Pulling The Dragon's Tail (52 page)

With a look of bemusement, he said, “I’m just
the bastard son of Sheridan North.”

“Ya got to be shittin’ me!”

Campbell interjected, “It was almost a storybook
ending. Nate was supposed to be his father, but—”

“Fate intervened,” concluded Thatcher.

“You a terrorist?”

“Hell, no,” laughed Thatcher. “But I’ll be in
therapy a long time. I went from thinking I had a father who wants
to rescue the world from the End-Date to discovering my real dad is
the personification of evil.”

Ryker slapped his knee. “Unbelievable,” he
remarked. “Maybe I hit my head too hard back there. Who would have
thunk when I first met y’all, what kind of mess I’d end up in?”

“I’m sorry it’s turned out this way,” voiced
Campbell.

“Hey, no apologies needed. I’m just making up
for lost time!”

“An opportunity then?” queried the doctor.

“A pretty big risk,” voiced Thatcher.

“Fate?” offered Campbell.

Ryker looked up. “What’s that little thing on
the wall next to you, Thatcher?”

A pale, thumbnail sized piece of plastic was
loosely stuck to the bottom of the window below the control
console.

“I don’t know,” said Thatcher, touching it. The
strange object fell away from the window. He picked it up.

Hilliard grew concerned. “Let me see that.” He
held it up in front of his face, concentrating on it, rubbing it
between his thumb and forefinger. “Bad news, I’m afraid. I’m pretty
sure this is a tracking device. Herschel and Beckett are around
here, somewhere. I feel them.” Beads of sweat dropped down his
forehead.

“Shit!” You’re god damn right,” Ryker exclaimed.
“Look,” he said, pointing starboard.

The mini-sub zoomed slowly overhead, confirming
Hilliard’s apparent extrasensory perception.

Thatcher whispered, “Maybe he doesn’t see
us.”

But at that moment the sub turned, and Herschel
was in full view, waving at them.

“He’s seen us, Grandpa.”

“Destroy that thing now!” ordered Hilliard.

Ryker extracted a pocket knife from his pocket
and rained blow after blow onto the surprisingly tough plastic.

“Good,” said the doctor. Now, how far are we
from the hull of my ship?”

“I’m heading there already,” answered
Thatcher.

“He’s toying with us,” said Ryker, watching the
other sub about a hundred meters in the distance.

A moment later Thatcher had narrowed their gap
from the ship from 200 meters to 100 meters.

“Come on!” urged Ryker.

Eighty meters away from the safety of the
wrecked vessel.

Fifty meters.

Thirty meters.

“There he is! At two o’clock!” yelled eagle-eyed
Ryker.

“What do I do!” screamed Thatcher.

“Keep on the course until he fires a torpedo,”
answered the doctor.

Twenty meters. A few pieces of hull wreckage
were strewn around, with some large enough to hide behind.

“Torpedo at 10 o’clock,” yelled Ryker.

“Anything to hide our glider behind?” yelled
Thatcher as he steered hard left.

“Not too hard!” yelled Hilliard. “You’re going
to lose control.”

“Damn! I’m fighting the controls. They’re not
responding!”

The torpedo changed trajectory, following
them.

Suddenly they tumbled over and over in the
water.

“Oh, God, no!” cursed Thatcher. His face was
smashed up against the window. His eyes unable to close, he saw the
torpedo edge closer.

The glider kept rolling over, out of control,
with the wings roiling the water.

On the next revolution, the torpedo bore down on
them.

Campbell screamed.

Then the torpedo brushed by them.

Thatcher let out a sigh. “Nate must have put out
a prayer to Father Abraham for us.”

A moment later it exploded against the hull of
the gigantic sunken complex.

Thatcher righted the glider as the explosion
darkened the water.

“At least we’re still here,” breathed Campbell
uneasily. She looked around her. “I don’t see him.”

“One down, one to go for that S.O.B.,” sneered
Ryker.

“Stay close to the hull,” barked Hilliard.

“I guess it’s better than facing him in open
water, “agreed Thatcher.

For the next several minutes they kept their
eyes furtively on the water around them.

As the water cleared, the outline of the hull
came into view once more. Large pieces of the exploded ship lay
about them.

