Hope to Die (31 page)

We were passing mile marker forty-six when I cut the engine and brought the Whaler in at a forty-five-degree angle to the starboard rear corner of the barge, hoping I’d present such a poor target from the windows of the tower that Sunday would hesitate to shoot and reveal his position.

In any case, I hauled back on the throttle and threw the engine in reverse for less than a second and then cut it again. The Whaler’s bow came up within feet of the rubberized bumpers on the barge’s stern. Pocketing the ignition key, I ran forward, grabbed a rope tied to the bow, stepped up onto the padded sitting area, and jumped.

I landed on a narrow aft deck thirty feet below the wheelhouse and tied the Whaler to a cleat. Years of police training suggested that I clear the working and living areas of the barge before I went searching for my family.

Moving with my gun drawn, I saw no one on the way to a narrow metal stairway that climbed the tower. Behind it was a door with a sign that read
Engine Room
.

Taking a long breath, I put the Maglite between my teeth and yanked open the hatch. The heat came out like a blast furnace, and the throbbing of the engines boomed up out of the hold below an interior staircase.

The engine room was reasonably well lit, and I stepped inside onto a steel grate landing. I scanned the place, alert for movement, and spotted a crumpled figure lying between the two huge diesel engines that powered the river barge.

Male. Late thirties. In a greasy wife-beater and equally greasy shorts. That was definitely a close-range gunshot to the side of his head. When I was certain there was no one else in the engine room, I eased back out into the sunshine and shut the door quietly before stalking up the side of the tower to an unmarked hatch door.

I smelled bacon when I opened it. Looking down a short passage, I could see a stove and part of a countertop. Country music was playing from the galley: Miranda Lambert singing about hiding her crazy and acting like a lady.

Beyond the galley was another passage, and I figured it led to the berths. How many people were in a barge crew? I wondered. Two? Three?

When I stepped into the galley, I looked to my right, saw a booth, and understood the
Pandora
carried a crew of at least two. Sprawled sideways onto the table in a puddle of spilled coffee was a man in his late twenties, sandy-haired and bare-chested. He had a tattoo of a bleeding heart over his own heart and a bullet hole just above the bridge of his nose.

Creeping up the exterior staircase toward the wheelhouse a minute later, I could hear radio chatter and a woman’s insistent voice. I slid up beside the slightly open door and took a quick peek inside.

A thick-necked bull of a man in a Chicago Bears T-shirt sat in a high-backed padded chair mounted on a pedestal bolted into the forward deck of the wheelhouse. A horseshoe-shaped console surrounded the chair, with controls, computers, and screens around the pilot. One screen clearly showed the barge’s position on the river.

Below that screen, there was a steaming mug of coffee on a narrow workspace. The rest of the wheelhouse looked empty, so with my pistol leading, I opened the door and stepped softly inside.

“
Pandora?
Scotty Creel? You answer me now, you hear?” the woman’s voice squawked over a shortwave radio mounted on a shelf above him.

“Shirley, do you ever shut the fuck up?” the pilot grumbled as he reached up and turned off the volume.

“Sir?” I said.

He startled, swiveled in the chair; his eyes went wide, and his head retreated sharply. I suppose turning to see a six-foot-two-inch strange man in filthy clothes and bright red high-tops holding a pistol might make a man do that, as well as raise his hands, which he did.

“What the fuck is this?” he said, looking terrified. “Who the fuck are you? Some kind of pirate?”

I TOOK IN THE
rest of the room at a glance, seeing closed compartments and charts, a coffeemaker, and little else. “My name is Alex Cross. I’m a Washington, DC, homicide detective. You?”

“Creel,” he choked, staring incredulously at me. “Scotty Creel. I’m the captain.”

“Are you aware that your crew is dead?” I asked.

He stared at my gun now, looking shocked and almost frantic with fear. “Why’d you kill them?”

“No, I found them dead just now,” I said. “One in the engine room. One in the galley.”

“Hawkes?” Creel said in dismay. “Timbo?”

“Where’s Sunday?”

He recognized that name right away, and he looked stunned. “No—you think that guy—”

I cut him off. “Where is he?”

