by Blake Banner
One eyebrow arched on an expressionless, porcelain face. “Thanks, I’m flattered.”
“Come on, Diana! Listen to what I am telling you!”
“Yeah, you’re a big harmless teddy bear who just wants to be loved, and you’d do anything to protect me. And maybe that’s true. It would be awful nice if it was true, but how can you prove it to me?”
I tipped my beer from side to side, thinking. “What made you go to my boss? How did you know about him in the first place?”
She looked like she was going to tell me to go take a hike, but hesitated at the last moment. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t? Then what the hell am I doing here?”
“He approached me.”
We stared at each other for a long moment and at the end of it she smiled, a real smile. “That silence was the most believable thing I have heard you say. You were genuinely surprised.”
I shrugged. “Need to know.”
“You genuinely are a grunt sent to protect.” She threw back her head and laughed. For a moment it was strangely reminiscent of a parrot screaming, but then settled into a sound that was almost pretty.
I had an uncomfortable knot of anger in my gut that I couldn’t fully understand. I smiled in spite of it.
“I guess I am.”
She stuffed the last piece of burger in her mouth and washed it down with beer, then gave a small belch and said, “I tell you. It is a shame you’re here working, or I would ride you like a damned bronco this afternoon!”
Seven
We made our way back to the motel and I allowed myself a good eight hours’ sleep, from three in the afternoon until eleven that night. I was aware that I was exhausted, and I was also aware that there was a very good chance we had thrown off her pursuers, at least temporarily. And the fact that nothing happened during the hours we were sleeping reassured me that I was probably right.
At eleven I walked out into the forecourt and had a look out at the lake. I smiled because there wasn’t a lot to see. Lights dotted the shore from the houses that lined the lakefront, and reflected in brilliant threads along the small waves. But out on the deeper water I could see only two lights. They were the warning lights suspended from the masts of the sailing yachts. There was no glow from the cabin, or from the cockpit or the deck.
I went back inside. Diana was up and in the shower. I packed a bag with essentials, including some takeout we’d brought with us for lunch, and carried it out to the truck, which I had parked outside our door. Then I spent ten minutes wiping all the surfaces clean of any prints, inside and out.
Finally I went inside and found Diana dressing.
I said, “Jeans, boots or sneakers, and something warm. It can get cold on the water.”
“I know, John. I don’t need to be mothered.”
“Good, when we get to the water, you take the bag on the back seat and you carry it to the dinghy while I conceal the car. Wait for me at the dinghy. Do not move. Is that clear?”
She blinked a few times without expression, then said, “It’s not complicated, John.”
I sighed and checked my watch. It was midnight.
“OK, help me wipe down the surfaces. I don’t want any trace that we were here.”
“I am not on any databases.”
“Bully for you. Now get cracking.”
By half past midnight we were done. We climbed in the truck, taking care not to leave prints, and rolled out of the motel parking lot, headed north along Lakeshore Drive. I knew exactly where we were going, because I had spent most of the day eyeballing the houses, making a note of which ones had dinghies and which ones were locked up and uninhabited. The ones that ticked both boxes were of special interest. There were a few—these were mainly holiday homes and the season was coming to an end. One such was on Ishkibbible Beach Road, separated from the highway by a pinewood. There was a row of maybe twenty waterfront houses, each with a boathouse. Slightly over half seemed to be occupied, but the two I had selected were not. One of them, the one on the right as you approached, had a wooden rowboat moored to a jetty. To the left of the house there were two boathouses, and beyond them another house, which appeared to be empty. But what had proved an added bonus was that to the right of the house there was a flat slope that fed right into the water, probably used for extracting larger boats, or launching them.
I pulled up on the slope, ten or fifteen feet from the shore and killed the lights, but left the motor running.
“Take the bag from the back seat, go get in the rowing boat on that pier.” I pointed. “Wait for me there.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to put the truck somewhere it won’t be found for a while.”
She looked scared, but she climbed down, pulled the bag from the back seat and crossed the darkness toward the jetty. There was a crescent moon low on the horizon, laying pools of liquid silver on the water here and there. I watched her hurry past the house, glance at it a couple of times and then make her way along the jetty toward the boat. As she climbed in I put the truck in drive and floored the pedal. I must have hit the water at forty miles per hour. A wall of spray leapt up in front of me and to either side. I had the windows open and water crashed in over the seats, soaking my legs. I kept my foot on the pedal as long as I could feel the rear wheels biting, and I could see the heavy bow wave rolling in front of me.
Next thing, I was still moving forward, but I was aware I was sinking, too. I tried to open the door, but the pressure of the water from the outside was still too great. The truck sank another couple of inches and water started gushing through the open windows in a heavy, steady stream. The truck stopped moving forward and started to sink fast. I grabbed a hold of the window and started to pull myself out. But before I could get my shoulders free, we had slipped below the surface. I hauled myself out, kicked hard against the suction of the truck and broke the surface.
I could just make out the dim form of Diana on the boat. She was releasing the mooring and, as I struck out toward her, she sat at the oars and started rowing toward me. Thirty seconds later I was dragging myself out of the creamy, moonlit liquid and rolling into the boat. In silence she vacated the oarsman’s seat and settled in the stern, while I took up the oars.
