Wildfire (40 page)

Caught up in the incredible beauty of the turquoise-tinged panorama, as he made a quick three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn to make certain that the hammerhead shark
wasn't
in the immediate vicinity, Lightstone almost missed the movement off to his right. And when he did finally notice it, out at the edge of his visibility, he had to blink and look again before he was able to recognize the distant blurry object as a diver moving away ... on what? Some kind of underwater sled?

And then another movement caught Lightstone's attention, something dark and moving fast out in the far opaque distance to his left, and he suddenly became conscious of the fact that he was starting to run out of air.

Rising quickly to the surface, he forcibly expelled the remaining air in his lungs, took in another deep breath — ignoring as he did so the cursing of Bobby LaGrange, who was still waiting for his son to find his diving gear, and the yelling of Larry Paxton and Dwight Stoner, both of whom had pistols in their hands and were pointing off to the distance in the direction where Lightstone had briefly observed the rapidly moving dark shape and then immediately went back under again because he suddenly remembered why he'd gone into the water in the first place.

That barely audible clanking sound.

It took him almost a full minute to find it because Bobby had said the hull was fiberglass, so he'd started at the stern where the stainless steel propeller shafts and manganese bronze rudder were located, and found nothing. It was only as he moved forward along the eight-two-foot craft, ignoring the splash behind him, that he realized that the leading edge of the keel was also made of stainless steel.

But even then he almost missed it, because the design appeared to have been based on the shape of a small manta ray: thick in the middle and then flaring out into two progressively thinner winglike extensions that were folded across the leading keel edge and attached with some kind of adhesive bond to the smooth broad keel surfaces on either side. The color was a perfect match for the protective marine-red coating on the keel of the luxury sports fishing yacht, and he might not have seen it at all if it hadn't been for the visible break in the protective metal keel edge.

Even the texture of the material—smooth and flexible and giving, and somehow very familiar—felt manta-ray-like.

What the hell. . .

The movement of the water had warned Henry Lightstone of the approach, even before he felt the impact. But he had ignored the warning because his senses told him that the threat wasn't coming from that direction. It was the other movement that he had to be concerned about, the dark, fast-moving shape out in the distance.

That, and this thing—whatever it was—that was stuck to the keel of the
Lone Granger.

Bobby LaGrange had given up waiting for his son to bring up the scuba gear, and had simply gone into the water with the diving mask and knife he'd found in one of the lower-deck storage cabinets. Finally catching up with Henry Lightstone under the keel of the
Lone Granger,
he grabbed his ex-partner's shoulder, shook it, and pointed with the diving knife in the same direction that Paxton and Stoner had been pointing.

But Lightstone shook his head and ignored him, already starting to feel the tightening in his lungs, as if they were going to explode if he didn't hurry up and—

Explode.

The word jarred Henry Lightstone's mind like a fist strike.

Twisting around in the water, Lightstone wrenched the diving knife out of Bobby LaGrange's hand. Then, pulling himself back around again, he quickly jammed the point of the blade underneath the flexible, rubberlike flap. In doing so, he ignored the damage that the knife blade was causing to the glass-smooth keel because he understood now why the soft, flexible material had felt so familiar.

It was plastic explosive.

He could feel Bobby LaGrange pulling on his shoulder, insistently now. Lightstone continued to ignore his boyhood friend because he was running out of air and he was terribly afraid that if he went back up for another breath, they'd run out of time too.

It took the struggling wildlife agent almost ten seconds to pry the tightly bound and incredibly resilient flap loose, and another three to get a grip on the slippery material and wrench the entire device loose. In doing so, he managed to expose the metallic timer and detonator that had clanked ever so slightly when it had come into contact with the stainless steel keel edge and given them a chance.

And in doing
that,
he also managed to trip a cleverly designed tamper-protect switch specifically engineered to
prevent
people like Henry Lightstone from peeling the device off boat keels prematurely.

In the time it took Lightstone to understand what he had done, the exposed red numerals on the timer counted down from twenty to thirteen.

