A Dangerous Breed

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Liashko was screaming at his men. The barge pilot had wisely taken cover from the barrage inside the steel container. He obeyed his boss, jumping out and running to the pilothouse of the barge. The bodyguards checked the freighter’s progress—too far away now to shoot at us again—before they risked moving to the open side of the truck.

  They shouldered their rifles and bent down to lift something. Burke. Facedown and unmoving. Was he dead?

  The two men dragged his limp body to the cruiser. They opened the back door and threw Burke inside with me, more onto the floor than the seat. The back of Burke’s trooper jacket was torn in two places over his shoulder blades. The black fabric gleamed wetly. Blood. He’d been hit, probably in the first wild volley from the deck.

  But he was breathing. Raspy, but there. I twisted to get my cuffed hands lower, to feel at his jacket. Yes. A lightweight ballistic vest, maybe stolen along with the uniform. He’d come prepared.

  Body armor or no, Burke was wounded. Though he may not have enough time remaining for the bullets to prove fatal.

  Liashko came to the open door.

  “Your man is shot,” I said.

  He didn’t bother to look. “Sean would die tonight, anyway. I know his plans. I know he is the reason you are stealing from me.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He is too excited to have me come here,” Liashko said. “I know him, like his father. They smell blood. They turn on their masters.” He spat on Burke’s prone body, his lips stained red from my headbutt.

  Liashko motioned to a bodyguard, who handed him an automatic pistol. He aimed it at my head.

  “You will tell me who you are, if you and Sean have other partners. Then it will be quick. Instead.”

  He spoke to the bodyguards. One of them came around to the driver’s side. I watched him through the clear barrier. He opened the door, leaned in to release the emergency brake, and shifted the car into neutral. The car eased fractionally on its shocks. Wheels ready to roll.

  Liashko waited, his deep-set eyes expectant.

  I didn’t say anything. Just attempted a defiant grin, which was probably closer to a baring of teeth.

  Liashko nodded like that was an answer he’d already known. He closed the car door and motioned. The bodyguards smiled and bent into the glare of the headlights to push at the front of the car, getting it rolling backward toward the open bow. A bump, as the tires hit the slight rise of the retracted loading ramp. It didn’t slow our progress.

  The back wheels rolled off the deck. The cruiser’s chassis dropped to hit the bow edge with a grinding crash. I tumbled backward, Burke rolling from the floor onto the hard black plastic seat.

  For an instant, it seemed like the car would be stuck there. Then the combined force of its momentum and the grinning bodyguards’ shoves slid it one inch, three more—

  We were falling.

  Fifty-Two

  The black water splashed and gurgled as if hungrily devouring the car’s front compartment. It found tiny crevices, entry points between the seats and the caged rear. Icy gouts sprayed over me and the unconscious Burke. My feet were under now. So cold it felt like stepping on an electrified wire.

  Ignore it. Set everything else from my mind and keep searching for the fallen lockpick. I’d had a hold on it, was already picking the handcuffs, when the car’s rear tires banged off the barge and threw everything inside ass-backward. The pick was still here. It had to be. My fingertips brushed across the seamless hard plastic of the seat, even as the car tilted farther forward and the water rose to meet my touch.

  Burke might have the keys to the handcuffs on his belt. Or in his pocket. Or not at all. No time and no way to search him now. Find the pick.

  There. A tap of metal, brushing against my knuckles as a first wave lapped across the seat. I stretched, touched it, got the pick between two fingers that were already growing numb. I twisted around. The end of the metal pick scraped the cuffs, missing the lock. Water at my chest now, squeezing my ribs. Burke was half floating, his face bobbing just above the roiling surface. My head touched the roof, and the surface of the water rose fast to catch up.

  Breathe, Shaw. You have all the time you need. Just like catching a line drive, or taking your shot at five hundred yards with iron sights alone. Nothing else exists. I closed my eyes.

  The pick found the handcuff lock. Eased in. Turned, gently. All like my fingers had nothing to do with it.

