‘I don’t expect you to. What I expect is for you to find me somewhere nice and quiet, where we can moor up and shift the gold without anyone else around.’
‘There’re places like that,’ said Jacquot, wondering why the man would want to use Constance when he had his very own gin palace moored just a few hundred metres away. That’s when it suddenly struck him that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the main man. That there was someone bigger, someone further up the chain than him, someone he now planned to screw just like Léo and Dhuc were planning to screw him. For a moment he wondered whether he should say anything about the four gold bars they’d had him re-bury, but he decided against it. Maybe later.
‘That’s good, that’s good,’ said Didier. And then, ‘You got any food on board?’
Forty minutes later, after providing Didier with a chicken baguette, some cheese and a bottle of beer – watching him chomp and swig his way through it from the far end of the aft deck – Jacquot spotted Dhuc and Léo returning to the cove. Bent under their rucksacks, they tottered down the path and onto the beach.
‘Your friends are back,’ said Jacquot.
‘Perfect timing,’ said Didier, and with a hefty belch he slid off the skipper’s chair and gestured Jacquot ahead of him.
‘You get it?’ he called out, as Dhuc and Léo waded out to them.
‘All here, boss,’ replied Léo, breathless, and drenched in sweat.
‘So what are you waiting for?’ said Didier, waving his gun at Jacquot. ‘Help them get it up here. Et vite.’
Once again the two loose bars that Dhuc and Léo had carried in their arms were handed up first, then the rucksacks, shrugged painfully off shoulders and heaved aboard.
When the second rucksack hit the deck, Didier leaned over the side, raised his gun and shot both men in the head.
He turned to Jacquot.
‘Gold,’ he said, with a twisted, satisfied little smile, his eyes glittering with a kind of madness. ‘Who’d have thought it …?’
120
THE TWO GUNSHOTS from Constance, ringing back from the slopes of Pénitents, had Zach reaching for his glasses and fixing them on the launch.
‘Someone’s shooting,’ he said. He was up on Corsaire’s bridge with Cassel. ‘Looks like the boss. Can’t see Léo or Dhuc, but he’s still got that skipper there.’
There was a crackle of static from the walkie-talkie on the instrument panel. ‘Cassel. You there?’
Cassel snatched it up.
It was Didier. Zach could see him in the wheelhouse, walkie-talkie in one hand, gun in the other. Zach lowered the glasses and turned to Cassel.
‘I’m here, boss,’ said the skipper. ‘We heard shooting. You okay?’
‘Just Dhuc and Léo trying to go solo and take over the party. Gone gold mad. Tried to pull their guns on me, would you believe?’
Zach looked like he’d been punched in the guts. His eyes went wide and his mouth opened in disbelief. Léo? Pulling a gun on the boss? It couldn’t be.
‘Get Zach and Milagro over here fast,’ Didier continued, moving on to more important business. ‘We need to shift the gold.’
‘T’as pigé,’ Cassel replied. ‘You got it. They’re on their way.’
Zach frowned. ‘He wants us to go back for him? In the Zephyr? Why doesn’t he come to us … use the boat he’s got? Much easier.’
Cassel put down the walkie-talkie. ‘You heard the man. He wants you there. Just do it.’
And then, over Zach’s shoulder, Cassel saw movement. A kilometre off, appearing round an outcrop of rock. Another boat. Coming in from the east, the lowering sun glancing off its curved windshield, the sculpted bow slicing through the water.
He snatched the binoculars from Zach and trained them on the approaching vessel, recognised the sheer lines of an Adagio 60 and remembered the one they’d passed just that morning in Calanque d’En Vau. And Cassel knew that there weren’t enough of the latest Adagios around to see two in one day. It had to be the same one.
The question was, who did it belong to?
And what were they going to do about the unexpected arrival?
He handed the glasses back to Zach and reached for the walkie-talkie.
‘Boss? We got company.’
