by Lyle Howard
“Hurry up, Cal!” Geiger’s voice came muffled through the bulletproof glass of the helicopter’s passenger window. “Take him down!”
Taking a shot at the walking Redwood while he was still holding the knife to the girl’s neck was easier said than done. And it appeared that reasoning was out of the question too, since language was more than just a barrier—it was a gaping chasm. Every time Cal attempted to convince the giant to drop the girl, his commands were met with only the blankest of expressions. He needed an interpreter...
But wait ... just because Raimund didn’t understand English...
Cal changed his tack, remembering that Artie had called the girl Becky!
“Becky!”
Raimund stopped moving and his eyebrows furrowed.
“Becky ... can you hear me?”
Abrams’ eyelids fluttered open revealing two bloodshot and sightless orbs.
“Becky, I need you to do something ... anything ... to help me out here!”
It was very bizarre to be shouting instructions right in the giant’s face.
Abrams’ head lolled back lethargically with her empty eyes looking up at Raimund. The giant howled with laughter, knowing full well the girl was on her last legs. But he was wrong...
From deep in her throat, Becky summoned up the biggest wad of blood and slobber she could muster and spit it upward into the bodyguard’s eyes. Raimund screamed like a banshee and let go of the girl and knife, wiping his eyes furiously to clear his vision. Becky fell to the deck with a bone-jarring thump!
Cal emptied his clips; his aim was true...
Three shots rang out, each one hitting the giant square in the chest. The force that would have sent the average man reeling across the deck only staggered the giant, who seemed more concerned about clearing his vision than the sudden perforation of his chest...
Cal knew he was in big trouble. It was fantastic that the girl was finally out of harm’s way, but the bad news was now he was the center of the Raimund’s attention.
The giant’s face was a fright mask of dripping crimson. With the delight of a child showing off a Christmas present, Raimund ripped open the front of his shirt to reveal the largest Kevlar vest Cal had ever seen. Specially made for the oversized bodyguard, the bulletproof vest had easily stopped what the pair of Walthers had offered. Cal could have kicked himself for not aiming at least one shot at the giant’s head!
Raimund’s mighty hands balled up into sledge-hard fists. This would be over in a matter of seconds. No one had ever lasted longer than that in the practice ring. He wondered if he would even break a sweat.
It was David versus Goliath all over again. Cal was overmatched by a foot and a half and more than one hundred pounds. With no time to rationalize his actions, he tossed his guns over the railing and lowered his shoulder, charging at Raimund with the force of a professional linebacker.
But noble aspirations would only get him so far...
With the resistance of a brick wall, the giant never flinched. Cal hit Raimund’s right thigh with every ounce of energy he could gather, only to be greeted with a colossal right uppercut that lifted Cal off his feet and sent him crashing backward. If one were to normally see stars when hit as hard as Cal had been, then he was seeing the entire cosmos...
“We’ve gotta help him!” Cal’s father yelled from the back seat.
From his vantage point, Geiger could only partially glimpse Becky Abrams’ crumpled legs. The time for indecision and sitting on the sidelines was over. He threw open the passenger’s door and turned back to Ernie. “I’m gonna get the girl! See if you can find something to distract King Kong!”
Raimund appeared to be enjoying himself. Cal was on his back, the bodyguard standing over him, grabbing him by the front of his shirt, mercilessly pounding on his face with a right fist that could have doubled for a jackhammer.
Raimund felt no hatred—no animosity—toward his victim. He was just performing the job that he was being paid handsomely to do. If he wouldn’t have been working for Wolfgar Von Robles, he would have been doing the same thing for someone else who could have lined his pockets equally as well. This was as natural to him as walking ... and he took pride in his expertise.
Becky groaned when Artie cradled her in his arms. As he lifted her off the deck, she tried to mutter something but the deputy told her to stay quiet. Her head fell against his bare chest, blood trickling from her nostrils mixing with his sweat. On the verge of passing out, she was dead weight and would need to be stretched out across the rear seats in the helicopter. Ducking below the spinning blades, Geiger opened the passenger door and called out for the old man’s help. But Ernie Mackey was gone...
Cal squinted up at the shadowy figure towering over him. Backlit like Mount Rushmore at dusk, the giant’s facial features were impossible to make out with the sun directly behind him. Cal could only see the occasional sparkle of a sinister, satisfied snarl.
Darkness began to engulf him as the thin line between reality and unconsciousness started to blur. There was no more pain, only numbness as punch after punch landed with relentless brutality upon his face. He wanted to reach for his knives, but his arms felt paralyzed; little did he know that Raimund was standing on his hands. There was no more concern for his friends now. He only hoped that the end would come quickly. His nose had been broken before, so there was no surprise this time. There was no more concern about what it would feel like to have your body blown apart by the impact of the blast ... he was beyond feeling that anymore. His threshold of pain had been exceeded five punches ago.
The warmth of the sun had returned...
At first, Cal thought the bright light shining in his eyes was the one he had heard a person saw when they were dying. But he hadn’t imagined it would feel as hot as this...
No, this wasn’t the great light, and he wasn’t cashing in his chips just yet ... this was the sun, shining warmly overhead, and Raimund was no longer standing over him...
