by William Kerr
After the fourth round, the pistol clicked empty. “Damn!” Matt cursed as the elevator door closed with a thunk. Immediately on his feet, Matt shouted, “Brandy?”
“I’m here, Matt,” Brandy said through a wash of tears, her body slumped against the end of the table. “I’m so sorry. I…I couldn’t go with them. I—”
Remembering the man who’d taken bullets to save his life, Matt whirled around. “Hammersmith?”
Park had his hand against the detective’s throat, searching for a pulse. “Still alive. Conscious, but barely.”
“Berkeley,” Jameson called between painful whimpers, “help me.”
“Forget it, Senator,” Matt yelled back. “You’re history.”
Kneeling, Matt raised Hammersmith’s head. “I owe you bigtime, Hammersmith, but for right now, the ship. Starla said ship. You know anything about Shoemaker’s ships at Blount Island?”
Hammersmith coughed, and blood sprayed from his mouth. Gasping for breath, he whispered, “Alliance…all ships’ names…end with…with Alliance.” With little more than a wheeze for a voice, he said, “Roll-on/roll-off ships. Ma…Majestic Alliance, Grand Alliance, Star…Starla Alliance.”
“That’s gotta be it,” Park said. “Bitch is so stuck on herself, a ship with her name on it is the only way she’d go.”
The sudden whump, whump, whump of helicopter rotors from the roof shook the building, the vibration quickly fading as the helicopter moved up and out over the river.
Matt catapulted across the desk, landing in front of the windows next to Terri Good’s body in time to see the huge helicopter, its blue and white fuselage with Alliance Industries painted along its after section. “Goddamn!”
The sound of Park punching three numbers, 9-1-1, called his attention away from the disappearing helicopter. With Starla’s pearlcolored phone in his hand, Park said, “This is Steve Park. Officers down, officers down.” He paused a moment, then said, “Bullet wounds, Alliance Industries Building…Hell, lady, I don’t know. Some kind of conference room.”
Park held the phone out to Matt and asked, “What floor?”
Matt threw up his hands. “Way up. Antiquity Finders conference room.”
Back on the phone, Park asked, “Got that?…Yeah, one probably dead; one hurt bad. Also, one crooked state senator who the cops’ll love to see…”
Brandy rushed around the table and grabbed Matt’s arm. “I knew about the gold, Matt, but I didn’t know about the Catholic thing. And I didn’t know they killed Ashley or tried to kill you. Please, Matt, please believe me.”
Matt pulled away from Brandy. “I believe you, Brandy, but your ship that was coming in? Unfortunately for you, it just left.”
Spinning away, Matt snatched up Good’s Glock semiautomatic, crammed it in his pants pocket, then rummaged in her jacket for the keys to the Crown Victoria. Once the keys were in his hand, he waved at Park as he headed for the elevator door. “The nine-one-one operator,” he said over his shoulder, “don’t let her go. Tell her to get that Coast Guard Group Commander friend of yours at Mayport on the horn.” Matt slapped the elevator’s down button and added, “Tell it all, gold and everything. Tell him Commander Berkeley’s on his way and to have one of their patrol craft standing by. We’ve got a ship to stop.”
“But you’re not active duty,” Park shouted back as the elevator door slid open.
As Matt stepped into the elevator and the door started closing, he called back, “Active or reserve, like they say in the Navy, it’s not over till it’s over.”
Matt had toyed with the idea of turning on the front and rear emergency blinkers to hopefully clear out some of the traffic on Atlantic Boulevard and then on Mayport Road, but his prayers had been answered. Not much traffic in midafternoon and no cops to come screaming after him for doing 65 and 70 in 45 and 55 mile-per-hour speed zones. And he refused to think about how he would explain driving an unmarked police car and carrying a police officer’s sidearm, concealed no less. As he whipped left through the gates of the Mayport, Florida, Coast Guard Station, two young men in Coast Guard uniforms, carrying M16 automatic rifles, brought him to a screeching halt next to a small guardhouse. Rolling down the window, he said, “Berkeley. Commander Berkeley. Group Commander’s expecting me.”
“ID, sir,” the guard on the driver side of the car ordered.
