kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller)

by Chesler, Rick

Weapons? Archer gathered up a spray bottle he had filled with sulfuric acid. He suspected that his captors didn’t wear their masks when they were outside on deck, so the acid spray bottle could make a fine weapon. Then he rooted around in a drawer until he found what he was looking for: a pair of scissors. He tucked them into his waistband.

  He glanced around the lab one more time, searching for anything he might have overlooked. Should he take one last look out the porthole? No…not worth the risk. He was going, whatever was out there; it wasn’t far from the tourist beach he’d just seen. It was time.

  Dr. William Archer lit the Bunsen burner and held the paper towel fuse over the flame.

  …TTTG53TTGT …

  1:07 P.M.

  The spectacle of a man wearing yellow rubber gloves, safety glasses and a T-shirt wrapped around his head crashing through a fiery hole on a motor yacht and splashing into the water was witnessed directly by no one. Even the Nahoa’s crew was caught off guard. By the time the first guards burst into the lab, William Archer was already swimming away from the boat as fast as he could, churning a human wake as he scratched for shore.

  Only one crew member had given him any resistance after he leapt through the hole made by his explosion. Archer had defended himself from that man’s blows with his wooden cabinet door shield, held in his right hand. Then archer had thrown the door at the man, sidearming it at his head but missing. Smiling demonically, the attacker moved fluidly to block Archer’s approach to the rail, ducking and darting as he did so, putting into practice some kind of mixed martial arts training that made Archer nervous. He saw the squirt bottle still in his own left hand. He directed the nozzle at the man’s head and squeezed hard, sending a jet of high concentration muriatic acid into his assailant’s left eye.

  Archer heard the man scream as the aggressor backed away from his prey, teetering, falling to the deck as he turned an ankle. The scientist dropped the acid bottle and hurtled over the rail. On his way down he was surprised to see an oversize plastic killer whale—a toy float—which he fell onto and promptly bounced off into the water, limbs flailing.

  Archer heard the hissing of fire extinguishers behind him as he began to swim. His turban wrapped shirt, once wet, had slipped down over his mouth. He ripped it away so he could breathe; heard the Nahoa’s crew shouting. Archer lifted his head out of the water, tried to get a look at where he was going, but the goggles had collected water and fogged. He tossed them away, squinting with the sudden light intensity.

  Archer treaded water for a moment, taking his bearings. A good two hundred yards ahead lie the beach he’d seen from the porthole, and the road, still full of traffic. His head swiveled to the right. A surf break; a half a dozen wave riders oblivious to his plight as a clean head-high set rolled in over the reef.

  Left: an old shipwreck lay abandoned on the shallow reef. Its mast protruded from the water at a forty-five degree angle. A dark hole was visible in her hull like a toothless smile. Much farther in toward shore, there were bathers, rafters, paddlers. He wondered if any of them had seen or heard the explosion, but it didn’t look like it.

  And then the high-pitched whine of an engine chilled his blood. Coming from behind him, and fast by the sound of it. He turned to look, confirming his fear.

  A waverunner.

  William Archer struck out again for the lighter colored water ahead of him. Reef. Maybe it would be too shallow for the waverunner. He did see a few coral heads poking out of the water. But he knew that a waverunner needed much less water in which to operate than did a conventional boat, especially when skimming along at cruising speed.

  He kicked more rapidly, arms windmilling as he swam faster than he ever had in his life. He looked up to make sure he was still headed for shore and saw the wreck off to his left. He altered his course to head for it. The personal watercraft whined louder somewhere behind him.

  Archer reached the beginning of the shallow reef and the knuckles of his right hand scraped coral on the downstroke. He kept going. So did the waverunner.

  Archer smacked into a barely submerged coral head and realized that he had to watch where he was going or risk striking his head and passing out. Further compounding his problems, the water was now far too shallow for a conventional crawl stroke. He had to do an improvised breast stroke, fanning his arms out in front of him without penetrating the water too deeply. Once he scraped his chest on the reef below, but he kicked sideways into a depression of deeper water and continued toward the listing wreck. A sizable fish splashed out of the water beside him, but he paid it no mind. As he drew nearer to the wreck, Archer took two precious seconds to assess its condition, lifting his head out of the water like a seal.

