Bedded in the side of the starter coil smoldered part of a mangled bullet. Slagget used his pocket knife to pry the fragment free. He bobbled it from palm to palm while it cooled.
Slagget said, “Slug’s still hot! Anybody here shooting .308 Winchesters?”
“What are you talking about?” Chalk leaned in close, took the slug from Slagget, put his flashlight on it. “That’s not .308! It’s M-one eighteen LR. A hundred seventy-five grain. This, my friend, is sniper spore.”
Chalk looked wildly out into the storm. Tensed for the next slug to smash home. He knew he would never hear it coming. Defiant, he held the bullet up high in his fist.
He shouted at the wind, “Look at me, you damnable pop-eyed bastards! See me, and fear me, and fall down before me! You missed!”
CHAPTER 43
“You missed?” Knocker Ellis was incredulous. Tried to bury the embarrassment he felt for his captain. Ben was not his father’s son after all.
Ben lowered the smoking rifle. “Head us back to Smith.”
Ellis timed the turn with the waves. Hauled on the tiller. Set the course for home.
Ben stowed the rifle in Miss Dotsy’s cuddy cabin. “And what do you mean? That wasn’t any Maggie’s drawers.” Ben was speaking Sniperanto, meaning the red flag raised from the pits down range, indicating a shooter had totally missed the target.
“Oh, so you really killed somebody just now? I must’ve not seen it. These old eyes, and whatnot.”
“Okay! I hit the N not the R. I admit that.” Ben looked abashed.
“Come again?”
Ben spelled. “E-V–I-N-R-U-D-E. I was aiming for the R. It’s embarrassing. I reckon the N will have to do.”
Now Ellis was fuming. “You risked our lives out here in this mess just to shoot up an outboard motor. And the bomb’s still live? He spooked you! He messed with your head, talking about your mother.”
“This was a recon sortie, Ellis. Now we know they’re six strong. We’ve denied them an important asset. Cut their flotilla by one third. And we scared them. They won’t know when the next shot’s coming in, and you know that’s a bad feeling. You have to trust me. I do have a plan.”
Ellis was not placated. “What the hell important asset! Hiram’s janky old skiff? Why not plug that inflatable’s engine? Or shoot something with a trigger finger.”
Ben said, “Entertaining as it might be, what I have in mind doesn’t mean picking them off right now. Soon. Not now. Not if you want to sleep easy when all this is done.”
Ellis negotiated Miss Dotsy over several waves. They were getting bigger.
He railed, “You want them to think they got the upper hand. Okay, that’s one thing, but Ben, you’re giving away the damn store!”
CHAPTER 44
They cut Hiram’s skiff loose back at the lighthouse with Dar Gavin’s body tossed in the bottom. The storm would take care of the burial. Chalk’s mind boggled that he’d been so punctilious, wasted so much time disposing of Clynch’s remains. Maybe the meds had their purpose after all.
Chalk stood forward at the helm under the Palestrina’s hardtop. He frequently looked aft to emphasize his points. Big gestures. Tahereh was parked near Slagget on the engine box in the middle of the boat. She gazed forward at Chalk with rapt attention.
Slagget faced aft. His Five-seveN gripped in his right hand. He guarded al Mubi, and Surur with the recently pierced ear, and al Temiyat.
Al Mubi seemed to Chalk like the toughest of them. Older, and battle-hardened. Al Mubi had not let himself run to anger yet, nor despair. He was calm, though Chalk was sure the Islamist had already weighed matters and found them wanting.
Out of the corner of his eye, Chalk glimpsed Slagget as his lieutenant reached under his jacket and cupped his hand around a small knife he’d taken off the prisoners back at the boat ramp frisk. It all actually happened in the blink of an eye, but like a nightmare, it seemed to take hours, and Chalk was rooted in place unable to act in time.
Al Mubi and al Temiyat swapped looks. Very uneasy. Surur was still taken up with his own problems; nausea, a bleeding earlobe, a grazed leg, self-pity, and a dearth of handy virgins. He was not paying attention.
Casually, Slagget lobbed the knife aft toward the three men sitting cross-legged at the transom. Al Mubi and al Temiyat saw Slagget do it. Watched the knife float through the air. An easy underhand toss, as if Slagget was passing it to them.
Chalk arrested his soliloquy as the knife bounced once off the deck on its rubberized handle, and settled harmlessly in al Temiyat’s lap. Al Temiyat was about to reach, but al Mubi recognized deadly bait when he saw it. He slapped his hand over al Temiyat’s to keep him from grabbing the knife and giving Slagget probable cause to shoot them. The two men held still for a nanosecond starring at Slagget.
Asir Surur was not savvy. He had not seen the toss. Had only seen the blade flop into al Temiyat’s lap. To Surur, the angry, wounded, gullible student, this looked like a gift from Allah. Surur went for the knife as Slagget clearly hoped he would, digging into al Temiyat’s lap with the verve of a hooker doing piece-work at a Vegas bachelor party. Finally, he came up with the needle-fine tip pointing at Slagget.
Slagget waited a half a second before he raised the Five-seveN. Surur’s eyes met his. Even with the knife in hand, he realized he was seated too far away to scratch Slagget with it. Al Mubi swore at his squaddie’s mortal stupidity.
Slagget fired. Tahereh turned and watched in horror. Though he didn’t have the knife, Al Mubi went down first because he was toughest. Slagget put the first round in his heart, and parked a second pill in the middle of his forehead. Al Mubi’s head snapped backward. He collapsed on the deck and lay still.
Surur, small and quick, was close to getting on his feet with the knife stretched out toward Slagget. At this range Slagget seemed relaxed as he shot Surur in the knee. With Surur’s thigh aligned with Slagget’s gun barrel, the tiny, hyper-Mach round punched through his patella. Shattered the medial condyle knob of his femur’s south end. Threw a tablespoon of loose change, bullet and bone, along the femur shaft. The shrapnel sieved the femoral artery like buckshot. With that kind of trauma, Surur should have bled out with respectable speed. To Slagget’s astonishment, the dumb bastard kept coming.
“Allahu-Akbar!” cried Surur.
“Kumbaya,” Slagget muttered as he shot out Surur’s left eye. That did it. Surur flopped face down on the deck. The tip of the knife blade lay three inches from the toe of Slagget’s left shoe.
Chalk yelled, “What in the holy fuck!”
Al Temiyat, who’d been sitting between his recently deceased friends, had a mix of rage and hopelessness in his eyes. Slagget paused long enough for the poor guy to think he’d been reprieved. With one look at Slagget’s deadpan face, al Temiyat scrambled to stand, started alternately splaying his legs out from beneath him like a Russian folk dancer. His feet could not get a purchase on the slippery deck. Two in the heart.
That was the proof Chalk needed. This bastard Slagget was definitely Senator Morgan’s other mole. That meant he had to die. Though not before he helped move the gold off the island.
Slagget stood up quickly, and backed away from Tahereh. For a moment, Chalk thought she would make some kind of stupid, butch girl-move so Slagget could complete this purge. Not this gal. She quickly put her hands up in surrender.
Covering the woman, Slagget bent low and picked up the knife. He held it up where everybody could see it. “Sorry Maynard. I guess I missed this one.”