Numa Files: Ghost Ship Part 11

Kurt sprang to his feet and dashed for the rail without looking back. At a full run, he put his hands on the rail and hurtled over it. He swung through the air-holding the rail for a split second longer than necessary-and then he vanished into the dark.

On the bridge of the Ma.s.sif, Rene Acosta waited to hear that the intruder was dead. To his surprise, Caleb's voice came over the radio sounding angry and somewhat panicked.

"The intruder has gone overboard," he shouted. "I repeat, the intruder has escaped and gone over the rail."

Acosta lifted a radio to his mouth. "I told you to shoot him!"

"I did," Caleb said.

"Then, what happened?"

"I don't know," Caleb said. "But I'm sure I hit him!"

Acosta burned with indignation, half at Caleb for such stupidity, half at the intruder for having the insolence to crash his party.

He glanced over at the yacht's captain and made a twirling motion with his hand. "Turn us around. We're going to have a hunting party."

At that moment Kovack came in, waving for Acosta's attention with his bandaged, handless arm. As Acosta looked his way, Kovack slung Calista onto the deck. She landed at Acosta's feet.

"She was found in your cabin."

"My cabin?"

Calista spoke up with a snarl. "The intruder broke into my cabin first," she insisted. "He put a gun to my head and dragged me out the window while your inept fools snoozed outside my door."

Acosta glared at her. Another lie. There was always another lie waiting on her lips.

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" he boomed. "You're dressed differently than you were before. Perhaps we're seeing your true colors."

"Look at me," she said. Her face was bruised, the split lip swollen and wet with blood. "Does it look like I went to your cabin of my own accord?"

Acosta turned to Kovack. "Did you or your men hit her?"

"No," Kovack insisted.

"Tell them how you found us," Calista prodded.

Kovack hesitated.

"Well?"

"Her screams alerted us to his presence," Kovack said. "If it wasn't for her, we wouldn't have known he was there."

By now Acosta could feel the ship leaning into the turn. He had bigger issues to deal with. "Lock her back in her cabin and post a guard outside her window," he ordered. "And then join me on deck with rifles and a spotlight."

"The guests are concerned," another one of Acosta's people mentioned.

"Tell them we're going to have a bit of sport," he replied. "The intruder is in the water. I'll give ten thousand dollars to whoever gets off the killing shot."

Five miles behind the Ma.s.sif, Joe Zavala stood at the bow of the small fishing boat, trying to keep the speeding yacht in sight. At this point he could track the warm glow from the ship's interior lights. But if she went dark, they would have a problem.

He turned to El Din, who stood at the helm. "We're still falling back. Can't you goose any more speed out of this lobster boat?"

"Patience," El Din said. "Remember, patience may be bitter, but its result is sweet."

Joe cut his eyes at El Din. "I'm not interested in learning patience. Just keeping that yacht in sight."

Without warning, the tracking scanner began to chirp. "It's the beacon. He's in the water."

"Thank Allah," El Din said. He shoved the throttles full on to the stops, hoping for more speed than the boat possessed.

"What happened to all that 'patience'?" Joe asked.

"I was never very good at it," El Din said. "Besides, the time for patience is over. Now is the time for action."

Joe could not agree more. Kurt had been aboard the Ma.s.sif for just under an hour, but it felt like half the night. He placed the scanner down and raised the spotter's scope up to his eye. Almost immediately he saw something he didn't like.

"d.a.m.n."

"What is it?"

"The yacht's turning broadside," Joe said. "They're coming back around."

The Ma.s.sif turned in a wide arc, shedding velocity as it went. By the time its rudder was back on center, the huge vessel was making no more than five knots.

Standing on the bridge, Acosta marked a spot on the GPS map where the stowaway had gone overboard.

"Hold this speed and keep the ship stable," he ordered. "I want you to make slow pa.s.ses back and forth through this area until we spot and kill the intruder."

"Yes, sir," the captain said. He didn't bat an eye at the brutal order.

With that done, Acosta stepped out on the deck. Caleb waited there holding a bolt-action hunter's rifle. "Give me that," Acosta said. "You might miss again."

Caleb scowled and handed the rifle to his master.

In addition to his own hand, Acosta had stationed teams of armed men at various spots on the main deck. Two groups stood amidships, one on each side. Two more men waited at the stern.

"Lights to full," Acosta ordered.

Around them exterior lights lit up the waters of the Persian Gulf in a swath two hundred feet wide and five hundred feet long. Two spotlights above the bridge came on and were aimed ahead and outward at forty-five-degree angles in order to cover the most water possible.

"This won't take long," Acosta promised, wrapping the rifle's strap around his forearm.

"Target off the starboard beam," someone shouted.

Acosta was on the port side. He strode back through the bridge and pushed out through the starboard door just as his men opened fire. Ribbons of water flew up where the men laced bullets into the fire zone.

Acosta raised his weapon and spotted the target quickly: a flash of white clothing. He fired once-a direct hit. The coveralls jerked as the bullet found its mark, but there was no blood or even the slightest defensive reaction.

As the target drifted closer, Acosta saw why. The stolen coveralls were empty. They floated past in a tangle, sliding gently across the waves.

More shots rang out.

"Hold your fire!" Acosta shouted. "There's no one there. He must have shed the clothing and left them behind as a decoy."

The shooting ceased, and Acosta turned his attention back toward the inscrutable waters, looking for any sign of the man who'd come aboard his yacht.

After several minutes with nothing to see, he lost his patience. "Take us back around," he bellowed. "He has to be out here somewhere."

In fact, Kurt was much closer than Acosta could have guessed. He was clinging to the side of the ship, twenty feet below the main deck, about six feet from the rushing water.

