William H. Lovejoy
The Mountain
As always, for Jane, Jodi, and David, and for Clete,
who once shared twenty-eight days at sea with me
Chapter 1
The light from a three-quarter moon left a blue-white trail on the black water to starboard. A mile ahead on the right, sodium vapor lights floated on the shoreline like yellow polka dots. A foggy haze obscured similar lamps on the coast to the left. Low-lying clouds hid the stars from the western horizon to almost directly overhead. Black on black.
The Scarab gurgled along, piercing the bay and the blackness at less than ten knots, but McCory could feel the subdued vibration of the 350-cubic-inch V-8 engines in the steering wheel. A light breeze plucked at his shirt sleeves.
White light of a marker buoy a quarter mile to starboard.
“Jesus, Mac. Turn on the running lights.”
“And have somebody spot us?”
“And get out of here,” Daimler told him. “We get caught, it’s my ass.”
“And mine.”
“My boat. They’ll confiscate it, and I paid sixty grand, damn it!”
“Not so loud, Ted. Sound carries.”
“Shit! Look… ”
The night filled suddenly with halogen light off the port side, starkly bright. McCory was on stage again, high school production of The Man Who Came to Dinner.
A bullhorn blared. “This is the U.S. Navy gunboat Antelope. You are in restricted waters. Heave to, and prepare to be boar… ”
McCory slammed his palm at the twin throttles, and the Scarab surged forward, leaped to the plane, and shot out of the floodlight.
“Mac! Goddamn it, Mac! Shut her down!”
He spun the wheel slightly and rolled into a broad turn to the right as the searchlight chased him, missing, going far to the left.
The instrument panel was unlit, but McCory figured he had forty knots by the time he swung back to the left. The engines screamed, rising close to maximum revolutions. The coast on the starboard was much closer.
The man controlling the searchlight would be looking for a wake.
Whipping his head around, he saw the running lights of the gunboat illuminate as it rose to the chase. Sneaky bastard had come up on him unlit in the darkness of the fog. Probably had him on radar.
Searchlight sweeping back, probing.
Forty-five knots? The windstream tore at his shirt sleeves.
“Goddamn it, Mac!”
“We can outrun him!” McCory had to shout over the scream of the wind.
“Not in here!”
The gunboat was behind them to port and had the mile-wide mouth of Carr Bay covered. The bay would narrow rapidly on him from here on in. Already, the dim lights in the mist on the left coastline were becoming sharper.
Daimler was right.
A siren started to scream from the Antelope.
“They’ll sink my boat!” Daimler yelled. He was getting panicky.
Fifty knots? The Scarab could do it.
The gunboat could only make a bit over forty knots, but it had time and space and angle for advantages. Probably calling his friends on the radio, too.
McCory reached below the helmsman’s seat, found his blue plastic bag, and pulled it up onto his lap. Probing with his left hand, he located a fragmentation grenade, removed it, and rezipped the bag.
He pulled the pin and tossed it overboard.
The searchlight swung close, passing just off the port side. The coast was about a quarter mile off the starboard bow. Shallow waters ahead.
McCory turned the helm left as soon as the light went behind him.
Tapping Daimler on the right shoulder with his left hand, he held the grenade close enough for him to see.
Daimler’s face was not visible, but McCory heard the man groan.
“Hey, Ted!” McCory called. “What say we get out right here?”
“You son of a bitch! Sixty thousand bucks!”
The searchlight found the boat’s wake and raced toward them.
McCory dropped the grenade.
It bounced once, then rolled aft down the incline of the deck.
He scrambled out of his seat listening to Daimler’s screams as the boat’s owner did his own scrambling. Hanging on tight to his plastic tote, McCory pulled himself up to the gunwale, rolled over it, and hit the bay on his back.
At sixty miles per hour, he skipped like a flat stone six times before the water caught his leg, flipped him over, and dragged him down.
When it came, the concussion hurt his ears.
Chapter 2
“Allah Akbar!” yelled the young man in the bow.
Ibrahim Badr kept his own exclamation to himself. He had more self-discipline than the young Muhammed Hakkar.
Still, the detonations were impressive. He gauged them to be almost two kilometers away, near the western coast. A boat or ship, of course. In the dark, the first explosion had been a flare, a blue-white visual crash that stunned eyes accustomed to the night, followed momentarily by deep thunder. The second explosion — fuel tanks, no doubt — was yellow-red. Flaming debris arced out of the center of the fiery maelstrom.
Badr turned the handle throttle of the outboard motor to full idle. The rubber Zodiak boat slowed, skewed about, and bobbed in the light chop of the Chesapeake Bay. Far away to his left, he could see the lights of Annapolis struggling through the fog.
The explosion receded and became simply fire on the water. The ship with the searchlight and siren — the one that had first caused him to retard his throttle — was slowing, moving in on the wreckage.
“We must leave,” Hakkar said from his seat in the bow of the rubber boat.
“It appears to be the best course,” Badr agreed.
Already, the lights of another ship had appeared in the north, coming toward the scene of the fire — and toward them — at a fast pace.
A night that had been so shining with promise had become a disaster.
“And we must hurry,” Hakkar urged.
“No,” the leader said. “We must think.”
Too many of his subordinates were disadvantaged in the matter of thinking. They promoted action without thought, reacting on impulse to outside stimuli. They thought little of consequences and almost never developed credible or practical alternatives.
“There is nothing to think about, Ibrahim Badr. We must try another time.”
“But time grows short, young Muhammed, and opportunity slips away. Instead, we must remember that at the eye of the hurricane there is calm.”
He could not see Hakkar’s face but knew there would be a grimace of disgust on it.
“I do not know what you speak of.”
Which is why it is I who am in command, Badr thought.
“The hurricane is over there, and we are in the eye. We will take advantage of this diversion,” Badr said.
He twisted the throttle grip and turned the bow of the Zodiak toward the west.
Commander Martin Holloway stood to the left of his helmsman in the wheelhouse and looked down on the bows of his gunboat. The decks were crowded with crewmen, but few were gawking. His crew was well trained.
Beyond, the flames were dying away as the flammable liquids were consumed. Tongues of fire reached a few feet off the surface. Several searchlights were in play now, their beams slicing the night, seeking whatever was left. The forward half of the civilian boat was still floating, but barely. As he watched, a deck hatch popped open from internal pressure, let the air escape, and the bow started sinking.
“Mr. D’Angelo, let’s come to five knots.”