Matt pulled out his wallet and flashed his Naval Reserve identification card.
The guard took two steps back and raised the M16. “This is an unmarked police vehicle. You’re not police.”
“Afraid not, son. Let’s just say the car’s a loaner, but I am a Commander in the Naval Reserve, and if you don’t let me in, some real bad folks who just got a cop killed, and wounded another one, are gonna make off with a lotta money that doesn’t belong to them.”
The second guard picked up a phone placed in the window of the guardhouse and pushed one of its buttons. “Commander Worley, we’ve got a man down here, says his name’s Berkeley and…” The guard paused a moment before saying, “Aye, aye, sir.” To Matt, he said, “Commander Worley says drive to the pier. Lieutenant (JG) Maitland, CO of the Kingfisher’s standing by, ready to get underway.”
Matt gave a salute, said, “Thanks,” and burned rubber in the direction of the pier, the St. Johns River, and the USCG Kingfisher, a white, 87-foot patrol craft with identifying orange and blue stripes on its forward hull. Already, personnel were standing by two tripod-mounted, 50-caliber machine guns, one on each side of the forward deck. The machine guns’ weather covers had been removed, and both weapons were ready for action.
As the Crown Vic skidded to a stop, leaving tread marks on the concrete, the car’s right front fender barely missed one of the concrete bollards positioned along the edge of the pier. Scrambling out of the car, Matt shouted, “Permission to come aboard,” as he raced over the narrow brow onto the Kingfisher’s afterdeck.
A young officer in a dark blue work jacket with a single silver bar on each shoulder, stuck his head out of the pilothouse. He wore a Coast Guard ball cap and had a baby face, making him look like he might have just graduated from high school. He called, “If you’re Berkeley, permission granted.”
“That’s me,” Matt shouted. The brow was pulled back to the pier by two Coast Guardsmen as soon as he was on board,
The officer answered, “Maitland, CO of the Kingfisher. C’mon up. Looking for gold, are we?”
Matt grabbed the handrails and, two steps at a time, hoisted his way up the ladder and into the pilothouse. “And two people wanted for murder. On the Starla Alliance, we think, or if we’re not too late, they’ll be on a boat trying to catch up with the ship.”
Maitland held a microphone to his mouth and ordered, “Take in all lines.” His words boomed out from loudspeakers, fore and aft. His order was immediately answered by personnel freeing lines from bollards and cleats on the pier and throwing the looped ends to ship’s crew on Kingfisher’s decks. With that done, Maitland took the helm, backed down on the port engine, and waited a moment before turning the wheel slightly to port.
“People we’ve gotta stop were on a chopper,” Matt hurriedly explained. “One too big to land on a Roll-on/roll-off ship. Probably went to Blount Island or the Alliance Industries shipyard to get the boat.”
Keeping his eyes on the pier and the movement of the patrol craft, Maitland said quickly, “Starla Alliance passed here as you were driving up. Heading seaward. Couldn’t be more than a mile ahead of us.” With the craft’s bow a good 50 feet from the pier, Maitland punched in the order for both engines ahead two-thirds and worked his way into the river’s main channel.
As they turned, Matt saw a white cruiser plowing through the channel ahead of them, its stern down, bow up, moving at a high rate of speed. “Binoculars?”
“Hanging on the side of the chart table,” Maitland answered.
Matt spun around, grabbed the binoculars, brought them to his eyes, and focused. “Yeah, man, that’s them!”
“Hank’s Baby, the boat’s name, and flying the Alliance Industry flag. I’m sure. Hank for Henry, as in Shoemaker. The woman killed her old man and stole the boat.”
“The Shoemaker?”
“Yeah”
“Wow!” Maitland said. “Thirty-seven foot Chaparral cabin cruiser. A mini-yacht.” Almost immediately, he grabbed the microphone and ordered, “Battle stations! Man your battle stations! Boarding party, stand by.”
Matt watched from the pilothouse as personnel manning the two 50-caliber machine guns up forward slipped into bulletproof vests and helmets. Looking aft, he could see armed personnel take the same precautions before preparing a small, fast intercept boat to be launched from Kingfisher’s stern ramp.