  My wrists were free. And my mouth underwater. I pushed with my legs, toward the last vanishing inches of air at the rear window. The car was near to vertical. Sinking fast. By turning my neck I found air, gasped twice, held it. Outside the window, I could see plumes of bubbles escaping from the car’s trunk.

  Burke was under now. His autonomic response keeping him from inhaling water into his lungs. I crawled hand-over-hand down his body to his ankle. Working by feel. The world was growing dark, and squeezing tighter.

  He’d worn it. His backup Glock. Bless your homicidal habits, you maniac.

  I yanked the gun from his holster and spun to shove it against the side window and began pulling the trigger, the explosions in the enclosed underwater space hammering on my ears. Two rounds, three, four. I reached out blindly to shove with both hands and the splintered window fell outward, more like fabric than glass.

  Burke’s legs were closest. I grabbed his foot and clambered out of the window. The cruiser’s headlights still shone, silt and foam swirling frantically past the beams as we dropped. How deep were we now? I got myself free, and the sinking car immediately pulled at Burke, threatening to tear him from my grasp. It turned me upside-down, borne deeper by the car and my grip on Burke’s pants cuff.

  I reached in, finding his other leg, twisting to push against the car with my feet and force Burke’s reluctant body from the car. Was he alive? The water pressure pounded at my skull. His legs were out, then his torso, and then suddenly we were floating loose.

  Below us, the police cruiser flew toward the void, its headlights seeking, white paint as luminescent as some deep-sea creature returning home.

  I kicked. Burke’s body rose, too slowly. His body armor. I kicked harder, dragging at him. If there was an end to the water above, I couldn’t see it. If the crushing pressure was lessening, I couldn’t tell.

  My heart stuttered in my chest, desperately pushing blood in search of oxygen that wasn’t there. Somehow my head was expanding from the inside out. Everything was pain. Any second now I would lose the fight and my body would inhale, reflexively, and then there would be a moment of horrible agony before it was over.

  Kick, damn you.

  Was that a light? The moon? Or the light of the end?

  Kick.

  We broke the surface.

  I coughed, retched, my lungs so desperate they had forgotten their job. Burke bobbed up next to me. His face to the sky. I grabbed at him, thumped on his chest.

  He let out a strangled gasp. Clutched at me. Clawed my face. Pulled me underwater in his atavistic terror of waking to dark and pain and bone-deep cold.

  I fought free from his thrashing limbs to surface again. He reached for me again, eyes wide and unseeing. I thrust him back with one arm, reached up with the other, and clubbed him as hard as I could.

  Just enough. Burke went limp once more, floating on his back. I got behind him in a lifeguard carry, where I could keep him from drowning me if he revived.

  If. I looked into the distance for the first time. I could see the sliver of black that signified land and sparse fairy dots from the brightest lights onshore. A long, long distance. Four miles or more to the closest point in the west.

  Already my teeth had stopped chattering. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet.

  We were going to die.

  And with that decision made for us, I swam.

  It was a very slow process. My limbs like planks of wood. One arm, two legs, moving as well as I could convince them to move, a conscious debate each time. Towing Burke with me
like driftwood.

  A waspish buzzing sound filled my ears. An engine. Somewhere east of us, getting closer. Still out of my sight. I tried to raise my unfeeling arm to wave. It barely lifted above the surface. Tried again, and the arm pointed skyward.

  The sound was coming fast from behind. I flailed to turn myself, just in time to see the spearhead of the gray hull bearing down on us. I blinked stupidly. I knew that boat.

  A round bristled head appeared over the side.

  Jaak.

  “Shaw, man,” he said, grinning. “You have crazy days, I tell you.”

  Fifty-Three

  Jaak’s two crewmates fished us out, working in tandem to haul our soaked and uncooperative bodies aboard my boat. Jaak apologized for not helping. Given he’d been stabbed barely a week before, I could forgive him slacking off. I pointed more than I spoke to show them where clothes and towels were stored. My lips and tongue felt like so much dead fish.