As he'd hurtled over the railing, he'd held on for a split second longer than necessary, converting his outward and downward motion into a turning arc. The trajectory had slammed him into the side of the yacht just as he'd activated the magnetic pads once again.

It had been an awkward, jarring crash, but the magnets didn't care. Once again they'd done the trick, locking him to the steel hull and holding him in place.

From there, Kurt had crabbed his way forward and parked himself in a spot below the Ma.s.sif 's four-ton anchor.

After tearing off the white coveralls and throwing them into the sea, he waited patiently as the yacht reversed course and slowed to a crawl. Aside from some strain on his arms and legs, Kurt was quite comfortable. a.s.suming the battery packs held out, he could hang in there for quite some time. And he intended to do just that.

Sooner or later, Acosta would give up, douse the lights, and turn back onto his original course. At that point Kurt would slip off the side and into the darkness, treading water until the yacht was far enough away for Joe and El Din to come get him.

After three runs back and forth, Kurt figured the towel was close to being thrown in. He grinned in the dark at his own tactical brilliance, all but ready to pat himself on the back, when he noticed something he hadn't expected.

Speeding toward them, just barely visible in the moonlight, was the silhouette of a long-nosed fishing boat.

"You've got to be kidding me," Kurt whispered. "What can they possibly be thinking?"

And then it dawned on him. He glanced at his right arm where the key pocket was. It had been torn open, perhaps in the scuffle with the woman or even with Acosta's thug.

With nothing to keep it secure, the transmitter had either been caught in the coveralls when Kurt pulled them off or had simply fallen into the sea as he climbed around on the side of the hull. No doubt it was now bobbing in the water somewhere, broadcasting a message to his friends and luring them unwittingly toward the monstrous yacht bristling with gun-toting thugs.

As they raced toward the beeping transmitter, Joe divided his attention between the yacht and the section of water where he expected to find Kurt. There was no more than a quarter mile separating the two.

"They must have missed him," Joe said. "We need to hurry." "What if they spot us?" El Din asked.

"I'd be surprised if they haven't seen us already," Joe said.

"But we're not leaving Kurt out there to be run down or shot." "They're lit up like your a proverbial Christmas tree," El Din said. "Maybe they're not able to see us out here in the dark." "Let's hope so."

El Din kept the throttles open, and Joe dug into one of the boat's lockers.

"What are you looking for?"

"I'm thinking this is going to be one of those high-speed operations. We need something for Kurt to grab on to." He pulled out a cargo net. "This should do."

El Din nodded. "Three hundred meters," he said, glancing at the scanner.

"Slow her down a bit," Joe said.

"Two hundred."

Joe grabbed an infrared scope and scanned the water. The surface of the gulf remained dark. But the heat from Kurt's body should have stood out plainly. He saw nothing. "Are we headed for the target?" he asked.

"Dead ahead," El Din said.

"Let's not use the word dead."

"One hundred meters," El Din said. "Three hundred twenty-eight feet, if you don't like the metric system." Joe lowered the scope and squinted, looking for any sign from Kurt alerting them to his location.

"Fifty meters," El Din said, backing off the throttles. They were soon coasting, El Din correcting their heading to port. The nose of the boat slewed around. "We should be right on top of him."

Joe felt his nerves tingling. As the fishing boat settled and its wake dissipated, the night became awfully quiet.

He glanced nervously at the yacht. It too was sitting idle, its nose pointed thirty degrees off line from them.

With their small boat in a similar condition, it felt like a stalemate between predator and prey. The yacht, a big cat crouching on its haunches; the small fishing boat, a gazelle ready to bolt at the cat's slightest twitch. For now, both held still as stone, waiting for the other to make the first move.

"They know we're looking for him," Joe said, whispering.

"They're waiting for us to find him. Be ready to go." "As soon as we have him, I'll head straight for the sh.o.r.e." Joe raised the infrared scope and studied the yacht. He could clearly see the heat plume emanating from its angled stacks.

The scope was working, so why wasn't it picking up Kurt's body heat?

Fearing the worst, he grabbed the scanner and stared in the exact direction of the beacon. Kurt wasn't there, but in the darkness Joe caught sight of a dim flash, too dim to be seen from more than twenty or thirty feet away.

"There," he said.

El Din nudged the throttles and then brought them back.

The boat coasted forward on the impulse, closing the gap.

As the dim flash came into range, Joe used a fishing net, stretching over the side. He scooped a familiar-looking cylinder out of the water.

"Is that what I think it is?" El Din asked.

Joe nodded. "Kurt's transmitter."

"So where is the man who's supposed to be attached to it?" A sudden rumble from the yacht drowned out any reply. Joe turned to see water churning at the aft end of the big vessel and the bow of the yacht swinging around rapidly as if guided by a bow thruster. Almost simultaneously the twin spotlights on the bridge converged on the small fishing boat and the sea around it.

In quick order the behemoth was charging toward them. "Go," Joe shouted.

El Din gunned the throttles and turned away from the yacht, setting a heading for the sh.o.r.e. As the chase began, Joe saw a big problem with their plan. The yacht was still accelerating and already gaining on them.

"We can't outrun it," he shouted. "Turn toward her." "Are you sure?"

"Quickly," Joe shouted. He was amazed by the speed of the Ma.s.sif 's acceleration. It was bearing down on them like a thundering giant, eating up the distance rapidly.

El Din spun the wheel to port. The outboard motors pivoted in their cradles and the nimble little boat curled back toward the big yacht. Joe had to hold on to keep from being tossed out. The Ma.s.sif tried to match their turn but was simply unable to change direction fast enough. The little boat raced by less than a hundred feet from the yacht.