  A permanent fixture of the reef for some time, the old sailboat—easily accessible from the crowded shore—had long been picked clean. Nothing of any value remained—not a single brass fixture, working piece of stainless steel, rigging, sailcloth, hardwood or anything else that might be resold, reworked or reused. But to Archer, it was a place to hide. He gazed into the gaping maw of the broken vessel and—as he heard the roar of the waverunner close in behind him—decided that right now there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

  The last few feet to the stranded boat were too shallow to swim. Archer stood and ran. Painful and dangerous on bare feet, to be sure, but there was no other way to reach the wreck. Jumping and limping toward the hole in the wreck’s side, Archer felt the bow wave from his pursuer’s vehicle wash against his midsection.

  The renowned geneticist reached the wreck just as the personal watercraft was forced to turn away from the inches-deep water lapping at the high-and-dry vessel. The motorized craft made a lazy turn around the side of the wreck facing the Nahoa. Standing at the entranceway to the wrecked hulk, Archer turned around to look at his kidnappers.

  There were two of them—one driving and one on the back seat. It was a large waverunner that could accommodate three people if necessary. Archer realized that to anyone observing their activity from the beach, they would look like typical fun-in-the-sun tourists out for a day of adventure—his two friends circling him on the personal watercraft (they were rented all over the islands) while he tiptoed over to check out the exposed shipwreck. His captors did not wear their masks out here, Archer couldn’t help but notice. Caps and sunglasses, but no voice modulators. Those would arouse way too much suspicion, so they’d left them behind, and Archer saw that they were Asian—maybe Chinese.

  Archer shouted “Help! Help me please!” a couple of times at the top of his lungs. He doubted anyone would hear him, but you never knew—he could no longer see what was in front of him on the other side of the wreck—and even if no one was there, it would make his pursuers nervous. Sound could carry a long way over water, even if its direction was hard to pinpoint.

  Cursing as he stubbed his toe on the bottom, Archer felt something give way. He bent down and picked up a softball-size chunk of loose coral rubble before scooting inside the wreck.

  …TTAC54TTGG …

  1:29 P.M.

  “Rob Tanner, pleased to meet you,” the helicopter pilot said. Tanner’s crew cut was framed by a headset and a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. He spoke without actually looking at his new passengers while he flipped switches on the instrument panel. Dave, Lance and Kristen shared the back seat of the A-Star 350 while Tara climbed into the front seat.

  “Well if it isn’t the illustrious Rob Tanner himself, master pilot of the Pacific!” Tara said, beaming. “Great to see ya, Rob! If I’d known you’d be my pilot I’d have requested air support a lot sooner, believe me.”

  The pilot looked over at Tara, surprised, but smiling warmly. “Tara Shores! Oh, no! If they’d told me you were the agent I’d be flying I’d have turned it down. Jesus, Shores, I still have nightmares.”

  The two had worked together a year earlier on a Los Angeles case in the Channel Islands. Tara had pushed the Gulf war veteran’s flying abilities to the absolute limit then, and he wasn’t lookin
g forward to a repeat or anything close to it.

  “Hey Rob, you have a side job here in the islands? Reason I ask is because those tourist helicopters are always crashing, so I thought maybe you were moonlighting.”

  “Funny, Shores. In fact, my stay in the islands is temporary, they tell me for six months. I’m setting up a new FBI pilot training course here. So I hear you’re looking for a boat. Tell me about it,” he said. He knew they both wouldn’t mind reminiscing over the past case, but chopper time was expensive, they had civilian passengers aboard, and the assignment had come to him labeled high priority, urgent status. Figures Shores was attached, he thought as he watched her become serious.

  “We’re looking for a boat named the Nahoa. I understand that’s a pretty common name in Hawaii,” she began. Rob cut in.

  “Let’s narrow it down. Big boat, small boat?”

