Armageddon Conspiracy (34 page)

The man was extraordinarily quick. Because he didn’t reach for the machine gun, Brent hesitated, and the knife seemed to appear from nowhere, just an instantaneous flash in the smoke. At the last possible instant Brent threw himself sideways and pulled the trigger. The knife hit, clipping his ear where his throat had been a half second earlier. The terrorist’s machine gun was already in his hands, but Brent’s burst tore into his legs.

Brent rushed forward, ignoring the warmth of fresh blood on the side of his face. He grabbed the man’s gun and jerked the sling free of his shoulders. The man was conscious although from the amount of
blood, Brent’s shots had clearly caught an artery.

“Where is she?” Brent demanded.

The terrorist looked up at him and shook his head.

“Tell me!” Brent shouted. He put his foot on the man’s mangled thigh and pressed.

The terrorist arched his back in agony, and air hissed through his teeth. But he said nothing.

Brent straightened up and looked down. The man was bleeding to death, but one of his hands was busy with something on the inside of his belt. Suddenly, Brent saw the blade of a second knife. He aimed at the man’s chest, but the terrorist’s hand never paused. “Game’s over,” he said, then pulled the trigger.

WHEN THE BOAT’S POWER SYSTEMS
went dead, Abu Sayeed froze in the silence and listened. The wind and rain had slackened. He could hear the faint slap of waves against the hull. Seconds ticked past as he waited for some sign from Naif. Nothing happened for nearly a minute, but then came a muffled coughing sound, the bark of a silenced machine gun. A moment later, a second burst. When Naif still did not call out, Abu Sayeed assumed the worst. Where had his enemies come from? How had they gotten on board? When? How many?

With no time for hesitation or regret, he moved to the flybridge. The boat was on fire, its engines dead. They were rudderless and drifting with the current. He would never reach Manhattan, but he would wound America all the same. One by one he would launch the Strellas. After he’d sunk his poisoned harpoons deep in his enemy’s
hide, he would try and escape with his hostages.

As he knelt beside the weapons crates, his mind raced with his contingency plan. He’d use each of the hostages, Anneliës as well, to trade for time or whatever he needed. Every warrior had to die—he had no regrets if it came to that. The Americans might eventually destroy him, but first he would strike a great blow for Allah.

He picked up the launcher, activated the system, and waited for the tone to indicate the passive infrared homing was operational. It needed only a few seconds to come on line, but the missile wouldn’t fire without the tone. It had a range of nearly three and a half miles. He planned to fire in the direction of LaGuardia Airport.

The tone was beeping faster, building toward a solid whine that would indicate the homing device was active, when something moved in his peripheral vision. He swung his head and saw a partial silhouette and the barrel of a gun at the top of the stern ladder. He lay the launcher down and reached for his Heckler & Koch, but a burst caught him twice in the abdomen and knocked him backward.

He felt rage and surprise, and his guts were on fire. He fired wildly toward the top of the steps. He backed into the cockpit, lifted his shirt, and saw two small holes. There was little blood, but he sensed the damage. He fired again through the open door, and then ignored the searing pain as he darted down the steps toward the lower deck. His only thought now—the hostages.

MAGGIE STRUGGLED TO FOCUS. THE
knife was everything. The other woman was clawing at the carpet, trying to pivot around her dead legs in order to reach it. Biddle, too, had rolled on his side and was backing toward it. Maggie knew her life depended on getting there first, but she was terribly tired. The cabin lights had gone out then other lights had come on, but these were dim, soothing as nightlights. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep.

With all her effort she swung her legs off the bed and tried to stand. Her knees buckled. She went down hard, her shoulder striking a dresser. The pain gave her a few seconds of clarity.

She realized the room was filling with smoke, also that Biddle was about the grab the knife. She kicked him in the back, rolling him away and onto his stomach. Then she turned on her side and slid backward, groping blindly. The plastic cuffs had cut her circulation,
and her fingers felt almost lifeless. She grasped the knife and tried to slide the blade inside the loop that bound her left wrist, only to lose her grip. Biddle was kicking at her, but she ignored him and kept struggling. The other woman was clearly injured, but she, too, was moving closer, her hands outstretched. On her fourth try Maggie managed to work the blade into the loop and began to saw.

