John Thompson - Armageddon Conspiracy

Jesus, she thought, what the hell happened? It had all been so fast, there’d been no time to radio their position. Nobody knew they were down. They needed to get out of the river and locate a phone. But how? The current was fast and powerful, and they were being swept with the tide. She couldn’t see a thing. She didn’t know which shore was closer, whether there were bulwarks or whether she could climb out.

“Hey!” a voice shouted from somewhere in the fog. “Can anybody hear me?”

“Over here!” the co-pilot shouted.

Jenkins felt a ray of hope as she heard an engine throttle up and then back. “Hey!” the voice came again, a little closer.

“Keep coming!” the co-pilot shouted.

“Talk to me!”

“Here,” Jenkins shouted.

They kept calling back and forth, and a boat emerged out of the fog, nearly running over them. The person at the wheel reached an arm over the side. “Come on, someone grab on,” he said.

“Take him,” the co-pilot shouted, pushing the pilot forward.

“I can’t get him. I only have one good arm.”

The man was reaching down, and Jenkins grabbed his wrist and let him help pull her aboard. She turned around and they both grabbed the pilot’s life jacket and hauled him up and over the gunwale. Finally they pulled the co-pilot on board.

The pilot lay gasping on the bottom of the boat while the co-pilot tended him. Jenkins looked at their rescuer, noting the face she’d seen on the law enforcement net and the bloody arm.

“You’re Brent Lucas,” she said.

He said nothing.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Looking for Biddle’s boat.”

There was something in his tone that made her guess. “Is DeVito on board?”

He nodded.

“Know what else is on that boat?” she said.

He shook his head as he peered ahead into the fog. “I’ll worry about that after I get Maggie.”

“Where’s your radio?”

He pointed at the hole in the control panel. “Missing.”

She was going to say something else, but he grabbed the controls. “Hold on!” he shouted then pushed the throttle forward and steered toward the right shore.

Jenkins grabbed desperately for the back of a seat as she barely kept her balance. “Stop!”

Lucas ignored her. The boat picked up speed. Jenkins could see only baffles of fog, but the sound of the engine began to echo off the nearby river wall, telling her they were way too close.

“Stop the boat!” Jenkins commanded. “I’m putting you under arrest!”

Lucas shook his head.

Jenkins took her pistol from her holster and put it to the Brent’s back. “Hands in the air! Now!”

Lucas ignored her. He was busy adjusting the radar resolution. “There!” he cried, pointing to the image that suddenly jumped out from the clutter of the shoreline. “Just ahead!”

Jenkins shook her head, knowing she wasn’t going to try and take him down physically, not here. “Shit!” she snapped.

Lucas glanced back. “You steer. Get me close enough to jump on.”

“You’re crazy!”

Lucas smiled as he turned back to the radar screen. “Runs in the family,” he said.

EAST RIVER, JULY 2

MAGGIE OPENED HER EYES, TRIED to blink away the pain and dizziness and get a sense of where she was. She was on her side, on a large bed, her hands cuffed behind her back, her knees drawn up in a fetal position. She’d been dragged down some stairs, but she couldn’t say how long ago. Ten minutes? An hour? She’d been slipping in and out of consciousness for a while, but she had to find her bearings and make a plan.

A man lay facing her on the other side of the mattress. His eyes were open but glazed over, his mouth slack with either hopelessness or defeat. He was thin with sandy hair, midfifties she guessed. Like her, his hands were bound behind his back. He had to be Prescott Biddle.

At the other end of the room, a woman paced the floor, talking on a cell phone, moving in and out of Maggie’s line of sight. She was surprisingly beautiful, blonde, midthirties, but her mouth was curled in a tight scowl.

Suddenly, Biddle stirred. “Anneliës,” he said plaintively. He rolled over, threw his legs over the side of the mattress, and struggled into a sitting position. “For God’s sake, let us go!”

The woman closed her phone and spun. “Shut up!” she cried with icy fury, and then she stepped over and hit him across the mouth with the back of her hand.

Biddle’s head snapped sideways at the blow. “You told me not to come,” he persisted. “You knew! You’ve always known! How could you do this to me?”

“I’m warning you,” the woman whispered in cold fury. “I will kill you if you say more!”

“Why? You’re afraid I’ll tell Sayeed? Well I will!”

The woman grabbed Biddle by the shirt and jerked him off the bed and onto the floor. She slammed her foot on his chest and stood over him, her back turned to Maggie.

Maggie struggled desperately to remain conscious. Through a fog of pain she watched the woman pull a long folding knife out of her blue jeans, flick it open with a snap of the wrist, and place the point at Biddle’s throat. The woman’s back was still turned as Maggie shifted across the bed.

“Not one fucking word!” the woman was saying to Biddle. The boat hit some rougher water, and she straightened and groped for the bedside table to steady herself. Maggie shifted further and pivoted so her feet pointed off the side of the bed. The yacht shifted again, causing the woman to brace her knife hand against the ceiling. With a furious effort, Maggie rolled onto her back, balancing painfully on her bound wrists, her vision blurred. She brought her knees to her chin then exploded with every bit of strength she possessed, firing both heels at the woman’s kidney.

Even as she struck she knew she would miss. The boat’s roll caused the woman to turn slightly, so that the full force of Maggie’s kick missed the vital kidney and instead exploded against her spine. A dull crack sounded as Maggie’s heels hit full force.

No! Maggie thought. Struggling not to black out, she cocked her legs again, expecting the woman to jump to her feet and attack with the knife. She was about to die, but she would go out fighting.

She waited like that, teetering at the edge of blackness. Finally, she looked around. Had it been five seconds? Thirty seconds? A minute? Where was the woman? She heard a horrified cry, “Mein Gott!” and the sound of something dragging.

Maggie shifted her shoulders to the edge of the mattress. First she saw Biddle lying on his side, and then she shifted further and saw the woman. She was lying where she had fallen beyond the foot of the bed, propped on her elbows, staring in horror at her legs where they lay splayed like discarded toys. “Help me,” Biddle mumbled, as the woman flashed Maggie a look of hatred mixed with fear. Maggie glanced at the floor between them and saw the knife.

EAST RIVER, JULY 2

BRENT DROPPED TO HIS HANDS and knees and groped about the stern beneath the fuel lines until his fingers touched the squirt gun. He threw the sling over his head then moved toward the bow. The FBI woman had the wheel. As he moved past her, he shouted, “You have any matches?”

She looked at the oversized child’s toy hanging around his shoulders. Whatever her thoughts, she held them back. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a gold lighter. “It should still work.” As he took it, she looked at his bloody arm and shook her head.

Brent climbed into the bow, holding the forward rail with his good hand and peering into the fog. The water directly ahead was flattened, a sign they were very close. Suddenly, there was sound, a rumble of exhaust as the yacht hit a swell. It seemed near enough to touch, and a second later the stern materialized out of the mist.