Wired Kingdom

by Rick Chesler

  “I need to check the GIS before we get too far,” he said, indicating his laptop in the cuddy cabin, and retreated into the bow of the vessel.

  Tara scanned the rocks with her searchlight, looking for signs of the Blue. She saw none. The first symptoms of irritation were gnawing at her when Trevor emerged from the cabin—

  —pointing a pistol at her.

  “What are you doing? Put that thing down!”

  “Shut the hell up and turn off the light!” Lane kept the weapon leveled at her head.

  Despite the intimidating posture, Tara recognized his choice of target as a sign of an inexperienced shooter, a headshot requiring more precise aim and reaction time than a shot to the torso. A professional killer would never take the risk of missing his shot in the dark on a moving boat.

  Still, she was now one-on-one with an armed suspect, a situation she had been trained to avoid at all costs.

  Her finger reached for the light switch. Sudden darkness would require Trevor's eyes to readjust, if only for a second. But a second was all she needed.

  She killed the light and slammed the throttle full ahead while ducking behind the steering console. The instant acceleration launched Trevor toward the stern. He flew by Tara, firing the gun twice on his way past, the bullets embedding in the console.

  Tara's Glock was out before Trevor smashed into the transom and his gun clattered across the deck. Too dark to see where it went. She trained her weapon on Trevor's chest. He held a hand out and whimpered—he thought he was about to die—but she kept her pistol silent. She wouldn’t kill him if she didn’t have to, but considering the mood she was in if he moved the wrong way, she’d finish what he started.

  Trevor pointed past the bow.

  “Rocks!” he yelled.

  Tara was not going to turn around to have Trevor rush at her or pick up his gun. But she was acutely aware that the boat was plowing along unpiloted at full speed. Keeping her weapon on Trevor, she glued her eyes to him while her left hand crossed over and found the throttle.

  She was easing the throttle back when they felt a sickening thud as the boat struck a submerged rock. The impact threw the two of them against the door to the cabin as the craft came to a sudden stop. Tara lost her gun when her head slammed into the doorframe.

  Trevor piled into her and groped about looking for her weapon. In a move calculated to bring horrific pain, Tara wrenched Trevor's pinky finger out to the side, severing the tendon so that the digit only dangled uselessly. He gave a pitiful shriek and then tried to knee her in the groin. Tara turned her hip to deflect the blow and countered with a heel to Trevor’s gut, dropping him to the deck gasping for air.

  Tara used the seconds she had bought sweeping the deck on all fours looking for a gun, and she realized somewhere in the back of her mind that she was getting wet. The boat was turning a slow, wobbly circle. It listed badly. Water lapped at the port rail. Worse, a steady stream of ocean poured in from the cabin.

  Tara's foot came into contact with something heavy and she caught hold of it. Trevor threw himself on top of her and broke her grip. She watched the object skid out of reach.

  There was more scuffling, but Tara would not remember the details of it. The next thing she would recall, however, was producing her handcuffs and slapping a bracelet on Trevor's wrist as it came at her face. She yanked on the free end of the cuffs, pulling Trevor back to the deck, and lunged for the rail. He let her pull his arm by the cuff, concentrating instead on the gun he’d found. Then he heard a ratcheting click click click of the other cuff locking to a metal cleat, handcuffing him to the boat.

  Tara’s eyes swept the deck. Saw Trevor's foot on her Glock. He followed her gaze to his foot and began sliding the gun toward his free hand. She stepped on his mangled finger just as his hand reached the pistol.

  He blacked out before he could scream.

  When he came to, she was standing at the console, shining the searchlight around the deck. She held her gun in her other hand, pointed at him. She spotted Trevor's gun near the stern. Went to it and picked it up. It was an old .38. Nothing special, but deadly all the same. She tucked it into her waistband.

  Turning her attention to the condition of their craft, Tara noted with horror that the water on deck was now ankle deep. The boat slanted undeniably towards the bow, where the rock had ripped a gaping hole.

  They were sinking.

