by Chris Ryan
Big trouble.
Half of the small boat's hull was submerged. The canopy that had covered the top for shade had come loose on one corner and had filled with wind. It was billowing like a sail and pulling the boat further onto one side. The trio stood and stared at it, their hair blowing in the wind. No one said so, but Ben reckoned the other two were thinking the same as him: if anyone had been on that boat, they'd be going swimming. And a dip in those rough, muddy waters was the last thing any of them wanted in this weather.
'Maybe a bit of weight in the boat would steady it,' Angelo shouted uncertainly. The three of them edged further towards the pier. They were almost standing on it now, but neither Ben nor Danny replied to the Italian boy. Watching the boat, his suggestion seemed a bit too much to hope for. It was sinking fast. It reminded Ben of the pictures he'd seen of the Titanic — smaller, obviously, but going down in just the same way, and just as fast. They stared at it silently for a good two minutes, by which time the vessel was completely underwater.
The writing was on the wall. There was no way they could take to the water.
It was Angelo who said so first. 'There's no point being stupid about it, Ben. We can't help the other passengers if we're on a sinking boat.'
Ben knew he was right. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's go back to the wardens' station. I guess we'll just have to sit out the storm.'
As one, they turned to leave. And as one, they stopped in their tracks.
Ben felt his muscles freezing.
There were five of them. Five alligators. Ben didn't know if they were fully grown adults, but from the size of them he reckoned they couldn't be far off. They had obviously approached while the three of them had been looking out across the marshland and now they were only metres away. Ben knew nothing about alligator behaviour, but you didn't need to know anything to see that they seemed agitated. Their long, scaly tails lashed out like whips and occasionally they would snap aggressively at each other.
'Where… where did they come from?' Angelo stammered from behind gritted teeth.
'Marshland, I guess,' Ben replied, edging nervously backwards. 'If I was one of them I wouldn't want to stay in the water when it's like this.'
A sudden movement as one of the gators shuffled forwards. It was surprisingly fast, and Ben and Angelo both stumbled as they stepped backwards onto the pier. Behind them, Ben heard the sound of Danny fumbling in his rucksack for ammunition, but before the older man could load the gun the nervous animals had grown bolder. They were crowding round the end of the pier now, snarling and snapping at each other to get onto it.
'They're hungry!' Ben shouted. His voice sounded high-pitched and nervous. 'The wind's forced them out of the water and they haven't had anything to eat!'
One of the alligators made it onto the pier; the three of them ran to the end. Danny was still fumbling with his gun, but it was clear he wasn't going to get it loaded in time.
There was only one thing they could do.
'Jump!' yelled Ben.
He was the first to leap into the boat that was moored at the end of the pier. He wobbled and rocked as his feet hit the hull, and he had to grab on firmly to the side of the unstable boat to stop himself from falling in.
'Come on!' he screamed. There were more gators on the pier, and the leader was halfway along by now. Angelo jumped; the boat rocked dangerously again. Now it was just Danny who needed to get off the pier. He threw the gun first, which clattered heavily onto the boat, followed by the rucksack full of ammo. Just as he was about to hurl himself off the pier, the lead alligator snapped at his heels.
'Jump, Danny!' the two of them shouted above the howling wind. 'Jump!'
He jumped.
And as he jumped, the alligator opened its gaping mouth. It tried to grab Danny's leg but missed. Instead, its jaws clamped around the rope that was tying the boat to the pier. Furiously the alligator started to shake the rope, so when Danny landed the vessel was wobbling more unevenly than before. Instantly he lost his footing and with a shout he splashed into the water.
It all happened so quickly. Ben reached his arm out to grab Danny, who stretched to take hold of Ben's hand. But before they could make contact, the alligator's sharp teeth tore through the mooring rope. Like a pebble released from a catapult, the boat shot away from the pier, driven by the roaring wind. Ben and Angelo were away from the danger of the alligator; but Danny was still flailing in the rough water.