Simultaneously, voices from the fore-and afterdecks crackled over a speaker mounted in the pilothouse. “Fifties, manned and ready,” followed by “Boarding party, manned and ready.”
With the rapid movement of Maitland’s right hand over the control console, the Kingfisher surged forward. “We’ll take ‘em,” he shouted to Matt over his shoulder.
Pulling Terri Good’s semiautomatic from his pants pocket, Matt held it behind his back, hoping Maitland wouldn’t see, but he did. “Commander or not, you’re not supposed to have that weapon on this boat,” Maitland said.
“Sorry about that, Lieutenant, but if the people on that boat up ahead had already been shooting at you, you’d do what you had to, also. Hopefully, I won’t have to use it, and your people on deck won’t have to use those machine guns either.”
As the Kingfisher drew within fifty yards of the cabin cruiser, Maitland switched on the blue law enforcement light mounted above the pilothouse. He then turned up the volume on the craft’s loudspeaker, put the microphone to his mouth and said, “White cabin cruiser, Hank’s Baby, this is Coast Guard Patrol Craft Kingfisher. Lie to and stand by to be boarded.”
Matt focused the binoculars on the cabin cruiser’s cockpit. “She’s driving.”
“Who’s driving?”
“Starla Shoemaker.”
“My God, Berkeley, and she really killed her husband?”
“Damn right, and her brother Eric Bruder’s with her, but where? I don’t see him.”
As the Kingfisher rounded the last bend in the river and took an easterly course toward the open ocean, Matt finally caught sight of the massive, gray-hulled Starla Alliance, its huge stern slewing ramp in the up position, its two, twin 55-ton cranes reaching skyward above the main deck. Riding high in the water, the ship was apparently not fully loaded The tips of twin propellers were visible above the river’s surface as they churned up dirty white foam, and an accommodation ladder hung suspended against the ship’s starboard side. Just forward of the superstructure, the ladder’s embarkation platform rode barely above the water.
Focusing again on Hank’s Baby, Matt shouted, “Looks like the cabin cruiser’s still a couple of hundred yards behind the ship, but she’s putting on speed. Trying to get alongside that accommodation ladder. If you’ll…Aw, shit! There’s Bruder, and he’s got what looks like a machine pistol.”
No sooner had the words spilled from Matt’s mouth than staccato bursts of gunfire erupted from Bruder’s weapon. Bullets sprayed across the patrol craft’s bow, shattering windows that surrounded the pilothouse as Matt and Maitland threw themselves to the deck. Matt waited for the ear-splitting sound of the Kingfisher’s 50-caliber machine guns…and waited. But the guns remained silent. Ignoring blood streaming down his left cheek from tiny shards of embedded glass, Maitland jumped to his feet. “Goddamn it! My people!” He swung the patrol craft away from the cabin cruiser, then brought Kingfisher’s controls to all stop.
With exception of sporadic gunfire from the boarding party aft, the Kingfisher’s guns were quiet. Matt pulled himself up and yelled, “Whatta you doing? You’re letting ‘em get away.”
“On the deck, man! If it wasn’t for you…”
Matt stared through the blown-out windows. “Aw, Christ! They’ve all been hit.” Spinning on broken glass underfoot, Matt threw open the pilothouse door and bolted toward the ladder.
“Where the hell you going, Berkeley?” Maitland yelled.
“Forward deck. Get this boat underway. We’ve gotta stop ‘em, or do you want your people to die in vain?”
Using the ladder’s handrail, Matt catapulted to the deck below and raced forward alongside the superstructure. Seeing a chief petty officer trying to get to his feet, Matt grabbed the man’s shoulder, lifted him, and shouted, “You okay, Chief?”
“Caught me in the legs, but Lopez there…” The chief nodded to the man lying at the foot of the machine gun’s tripod support.
“He took one through the head.”
Matt looked around. The personnel assigned to the starboard machine gun were sprawled against the superstructure, one holding a wounded thigh, the second nursing a smashed shoulder. Looking up toward the pilothouse, Matt shouted, “Lieutenant, one dead, three wounded. You gonna get those bastards, or let ‘em get away?”
Matt watched Maitland’s face, knowing the man was torn between the safety of his remaining crew and stopping the killers.