  West. The barge had gone west. Damn it, why hadn’t I told them that first? I pushed my way past them to take the wheel, pushing the throttle forward with my elbow. The speedboat leapt forward and the sailors stumbled back, protesting.

  “Shaw,” Jaak said. “You’re too cold.”

  “Nerve gas,” I said. “They have nerve gas. Poison. You understand?”

  Jaak’s mate Harri translated into Finnish. Jaak blanched.

  The gunfight between the ships might have been seen. Liashko must know he could put the barge ashore anywhere with a boat ramp or even a shallow beach. They’d headed west, toward the closest land. Probably aiming to get off the water before police boats or the Coast Guard came hunting.

  That land was the Kitsap Peninsula. Did Liashko know the area? The peninsula would be quiet, with plenty of beaches. But it was also remote. A long drive south and around the Sound until he’d be back on the mainland.

  The cops could corner him. If we called it in now.

  I told Jaak to take the helm while I stripped and fumbled myself into a dry turtleneck and paint-spattered jeans, my urgency and rage combining to warm my bones. My mouth still carried the taste of brine. I spat over the transom into the speedboat’s thrashing wake. Jaak pressed coffee on me, and I gratefully downed half a pint straight from the thermos.

  The Finns already had the groggy Burke half out of his sopping trooper uniform. The wounds on his back had bled but not profusely. Cuts and punctures. I guessed that the vest had mushroomed the rounds and Burke had caught a few splinters along with the impact that had knocked him cold. Lucky. Lucky that the gunfire had come from a distance, and that the rounds weren’t jacketed with something harder.

  “He’s dangerous,” I said, pointing. “Once he’s in dry clothes, tie his hands and feet. And watch him close.”

  The VHF radio was on the shelf just inside the cabin door. I reached in to switch it to Channel 16 and handed the receiver to Harri, the one with the stronger English.

  “Call for the Coast Guard. Say you saw a lot of gunfire between two ships on Puget Sound. A cargo ship and a smaller craft. The cargo ship headed out of the Sound and—” I checked our heading. The beam of a small lighthouse shone like a low star, maybe two miles off now.

  “—and the smaller ship is going toward Point No Point,” I finished. “Say that back to me.”

  He did, perfectly. The Finnish crew was adept at handling emergencies.

  “Good,” I said. “If they ask, tell them who you are and that you borrowed this boat from your friend Hollis Brant. There won’t be trouble.”

  As Harri hailed the emergency line, I dove into the cabin, tossing the sleeping cushions aside to reach the compartment underneath. Inside was my worn set of hiking boots. And, wrapped in a waxed cotton sheet, a Mossberg pump shotgun and two boxes of shells. The shotgun was kept loaded. I filled my pockets with shells and grabbed a burner phone and a flashlight from the chart locker.

  When I emerged, Burke was alert.

  “Let me go,” he said.

  “I should’ve let you drown. You sold us out.”

  “The hell I did.” He looked around at the sailors.

  “You can talk,” I said. “They’re with me.”

  “Anatoly changed the plan tonight. The deal was supposed to go down three days from now.”

  “Then you should have told Martens. Called the task force in.”

  He sneered. “If I did that, I’d miss my shot at Anatoly.”

  The truth was so obvious I felt like my pounding head was some sort of divine penance for not realizing it earlier. “You were never going into WITSEC.”

  “Shit no. I’d kill Anatoly and his two pussies and call the Feds to come pick up the arms. My boy gets the bust, and I’m gone. Disappearing ain’t hard when you’ve been preparing as long as I have.” He showed me his bound wrists. “Cut me loose.”

  “Not a prayer.”

  Burke swore. At length, as I finished tying the laces on my boots. I imagined even Harri learned a few new words. “You owe me.”

  I glanced at the vast stretch of Sound to our stern. “Remember where you were ten minutes ago and say that again.”

  “You’re going to take him out, right? I can help you. You can’t do it without me.”

  Ahead of us, the torch of the lighthouse burned. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I glimpsed a reflection off green metal, at the beach mere yards from the short tower. I hefted the shotgun.

