Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [122]
He slid to a stop and tore away the Velcro straps binding the bright red Zodiac raft to the inside of the railing. About ten feet long, it had a stern-mounted outboard motor that looked like it had plenty of zip.
The raft wouldn’t budge. A padlock at the end of a thick stern line fastened it to the yacht’s uppermost rail. Charlie looked on the back of the lock. No miniature keyhole. He might be able to cut the line with a knife or saw, however. And a couple of minutes.
He had 1:43.
He considered diving overboard and swimming away. Hypothermia beat disintegration.
Instead he held the barrel of the Glock two feet from the padlock. He shielded his face, and pulled the trigger. Either the sound or the shrapnel stabbed his eardrums; he couldn’t be sure which. Regardless, there was no longer any trace of the lock.
He heaved the Zodiac into the water. Trying not to think about the fifteen-foot drop, he straddled the rail. He glimpsed the LED blink from 1:00 to :59 as he leaped.
His weight and momentum torpedoed him into water that felt so cold it should have been ice.
He resurfaced to find the Zodiac drifting away, faster than he could swim. Ordinarily. Lungs shrieking for air, he reached the raft, perhaps seventy-five feet from the yacht, or a good thousand feet closer than he needed to be.
As he climbed aboard, he jerked the cord, starting the little outboard motor on the stern. Grabbing the tiller, he set a straight course. The raft shot ahead like a dragster just as a blinding flash cleaved the fog, followed by a boom so intense that his hearing quit, replaced by sticky blood and maddening pain.
A tower of water of biblical proportions rose from the disintegrating yacht. The force of the explosion swatted a helicopter out of the sky and tipped over sailboats as far away as the eastern shore.
The Zodiac shot into the air like a kite, Charlie clinging to it until he was no longer able to stay conscious.
He awoke at the center of a flock of tiny, sylphlike particles of light. He was seeing stars. Spectacular, but probably the result of a concussion, judging by the pain.
Shaking his vision clear, he found himself on the Zodiac, the motor still bubbling away, though icy water streamed through the holes in the hull, swamping most of the bow.
Chunks of the yacht had hacked into his running suit. The two layers of long underwear notwithstanding, blood coated him. Each wave that sprayed his wounds felt like a hundred fresh cuts. Still he was alive, and the knowledge that he’d succeeded in getting the bomb far enough away from shore relegated the pain to mere discomfort. He felt himself smiling, ear to bleeding ear.
A police boat sprinted from the eastern shore toward the shaft of smoke that had been the yacht, a quarter of a mile away. Through the scattered fog, he could see two more police boats charging from the opposite side of the bay.
As his hearing began to return, he discerned from the tumult of waves the whine of a motor, spotted the motorboat, and made out a figure at its helm. A woman. Hand held as a visor against the vapor, she was scanning the area where the yacht had been.
Alice!
Even in hazy silhouette, she was beautiful.
“Where are you?” she called out.
“Here,” he croaked through a throat caked with salt and blood.
She didn’t look his way.
He swallowed, then tried again. “Alice.” It came out as a wheeze. Something was seriously wrong with one of his lungs.
She steered away from the Zodiac.
Fog was resettling over the bay, shrouding the police boats in the vicinity of the yacht’s wreckage. Charlie doubted he would be able to get to them, meaning his survival would come down to a race between Alice and hypothermia.
He thought of firing the Glock to draw her attention. Before he could reach for it, the Zodiac’s bow rose sharply. He turned and looked over his shoulder.
Bream clung to the stern.
Charlie considered that he was hallucinating.
“She’s looking for me,” Bream said weakly, but all too real. Somehow he’d made it off the yacht and then clung to the Zodiac’s stern line.