that I was worried about my old man, if only to know what his fate was going to be. And I wanted to not care at all about Joey and Shalice, and the fact that she was still in very real danger.

  And then there was Frey. If we stopped, he would continue. He’d all but told us that, but I knew it intuitively as well. He was on a mission, and there was something deeper to that mission than he’d told us. I could guess — he was part of a small team that had been given an impossible mission, and there hadn’t been enough budget to go around before they’d been given their task. There might be three others, four max, working with him in the office, but he’d likely be the only field agent. He had no partner, and he had no police force he could call for backup.

  So he’d go in, guns blazing, just like Jet and the team he represented had. A suicide mission, for sure.

  I sighed. That meant I was still in it, still fighting. I’m not one to toot my own horn, and I certainly am not one to think that I’m good at everything I do, but there are two things in this life I know I can do well: scramble in a difficult situation and make drinks.

  Making drinks wasn’t on the agenda tonight. But I had been trained in the Army and by my father growing up and later through private channels, and — most importantly — I was naturally gifted in the art of battle. One-on-one, perfectly matched in weaponry, I’d bet on myself every time. Even two-on-one and sometimes three. Hand-to-hand combat wasn’t a specialty, but I’d won my fair share of scrapes. I preferred to do things the easy way, the way they made sense to me: to run in and figure things out as I went along. That way I could adapt and roll with the punches as they came, keeping everyone involved on their toes.

  That was where people made mistakes. On their toes. I thrived in those moments, though.

  So that’s what I knew we were doing. Running in, trying to get to Shalice. Somehow, some way.

  “Any idea?” I heard Frey ask.

  Joey shook his head. I troweled off using a tiny hand towel I’d found in a seat compartment. It smelled of gasoline and oil, but I didn’t care. It was drier than my hair and clothes and it was only getting colder.

  “Storm’s coming in,” Frey said. “That could be good for us.”

  “It’d better be good for us,” I said. “We’ll use it to our advantage. Go in quiet as possible, but use the storm for cover.”

  “That means we have to wait until there is a storm.”

  That moment the heavens opened. The sky split like someone had just gutted the bottom of a universe-sized water tank, and gallons of water began spilling around us. It was an absurd amount of water, and for a moment I was worried that the boat would fill up and sink. But there wasn’t enough space in the boat to hold water, and the entire front end that Frey and I had been sitting on earlier easily provided the buoyancy it needed to stay afloat.

  Still, the water was annoying. The rain fell in cold, hard sheets, both piercing and chilly, and within seconds my hand towel was soaking wet and useless. I tossed it into a ball into a corner of the boat and looked up at the pitch black sky.

  “This ought to work,” I said.

  The noise was deafening, and I knew it would be more than enough cover for the volume of our engine, even at full throttle.

  “Yeah,” Joey said. “It’ll be more than enough. Let’s do it.”

  Frey walked between us. “I’m all for moving in on Elizondo guys, but can we get some idea of a plan?”

  I shrugged. Joey smiled. “This is definitely Mason’s area of expertise.”

  Frey looked at me, the surprise not hidden on his face.

  “He’s kidding,” I said. “Obviously. But I think this is one of those times when it’d be best to just follow my lead.”

  “And what’s that look like?” he asked.

  “Just roll with it. Whatever happens, happens. Try not to die.”

  “Wow,” Frey said. “You should write a leadership book.”

  I smiled as Joey sat down behind the wheel of the speedboat. We’d drifted to the west a bit and were now facing the shoreline of Morris Island. It was a blacker black against the already black nothingness of everything else, and the only reason I could see that it was land was the gentle haze of the city lights thrown upward far behind it.

  “It’s worked for us before,” I said. “Just t
rust your gut and don’t get shot.”

  42

  THE PLAN WAS SIMPLE: WAIT for Elizondo’s ship to pass, get behind it, and come alongside the Handysize vessel. From there we’d attempt to get onboard. We didn’t know how.

  Even I was feeling rather pessimistic about this plan. There were still gunshots, but they had receded into the distance quite a ways, or else the rain was so pounding that everything seemed to be miles away. The Rummer was in front of us now, still a quarter-mile away and inside the jetties, while we sat in the spot we’d originally decided upon, right off the northeast coast of Morris Island at the mouth of Charleston Harbor.

  The speedboats were either silently lurking near the Rummer or they were all out chasing Jet and whoever was still alive on his own boat. We didn’t care, because we didn’t know. Worrying about it would get us nowhere, so Joey and I had decided to just go for it. Frey hadn’t argued, so I took that to mean he didn’t have a better idea.

  “What are we waiting for, exactly?” I asked.

  “The Rummer needs to get fully inside the harbor,” Joey replied. “That way we’ll have the best chance of getting in unseen.”

  “They have radar, Joey,” I said. “They already see us.”

  “True, but at least this way it’s only radar that can see us. If we’re lucky. If we went in before them, so we’re sitting right in front of them, then they get a heads-up view of us, clear as day.”

  “So you’re hoping they’re not going to be able to tell who the little green dot on their radar screen is and just let us through?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “Great.”

  The lightning and hazy cast of greenish-yellow light spilling into the harbor from the city showed us the location of the Rummer. It was a half-mile away, broadside with the stern of our own boat, and moving fast. There were no speedboats near it.

  “I’m also hoping he’s true to his word,” Joey said. “His guy told you that we were supposed to protect him, remember? So if they see a single boat heading in, they’ll hopefully assume that it’s you. No one would risk opening fire on a ship while they’re in a speedboat, you know?”