121
HAMID, DÉSIRÉ’S SKIPPER, had run a wide arc from the mainland out to Pénitents but had kept the island close on his starboard side. If anyone aboard Corsaire had spotted them, they would have assumed that Désiré was just another pleasure cruiser heading east towards Cassis, Bandol or Toulon. But the moment Corsaire was out of sight, Hamid eased the wheel to starboard and turned into the sun, coming in fast and low for the island. A hundred metres out he’d levelled off and hugged the rocky shoreline until finally, up ahead, he spotted Corsaire’s radio mast and navigation lights the other side of a low, intervening headland.
‘Come in slow, like we’re looking for a good mooring, and get in close as you can,’ said Duclos, sitting in the middle of a cream leather banquette built into a corner of the bridge. The leather was warm and smooth and creaked when he moved, and not two metres away, standing at the wheel, was Hamid – the long white socks and plimsolls, the smooth brown legs and shorts creased tight to the buttocks. ‘Are the boys ready below?’ Duclos asked, savouring the view.
‘They’re all set,’ confirmed Hamid, taking Désiré wide to pass the headland and coming now into full view of Corsaire, neatly pegged at anchor and lying abeam to them, her decks deserted. He eased off the throttles and coasted into the cove, no more than two hundred metres from Corsaire, spotting on his port side, drawn up near the beach, the other boat, Constance.
He couldn’t see anyone on board the small cutter, but something else caught his eye, something in the water, between the launch and the shore. He reached for his glasses and holding the wheel with one hand, he trained the binoculars on Constance.
‘What is it?’ asked Duclos, seeing Hamid’s attention focused on the beach and not Corsaire.
‘It’s the launch, boss. And two bodies by the look of it, in the water. Maybe a third, it’s difficult to tell.’
Duclos smiled. ‘They’ve got the gold then,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Loaded it aboard, and got rid of the skipper and his lady friends. Looks like we made it just in time.’
Hamid pulled the glasses away from the beach and set them on Corsaire.
‘There’s movement in the stern. Looks like they’re going to lower a Zephyr.’
‘Let them do it. An open target just makes it easier for us.’
Closing now on Corsaire, with just a hundred metres between them, Hamid swung Désiré in a lazy, elegant turn that put them beam side on to Corsaire. Leaning forward, he punched a button on the console and from the bows came the rattle and clank-clanking of an anchor chain.
122
IT WAS DIDIER who spotted the new arrival first, over Jacquot’s shoulder, a sleek thirty-metre motor cruiser coming round the headland, its blue-black shining hull settling into the bow wave, a line of deck level cabins set beneath the swept-back tinted glass windows of an enclosed bridge.
‘Get down,’ he snapped at Jacquot, ‘and get in here quick.’
Jacquot did as he was told and, crouching low, scrambled over the stacked gold and into the wheelhouse. Didier had slid down from the skipper’s chair and was peeping over the sill of the wheelhouse side windows, gun in one hand, still trained on Jacquot, walkie-talkie in the other. At the mouth of the cove the new arrival drew to a halt about eighty metres from Corsaire’s port side, and dropped anchor, both boats bow on to the beach.
When the anchor went down with a rattle and splash, Didier cursed.
‘You know who they are?’ asked Jacquot, still stunned by what had happened to Dhuc and Léo.
‘Course I don’t,’ Didier spat angrily, ‘but right now is not a good time for someone to start messing up my arrangements. Whether they mean to or not.’
‘This time of day, with some weather coming in, t
hey’ll probably be mooring for the night,’ said Jacquot. ‘And you’ve got a couple of bodies floating out there. If they decide to come ashore …’
‘Alors,’ whispered Didier, ‘if they decide to come ashore, they’ll regret it, n’est-ce pas? And if you don’t keep your mouth shut, sailor-boy, so will you.’
But their conversation was brought to an end by the sound of a single gunshot.
Both men ducked below the window.
‘Merde,’ said Didier. ‘What the fuck …?’
123
THE FIRST BULLET smashed through a port-side window on Corsaire’s bridge and struck Milagro in the left shoulder as he reached forward to slide it open. No one on Corsaire had known who the new arrival was but Cassel, the skipper, wasn’t taking any chances. After letting Didier know that another boat was approaching, he’d sent Zach down to the salon to tool up the crew and told Milagro to break out his bolt-action M40 sniper’s rifle. Which was exactly what he was doing when the 9mm slug, flattened from its passage through the glass, hammered into him. It wasn’t a fatal shot but the force of the blow lifted him up from the banquette where he was kneeling and spun him across the bridge, his M40 tumbling after him.
