Wired Kingdom

by Rick Chesler

  “Go on,” Tara said. Give me the details.

  “And then, on this very boat, Crystal told me that she intended to marry my father. I tried to convince her to break it off with him, explain that she was ruining a twenty-five-year marriage. You know what she told me?”

  “No Dr. Reed, what did she tell you?” As long as she was providing more details about the case, Tara saw no reason to apprehend Anastasia immediately. People—especially wealthy people—had a way of clamming up under their lawyer’s advice once they saw the inside of a jail cell. Let her run her mouth for a bit.

  “She told me that girls were just a phase for her, and that I’d grow out of it when I found the right man, like she did.”

  “And for her that ‘right man’ was your father?”

  “So she said. Our family was finally back together again, and now it was being torn apart by someone I thought had cared for me. And so . . .” Anastasia trailed off, her face a mask of anguish and confusion.

  “And so you shot her and pushed her overboard.”

  A tear fell down Anastasia’s cheek. The whale-cam began to tremble in her hand. “I’m sorry,” Anastasia said. More tears chased after the first. Eventually they mingled with the seawater dripping from the whale-cam.

  Tara was dumbfounded. How was it possible that so keen a mind—such an extraordinary intellect—could also be so primitive in its capacity for human relationships? She’s lonely. Coming off a painful rejection. . . . Stein cheated on her. . . . I rejected her. . . . But that would be for the psychologists to theorize over later.

  “What about Trevor Lane? Were you involved with him in any way?”

  “No,” she said, sniffling now. “He came to my father saying he invented a telemetry device small enough, rugged enough, and powerful enough for long-term deployment on wild marine animals. I guess it turns out that he stole the design from some black-market defense-tech ring, but we didn’t know anything about that. That was his world.”

  Tara had heard enough. “Okay, Dr. Reed, I need you to turn around, put your hands behind your head, and get on your knees.” Anastasia slowly turned around, facing away from Tara.

  “On your knees!”

  As Anastasia started to kneel, Tara heard the distinctive CRACK from the harpoon gun. Tara hit the deck, covered her head with her arms.

  A second later the grenade-tipped projectile struck the ketch amidships. The blast knocked a hole in the upper portion of the ship’s hull.

  Tara sprung from the deck and turned back to Anastasia, who was gone. “Dr. Reed!” she called out. “Don’t make things worse than they already are.” It made Tara nervous to think about just how far away from her field office she was right now, so she pushed the thought from her mind.

  In the distance Tara could hear the whump-whump-whump of helicopter rotors. Worried they may be sinking, she took a precious second to glance at the side of the boat where the harpoon had struck. They did not appear to be listing or taking on water. The sound of the helicopter grew louder, but she did not want to take her eyes off the deck a second time to look for it.

  Tara’s gaze swept the vessel from bow to stern. No sign of Anastasia. She had not heard any splashes. She had to be somewhere in the cabin.

  Tara walked around the ship’s side. She jumped on top of the cabin where there was a small sundeck. As she climbed over the railing there, she lost hold of her pistol and dropped it, then heard the clatter of metal on metal followed by a splash as it went overboard.

  Her mind screamed one question: Did Anastasia hear it? She didn’t think so. She hoped her suspect didn’t have a gun somewhere in the cabin. She must have had one at some point to shoot Crystal, Tara thought, but it was likely she would have disposed of it afterwards. Probably threw it overboard in the same water Crystal died in . . . 1,600 feet deep.

  Tara imagined Crystal running around the ketch for her life, perhaps over the same sundeck on which she now crouched, Anastasia close behind. Tara made a mental note to have the boat searched for forensic evidence—bullet holes, blood that might be revealed by the chemical luminol, any signs of a struggle . . .

  The helicopter was loud now. Tara looked up. There it was, a big, beautiful Coast Guard bird, bearing down fast on the black schooner. She lamented the fact that she’d left her radio in the salon.

  “I can’t go to prison, you know,” Anastasia called out from inside the cabin. “You know I couldn’t live like that.”