  Tara searched the console for the marine radio. Found it on top, with a bullet hole smack in the middle of the digital display. Her cell phone dripped water when she pulled it from her pocket. Tried it anyway. Nothing. She pointed the pistol at Trevor and asked him if he had a cell phone. Slowly, he removed it and he tossed it to her, but it too was wet; and its faceplate had been smashed during the fight.

  Tara spun around in a slow and deliberate circle, searching the distance for running lights.

  They were alone.

  Trevor, who had been sitting quietly with his knees drawn up to his chest, started crying and repeatedly knocking his head into the rail. He reminded Tara of a crazy guy getting busted on COPS. She’d arrested more people than she could remember—white-collar felons, violent criminals, bad cops—and if she’d learned anything, it was that you could never predict someone’s reaction when they felt those cuffs for the first time. Here was a highly educated computer expert behaving like an indigent drug addict. A sense of imminent loss of freedom could do that to a person. But she felt no pity for him. He had tried to kill her. She would use him to survive, and to advance her knowledge of the case.

  “Trevor, do we have a life raft?” She hoped they wouldn’t need one, but if all else failed she would cling to it like life itself.

  He continued butting his head into the rail, adding an accompaniment of “No, no, no . . .”

  Deciding she couldn’t trust him, she tore the boat apart looking for an emergency flotation device—inflatable diving vest, ski vest, rescue buoy, anything. Lifted all the seat cushions in the rear, probed every corner of the craft with the searchlight. With only the cabin left to search, she glanced at Trevor to make sure he was still chained down and then opened the cabin door.

  She entered the small compartment. It was free of clutter, which meant she could see right away that there was no raft. The forward-most area of the cabin was underwater. If there were life jackets on board, they were stowed here, but she couldn’t bring herself stay in the flooding compartment long enough to check. Hanging on the wall over the flooded section was a white life ring.

  Better than nothing.

  She inched forward, reaching a hand out for it. As she stepped, the bow tilted and took on more water. Screaming as cold ocean assaulted her for the second time that day, she snatched the ring and made her way back. She saw Trevor’s laptop sitting near the door on a bench. Grabbed it seconds before it would have been claimed by a surge of incoming water.

  She stepped out to the deck. Trevor’s eyes widened when he saw her emerge with the life ring. “The boat’s sinking. You’ve got to unlock me.”

  Tara ignored him, shining her light at the rocks on shore while trying to gauge their distance. An eighth of a mile? A quarter? And in a choppy, confused sea.

  “Start the pump,” Trevor said. He pointed to a small bilge pump attached to an old car battery. She went to it and fired it up. She doubted it could have much effect. So did Trevor. “Please,” he continued. “When it sinks it’ll happen fast, and you might not have time to unlock me.” Tara’s gaze turned his blood to ice.

  “Regained what little sense you had, have you?”

  A wave washed over the rail, taking Trevor’s feet out from under him. “I wasn’t go—going to kill you,” he said, choking on sea water.

  Tara stepped back to the console and turned their foundering craft toward shore. They limped toward the rocky beach.

  “You fired at me twice.”

  “I . . . Look, there’s no time to talk right now, okay? Please unlock me from the boat—keep me handcuffed
if you want, just get me off the boat so I have a chance.”

  The investigator in Tara made her forget her predicament for the time being. She took the life ring and climbed on top of the console. “Oh, I think we’ve got plenty of time,” she said, dropping the ring around her neck, oozing false confidence. We’ll never make it to shore.

  Only the rails of the deck were clear of the sea now. Trevor’s eyes radiated the fear of a trapped animal. A thin trail of bloody spittle hung from his mouth. “What do you want me to do?”

  Tara held up the laptop. “Can I send an e-mail from this thing?”

  “Yes. Satellite linkup. Just open Internet Explorer.”

  She logged onto her Internet mail and sent a message to FBI staff who would be monitoring her case activities. She wrote, in typo-ridden shorthand, that she was with a combative suspect in a sinking boat. She described her position both visually and with the GPS coordinates she took from the open GIS program. Clicked SEND and looked up at Trevor. “Okay, now. If you want me to unlock you, you’ll need to answer my questions. What are you into that you would kill an FBI agent for? Did you kill that girl in the video?”