He had a brief second to see the sudden, horrified look of recognition and awareness in Bobby LaGrange's eyes. Then Lightstone turned away and dove downward, kicking hard with his fins—two, three, four times— before he shoved the device toward the bottom, confirmed that it was drifting down instead of up, and then kicked hard for the surface.

Bobby LaGrange had already pulled himself up onto the swim platform and was screaming for Mo-Jo to get the engine started when Lightstone reached the platform.

Henry Lightstone felt the powerful diesels rumble into life, and he scrambled desperately to get his legs away from the stainless steel propellers. He had one leg up onto the platform and was starting to pull himself out of the water when Bobby LaGrange grabbed his arm, pulled him clear, and then yelled up at the bridge:

"Mo-Jo! Full speed! Right now! Go! Go!"

Grasping the stainless steel railing with his right hand, Lightstone shoved Bobby LaGrange up over the railing and toward the deck-mounted fighting chair. Then he was forced to grab onto the railing with both hands as Mo-Jo slammed the throttle all the way forward.

At that moment, as the
Lone Granger
lunged forward in a desperate effort to escape the imminent explosion, the concussive shock of a high-order underwater detonation drove hundreds of tons of saltwater upward and outward, sending the two hundred-and-twenty-thousand-pound luxury yacht twisting violently into the air.

Chapter Twenty-five

The enormous forces generated by the detonation of ten pounds of C-4 about thirty feet beneath the stern of the
Lone Granger
had two immediate effects on Henry Lightstone:

The first involved the initial shock wave created by the explosion, which —in addition to breaking almost every one of the light bulbs on the
Lone Granger
, and loosening most of the ROM and RAM chips on the yacht's control station circuit boards—caused the wildlife agent to strike his head with a resounding
thunk
against the reinforced fiberglass rail separating the yacht's lower deck from the extended swim platform.

The second occurred approximately one second later when hundreds of tons of displaced seawater took the path of least resistance and surged upward, catapulting Lightstone high up into the air.

Partially dazed by the sharp blow to his forehead, Lightstone was still tumbling head over heels in midair, trying to figure out up from down— while at the same time, somewhere in the back of his semiconscious mind, trying to understand why two resonating
thunk
sounds, instead of only one, actually meant something—when he suddenly landed on his back in the water with a cannonball-like splash.

The unexpected impact drove the remaining air from his lungs, and it was all he could do to keep himself from trying to draw a breath underwater. But it wasn't until he finally managed to claw and kick his way back to the surface, realizing only then that he was still wearing the swim fins, that Lightstone remembered why that second
thunk
sound had seemed so important a few moments ago.

He started yelling, "Bobby!" as he twisted around in the water, searching for some sign of his ex-partner. But then a second series of massive waves—caused by the impact of a hundred-ton sports fishing yacht dropping back down and striking the water—sent him tumbling backward in a rush of sand-and-debris-filled saltwater that left him coughing, gagging, and cursing.

Bobbing up and down in the smaller after-swells, Lightstone suddenly remembered the source of that second
thunk
sound: the nauseating "hollow gourd" sound of Bobby LaGrange's head ricocheting off the stainless steel fighting chair.

He heard splashing and a familiar voice yelling for help, but some analytical portion of Henry Lightstone's dazed mind decided that anybody who was capable of splashing and yelling wasn't completely helpless yet. Then his hands found the face mask that was still hanging around his neck. Without really being aware of what he was doing, he cleared the mask and adjusted it to his face and tightened the strap, and then dove down, searching for his ex-partner and childhood friend.

Got to be somewhere close, because . . . there!

Lightstone could see Bobby LaGrange now: about twenty yards away, and drifting down toward the bottom, his arms and legs waving about loosely in the churned and cloudy water.

He started to go down after him and quickly discovered that the diving mask was a hindrance to any kind of rapid swimming. Wrenching the mask off, he continued his dive, kicking hard with the powerful swim fins to propel himself downward. But even so, it seemed to take minutes—instead of seconds—to reach his unconscious ex-partner and then drag him back up to the surface. There Lightstone's instincts and training immediately took over as his hands began to go through the familiar motions.

