by Marty Steere
Nate felt a sudden chill. He watched the boat approach for a few seconds, then reached into the waterproof overalls he was wearing on top of his clothes, fished in the pocket of his jacket, and pulled out the two-way communicator Matt had given him. He switched it on, toggled it to speaker mode, and set it down on one of the plastic crates stacked next to the lobster tank. After a moment, Matt’s voice came through the small speaker. “Talk to me, Nate.”
“Maybe it’s nothing,” Nate said, trying to keep his voice casual. “But we’ve got company.”
“Tell me where you are and what’s happening.”
“We’re,” Nate started to say, then realized he had no idea. He looked at Maggie.
“By Turner’s Lighthouse,” Maggie said. “About a mile and a half out, opposite the mouth of the Monahauk River.”
The other boat was close enough now that Nate could read the words “Maine Marine Patrol” in green lettering on the side of the hull. She was a bit larger than the Sarah Lynne, and the deck sat a few feet higher. He could see that there were at least four people on board. As she approached, the patrol boat slowed and turned, her captain guiding her to a spot parallel to the Sarah Lynne, facing in the opposite direction, about ten yards away. The wake generated by the larger vessel caught the lobster boat and rocked her from side to side. A man in a khaki uniform and a green baseball cap leaned out of the patrol boat’s wheelhouse and hailed them.
“Hello, Maggie. Tim,” he shouted.
“Afternoon, Burt,” Maggie called back. “What are you doing all the way up here?”
The man didn’t answer right away. He tilted his head slightly, and it appeared to Nate as though he was directing a question behind himself. Nate could see that two of the other men in the patrol boat wore uniforms, but the fourth was in civilian clothes. A pair of aviator sunglasses concealed the fourth man’s eyes. Nate wasn’t sure, but he thought the man might have spoken in response to the question from the uniformed officer.
“Maggie, I’m going to come alongside,” the first uniformed man called out. The patrol boat reversed engines, and it began backing away, apparently in preparation for the maneuver that would bring the two boats together.
Matt’s voice again came over the speaker. “Do not let them board.”
Maggie raised a hand in acknowledgement and stepped over to the starboard side of the wheelhouse. Without warning, she fired the engine and threw the throttle all the way forward. The Sarah Lynne bucked, and Nate almost lost his balance. Maggie immediately swung the wheel hard to the right, and the lobster boat began a tight turn taking them around the rocky outcropping on which the lighthouse sat.
The move obviously surprised the patrol boat captain. It took him a moment to halt the rearward movement of his vessel and to start forward. Then, when he did, he had to maneuver around the other side of the lighthouse, taking a longer course than the Sarah Lynne. By the time the patrol boat had cleared the outcropping, the lobster boat was a good hundred yards away and moving at a rapid clip.
Nate retrieved the communicator from the deck where it had fallen and joined Maggie and Tim in the wheelhouse. The deck beneath his feet was bouncing, and he had to hang onto a stanchion to avoid falling.
“Nice move, Maggie,” Tim shouted above the sound of the engine and the wind passing through the open side windows. “But it’s not going to give us more than thirty seconds, and that patrol boat’s a lot faster than this old bucket.”
Maggie, her eyes focused ahead of them and a resolute look on her face, shook her head. “Thirty seconds can be a lifetime.”
Nate realized there was sound coming from the communicator, and he held it up to his ear. “Nate,” he heard Matt calling, “tell me what’s going on.”
“We’re making a run for it,” he replied, shouting into the device.
“Where are you headed?” Matt asked immediately.
Nate turned to Maggie. “Where are we headed?”
Without taking her eyes off the water in front of them, Maggie shouted, “Up the Monahauk River. Tell him to meet us at the bridge where Highway 1 crosses.”
Nate repeated the information into the communicator.
“Maggie, no,” Tim was saying, and Nate looked at him in alarm.
“What do you mean, no?” Nate asked.
“Can’t be done,” the old man replied, a look of panic on his face. “Been tried before. No one’s ever made it.” He pointed ahead of them. “Too many rocks. Way too shallow.”
