She moved rapidly to the door to the V berth, went in, and locked it behind her.
“What?” Erin asked.
The children stared at the gun with surprise in their eyes.
“Everything’s gonna be all right. We’ve got to keep our wits,” she said.
Laura was holding the gun tightly when she heard the galley door to the deck open and bang closed. Then she heard voices speaking in hushed tones. She prayed it was Vance or Nelson even though she knew it had to be Martin and someone else.
“Erin, Reb.” She couldn’t think of what to tell them. Her mind was all but frozen, fighting for a plan. She heard something that sounded like wet deck shoes squeaking on the galley floor.
Laura remembered that the hatch in the berth’s ceiling over the bed was locked from the inside. She turned to the door and looked through the keyhole. She saw a figure silhouetted against the light in the hallway. Martin. He looked completely different from the way he had when she had known him, but she knew it was him by the way he was standing-the set of his powerful shoulders.
“Erin. Come here,” she said in a whisper. She sat Reb down and cupped her hands. She nodded in the direction of the ceiling. “Come on, we’re getting out of here,” she said, unscrewing the latch.
Erin put her foot in the stirrups of her mother’s hands and was lifted up into the cool rain. She looked around and back down as her mother started to lift Reb up, but her eyes caught the movement of someone entering the cockpit from the galley. The rain was beating cold against Erin’s hair. She looked down at her mother and Reb.
“Someone’s coming!” Erin whispered, and dropped flat against the deck. She was on the edge of panic, holding the hatch open a sliver.
Laura pulled Reb back. “Go-hurry-get help!”
“I can’t,” Erin pleaded. “I’m coming back inside.”
“Go!” she said, and pulled Reb back. “Just run!”
Erin closed the hatch and Laura locked it. Then Erin scooted backward until she was at the railing, and she pushed herself under the rail wires, slipping into the water between the hull and the pier just as a wave slammed into the boat, making it lurch against the rubber bumpers over her head that kept the hull from striking the dock. It would have crushed my skull like a grapefruit.
As Erin paddled under the dock, she looked up through the cracks in the flooring and saw the figure step to the bow and secure the hatch from the outside. He’s locked it, she thought.
She turned and had just started dog-paddling when she heard a siren scream to life. It was an earsplitting wail and seemed to be coming from the boat-the mast, maybe. Then the Shadowfax’s diesel turned over. A large searchlight came on, pointed at the sailboat from the Coast Guard boat.
“Shadowfax!” an amplified voice boomed. “Cut your engines immediately!”
Erin could make out the shapes of men moving on the deck of the cabin cruiser. She started to swim in that direction but decided to make for the yacht club a hundred yards away. She could see someone standing in the Shadowfax’s cockpit, shielding his eyes from the bright light.
Then, as Erin treaded water, it was if the world were ending in a brilliant finale.
The harbor went white several times in rapid succession at different locations. There was a deafening thud, and the Coast Guard boat was replaced by an orange fireball surrounded by water vapor. Then a boathouse across the way went up, and the cabin cruiser that she had started to swim for evaporated. The harbor was filled with debris flying into the air and raining down all over. Several pieces of fiberglass and metal clattered against the deck of the Shadowfax, then splashed all around her. Several boats moored near the Hatteras were burning. She watched as the Shadowfax pulled away from the pier and began running for the harbor’s mouth, illuminated by the fiery maelstrom. The siren aboard the Shadowfax stopped blaring, and the only noise was the crackling of fire and voices yelling.
Within seconds Erin heard new sirens. Police cars on the outside perimeter had started in toward the devastation. Diesel fuel and gasoline from ruptured tanks caught, and the flames rolled across the harbor out toward the other fingerlike piers, where scores of boats waited to be added to the catastrophe.
As Erin swam for the nearest boat, something rolled under her hands, a form moved, and Tom Nelson’s face turned upward into hers. His lifeless eyes were open far too wide. Then his clothes released the air trapped inside, and he sank slowly into the dark water. Erin screamed, but the sound was covered by newly exploding boats. Then she climbed onto the pier and ran, stepping over debris as best she could. Her teeth chattered loudly, the violence of the muscle spasms blurring her vision as she ran toward the lights of the yacht club, her nightgown clinging to her like wrinkled skin.
50
The Falcon landed successfully though very hard, due to a sudden downdraft. The engines reversed with a loud whine, and the pilot taxied off the runway as soon as he could, stopping just off it in a perpendicular attitude. Emergency and security vehicles were coming down the runways and taxiways, washing the mirror of wet asphalt with their yellow and red flashing lights. The vehicles rolled up to the Falcon and stopped in a semicircle, halting the airplane’s forward progress. Men climbed down from the fire truck and out of the other vehicles. Paul dialed a number and put his phone to his ear.
“Thorne, where the hell are you?”
“Coming from the terminal. A taxiway, I believe,” Thorne Greer said, sounding out of breath.
“Well, hurry. This is looking like a lynching party.”
Paul stood and moved to the door with the cane pinned to his stomach by his left wrist. He held the telephone in his right hand like a weapon. He slapped the pilot on the shoulder and noticed sweat running down the faces of the two men in the cockpit. “Damned good landing, boys,” he said. “You’ll get a big bonus for this.”
The pilot looked at Paul through his red-ringed crystalline eyes. “You’ll go to jail for this,” he mumbled, his hands still trembling. “You’re fuckin’ insane. What you did was air piracy, and I’ll make sure…”
Paul frowned. “Let me do the talking, and maybe I can save your licenses.”
Rainey opened the door, and he and Paul stepped down onto the taxiway’s pavement. Thorne Greer’s car pulled up in front of the men who had advanced on the two passengers. Thorne jumped out and ran to Paul.
A large man in a cheap suit who was sopping wet held up a badge. “National Transportation Safety Board,” he growled. “What the fuck’s going on here? You nuts? You were warned off… you could have made several alternate fields that are open. You’ve put a lot of innocent lives in jeopardy.” Paul assumed he was referring to people in the homes around the airport, certainly not theirs.
Paul held up his own badge. “DEA. We have a national emergency, and I don’t have time to explain it to you. Don’t speak to my crew, or you’ll all be in debriefing for weeks.”
“DEA, so fuckin’ what? I never heard of anything that would allow you-”
“National emergency, I said!” Paul yelled to be heard by all in earshot. “We’re operating on direct orders from-”
The necessity for Paul’s explanation ended when the western sky suddenly turned a brilliant red-orange once and then almost immediately three more times. When the sound arrived, it was as if lightning had struck a few feet distant. Boom! BaBoom, boom, boom. The shock wave was a wash of air pushing through, which fluttered the men’s wet clothes like flags. “Holy fuck!” the NTSB inspector said, his fat face orange, his mouth like a crater.
“Yacht basin. Must be fuel tanks,” someone said.
“Bombs,” Rainey yelled in alarm. “It’s going down!”
Paul, Rainey, and Thorne jumped into the car, leaving everybody standing beside the plane, staring off at the red pulsing sky. The DEA Chrysler fishtailed off silently and, when the tires caught purchase, shot straight down the center of runway eighteen, leaving a crowd of confused personnel standing with their mouths agape, sharp shadows dancing behind them, and the light of the great fire reflecting in their eyes.
51
