“Because when the program was shut down, and the weapon ordered to be destroyed. Excalibur didn’t take too kindly to the concept of being broken into little pieces. Instead, he went about systematically hunting down each of the seven-man group who worked on the project. Of which, four are already dead. That’s why I have been in hiding. But now he’s come for me.”
“Stop. I don’t want to know anymore. Why are you telling me this?”
“Don’t you see?” Patrick’s lips curled into a sardonic grin. “Some weapons can’t ever be broken. Excalibur will systematically hunt down every one of us, until we’re all dead.”
He stepped out onto the deck.
The Hoshi Maru motored through the second break wall of Minamisōma Harbor. Patrick looked up. “Holy shit! You didn’t tell me we were almost on land!”
“Yes. I thought you knew. We just need to keep that… thing locked within the hold until we reach land and then we’ll be all right!”
“No, we won’t!” Patrick’s words were emphatic. “We’ll never be all right. Not until that creature is destroyed.”
He turned and raced toward the raised pilothouse.
“Where are you going?” Yuki Tono asked.
“To change the course of the future.”
Dr. Jim Patterson stared through the binoculars at the fishing trawler that was motoring into the Minamisōma Harbor. He focused the binoculars on the name on the side of the ship — Hoshi Maru.
He shook his head. From this distance there was nothing to show that the vessel was in any sort of trouble.
He turned to Dexter Walsh. “Are you sure he’s on the Hoshi Maru?”
“Certain,” Dexter replied. “I heard the skipper’s mayday call, saying that they had pulled up a Nue and needed police to meet them at harbor. It has already killed their captain.”
Dr. Patterson looked blank. “What the hell’s a Nue?”
“Some sort of Japanese Chimera described in folklore,” Dexter explained. “It has the face of a monkey, the legs of a tiger, the body of a tanuki dog, and the front half of a snake for a tail.”
Dr. Patterson grinned. “That’s got to be Excalibur!”
“If it is, he’s a hell of a swimmer.”
“To reach three miles off shore, he’d have to be.”
“It’s got to be him. No other description fits. Besides, the coincidence is too much for it to be anything else.”
Dr. Patterson nodded in agreement. “Well, that just proves it.”
“What?”
“You were right, Dexter. After we were tipped off that Patrick was hiding onboard the Hoshi Maru, Excalibur came after him. That proves it; he’s hunting every one of us. He’s lashing out all right, but his kills aren’t the random attacks of an animal, he’s systematically taking out each member of the original team — everyone that knew the truth — until there’s no one left.”
Dr. Patterson scanned the vessel from left to right. Nothing appeared to be wrong on board. “Where’s Excalibur now?”
“Locked inside a fish hold,” Dexter replied.
“That won’t keep him very long.”
“No way in the world.” Dexter asked, “Should we get on the radio and tell them what they’re facing?”
“Why would we do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to give the police a fighting chance?”
“There aren’t enough police in Minamisōma to give them a fighting chance. No. We’re better off leaving. It’s time we get on an international flight.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine there is anywhere on Earth that can keep me safe from Excalibur.”
Dr. Patterson lowered his binoculars.
A moment later a siren filled the entire harbor. It sounded like one of those old air raid warning sirens from World War II.
Dexter asked, “What is that?”
Dr. Patterson swallowed. “That’s the tsunami warning.”
Patrick stepped into the wheelhouse and grabbed the wheel, trying to turn the Hoshi Maru around until it was heading out to sea.
Sojuro Ishiyama, the skipper, gripped the wheel and fought to hold the course. “What are you doing?”
“We have to get back out to sea!” Patrick yelled. “That creature in our hold can’t be allowed to survive!”
The skipper met his eyes. “We can’t go back out to sea!”
“Why the hell not?”
“There’s been an earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku. The harbor master says it was big. The harbor’s in the process of closing in case there’s a tsunami.”
Patrick shook his head. “Trust me. With that creature on board, a tsunami’s the least of our worries.”
“You can’t seriously be thinking of taking us out of the harbor channel. It’s too long. We’ll never make it before the tsunami reaches us.”
Patrick pulled out his Sig Sauer pistol and pointed it at the skipper. The weapon didn’t have a safety. It could be fired immediately out of its holster. “I’m afraid I’m deadly serious, Sojuro Ishiyama.”
The skipper glanced at him, considered fighting, and then, thinking better of it, said, “Okay. If we’re going to try and beat this thing, we need to hurry.”
“Right.”
Patrick took hold of the wheel and shoved the twin throttles all the way forward. The Akasaka diesel engines made a deep, resonant, gravelly rumble. The twin screws found their perch in the water, and the Hoshi Maru lurched forward.
Minamisōma Harbor was designed with two long, narrow, shipping lanes surrounded by a large break wall. They were heading out along the inner shipping lane now. It continued for another quarter of a mile, before opening into the outer harbor, which held a large upside-down U-shaped break wall that was twenty feet high.
All they needed to do was get outside that wall, and they would be free. There would be enough water beneath their keel to ride out the tsunami.
Not that it would help them much. If Excalibur was indeed on board, their lives were already over. The real question was, if they reached the deep waters outside of Minamisōma Harbor, what was he going to do about it? He might not be able to shoot Excalibur, but nothing prevented him from drowning. That was it! He would need to open the sea-cocks and sink the Hoshi Maru as soon as they were in deep waters far off the coast of Japan.
But first, they needed to get out of Minamisōma Harbor.
Patrick glanced at their speed. They were doing six knots through the water, but sixteen over land, meaning there was a ten knot outward going tide.
He’d never seen anything like it.
Patrick turned to Sojuro Ishiyama. “What’s going on?”
“That’s water feeding the tsunami. We don’t have long.”
“Will we make it?” Patrick asked.
Sojuro Ishiyama shrugged. “I don’t know. But there’s no point turning around now. It’s too late. Our best chance is to reach the outer harbor. Depending on how big the tsunami is when it reaches the harbor, we might be able to ride it out in the outer harbor.”
“And if it’s really big?”
“Then we make sure to hit it head on. Then hope like hell that we survive, because there will be nothing else we can do.”
Patrick nodded.
He put the pistol into the side pocket of his cargo pants, and gripped the wheel so tight that he felt it in the tendons and muscles of his forearms.
The Hoshi Maru came around the first break wall and into the outer harbor. In the distance, beyond the outer break wall, something caught Patrick’s eye. It looked like the white crest of a wave rising in the distance.
It was moving so slowly, he asked Sojuro Ishiyama, “What is that?”