Karel smiled. “All ready. We’ve been collecting rocks to send flying over—all we need to do is put them in position when all hell breaks loose.”
The idea behind the catapults would be to use them in the night to pepper the Grimoire and keep the Harbormen on it occupied, all while the other stuff Josh had planned played out. Hopefully, the Harbormen would assume there was very little ammo spread out among the attacking forces—which was true, to an extent—and lulling them into a false sense of superiority would hopefully make them lax and complacent.
Maybe.
There had been a good stock of equipment in a well-equipped gymnasium in one of the other buildings Lemming and Ten-Foot had broken into, and that helped. In the two days since Josh’s speech, they’d located the Grimoire anchored off the opening to the inlet, and there had been feverish activity undertaken to repurpose as much as they could from the center—turning otherwise innocuous supplies into weapons or adjuncts to battle.
And when Josh and others made it back to Maxine’s position, the battle would begin.
Donald had given Josh, Henry, and Karel as much instruction in the use of the aqualungs as he could, but it was still a moment of counterintuitive activity. One to be resisted. To put his head beneath the water and try to breathe as normally as he could without panicking was a tough ask.
Josh had always been a good swimmer, but going under water in near darkness, over coral and around the black rocks close to the beach, was proving as difficult as it was dangerous. Under normal circumstances, the one hundred and fifty yard swim from the shore to the boat wouldn’t have held much in the way of fear for Josh, but doing the whole journey underwater, with only the occasional moment with his head above water to check that their direction was sound, was a whole other kettle of fish.
Donald swam alongside Josh, with Henry and Karel just behind them. The waves were thankfully gentle, but they had to swim below the troughs in them at a depth of just over a yard, the weighted belts giving them a neutral buoyancy to ensure they didn’t crest the surface of the water and provide an inviting target for the Harbormen on the Grimoire.
“Why don’t we just blow it out of the water with the grenades?” Ten-Foot had asked the night before, even as Josh had gone over his plan again in the lecture hall.
“We need to try to take the boat intact,” Josh had replied. “We might need it one day to get ourselves back to the mainland. We don’t know what other craft there are on the island. Sinking it would cut off our noses to spite our face.”
Ten-Foot had shrugged. “We’s well set up here, Boss Man. All we can eat forever. We’s fine.”
“And how do we and Halley get back to the mainland to show people the treatment for the Barnard’s madness?” Poppet had piped up. Her face had fallen as she’d realized what she had said, though, and she’d followed it up with an immediate apology to Ten-Foot. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think before I spoke. I didn’t mean…”
Ten-Foot had glared at her. “I’m doing what I should––two hours in the river every day. If I eat any more of those bananas Halley and Lash are forcing on me, I’ll start to look like one. I’m okay. You can trust me.”
“It’s okay,” Josh had soothed. “We know you’re good to go, Ten-Foot. Poppet didn’t mean anything.”
Ten-Foot had kissed his teeth and shrugged. “Okay, but it’s not madness if it’s caused by that star, right? It’s just a condition, an illness. Right? I’m not mad.”
And Josh had agreed with the boy. Ten-Foot was turning into a proud man, Josh could see. He was more of an asset than a hindrance, and although it had been kind of sweet to see him competing with Henry for being the most useful, he was also finding his own niche amongst the group. That of a strong man and fighter. He’d finally found a place for himself, and Poppet’s talk of madness had shaken the foundations he was building for his identity in this new world. It had been quite a ride for the boy—from criminal, to probationer, to evil soldier in the thrall of Gabriel Angel, to this boy who was trying to become a man they could trust.
Josh swam up and checked their direction. The Grimoire was a good seventy-five yards away now, bobbing on the gentle swells. He could see candles being lit in the cabin windows. Josh ducked back down as quickly as he’d come up to avoid detection, but the lights at least told him there were people below decks.
How many, he couldn’t be sure.
A skeleton crew of about five could get the ship to sail in a hamstrung way, but they had repelled a crew of about ten—killing four in the battle at Evergreen—and he couldn’t imagine they would have left the ship unguarded while they’d come onto the island. Especially if they’d seen any of the Sea-Hawk’s rafts washed up on the beach.
He kicked on over the coral as the depth increased with every yard.
If things were going to plan back on the beach, the catapults he had gotten Karel to make would be going into position, with the tree line getting ready for darkness and the full battle about to begin. By then, he and the rest of the swimmers would be in position, ready to board the Grimoire and take the ship. It wasn’t going to be an easy fight, and as a dyed-in-the-wool law enforcement officer, he would have preferred there to be some way that the Harbormen could be captured and imprisoned rather than killed—as the final phase of his plan would entail. But these were desperate times that needed desperate measures. Leaving one Harborman alive would be a risk, and if Gabriel Angel was still on the boat, he would need to be put down like the sick dog he was.
