Doc Ford 19 - Chasing Midnight (33 page)

I lifted my head from the lens, blinked the dizziness away, then tried again.

Breath control and focus—components of a clean kill. As the Whaler moved over the bottom, my lungs tried to find the rhythm of our boat’s slow-motion greyhounding. I kept the rifle still and allowed each passing wave to drop the scope onto a bow section of
the Dragos. The crosshairs would pause momentarily at the yacht’s waterline, then rocket skyward again. But the timing was unpredictable. The yacht filled the circumference of my eye, riding and wallowing bow-high while our own boat slapped water, the wind swirling a mix of salt spray and exhaust fumes from behind.

“A little more throttle,” I told Tomlinson. “A little more… there—
good
.”

A scope with a gyro stabilizer is what a shooter would have been issued for an offshore mission like this. But even if I was properly equipped, my confidence would have only been proportional to my skills. I’m an adequate marksman with a long gun but not in the same league with those elite snipers who tune their weapons like instruments, then tap their targets from a mile away.

One thing I can do, though, is pull the trigger when I choose.

When the front of the Whaler lifted toward the stars, I began to exhale evenly, anticipating the inevitable descent. My index finger had found the steel scimitar that linked brain and firing pin, so when the Whaler paused at star level I was already applying a fixed pressure. First, the yacht’s flybridge soared into view… then an electronic forest of antennas… then, in blurry slow motion, the forward windows of the steering room… the cabin… the starboard rails…

That’s when I fired—
BOOM
—squeezing the trigger just before the crosshairs touched the yacht’s hull. Like a quarterback throwing to a receiver, I’d tried to anticipate where two objects in motion would precisely intersect.

How precisely, though, I didn’t have a damn clue.

Immediately, I lowered the TAM-14 over my left eye while, beside me, Tomlinson rubbed at his ears. “Shit-oh-dear, that was loud!”

Not really. At sea, a gunshot rings like a hammer hitting stone but is instantly dispersed, so it doesn’t echo in the ears or the conscience.
Drowned by the yacht’s engines and air-conditioning, it was unlikely the twins had even noticed my muted report.

“You didn’t kill anybody, did you?” Tomlinson’s head was pivoting from me to the yacht, which was still coming toward us, plowing an eight-foot wake. “You’d tell me if you killed somebody, right?”

I said, “Hang on, I’m trying to see what’s happening.” Scanning the Dragos, I ejected the brass casing, shucked in a fresh round but didn’t lock the bolt because I couldn’t look to confirm the safety was engaged.

“Those little pricks, I’ll follow them to hell if they’ve made me a party to murder. Doc, you
would
tell me.”

Without turning, I pressed the rifle into his hands. “Hang on to this. You’ve overestimated my shooting skills, pal, so stop worrying.” Then I said, “Hey—you see that?”

Yes, Tomlinson saw it. “Someone turned on the cabin lights!”

A lot more than that was happening. The three people on the yacht’s afterdeck were moving erratically, one of them making wild arm gestures before turning and racing up the ladder toward the steering room. When I saw that, I felt a sickening tightness in my gut. It had to be one of the twins.

I banged the console with my fist. “Son of a bitch. I screwed up again.”

“What’s wrong, man? The lights prove you hit their boat, right? Good shooting!”

“Umeko’s still in the cabin. No! Christ, there’s only one person in the cabin, not two. I was wrong!”

“She has to be aboard somewhere, we’ll go after her. We still have time. Maybe run them aground, like you—”

I put my hand on Tomlinson’s arm to quiet him, and said, “Switch spots, I’m taking the wheel.”

I was watching a person on the afterdeck—Kahn, probably—climb over the transom, then drop down onto the swim platform. Trapper hesitated for several seconds but then followed.

I told Tomlinson, “Grab something! Stay low,” then pushed the throttle forward.

By the time both men had cannonballed into the darkness, we were banging across the shallows on a collision course as the yacht made its final turn toward the bridge… or the dolphin pool at the casino.

A
s we closed within fifty yards of the Dragos, the Neinabors still hadn’t discovered that Kahn and Trapper were gone nor had they seen us—but they would. It was inevitable. It had been under two minutes since a bullet had slammed into their hull and they would soon recover from their surprise.

As of yet, though, nothing had changed. The yacht hadn’t slowed its wallowing pace and it was still on autopilot, although we could look into the lighted cabin and see the brothers standing near the wheel. They were more concerned with the helicopter than some phantom boat. I could tell by the way they paused every few seconds to use binoculars. I also got the impression they were arguing while they studied the boat’s electronics, trying to figure out what had made that sledgehammer sound.

It was just a guess. I was too busy steering the Whaler to give them my full attention. And I was also keeping an eye on the progress of Markus Kahn and his partner. It was so dark, the two men were invisible specks, even when I swooped in close enough to yell, “We’ll be
back!” but their heat signatures confirmed they heard me. They were already standing in knee-deep water, waving their arms and shouting words that faded as we left them behind.

“They’re okay!” I told Tomlinson. He was on the bench seat beside me, the rifle in one hand, the other white-knuckled as he clung to the console to keep from bouncing out of his seat. It was because of the yacht’s rolling eight-foot wake. The closer we got, the larger the waves.

My friend nodded, but his eyes were locked on the cabin. “I still don’t see her. Are you sure she was up there?”

He meant Umeko and he was right: the girl was no longer visible inside the steering room. Maybe the twins had sent her below or told her to lie down—or possibly had done something worse.

I didn’t reply. The seconds were ticking away; I felt a palpable pounding inside my head yet I was now wondering about the three a.m. deadline. I had warned Kahn about the twins using a wireless detonator, but the significance of my own words hadn’t hit me until now. Maybe because I wanted to believe it, my brain was piecing together evidence that the deadline no longer mattered.

