The Last Family (48 page)

“Reb,” she started. “We have to look around in here for anything we can use to fight him. Just until help comes.”

“Like what?”

“Like a flare gun, anything.” She opened the closet and started pulling things out. “Check under the bed—in the cabinets.”

“The flare gun is in the cockpit,” he said. “Under the seat. I think.”

“Anything.”

“So, like something I’d get in trouble for having normally?”

“Exactly,” she said. “A weapon—something …”

“I got ya,” he said. “Like I’ll know it when I see it?”

“Exactly. Like something we can use. Like the file. Screwdriver, anything.”

He opened the cabinets under the bed and looked in to see if he could find anything he shouldn’t have. “Know what?” he said.

“What?”

“Your mind is the best weapon there is.”

Laura was startled. Reb made perfect sense. My mind. A weapon. Let’s see, now. She looked around the room and finally at the lamp. An idea started to form. What was it Reid had said about the lights? The lamp cord.
I’ve made lamps before. It’s simple.… What can I make
with
a lamp?”

“No weapons,” Reb said, closing the cabinet. He opened the last drawer. “Some liquor and … you could use a bottle to hit him,” Reb said. “It burns like the man does at the restaurant with those bananas.”

Flambé. Bananas Foster
.

“Matches?”

“Nope,” he said sadly as the vision of a flaming Martin dissipated.

Laura looked at the vent in the wall. “Reb, is the AC on?”

Reb reached up and felt the vent in the wall. “Yes,” he said.

“Okay, I have an idea,” she said. “This is what we’ll do.”

What was it Reid told Thorne about the power?

53

T
HE YOUNG PILOT LOOKED TO BE HARDLY MORE THAN A TEENAGER
. He was constructed on the order of a series of rectangles with a head shaped like a pineapple. The effect was completed with a flat-top hair style and small ears that seemed to have been glued and pressed against the skull, possibly in an attempt by the gene pool to lessen the boy’s natural wind resistance.

He was wearing a tight black suit that shed the water and a cap that said HSSI in gold lettering, and below that the word “Cheetah” was stitched in a script face. The navigator-systems operator was short, and his matching uniform was wrinkled, giving the impression that it was too large and that he had slept in it. They both wore nylon shoulder rigs with government-issue nine-millimeter stainless steel Berettas and polished combat boots.

As Paul, Thorne, Rainey, two black-clad NOPD SWAT-team members, and the soot-faced policeman from
the yacht club followed, the young Coast Guard pilot led the way to the boathouse. It was located away from the privately owned boathouses on the harbor and had a steel door, which the man opened with a nine-digit combination pressed into a keypad. Prior to the explosions there had been guards posted inside and out.

Inside the main room, some sixty feet across and fifty deep, two vessels seemed to be standing on a floor of dark water. They were secured to the U-shaped interior pier and were aimed toward the roll-up steel garage door. The boat closest to the entrance was a Cigarette racer that had been painted dark green. The cockpit was open to the elements, and there was an airfoil bar just over that with a phalanx of blue lights mounted on it. There was also a searchlight with a twenty-inch lens mounted between the blues. That wasn’t what they had come for, and Paul’s eye found the other almost at once.

The HSSI on the far side of the cavernous space looked like a floating stealth fighter; the hull was all soft curves, the reflective surfaces making radar return impossible. It was thirty-five feet long and, except for a small section at the bow, accessible from the cockpit through a hatch, completely enclosed.

Two black-clad SWAT-team members, who had volunteered to go onto the
Shadowfax
, stood a few feet away checking their vests and gear. Paul hoped they weren’t so filled with anger at the loss of their friends that they would let their emotions override their training. They had lost their captain, who had been aboard the Hatteras, and four other of their comrades in the explosions. They would be armed with MP-5, nine-millimeter machine pistols equipped with silencers and subsonic safety rounds. Paul knew that the guns sounded like musical spoons when fired.

Rainey was standing beside Thorne as they awaited the pilot and navigator to check the systems and otherwise make the craft ready. His eyes gave away the rage that burned within him like napalm.

“I’ll need a gun,” Rainey said to no one in particular.
He turned his eyes on Paul and tried to calm the tightened muscles in his face.

“You’re staying.” Paul said authoritatively.