Whoever the newcomers were, Cassel now realised, they weren’t friendly.
It was Beni on Désiré who’d pulled the trigger. Raking his binoculars across Corsaire’s bridge he’d spotted the Mexican taking up position, keeping low. And seen the rifle.
‘They’ve got a sniper on us,’ he’d called out and, tossing aside the glasses, he reached for his gun.
‘You certain?’ shouted Hamid, ducking down below any possible line of fire, while Duclos scrambled for cover below the overhang of the instrument panel. None of them had expected things to start so quickly.
‘Oui. Certain.’
‘Those dirty Polineaux bastards,’ spat Duclos. ‘It’s a trap. They’ve set us up.’
‘So what do we do?’ Beni looked at Hamid and Duclos.
‘Take the fucker out,’ replied Duclos. ‘Just put him down. All of them.’
And that’s what Beni had done. Leaning back in his seat, he’d held his Browning Hi-Power in both hands, supporting the gun on his bent knees, squinted down the barrel at the bottom left corner of the middle window on Corsaire’s bridge where he’d seen the gunman, and let off a single round.
There were maybe twelve seconds between that first shot from Beni and the fusillade that followed, not enough time for the two crew members working on Corsaire’s Zephyr to reach cover. They were the first to go down, taking three or four bullets apiece, blood blossoming across their whites as they crumpled to the deck. With Milagro down as well, Corsaire’s compliment of gunmen might have been reduced to Zach, Cassel and the three remaining members of crew, but they returned fire with a blazing enthusiasm – Zach and Cassel firing from the bridge, the three crew members taking up position on the lower deck.
On Désiré’s bridge, windows shattered and tinted glass splinters showered Hamid, Beni and Duclos as the gunmen on Corsaire returned fire. Aris and Jo-Jo, down in the salon, had the worst of it, along with the crew members they’d staked out on the rear deck. Pinned down by a raking sweep of machine gun fire, they were unable to get off more than a few shots, with Aris taking a ricochet hit to his leg and Jo-Jo a flesh wound to his upper arm. Two of the three remaining crew were not so fortunate. A lucky head shot and chest shot only seconds apart sent them sprawling back on the deck, their lives leaking out of them.
Up on the bridge, ducking up and down from the shattered windows like targets in a fairground shooting gallery, Beni and Hamid returned fire, Hamid hitting one of Corsaire’s crew as he stepped out from behind a companionway to take aim, Beni winging another crew member.
‘My boat,’ seethed Duclos, hunkering down beneath the instrument panel as another volley thudded into Désiré. ‘My fucking boat! I’ll fucking kill the salauds.’
On Constance Didier and Jacquot watched the exchange of fire in stunned silence, the sound of gunshots ripping around the cove and battering back from the slopes of Pénitents.
‘Who the hell are they?’ asked Didier.
‘Someone else who knew about the gold,’ replied Jacquot, praying that they didn’t become a target, and wondering how he could turn the firefight to his advantage. Before he could work out how to do it, Didier kicked out with his foot and caught Jacquot on the shoulder.
‘How much fuel you got?’
‘Half a tank, maybe more.’
‘So let’s get moving.’
‘Get moving? Where?’
Didier smiled, nodded towards the two cruisers. ‘Where do you think? Out of here.’
On Corsaire’s bridge Cassel was bleeding from the cheek, a warm flow of blood that spilled down into his collar. Either it was a near miss, or a splinter of glass had done the damage. Beside him, Zach was reaching his pistol through one of the smashed windows and firing blindly at Désiré, finishing a full clip and pulling a fresh one from his pocket.
‘Last clip,’ he shouted at Cassel, as bullets whined through the bridge just centimetres above their heads. ‘What about you?’
‘Another clip and I’m out,’ Cassel shouted back. ‘Time to leave the party,’ he said, peering through a shattered window.
‘What about the boss?’
‘You want to go get him?’
‘I sure as hell don’t want to leave him. Alive, that is.’
Cassel chanced another peek through the windshield.
‘Doesn’t look like you’ll have to. Constance is on the move.’