  “No! I didn’t kill h—her.” He spat out invading seawater.

  “Who did?”

  Another wave swamped Trevor’s head. Panicking, he tried to free himself. He jerked his chained arm from the rail in a motion that was far more damaging to his wrist than to the boat. He tried it two more times. The cleat held.

  “Who did, Lane? There’s not much time.” Tara knew that soon her desire for answers would be outweighed by her instinct for self-preservation. She was losing focus.

  “I don’t know. I swear. I don’t know that.” He lost his footing and slipped beneath the water on deck. Atop the console, Tara felt a twinge of fear. What would she do if he didn’t come back up? Part of her wondered if she wasn’t a little too fascinated with watching this guy suffer. Then he pulled himself back up by the handcuff, retching water.

  Just a little more. “In another couple of minutes you’re gonna be part of L.A.’s newest artificial reef if you don’t answer me. There’s no whale beached on these rocks, is there? You tricked me with some kind of computer-generated scene. That demonstrates serious premeditation, Lane.”

  “Arrest me. I want to talk to my lawyer. Just get me outta here.”

  “You tried to kill me—the ballistics report will bear that out—and so I had to handcuff you to the rail to control you. Also true. But then the boat sank so fast I barely had time to save myself.” She hung her head in a mock show of sadness.

  “You sick bitch! You can’t do that. That would make you a murderer.”

  “Who was in that floatplane earlier today?” That’s it. Last question.

  He screamed his entire reply at the top of his lungs, head thrown back to the sky, yanking spastically on the handcuff as bloody spittle erupted from his mouth. “I don’t know! I don’t know! All right? I don’t know! I was being blackmailed by some guys at Martin-Northstar—system administrators with access. I told them I was interested in certain types of telemetry for web sites, and I paid them five grand to hook me up with technology I was able to modify for the whale-cam. But when they found out I made a deal with Wired Kingdom, they started threatening me. E-mailing me pictures they’d taken from security cameras showing me in restricted areas, saying they had fingerprints of mine they’d lifted from keyboards, computer routing records with my home IP address logging on to secure systems. Said they would send it all to the FBI if I didn’t wire them fifty thousand dollars.”

  “What did you do then?”

  He took a deep breath and slumped against the rail. “I wired them the money. Took everything I had—my signing bonus from the show, my savings, borrowed from my parents, sold some computer equipment. Everything I could get. Then they contacted me two weeks later and said if I didn’t wire them another twenty-five grand they’d turn me in anyway.”

  “And you thought by killing me those problems would just go away?”

  “When they asked for the twenty-five I decided to fight back. I said I’d turn them in for their part in getting me the original designs if they didn’t lay off. They said they’d be sending someone for me if they didn’t get the cash. I refused to wire it—couldn’t get it anyway—so when you started coming around I figured you were the one they sent to kill me. Posing as FBI.”

  “It didn’t occur to you after the girl was murdered live on the web that authorities might be looking into it?”

  He shook his head. “At first I really thought it was part of the show somehow, like everyone else. A media-hype thing. I called a producer right after it happened and asked him that. Anthony Silveras. You can ask him yourself. He’ll remember my calling.”

  Tara shook her head in amazement. “Newsflash, Lane: I’m a real FBI agent. And right now you’re a real attempted-murder suspect. It’s time to go.”

  She forced herself to get down from the console into the swirling water on deck. Let the laptop fall into the water. She waded toward Trevor, familiar sensations of panic welling up within as the water roiled around her. Too risky to come within arm’s reach of him.

  “Trevor, I don’t trust you. So if you want to live, keep quiet and do exactly as I say.”

  He glared up at her before ducking another wave.

  She held up a small key. “I’m going to toss this to you. You need to catch it.”

  If possible, his eyes got even wider. “Why can’t you just hand it to me? I’ll stick my hand out and you drop it into my palm.”

