“Sorry, Alpha Team,” Deuce calmly said. “He must have been blotted out by the heat signature of the engine.”
“What now, Alpha One?” I asked. “We returned fire, and the target appears to be dead in the water. One tango down.”
“Wanna try hailing them and asking if they need help?” Jeremiah suggested. Usually a very quiet and introspective man, his comment brought a chuckle from me and Scott.
“What’s the thermal showing the people on board doing?” I asked.
“One in the pilothouse,” Deuce said. “Four on the starboard rail, and three moving aft, probably on a lower deck. Their signature is fainter.”
“Keep talking,” I said to Deuce. “They’ll do something.”
“Two of the three are now stationary on the lower deck,” he said after a moment. “The third is moving forward now. Still four on the rail and one in the pilothouse.”
“It’s the Minniches,” Waldrup said. “They just locked them in an aft cabin.”
“Which side are the two stationary ones?” I asked.
“Starboard, near the engine room, but not lost in the heat signature. The one that went aft with them has just joined the four on the rail. Still one in the pilothouse.”
“You’re sure they’re on the lower deck?”
“Affirmative,” Deuce said. “The third person appeared to climb a ladder to reach the others on the rail.”
“We barely have enough fuel to get home at cruising speed,” I said. “A few high-speed passes might get them to surrender, but that’ll cost us a lot of gas.”
“We can get more to you,” Deuce said. “Binkowski’s on his way back down here in a Feeb chopper. What’s your idea?”
“Stop being an impatient buzzard,” I replied and hit the throttles. The big racing boat roared ahead, and I made a wide sweeping turn back toward the disabled boat. Even under the old rules of engagement, we were free to engage. We’d been fired on.
The deckhands had been sitting around an upturned box on the foredeck, playing cards and smoking cigarettes. Darius figured it’d been nearly an hour since they’d hoisted anchor and left the little cove. They were still in international waters, of that he was sure. He hadn’t heard the other boat again.
“Can I ask you something?” Darius asked Ilya. He’d told them they were free to move about on the boat, if they liked. But Darius had chosen to stay in the pilothouse.
“You want to know how much money you will receive,” Ilya said, grinning.
Darius nodded. “I can’t help it. I’m a businessman now.”
“A valid question, Mister Minnich. But, considering that you will also have your life, what monetary gain do you think will be a fair gain above that?”
Darius thought about it a moment, uncertain about putting an actual figure to it. “You said half.”
“Yes, I did,” Ilya replied. “However, I could say any number and reduce that to a third, and it will still be on top of your lives. I like to think I’m a fair businessman, like yourself. If this suit is everything it is reputed to be, my clients will pay dearly to make it impervious to the Americans’ attempts to shut it down. I plan to begin negotiations at five million American dollars and will probably settle on four million. My clients are fanatics. Very rich, but fanatics nonetheless. You will get half.”
One corner of Darius’s mouth rose almost imperceptibly. Looking through the windshield, Ilya didn’t notice. But Celia noticed and it disheartened her. With two million dollars, she and Darius could live like royalty in quite a few places.
But at what cost to our souls? she thought.
Suddenly, gunfire erupted from the back of the boat. Darius recognized the roaring sound that followed and confirmed it when he looked back and saw a racing boat accelerating away to the west.
Darius stared as a man in the boat raised a small, sinister-looking gun and began firing at the fishing boat. Darius could have sworn there were several more men lying on the bow before it disappeared in the darkness.
Ilya shouted orders to the men on the foredeck and said something to Oleg, who’d been standing just inside the pilothouse door.
“Oleg will return you to your cabin,” Ilya said. “Stay there and stay down, until I find out what is going on.”
Oleg raised his weapon and motioned with it. Darius helped Celia down the short ladder to the dining area, then they retraced their steps to the cabin on the lower deck. Oleg once more locked them inside.
“What’s going on?” Celia asked. “Was that gunfire?”
“Yes,” Darius replied, listening intently. He could no longer hear the racing boat, and a screeching sound from the engine room just behind their cabin didn’t bode well for Ilya being able to make a run for Cuban waters. There was a muffled boom and the engine went dead, leaving them in total silence for a moment.