Ben knew he must be shouting, but he couldn't hear the man's voice above the storm.
'We've got to get him!' Angelo roared, but Ben was already on it. Still holding on firmly to the side of the dangerously swaying boat, he edged towards the back end of it. There was an intricate-looking motor there. Ben struggled to find the starting cord; when he finally did, he gave it a good yank.
Nothing but an unimpressive-sounding splutter.
He looked over his shoulder — they were moving alarmingly quickly away from where Danny was struggling in the water. From that distance they couldn't see the alligators, but they couldn't have gone far.
He pulled the starting cord again. Still nothing. Only on the third time did the motor kick into life and start turning over.
'We've got power!' Ben shouted. His voice was hoarse now from all the screaming, but he only had to yell louder now that he had to make himself heard above the growling motor as well as the wind.
Angelo didn't reply. He was too busy holding grimly onto the side of the boat, his skin a sickly shade of white. Ben clambered to the front, his body clattering uncomfortably against the hard benches in the middle of the hull as he did so. He cursed as he felt his body bruising with the impact, but finally he grabbed hold of the boat's steering wheel and knocked the throttle stick forward.
All of a sudden, the boat surged ahead. In the split second it took for a huge wave to come crashing over the boat, Ben realized he had moved far too quickly and in the wrong direction. Now his eyes were full of water, his clothes soaked. He felt the boat tip dangerously to one side before it righted itself. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that Angelo had been thrown into the centre of the boat, which had filled with a good few inches of water.
'Hold on!' he shouted. 'I'm heading for the shore.'
The second time he surged forward, he moved much more slowly. Even then it was difficult as the wind was squally and gusty. It kept coming at them from different directions, which made it incredibly hard to steer the vessel; and waves continued to splash over the side from different, unexpected directions.
They made painfully slow progress towards Danny, who kept disappearing below the random surges of the water. Ben didn't have the sensation that it was particularly deep where they were, but that didn't make it any less dangerous. For some reason he heard his mum's voice sounding in his head. 'A baby can drown in an inch of bath water, you know.' Yeah, thought Ben grimly. And a fully grown man can drown in the Everglade marshes in the middle of a hurricane, no problem at all.
Ben couldn't have said how long it took to get near to the spluttering Danny, but by the time they did his muscles were in agony. He could see now why the older man had stayed in the water: the alligators had left the pier and were now at the water's edge. They seemed reluctant to enter the turbulent marshes, although a couple of them seemed to be becoming braver and had started to slide their bodies closer to Danny.
When the boat was only a few metres away, Ben killed their speed. He pointed to a safety ring that was tied to the side of the boat and shouted at Angelo. 'Throw him the ring! I'll try and keep the boat steady.'
It wasn't easy. Buffeted by the wind and the waves, the boat seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Ben struggled to stop it turning of its own accord and drifting away from Danny as Angelo untied the ring.
'Quickly, Angelo,' Ben shouted. 'The alligators — they're slipping into the water.' He had just seen one of the scaly beasts disappear into the marsh despite the conditions. That must mean it was hungry enough to risk the dangers of
the water in its search for food. And if it was food the gator wanted, Danny would be first choice from the menu.
Angelo stood up in the boat, steadied himself and hurled the ring overboard.
It landed close to Danny, but not quite close enough. The older man had to struggle through the water to grab it. 'Pull me in!' he shouted just as his fingers clutched the edge of the ring. There was panic in his voice. Angelo pulled, heaving on the rope like it was a tug o' war. It was obviously a struggle for him, so Ben left the steering wheel and went to help him. They stayed standing with difficulty, but gradually managed to pull him towards them.
Danny stretched out and grabbed the side of the boat. It wasn't a big vessel, and as he pulled himself up, it tilted sharply.
'Alligator!' Ben screamed. Only metres behind Danny he had caught a glimpse of the reptile surging through the water. He and Angelo grabbed Danny's arms and pulled him on board.