Nate looked, and, as if to punctuate the man’s point, Nate saw the remains of a boat impaled in the crook of a pair of rocks jutting out of the water a couple hundred yards in front of them.
Grimly, Maggie shouted, “Don’t have a choice.”
Maggie had a set a course to the right of the rocks that dotted the ocean surface, angling slightly away from the opening to the river. They were headed toward a point where the sea met the shore at a massive stone outcropping, its ocean side dropping straight down into the water. Unless they were to turn soon, Nate saw, they would plow directly into the solid rock face.
“Maggie,” Tim called out.
Nate glanced back at Maggie. Her expression was set, a look of fierce determination in her eyes.
Something pinged off the top of the wheelhouse. Nate jerked his head around. The patrol boat was behind them and gaining. He saw the man in civilian clothes leaning out the port side of the boat, his hand extended toward them. Nate realized with a start that the man was shooting. Under the circumstances, Nate didn’t think it would be possible for anyone to fire a handgun with any accuracy, particularly given the way the boats were bouncing over the waves, but then he heard the sound of another ricochet somewhere near the stern of the lobster boat.
He turned to look forward again and instinctively hunched his shoulders. The sheer cliff was now looming above them.
“Maggie,” Tim called out again. “Maybe you should turn now.”
Maggie didn’t reply.
“Really, Maggie.” Tim’s voice was plaintive. “Now.”
The rock towered over them.
“Maggie. Please.”
Suddenly, Maggie pulled back on the throttle, and she threw the wheel hard over to the left. The Sarah Lynne wallowed, and it appeared that she would crash into the rock at her starboard beam. Then Maggie again rammed the throttle forward and, just as contact with the face of the cliff seemed inevitable, the lobster boat jumped and began moving away from the stone wall, headed toward a narrow gap between two rocks jutting up out of the water in front of them. It didn’t look to Nate as though there was nearly enough space between the rocks to accommodate the boat. He increased his grip on the stanchion and reached forward with his other hand to brace for the impact.
And then, inconceivably, they were through, and Maggie was bringing the wheel hard over to the right. The Sarah Lynne swept past yet another large boulder, and suddenly they were in calm water.
For a moment, Nate couldn’t move. Then he roused himself and looked back. The patrol boat had veered away and was circling in the ocean just beyond the shoals. The man in civilian clothes stood at the rail. He was no longer firing his weapon. They were obviously out of range.
Nate looked back at his companions. Tim appeared faint, but Maggie’s face still bore the same grim determination as before.
He remembered the communicator. “Matt, we made it. We lost them.”
After a moment, Matt’s voice came back. He was unusually terse and spoke in clipped tones. “Good. We had issues too. On our way.”
Ahead of them, the waterway they were on narrowed at the point where it was spanned by a bridge. Maggie reduced the speed, and, as she neared the bridge, she turned the Sarah Lynne toward the shore, heading for a spot on the left hand side that appeared to Nate at first to be a sandy beach. When they got closer, however, he realized it was an area from which boats could be launched into the river. A narrow drive led away at a slight incline, apparently connecting with the highway above.
As they approached the landing, Maggie shut down the engine, and the Sarah Lynne drifted in, finally making contact with a loud scraping sound.
“Sorry about that Tim,” said Maggie.
“Can’t be helped,” the old man replied. He seemed to have regained some of his regular equanimity.
Nate and Maggie lowered Tim over the side into water that came up to his chest. He waded ashore and Maggie tossed him one of the mooring lines. Then Nate lowered Maggie into the water, and, when she was clear, he jumped in himself. When he emerged, he saw that Tim had tied the boat off on a hooked metal stake that sat to the side of the landing. Without a word, the three of them hurried up the inclined drive.
At the top, there was an open area where vehicles could safely turn off the highway. Nate pointed to a thicket of trees to one side of the opening. Maggie nodded, and they jogged over, slipping into the relative privacy, where they stood, shivering in the cold.