  “Fuck I can’t,” I said.

  Fifty-Four

  I had the Finns put me ashore on the beach, half a mile south of the point. Or what passed for one. Point No Point had earned its name because, from a distance, it tricked the eye into thinking a mere bump in the land was something more substantial.

  But it was enough of a bend that the short lighthouse was out of my view as I waded through the low surf. And I would be just as hidden, running along the beach.

  Liashko and his men would watch the single road that led visitors to the lighthouse. With an eye on the water, too. Those were the places where cops might approach. They would pay less attention to the shoreline.

  They couldn’t have arrived too many minutes ahead of us. The speedboat was a hell of a lot faster than any barge, and I had pushed her throttle all the way open. How long would it take them to offload the truck? The pilot could run the barge hard into the shore—I guessed they planned to abandon the vessel—and then lower its ramp. Picking the right spot would be critical. If the truck with its heavy load floundered in loose sand, they were finished.

  A path off the beach led to a hiking trail. Tall thickets and bramble bushes shielded me on both sides. Ahead, a flash of yellow light from behind the building. Too low for even the undersized lighthouse. Headlights. I slowed my run, hunching over and keeping the shotgun butt tucked tight to my shoulder.

  As I neared the end of the trail, the rev of a diesel engine temporarily covered the soft crunch of my footfalls on the gravel. I looked through a gap in the reeds. The truck, on the other side of the lighthouse. Already moving.

  I kicked into high gear, tearing off the path, full tilt toward the stubby black-capped tower. Angling left to follow the moving target of the engine.

  I stopped at the corner of the white building that abutted the lighthouse itself. The beams of headlights came into view. The truck was still on the beach, making its steady way forward on the harder-packed sand, parallel to the water. Steering to avoid chunks of flotsam and larger logs that had washed onto land over the years. Along with a line of small boulders, the timber formed a natural barrier that prevented them from simply driving straight off the shore.

  Another hundred yards down the beach, lampposts illuminated a red-roofed house and nearby parking lot. The log barrier ended there. Liashko and his men would turn onto the paved lot and then to the road, and then they would be gone. The truck passed my corner at a runner’s pace. They were careful. Not losing their nerve. Not getting stuck.

  I sprinted out from the shelter of the building, racing tow
ard the driver’s side of the truck as it trundled away. Veering into an angle of approach I hoped matched the blind spot in its side mirror. Only thirty yards away from their taillights and closing fast. Jumping the boulders and the line of bleached logs like huge bones, my boots digging into the sand as I ran faster.

  At fifteen feet they slammed on the brakes. They’d seen me. Too late for them.

  The first blast from my shotgun exploded the left front tire of the truck. The second tore the side mirror from its brackets. I faded back, racking another shell and blowing out the two rear tires on the left side with one shot.

  They floored the gas. Trying to escape the sudden onslaught. The big flatbed with its cargo sagged heavily to one side on flattened tires and dug in. Sand sprayed from under the shredded rubber for an instant before the front wheel became mired too deep to do even that. The truck’s right tires pushed forward, the left side stayed stuck. The truck began to grind a slow painful circle in the dirt and sand.

  I dove behind the nearest driftwood log. Knelt into shooting position. Over the howl of the straining engine I caught a loud creak from the passenger door on the far side. In another second, the silhouette of legs came into view under the flatbed. One of the bodyguards moving to the rear of the truck.

  I shot the legs under the truck bed, racked, and fired again at the same spot over a scream of pain or fear I barely heard over the ringing in my ears. Half deaf and half blind on the dark beach with muzzle flashes still hot in my vision. I put one more blast through the driver’s window. Not hearing the shatter.

  Keep them guessing. Don’t give the guards a chance to sight in with their assault weapons. I retreated, running to crouch behind one of the jagged boulders. The driver’s door opened and the barge pilot fell out to scramble to his feet. He ran clumsily up the beach, into the beams of the headlights and away. I let him go, watching the truck as I loaded shells into the underside of the Mossberg by feel.