Eve glanced around as she pretended to look through the small purse she had hidden in the folds of her clothing. She waited a couple of seconds and took off again, with Stephanie following. Stephanie reached into her purse and felt the handle of her nine-millimeter. I’ll know Martin when I see him. I have to. I have to stop him… She remembered Paul’s warning: “… the single most dangerous man I have ever known. Do not engage him one on one. If he is identified… shoot to kill… shoot to kill… shoot to…”
Eve stopped at a row of lockers and looked around again. Stephanie averted her eyes and quickly stepped into the cocktail lounge, taking a seat at a table. What if Martin’s watching me right now?
Stephanie held her phone down in her lap and dialed Paul Masterson’s number, which they had all memorized on Joe McLean’s orders.
She looked up to see that Eve had opened the locker door with the key she had retrieved and was staring right at Stephanie, her eyes huge through the lenses.
Stephanie averted her gaze again, took a count of six, and when she risked another peek, Eve was reaching into the locker, her attention focused on something inside. Stephanie tried to figure out what Eve was doing as she pressed the send button on the cell phone. At that instant there was a brilliant flash and ear-closing pressure- everything in the world went white as the wave hit Stephanie. She realized, in that euphoric and detached state of shock, as she was floating backward on the wave, that something wasn’t exactly right. That Eve was vaporized. Then there was just darkness… and silence.
45
The group was getting comfortable in the lounge of the Shadowfax while Laura set about checking the stocks and selecting a couple bottles of wine from the cabinet.
Alton Vance and Tom Nelson were standing in the galley door, which opened to the cockpit, in still-dripping rain gear. They had Uzi machine pistols hanging in plain sight under their arms.
“Woody, do you or the other men want a drink-a beer or a coke?”
The agents shook their heads.
Alton Vance turned to Woody. “We’ll cover the pier,” he said. “If someone made a pot of strong coffee, I imagine we’d drink it.”
“It’s going to be wet out there. I’ve got a couple sets of foul-weather gear in the hall storage closet,” Reid said.
“These coats are fine,” Alton said. The two agents disappeared up the ladder to the cockpit. Their feet could be heard as they walked aft.
“Hard shoes,” Reid said, frowning. “They’re scuffing the deck.”
“Sorry,” Woody said. “They weren’t thinking they’d be walking on boat decks when they chose their shoes.”
Reid went out to the hall closet and brought back a yellow rain jacket and a pair of pants. “Gore-Tex,” he said. “If I need to go outside.”
Woody waited for the coffee and then stepped out to deliver it to the guards on the pier.
Wolf sniffed at the door, then turned three tight circles before lying down at Reb’s feet.
Thorne and Sean were in position across the marina, Thorne scanning the piers through binoculars and Sean waiting his turn at watch. He saw Woody hand the steaming mugs to the agents on the pier. The rain was falling harder, and Thorne turned up the collar of his coat to help keep out the wind.
“I guess we can relax a bit. I mean, there’s a fucking army out here,” Sean offered. “Man’d be nut cakes to try anything.” He looked again at the sniper on the roof of a boathouse and at the one directly across, set up in the flying bridge of a fifty-foot powerboat moored less than one hundred yards away.
“The man is nut cakes, kid. The sniper on the boat there has a Winchester model seventy, looks like,” Thorne said.
“A two-seventy you reckon?” Sean asked. “That’s a flat shootin’ round. At this range I’d imagine thirty-oh-six with a one-hundred-eighty-grain boat tail would be perfect.”
Thorne exhaled. “For deer hunting, maybe. They use three-oh-eight, kid. Every sniper on earth uses a three- oh-eight. He can pierce your earlobe at five times that distance and not even make a heat line on your cheek.”
“I used to hunt. Growing up, I mean,” Sean said, trying to make conversation. “I used a thirty-oh-six.”
“And one-hundred-eighty-grain boat tails, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Was a sniper in Nam I knew. Marine Corps fellow. Sheriff now in Utah. This guy took a VC’s head right off his shoulders. Shot measured out to a quarter mile. VC never knew what hit him.”
“You an atheist?”
“I’m a Libra,” Thorne said dryly.
“It’s almost like hunting from a stand.”
“Right,” Thorne said. He trained the binoculars on the diver who was surfacing beside the Coast Guard launch and the men on the aft, standing under the awning, looking miserable in their rain gear. God, I’d hate to have that fucker’s job, he thought to himself. He watched as the diver said something to the guardsmen. One of them handed him a set of fresh tanks and took the old set up onto the deck. Then Thorne watched as the bubble trail headed toward the Hatteras where the prone SWAT sniper watched the Shadowfax through his scope.
All evening, swimming in that murky shit. Like being a friggin’ earthworm.
46
The Falcon was above twenty thousand feet making a beeline for Miami. Paul’s telephone buzzed from inside his briefcase. It was Tod Peoples.
“Where are you?” he said.
“Tod, we’re over the Gulf, headed for Florida. My shadow team should be landing there right before we do.”
“A bomb went off at a DFW terminal a little while ago. Just getting the update. Looks like… okay, ten dead, no telling how many wounded.”
“Bomb? When?”
Rainey sat on the edge of his seat, the Bible in one hand. “What?” he asked. “What bomb, where?”
“Went off fifteen, twenty minutes ago,” Tod said.
“A diversion maybe?” Paul wondered if the bomb was to help Eve lose her tail.
“What bomb, where?” Rainey repeated.
“DFW,” he said to Rainey. Then he spoke to Tod again. “That was after Eve’s flight took off-Joe called me on his cell phone when they took off for Miami. This is not good. Maybe the bomb was just late going off? Maybe it was supposed to be a diversion while Eve sneaked on the Miami flight?”
“Martin twenty minutes off with a bomb?” Tod’s voice was full of skepticism. “Man’s very accurate, but it’s too coincidental not to be Martin.”
“A bomb is too overt for a diversion with his mother in the place. Maybe the flight was originally scheduled to be loading later and he set the device before the schedule change. Can you check that original schedule from where you are? When he bought the ticket.”
“Sure,” Tod said. Paul heard keys clicking in the background. “Just a minute.”
There was a click alerting Paul that he had another call coming in.
“Believe this shit? Hold on, Tod. Got a call on the other line.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Tod said.
“Hello?”
“Paul?” The voice was light, the background full of static.
“Is that you, Joe?”