A couple of trucks passed over the bridge, but there was otherwise no traffic on the highway. The communicator crackled, and Matt’s voice announced, “We’re coming up on you now.”
Then the SUV careened into the clearing, coming to a quick stop, kicking up dust and pieces of gravel. As the three of them ran to the vehicle, the doors on the right side flew open. Nate jumped into the front seat, next to Patricia, and Maggie and Tim threw themselves into the rear seat. The SUV was already back on the highway before the doors could be shut.
It took Nate a moment to notice that the front windshield was pockmarked with multiple holes. Not holes, he realized, because the window was still intact, but deep circular impressions that looked for all the world like holes. Not just any kind of holes, either. Bullet holes.
Nate glanced across at Matt, who was gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Looks like you did have issues.”
Matt nodded, but he didn’t turn. His eyes were focused on the road ahead, though it appeared he was also scanning the areas to either side. “Hold on,” he announced, and he suddenly slammed on the brakes. With a loud squealing sound, the SUV slewed to a complete stop. Matt then threw it into reverse and started back down the highway in the direction from which they’d just come. After about thirty yards, Matt yanked the steering wheel hard right, and the vehicle swerved off the road backwards. Nate hadn’t even noticed it as they’d passed, but there was a tiny service station sitting by the side of the highway with two gasoline pumps out in front. Matt just missed clipping one of the pumps as he backed the SUV to a spot adjacent to the building, squeezing it in between the huge trunk of an evergreen tree and the side wall of the structure. He pulled the vehicle well back from the front corner of the building and shut off the engine.
There was a sudden silence.
After a few seconds, Nate said, “What are we…” but stopped when Matt held up a hand.
“Wait,” Matt said, quietly.
After a moment, Nate heard something new, a thumping noise. It quickly grew louder, until, in a matter of seconds, it reached a crescendo, and, with a massive whoomping sound, a helicopter roared overhead, not more than a hundred feet above the highway, traveling north, as they had been, but at a much greater speed. It was past them and gone before they had much of a chance to register the fact that it was there, the thumping fading into the distance.
“They’ll be back soon,” Matt said, starting the engine. “With others. We’ve got to get off this highway, and, more importantly, we need to disappear.”
From the back seat, Tim said, “I think I know where we can do that.”
Nate turned to look at him. Tim was, in turn, looking at Maggie.
“The cabin,” Maggie said.
Tim nodded. “The cabin.”
#
Dacoff took one last look at the bloody remains of Ozaki as the medical technician zipped up the body bag. Raen was going to be furious.
They’d had Marek trapped. The Dayton house sat on a high bluff. It was an almost straight drop to the bay below. And, sitting in the bay just off shore had been a pair of marine patrol boats. The only way out was the narrow drive. There was no chance that Marek could outflank them. They’d had their quarry completely outnumbered and just where they wanted him.
Somehow, though, the man had known they were coming. Dacoff had heard stories about Marek’s sixth sense. He hadn’t believed them. He did now.
As the action team was making its approach, a black SUV with tinted windows had suddenly appeared, flying down the lane, nowhere to go but straight ahead, a suicidal move. Dacoff had been in the lead vehicle, a pickup truck, Ozaki perched behind him in the bed, armed with an assault rifle mounted on a bipod, facing forward. Ozaki waited until they’d closed to a hundred yards before opening fire. He aimed for the SUV’s engine block. A single round should have taken it out. But it hadn’t.
The SUV had covered half of the hundred yards before anyone realized that the bullets were merely pinging off the front of the vehicle. Ozaki then shifted his aim and put several rounds through the front windshield. Except, inconceivably, those pinged off as well.
At the last possible moment, Dacoff had jumped from the passenger seat. The move saved his life. At approximately eighty miles an hour, the SUV slammed into the pickup, instantly turning it, the driver and Ozaki into a grisly collection of mangled and twisted metal and flesh. The collision barely made a dent in the front end of the SUV.