“A racing boat attacked us,” Darius said. “I heard it earlier, as we were just leaving the island. It was a long way off and slowed down.”
“Do you think they know we’re aboard?”
“I’m certain of it,” he replied. “I got a glimpse of it, just after the shots were fired. It’s one of those superfast racing boats, and I could swear it was Miguel that was shooting back.”
“Miguel?” Celia gasped. “But how?”
“I don’t know, but he’s not alone out there. I saw at least four other men on that boat. His security team, maybe.”
The sounds of men shouting directly above them cut the discussion short. Then the roar of the powerful boat’s engines penetrated the hull. It seemed to be racing at high speed in a circle around the front of the fishing boat.
Seconds later, Darius heard Ilya shouting orders, obviously very angry. Heavy footsteps sounded above as the men ran forward, then crossed the work deck to the other rail.
Rifle and handgun fire could be heard from the other side of the boat, and seconds later the roar of the racing boat went by so close and at such a high rate of speed that Darius was certain the men on deck had little chance of hitting it.
As the speedboat passed, more gunshots erupted, this time sounding like several machine guns. Darius grabbed Celia and forced her to the deck. He then lay over top of her as he heard two loud splashes.
Anguished screams came from above, and the shooting ceased. From the sound of the engines, the racing boat had moved off quite a distance and slowed down, Miguel perhaps contemplating making another pass. Wails of men in pain and shouted orders followed. Above it all, Ilya yelled fanatically.
It became quiet for a few minutes, an occasional moan from above and a tinny voice on the radio all they heard. Another minute passed, then loud footsteps came running down the hallway.
Darius rose and helped his wife to her feet. “Are you okay?” he asked, very concerned.
“Yes,” Celia replied. “Are you alright?”
Before Darius could answer, the door flew open. Oleg stepped inside, his gun pointed at Darius and Celia. He strode into the cabin and backhanded Celia, knocking her back onto the bunk.
Oleg put the barrel of the handgun to Darius’s chest, pushing him back with it, and growled, “What did you do?”
When we came out of the turn, I lined the Cigarette up with the port side of the Esperanza, pushing the throttles to the stops. The boat surged forward, both engines howling a throaty roar, as I aimed for a spot about twenty feet off the fishing boat’s port side. Knowing we would probably take fire, I began a series of zigs and zags, the bow turning away from a spot twenty feet out from the fishing boat with each zig.
Seeing the muzzle flashes from the guns on the deck and hearing the occasional crack of a near miss, we bore down on the old boat. All four in back had moved to the port gunwale, MP-5s at the ready. This was going to be the modern version of a pirate’s broadside fusillade.
I timed it perfectly, turning away from the boat just ten feet from it, and all five machine guns opened up at once, raking the port rail and pilothouse with hundreds of rounds in a matter of
seconds. The ejected casings littered the deck of the Cigarette.
The spray from our wake and rooster tail washed over the rail of the Esperanza, and as I looked back, two men were swept overboard. I didn’t know how many were hit, but they’d been clustered close together and none were still standing, so there was a good chance several were dead or injured. We’d passed very close, the team all aiming upward and away from the captives on the lower deck.
By this point we were convinced it was the Minniches. Deuce had pretty much confirmed it in our minds when we were making the wide turn. He’d said that Darlene Minnich had finally admitted to letting an Eastern European black market group know about the Minniches’ travel plans.
Half a mile astern of the Esperanza, I brought the Cigarette down to an idle and killed the engines. Nodding at Jeremiah, I said, “Hey, Deuce, I think now would actually be a good time to give Germ’s idea a try. I think that fishing boat is in distress.”
I’d said it in jest, but it wasn’t a bad idea. We were very close to Cuban waters, and the longer we sat out here, the more dangerous the situation became.
“Give it a try,” Deuce said. “Hail them and tell them to heave to and stand by to be boarded.”
So I did just that. I let ten seconds slowly tick by. Then I took the VHF mic in my hand again. “Última Esperanza, heave to and prepare to be boarded. We will not advise again.”