It was a hundred yards to the thirty-foot cutter that was lying at anchor in the deeper water. With each pull of the oars the few, scattered lights of Ishkibbible Beach receded a little farther into the night. We didn’t talk. The only sounds were the dip and squeak of the oars and the lap and slap of the black water against the hull of the wooden boat.
Every so often I looked over my shoulder to see if I was on target, and pretty soon the ghostly, misty white shape of the sailing yacht began to emerge from the dark. After a little more than ten minutes we were pulling up to the stern of the cutter, and Diana was staggering, with our bag, up the steps and into the cockpit while I held the dinghy steady.
Ten minutes later I had killed the light on the mast, released the spinnaker and weighed the anchor, and we were inching around for a heading south and east toward Pie Island and the US border. Once we were under way, and I was sure we were invisible from the shore, I hoisted the mainsail, close hauled for the small breeze, and we began to shift, skipping and slapping across the small waves.
Diana found some coffee and some rum in the galley and fixed us a drink each. She also heated up the takeout we’d got at lunch and we had a late dinner. After that she brought up some blankets, put one across my shoulders and laid a couple on the decking, where she lay down with a pillow under her head and went to sleep.
For a couple hours it was peaceful, and overhead the sky was filled with a billion stars you never see if you live in New York. What little moon there was, was rising and casting a long, liquid silver path across the blackness. She was smiling as she did it, because we both knew that beautiful as the path was, once you took your first step, you sank into a cold, wet death.
At just after four AM we rounded
the southwest tip off Isle Royale. We were now outside Canada and into the USA. It was still dark and the gray breath of dawn had not yet touched the horizon. What we had ahead of us now was three hours of open water, heading south by southwest until we hit the south coast of Lake Superior.
It was as Pie Island began to recede on our port side that I first noticed the lights. There were two of them. They first appeared as one, a few inches above the horizon. For a while it remained motionless, but I didn’t recognize it as any planet and wondered if it was a satellite. Then it began slowly to split, and each of the two lights began to grow larger, and I knew it was a couple of light aircraft, or maybe choppers. I thought about changing course to avoid being seen, but they were approaching too fast. I wondered if they were Coastguards, but the Coastguard don’t operate that way. They would send a launch to intercept us. They might be DEA, but the DEA would be operating with the Coastguard, and I could not see any launch approaching. I glanced over my shoulder at Pie Isle Royale and thought about making a dash for it. But the shore was a good ten to fifteen minutes away, and if these birds were after us, what we had was seconds.
And it was just thirty seconds later that they roared past, almost overhead, a Grumman 111 Albatross and a chopper I could not identify. The chopper skewered us with a spotlight and swung to a halt dead ahead, flattening and tearing up the water with its downdraft. Meanwhile the Albatross did a slow, cumbersome turn, aiming, I figured, to come up behind us. Diana covered her head, then scrambled below.
The chopper was head-on, blinding us with its light. But if it wanted to shoot us, it would need to be sideways on. I looked over my shoulder and saw the Albatross banking again, lining us up. That was enough. I didn’t know what the hell they wanted to do. It would have been easy enough to rake us with machine-gun fire and send us to hell. They obviously had other plans. Whatever they were, I didn’t intend to make it easy for them. I pulled my Sig from behind my back and put four rounds into the middle of the spotlight. It went out. The chopper did a little dance, like it was going to pull out of the way. But that didn’t fit with my plans at all. I didn’t pause. I dropped a couple of inches and emptied half my extended magazine into where I knew the pilot was sitting. That was ten rounds and I guess some of them found him, because the chopper’s dance became a little more wild. It bucked and swerved, then tilted sideways and pitched into the lake, sending a huge wave crashing into our bows.
Two seconds after that I heard a smack and a roar and the Albatross thundered overhead, twenty feet above our mast. And suddenly I knew what they were doing.
As the plane banked to my left I turned and looked back. There were two plumes of luminous spray in the moonlight, and as the drone of the plane faded, so the high buzz-saw of the Zodiacs reached my ears. They were catching us fast and I could just make out four men in each one as they slapped and sped over the black water.
Then, as they separated and came up on either side, just behind us, I saw the flash of automatic fire and the air was alive with the rattle of two assault rifles. Rounds hissed and popped in the air around me, snapped and whined off the cabin roof and tore into the sails and the rigging.
I dropped on my face, scrambled for the shelter of the cabin and rolled on my back with the Sig in my hand. The yacht lost speed and next thing they were pulling up either side, and clambering onboard. There were eight of them, in black battle dress with balaclavas and automatic rifles, and all eight of them were trained on me. One of them spoke.
“Drop it!”
I had a choice. Die protecting Diana, knowing I was going to fail, or live to fight another day—or at least later that same day. No contest. I dropped the Sig and raised my hands.
“Where’s the woman?”
That was asking too much. I made a face that asked who had the family neuron that week. “Maybe she’s in the Jefferson Room in the west wing. This is a thirty-foot yacht, Colonel. Where do you think she is?”