Not a moment too soon.
The alligator emerged from the water with terrifying swiftness. Its jaws snapped in the air, but they caught nothing.
Danny was on board. Soaked, breathless and white with fear. But safe.
For now, at least.
Chapter Ten
At the South Miami Oil Refinery, it was panic stations.
Nobody there knew about the plane. Nobody knew how close they had come to disaster. And nobody cared. They had other things to worry about. The hurricane was on its way, and the whole place was being shut down. All non-essential staff had already been evacuated from the premises. The final hangers-on — a few management and some security guards — would be out of there within half an hour. They all knew that an oil refinery was the last place you wanted to be in conditions like this.
In the chaos and the confusion, however, one man had managed to slip in unobserved.
He was a good-looking person, tall and with chiselled features. He hadn't shaved for a day or two, but somehow that only made him look more distinguished. More trustworthy. And he liked it that way. His black jeans fitted him well, as did his black jacket; and as he approached the oil refinery he had a small but heavy black rucksack slung over his right shoulder.
The winds were already strong here — not as strong as they were going to get, he knew, but fierce enough to make the high, wire-mesh fences that cordoned off the boundary to the refinery rattle in the breeze.
He was approaching from the south side. His car had been dumped at a nearby parking lot, and he had crossed a highway to get here. The road had been full of traffic — everyone was fleeing the area — and as he crouched by the wire fence he knew that although people could see him from the highway, none of them would be paying him any attention.
The fence was shaking violently. He pulled a pair of wire-cutters from his bag, then held the rattling fence in one hand and started to snip away at the mesh. It was difficult, and he was glad of the black leather gloves he was wearing. But before long he had cut a hole big enough for him to crawl through.
He skirted round the edge of the boundary towards the western entrance. There was an entry checkpoint here, but now he was inside the oil refinery's boundary fence he didn't need to be bothered by that. Hidden by a long line of low, breeze-block buildings, he walked towards the edges of the refinery itself.
It was like a small city. Huge, metallic, industrial-looking towers stretched up into the sky. Some of them had flames coming out of the top that licked into the sky; others were billowing smoke that was hardly any different to the grey clouds scudding overhead. A number of the towers had metal ladders fixed to their sides, but of course no one was using them now. Hardly anybody was on the site, in any case. There were enormous containers the size of several houses — these too had ladders on them — and everywhere there were more of the little breeze-block office buildings that he was using to hide behind. A main road led up into the centre of the refinery, and lines of lorries were parked along it in neat little groups. He supposed that ordinarily there were fewer trucks here, but no one was going to be delivering oil at the moment. Not until the storm had passed.
Just as that thought crossed his mind, there was a sudden howling of the wind. It threatened to knock him over so, quite calmly, he pressed his back against one of the breeze-block walls and waited for it to pass. Then he continued on his way.
For five minutes he headed towards the refinery. He was going to have to be careful here. He wasn't dressed for this area.
He stopped, caught his breath, and looked around.
At the base of one of the towers he saw what he wanted: an oil-refinery worker. They were few and far between, and he knew how important it was for him not to get away. The worker wore jeans and a luminous green jacket. His head was covered by a yellow hard hat.
Quickly, the man rummaged in his rucksack before pulling something out and hiding it inside his leather jacket. Only then did he step out into the main road.
'Hey!' he called. 'You there. You heading out?' Ordinarily the man's accent was English, but for the purposes of this conversation he put on an American accent.
The worker turned to look at him. He shook his head and pointed in the air as if to say that he couldn't hear what the man was saying because of the wind.
'You heading out of the refinery?' the man repeated himself, his voice louder now. 'I could use a lift.' As he spoke he hurried across the road towards where the worker was standing.
The worker looked at him curiously as he approached, clearly surprised that someone dressed in jeans and a leather jacket should be this far into the refinery. But he seemed on edge, keen to get off the site and away to a place of relative safety — so if he was concerned about the man's presence here, he didn't say so. Instead he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 'This way, pal,' he called. 'I'm parked up back here. You're in luck — I was just leaving.'