Josh knew this was personal now. Maxine had been right when she’d told him what Halley thought about the mission and the reasons for it. Yes, Josh could dress it up as necessity and logical action to be taken, but there was too much history between him and Gabe now. From the moment he had clashed with him over his treatment of Maxine in a roadhouse parking lot in Raleigh, North Carolina, right on to him hunting down Josh’s family and setting his own son against him—and after what he had done to Maxine when he had drugged her…
The cold clench in his guts stopped the forward momentum in his thoughts. It didn’t bear any more analysis. Gabe had to die, and Josh had to do the killing. It was the only imaginable way to extricate himself from these feelings and to bring on some peace that would allow him to go forward. He hadn’t admitted to Maxine that Halley was right on the button, though. He hadn’t admitted to Maxine that he was experiencing an inkling that he was putting them all in danger for a slice or two of testosterone and pride-induced toxic masculinity.
But there it was.
Two birds to be killed with one stone. The island made safe for them to rest, recuperate, and plan their new future, and Gabriel Angel out of his life forever. And finally, out of Storm’s, too.
Out of the water again—just his face mask. The last rays of the sun were pink on the bottom of the scudding clouds. The Grimoire was etched black against the sky, near enough now for Josh to hear the slap of the waves on the side of its hull.
Each of the divers had their guns and ammunition in 10-liter dry bags hanging from their belts, they had knives in sheaths on their thighs, and in their hands, they carried spearfishing guns, all of which had been found with the scuba equipment back at Bluehills. The spear guns were just the last ingredient in Josh’s plan. If they worked as Josh and Donald hoped they would, he and the others would be on the deck of the Grimoire within the next ten minutes.
If it all went as directed.
22
The first stones began splashing into the water from the three catapults on the shore eight minutes after Josh, Donald, Henry, and Karel had positioned themselves off of the far side of the Grimoire, with the ship between them and the beach. The missiles hit the water with loud sploshes that could be heard from where they were treading water. Frenzied activity on the boat became apparent as the stones whizzed through the air, clattering into the side of the ship with sharp clacks and deep thuds.
The projectiles weren’t going to cause any kind of damage, but that’s n
ot what they were meant for. There were excited shouts sounding out as Harbormen came onto the deck, flooding up from below to see what was going on, and there was a yell as one of them was hit by a lucky blow. This even drew laughter from some of the men, all of it towards their hapless comrade. More importantly, they were proving as complacent as Josh had hoped. He could only imagine them thinking this: They’ve been reduced to throwing stones? Fools!
And now, from what he and the others could ascertain, the Harbormen were all on the other side of the ship from where he and his comrades lay in wait, trying to work out what was happening and exactly who was attacking them—with piddling little stones!
It took another minute or so before the Harbormen started taking potshots at the land with their weapons.
That was the cover Josh and the others needed.
Josh counted down on his fingers to the others in the moonlight, the moon’s heavy glow coming from high above them in the clouds and providing them some light.
Three.
Two.
One.
All four guns shot their spears whispering up and over the Grimoire’s rail. The aluminum barb-tipped shafts trailed monofilament lines which had in turn been spliced to thin, high-tensile climbing ropes bound around improvised grapples, these made once again from boathooks and rowlocks. Neat little constructions which Donald had made from metals ripped from Bluehills’ stock of kayaks. The Harbormen’s gunfire covered the grapples hitting the deck right at the bow of the ship, and after Josh and the others let their tanks, flippers, and face masks go, dropping it all down onto the silent ocean bed yards below them, the four of them began to haul themselves up the ropes in the darkness. Feet digging into the wood, rubber gripped climbing gloves anchoring them securely to the lines as they pulled and strained. Soon, all four were looking through the rails along the ship’s deck.
Josh searched between the slats in the rail. The Harbormen, six of them, were having a rare old time laughing and pointing to the shore as they searched for more targets for them to fire at. Maxine and the others should already have gone to ground behind the rocks so as not to get tagged by errant shots, however. So, they should be quite safe.
Josh rolled over the rail, onto his knees, and crouched down in the space behind the wheel-house and the rail. Donald, Karel, and Henry followed soon after, taking their guns out of dry bags and waiting for the signal to begin.
“Ready?” Josh whispered as the hoots from the Harbormen’s shooting party and the crackle of gunfire continued.
Donald and the others gave affirmative nods.
Josh released the safety on his AK-47 and stood up. The three others followed suit.
The gunfire blasted across the deck to where the Harbormen had stood focused on the shore and their potshotting. They threw up their arms as the bullets slammed into their sides, heads snapping around with their mouths in wide O’s of shock, their arms splayed out and their legs crumpling.
Two of their number who had been shielded by the bodies of their comrades dove for cover––one ending up in a position behind one of the remaining masts, the other by a louvre-slatted sail store. The rounds from the AKs tore lines across the deck and threw splinters into the air as if whipping tornadoes were crossing the ship.
Fire was returned by the two surviving Harbormen, who were firing a pistol and something that clattered like an Uzi in sending bullets back towards Josh.
Henry pulled Josh backwards and they fell to the deck, bullets fizzing through the space Josh had just been occupying.