He froze for half a second and a couple of his boys glanced at him. He jerked his head and four of them went below. That left four in the cockpit with the boss staring at me hard.
“Who are you?” He asked it as the screaming started inside. He seemed not to hear it. I gave him my best wiseass face and said, “I don’t know. I’m going to India next week to find out.” I sensed rather than saw his eyes narrow behind his balaclava and added, “I think I’m a person who smiles a lot and says ‘namaste.’”
He took a small step and kicked me hard in the thigh. The fact that I knew it was coming didn’t lessen the pain any. I bit back the pain but heard somebody swear violently. Maybe it was me.
The son of a bitch bent down, picked up my Sig and threw it over the edge. I heard it splosh and felt it sink irretrievably into the cold, wet dark.
“So we know you’re a wiseass. Why did you call me colonel?”
I shook my head and spoke, trying to ignore the pain. “You going to kick me again if I tell you the truth?”
I wriggled into a better position as I spoke, resting my back against the side of the cabin. He snapped, “I’ll kick you if you don’t, but it won’t be in the thigh. Stop moving!”
I stopped. “OK! You move like a man of action, but you haven’t the flexibility of a man of twenty-five. The way you give orders, you’re used to command and authority in the field. You and your men are obviously professional, so I figure you didn’t get stuck at captain or major. Colonel was a fair guess.”
“Like I said, a wiseass and a bull-shitter. Do you know me?”
I hadn’t a bull’s notion who he was, but I figured this might be an opening, and I had just about nothing to lose.
So I said, “Maybe. But obviously you don’t know who I am.”
“But you’re going to tell me, now, in fifteen minutes, in half an hour… I’m not in a hurry.”
The slowing thud of an airscrew told me the seaplane was approaching on the water and was coming to a halt. Down below Diana had stopped screaming, but was cursing in colorful detail. A grunt appeared in the doorway beside my head.
“We have her,” he said.
I played for time. “You’re not CIA, that’s for sure.”
“Really? What makes you say that?”
I ignored the question and went on. “You’re not SEALs either. You might be Delta but I don’t think you’re military at all. I think that boat sailed. I think you are private sector, guns for hire.”
“Maybe I don’t give a good goddamn what you think.” But he didn’t kick me again. Instead he sat on the gunwale with his elbows on his knees and pulled a bowie knife from his boot. “Who are you?”
I decided in that moment that I had to kill them all, so I said, “Harry Bauer.”
“I never heard of you.”
“No, I know.”
“But you know who I am?”
“Probably, with the balaclava on at night, it’s hard to be sure.”
“What’s your outfit?”
“I keep a low profile and I work for myself.”
“Yeah? Let’s say for now that’s true, which it’s not. Who were you with before?”
“The SAS.”
“Figures. You moonlighting with the woman?”
“I’m helping her get home. What do you want from her?”
He snorted a small laugh. “You still think you’re getting out of this alive, with information?”
“Positive mental attitude, Colonel. Sometimes it’s all you’ve got.”
“It’s sure as hell all you’ve got, Bauer.” He turned to the guy on his right. “You, go down and assist.” He stood and turned to the other two grunts. “You two keep watch. Kill this joker and put him over the side. Weigh him down with an anchor or something. I don’t want a floater.”
He didn’t give me a second look. He ducked into the hatch and I heard his feet clunk down the steps. There were two guys in front of me, both in black battledress, both with balaclavas. The one on my left pulled a Glock 19 from his leg holster and cocked it.
Then he took careful aim at my head.
Eight
“Can I at least die on my feet?”
I knew they had been special forces. There’s an understanding between Western special forces. We all know death will probably come early for us. What most of us want is to go with some dignity. Nobody who has spent his life fighting, wants to die on the can with his pants around his ankles.
He glanced at his pal, who gave a small nod, and I stood. And as I stood I stumbled on a small swell, staggered forward and slipped the Fairbairn & Sykes from my boot. It took less than half a second.
It took another half to lever the barrel of his Glock down and ram the knife into the side of his neck. I heard the crack of his pal’s pistol as I stepped behind the dying man and let him fall against me. His body armor took the double tap, pushing me back a step. I still had a hold of his Glock. With both my arms over his shoulders, I took aim and plugged his pal twice in the face. With half his head missing, he took half a step back and keeled over backwards into the deep, wet darkness, with a bizarrely peaceful “splosh.”
Inside I could hear Diana speaking. Her voice was level and calm, but there was an edge of tension to it. I couldn’t make out the words but I heard the colonel’s voice loud and clear.
“How many fucking shots do you need to kill a guy lying on the fucking deck?”
I shouted back, “Taken care of, sir!”
His voice came back from below. “Taken care of?”
He muttered something and Diana started talking again.
“…you’re going to have to wait, like everybody else.”
“You don’t understand, sugar. My client doesn’t wait.”
“Well that’s tough shit, Rambo, because waiting is all there is on the fucking menu!”
There was a short silence, then the colonel’s voice, distorted by an ugly smile.
“I could strain the metaphor, sweet cheeks, and start talking about tender cuts, and other, more exotic, delicacies. You need to take on board, sweetheart, that your NPP is going one place and one place only.”