Then bullets rang off the deck’s rail. Ellis was covering. Chalk’s man disappeared into the lighthouse firing blind over his shoulder.
Ben dived for LuAnna. The water was liquid ice. LuAnna would be dead in seconds if he couldn’t find her, drag her up, get her warm. He had lost her.
He surfaced again, and saw her adrift next to the Palestrina. Her life vest had inflated. He swam toward her. Suddenly there was a buzz of machine gun fire from above. Ben braced for bullets to tear into him. Little geysers erupted in the water. The shooter in the lighthouse shifted his aim to something else, fired three times.
Ben had to keep LuAnna out of sight in the water. He towed her under the far side of the bow of the Palestrina for cover. LuAnna was still unconscious.
The gunfire ceased. Seconds passed. Ben held LuAnna close. His mind froze. He had her in his arms, but had no idea what to do next.
Miss Dotsy’s bow knifed into sight over the crest of a wave. Ellis leaned over her washboards, snaffled LuAnna by the back of the life vest, and plucked her from the water. Ben grabbed a mooring cleat on Miss Dotsy’s stern as it careened by. He hung on, completely unable to pull himself aboard.
Again Ben felt Ellis’s crushing grip on his arm, and he was back on the familiar deck. Ellis set the steering tiller for a heading away from the lighthouse. Then, as gently as he could, he hauled LuAnna into the cuddy cabin, and wrapped her in a blanket. Ben followed close crawling on all fours.
Ellis put his head out of the cabin door. “You got this shot?”
Ben said, “Hell yes. Gimme.”
Instead of producing the sniper rifle, Ellis handed Ben an ancient Webley and Scott break-action signal pistol with a wood stock, vintage 1917. Ben’s great-grandfather’s flare gun. Not like Ben’s sniper rifle by any means, but from shooting it on many Independence Days as a kid, he knew the piece as intimately as any deadly weapon.
Ben marshaled his last strength, and crouched on the heaving deck. Didn’t brace himself at all. He let Miss Dotsy roll naturally under his feet as she had for so many years. He took aim at the nearest lighthouse window on the lower brick level, and compensated for wave and wind. “Shooter ready.”
Ellis smiled. “Send it.”
Pulled the trigger. A wet popping sound, a dull flash and smoky puff, and nothing else. A short round. The ammo was so old.
Ben broke the signal gun open. Plucked out the hot dud, slapped the last flare in the barrel and snapped it shut. He took aim again, now compensating with a negative lead for the distance Miss Dotsy had just traveled.
Ben muttered, “Shooter ready,”
From the cuddy cabin, LuAnna’s voice feebly croaked, “Send it.”
Ben pulled the trigger.
The gun kicked. The blazing red flare arced through the storm pretty and true, the smoke plume dissipating fast downwind. The little meteor disappeared through a thin glass window in the lighthouse.
For an instant, nothing changed. Then the flare ignited the bug-bomb aerosol. That touched off the kerosene flood in the basement.
The lighthouse disintegrated. The iron caisson acted like a mortar tube, directing all the blast force upward into the masonry and wooden frame structure. A white-orange column of flame. The lighthouse beacon flew up wildly into the clouds like an anti-aircraft searchlight. Then it winked out. A man cartwheeled in a high trajectory through the storm-wracked sky, a scarecrow burning alive.
Ben mumbled, “For Hiram and Charlene. Down payment.” He yelled to Ellis, “Now let’s get LuAnna home.”
CHAPTER 30
Chalk had to give him credit; Slagget sure moved quick. A good thing, since the leaky old skiff was still overloaded, slow as a barge, and their clients were still out there in the storm looking for blood. Slagget found what he needed in the bottom of the skiff, forward of the bow seat. Its chain was fastened on one end to a length of bristled, sun-rotted yellow nylon line. The other end was shackled to a Danforth anchor lying awash in the rising water. With flat, scapular flukes, and a straight shaft, it looked like a steel stingray on a leash.
Slagget grabbed the anchor. He hurried aft trailing the clinking chain like Jacob Marley on his Christmas Eve mission, but did not stop to untangle the duck decoys’ anchor lines snagging in the rusty links.
In the stern, Chalk scanned through the rain for their pursuers in the black boat. No sign, yet. This squall could blow through any second, leaving them exposed in clearer air. First things first. He made gun fingers over Clynch’s bowed head. Ever the professional even in semaphore, he pantomimed parking not one, but two bullets in Clynch’s noggin. Then Chalk pointed at Slagget. Again Slagget nodded.
Chalk said, “I don’t think that hit of morphine’s doing the trick. Slagget, better give him another.”
Slagget balked at the waste of meds. “Really?”
“I mean, fuck it a little, eh Bill? Our buddy’s in pain.”
The condemned tried to communicate. “Tangs, Mayn’rd. Slug’z killin’ me!”
Not fast enough, thought Chalk. He blathered out more encouragement, all the while searching for any sign of the clients bearing down on them again, guns ablaze. “We got to get you in tip-top shape, Simon. Lots of work to do. Hurry up, Slagget! And make it two hits.”
Slagget complied. All that dope would keep Clynch calm. Limit his struggles against the inevitable.
Clynch quickly slumped. Lost all muscle tone. He slurred, “Damn! Hurzzz!”
Chalk looked around the horizon through the blowing curtains of cold rain. He thought he saw a low shadowy boat in the distance, and snapped off three shots at it. A buzz and flicker of distant automatic weapons answered, but the shooters had no clear bearing on a target. “Not even close, pussies!” Chalk gave Clynch an appraising look, then nodded at Slagget again.
The curtain of rain returned, harder than before. Slagget drew his FNH Five-SeveN pistol. Chalk hated Slagget’s choice of sidearm. It was a hobbyist’s piece, with exotic ammo. Slagget had to form and load all the cartridge brass himself, and when he’d shot it all, what did you have? A two-pound bludgeon? Plus, unless you had the armor-piercing bullets, wet wool would stop the little bitty rounds cold. Chalk allowed Slagget his vanity piece because in the end, the man was a half-decent shot.
Slagget cajoled, “Easy there, Simon. Why don’t you lie down a bit? Might have given you a little too much of that poppy juice, sport.”
Slagget leaned Clynch’s head to starboard over the water. A simple thing. The wounded man was rubbery now. Chalk slowly hiked out to port to keep the tippy skiff on an even keel.
With a round already in the chamber, Slagget cocked the gun. He positioned it in that just-behind-the-ear quadrant favored by John Wilkes Booth.
The deadly familiarity of the hammer’s snick registered deep in Clynch’s doped-up squash. He gave a little tremble of resistance. Asked, “Bill?”
Slagget held him down, pulled the trigger twice. Ba-pop! The wind carried the sounds away, but Chalk could still taste the acrid smoke in his mouth. Two very fast, very small rounds went into Clynch’s head.
There in the storm, his enemies on all sides, and facing his worst crisis ever, Chalk couldn’t help but ponder Clynch’s neurology. What part of his mind contained that first twinge of fear; that realization he was about to be killed? Was the presentiment of death still synaptically fizzing around somewhere inside Clynch’s head? No, Chalk decided. More likely it was now just an electrochemical yelp eddying in the bloody waters astern.