He was sure his grandchildren would be impressed.
John
He stood in the rapidly receding water breathing deeply and trying to calm himself. His heart was beating so fast that he feared, in his exhausted state, that he would have a heart attack. He did not intend to die that way, nor from exposure or madness; there was still one option left, and he had decided to exercise it. He would go back into the maelstrom of the underground stream and hope that it flushed him out of the rock before he drowned.
The decision had been simple, he thought, pulling his lips back in a thin, humorless smile that was close to a grimace; the problem lay in finding the courage to actually implement the decision. He had already wasted precious minutes, paralyzed with fear and doubt, as the water had continued to rush out of the chamber.
Once again, as he had done twice before, John clung to the wall and inched to his right, probing beneath the surface of the frothy, hissing water with his right foot for the edge of the rock shelf on which he was standing. He found it, flexed his knees slightly, and felt the force of the current pushing on the instep, ankle, calf.
Memory, the vivid recall of what it felt like to be trapped underwater with lungs and brain bursting in a narrow tube of rock, had brutally gutted his two previous attempts. Now he concentrated on what would happen if he did not go in.
What would happen was—nothing. He would remain trapped forever inside the black chamber. The stream was the only way out.
He knew he would probably survive the next flooding of the chamber, and that he might work up the courage to go then. But that event was many hours away; if it were not already too late to save Alexandra, he knew it would certainly be too late then, even if he did get out alive.
He thought about freezing and thirst and how he would feel about himself at the moment of death if he did not go back into the stream.
Three times and out, John thought. He would not back off again. He hyperventilated, sucked in a last deep breath, and plunged into the water.
8:47 P.M.
Claude Moiret
Moiret glanced at the luminous face of his digital watch and smiled with satisfaction. He had timed his first pass perfectly, he thought. Everything was on track. The sea was calm, and the hundred-mile crossing from Key West had been uneventful. With the extra fuel tank built into the hull and the two fifty-gallon drums of gasoline lashed on board, Moiret calculated that he had fuel to spare for extensive evasive maneuvers, if they became necessary, as well as for the return trip.
The full moon was both a benefit and a handicap. He had been able to make the entire crossing without running lights, but he felt exposed now that he was drifting near the cliff face beneath Tamara Castle; he had thirteen more minutes to wait in this escape window.
He would certainly know if Peters had succeeded, Moiret thought; Peters had told him that he would hear an explosion. Peters would escape by diving from the castle ramparts into the sea. He would pick up the assassin, and they would be on their way. Two million dollars richer.
The currents were bringing him dangerously close to the cliff, now only ten or fifteen yards away. Moiret engaged the clutch on the engine and tapped the throttle lightly with the heel of his hand. The powerful, double-muffled motor purred a bit louder, and Moiret steered the boat away from the cliff. When he had retreated fifteen or twenty yards, Moiret let the engine idle back and again allowed the boat to drift. He was not worried about being heard; he knew that the roar of water cascading from channels high up on the cliff face was more than sufficient to cover the sound of his engine.
Again he glanced at his watch. It was eight-fifty-two.
When Moiret looked up, he was astonished to see a man’s splay-limbed, naked body hurtling through the air. It landed with a loud splash at the base of the cliff, no more than twenty yards from the boat.
Moiret had heard no explosion and he had seen no movement on the castle’s ramparts. It was, he thought, almost as if the body had been spewed from one of the caves in the side of the cliff, yet he could not conceive of the man being anyone other than Rick Peters. He immediately eased the boat forward toward the ripple marks at the spot where the man had gone under.
A head broke the surface of the water. Moiret tossed a small black life preserver overboard in the direction of the dazed, struggling swimmer. The man grabbed it, and Moiret pulled him to the side of the boat. He reached down to grasp the man’s hand, then recoiled in shock when he saw that the swimmer was not Rick Peters.
The man in the water had dark, burning eyes and gray hair marked with a wide swath of silver. His features were drawn and haunted.