The radio crackled and a man said, “If you try to take us, we will kill our hostages.”
“Esperanza, we are going to board you,” I repeated and started the engines. “Have everyone aboard standing on the starboard rail with their hands behind their heads.”
Engaging the transmissions, I brought the Cigarette up to ten knots and slowly moved around to approach the disabled vessel with the moon at our backs.
“Jesse,” Deuce said. “You only have about five minutes. Satellite radar shows a MiG-29 just took off from San Antonio de los Benos Airfield, one hundred and seventy miles from your location.”
“A MiG? You gotta be shitting me.”
“Be advised, Binkowski is inbound to you now. He has fuel and two of the boxes from the Revenge. Also, two F-15 Eagles are scrambling from Homestead. They’re only slightly closer than the MiG.”
One of the boxes from the Revenge? I thought. The minigun? On a chopper against a MiG? Hopefully, the Eagles would get here first.
A hundred yards from the other boat, I slowed. Most of the lights on the Esperanza were out. Idling forward, Scott and Jeremiah moved up to the second seat and the spot in between. Both men were exceptional shots with the short-barreled MP-5.
Only four people stood on the rail. As we drew nearer, I could see that one was a woman, wearing torn slacks and a shirt tied loosely in front.
“That’s definitely Mister and Missus Minnich,” Waldrup said, looking through the monocular.
“That’s far enough!” one of the people on the rail shouted. “If you come any closer, we’ll kill them!”
Dropping the throttles to neutral, I shut off the engines, letting the Cigarette continue forward of its own momentum. I reached down, took my own Tavor from my go bag, and brought it up. None of the people on the deck seemed to be wearing any kind of night vision.
The moon was nearing the western horizon and for the kidnappers, the Cigarette was silhouetted before it. Hopefully, they wouldn’t notice the fact that we were drifting toward them.
“Is that all of your crew?” I shouted, bringing the Tavor up and aiming at the man nearest the bow. We could now clearly see that two men, one with a shaved head and the other with short, light-colored hair, held the Minniches between them. The Minniches both seemed to have their hands tied behind their backs and had handguns pointed at their heads.
The man standing next to Darius Minnich leaned a little away from him and shouted, “Our crew is all dead. These are hostages. If you try to come any closer, we will kill them.”
“I have the guy on the right,” I whispered as the Cigarette continued to slowly drift toward the Esperanza. “Scott, you take the guy on the left, when Germ counts down.”
I didn’t reply to the kidnapper, just let the momentum of the go-fast boat slowly carry us closer and closer. With the moon behind us, I counted on them not detecting that we were getting nearer as the seconds ticked by in silence.
“On one,” Jeremiah said. “Three, two.…”
The man to the left of Mister Minnich moved suddenly and shouted, “I said no closer.”
“One,” Jeremiah whispered. Time seemed to slow down then. Scott and I both fired at the same time, and Jeremiah fired just a fraction of a second later. As my Tavor kicked, I knew without looking away from my target that Minnich was dead. A spraying mist partially blocked my view of the man in my sights.
At precisely the same time, the woman stomped on the bald guy’s instep and threw her left shoulder up. The man’s gun went off at the same instant that my bullet entered his head, just above his left eye.
I swung my sights to the left, but the other man was already falling backward. Darius Minnich crumpled where he stood, and his wife tumbled forward over the rail, screaming as she fell toward the water.
“Take the helm!” I shouted as I stripped off the night vision goggles and stepped out of my boat shoes. “Search the boat,” I said to Andrew, climbing quickly over the windshield. “But be fast. We only have four minutes.”
In four quick steps, I dove from the bow at a dead sprint, stretching as far as I could for the water. Celia Minnich hit the water when I was just going over the windshield, her scream ending abruptly as she went under.
Never taking my eyes from the spot where she submerged until the last second, I hit the water. Holding the knife position, I opened my eyes, for all the good it did. I was surrounded by inky blackness, no light at all to indicate up from down or allow me to judge distance.
