MacDonald pull an Evel Knievel across the makeshift bridge and disappear into the cargo hold of the
A third cop, decked in black fatigues and weighted down with a vest full of gear, stepped up to the edge of the ramp.
But the man in black wasn’t so lucky. Just as he was about to leap, the boat tilted, and he bounced off the ramp and into the water.
One less cop to worry about, but now there was no time to plant the bonus bomb. The three in the engine room were more than enough.
Gabriel had no idea how the two cops had managed to avoid getting blown up and then track him here. But it didn’t matter.
He stormed down the metal steps to the lower deck. “Glad to have you on board, Detectives,” he said, the tears in his eyes now replaced with white-hot rage. “You’ll be dead before the sun sets.”
Chapter 89
“Engine room,” I said to the two crew members who helped us board.
“We can take you,” one of them said.
“Just point,” I said. “Then leave.”
They were trained not to argue with authority. One pointed, and they both left.
“This is my first time on a yacht,” I said to Kylie. “I hope they weren’t expecting a tip.”
We drew our guns and found the metal door that warned us to stay out in five languages.
The engine room looked exactly like the picture Rothlein had showed us, but it wasn’t nearly as loud as I expected. I was prepared for the clanking and banging I’ve heard in the movies, but this was more like the low rumble of a high-performance car.
We headed straight for the forward section, and there, molded to the hull, exactly where Ordway predicted it would be, was a thick gray block of C4, still bearing Benoit’s handprints. There were red, white, blue, and yellow wires buried inside the plastic along with a cell phone waiting to be triggered by a signal from a cell phone.
“It’s armed,” I whispered.
“Then we better find him before he jumps ship,” Kylie said. “We’ll split up. You go upstairs, and I’ll-”
The thud was loud, clear, and completely out of sequence with the steady rhythmic beat of the engine.
Kylie mouthed the word
A second thud.
Engine rooms are not known for their acoustics, and we couldn’t tell exactly where the thuds were coming from. I went left, Kylie went right, and we slowly advanced in the general direction of the sound.
And then, a new sound. This one was human, but muffled. Deja vu. It was the same thing I had heard from Spence less than an hour ago. Only this time, I couldn’t trust the source.
Benoit was smart, and for all I knew it could be a trap. He could have heard us come in and figured a muffled cry for help would get us out in the open.
I motioned for Kylie to stay down.
“NYPD!” I yelled. “Come out with your hands over your head.”
The voice came back loud now, desperate, angry, and totally unintelligible. I pointed my body and my gun in the direction of the sound. And then I saw him. An older guy, obviously a crew member, duct-taped to a pipe.
“Over here!” I yelled to Kylie, and I dropped down and peeled the tape from the mouth of Benoit’s latest victim.
“NYPD,” I repeated.
“Bomb squad, I hope,” the man said.
“No.”
“Then cut me loose and get me the hell out of-Mother of God-Kylie? Kylie Harrington? Is that you?”
“Hey, Charles. Right now, I’m Detective MacDonald,” she said as I slashed the tape from the man’s arms and legs. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine as soon as I get the hell off this ship. There are three bombs down here, and somewhere topside there’s a maniac with a cell phone who’s planning to set them off.”
“Benoit-how long ago did he leave?” I said.
“Maybe five minutes. He’s crazy. He thinks he’s making a movie. No camera, but this whack job is making a movie.”
“He can’t blow these till he’s off the boat,” I said. “Do you have any idea how he plans to get off?”
“He’s going to steal one of the Zodiacs, put some distance between us and him, then speed-dial us all to kingdom come.”
“Not if we can stop him first,” Kylie said, helping the man to his feet.
He was a little wobbly, and he grabbed onto a thick chrome pipe.
“Charles, you’re on your own,” she said. “What’s the fastest way to where Shelley keeps the Zodiacs?”
“Staircase D. Red door,” he said, pointing.
We took off.
“Kylie, wait!” he yelled out. “One more thing you should know.”
We stopped.
“Benoit showed me his script. He wants to blow up the ship with the Statue of Liberty in the picture,” Charles said.
“What does that mean?” Kylie said.
“It means that once he’s out on the river, and he can see the statue in the background, we are dead in the water.”
Chapter 90
Rich, powerful businessmen always have an exit strategy, Gabriel thought as he raced down the steps toward the stern. In Shelley Trager’s case, it was the Zodiac Bayrunner, a fifteen-foot yacht tender with a sleek, fire engine red fiberglass hull and a forty-horse Yamaha outboard engine. At about twenty thousand bucks a pop, it was the rich man’s dinghy, and Trager, of course, had a small fleet of them.
Two were waiting for him at the swimming platform. He untied one, slid it into the water, and got in, taking care not to do anything stupid that might get his cell phone wet.
The evening light was picture-perfect, bouncing off the wake of the yacht as it slowly pulled away from him. But the statue was still too far in the distance. He had to get closer.
He started the Zodiac’s engine and, with about a hundred feet between him and the yacht, followed her, cupping one hand to his forehead to block out the sun. With both eyes fixed on Liberty Island, he waited for the perfect shot.
“O beautiful, for spacious skies,” he half talked, half sang. But he was so wrapped up in the visual that he wasn’t even aware of the sound track.
The first bullet snapped him out of his reverie. The gunshot rang out, instantly followed by the cracking of fiberglass as it bounced off the hull.
“It’s a rigid inflatable, you idiots,” he yelled at the two cops standing on the swimming platform of Trager’s boat. “You think you can sink this baby like it’s a rubber raft?”
Another gunshot. And another.
He crouched low in the Zodiac and yelled over the gunwale. “Keep shooting, assholes. You’re only making this movie better.”