The smoke was growing thicker. Her lungs burned. Biddle’s foot lashed out and caught her painfully in the thigh, but she didn’t stop. Finally, the left loop began to loosen. She sawed harder, and at last her hand came free.

The woman was trying to grab her legs as Maggie struggled to her feet, fighting dizziness and confusion, in some part of her brain knowing she had a concussion. She wondered if the boat was sinking. She had to escape, but first she needed air. Portholes were set into the hull on both sides of the stateroom, above the built-in dressers. She clambered onto one of the dressers and began frantically unscrewing the brass wing nuts around a porthole.

“Cut me loose!” Biddle rasped. “Please!”

Maggie ignored him and kept working. She was on the verge of blacking out when she managed to swing the porthole open. She shoved her face into the opening and pulled clean air into her lungs. Her head had barely starting to clear when the stateroom door opened and closed again.

She looked around to see the man who had beaten her. He was leaning against the door clutching his abdomen. A machine gun dangled from one hand. As she watched, he fell to one knee, and then struggled to his feet. A dark stain was spreading across his torso.

He squinted at the woman on the floor as if he couldn’t understand
why she was down there, and then he staggered past her and sat heavily on the edge of the bed. His eyes moved to Biddle. “Get up!” he groaned.

Suddenly, Biddle seemed to come alive. “You betrayed me!” he shouted then began to cough.

“This was never for your God,” the other man wheezed. “It was always for mine.”

“Well, where is your God now?” Biddle demanded.

“Here,” the man said as he shoved his machine gun into Biddle’s face. “Get up!”

Biddle’s brief resistance seemed to flag as the terrorist grabbed hold of him and dragged him slowly to his knees. The terrorist sat back on the bed and took a deep breath, seeming momentarily overcome with pain, but then he swung his eyes up to Maggie.

BRENT STOOD AT THE TOP
of the stairs and strained his eyes into the twisting yellow smoke. It gouted upward, scalding his lungs. The fiberglass was burning unchecked now, the fire already eating through the bulkhead separating the engine room from the staterooms.

The rest of the yacht was empty, which meant Maggie was down below in the smoke, along with at least one terrorist. Brent was sure he’d wounded the guy, but maybe not so badly that they guy wasn’t down there waiting in ambush. It didn’t matter. At some level far below reason he knew Maggie was alive, which meant he was going after her.

Over the roar of the flames and the sucking air he heard the yacht groan, the sound coming from somewhere deep in her bowels, as if the fire was literally tearing her apart. He shuddered, knowing that once the diesel started to burn, no one below decks would have a chance.

It brought his lifelong nightmare charging back. He saw burning walls. He saw his father and Harry, both trapped by impenetrable flames, both knowing they were about to die horrible, excruciating deaths.

The next thing he heard was the sound of laughter and then Harry’s voice.
No one lives forever, little bro.
In spite of his terror at dying the same death, Harry’s words made him smile. His whole damn family had been insane, he thought, beautifully and irretrievably nuts.

With that, he took the deepest breath possible, getting too much smoke and too little good air, and he stumbled down the stairs, immediately blind, unable to even see his hand on the railing. The railing became too hot to grip even before he found the bottom step. His lungs were wild with the need for a fresh breath, and his eyes were on fire. The smoke was thick as wood, completely disorienting, but he moved instinctively away from the heat.

He moved by touch along a short passage, finding several open doors but then a closed door at the end. Voices came from the other side. He could hold his breath no longer, and he expelled the acrid air. His reflexive gulp of smoke made him double over with coughing.

Knowing that he had no other choice, he threw open the door and stumbled inside, slamming the door behind him, his choked lungs heaving. His eyes were partly blind with tears, but he made out a blonde woman on the floor. He recognized Biddle’s thin shoulders and blond hair where he knelt in one corner, And the man he’d shot sitting on the beds pointing a gun at a fourth person, a woman, who was kneeling beside an open porthole Maggie! He saw it but could do nothing, as coughing drove him straight to his knees.