  “No deal. One chance is all anyone gets to kill this agent. I’ll toss you the key from here. Take it or leave it.”

  “Okay. Okay. Just give it to me!”

  Under ordinary circumstances it was a trivial toss, but at night, handcuffed to a sinking boat, knowing you’re dead if you don’t catch the damn thing, Trevor knew it was a different story. He pleaded with Tara once more to just hand him the key.

  “One . . .”

  Bait wrappers, Styrofoam coffee cups and other flotsam drifted away from the small cruiser as it began to slide under for good. Tara had already started to shiver.

  “I’ll keep the light steady on your hand.”

  “D—don’t, please. Just hand it to me, I w—”

  “Two . . .”

  As the water drained from his face, leaving him stammering and sputtering, Tara shot forward, thrust the key directly into Trevor’s palm, and retreated to beyond arm’s length. “Don’t drop it.”

  He didn’t look up at her or offer any kind of thanks, but simply bent to the task of freeing himself. She held the light so he could see what he was doing. The beam jumped in her shaky grip.

  No sooner had Trevor removed the bracelet from his wrist than the entire boat was swallowed by the sea. Life ring around her waist, Tara jumped clear of the sinking cruiser. She was shocked at how fast it happened. Ten more seconds and Trevor would have had to unlock himself on the way to the seafloor. They heard the discordant shriek of fiberglass grating against rock as the craft scuffed along the bottom only a few feet beneath them.

  Tara said a silent prayer of thanks that their foundering vessel had made progress toward shore.

  CHAPTER 12

  Trevor moved to put a hand on the life ring. Tara waved her Glock at him. “Off.”

  He backpaddled.

  Neither knew just how close to shore they were until the next wave came. A gurgling river of surge whisked them through a barnacle-encrusted cut in the rocks. Trevor, somewhere ahead of Tara in the darkness, cried out in pain as his skin was sliced by the sharp crustaceans. He and Tara were washed through the channel and deposited in a shallow open area. Tara was grateful to scrabble over the uneven rocks.

  Trevor scrambled up to a rocky shelf and collapsed there in a tide pool. Emboldened by having two feet on solid ground, Tara approached him, gun at the ready. But he only lay there on his back, motionless in a bed of green sea anemones.

  “I
like it here,” he said, not looking at Tara, but staring up at the dark sky. He closed his eyes. Trevor would be of no help to her.

  Tara took in their surroundings, looking for a way off the surf-swept shelf. She saw none. A near-vertical wall of rock and scrub brush rose into the night sky. A treacherous array of jagged tide pools stretched endlessly in either direction. Buffeted by strong winds, she wondered if it was high or low tide, and if they would be able to last through the night without being swept from their rocky perch. Tara thought back to Trevor’s laptop, now on the sea bottom. Did her e-mail get through to the field office?

  Sitting on a pile of kelp, she had almost nodded off for the umpteenth time when a faint rhythmic thumping caught her attention. Suddenly a helicopter buzzed in low, searing the tide pools with a high candlepower spotlight.

  “FBI. Don’t move. We’re coming down,” a voice boomed from a loudspeaker. A line was dropped from the aircraft and the first man from a SWAT team rappelled to the rocky shelf.

  L.A. COUNTY JAIL

  After receiving medical treatment for the injuries he had sustained in the fight with Tara, and from being dragged across the rocks, Trevor Lane was taken to L.A. County Jail and booked for the attempted murder of a federal agent. He was then placed in an interrogation room. Tara, in a borrowed suit one size too small, which earned several glances from her male associates, watched Trevor from the dark side of the one-way glass. Two of the SWAT team members who had rescued them watched with her. Trevor sat with his head buried in his elbow on the tabletop.

  “You think he knows anything else?” one of the SWAT guys asked.

  Tara shook her head. “If he didn’t tell me what he knows while he was handcuffed to a sinking boat . . .”

  The SWAT men exchanged approving glances. “Give us five minutes alone with him to find out for sure,” one of them said.

  Tara shrugged. “Go for it.”