He turned and walked in the direction he had pointed.
Now that the worker's back was turned, the man worked quickly and deftly. The Beretta 92FS that he pulled from inside his jacket was his favourite pistol, and he would only need one of its fifteen rounds to carry out the job in hand. He swiftly raised it so that it was pointing at the back of the man's head.
And then he fired.
The shot rang out, echoing around the refinery. It was loud, but somehow it didn't seem out of place here, and he wasn't worried that anyone would come running. They would probably just think it was something to do with the wind.
The shot itself was well placed: just below the rim of the hard hat, just above the line of his luminous green jacket. The worker fell instantly to the ground. The man didn't waste any time: he dragged him out of sight of the road and quickly, before the blood could spoil his clothes, he started to undress him. Moments later he was wearing the regulation uniform of a South Miami Oil Refinery employee. He left his own clothes in a bundle by the corpse before, without a moment's remorse for what he had done, he slung his rucksack back over his shoulder and started hurrying further into the refinery.
There was a job to do.
There was money to be earned.
Everything was going according to plan. He just prayed that it would continue to do so.
Ben, Angelo and Danny gripped on tightly to the side of the boat. It was still being jostled and blown around by the wind, but for the moment they had something else to worry about. It wasn't far to the shore and in any other circumstances they'd have made straight for it. But there was no way they could do that. No way at all. Because all along the shoreline the alligators had congregated — not just the four or five that had chased them off the pier, but dozens. More than they could count.
'What are we going to do?' Angelo shouted.
Ben stared at the gators, his brow furrowed. It was dangerous in the water, but it was far more dangerous back on land. 'We haven't got any choice,' he screamed back. 'We can't get back to the shore, and we still need to warn the others. We need to try and get the boat past the plane wreckage, see what things are like back th
ere.'
As he spoke, the three of them looked in the direction of the plane. It was out of sight, but there was still an ominous orange glow lighting up the sky from that direction. And the water looked threatening to say the least.
'OK,' Danny called. 'If we're going to do it, let's do it.' As he spoke, he secreted the shotgun and ammo in a long compartment under one of the seats. 'Do you feel like you've got the hang of this thing?'
Ben nodded.
'All right, then. You drive. Angelo and I will use our weight to try and keep the boat steady.'
Ben took his seat at the helm of the boat. As gently as possible, he turned it round. Almost immediately there was a howling gust of wind. It filled the canopy above them like a sail and suddenly they were toppling to one side. He heard Angelo screaming as the edge of the boat tipped to the water's edge; Ben himself had to clutch onto the steering wheel with all his might before Danny hurled his weight to the other side of the boat and it righted itself again.
He gritted his teeth. 'Most of the gusts are coming offshore,' he said. 'We're sailing square to the wind — that's what filling the canopy.'
'So what do we do?' Angelo demanded.
Ben could only give it a moment's thought. 'Tack in and out,' he shouted. 'That way we can keep better control of the boat.' He turned the vessel so they were pointing out to sea at an angle towards the plane.
It was tough going. Waves kept splashing over the side and the motor barely seemed powerful enough to counteract the force of the winds. The canopy above them flapped noisily. Ben was blinded by the spray; he struggled to be able to tell where he was going and more than once he found himself pointing in a completely different direction to what he thought. When he had motored out perhaps thirty metres he prepared to turn the boat and tack back in.
That was when it all went wrong.
Ben didn't know what it was that upturned the boat. A combination of things, probably: the wind, an awkward wave, the way he was turning. But suddenly he found himself under. Lungfuls of water crashed up his nose and for a moment he couldn't tell which way up he was. He kicked his legs hard and felt himself move through the water, but as he did so there was a brutal crack against his head. He only had a split second to realize that he had whacked his head against the body of the boat before he lost consciousness.