“Bullshit!” Rainey barked.

“That’s an order.”

“I’m going and you can’t stop me, Paul. God won’t allow it.”

Paul turned to the soot-faced police officer standing beside the Coast Guard pilot. “Captain Mullin, Agent Lee is under arrest. I am charging you with detaining him.”

“What?” the officer said, confused.

“Take out your gun!” Paul barked. “Point it at him,
now!

The policeman did as he was told, but the revolver’s aim lacked conviction.

“If he tries
anything
, shoot him. Hold him at the yacht club until this is all over. Then you can release him. That understood?”

“What charge?” Rainey asked, his face betraying the rage and the panic of being left behind at this juncture.

“Obstruction of justice,” Paul said. “I need calm heads on this one.”

“You’re under arrest,” the policeman said.

Rainey lurched at Paul with his hands out, the fingers like eagle claws. Paul shifted his weight and, despite the unsure leg, stepped aside and brought the cane down on the taller man’s head. There was a sickening crack, and Rainey collapsed on the dock.

“Now cuff him, goddammit,” Paul demanded.

“Paul?” Thorne started. “It’s Rainey. He deserves—”

“It’s for his own good”—he waved a hand toward the lake beyond the open garage door—“and theirs. Get the medics to look at that knot.” He turned to Thorne and lowered his voice. “We got too many wild cards and no plan.
Okay?”
His voice quivered with emotion. “Think I wanted that? I’m sorry about this, Rainey,” he said.

The navigator appeared in the door of the boat and waved them in. Paul led the others into the vessel.

“ ‘HSSI’ stands for High Speed Stealth Interceptor.” the navigator said as he brought the control panel to life, filling the interior with orange and green lights. “It’s strictly experimental but they’ve worked most of the bugs out over the last few months. It was christened the
Cheetah
. We only take it out between the hours of nobody’s looking and nobody’s up yet.” There was a whir as the big engine started, then only the hint of vibration to announce the motor. “It uses the latest in noise suppression. For starters each sound wave is—”

“Let’s go,” Paul said. He didn’t care how it worked. “Cut the tour and get this tub moving.”

“Tub?” The pilot looked at the navigator, and his eyes said that he couldn’t believe Paul’s disrespect or lack of interest in the latest technology represented. The boat was still so classified that it was rarely seen in the daylight, and the interior was off-limits to all but the engineers who had designed it, and military test personnel. Had it not been for the deaths of their comrades on the Coast Guard boat, time would have been lost seeking the authorization needed to take the boat, with noncleared personnel, into a potential combat situation.

“Unless you have to jabber it into working,” Paul added.

One of the SWAT members closed the door, the pilot pushed on the throttle, and the boat moved silently forward and out through the open doors toward the crimson light of the fires. At the channel’s entrance the boat accelerated, and the men, who were not seated, were all but rocked off their feet by the sudden speed.

Captain Mullin watched the boat head off into the open lake and then turned and helped Rainey to his feet. He holstered his gun so he could perform the cuffing, which he wasn’t convinced was necessary, given the state of the man on the ground.

It had been years since the police captain had been on the streets, and he was rusty. He reached into his belt and removed his cuffs. Rainey had his right hand on the
knot on his head—he seemed woozy, uncertain of his feet as he was being helped up.

“You don’t need those,” Rainey said. “What can I do now? They’re gone.”

“Orders.”

“The man on that sailboat killed my wife and two children. You have kids?”

The opening of the street door stopped the conversation, and Rainey and Mullin turned to the sight of an ensign walking into the boathouse. He stopped and stared at the doors open to the harbor and the spot where the
Cheetah
had been. Then his gaze turned to the two men near the Cigarette racer. He put his hand reflexively to the Beretta at his side but stopped when he realized that one was a police officer.

“Halt!” he yelled. “Where’s …” he started. He approached and saw the gun and cuffs in the officer’s hands.

“Gone fishing,” Mullin said, turning back to Rainey. “No,” he replied to Rainey’s interrupted question as he clicked the cuff on Rainey’s free wrist. “No kids.”

Rainey turned as though he were offering the other wrist, but instead he brought his fist down into the side of the cop’s face like a hammer. When the dazed man hit the deck, Rainey kicked him in the stomach twice, deflating him and leaving him immobilized. Before the young ensign could get to his gun, Rainey had picked up the .357 and turned it on him.

