Which exposed the gunman’s bluff. He needed Nimec. Needed his body intact to pull off his scheme.
Leaving Annie — and Annie alone — immediately vulnerable to the gun.
Nimec did not wait so much as another heartbeat to make his move. Glancing quickly around, he spun in a half circle and snatched hold of Kettering’s wrist with his right hand, wrenching it up and backward as he jammed his left shoulder against Kettering’s chest, driving into him with all the momentum he could summon. Kettering grunted and began to stumble backward, but Nimec held on to his wrist, seeing the hank of cloth bunched in his gloved hand, saturated with the goddamn sleep drug he’d been about to smother him with. Nimec simultaneously jerked the hand up again and twisted it over and around, slapping it over Kettering’s face, holding it there over his nose and mouth.
“Stop or I’ll kill the bitch!” Eckers yelled, waving his Steyr as he moved forward in a kind of charge. “You hear me, I said sto—”
“Down, Annie!” Nimec said, shouting over him. And she did, hurling herself flat to the deck as he whipped Kettering around in front of him, pushing his suddenly limp body between Eckers and himself while reaching for the stock of the submachine gun against Kettering’s side, tearing it from its harness, and getting his finger around the trigger to squeeze off a two-round burst.
His chest soaked with blood, Eckers wobbled on his feet a moment, looking straight at Nimec as Kettering sagged and then fully collapsed between them. Then his eyes rolled up in his sockets so that only their whites were visible, and he also dropped to the deck.
Nimec turned, hurried to Annie, knelt beside her.
“You all right?” he said, taking hold of her arm.
She nodded, started to push herself onto her knees, trembling all over.
“C’mon, honey,” Nimec said, helping her up. He shot a glance around toward the buoys across the water. “We’ve got to move fast.”
“That’s it,” said the racer’s copilot. He’d heard the report of the Steyr TMP come echoing across the water perhaps a second before. “They’ve done the woman.”
At the wheel in the silence following the gunshots, Harrison lifted his binoculars to his eyes and peered eastward. Having reached the safe passage lane marked by the buoys, yards from where the broken points of the ledge had emerged above the receding tide, he had only to follow orders and wait for Eckers and Kettering to bring the pontooner in their direction. By the time it arrived, enough of the formation would be out of the water for the pleasure boat and its unconscious passengers to be driven into the rocks, a seeming mishap that would claim the lives of both the guide and their prime target. The woman’s body would need to be transferred to the racer and disposed of separately, and Harrison assumed the job would fall on him, as it had with that bookkeeper and the hired men who’d come to take him off the island. Carving them up had been unpleasant but not unprecedented — Harrison did whatever was required and accepted his pay, that was all.
His lenses focused on the pontoon boat now, he suddenly straightened and cursed under his breath.
The racer’s copilot looked at him. “What’s wrong?” he said.
Harrison let the binocs sink down from his face.
“They’re still standing,” he said, disconcerted. “Both targets.”
A stunned pause.
“How about Eckers?”
“I can’t see him,” Harrison said.
“Kettering?”
Harrison had raised the glasses back to his eyes.
“No,” he said.
The copilot looked at him again. “Shit,” he said. “This is unbelievable.”
Harrison shook his head.
“You read reports on that Sword op,” he said. “There was nothing in them to indicate it would be simple.”
Silence.
“How do we carry on?” said the copilot.
Harrison reached for the ignition and their engine revved.
“First we’ll need to get on top of that boat,” he said. “Then we need to decide.”
His hands on the pontoon boat’s wheel, Nimec glanced back over his shoulder and spotted the racer approaching from the vicinity of the underwater ledge. When he’d heard its outboards come to life only moments ago, it had been too far off to see with the naked eye. The pilot was pushing it hard.
“Annie,” Nimec said. “Think you can hold us steady?”
Beside him in the pilot’s station, Annie stood gripping the radio handset she’d used to contact UpLink’s temporary facility across the channel, providing its operators with Nimec’s coded identifiers for emergency assistance. Nodding, she clipped it into place on the console, eased closer to him.
“I can try,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
Nimec looked at her.
“This boat’ll move at forty-five, fifty miles an hour if I really pour it on,” he said. “The racer can double, maybe triple that speed.”
“We won’t be able to outdistance it.”
“No,” he said. “But we might not have to.”
She shook her head to indicate her confusion.
“Think about it, Annie,” he said. “Those guys on our tail are handcuffed as far as how they can finish their business, same as the ones who stayed aboard with us. Their whole setup depended on making it look like Blake ran us into the outcrop.”
It took barely a second for understanding to flood Annie’s eyes.
“They won’t want to shoot,” she said.
“That’s what I’m betting,” Nimec said. “And fast as their boat travels, ours is a lot bigger and heavier. They try to ram us, it’ll be the racer that takes the worse beating.”
Annie nodded. Then, not quite lost to their hearing under the growl of the vessel at their rear, a low moan rose from where Blake lay sprawled on deck.
“He needs a doctor,” she said. “If we don’t get him some medical help…”
“I know, Annie,” Nimec said. “But we can’t do anything for him until we shake loose that chase boat… and for that I need you to take the wheel.”
She nodded again, shifted places with him.
“I’ve got us headed southeast toward that wilderness preserve Murthy talked about,” Nimec said, and motioned toward the instrument panel’s compass and GPS displays. “Keep us on course.” He hesitated. “And if there’s any gunfire, keep your head down.”
Annie looked at him, fingers around the wheel now.
“I thought we’re betting against that,” she said.
Nimec squeezed her shoulder.
“Just in case,” he said, and slid from behind the console.
Nimec examined the Steyr he’d taken from Annie’s attacker and set its firing lever to full-automatic mode. He’d already ejected its magazine, determined it had plenty of rounds left, then palmed it back into its slot. If he was right and the chase team was still locked into its original plan, a few bullets would be all he needed.
He stood with his back to the pilot’s station and looked out beyond the pontooner’s stern. The speedboat was close and getting closer, spray flying off to either side of its windscreen, water sheeting off its flanks, a white chop of foam trailing behind it. Seabirds squalled overhead or launched from the water in flapping clouds, terrified by the loud roar of its powerplants.
Nimec saw the racer angle off to starboard and hurried to the safety rail. Then he waited, his finger on the trigger.
The speedboat gained by the second. Came closer, closer, closer…
Finally it caught up, nosing past the stern, then rapidly pulling even with the pontooner’s keel, continuing to surge forward until the two vessels were moving along side-by-side.