“What the—”
“My name’s John Finway,” the man gasped hoarsely. “Time … no time. Help me, please. Salva and my wife … inside the castle. Going to be killed. Have … to hurry.”
Moiret punched at the man’s head, missed, and almost fell over the side. The man had ducked away, but he still clung to the life preserver. Moiret recovered his balance, than yanked hard on the attached rope with one hand while he reached with the other for the pistol in the pocket of his windbreaker. He brought out the gun and pointed it at the swimmer’s head. The man released his grip on the life preserver and disappeared under the dark water.
He didn’t dare fire the gun without a silencer, Moiret thought. The sharp crack of a gunshot could pierce the torrent of sound around him, echo across the water, and be heard by security personnel inside the castle. But he knew that he had to kill this man who, somehow, knew what was about to happen.
He gripped the pistol by its barrel and walked slowly around the perimeter of the boat, peering down into the water. He spun around at the sound of splashing behind him and saw the man in the water ten yards away, between the boat and a spit of land perhaps two hundred yards away. The swimmer stared back at him for a few seconds, then rolled over and weakly struck out for the shore.
“Merde!” Moiret shouted as he leaped to the boat’s helm and got the gun’s silencer from a cabinet behind the steering wheel. He quickly screwed the silencer onto the pistol, took careful aim at the fish-white, ghostly body floundering in the water ahead of him, and squeezed off three shots. Shimmering, silver plumes of water spiked just ahead and to either side of the man’s head a moment before he jackknifed forward and dove from sight.
The Frenchman cursed again, then froze for a moment in indecision. Good sense, he knew, would dictate that he abort and head back to Key West. He should abandon Peters and save himself. But pride, mingled with greed and fear, would not let him do that: Peters was his client. And there was a great deal of money involved. Also, Peters, if he managed to get away on his own, would find and kill him.
Moiret gunned the engine into life.
He steered the boat in an arc until he knew he had to be between the swimmer and the shore, then eased back on the throttle and waited, bracing himself against the gunwale as the boat wallowed in the wake it had created. The man surfaced to Moiret’s right, gasped for air, then dove under again as Moiret fired.
This time Moiret thought he might have hit the man. He leaned out over the gunwale, gun poised, staring at the surface of the water. Almost a minute passed, and then he heard a faint splashing sound out in the direction of the open sea. Moiret looked, but could see nothing. The splashing stopped.
Moiret’s body was filmed with sweat despite a cool breeze blowing in from the sea. The Frenchman reloaded the gun, then stood in the middle of the boat and slowly turned, his eyes straining to see movement on the glittering surface of the sea. He heard a splash behind him, wheeled and squeezed off three more shots in rapid succession. But there was nothing there.
Then there was the unmistakable sound of a man struggling hard for shore. Moiret lunged for the controls and shoved open the throttle. He heeled the boat around in a tight, scudding half-circle and headed directly toward the spot where he had heard the sound. He went twenty-five yards, executed another hard turn and cut back the throttle. He braced his
knees against the starboard gunwale of the pitching boat and used both hands to hold the gun stiffly out in front of him, swinging the weapon back and forth in a broad arc.
He suddenly became aware of another sound rising above the soft, whirring purr of his engine and the constant hissing of the water cascading from the cliffs.
The swimmer’s head surfaced no more than ten feet to his left. Moiret braced to fire, but was startled by an incandescent glare that suddenly bathed him and the surrounding area with a blinding white light. Moiret wheeled and looked up, then instinctively threw his right arm across his eyes to shield them from the burning glare that seemed to be right above his head, bearing down on him.
Moiret groped blindly for the controls, found them, opened the throttle.
Harley Shue
Harley Shue sat stiffly erect in an anchored chair on the starboard side of the blimp’s spacious gondola, alternating his attention between the mercury-light glow of Tamara Castle far below and the clear color pictures on the six ABC monitors suspended from the gondola’s ceiling. Beside him, the blimp’s cameraman was idly smoking as he awaited instructions for his next shot.
