With all her effort she swung her legs off the bed and tried to stand. Her knees buckled. She went down hard, her shoulder striking a dresser. The pain gave her a few seconds of clarity.
She realized the room was filling with smoke, also that Biddle was about the grab the knife. She kicked him in the back, rolling him away and onto his stomach. Then she turned on her side and slid backward, groping blindly. The plastic cuffs had cut her circulation, and her fingers felt almost lifeless. She grasped the knife and tried to slide the blade inside the loop that bound her left wrist, only to lose her grip. Biddle was kicking at her, but she ignored him and kept struggling. The other woman was clearly injured, but she, too, was moving closer, her hands outstretched. On her fourth try Maggie managed to work the blade into the loop and began to saw.
The smoke was growing thicker. Her lungs burned. Biddle’s foot lashed out and caught her painfully in the thigh, but she didn’t stop. Finally, the left loop began to loosen. She sawed harder, and at last her hand came free.
The woman was trying to grab her legs as Maggie struggled to her feet, fighting dizziness and confusion, in some part of her brain knowing she had a concussion. She wondered if the boat was sinking. She had to escape, but first she needed air. Portholes were set into the hull on both sides of the stateroom, above the built-in dressers. She clambered onto one of the dressers and began frantically unscrewing the brass wing nuts around a porthole.
“Cut me loose!” Biddle rasped. “Please!”
Maggie ignored him and kept working. She was on the verge of blacking out when she managed to swing the porthole open. She shoved her face into the opening and pulled clean air into her lungs. Her head had barely starting to clear when the stateroom door opened and closed again.
She looked around to see the man who had beaten her. He was leaning against the door clutching his abdomen. A machine gun dangled from one hand. As she watched, he fell to one knee, and then struggled to his feet. A dark stain was spreading across his torso.
He squinted at the woman on the floor as if he couldn’t understand why she was down there, and then he staggered past her and sat heavily on the edge of the bed. His eyes moved to Biddle. “Get up!” he groaned.
Suddenly, Biddle seemed to come alive. “You betrayed me!” he shouted then began to cough.
“This was never for your God,” the other man wheezed. “It was always for mine.”
“Well, where is your God now?” Biddle demanded.
“Here,” the man said as he shoved his machine gun into Biddle’s face. “Get up!”
Biddle’s brief resistance seemed to flag as the terrorist grabbed hold of him and dragged him slowly to his knees. The terrorist sat back on the bed and took a deep breath, seeming momentarily overcome with pain, but then he swung his eyes up to Maggie.
SEVENTY-TWO
EAST RIVER, JULY 2
BRENT STOOD AT THE TOP of the stairs and strained his eyes into the twisting yellow smoke. It gouted upward, scalding his lungs. The fiberglass was burning unchecked now, the fire already eating through the bulkhead separating the engine room from the staterooms.
The rest of the yacht was empty, which meant Maggie was down below in the smoke, along with at least one terrorist. Brent was sure he’d wounded the guy, but maybe not so badly that they guy wasn’t down there waiting in ambush. It didn’t matter. At some level far below reason he knew Maggie was alive, which meant he was going after her.
Over the roar of the flames and the sucking air he heard the yacht groan, the sound coming from somewhere deep in her bowels, as if the fire was literally tearing her apart. He shuddered, knowing that once the diesel started to burn, no one below decks would have a chance.
It brought his lifelong nightmare charging back. He saw burning walls. He saw his father and Harry, both trapped by impenetrable flames, both knowing they were about to die horrible, excruciating deaths.
The next thing he heard was the sound of laughter and then Harry’s voice. No one lives forever, little bro. In spite of his terror at dying the same death, Harry’s words made him smile. His whole damn family had been insane, he thought, beautifully and irretrievably nuts.
With that, he took the deepest breath possible, getting too much smoke and too little good air, and he stumbled down the stairs, immediately blind, unable to even see his hand on the railing. The railing became too hot to grip even before he found the bottom step. His lungs were wild with the need for a fresh breath, and his eyes were on fire. The smoke was thick as wood, completely disorienting, but he moved instinctively away from the heat.
He moved by touch along a short passage, finding several open doors but then a closed door at the end. Voices came from the other side. He could hold his breath no longer, and he expelled the acrid air. His reflexive gulp of smoke made him double over with coughing.
Knowing that he had no other choice, he threw open the door and stumbled inside, slamming the door behind him, his choked lungs heaving. His eyes were partly blind with tears, but he made out a blonde woman on the floor. He recognized Biddle’s thin shoulders and blond hair where he knelt in one corner, And the man he’d shot sitting on the beds pointing a gun at a fourth person, a woman, who was kneeling beside an open porthole Maggie! He saw it but could do nothing, as coughing drove him straight to his knees.
The coughing also saved his life because the man on the bed swung his gun, firing an awkward one-handed burst that would have cut him in half. Brent fired instinctively, just as he was wracked with more coughing and gagging.
As his lungs slowly recovered, he tensed, expecting bullets to tear into him, but they never came. Finally, he raised his head and saw the terrorist sprawled across the bed, unmoving. He used his last dregs of consciousness to crawl toward the porthole. At that point, he recognized the woman on the floor, but his mind was too numb to register shock. She made a feeble grab for his gun, but he shoved her away. The air near the wall was slightly better, but when he tried to take a deeper breath he doubled up again with coughing.
“Come on!” Maggie’s voice came to him.
It took everything he had to grab the edge of the dresser and drag himself up, but after a second he felt Maggie’s hands on his head as she forced him to the porthole.
For several moments they clung there, gripping the edge, greedily sucking the clear air. Along with oxygen came the fresh realization that they were out of time. Any second the diesel would start to burn, and there would be no escape. He turned an, saw the blood in Maggie’s hair and on her face. The way she clung to the porthole told him she had nothing left.
“Wait here,” he mumbled. He was close to passing out, but he took one more clean breath and climbed off the dresser. He pulled the dead terrorist onto the floor then jerked the spread from the bed, dragged it into the head, and put it under the shower. He prayed the pressure tank still worked as he turned the spigots and got an answering sputter of water. With the spread soaked and heavy, he staggered back into the stateroom.
With a last lungful of good air, he lifted Maggie over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry an, started to pull the blanket over them.
“Take me with you!” Biddle said in a choked whisper. “Please!” He was still on his knees in the corner.
Even if he wanted to help, Brent knew there was no time. Maggie’s weight was nearly unbearable, and already his knees threatened to buckle. He stumbled to the door, his only thought getting her away from the fire.