Karel was already on her front, crawling around the wheelhouse to the other side of the ship in order to send bullets screaming ankle-high along the expanse of deck, chewing into the sail store by blowing apart the doors and blasting through the top of it. It was no longer going to provide much protection to the Harborman using it for cover, and as Josh got to his knees to risk a look along the deck, he noticed a shadow flitting from behind the store and rolling behind a large wooden lifeboat. This was much sturdier construction than the sail store, and might provide a little more cover from gunfire.
Donald’s arm arced upward and something flew speedily from his grasp.
“Fire in the hole!” Donald screamed.
Karel covered her head and Josh returned the compliment to their young friend, pulling Henry down as Donald flattened himself on the wood and the grenade he’d thrown detonated twenty yards down the deck.
From his position on his back, with Henry across his knees, Josh could see up to the near empty sky as debris and splinters rained down.
For the first time since darkness had fallen, he could see the full dusting of stars across the spine of the night. The moon, now naked and exposed, was a wide and yellow blazing disc—which had chosen this moment to fall from the clouds into a shimmering pool of deep black sky. And there, edging thirty degrees above the horizon, the Barnard’s Nebula was clear and livid in the swimming, star-encrusted firmament—as if it had come out especially to join the full moon.
The nebula, almost in a direct line between the moon and Cook’s Hump on Dark Point, shone with its own inimitable light. Not as bright as the moon, but up there like a ragged tear in the sky.
It had caused all this—and now it was there, looking down on all of the destruction it had wrought like an accusation… No, Josh corrected himself as the last of the debris from the grenade blast hit the deck, and the sound of it reverberated off the island.
No. A dozen times, no.
The nebula wasn’t an accusation. It was like a sneer on the face of the sky. The rotten, dirt-eating corner of a mouth you just wanted to punch. And keep punching until the body it was attached to stopped moving.
That was the Barnard’s Nebula in that moment, and Josh had never hated it so much as he did now.
And then, Dark Point Island exploded.
The boom of the explosion and the shock of light from the land blanked out the moon and the nebula for more than a couple of seconds as the shadows around them became harshly exposed and the flames from the shore spat their orange tongues up to lap at the clouds.
Josh rolled to the rail, not caring if the surviving Harbormen could get a bead on him. This wasn’t part of the plan; this wasn’t supposed to happen. What was going on back on shore?
“Did you really think we were not defended? That we weren’t ready for you?”
At the question, Josh turned away from the diminishing effects of the explosion on the shore.
“Did you really think that we had not kept watch on the shore closest to the Grimoire, to make sure any plan you put into action couldn’t be countered?”
Gabriel Angel stood behind him along with five other Harbormen, each of whom had a combination of submachine guns––Uzis and MP5s—pointed at Josh and the others. Donald already had his hands raised. Karel was being disarmed even as Henry put down his AK-47 onto the deck.
Gabe was dressed as he had always been, in black. He looked like a hole in the stars. With the nebula at his shoulder, the moon might have been his crown. Josh’s machine gun was pointed at the deck. His finger was next to the trigger guard, but he knew that if he even twitched up the barrel towards Gabe––who in this moment he wanted to shoot more than he had anyone in his life, ever––then he would be dead.
So, he put down his gun and joined Donald in raising his hands.
“Signal from the shore, Your Majesty. The attackers have been taken. Including Standing’s wife and children. We lost two men in the firefight, but all’s well now. Resistance has been suppressed.”
“Any news on Professor Halley?”
“No, sir, but our boys are on their way up to Bluehills now, and it will only be a matter of time before they’re found.”
The words all sounded like they were coming from the wrong end of a dream to Josh.
They were below decks on the Grimoire in a sumptuously laid out lantern and candlelit cabin in the stern. Plush chairs and a heavy mahogany table, on which an open bottle of re
d wine was breathing before being poured, completed the impression of luxury with which Gabriel Angel liked to surround himself. Gabe leaned back in his chair and dismissed the reporting Harborman with a curt wave of his fingers.
The Harborman left the cabin, leaving Josh, the three who had come to the ship with him, three Harborman guards, and Gabe. The self-styled King of America studied Josh with his blue eyes. The blue eyes that proved, according to Halley, that Storm was not his son, but that was news which Gabriel needed to be brought up to speed on.
“You took my son.”
Josh said nothing. He just looked back at Gabe with the same contempt the other man held for him. His hands were tied behind his back and he was on his knees like the others, but this wasn’t the time to show how scared he was feeling on the inside. This was not the time to give Gabriel Angel any of the wins he wanted before dispatching Josh.
Josh knew he was going to die, and that certainty brought fear, but it also brought resolution. Why give Gabe anything now? Why give him anything that he hadn’t already taken?
“You burned my home.”
Josh stared.
“You tried to sink my ship.”
Nothing.
“You came here to kill me.”
Josh was not rising to it. The room was shrinking to just a tunnel of hot air drilled between the eyes of the two men and everything else was fading into the background. Josh could hear the breathing of the others, but that was all. It was just him and Gabe.
Supernova EMP- The Complete Series Page 95