Shue, watching the monitors, could see that one of the cameras inside the castle was fixed constantly on a section of empty bleacher seats. Between rounds, the show’s director would occasionally cut to that picture for transmission while Howard Cosell alternately speculated on what might be delaying Salva and commented on the fact that there were many bouts yet to be fought and that there was still an excellent chance that Manuel Salva would appear.
If Salva didn’t show up, the Director of Operations thought, neither would Saint George. He would have lost one night’s sleep in exchange for a rather pleasant ride in the Goodyear blimp.
Shue himself had pointed out that the blimp—Home Plate—would make an ideal observation and communications post from which to monitor activity on the island in the event Salva was assassinated and an invasion launched. Geoffrey Whistle had agreed, and the CIA Director had personally made arrangements with a senior member of the Goodyear Board of Directors to have Shue ride in the blimp as an “observer.”
The Director of Operations knew that as far as the flight crew and cameraman were concerned, he was merely a friend of someone in the parent corporation who had pulled some strings to get a ride in a blimp. The other men on board had been coolly polite, but for the most part had ignored him. That was exactly the way Shue wanted it; only if Operation Saint George were launched would he reveal his credentials and exercise his authority.
The captain and the co-pilot of the blimp, Jack Barnes and Terry Factor, were both retired Air Force officers, and Shue was confident they would follow his orders when they saw what was at stake. If the need arose, Harley Shue had authority to place a call to the President of the United States, by means of the special communications equipment that had been secretly loaded on board the blimp earlier in the day.
Now, he thought, there was nothing to do but wait and see what happened.
The television director’s voice, piped into the blimp through twin loudspeakers, suddenly filled the gondola. “We’re going to segue in from the next commercial on a long shot, gentlemen. Approximately two minutes. I’ll give you a count from ten. Please get ready. Let’s make it a pretty one.”
“Hey, Jack,” the co-pilot said as he looked down from his side window. “I’ve got the controls. Come over and take a look at this.”
Captain Jack Barnes removed his headset, stood up, and leaned over his co-pilot. Shue turned in his seat and looked down. Below, a boat without running lights was clearly visible in the moonlight as it carved a wide arc in the water, heeled sharply, then abruptly stopped.
“I don’t see what—”
“Just watch, Jack,” Terry Factor said abruptly. “There’s a man in the water. He’ll come up in a minute.”
Shue felt the cameraman move up behind him at the same time that he saw a man’s head break the surface of the water below. The man ducked under almost immediately as water erupted in sharp spikes around him; he could be seen swimming underwater in a direction lateral to the boat, his arms and legs straining, his body skimming just below the surface like some great pale fish.
“One minute, gentlemen. Gentlemen? Anyone home up there?”
“Do you believe this, Jack? The guy in the boat’s shooting at the guy in the water!”
“Twenty seconds. Hey! Give me some confirmation up there!”
Jack Barnes returned to his seat and flipped a switch on the blimp’s control panel. “You’ll have to run by us on this one, Molly. We’ve got something going on here.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Jack? What are you guys doing up there?”
“Be quiet and listen,” Jack Barnes said, his voice calm but hard with authority. “Just cut to something else. Let Cosell talk. In the meantime, get the Sierran authorities on the horn and tell them they’ve got a problem, an emergency, in the water on the seaward side of the castle. There’s a guy in trouble down there, and they should bring a boat around as quickly as possible.”
“Hey, Jack, I’ve got a television show to—!”
The director’s voice was abruptly cut off as Barnes peremptorily flicked two switches on the control panel. “Terry, see if you can raise the Sierran Coast Guard, or anyone who has a boat.”
“Will do,” the co-pilot said, quickly donning a headset and tapping the earphones. He made a tense, sucking sound with his teeth. “I don’t think they’re going to get there in time.”