The coughing also saved his life because the man on the bed
swung his gun, firing an awkward one-handed burst that would have cut him in half. Brent fired instinctively, just as he was wracked with more coughing and gagging.

As his lungs slowly recovered, he tensed, expecting bullets to tear into him, but they never came. Finally, he raised his head and saw the terrorist sprawled across the bed, unmoving. He used his last dregs of consciousness to crawl toward the porthole. At that point, he recognized the woman on the floor, but his mind was too numb to register shock. She made a feeble grab for his gun, but he shoved her away. The air near the wall was slightly better, but when he tried to take a deeper breath he doubled up again with coughing.

“Come on!” Maggie’s voice came to him.

It took everything he had to grab the edge of the dresser and drag himself up, but after a second he felt Maggie’s hands on his head as she forced him to the porthole.

For several moments they clung there, gripping the edge, greedily sucking the clear air. Along with oxygen came the fresh realization that they were out of time. Any second the diesel would start to burn, and there would be no escape. He turned an, saw the blood in Maggie’s hair and on her face. The way she clung to the porthole told him she had nothing left.

“Wait here,” he mumbled. He was close to passing out, but he took one more clean breath and climbed off the dresser. He pulled the dead terrorist onto the floor then jerked the spread from the bed, dragged it into the head, and put it under the shower. He prayed the pressure tank still worked as he turned the spigots and got an answering sputter of water. With the spread soaked and heavy, he staggered back into the stateroom.

With a last lungful of good air, he lifted Maggie over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry an, started to pull the blanket over them.

“Take me with you!” Biddle said in a choked whisper. “Please!” He was still on his knees in the corner.

Even if he wanted to help, Brent knew there was no time. Maggie’s weight was nearly unbearable, and already his knees threatened to buckle. He stumbled to the door, his only thought getting her away from the fire.

“Lucas!” Biddle cried, his voice rising to a high pitch.

Brent raised the corner of the spread just enough to glance back. Biddle’s hands were free, and he was trying to pull the machine gun sling over the dead terrorist’s head. The woman Simone or whoever she really was had her arms wrapped around Biddle’s legs.

Brent jerked open the door and plunged blindly down the passage, following the wall with his left hand, desperate to reach the stairs. Ahead, the orange glow of flames glimmered, and steam already rose off the thin fabric, which felt hot enough to ignite.

Don’t let the stairs be burning, he prayed. When he finally gripped the banister in his left hand, it nearly blistered his flesh. He ignored the pain and stumbled upward, feeling the steps shudder, saying to himself, someone in this family has to make it out. His foot hit the top step. He somehow found the strength to keep going, up the next set of stairs to the bridge and then out the door into the open air of the flybridge, where he fell to his knees.

From the decks below, over the roaring of the flames, a sudden scream rose and fell away. He’d never know what happened, but he knew no one could have made it up the stairs behind them.

He rolled Maggie gently from his shoulder, and they rested side by
side on their hands and knees, pulling the night air into their seared lungs. After a moment, he raised his head and looked around. The fog had lifted slightly, and he could see the Whaler about fifty yards off the stern. He got to his knees and waved and saw the boat start forward. With the fire spreading, they couldn’t risk going down the stairs and through the salon to the aft deck. It meant they had to go down the aft ladder to reach the stern, where the Whaler could pick them up.

“Come on!” he said as he pulled Maggie to her feet and led her to the stern. Her eyes kept closing as if she was unable to stay awake. “I’m going down first, then you come. I’ll catch you if you fall.” He shouted the words as if volume would help keep her awake. “Can you do it?”

She nodded, and he started down the ladder. The descent seemed to take forever, the pain in his arm making it nearly impossible to grip the rungs. Maggie followed, each movement precarious. Brent knew he could never hold her if she fell.

As he reached the bottom, he heard a sound and turned, thinking the woman FBI agent or one of the helicopter pilots had come to help. Instead, he saw Biddle stagger from the burning salon at least he thought it was Biddle. His face was soot black, one side distorted by raw blistered skin. He was weaving, smoking like a piece of overdone meat, but he held the machine gun in his hands. He opened his mouth, and some garbled words came out.