Джон Сэндфорд - Ocean Prey [calibre]

Coast Guard inspection boats were usually larger RIBs with pilothouses; the boat that had been scrambled to intercept the Mako was smaller, three men aboard, no pilothouse. The Coast Guard boat pulled up behind the Mako and the petty officer in the bow saw two men waiting in the stern—bulky guys, dressed like sport fishermen, bright-colored shirts and shorts, sunglasses, and billed hats.

Then, as they were a few feet off, ready to board, one of the men on the stern of the Mako lifted up a heavy long-nosed black rifle with a red-dot sight. With a motion that was practiced and almost graceful, he shot the two Coast Guardsmen in the bow, and then twice shot the PO2 who was running the boat. The four shots together took no more than two seconds. The gun barked, rather than banged, a flat noise because of the suppressor on the barrel; the gunshots were loud, but not especially audible over the sound of the boat engines.

The PO2 had killed the boat’s speed for the boarding and when he saw the rifle come up he reached forward to hit the accelerator, but a bullet took him in the throat and then another in the chest, and the slugs turned him away and he fell into the bottom of the boat, dying, blood spreading around him on the wet floor, a purple flood. The Coast Guard boat turned into a slow circle across the wide port and the Mako accelerated away.

As the Mako left, Hall, Sue, and the baby nosed through the cut in their rehabbed Whaler and saw the Coast Guard boat turning away from it.

Hall watched for a moment, then said, “There’s something wrong, Sue.”

“Get over there,” Sue said. “That Mako’s running like a thief in the night. I’ll get the gun.” They kept a .38 Special in a waterproof can down an equipment hatch.

Hall pushed the boat as hard as he could, but they were a full minute away from the Coast Guard RIB. He couldn’t see anybody aboard as he approached. He slipped his cell phone out of his pocket, but when he got alongside, he saw the three bodies in the bottom of the boat and he dropped the cell phone and grabbed the VHF and screamed, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Port Everglades, three Coast Guards shot in boat chasing black-and-white Mako . . .”

The Coast Guard came back instantly: “Mayday caller, identify yourself!”

“This is Coast Guard Petty Officer Two Barney Hall. We have three men shot inside the Port Everglades entrance. They look bad, man, they look really bad.”

Then the watch officer: “Hall, can you help them? We’re on the way, but you gotta do what you can . . .”

“My wife’s a nurse, I’m putting her on board, sir. Should I go with her or go after the Mako?”

There were several seconds of silence—Sue had handed him the .38, and was already clambering into the Coast Guard boat with the baby and their first aid kit—and then the officer came back: “Your call, Hall. Chopper’s coming, but it’ll be a few minutes.”

Hall looked down at his wife, who had checked one man quickly and then moved to the bow. She’d done two years in emergency rooms and she knew what she was seeing. She looked back at him and shook her head and Hall shouted into the radio, “I’m going after the sonsofbitches, sir.”

He dropped the hammer on the Whaler. The Mako was most of a half mile ahead of him, moving fast down the Intracoastal Waterway, and there was no way Hall would have caught the other boat if the Mako hadn’t swerved to a pier, where three men jumped off. One ran to a parked SUV, opened it, and backed it to the edge of the pier. Two others ran what looked like black buckets to the white SUV. A fourth man was still on the boat, carrying more black buckets to the bow. They were in a frantic hurry: radios automatically monitored channel 16, so they’d heard Hall’s Mayday and the Coast Guard’s response.

After moving more buckets to the bow of the boat, the fourth man hoisted a five-gallon gas can out of a hatch on the Mako’s stern and began spraying the boat with gasoline and then, as Hall roared toward them, stepped off the boat, lit what looked like a piece of newspaper, and threw it toward the Mako. The boat exploded in flame.

The three men who’d been loading the black buckets into the SUV jumped into the car and the fourth man ran up to the back door and yanked it open. Hall had the .38 in his hand—he was close enough to feel the heat from the flames—and fired three wild shots at the car, no hope of hitting anything because the careening Whaler was pounding the deck against his feet, making any kind of an accurate shot almost impossible.

Impossibly, one of his shots hit the fourth man in the head.

The man dropped flat on the concrete pier, stone-cold dead. The driver of the car jumped out, grabbed the man by his shirt, looked at him, dropped him, looked for a moment at Hall, his face unreadable behind dark glasses, then leaped back into the car and spun it out of sight.

The Mako was burning like a torch.

The watch officer was shouting, “Hall, Hall, where are you?”

“Look for the fire, sir; I’m south of the cut where the fire’s at.”

For his actions, Hall was given the Coast Guard Medal. Other than the man killed by Hall, none of the men on the Mako or in the car were caught or even identified. The dead man was a minor hoodlum from Miami Beach, whom the feds called a “known associate,” though he appeared to be an associate of every piece of scum on the Beach, which was a lot of scum.

The Mako’s Florida registration was real enough; the owner wasn’t. The fire, which sank the boat, wiped out fingerprints and DNA. The SUV was never identified or found. No gun was found on the sunken boat or in the area around it.

Hall was presented the medal by the rear admiral who commanded the Coast Guard’s District Seven. When the admiral asked him his plans, Hall said, “My hitch is almost up, sir. I’m going to college at FIU. If I go full time, I’ll be out in three years. Then I might be back, if I can get into OCS. I really like what we do.”

The admiral patted him on the shoulder with some affection. “You’ll get in. With your history, I can guarantee it. Get a degree in something useful.”

“I’m thinking crime science,” Hall said.

“That’ll work,” the admiral said.

“Sir, if you don’t mind. I do have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Nobody’s been caught for killing our guys,” Hall said. “Where’s the FBI?”

“I asked that exact same question, a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn’t as polite as you are,” the admiral said. “I asked, ‘Where the fuck is the FBI?’ The answer was, ‘Nowhere,’ and you can quote me on that.”

NOVEMBER

CHAPTER

TWO

Virgil Flowers left the courtroom and caught an elevator going down. He turned as the doors began to close and a dark-haired hatchet-faced woman in an old blue floral dress, carrying an antique white woven handbag, standing outside in the hallway, looked straight into his eyes and held them. She was only a foot or two from the elevator doors, but made no effort to step inside.

When the elevator doors closed, a woman next to Virgil said, “Well, that was weird. I thought she was going to shoot you.”

“Couldn’t get a gun in the courthouse,” Virgil said. A couple of people behind him laughed, more nervously than heartily.

Virgil worked his way down to the Hennepin Government Center’s basement cafeteria, where he spotted Lucas Davenport sitting at a table to one side, legs crossed, reading a free newspaper. Davenport saw him at the same time and waved. He’d walked to the courthouse from the federal building.

Virgil went over and shook hands and asked, “You eat?”

“Not yet. I wasn’t sure when you’d get out.” Davenport was a tall man, but thin, weathered, athletic, dark hair shot with gray, crystalline blue eyes; he was fifty-two, and looked his age. He was wearing a blue woolen jacket, a white dress shirt, black woolen slacks, and cap-toed dress shoes; a light cashmere coat was draped over the back of his chair. He might have been a prosperous attorney, but he wasn’t.