  “It’ll be big, but not as big as a cargo or container ship. Probably some kind of yacht.”

  “Sail, power?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “And all you do know is that it’s somewhere around the Hawaiian Islands, but you don’t know where?”

  “I know it sounds like a needle in a haystack, but—”

  “I’m not going to tell you it’s no use. We can zip across channels pretty quick in this little bird,” he said, patting the A-Star’s console. “Do you have a preferred starting point?”

  “Kauai Channel,” Dave said from the back.

  Rob looked at Tara for approval. This flight was on her authority. She nodded. “Let’s cross that channel, check out the east coast of Kauai, and then come back across, but farther north for the return trip,” she said.

  “Roger that,” Rob said, hands taking the helicopter’s collective.

  In minutes they were heading west across the Oahu shoreline.

  Inside the wreck, the air was cooler. Archer whipped his head back and forth, allowing his vision to adjust to the dim light as he assessed this new space. He stood knee deep in water that became deeper toward the stern of the wreck and shallower toward the bow, which jutted above the reef at roughly a forty-five degree angle.

  The former boat was now nothing but a fiberglass shell, partitioned into several smaller spaces inside—what used to be cabins. Archer slipped around one of these walls and stepped up into ankle-deep water. Hearing the thrum of the waverunner’s engine start up, Archer ducked below an open air window. The waverunner’s operator began to circle the wreck not more than a few yards away, like a shark honing in on its prey.

  Archer cautiously exposed one eye enough to peer out of the window. He couldn’t see the waverunner, but could hear its motor revving and fading as the kidnappers picked a careful course through the maze of corals around the wreck. But it was what he could see that shocked Archer.

  The Nahoa—his seagoing cell. Its fun-loving exterior belied the fact that inside it had been converted to a high-tech industrial prison complex. Floating all around the yacht were a collection of water toys, including the orca float Archer had bounced off on his way into the water. But there was also a mini-island, complete with fake palm tree, and ringed with cup holders, one of which held the beverage that belonged to one of the kidnappers reclining under the tree, apparently without a care in the world. A yellow tow-banana trailed off the stern, presently unoccupied. On the yacht itself, prominently lashed above the perimeter deck, were a clutch of surfboards, bodyboards, and snorkel gear. Two small jet-skis sat on the stern deck platform, while a couple of fishing rods rested in rod holders on either rail.

  Archer muttered to himself in disbelief. He seethed as he took in the charade. There was no way anyone would look twice at this boat in a place like this (wherever this was), he knew. Even the area he had blown up had already been covered by a yellow rubber raft, carefully arranged to appear casually stacked there.

  It worried Archer that his kidnappers were carrying out such an elaborate ruse. And effective, too, he noted, watching a crewmember dance to a reggae tune with his arms in the air atop the upper cabin deck. What a party cruise!

  The waverunner engine suddenly stopped. Archer retreated from the window. He had seen enough. He struggled to contain his anger as he heard the two kidnappers conferring in hushed voices. Then one of them spoke loudly.

  “Doctor Archer: we know you are inside the wreck. There is nowhere to go from here. Please come back with us to the ship.”

  Archer could hear wet footsteps. Then the machine started up once more, resuming its circular path around the wreck.

  One of the waverunner’s passengers had jumped off.

  Now that he knew to listen for it, Archer could hear the sound of feet sloshing through the shallow water around the wreck. One of the kidnappers was approaching. From the regularity of his steps, there was no doubt the man wore boots or water shoes of some kind. Archer crouched behind a partition so that he would not be immediately visible to anyone approaching the wreck’s main entry point. Then a voice almost made him jump.

  “Doctor Archer, please come out peaceably. I’ve got a silenced pistol, and if I have to I have orders to shoot out both of your kneecaps to keep you from escaping. I will not kill you because we still have important work to do. Doctor Archer?” The footsteps stopped.

  The waverunner’s idling engine and the lapping of waves against the wreck were the only sounds as Archer processed this new information. Not only what the man had said, but how far away he had sounded, from which direction, and the undeniable undercurrent of anger in the voice. Archer hefted the chunk of coral in his right hand, finding comfort in its weight.