Shue saw Barnes nod curtly. “I’m going down there and see if I can’t scare that guy off,” Barnes said in a clipped voice. “I don’t think he realizes he has company upstairs.” He turned around and spoke to Shue. “Strap yourself in there, mister, and lean away from the window. We’re taking a little side trip.”
“Perhaps this is a matter the Sierran authorities should handle,” Shue said carefully. “They may not appreciate our involving ourselves.”
The captain, if he had heard Shue, paid no attention. Almost immediately the blimp began to drop with what was to Shue surprising speed for such a large unwieldy craft.
Ignoring the captain’s suggestion, Shue stood up, then moved aside as the cameraman rudely shoved his camera into the space beside him and aimed it at the water below. For a few moments the boat and the gunman’s back were clearly visible. Then the captain executed a quarter turn to come in directly behind the gunman, and the scene slipped out of sight.
“Damn it!” the cameraman said to himself, irritably slapping the top of his equipment. “This could get me a fucking Emmy.”
The blimp turned slightly to allow for stronger air currents near the surface, and the boat came into view. The gunman still seemed oblivious to their approach as he aimed his gun out over the water. Ignoring the cameraman’s impassioned pleas to move out of the way, Shue saw a flash of white appear in the water a moment before a head surfaced very close to the boat.
“Oh, Jesus,” the co-pilot said tensely, wincing and reflexively pressing back in his seat. “That’s it. The guy must not have seen the boat. If he doesn’t get back under quick, he’s going to catch a bullet between the eyes.”
“He’s out of breath! Hit them with the searchlight, Terry! Fast!”
The co-pilot lunged forward and moved a chrome lever. Instantly the water below them was flooded with harsh, white light. The captain executed a sharp starboard turn to avoid the sheer cliff rising from the sea, and Shue could clearly see the gunman throw an arm across his face. Temporarily blinded, the man groped for the controls. He found the throttle and gunned the engine. The boat’s prow lifted out of the water and the craft shot forward along the cliff, heading away from the castle. Suddenly it made a quarter turn to port and headed directly toward the rock.
The co-pilot jerked forward in his seat. “Hey, Jack, the guy can’t see—”
The gunman in the boat finally saw the direction in which he was heading. He clawed desperate
ly at the steering wheel, but it was too late. The boat heeled sharply to starboard and shot parallel to the cliff face, millimeters away from destruction. In the blimp they could hear the faint but unmistakable screech of metal scraping against rock a few moments before the boat hit a jutting promontory. There was a rending crash, a scream of wood and steel, then an oddly muffled whooshing sound as the boat and the man in it exploded in a ball of flame. Fiery pieces of metal and wood arced through the night air, a few passing just below the blimp.
“Jesus,” Terry Factor said in a low, stunned voice. “The guy must have been carrying half a gas station with him.”
“He’s gone,” Jack Barnes said tensely. “What about the guy in the water?”
“He’s right down here,” the co-pilot replied quickly. “Nine o’clock, Jack.”
The captain turned in his seat and impatiently waved Shue to one side. “Frank,” he said sharply to the cameraman, “open the starboard bay door and throw him one of the tether ropes. You, mister, you’ll find some blankets in that green trunk back there under the medical kit. How about getting them out?”
“Right away, captain,” Shue said evenly.
Shue went to the rear of the gondola, opened the locker trunk and removed two heavy gray blankets. He came back, spread one blanket out over the floor in the center of the gondola, held on to the other.
“Hey!” the cameraman shouted as he braced his right foot against the jamb of the bay door and strained at the rope. “Somebody give me a hand here. I’ve got him, but he’s too weak to climb. We’re going to have to pull him up.”
Shue and the co-pilot grabbed hold of the rope and, with the cameraman, began laboriously pulling it in hand over hand. A few seconds later, the man—whom a startled Shue instantly recognized as John Finway—was hauled into the gondola.
Turn Loose the Dragons Page 33