Ernie had found a small two-by-fours lying across one of the lifeboats. It felt like it weighed a ton, but he closed his eyes and swung it with the conviction of a thirty year old policeman, bringing it splintering down on the giant’s back. Enough to drop an average person, this proved to be merely another minor inconvenience for the bodyguard, like swatting away a pesky insect.
There was nowhere to run for the old man. He was too old and too sickly. He knew it, Raimund knew it, and somewhere ... some peaceful place that he hoped he would be soon ... his wife waited for him.
And so, Ernest Mackey accepted his fate with all of the dignity of a casualty of war. He lunged headlong at the giant, his arms swinging at every conceivable angle, his heart jousting at windmills.
Cal managed to lift himself to his knees, blood pouring on the deck from his battered face. His arms were outstretched, but woefully short of offering his father any help. His voice was abjectly grief-stricken as he screamed his dad’s name...
Geiger had just buckled Becky into the backseat when he heard Cal’s distraught scream over the steady drone of the spinning rotor blades. He knew instinctively what it meant. At the time, he was too concerned with the girl’s safety to think twice where Ernie had gone to. It was a regret he would carry with him always.
Raimund grabbed Cal’s father by the head and twisted. Just that effortlessly his neck was snapped—like twisting the cap off of a cheap bottle of wine. Ernest Mackey went limp, his body collapsing to the deck at Raimund’s feet. The giant stretched his back to relieve the slight stitch the two by four had caused before turning his attention back to the other annoyance sprawled out next to the helicopter.
Facing Raimund on his knees was not the most advantageous position a person wanted to find themselves in, but Cal had no choice. As the giant moved closer, Cal could see his father’s inanimate form slumped on the deck behind him. The sight of the man who had come to terms with his life and was willing to sacrifice himself suddenly put a face to all of the death and destruction caused
by this infernal ship and the ghoul who ran it. Up to this moment, Cal had maintained an air of detachment, which came from years of practical experience. He had seen death close up, but it never affected him like this. His father wasn’t an angel, but he was an innocent, not some terrorist through a gun sight that had to be taken out. These were his friends in trouble, not a handful of foreign villagers that needed to be extracted!
Raimund’s hands flexed like a contented cat stretching its paws. He wondered if he could kill him with one more blow. Just look at this weakling American kneeling before him ... how appropriate!
“You ever have a chicken fight, you big piece of shit?” Cal snarled through his bruised and purpled lips.
The giant paused, unsure of the unorthodox change in attitude that seemed to have befallen the American. He had expected submission, perhaps even a bit of whimpering, but not brazenness! This took all of the excitement out of it!
Cal snickered. “Yeah, I didn’t think so...”
The giant moved in for the quick kill.
Cal waited for just the right moment, when the giant’s legs were spread far enough apart.
Raimund never saw it coming.
Cal plowed between the bodyguard’s legs until his shoulder were firmly planted between his thighs. “I’ll bet you always thought you were head and shoulders above the rest of us, didn’t you, big guy?” Cal snickered.
Wrapping his arms around the gargantuan legs, the bartender heaved upward, tapping into some unknown reservoir of strength still hidden in his own indomitable spirit. “Well, now you’re just shoulders!”
With Cal rising to his full height, Raimund found himself perched precariously in the path of the spinning rotors.
The helicopter’s blades decapitated the bodyguard with the precision of an experienced butcher, and the grisly sound of a melon being cleaved in half. Blood and gore showered in every direction like the red pigment on a carnival pinwheel painting machine. The severed head hit the front windshield of the helicopter, leaving a long crimson smear that dripped gruesomely down the glass before it bounced across the deck, rolled awkwardly through the handrails, and plummeted into the ocean where it bobbed away on the passing waves like a discarded coconut.
Cal had no time to watch Raimund’s body collapse on the deck. Knowing that there could only be seconds left, he raced over to check on his father. There wasn’t anything more he could do for him. His head was lying at an unnatural angle, and his breathing shallow.
“Dad?” Cal whispered, as he rested his father’s blanched face in his hands.
Mackey Senior was too weak to open his eyes. “Did you get him, son?”
It was a good thing that his father’s eyes didn’t open. Cal didn’t want him to see the tears that were streaming down his face. “Yeah pop. We got him!”
His father reached out his hand and Cal took it gladly. “Don’t ever forget me or your mother, kid.”
Cal brushed a wisp of white hair off the old man’s face. “Never, Pop. I could never forget either of you.”
Ernest Mackey’s body spasmed twice and he simply ceased to be. With a trembling hand, Cal removed the wedding band he had found on the deck and placed it back where it belonged, on his father’s ring finger. “Give my love to mom,” Cal said, mournfully.
Climbing into the pilot’s seat, Cal was heartened to feel Artie Geiger’s hand on his arm. “Are you going to be alright? Your nose is where your cheek should be!”
Cal was too busy checking the gauges to answer.
“He tried to help you out, you know...”
Again, Cal didn’t answer, he just nodded sadly.
The deputy figured he needed to change the subject. “Boy, am I glad the girl wasn’t awake to see that!” he said pointing to the streak on the front window. “But I think she’s going to be okay though.”