“You know how to drive that?” he demanded. The ensign nodded weakly as he stared at the gun, which was aimed directly at his chest.

“I’m Rainey Lee, DEA.”

The ensign shrugged, not visibly relieved that the man holding the gun was law enforcement.

Rainey untied the lines at the bow and stern and stepped into a Coast Guard speedboat. “In here, son, and drop the gun belt.”

The ensign obeyed, letting the web belt with the Beretta fall to the deck with a thud. He stepped gingerly around Captain Mullin and dropped down into the cockpit.
Rainey glanced at his name tag. “Okay, Gleason, move it.”

The young man found the key in the ignition and twisted it. The big motors thundered to life with a deafening roar.

Mullin came around with a moan, shook his head, spotted the ensign’s gun, and pulled it from the holster. He stood unsteadily and aimed at Rainey’s head. “Cut the engine,” he yelled, trying to make himself heard.

Rainey frowned at him and shrugged.

“Give me the gun!” Mullin yelled. “I’ll shoot you, Lee!”

Rainey moved his own gun up so fast the policeman didn’t have time to react. He saw the first muzzle blast—frozen in disbelief even as he was pitched back—never thinking to return fire. Three shots hit him, two high in the right leg and one in the right shoulder. He collapsed, writhing, on the pier. The street door opened, and another Coast Guard ensign entered, pulling his gun out, but he stopped when he saw Rainey’s pistol on him. He raised his hands.

Rainey looked as if he were waiting for a signal to fire, his eyes emotionless, reptilian. Then he turned his head toward the open door as the ensign named Gleason throttled the vessel. When the boat’s engines caught, the bow rose out of the water and the boat shot out of the facility. Once in the harbor, the ensign aimed out through the channel, and then, in what felt like seconds, they were out into the lake where the
Cheetah
had gone.

Rainey took a stance beside the ensign and laid the gun on the control panel, his large hand all but covering it from sight. His head was extended over the windscreen, and he stared out before them.

“Gleason, you familiar with that HSSI rig?” he yelled to be heard over the engines.

“Yes, sir.” Gleason nodded in case his nervous voice didn’t carry.

“Find it!”

“I’ll do my best,” he muttered. “But it’s cloaked.”

Rainey used his thumb to cock the pistol’s hammer
where it lay flat on the console. “This is for her,” he said, smiling and pitching his head toward the seats at the rear of the cockpit.

“Her?” Gleason replied, trying to understand, assuming Rainey was indicating the harbor. Someone who had died in the explosions.

“My wife!” he yelled.
“Her!”
Rainey smiled, exposing a row of teeth all the way to the gums.

The ensign turned, halfway expecting to see a woman in the bench seat. He looked back into Rainey’s eyes for a second and realized with shock that the smiling man with the gun wasn’t seeing an empty bench.

The young ensign began saying a rosary in his head.

54

’
E
VERYTHING YOU COULD NEED IS IN THE STORAGE UNITS,” THE
Cheetah’s
navigator said.

Paul and Thorne sat watching the walls of water that were being spewed aside as the boat left the harbor and began skimming the tops of the waves, the props shooting a rooster tail of water high in the air behind the craft. There was almost no noise, even as the engine had powered up. The SWAT-team members sat on bench seats, facing each other and speaking in half sentences, trying to dispel the tension they were feeling. One of them kept removing the magazines in his guns and checking them as though the bullets were an illusion that might disappear if he failed to keep an eye on them. Paul realized he didn’t even know the men’s last names. He didn’t want to know them. Ted, the bigger one, and Brooks, the smaller. Kids, really. Weren’t they all?

The pilot was watching a small screen that broke everything
outside the craft into small, colorful, seemingly three-dimensional blocks. “Virtual reality,” the systems operator said proudly. “Like a video game or a simulator.” Another screen showed the lake as it might look in the daytime through a red lens. There was a blinking beside the bridge, and a seven-mile readout at the corner of the screen. The bank of screens taken together gave 360 degrees of view. Ten minutes out, the navigator pointed to a small blue light on the radar that represented something behind them, just exiting the harbor.