The side door on the Cheetah opened. The navigator and Laura reached down and helped Thorne climb inside.
“Move it!” Thorne yelled at Kurt from the clamshell door.
“Fuck you!” Kurt yelled back. The rain had stopped, and Kurt heard the giant Sikorsky approaching low and from the south. He had to do something fast. He pulled the grenade free, held it up over his head, and pulled the pin while he kicked to remain above the surface.
Thorne fired twice as Kurt reared his arm back for the toss, and once as the arm came forward. The first two bullets went high, splashing ten yards behind his head.
Then he loosed the grenade, aiming for the open door.
Thorne’s next shot hit Steiner full in the neck. He slipped under the dark surface without giving up so much as a bubble.
The grenade had been high. It hit the door’s edge and bounced along the sloping roof, exploding as it rolled off the stem.
When the grenade went off, the pilot shouted, “What the fuck was that?” A red light on the console began flashing.
“Grenade,” Thorne said.
“Props are damaged,” the navigator said. He lifted his microphone. “Duster One, this is Cheetah, do you read?”
“Affirmative, Cheetah. We’re right behind you.”
“We’re dead in the water. Need you to evacuate four souls, and we’ll need a surface tow as soon as you can arrange it.”
“Roger that.”
The navigator looked at the screen. “Sir,” he said. “We got a blip. The Cigarette is closing on us at sixty-nine knots.”
“Duster One, we’re ready when you are.”
“Prepare your souls for a ride in the basket. Be advised we have the Shadowfax at zero-zero-one degrees and a quarter mile and eight knots steady. Be advised a second vessel is closing from zero-ninety.”
Then the chopper was above them, the basket already hanging below its open door, two white helmets visible.
“Cheetah, this is Shadowfax.” A voice came in over the receiver speakers.
“Please identify,” the pilot said.
But Laura and Thorne knew the voice. “It’s Martin,” she said, fear filling her eyes.
“Cheetah, Cheetah, this is Shadowfax. Bang, you’re dead.”
Then, as they watched in horror, the sailboat appeared out from the curtain of rain like a ghost ship making a beeline for their bow.
60
Martin dropped the transceiver to the floor of the cockpit. The rain stopped suddenly, and the lake to the south opened up to him. He reached down to the console and turned on the tape player. The large speakers that were mounted on the deck, designed for people’s entertainment while they sailed or sunbathed, filled the air with an orchestral rendition of “Danny Boy.” In the distance the giant Sikorsky was hovering. Below it, in the circle of spotlight, there was a strange craft, a speedboat. The chopper was raising its basket. Inside was a prone body, which Martin assumed was Woody Poole’s, and the boy, Reb, was seated in there as well.
His heart soared and he checked to make sure the engine was operating at maximum power. Then he laughed and squeezed the detonator. He could arrive before the cot was back in the belly of the helicopter. Maybe he could take out the boat and the helicopter! If it remained anywhere near where it was, it was as good as down in flames. The boy and Woody might be killed even if they managed to swing away to run for it.
Martin felt the button, knowing that when he let go, the Semtex would turn the lake for a hundred yards around into vapor. As he watched, an orange-and-white Cigarette boat broke from the curtain of rain and turned to intercept him. He stared in disbelief as the boat closed. He saw someone in a white uniform fling himself off the side and into the spray.
“Fuck you!” he yelled. The boat was moving at a seemingly impossible speed. It was a bluff. No two-hundred-dollar-a-month swabbie would ram him. He laughed, and blood ran from his open mouth.
As the Cigarette boat closed, he realized that the pilot was Rainey Lee, and that he was screaming something Martin couldn’t make out, though he imagined what the gist of it would be.
As Rainey corrected the long boat’s course to slam into the side of the Shadowfax, Martin released the button and closed his eyes for the short wait, cursing his luck.
61
The helicopter pilot reacted to the impending collision by rolling off and flying south with Woody and Reb swinging in the basket under the Sikorsky. Laura, certain Reb would be safe, turned and watched. It was at that moment that the Cigarette boat burst from the wall of rain and aimed directly for the sailboat. She saw the racing boat close the distance between itself and the Shadowfax. It slammed into the sailboat slightly in front of the cockpit, the impact rolling the sailboat a few feet up on its side-the larger vessel was impaled. As she watched in horror, there was a white flash followed almost at once by a deafening, superheated blast wave that pitched the Cheetah’s bow high into the air. She felt as if she’d had her ears slapped, and her eyes watered from the impact. The brilliant white ball turned red as it rose into the sky, leaving a floor of white vapor. Above them the chopper tilted crazily back and forth and then straightened as the shock wave passed. Then Reb and Woody disappeared into the chopper. Finally Laura was pulled up into the helicopter and took her son into her arms. Both of them were crying.
Thorne was the last one in the basket. The pilot, the navigator, and Brooks would stay with the Cheetah until a vessel could be sent out to tow it back. The helicopter moved over and picked up the ensign who had fled from the Cigarette boat.
“We’re heading in,” the man who operated the basket said.
“My daddy!” Reb yelled. “He’s out there!”
The man’s face reflected what they had all known when they had heard Martin’s voice on the radio. Paul Masterson was certainly dead, his body most likely vaporized along with Rainey Lee, the young policeman, Reid Dietrich, and Martin Fletcher.
“Son,” Thorne said. “Your father is gone.”
“No, Thorne!” Reb screamed, grabbing Thorne’s Mae West and shaking it. “He’s not! I know he’s not.” He looked up into Thorne’s face and the tears streamed down both cheeks. “He’ll die if we go away! He promised!”
Laura tightened her grip on him, but he twisted free. “He promised me he’d save Biscuit! He would never lie to me again. You look for him!”
“I’m sorry,” the man in the orange suit said. “We have to get this man back.” He indicated Woody, who was lying on a cot, conscious now, being given first aid.
“Do it,” Woody said through his pain.
“Look for a few minutes,” Laura said. “Paul’s a hard man to kill.”
They followed the Shadowfax’s reverse course for several minutes, the spotlight a white plate floating on the propeller-beaten surface below them.
“He’s not here,” the guardsman at the open door said. Reb was beside him, looking down, Thorne holding the boy back by the shirt gathered in his fist.
As they started the turn for home, Reb screamed and pointed. “Look!”
There was something just outside the spotlight beam, bobbing and waving. When the light moved a few feet to the east, it became Paul Masterson floating on his back with Reb’s birdcage propped on his chest.
“Well, I’ll be fried,” the man in the orange suit said to himself.
62
Thorne Greer found Paul in his hospital room surrounded by flowers. Paul’s left shoulder was wrapped in plaster, and his arm was immobilized so the collarbone could heal. Thorne was carrying a long white floral box.
Sherry Lander, seated in the room’s sole chair, was reading a magazine.
“Agent Greer,” Sherry said. “How are you feeling?”
Paul opened his eye and smiled. “Thorne, come in,” he said. “Excuse me if I don’t get up.” He had a bandage covering the right eye and the damaged brow. The plastic plate had absorbed the deadly blow, but the covering skin had been split wide-open and had taken ten stitches to close. He also had a plaster cast covering the shattered collarbone from Kurt’s bullet.