The captain’s hands were still raised as he gestured behind him, through the window. “Out there, checking up on his research project. What in God’s name is he—”

“Show me,” I ordered, and crossed the room.

Creel turned the chair halfway and stood uncertainly before pointing out the window and saying in a wavering voice: “See the one there with the solar panels? The single one forward on the main deck? It’s supposed to be some kind of refrigeration experiment.”

“Can you put the barge on autopilot?” I asked.

“On this stretch?” the captain said, incredulous. “No way. The river’s heavily silted, and sandbars are always changing. It’s a sight job the next twenty miles to Port Sulphur.”

“You have a gun aboard?”

“A real gun?” he said. “No. A flare gun? Yes. You want it?”

Shaking my head, I said, “What I want you to do is get on that shortwave of yours and call in the nearest law enforcement agency. Tell them to send a medevac unit.”

“Medevac?” Creel said, confused.

“There are people being held hostage in that refrigeration unit,” I said. “My family.”

“What?” he said, his expression twisting to disbelief as he looked from me to the window and then back. “No, I never heard … all this time he …”

Looking frightened again, he said in an almost tearful voice, “Look, Detective, I had absolutely no idea that anyone was holding anyone hostage on my boat. I swear to God, Sunday said it was a test trial, see if his solar—”

“Make the call and we’ll talk later,” I said, turning away from him.

“I’ll call the Coast Guard,” he said, sounding calmer. “They have a search-and-rescue unit out of New Orleans.”

“Perfect,” I said as I went out the door. “Tell them to bring an armed escort and to notify the FBI that this entire vessel is a crime scene.”

I could hear Creel calling behind me as I pounded down the staircase. “U.S. Coast Guard, this is the river barge
Pandora
, I have a medical and law enforcement emergency south of mile forty-six. Repeat, I have a—”

The door slammed shut, and I was left with deadly purpose that carried me down the staircase to the deck. I circled to the starboard side, jogged forward in a crouch tight to the stacks of containers. When I reached the corner nearest the bow, I took a quick look around, saw that the container car with the solar panels and the forward reefer unit was not fifteen yards away.

There was a hatchlike door below the reefer. It hung loose on its hinges.

Seeing a light glowing through the opening, I was almost paralyzed with dread. Sunday was in there with my family. And he was waiting for me to arrive.

I knew how potentially suicidal my next move was, but I made it anyway, advancing fast and quiet across the deck and up beside the loose hatch. I reached over and tried to open the door as silently as I could.

“Just come on in, Dr. Cross,” Sunday called from inside. “We’ve been waiting for you for the longest time.”

“Dad?” Jannie cried softly.

“Alex?” Nana Mama choked. “No. Go away. He’s going to—”

I heard a slapping sound, and my grandmother groaned. Embracing death, I threw the hatch door open. Pistol up, finger on the trigger, I stepped into a clear line of fire and then ducked inside, hearing my grandmother sobbing quietly.

The smell was nasty: sweat, shit, and stale ammonia. It shocked me, made me suffer my family’s mistreatment even before my eyes adjusted. Six bunks bolted into the walls.

All but one held a member of my family. There was hospital apparatus around every one of them. On the near right wall, Jannie was twisting against her restraints to look back at me.

“Daddy?”

“Right here, little girl,” I said, my voice quivering.

Just seeing her alive and hearing her voice after all that I’d been through, I almost lost control and wanted to go straight to hold and comfort her.

But I couldn’t go to her, or to Ali, who seemed to be out cold below her, or to my grandmother, who was breathing shakily on the bunk under Damon’s, or to Bree, who was opposite him on top of the second set of bunks on the right.

Sunday had taken cover between the two right-hand sets of bunks and was aiming a nickel-plated Colt .357 Magnum at Jannie and a smaller Ruger nine-millimeter at my grandmother. His face was only partially showing behind a pair of medical monitors, but he appeared very different from his author’s photo and from his fake driver’s license as the red-bearded Thierry Mulch.

Sunday’s face was shaven, and his salt-and-pepper hair close cropped. Gaunt, maybe late thirties, but what struck me most were his gray soulless eyes that danced with excitement.