No… it was more than just wistful thinking. My suspicions had substance. From the moment I’d realized the twins were carrying a second explosive device, I had believed a mechanical engineer would build a dual triggering system. The importance of redundancy systems is a tenet of the profession. If something happened to the Neinabors, a clock would close the circuit and detonate the explosives at three a.m. If not, they could martyr themselves whenever they wanted.

But did that guarantee the clock could be disengaged?

As I watched one of the twins reaching for the cabin door, I had to admit the truth. Nope. There was no guarantee that I was even right about a dual detonator. Yet if I was wrong, the way the twins
were behaving made no sense. With only minutes to live, they wouldn’t bother to check on the helicopter—which the second twin was now doing—nor would they care about what had slammed into the boat they’d stolen. A pair of psychotics who wanted to vaporize themselves would be outside on the flybridge, closer to heaven, praying to God for a painless passage.

It turned out, Tomlinson was thinking the same thing. Sort of.

We were approaching the yacht from the aft starboard quarter, close enough now I had to finesse the Whaler through troughs of waves. Make one small mistake, the wake would pitchpole our boat end over end or dump us sideways. Without taking my eyes off the cabin, I leaned and asked, “How much time?” but kept my voice low.

The man checked his Bathys dive watch, then cupped his mouth to talk. “It’s not looking good, Doc.”

Apparently, he didn’t want to scare me by saying.

I insisted by motioning with my hand.

He stood so he didn’t have to yell. “About twenty minutes. But I’ve been watching those two. From the way they’re acting, they’re more worried about getting caught than dying. I’m starting to think there is no goddamn bomb.”

I was putting the TAM and the pistol inside the console as I told him, “Maybe, but we can’t risk it. At five till three, we’re pulling the plug. No matter what, understand? Keep an eye on the time.” Then I banged the locker door closed, saying,
“Grab something,”
and throttled the Whaler up the back of a wave… surfed momentarily… turned away from the yacht and finally broke through into a starry plateau ahead of the wake. When we were clear, I banked the Whaler to port, running side by side for several seconds, then angled southwest. Now we were on a collision course with the Dragos, heading for cleaner water that glanced off the yacht’s hull amidships.

“Damn, man, if they look out the window now, they’ll see us!”
Tomlinson was crouched low for balance, looking up at the vessel’s glowing superstructure, seeing stainless steel and a wall of maritime glass. Inside the steering room, one of the twins was clearly visible, twelve feet above us, and only twenty yards away.

Then he said, “Doc?
Marion
—Jesus Christ, you’re going to ram her!” because we were still greyhounding toward the vessel and would soon T-bone just above the waterline unless I changed course.

The noise of the diesels, of displaced water and of our own engine was so loud, I barely heard him. And I was concentrating too hard to respond or even glance up at the cabin. I’d known that we risked being seen during the brief time our two boats ran side by side. That’s why I wanted to shrink the distance so the yacht’s own girth would cloak us. It required us to motor so close to the Dragos that I waited until I sensed the flair of the upper deck looming overhead before I turned sharply to starboard.

For a couple of seconds, I continued at high speed, the two vessels running parallel, but then backed the throttle as we neared the yacht’s bow. The abrupt deceleration caused the Whaler to rear like a wild horse, but then our hull teetered forward as I experimented with the throttle, trying to match the yacht’s speed. I didn’t want to pass the boat. I had something else in mind.

Beside me, Tomlinson said something that sounded like
“Wowie-fuckin’-zowieee”
to signal his relief but kept his voice low because we were keeping pace with the yacht, near enough to reach up and grab a railing if one of us was willing to climb onto the Whaler’s console and give it a try.

I was willing. In fact, that had been my original hope—to board surreptitiously and take the vessel by surprise and force. It had seemed so unlikely, though, that we could get this close without being seen, I’d abandoned the idea in favor of trying to drive the Dragos aground. But now, here we were.

I gave myself a few seconds to think about it as I battled to hold our boat parallel, which was a job in itself. We were in flat water, ahead of the wake, but the yacht displaced tons of water that boiled from beneath the hull. It created a pressurized ridge that, alternately, tried to fling us away or suck us astern into a whirlpool created by two massive propellers.

Dealing with the twins, however, was a more perilous vortex. Something I hadn’t considered earlier was the dangers associated with a wireless detonator. Surprise the twins and they might turn the yacht into an inferno with the touch of a button. That alone was enough to convince me it was safer to attempt to force the yacht aground—not easy but possible.

The Dragos was thirty times heavier than the Whaler, but she was riding bow-high, which meant she was also bow-light. In combat driving courses—I’ve taken several—operators learn to use their car like a weapon. To pierce a roadblock, you steer for the enemy’s rear wheels and transfer the brunt of the impact to their vehicle by continuing to accelerate until you’ve punched through. The skill is counterintuitive, but I knew from experience that slowing after impact is suicide. That didn’t mean you collided with a vehicle—or a boat—at top speed. That, too, was suicidal. It meant you approached at a low speed,
then
accelerated.

Hit the behemoth at the bow at the correct angle, then force myself to use the throttle—do it right and it was possible to turn the vessel enough so that it grounded itself in waist-deep water. Maybe less water, depending on how hard the diesel engines continued tractoring forward. The job would be easier, of course, if the damn steering computer didn’t automatically fight me by trying to compensate—which it would—but I was going to by God give it a shot, anyway.

Yes, it was definitely doable. I might have to ram the boat two or three times to knock it off course, but so what? Once the Dragos
was grounded, the twins would either detonate their bomb or they would try to escape through the shallows. They were cowards, not fighters, and the rest was up to them. After that, I had zero control, which I understood, but I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing while Umeko Tao-Lien died.