“If we can just blend in or hide behind
something,” muttered Thatcher. He slowed the glider next to a
twisted, torn piece of metal. Strewn about were tables and chairs,
now occupying an unworldly home, soon to become the playground for
the creatures of the deep.

As if living a lifetime in one moment, Ryker
looked about him, keenly observing his situation. He noted that the
doctor looked weary and frazzled. Campbell still held her
grandfather’s hand while also keeping a wary eye outside. Thatcher
drummed his fingers nervously on the control panel.

Ryker calmly took in a deep breath in.
What a
world we live in
, he thought
. The sea, where life evolved
from. It’s so alien, yet so peaceful and strangely
inviting.

He felt the gun laser in its holster and quietly
grabbed the pack of weaponry. He missed Es and wished he’d known
her longer. He recalled vividly her instructions on using the
special underwater weapons.

“There he is!” cried Thatcher. “But I don’t
think he sees us!”

Ryker said, “We’re sitting ducks.”

A deep sound crackled above their craft.

“The ship’s hull is settling,” yelled Hilliard
“Thatcher, get us out and away!”

“But he’ll see us for sure!”

“Would you rather get crushed?”

Thatcher pulled the vessel ahead, mindful of the
danger of the lurking sub out there somewhere.

Ryker, the hunter, had a complete picture of
their predicament. He knew how the game of life was played. There
were good guys, bad guys, and victims. The bad guys hurt the
victims. The good guys rescued the victims and thwarted the bad
guys. And… sometimes the good guys, in saving the victims, become
victims themselves.

He opened the door to the decompressure chamber.
Agilely, he slipped through the hatch and put his wet suit on which
he had smuggled aboard.

Campbell grabbed him by the arm. “What’s going
on?”

“Providing a distraction.” He firmly but gently
pulled her hand off his arm. Staring into her eyes, he simply but
determinedly said, “I gotta stop the bad guys.”

And before she knew it, the door was shut,
resounding with a metallic clang.

“What the hell’s going on?” asked a furtive
Thatcher.

The decompressure chamber had already begun
filling with water. In less than a minute their communication would
be cut off.

All she could do was ask, “Why?” But Campbell
knew the answer already. The tall man with a big heart had made an
equally gigantic decision.

Despite the thick barrier separating them,
Ryker’s voice resounded loudly and eloquently. “I’ve got no family;
I’ve already lived a full life. My last ten days have been
fantastic!”

“You might be killed!” she said.

“You deserve more time with your grandfather.
Y’all have shown me a glimpse of the future. Take good care of it
for me if I don’t make it, okay?” He placed an air-breather onto
his face and slid out of the hatch.

Campbell’s eyes misted over, and she slowly
nodded her head.

“He sees us!” announced Thatcher, fear quaking
in his voice.

And then Ryker was gone, the craft shuddering as
he slammed shut the external door. He swam powerfully upward,
taking note of the mini-sub’s position about a hundred meters
away.

Ryker pulled the long-barreled, wide bore gun
off his back. He extracted a dozen grenade-sized mini-explosives
from the pack on his back.

Herschel opened the bay door.

Ryker inserted the mini-explosives, each labeled
by number, beginning with number twelve and descending in numerical
order. Flailing in the water with his flippers, Ryker positioned
himself about ten meters above the glider.

Herschel hit the fire button. The torpedo was
released and honed in on the helpless prey.

With expert precision, Ryker aimed the special
projectiles into the water, just as Es had showed him before she
left for the Canary Islands. Ryker began firing away, in the
direction of Herschel’s sub, all but one of the mini-explosives.
Each had a timer-delay setting which Ryker controlled from a remote
sensor attached to the gun. They made slow but wild gyrations in
the water as they headed steadily in Herschel’s direction. The
explosives were designed to be a motion—as well as heat—decoy to
confuse and fool the sensors onboard the oncoming torpedo.

Ryker pushed the remote timer. The first device,
now about thirty meters away, exploded. He detonated the second,
third, and fourth ones. The explosions set off a multi-colored
array of intense heat and light.

Still, the torpedo sailed straight for the
glider.

Damn!
thought Ryker.
That SOB’s gonna
hunt me!

Ryker remotely detonated five more explosives in
front of the oncoming torpedo.