Cal glimpsed into the backseat before slipping on his headset and instructing Geiger to do the same. “We’ve got to get her some medical attention,” Mackey’s voice announced through the earphones.
The deputy pointed to the rear of the cabin. “Did you know that this contraption doesn’t have a tail rotor?”
This brought a smile to Cal’s face. “This helicopter is a state-of-the-art, McDonnell Douglas Explorer—the sports car of commercial helicopters, my friend. It’ll reach a top speed of one hundred seventy five miles per hour. So hold onto your hat!”
Geiger swallowed hard. He hated to fly almost as much as he hated jumping off the back of yachts. He still honestly believed the whole concept and physics of flight were really voodoo magic.
Cal pulled back on the throttle and the ship gracefully rose into the air. “No tail rotor, but we’ve got a jet engine back there instead!”
With Artie Geiger screaming for dear life, the trio was catapulted to a dizzying height of two thousand feet nearly instantaneously...
Zero...
The last section of sizzling rope dropped into the barrel...
Zero...
The Nocturne was obliterated from existence in an orange plume of fire that mushroomed from the surface of the Caribbean Sea. The shockwave spread out in two distinct directions, one that burst outward with an expanding ring of water and shrapnel, and the second one, the one that had Cal worried the most, was the one that blossomed upward, like an enormous invisible fist punching at the sky.
“Hang on!” Cal screamed as the helicopter began to shudder.
Geiger looked back once over his shoulder to make sure Becky was secured before bracing his arms up against the roof of the cockpit.
The Explorer rolled onto its side and Cal went with it, letting the force of the blast push the helicopter even further away from the epicenter of the explosion. The g-forces squeezed both men into their seats as the helicopter was literally flying on its side.
Artie was too scared to throw up. After all, it was his side of the Explorer that was turned down facing the ocean. Instead of his life passing before his eyes, all the deputy could think of was having just gone to hell and back only to be hurled into the unsympathetic ocean while being trapped inside a giant blender.
Cal guided the helicopter through the turbulence with all the confidence and expertise of a flying ace. Within seconds, the Explorer had righted itself and was leveling off. Easing back on the throttle, Cal slowly circled the area and checked on the devastation. Nothing remained of the once majestic yacht besides a few sticks of floating debris and a dark black oil slick that would be carried further out to sea by the prevailing westerly winds.
Artie understood Cal’s solemn silence as they surveyed the wreckage. Although Ernie could be a handful at times, he was still a good man at heart.
“You gonna be alright?”
Cal pointed the nose of the helicopter due east toward the Florida coast. “Yeah, I’ll be just fine.”
Zero plus six minutes...
It appeared as a faint white streak that grew more visible the further east they headed.
“Do you see that?” Artie asked, pointing down at the stripe that bisected the deep blue water of the Gulfstream.
Cal let the helicopter slip to starboard until the trail was on his side. It was a gloriously full wake. One that made him smile when he saw it.
“You following it?” Artie asked.
Cal nodded. “Yeah, I should really make a close pass just to let him know that we made it.”
The deputy was shocked. Cal had filled him in on how Oscar Hidalgo had saved his life, but he was still the worst kind of criminal. “You think you’ve gotta waste time letting a Columbian drug smuggler know that you’re doing okay? We’ve got an injured girl back here!”
Cal’s opinion couldn’t be swayed. “Hey, the guy saved my life! The least I can do is let him know that we got out in one piece!”
The Thunderboat grew larger on the horizon, skipping across the waves at full speed.
“Damn, that sure is one fast boat!” Cal commented.
Geiger looked around at all of the
fancy instrumentation that filled the cockpit. “Hey Cal, why do you think they needed such a fancy helicopter?”
Cal dove the Explorer down to two hundred feet, close enough to see a school of porpoise skimming beneath the choppy surface of the water. “The way I figure it,” Cal said, adjusting the microphone in front of his mouth, “the government banned Von Robles from stepping foot on U.S. soil, but nothing was ever mentioned about his crew. What better way to shuttle them back and forth than in a bird that’s painted black and can run in whisper mode? No one would ever see them coming or going, and if there was a problem, this chopper could easily outrun any pursuit.”
Geiger thought about the theory and then nodded in agreement. “Sounds plausible.”
Cal increased their speed to catch up with the speeding boat. “Look, there he is!”
Geiger shielded his eyes to cut out the glare of the window, but something still didn’t look kosher to him. “I thought you said his partner was killed?”
Cal could clearly see two people now. “I thought he said...”
Artie pressed his face up to the glass. “Go down. Move in ... closer...”
Cal dropped the Explorer to just above the height of the indigo sea. “What are they doing down there?”
Geiger’s heart sunk into his throat! “Oh, my God ... they’re fighting!”
Cal looked over at the deputy. “What do you mean they’re fighting?”
“Get closer. I’m telling you, they’re beating the crap out of one another down there!”
Cal brought the Explorer into a holding position just above and behind the tail of the speeding Thunderboat. Aboard the boat it was obvious there were two men at odds with one another. Cal could clearly see that one was Oscar Hidalgo, but who was the other passenger?