CHAPTER 15
One slug slammed into the Jambalaya's mast, ringing like the peal of a dull bell. An angry shout followed: "Stop it! We want him alive."
Then the snick-click of a fresh magazine being seated.
I got to my knees and peered into the darkness as the outboard motor grew louder again. The beams of their flashlights cast shadows on the Jambalaya's deck and rigging.
I grabbed the flare pistol and popped up long enough to fire a round straight at the inflatable, As I hit the deck again, I broke the pistol down, pulled out the spent. 12-gauge cartridge, reloaded, and fired a round straight up. In an instant, the illuminating parachute flare hung above, painting the scene with its flat blue-white magnesium glowlight. "Get him! Get him now!"
Why? Why me? A drug gang raiding what they thought was a rival's shipment? But the expensive H amp;Ks they carried weren't the usual drug-gang firearm. I knew it, instead, as the choice of professionals ranging from urban SWAT teams to military Special Forces in close-quarter situations.
The flare-lit seascape, urgent shouts, and the lingering smell of cordite pulled the rip cord on a pack of long-buried memories that arced through my head, activating old reflexes that had often saved my life. I unsnapped the carabiner attaching my lifeline to the harness, reloaded the flare pistol, and fired. New illumination brightened the sky as I sensed my assailants' inflatable boat thumping against the port stern quarter. From my crouched position in the cockpit, I shoved the Jambalaya's throttle full forward, steered the Jambalaya straight into oncoming traffic, then set the autopilot to hold the course.
I was reaching for the VHF to radio in a Mayday when the first man came over the gunwale. I focused on his shadow, coiled myself tight, and waited. The man had a single tipsy moment as he stepped on deck. I lunged for him then in one long, taut step, focusing all the strength in my legs and torso and arms and shoulders into the single forearm of my right elbow, which I slammed into the side of the man's head right behind his ear. His head snapped unnaturally to the left accompanied by a dull snap of cracked vertebrae. Sweat flew from his face and arced like tiny glowing beads through the stark flarelight. Experience taught me that the higher the vertebrae in his neck, the faster he'd die.
The man crumpled into the cockpit like a sack of melons. He looked at me as his uncontrolled bladder and bowels darkened his pants. Regret passed through me like a quick shadow as I watched the recognition and panic ricochet in his eyes before the lids fluttered shut.
Scrambling to the cabin below, I flicked the VHF to Channel 16.
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is the vessel Jambalaya and am being attacked by armed assailants. Request immediate assistance." I read off my coordinates from the GPS screen on the panel next to the VHF.
I was still radioing my Mayday as I dialed 911 on my cell phone and got the inevitable recording.
"Hell," I muttered. I had barely finished stuffing the phone back in my Windbreaker's cargo pocket when the Jambalaya rocked gently, letting me know someone had stepped on deck. With the Jambalaya's diesel laboring away at full rpms, I rushed forward to the head, threw open the door, and yanked out a strategic piece of teak paneling to reveal a small void between the hull and the interior lining. From it, I pulled out a heavy waterproof bag containing an old friend-a Colt. 45 Model 1911 semiautomatic pistol- and three magazines.
I slid a magazine in the handle of the Colt, worked the slide to chamber a round, and made sure the safety was off. As I stepped from the head into the cabin, I spotted a man descending the steps from the cockpit, silhouetted by the trapezoidal opening of the companionway and the dimming flarelight beyond. I shot him.
The slug spun him around with his finger on the trigger of his weapon. I dived away from the long-full-auto burst that hosed the Jambalaya's interior. Before the last shot faded, I sprang toward him and nailed his head to the deck with a second shot. Never shoot once. Good training never died.
I was facing the stem when I heard the door to the bow stateroom slam open behind me, followed by the voice of command.
"Don't move, Dr. Stone. Don't even twitch or I'll blow your kidneys right out the front of your belly."
CHAPTER 16
I stood with the Jambalaya's galley on my right as I faced the stern. My hip touched the corner of the counter that jutted about three feet toward the centerline of the cabin creating a small alcove, but it was little cover. The fixtures had deliberately been designed as light as possible to avoid flotation and balance issues. The H amp;K's slugs could readily parse the flimsy paneling I was using for cover and dissect me with ease.
"Toss your weapon outside," the voice commanded me. I set the safety and sent it flying into the cockpit.
In the moment of ensuing silence, my ears took in the loud hammering from the Jambalaya's diesel and, just barely detectable through the noise, frantic shouts, voices, air horns. The VHF squawked a verbal collage of sudden traffic, none of it intelligible as one transmission after another sank beneath the frantic verbal hash.
"Dr. Stone, hand over the Blackberry Vanessa Thompson gave you."
"I have no idea-"
In the next instant, a pinpoint of red laser light shone remarkably steady on the teak bulkhead immediately to my right, then vanished through a hole with remarkably clean edges. The shot passed so close to my head I heard the slug's high ripping whine.
"I can shoot to wound you all night long, Mr. Stone. If you play games, it will cost you a great deal of pain."
I ransacked every memory of the past year.
"I can't remember-"
I didn't see the laser dance this time and realized what had happened only after I heard the gunshot and felt the warm stickiness flowing down the left side of my head. I touched the top of my earlobe and found the wound slight and the pain faint.
"That's my last warning," he yelled above the din from the VI–IF and the urgent voices outside.
In the next few fractions of a millisecond, I replayed the short scene in the graveyard and felt the pleasure as Vanessa slipped a hand inside my suit coat. The pleasure of her touch had overshadowed anything cognitive, especially because she was killed a second or so later. I had no idea about a Blackberry, but I needed a story to buy time.
"I have it in a safe at my office. I can get it for you."
"No." The laser dot danced again. "No. Give me the combination and I'll get it." The laser dot disappeared again, undoubtedly illuminating some part of my body that I had grown fond of.
Before he could shoot, the Jambalaya pitched forward with a thunderous deceleration that sent her rolling and yawing. My assailant cursed; I heard the deep thump of him colliding with something stationary. I lunged up into the cockpit. Gasoline fumes filled the air. I looked forward toward an epicenter of screams and curses and saw the Jambalaya's bow impaled in a flashy Cigarette boat.
I grabbed my Colt and almost fired at my attacker before my nose stopped me. I lunged topside and jumped overboard. The water geysered all around me as the H amp;K's slugs stitched into the sea. I dove under the surface just as the full-automatic muzzle blasts ignited the spilled gasoline from the Cigarette boat's ruptured tanks.
CHAPTER 17
Darryl Talmadge sat up in the hospital bed with its chipped enamel paint and threw back the pilled polyester blanket with its cigarette burns and medicinal smells. He took as deep a breath as his emphysema would allow, then struggled through a coughing fit that rattled through his bone-and-beef-jerky frame.