With Didier’s gun trained on him, Jacquot had squirmed forward using the wheelhouse for cover and crawled over the main cabin roof to bring up the anchor. As he passed the skylight over the for’ard cabin, he glanced down and saw Claudine and Delphie trying desperately to undo their bindings.
‘Stay down,’ he called to them. ‘And stay in the cabin.’
‘What’s going on up there?’ cried Delphie, eyes wide and frightened.
‘Just do as I say and stay where you are. When we start moving, get on the floor and pull the mattress over you.’
Back in the wheelhouse, he turned on the engine and, keeping low, backed Constance away from the beach.
‘Take her to the left,’ said Didier, peering over the instrument panel. ‘Between Corsaire and the rocks. There’s easily enough room.’
Jacquot did as he was told, keeping to the edge of the cove and aiming for Corsaire. It was, he realised, the only sensible route, the bulk of the cruiser providing cover as they closed on the gunfight. With just fifty metres to go, the first bullets from Désiré smacked into Constance and whined past the wheelhouse, one of its windscreen panels shattering as a lucky shot tore through the glass and bit into the aft deck.
As they closed on Corsaire, Didier backed up behind Jacquot’s legs and started firing as Désiré loomed up ahead, emptying a fourteen-round clip into the Adagio 60’s superstructure before Corsaire blocked out the target.
With just ten metres between Corsaire’s rising hull and the rocky edge of the cove, Jacquot held a steady course, eyes flicking to either side to guage his clearance as Didier loaded another clip and prepared for a fresh line of fire. But as he scooted forward to the starboard side and raised the gun, Jacquot came out of Corsaire’s lee and into open water. As they did so, a heavy swell smashed against them, the water much rougher than when they’d arrived that morning, driven now by the strong easterly that Jacquot had been warned about.
‘Merde,’ cried Didier, as a gout of water slapped up from Constance’s hull and splattered over him. But before he could scrabble back into the shelter of the wheelhouse, another cresting wave caught them square on. Constance lurched to port and Didier and the gold bars were sent slithering across her tilting aft deck, crashing into a seat locker.
‘The bastard’s making a run for it,’ shouted Cassel, as Constance raced past his stern. He could see Didier squaring up to take a shot from the aft deck
, a scatter of gold bars, and another figure at the wheel. He’d expected the launch to kill its speed and come in on the blindside, using Corsaire for cover to unload the gold. But whoever stood crouching at the wheel wasn’t doing that, heading straight past them instead, and making a getaway. And Didier, judging by the angle of the gun in his hand, aiming to take out anyone he could see who planned to get in his way. Either on Corsaire or Désiré.
Gritting his teeth, Cassel raised his own gun and took a bead on the lurching craft, making heavy weather of the incoming swell. He knew there was no chance of hitting Didier, almost out of sight in the tipping craft, but the man at the wheel was a different proposition.
Standing firm, a good wide target.
Following the swing and lurch of the boat, steadying his target in line with the barrel of his gun, Cassel’s finger was tightening on the trigger when a sledgehammer blow caught him between the shoulder blades and sent him staggering forward, toppling him over the edge of the bridge.
The last thing he registered before he hit the deck below was a shape, spray sluicing off its bow, racing in fast round the western edge of the cove.
Coming out of the sun. But not so fiercely backlit that he couldn’t make out the red, white and blue chevrons slanting across its grey hull.
Unmistakable.
It was the last thing that Corsaire’s skipper would ever see.
124
JACQUOT, WHO HAD seen the rougher water up ahead, was prepared for it, feet braced, knees bent, hands gripping the wheel as he came out of Corsaire’s lee. He knew what would happen, and when Didier lurched backwards as they hit the first swells he didn’t waste an instant. Didn’t think about it. Just turned the wheel to starboard, pushed forward the throttles and flung himself at his adversary.
Didier was younger and fitter, but Jacquot had the advantage, dropping his full weight on to the crumpled man. Bringing his right fist down in a series of hard, sharp jabs into Didier’s face, he reached for the flailing gun with his left hand, snatching at the man’s wrist and banging it down hard against the lip of the locker.
The Dying Minutes Page 38