  Tara didn’t respond. Why give away her position? The fact that Anastasia remained in the cabin was encouraging. But that didn’t mean the scientist was unarmed.

  And then it was too late. Anastasia popped her head and shoulders out of a covered hatch at the bow end of the same sundeck Tara crouched on, aiming a crossbow directly at her. “Your turn to freeze, detective,” Anastasia said.

  “What do you think you’re doing? You think if you kill me, that you’ll just be able to sail off into the sunset?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d rather die out here on the ocean, where I belong, than spend the rest of my life in a cage.”

  At that moment the Coast Guard helicopter buzzed in low over the OLF gunship. Two flash grenades detonated, one after the other. Then a team of heavily armed men rappelled onto the deck of the schooner, covered by automatic weapons fire.

  Anastasia said, “Looks like we won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Tara asked, hands in the air.

  “There’s not much you can do. I know it’s your job to bring me in. But I cannot allow that to happen, Tara. It’s ironic, you know.” Anastasia carefully climbed up through the open hatch cover. To do this she had to hold the crossbow with only one hand, but she never lowered it, and Tara didn’t think for a second that there was a decent opportunity to charge her. Anastasia stood on the sundeck next to the hatch, both hands now back on her weapon, still pointed at Tara’s heart.

  “What’s ironic?” Tara was buying time—anything to avoid being shot with that god-awful looking thing. She noticed a rope that trailed past her along the deck and between Anastasia’s feet.

  “‘I intend to get that hard drive, Dr. Reed.’” She mimicked the tone and inflection of Tara’s voice almost perfectly. The effect was chilling. “Do you remember saying that to me, in the studio?” Anastasia pressed.

  Tara only returned her stare.

  “Well, you were right. You are going to get it. This is the tag delivery system I used to implant the device into the whale. But a whale has about a foot of blubber to absorb the impact. You don’t look like you’re packing that much fat,” she said, looking Tara’s body up and down.

  “Please don’t. That won’t solve anything.” Tara said. The crossbow’s dart, to which Anastasia had attached the tag, certainly looked lethal enough at such a close range. Anastasia had the bow drawn all the way back. Tara had taken enough ballistics courses to know that the speed of its projectile would be measured in hundreds of feet per second, the force of its draw in hundreds of pounds.

  FBI FIELD OFFICE, LOS ANGELES

  Tara’s boss, Special Agent in Charge Will Branson, stood in front of a computer monitor set up by staffers to keep an eye on the wired whale’s feed. “How the hell did this happen?” he bellowed. An assistant replied something about the underwater team being preoccupied with the hijacked submersible. “Never mind. Get some of that underwater team on that sailboat. Now, damn it! We’ve got an agent one-on-one with an armed murder suspect in a close-quarters environment. Get them the hell over there! And where’s the Coast Guard?”

  “They’re in a gun battle with the environmental terrorist group, sir,” another staffer reported.

  “Tell them to send more men!”

  “Sir, I’m getting word that the team is working on raising the sub, using air bags,” a different staffer, monitoring a secure communications channel, said.

  “Give me that.” Branson took the handset.

  “Listen to me, agent . . .
No, you listen to me! I am Special Agent in Charge Branson, L.A. Field Office. I don’t care if you’re saving eight hundred citizens. Don’t tell me you can’t spare two men to save one of our own. Now get somebody’s ass on that ketch, right now!”

  He slammed the phone down and turned his eyes back to the monitor, where part of a crossbow could be seen in the foreground, with Special Agent Shores kneeling with her hands up in the background. He had no doubt that the underwater team would comply with his orders.

  He just hoped it wouldn’t be too late.

  CHAPTER 46

  ABOARD KETCH ME IF YOU CAN

  Tara and Anastasia could hear gunfire as the Coast Guard tactical team shot OLF into submission. Screams of agony punctuated the barrage of bullets. It was not easy for Tara to stand with her back to the carnage unfolding only a hundred yards away, but she dared not take her eyes off Anastasia. She couldn’t help but notice the Blue, however, swimming away from the ketch toward the open sea at a leisurely pace.

