Ellis said, “The lighthouse. Right. See, now that’s the Charlene I’ll remember.”
“I haven’t been able to raise LuAnna. Phone or radio.”
Ellis asked, “How often does that happen? That you don’t get her, or she doesn’t get right back to you?”
“Never. Today we argued some. We’re engaged, and she’s pregnant.”
“You lovebirds move quick. I’d surely puke if I weren’t so worried.”
Ben was galvanized. “Now that we’ve got a line on her, we’re going to need a few things.” He started back for Miss Dotsy. He stopped next to The Kid’s corpse. Faced Ellis. “How’d you get here? And why?”
“My skiff’s in the east gut. Figured you’d be along sometime to look in on the goods. Figured somebody might follow. What about you?”
“I think I can stop the bomb. I had a letter from Pap, and he all but gave me directions how to do it.”
Ellis’s eyes filled with mistrust. “You never said he wrote you.”
Ben said, “Wasn’t worth mentioning before now.”
Ellis said, “Anything else you care to say?”
“No.”
Ellis seized Ben’s arm. “Then let’s stop that damn bomb. Now.”
Ben wrenched free of his culler’s grip. “No. We still have a few hours on the timer. We need to find LuAnna. She comes before everything.”
“No offense, but you sure about that?”
“Damn sure, Ellis. I don’t want another word about it ’til she’s safe.”
Ben noticed Knocker Ellis’s hands tighten on the rifle.
CHAPTER 25
Though Chalk was talking on his sat-phone to The Kid, he still had the mental bandwidth to be pissed off at Dar Gavin. He nudged Corporal Bryce’s naked form with his foot. She was unconscious, and he needed her wide awake. Gavin had been too heavy-handed in her initial capture phase. They could learn nothing from her about the Blackshaws in this unresponsive state. Since Chalk still needed her alive as leverage, that meant no more abuse. For the time being.
Holding up his phone, Chalk said, “Check out who’s bucking for MVP. Hold on Kid. Read that again.” Chalk whipped out a Sharpie indelible marker, and with no paper in sight, he squatted, and scrawled Lat/Long numbers directly onto LuAnna’s bare hip. He always used a Sharpie. He believed his few written orders should have the permanence of law.
Chalk finished a readback of the numbers, and said, “You stay on top of them Kid! You hear?”
There was no reply. “Yo Kid! Kid?” Chalk snapped the phone shut. “Okay ladies. The Kid scrounged up a GPS, and just gave us the first solid piece of intel in three damn hours. We’ve got to reconnoiter another island. Slagget, Clynch and I are shipping out A-sap! Let’s get ready. Asses onboard in five. Gavin, get those coordinates for us. And then you’ll hold the fort here while we’re gone.”
Slagget and Clynch went downstairs to the lower story to collect their gear.
Gavin muttered to LuAnna’s inert form, “We coulda had fun all afternoon. I admit I kinda got a case of rapies for you. But Boss wants you presentable. Such a waste. Oh well. A man can dream.”
Dar Gavin looked around for a scrap of paper on which to transfer the long string of digits on LuAnna’s hip. He couldn’t find anything, which was too bad, but then he didn’t search very hard. He drew his Smith & Wesson Extreme Ops automatic knife with its sexy, angular tanto point. Slid the lock down, and pressed the silver button. The wicked blade flipped out in an instant, the heavy spring-load jerking his hand.
Gavin leaned over LuAnna’s hip. “Gee, baby. Too bad the boss writes so big. This is gonna leave a mark.”
CHAPTER 26
Chalk, Slagget, and Clynch set out from the Point No Point Light in Hiram’s skiff. Though faster, Chalk assumed that a missing patrol boat might get the Natural Resources Police looking for it. Maybe they could even track it with some kind of transponder on board. After ransacking the twin engine boat, they reluctantly set it adrift to get lost in the stormy Chesapeake. It didn’t matter. They had a damn good idea where the merchandise lay. Now they were going out to make sure, to size up the situation, and make their plan to recover it. Soon, this royal cock-up would be over and done with.
Hiram’s larger Palestrina would have withstood the weather very well. With more than thirty feet on her waterline, her size also made her more obvious. Any boat out in this slop invited attention Chalk could not afford. So it came down to Hiram’s anonymous eighteen-foot skiff, its antique Evinrude, his handheld GPS, and balls of case-hardened steel. God how he hated Dick Blackshaw for bringing him to this pass.
Chalk tried to distract Clynch from the rough weather, and his queasy belly, with shop talk. They had a frank exchange of views on the relative merits of the AN-94 Abakan, a primary assault weapon usually acquired from the obliging corpse of a Russian soldier, and the Heckler und Koch G-36, darling of the Bundeswehr.
Clynch, between poorly aimed barfs to leeward, said he preferred the light heft of the two-point-eight kilogram HK-G-36C. True to form, Chalk was infatuated with the staggering, albeit theoretical, 1,800-rounds-per-minute firing rate of the AN-94. Never mind that the standard AN-94 magazine only held thirty bullets. The prospect of a clip-voiding ejaculation of death scintillated Chalk to his deeps.
They had almost reached an agreement to disagree on hardware when a few more knots wound into the gusting wind. Their situation went from merely uncomfortable to abjectly dangerous. The overloaded little craft started shipping serious water. Chalk got busy bailing with the half Clorox bottle tied by a length of clothesline to his bench.
“Should we call it a day?” Clynch was a true berserker in a gunfight on land. He was of no value out here in the wet.
“Never say die, me hearties. Never say die! ‘We’ve just begun to fight!’” Amazed, Chalk was John Paul Jonesing himself into a suicidal courage. Maybe there was a point to downing all those pretty pills every day.
“Clynch’s making sense!” Slagget yelled over the din of engine and wind.
“Bullshit!” shouted Chalk. “Our merchandise is out there somewhere! We’re this close! I can feel it!”
They pounded farther south through the waves, passing abeam of Holland Island, then rounding northeast toward their destination.
“There!” Slagget looked up from his chart. He had been wearing his night vision goggles to help him navigate through the storm’s murk. Holding up the ragged, rain-rinsed flap of human skin with coordinates scrawled on it, he pointed. He waited until the skiff crested the next wave, shouted, “Yes! I think that’s the place! Deep Banks Island!”
“Oh I do like the sound of that!” Chalk was feeling merry.
The day went nearly black from thick cloud cover. Chalk and Clynch donned their NVGs and passed Slagget a fresh battery pack for his.
Chalk said, “Let’s take it easy. Orbit out here for a few. See who’s around.”
In ten minutes of watching the island, they saw nothing. Chalk steered toward the east side of Deep Banks. Everything looked dandy until they were a hundred yards out. Chalk went rigid. Bellowed, “Slagget! Clynch! Take off your damn bug-eyes! Now!”
Knowing from experience that most of Chalk’s orders had kept them alive, at least so far, Clynch and Slagget yanked off their NVGs.
Clynch asked, “What is it?”
Chalk said, “Slagget, hold this course. Clynch, I want you to get down real low, and put your red-eye on that island where I’m pointing.”
Sick as Clynch was, he quickly complied, raising an infrared scope.