“Gotta get ‘em, Skipper,” the chief called, and suddenly the Kingfisher surged forward.
Trying desperately to remember what he’d learned about the operation of a 50-caliber machine gun so many years ago, Matt checked to make sure the bolt latch release was locked before feeding the ammunition belt into the chamber. Once done, he pulled back on the retracting handle. “Can you feed for me, Chief?” he shouted above the rush of water and growing sounds of Starla Alliance’s giant propellers.
“Damn right,” the chief shouted back, pulling his body around to the ammunition box, ready to feed the belt.
But the cabin cruiser was gone. “Goddamn it, where is it?” Matt yelled, bracing himself as Kingfisher bounced across Starla Alliance’s wake, coming out on the starboard side of the ship.
“There!” the chief shouted. “Pulling alongside the accommodation ladder.”
Kingfisher made a tight turn, paralleling itself with Starla Alliance, its bow quickly settling into the water as the speed dropped to equal that of the big ship. Matt could see the river pilot and ship’s personnel on Starla Alliance’s bridge, looking down on the scene, and hurriedly talking among themselves, but he saw no guns and no overt efforts to help Bruder and Starla.
Maitland’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “White cabin cruiser, lay down your weapons, cast off from the accommodation ladder, and stand by to be boarded—now!”
Matt heard Bruder shout, “Never!” as he jumped from the cabin cruiser to the accommodation ladder platform, a line to the cabin cruiser in one hand, the machine pistol in the other. He immediately dropped to one knee, brought the machine pistol up, and fired.
Feeling the thud of bullets hit Kingfisher’s superstructure behind him, Matt automatically jammed his thumb hard against the machine gun’s trigger. Firing at a rate of 450 rounds per minute, empty cartridges flew across the deck. Almost simultaneously, 50-caliber rounds marched their way forward along Starla Alliance’s hull and tore through Bruder’s body, flinging him backwards against the ship’s hull. As though in slow motion, he slumped in a bloody heap to the floor of the metal platform.
“That’s for Ashley, you sonofabitch!” Matt hissed through tightened lips.
At the same time, the line to the cabin cruiser slipped from Bruder’s hand, allowing the boat to fall away from the accommodation ladder. As the boat drifted backwards toward the big ship’s stern, Starla tried to restart the engine, but it refused to turn over. Matt shouted to Maitland, “She’s in trouble. Move in.”
Maitland attempted to pull back and pivot to port, then to bring the Kingfisher closer without ramming the smaller boat into the Starla Alliance, but he was too late.
As if drawn to a magnet, the cabin cruiser, with Starla standing in the forward cockpit still trying the ignition,
swung stern-first around and beneath the ships’ stern counter. Matt saw what was happening. “Starla, jump!”
Starla kept her eyes glued on Matt as the boat’s engine roared to life, but Matt knew she’d never make it. “Jump, Starla!”
It wasn’t until Starla Alliance’s starboard propeller blade rose from the water and crushed its way down through the cabin cruiser’s stern, devouring the Alliance Industry flag, that Starla realized what was happening. She gunned the engine, but the ship’s propeller blade, followed by the next blade, and the next, crunched down and chewed through fiberglass, wood, and steel like it was a child’s toy. As the cabin cruiser’s stern plunged beneath the surface, its bow momentarily pointing toward the sky, Matt thought he heard a scream. Whether a human voice or the shrill screech of hovering seagulls, the sound was lost in a gas line explosion that blew apart what was still visible of Hank’s Baby and the woman named Starla.
EPILOGUE
Two Days Later
That morning had been chillier than usual for early November in North Florida, but the sun, working its way through the oak trees, was gradually warming the pathway as Matt and Steve Park strolled with Bishop Pastorelli. With briefcase in hand, Matt couldn’t help but laugh when the bishop asked, “You’re finally straight with our friends in law enforcement, I presume?”
“Neither the Jacksonville Beach Police nor the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office were overjoyed with me walking away. Fortunately, Detective Mike Hammersmith, recovering from gunshot wounds, and Dr. Fay Lundgren, Duval County Medical Examiner, both said if Steve Park and I hadn’t been brave enough to yadda yadda yadda… You get the picture.”