  Then the footsteps resumed. Toward the wreck entrance. The assailant was only yards away now. Archer hunkered down behind the interior wall.

  A long shadow was cast on the inside of the wreck as the kidnapper stepped inside. From his position behind the wall, Archer couldn’t yet see the man himself. He heard the waverunner’s engine stop and he heard the man inside the wreck walk away from him—toward the stern.

  Slowly, carefully, Archer rose from his crouched position without making a sound. His K&R trainer’s voice, Scottish accent, echoed in his head: If you are forced to consider an escape, remember that it’s about being able to first recognize a situation that is advantageous to you—relative to your average situation—and then to rapidly determine the best course of action to capitalize on that advantage, and finally, to swiftly and decisively execute that plan. Recognize, determine, and execute. Sometimes this entire process may take weeks. Others, only minutes.

  Recognize. Right now Archer recognized that he was in a situation where he faced considerably better odds of escaping than when on the ship. He was one on one with an attacker, and he was semi-armed. That was as good as it was going to get. Soon, he realized, hearing the waverunner start up once more and approach the wreck—it would be two on one, and maybe even more than that.

  Determine. Archer’s mind went into overdrive as he considered his best course of action. For an instant he considered stepping out from behind the partition and hurling the coral chunk at the kidnapper’s head, then charging at him, but he checked the impulse. Better to wait for the kidnapper to come to him. He needed a close-contact fight. Were he to show himself from ten feet away, the gun would take care of him.

  But after the kidnapper scoured the stern end of the boat, he would know he was up here somewhere. No doubt the man on the waverunner was watching to make sure he didn’t make a run for it over the reef. Still…the man inside wouldn’t know exactly where he was; there were at least two more partitions, farther up toward the bow. He could be behind either of those. The stalker wouldn’t be expecting his prey to leap out from behind the first one.

  Execute. Archer took a deep but quiet breath. One more, wanting his system to be well oxygenated for what he was about to do. He heard the splattery footsteps approach his end of the wreck. He clutched the coral in his right hand.

  The kidnapper walked slowly toward Archer’s partition. Archer f
irst saw the extra-long barrel of the man’s gun. Archer noted that it was indeed fitted with a silencer. His hunter was holding it out in front of him, in two hands, as he walked.

  In that instant the scientist was keenly aware of everything in his surroundings—the rays of sunlight piercing the gloomy interior of the wreck, the muffled sound of the waverunner’s idling engine outside, the sound the water made as the gunman sloshed ahead through the wreck, his own breathing…

  Archer sprung his large frame into action.

  His left hand hammered down on the gun while his right slammed the hunk of coral into the side of the gunman’s head. The assailant dropped to the ground but somehow held onto the gun. The coral fell from Archer’s hand as he went down with the gunman, grappling for the pistol.

  Archer wrapped both of his hands around the gun and began to yank it around violently. The gunman tried to head butt Archer, but the fleeing captive saw it coming and jerked his head to one side just in time. A volley of blood flew off the side of the gunman’s face with his aggressive head movement, some of it spattering across Archer’s neck. The coral had done its work.

  The two men wrestled on the floor of the wreck for a few more seconds until Archer managed to get up on his knees. A small blacktip reef shark slithered its way past the fighters, its quiet resting place inside the wreck having been invaded. Archer much preferred the shark to the man. He used his opponent to push off of, rising to his feet while still wrestling with the pistol.

  The kidnapper, still in a sitting position, wrenched his hand away from Archer’s. Archer saw him start to wave the gun toward him. The geneticist brought his foot up with full force into the man’s elbow. The gunman grunted in pain and the pistol went flying...

  ...Through an open hatch in the ceiling. They couldn’t hear it land. Archer had no time to even wonder if the waverunner driver saw it go flying out. The kidnapper was lunging for his waist, but he didn’t care. Archer grabbed the man’s hair with both hands and dragged him up until he could shove him against a bulkhead.