  “I’d say Eric Slime and his crew are getting what they deserve right about now,” Anastasia said. “And now I’m afraid it’s your turn, Detective.”

  “Great, will you make up a cute little name for me, too?”

  “Believe me, I’ve thought of a lot of cute little names for you, dear.”

  “I never hurt anyone,” Tara whined. “Why do I deserve to be killed? I didn’t even have to come out here today, you know that? I volunteered so that I could help you prove your father’s innocence.” Tara did her best to trace the path of the rope running between Anastasia’s feet without moving her eyes as she blathered on in a pathetic monologue.

  Although she had no way of knowing it, the riveted web viewers had inundated television news networks with calls and e-mails about the life-and-death struggle of an FBI agent broadcasting live off Catalina Island’s eastern shore.

  CNN was first to put the telemetry feed live on the air, and soon other networks followed. In Times Square, New York, the jumbo screen carried the live drama from the whale’s former tag. Thousands of people stood outside in the street, staring up at the tense situation unfolding on screen.

  “You leave me no choice. Incarceration is not my destiny. As soon as OLF is taken care of, I’ll be next on the FBI to-do list.” On the whaling ship, the gunfire ceased. The silence that followed fell heavily upon them. The decks of Pandora’s Box swarmed with Coast Guard men. She could see that at least one OLF member had been taken alive, pinned as he was to the deck by four Coasties. “I’ve got to get going.”

  Anastasia steadied the crossbow.

  “Goodbye, Tara Shores. I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

  In the distance, the high-pitched whine of an outboard running at full throttle, grew louder. Anastasia shifted her focus from Tara and watched in horror as the crewman from Pandora’s Box who had commandeered the FBI drone raced directly toward his mother ship with no apparent intent of changing course. The support helicopter hailed one warning before it opened up its arsenal, pumping hundreds of rounds per minute into the threatening craft and its pilot, who performed a brief macabre jig as he was shredded beyond recognition.

  And then she watched as the lifeless, mutilated body of the OLF saboteur rolled off the riddled drone, leaving the wreckage to drift on the swells.

  Before Anastasia could regain her composure Tara dropped to the deck, her right hand shooting out to grab the line, and pulled it taut with all her strength. The line snagged the inside of Anastasia’s thigh and rocked her off balance. She didn’t fall to the deck, but the unexpected movement caused her to bobble the crossbow.

  That was all Tara needed.

  The special agent shot across the sundeck with surprising speed.

  Hands went to the crossbow, wrenched it down, spraining Anastasia’s finger in the trigger guard but failing to dislodge it from her grip. She followed up with a strike to the nerve bundle beneath her ear but missed her mark.

  Anastasia wrapped her hand in Tara’s hair and jerked her toward the deck, but she maintained her balance and countered with a nasty kick to the knee, which brought Anastasia to the deck.

  Tara fell on top of her, one hand going for the bow.

  The two fighters rolled over one another. The crossbow was on top of them, then it was pinned to the sundeck beneath. Then it emerged once again, pulled in all directions by desperate hands.

  They reached the edge of the small sundeck, Tara on top of Anastasia, throwing fists and elbows while trying to gain control of the weapon.

  Both secured a hand on the grip, but it was Anastasia who gained control. Tara watched the bow’s dart swing toward her face from below. She could feel Anastasia pulling the trigger back, her hand over Tara’s. Tara knew she would not be able to stop it.

  Then she swung one of her legs over the edge of the sundeck. In an act of desperation, Tara pulled both of them over the side of the sundeck.

  They tumbled over one another onto the main deck six feet below, both landing on their feet but quickly falling to their knees, with Tara pinning Anastasia’s back to the cabin wall.

  Anastasia’s hand was knocked away from the bow’s trigger during the fall.