The driver of their second vehicle, a Suburban, swerved reflexively, the move sending the big automobile over the edge of the bluff into the rocks a hundred feet below. Two of the operatives in that vehicle had been killed outright, and the other two were badly injured.
While it had occurred to Dacoff in advance that Marek might have outfitted his vehicle with armor plating, he’d not even considered the possibility that Marek would have glass that could withstand armor piercing bullets. Dacoff had heard about a new transparent armor made from aluminum oxynitride, but he’d not yet had a chance to study it. Apparently, Marek had gotten his hands on some. That took Dacoff completely by surprise.
Dacoff kicked in frustration at the dusty ground. Yes, Raen was going to be furious.
#
The cabin sat on a lake, surrounded by woods. It was about a hundred miles inland from the coast as the crow flew. To get to it, however, they’d driven almost twice that distance.
They turned off the highway less than a mile from the spot where the helicopter had passed overhead, and they began wending their way into the interior of Maine. While the coast had been sparsely populated, compared to where they were now, it seemed to Nate in retrospect positively metropolitan.
On the drive, Maggie and Tim detailed the circumstances that had led to the existence of the cabin. Near the turn of the century, they explained, the fishing boat on which Tim’s great grandfather, Benjamin, had been serving was caught several miles off shore in an unexpected northeaster. One of his crewmates was swept overboard, and Benjamin risked his own life to save him. The man, it turned out, was the scion of one of the state’s largest landowners. To show his gratitude, he built for Benjamin and his family a vacation cabin at a prime spot in the vast forest owned by the man’s family.
There had never been a deed recorded. It was a private arrangement between two families. But the successors of the man whose life had been saved assiduously adhered to the wishes of their predecessor. For generations, whenever anyone from the Dayton family had wanted to get away, the cabin was available. In a drawer in one of the bedrooms was a blue flag with an orange stripe. When the Daytons were in residence, they’d raise the flag on the pole that sat by the lake and could be seen from the homestead of the owners on the far side, and the occupants of the cabin would be left in solitude. Otherwise, the owners kept an eye on the place and made sure it was always ready for a visit.
When Matt heard the explanation, he deemed the cabin an acceptable solution to their need to disappear. As soon as they started making their way inland, they found themselves plunged into
a relatively primordial world, leaving behind the majority of civilization, as well as the terrors it had recently visited on them. After evaluating the place following their arrival, Matt, to Nate’s profound relief, pronounced it “safe for the moment.”
The term “cabin” was a misnomer. Yes, the two-story structure was a bit rough-hewn, but it was quite large and very comfortable. There were six bedrooms, a large kitchen and a spacious dining and family room. It had electricity, running water and, Matt and Peter were delighted to discover, wireless internet service, courtesy of the owners who lived across the lake. The pantry was full of staples, and they even found a decent selection of frozen foods in the large refrigerator.
They’d raised the Dayton flag, secreted the damaged SUV behind the structure, and gratefully settled in. The first moment they were alone, Nate told Matt they needed to speak, but Matt asked for a little time, explaining that he had some things he needed to do. Reluctantly, Nate agreed.
The following day was unseasonably warm. Nate took Peter’s research down to a spot by the shore of the lake and spread it out on a large picnic table. With nothing but the sound of warblers, chickadees and woodpeckers in the background, Nate immersed himself in the remainder of the documentation.
He’d been at it for a few hours when he was suddenly startled by the intense sensation of something latching onto his foot - something alive. He looked below the table in alarm, only to discover, to his immense relief, that Buster had somehow found his way down from the cabin and was now scrabbling at his ankle, his stubby tail wagging wildly.
From behind, he heard a laugh. He glanced back just in time to see Maggie descend the last few steps of the path from the cabin. In one hand, she held a plate covered by a paper towel, in the other a tall glass.
“You looked like you were about to come out of your skin,” she said, an expression of amusement on her face.
Embarrassed, Nate took a deep breath, his heart still pounding.
“Didn’t hear you coming,” he acknowledged, after a moment.