Tommy sighed. “Well, I tried. So what is it I can do for you, my friend, other than start planning your funeral?”
“Well, I need a gun. Some explosives. A knife.”
“The basics. What else?”
“Well, let’s make a visit to that warehouse of yours and find out. I assume a hundred thousand euro will buy me quite a shopping spree?”
“That it will,” Tommy said. “That it will.”
CHAPTER 31
THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, SOUTH OF GIBRALTAR
he twin 220-horsepower engines underneath Thami Harif’s thirty-five-foot cabin cruiser — named the One-Legged Bandit, in ode to his anatomical deficit — churned with only limited effectiveness in a sea that kept slipping out from under them with the passing of each wave.
From afar, Storm had thought the swells were thirty feet. Now that he was out in it, they were more like forty. From the bottom of one wave, the peak of the next wave felt like a small mountain about to crash on their heads. They’d climb until the height was vertiginous. And then they’d begin their drop back to the trough, which made Storm sure they were going to keep plummeting until they reached the bottom of the ocean.
Tommy had buttoned up every part of the boat that could be buttoned and jettisoned as much equipment as he could, both because he didn’t want it to get swept away by the furious sea and because they needed every bit of buoyancy they could muster. About every twenty waves or so, a particularly large swell would come along and turn the boat into a submarine for a moment or two. The cabin was watertight, so Storm and Tommy would be treated to the surreal sight of watching the water close around them, then overtop of them.
Each time, a tiny, worried voice in Storm would swear this was the wave that was going to overwhelm them; or knock out the engines, rendering them powerless against drifting to wherever the hurricane wanted to blow them; or tear off some important piece of the boat and sink them without mercy.
And yet each time, the One-Legged Bandit would somehow float up to the top, its propellers still spinning through the wind-whipped fury. From underneath, Storm could hear the bilge pumps working double-time to excrete the water that was managing to find its way into the hull.
Tommy was hanging on to the wheel for all he was worth, his old seaman’s arms tested to the limit of their strength. His titanium leg was braced against one side of the bulkhead. His flesh leg was curled tightly around the captain’s chair.
Storm was, likewise, using a considerable amount of energy just to hang on through the unending roller-coaster ride. His task was made more difficult by the gear he had strapped on: scuba apparatus on his back; a modest amount of C-4 taped to the inside of his left leg; blasting caps and a small wireless detonator taped to the inside of the right one; a KA-BAR in a sheath on his right ankle; a bulletproof vest snug around his torso; a dry bag that included a grappling gun, a ring of single-loop plastic restraints, a Sig Sauer P229, and enough bullets to take on whatever hostile personnel he encountered once on board. It weighed him down, but it was a necessary concession. Getting equipped on a small boat in the middle of this maelstrom would have been impossible.
On flat seas, the One-Legged Bandit could have easily covered the distance it needed to travel in fifteen minutes. In these conditions, it had been fighting for two hours with no promise of an end. They had left with what Storm thought was plenty of time before dark. Now he wasn’t so sure.
There was no conversation between the passengers. Each man was simply concentrating on surviving the next wave.
Every once in a while, at the crest of a wave, Storm’s eyes would flit to the anemometer on the dashboard. He had yet to see the wind speed dip below seventy miles per hour. Most of the time it was in the eighties. The device topped out at a hundred. One or two gusts pushed the needle against its stop. The noise alone was deafening.
Finally, when they reached the peak of one particularly colossal wave, Tommy shouted over the howling, “I think I see it. We’re heading right for it. Look at your one o’clock.”
Storm had to wait for seven waves to pass until they again got high enough that he could make out a glimpse of Ingrid Karlsson’s billion-dollar ocean liner. It was still roughly two miles off, which was the extent of the visibility in this tempest.
“Think they’ve seen us?” Storm asked.
“I hope not. I didn’t make this thing torpedo-proof.”
“That was poor planning.”
“Look, Storm, not that this hasn’t been a lot of fun, but this is about as close as I want to go.”
“I understand. I’ll take my leave of you now.”
“Okay, my friend. Good luck.”
They plunged down a particularly steep slope of a wave and sank underwater for three terrifying seconds. Storm held his breath until they popped up again, then clapped Tommy twice on the shoulder.
“Thanks, my friend. I owe you one. Again.”
“You owe me nothing,” he shouted. “Or at least nothing that those hundred thousand euros didn’t take care of.”
Storm could not reply. He had already pulled down his scuba mask and strapped it as tight as it would go to his head. The mask had the regulator built in. Storm twisted a knob and the oxygen started flowing.
With one hand steadying himself, he used his other hand to unstrap the diver propulsion vehicle from the side of the cabin. The DPV was the latest in individual underwater propulsion, a slick little unit developed for military purposes that delivered both speed and durability, along with lights, a navigation system, and other useful features. Storm didn’t want to know how Tommy had procured one. He got it loose, then gripped it tight.
Then he crabbed over to the cabin door and timed his exit. If he opened it at the wrong moment — or, more accurately, if he didn’t get it closed quickly — the cabin would be inundated with Tommy inside it. Without the buoyancy of the air-filled cabin, the boat might not make it up from one of the larger depressions.
Storm waited until the boat had rolled through off one of the smaller troughs and was heading for one of the peaks. Just as soon as he was confident enough water had rolled off the decks, he opened the door and ran through it, slamming it shut with all his strength.
From there, gravity did the rest. The boat’s stern was tilted down at forty-five degrees. Storm followed the slope at an involuntary run, leaping when he reached the gunwale so he could clear over the side.
He was immediately in near total darkness. For one sickening moment, he thought the DPV had been ripped out of his hand by the force of his entry. Then he realized it was still tight in his fist.
As he sank in the water, breathing comfortably the whole time, he got his other hand on the DPV and switched it on. He let his weight belt take him fifty feet below the lowest trough, pressurizing his ears every ten feet or so, then filled his buoyancy regulator.
He switched on the headlight, and next took a look at the navigation system to make sure he was pointed in the correct heading. Then he turned on the propellers and started his journey toward the Warrior Princess.
NOTES FOR TRAVELING IN A HURRICANE: staying under the waves makes progress infinitely easier than trying to fight it out on top of them.
Fifty feet down, Storm was still dimly aware of the frothy, white-capped bedlam above him. But it did not impede his progress.