Right hand under the chin, forearm into the shoulder. Pull back. Left hand across the chest. Hold him tight. Now scissor-kick and stroke! Goddamn it, Lightstone, kick!

In the back of his mind Henry Lightstone could hear the demanding voice of his high school lifeguard instructor calling out the cadence as he worked to get Bobby LaGrange's limp upper torso tucked in tight under his left arm. Then he held on tight with his left arm and began to stroke hard with his right and scissor-kick with his legs. He was trying desperately to reach the still floating
Lone Granger
as quickly as he could, because he knew that LaGrange wasn't breathing and he didn't think he could perform CPR successfully in the water.

He paused once in his strokes, to realign himself with the boat, and he saw the huge form of Stoner, blood pouring down the side of his face from a cut over his right eye, reaching down over the side of the boat for somebody in the water.

Who? Somebody with black hair and dark brown skin. Larry? Yes, and somebody else. Woeshack? Okay, right, the familiar voice. Had to have been Woeshack yelling for help because he doesn't know how to swim. And even if he did, he'd still have a hell of a time of it with that plaster rock wrapped around his arm,
Lightstone remembered, breathing hard now as he continued to stroke with his right arm.
Good man, Paxton. Gotta take care of your troops.

He kept on stroking and kicking with everything he had, until his head hit the side of the
Lone Granger
and he felt Dwight Stoner's thickly muscled arms reach down and snatch the limp form of Bobby LaGrange out of his weakening grasp.

"Gotta hurry! CPR! He's not breathing!" Lightstone gasped, and then tried to work himself back to the swim platform.

Still groggy from the head blow and nearly exhausted by his desperate swim, it took Henry Lightstone three separate attempts before he was finally able to pull himself up out of the water and onto the wooden platform. He remained there on his back for a few moments, trying to control his breathing and regain his strength. Then he heard someone coughing violently.

Woeshack?

Lightstone pulled himself up to his knees, with his arms resting on the railing and his chin resting on his arms. He immediately saw the diminutive agent at the far left-hand corner of the lower deck, crouching down on one forearm and both knees as he tried to clear the burning saltwater from his spasmodically heaving lungs.

Knowing that there wasn't much he could do for Woeshack that the tough Eskimo agent couldn't do for himself, Henry Lightstone turned his attention back to Bobby LaGrange, who was lying on his back on the lower deck, surrounded by Paxton and Stoner. From his swim platform position he could see that both Stoner and Paxton had sustained bleeding head wounds, presumably from the concussive effects of the underwater explosion . . . which immediately caused Lightstone to think about the others.

Mike and Mo-Jo and Justin? Where the hell . . .

As Lightstone tried to look around for the three missing crew members, wincing both from the effort and the pain in his throbbing head, Stoner and Paxton continued to work on Bobby LaGrange.

They had started by trying to drive as much of the saltwater out of LaGrange's lungs as possible. Stoner thrust down hard on the boat captain's back with both hands and shoulders as Paxton turned and held his face to the side, giving the expelled liquids an easy pathway. Then, after additional back thrusts failed to produce any more water, Stoner quickly flipped LaGrange over, crossed the palms of his huge hands over the unconscious boat captain's sternum, and then began to drive his extended and locked arms down hard in steady, shoulder-driven strokes.

At the fifth stroke Larry Paxton tried to use his left arm to lift Bobby LaGrange's neck and to clear his throat, and discovered to his amazement that his left arm wouldn't function properly. So he used his right arm instead, leaning forward to force air into the unconscious boat captain's lungs.

Thomas Woeshack had managed to get himself up to his feet and was now leaning over the side, throwing up. Henry Lightstone was starting to lean forward to pull the swim fins off his feet, and the two wildlife agents were starting on the third series of strokes and breaths—having worked themselves into a steady rhythm without having any noticeable effect on LaGrange—when a distant voice that was both youthful and familiar suddenly began to scream in panic.