  Tara belted her in the stomach. Anastasia doubled over. Tara swung the bow around to point it at Anastasia, who spit in her face and lunged forward. And the next thing she would be able to recall was the soft thud of the dart penetrating Anastasia’s body high on her chest, just beneath her right shoulder. Tara backed away, half surprised. She felt the saliva slide down her lips.

  Anastasia gasped. Her mouth dropped open as she looked down. The whale-cam dangled from underneath her right clavicle, firmly implanted there. Tara was surprised at how little blood there was.

  Anastasia closed her eyes. Tara thought she was about to pass out. But suddenly the killer bolted left, toward the ketch’s stern deck. Tara sprinted after her, not wanting her inventive mind to come up with some other makeshift weapon.

  She slipped on blood that had begun to flow as she rounded a corner, landing hard on her elbow. She cringed in pain as the arm went numb.

  Tara expected Anastasia to either jump on top of her or run back into the cabin, but she did neither. She ran to a set of scuba gear already assembled in a tank holder against the starboard rail. She threw on a weight belt while Tara struggled up from the deck. She was shaky.

  By the time Tara was back on her feet, Anastasia had managed to back up to the tank and slip into its attached vest. She would have been unable to lift its weight on her own in her injured state, but with the gear held in place by the tank holder she was able to wriggle into it. Tara rushed at her, but Anastasia jumped over the side just as the detective reached the rail. Tara saw the pair of swim fins still on deck next to where the tank had been. Anastasia hadn’t had time to put them on. She wouldn’t be able to move very fast without them.

  In the water, Anastasia was strapping on a full-face mask—the same type that the Mexican divers had used.

  “Care for a swim, Detective?”

  Tara bit her lip.

  “I’m not wearing flippers; you’d catch me for sure. . . .”

  “How long have you known?”

  “About being afraid of the water? Since our little adventure in the helicopter.” The two women exchanged searching glances, each wondering what past events had brought the other to this moment.

  “Communication unit’s next to the radio,” Anastasia called out before pulling the mask straps tight and sinking beneath the waves.

  Tara took a quick look around. Coast Guard—and now police boats—still hovered around Pandora’s Box, containing the situation. The spectator boats had been ordered to disperse, and a long line of vessels could be seen returning to Avalon Harbor. Near the site of the raised submarine, Tara could see an inflatable boat with blue flashing lights atop its control console heading her way, fast.

  Here come the cavalry.

  Tara stared down at the water she so hated and feared, watching the murde
rer make her escape. Are you going to let this happen? For a moment she struggled with the question, but by the time Anastasia’s head went underwater, she had made up her mind.

  No way.

  Tara dove overboard after Anastasia, almost landing on top of her.

  Without equipment of any kind, still dressed in pants and a shirt, Tara could do nothing but reach down and make a grab for the fleeing criminal. She could see her retreating form just beneath the surface. Anastasia was venting the air from her buoyancy control vest to sink more rapidly.

  Tara thrust her face in the water, keeping her eyes open against the sting of salt, until she saw the blurry figure beneath her. She reached down and, feeling something besides water, latched onto the shoulder strap of Anastasia’s vest. She clutched her fist tight, seeking purchase with her other hand. As she grabbed onto the tank valve, she felt Anastasia’s arm on one of her wrists, trying to rip it away.

  The diver continued to descend. With her weight belt intended for use with a thick, buoyant wetsuit that she was not wearing, and a purged buoyancy vest, gravity was on her side. Anastasia began to pull Tara under with her.

  The special agent held on. She struck and clawed at Anastasia’s equipment, unable to see exactly what she was doing but attempting to inflict damage nonetheless.

  FBI FIELD OFFICE,

  LOS ANGELES

  Branson was livid. He stood in the middle of a now even larger contingent of employees gathered around a row of monitors set up to view the telemetry feed. The data logger’s depth was displayed in the lower right-hand corner of the video.

  “She’s ten feet underwater!” Branson exclaimed. “Where the hell is my backup?”