“Put the gun down, Cross,” Sunday ordered. “Or I shoot the both of them.”

Sunday was twenty-five, maybe thirty feet from me, and my instincts screamed,
Head-shoot him! Head-shoot the bastard like he did the crew!

“Daddy!” Jannie said again.

“Quick, Cross,” Sunday said. “Or that will be the last word of hers you ever hear.”

If I hit him in the perfect spot, which was anywhere above his eyes and below his hairline, he would go lights-out, lose all muscle control, and collapse, the guns with him. But if I was just the slightest bit off, he’d tense before he dropped, the guns would fire, and Jannie and Nana would die.

“It’s over,” I said, pressuring the trigger and trying to keep the sights on the center of his forehead. “The Coast Guard’s on the way.”

“Are they, now?” Sunday said, amused.

I heard feet scrape behind me, and Captain Creel said, “Not a chance, Marcus. And Detective? I’ve got a twelve-gauge pointed at your spine. You might want to drop that.”

SUNDAY GLOATED. “I’VE NEVER
had problems getting followers, especially those people needing money and a whole new life. The way the captain tells it, his wife, Shirley, is a nominee for bitch of the century, and he just can’t take it anymore. So, one last time, drop your weapon, Cross.”

“Don’t, Alex,” Nana Mama said.

I lowered the gun.

“On the floor, and kick it to me,” Sunday ordered. “Then on your knees, hands behind your head.”

I did as I was told. What else could I do?

Creel came up behind me and used duct tape to bind my wrists and strap them tight to the back of my head. As he did, I said, “Captain, has Sunday told you what he did to his last accomplice?”

“Shut up,” Sunday said.

“He fed her to alligators,” I said.

“Sounds like a hell of an idea,” Creel said. “I’d love to do the same to Shirley, but a new life in Colombia will have to do.”

“How much time now, Captain?” Sunday asked, tossing him my pistol.

Creel caught it, said, “Seventy minutes.”

“Back to your controls, then. I’ll take it from here.”

“You want the hatch closed?”

“Please,” Sunday said, and when the door shut behind me, he took a long deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Game over, Dr. Alex. I win.”

“The game’s not over, Mulch, and you will lose no matter what you do to me or my family,” I said. “The FBI is hunting for you now. So is every cop in the country. As we speak, your face is all over the news and the Internet. Not even the perfect criminal could get away. No matter what you do to us, you
will
be caught, and you
will
be judged and punished in the harshest manner. High-profile guy like you? Harvard PhD intellectual gone mad? Prosecutors absolutely love to see guys like you face justice and fry.”

In a voice rich with mirth and disdain, Sunday said, “Let them hunt me, Cross. Let them bring dogs and agents. I don’t care. I’ll relish showing them how quickly and permanently I can disappear. It’s all been arranged. A long time ago. I’m a planner.”

“And I used to be FBI. And I’m a cop. They won’t quit looking. Ever.”

“Tell it to Whitey Bulger,” he shot back. Then he licked his lips and smiled. “You fulfilled one of my fantasies, Cross. Did you know that?”

“What fantasy?” I asked, content to keep him talking.

“Shooting Atticus Jones in cold blood,” he said, his eyes dancing again. “How did it feel?”

“It felt like nothing because it never happened,” I said. “He’s dying but by no means dead.”

“Bullshit. I saw you take the shot.”

“You saw what a Hollywood A-list CGI specialist can do,” I said. “Friend of Jones’s daughter, Gloria, an NBC news producer.”

This seemed to upset Sunday a great deal, because he stood there fuming for almost a minute before he looked up with a cruel smile on his face.

“There’s still time,” Sunday said.

“For what?”

“Lessons,” he said. “In the meaninglessness of life.”

“Life is full of meaning.”

“I’m going to rid you of that ridiculous idea forever,” Sunday said, his cruel smile curling toward pleasure. “One by one, Cross, I am now going to kill your family in front of you. By the time I’m done, we’ll be out in the Gulf. I’ll make my escape to Mexico with the good Captain Creel in the Zodiac and leave you locked in here with the corpses, adrift. And I guarantee, in your last hours, you
will
come to see the world my way.”