Knowing without seeing, I figured she’d hit the water with her lungs empty from the scream. The impact would cause her to inhale sharply and her system would go into sudden shock, paralyzed by the water in her lungs.
I began kicking and stroking with my arms, swimming downward at an angle to where I calculated the best chance was to catch her before she sank into sixteen hundred feet of blackness, never to be seen again.
My lungs began to burn and the pressure on my ears was excruciating. Somewhere in my subconscious, I knew that if I didn’t equalize the pressure soon, my eardrums would rupture, causing vertigo. Then I’d join Celia Minnich in the slow fall into the abyss.
When I felt like I couldn’t go another stroke without taking a breath, I dug deep and went further, the pressure in my ears telling me I was at least twenty feet down and in serious trouble. Exhausted and out of oxygen, my lungs and shoulders burned, every fiber of my being telling me to go up.
Just as I started to turn and kick for the surface, my foot hit something soft and yielding. I quickly scissored my body and dove, knowing that I was surely about to drown. When I reached out my hands to stroke once more, my right hand tangled in something soft and wispy. I grabbed it and pulled. It was her hair. I pulled harder as I turned and began kicking toward the surface.
Celia Minnich’s inert body came up with me, and I reached down, hooked an arm, and hauled her up into a better position. With my other hand, I clawed at the water, my legs kicking with abandon.
Deuce’s dad, Russ, had once taught me some of the finer arts of free diving. He’d said that the body’s urge to breathe was based more on its need to expel carbon dioxide than to take in oxygen. Somehow my subconscious mind took over and I calmed myself, slowly letting air bubble out of my nose as I swam upward toward a bright light.
I’d heard stories about near-death experiences and the bright light. What it was, I didn’t know. Somewhere in my mind, I knew that if I could just get to the light, everything would be okay.
It seemed like a lifetime later that my head broke the surface, my lungs long empty. The cold rush of welcome air fi
lled my lungs as I gasped and choked.
A roaring sound filled my ears as hands grabbed at me, taking Celia Minnich and pulling her up. More hands grabbed me and I was hauled out of the water, completely drained but now certain that I was going to live.
The roaring sound, as well as the bright light, seemed to be coming from above. I suddenly recognized it as a helicopter. Binkowski had arrived.
As I struggled to get to my feet, I began to hear voices again. Andrew’s calm baritone voice said, “Okay, lower him down, Jeremy. Deuce, we have both victims on board and a laptop computer. The man’s dead and beyond help. Administering CPR to the woman.”
I stumbled as I tried to get to the helm and nearly fell overboard. “You okay, Gunny?” Scott asked, steadying me.
Waldrup was on all fours, doing CPR on Celia Minnich. Blood stained the left shoulder of her blouse. Looking back at where her husband’s body had been lowered by Jeremy and Jeremiah, I knew there was no need for CPR on him. Apparently the bullet had entered just behind his right ear and exited in a fist-sized hole from his left temple.
I struggled to get over the first seat and dropped into it. “Is everyone on board?” I yelled.
“Yeah,” Andrew replied. “Deuce says to get the fuck outta here.”
The engines were already running, and I slipped them into gear and idled away from the Esperanza. “Somebody give me a spare earwig!” I shouted.
One was produced and I powered it on, adjusting it to my ear. Deuce was talking in a calm voice. “Eagles inbound, ten miles out. They’ll get there first. Get out now. Head north.”
I hit the throttles and the Cigarette jumped up onto plane. I had no night vision, but I could clearly make out the Big Dipper and turned the boat in the direction the pointer stars said to go.
In seconds we were moving away from the Esperanza at ninety knots as Deuce’s voice came over the earwig. “Sink the boat as soon as they’re clear.”
Looking back for a second, I saw the Esperanza lit up by the spotlight on the black Bell helicopter, which hovered broadside to it about a hundred feet away. Suddenly a line of fire stitched the darkness, and even over the sound of the racing engines at full throttle, I heard the ripping noise of the minigun. Just as I looked back to the front, the sky behind us lit up bright orange, and a moment later, the shock wave and then the sound of the explosion overtook us.
Fallen Tide: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 8) Page 18