“It’s heading for us, isn’t it?” asked the
doctor.

“Yes.” Campbell lovingly rubbed his hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, Thatcher saw Ryker
fire away, understanding instinctively what he was trying to do.
Following Ryker’s non-verbal signals, Thatcher directed the glider
closer to Ryker’s position. A moment later, after closing some of
the distance, he again obeyed Ryker’s directive and nudged even
closer toward Ryker.

The torpedo adjusted its trajectory, continuing
to tail the glider.

Ryker signaled for Thatcher to dive the craft
straight down in the opposite direction. Simultaneously, Ryker
detonated the explosives already in the water and fired his last
remaining one.

At twenty meters, Campbell said, “I love you,
Grandpa.”

At fifteen meters, Mitchell Hilliard told his
granddaughter, “I love you. You’ve always remembered your
promises.”

At ten meters, the torpedo veered slightly,
seeming to finally be attracted to the counter explosions lighting
up the sea. Ryker detonated the final explosive.

This time the torpedo decisively turned away
from the robo-glider and toward the counter-explosives.

“Way to go, Ryker!” yelled Thatcher, shaking a
clenched fist.

A moment later the torpedo brushed overhead of
the glider and reached the last of the mini-explosive devices,
which Ryker then detonated.

“He did it! He did it!” screamed Thatcher. He
steered the glider away and down from the wrecked ship’s hull.

Ryker was still positioned above the glider. The
torpedo passed below him by five meters and headed for the wreckage
of the massive ship. With a sinking feeling, he realized he was too
close to the wreckage. Throwing his gun away, he swam away from the
eerie hull of the lifeless ship.

The torpedo passed through the field of the just
exploded devices.

Oh, no!
he thought. T
he torpedo might
not make it to the ship if the mini-explosives are still
too
—”

The torpedo exploded, sending shock waves toward
the robo-glider, now about thirty meters away. The shock waves
pummeled the glider but it stayed intact.

Shrapnel from the torpedo skewered Ryker’s body.
The Breather was torn off his face. Ryker floated awkwardly
downward, little rivulets of blood spurted out into the deep blue
vastness.

Thatcher and Campbell watched, horrified, as the
scene unfolded before them. Moments later, Ryker’s body passed in
front of them, coming to rest on the ocean floor. Suddenly Thatcher
realized that another piece of ship’s wreckage had been kicked up
by the explosion and was heading for them.

Thatcher maneuvered the glider out of harm’s
way. He could no longer see Herschel’s sub. “I’m gonna get that son
of a bitch,” he vowed.

As they passed over Ryker, Campbell sobbed
quietly. Then she felt her grandfather’s grip grow limp.

Through swollen eyes Campbell said, “We’ll need
to surface soon.”

“Yeah,” acknowledged Thatcher. “God, he saved my
sorry ass! Ryker Tobias,” he swore, “I won’t let you down.”

“Have you ever seen tsunami damage?” queried
Campbell.

“Only in history books and online videos,”
Thatcher answered. “ It wasn’t pretty.”

The glider containing Thatcher, Campbell, and
Dr. Hilliard slid onto the beach, propelled forward by the gentle
lapping of the ocean waves. Perhaps the calmness was the sea’s way
of trying to amend for the damage it had inflicted.

Debris from buildings and downed trees stretched
up and down the beach. Large tracts of the sandy beach were torn
asunder like prey after an angry animal had ripped flesh from bone.
Campbell became acutely aware of an eerie stillness and noted none
of the usual shore birds; no sanderlings, no stilts, no curlews.
Absent even were the ubiquitous gulls.

With Thatcher’s help, Campbell lifted her
grandfather onto the shore. A grassy knoll forty to fifty meters
from the beach extended in both directions. A number of homes had
been built on stilts and, until the tsunami hit, had occupied the
beach side of the knoll. Wooden homes were the worse off, lying in
shambles. Brick and mortar homes fared better, but all of them had
been uprooted from their foundations. They spotted a nearby house
directly in front of them. It lie about fifty meters inland and,
like the others, was built into the hillside. The metal poles that
supported the front were bowed severely inward, causing the house
to tip precariously forward. The doors and windows were crushed
inward, its roof partially washed away. They headed for it.