Harv got out of the car, crossed the street, and hunkered down in the cover of a small group of palms. This position offered a clear view of where Nate would attempt to board the yacht. The hotel rooms directly behind him raised some concern, but at this early hour of the morning he doubted anyone would be up. He didn’t smell any cigarette or marijuana smoke, and didn’t hear any late-night partiers. If a police cruiser happened to swing through, he could easily duck deeper into the landscaping.
He brought his field glasses up and spotted Nate. He’d already swum twenty yards. Pulling executive override wouldn’t have gone over well and he knew Nate would resent it, probably for the rest of his life.
He took a deep breath and tried to relax.
A shiver raked Nathan’s body as he began a breaststroke in order to maintain the best possible forward speed while keeping a low profile. A crawl would be faster, but not stealthy. Because he possessed a low body fat ratio, his buoyancy was more negative than most. He found he couldn’t keep his head above water and maintain a good pace, so he made three strokes per each breath of air. He felt the resistance of his pants, Sig, and Predator on his lower legs, but boarding the yacht unarmed wasn’t an option.
During the next three strokes, he tried to clear his mind of all distractions, especially the cold. Something bothered him, and it wasn’t the approaching yacht or even the knowledge of whose home they’d been in. It was something else entirely. Something important.
Trying to understand this odd burst of intuition, Nathan reviewed how they’d gotten here. First, he rewound to Senator Kallstrom’s house. It seemed his unease began there.
He took a breath and began his next three breaststrokes.
Inside Kallstrom’s house, Harv went upstairs while he worked the ground floor. There hadn’t been any sign of a struggle, but that wasn’t unexpected. Duane Dalton probably agreed to turn himself over to save his family. The furniture looked normal, albeit expensive, but it didn’t reflect any sign of a struggle.
Visually, he moved to his sprint toward the driveway. Montez blowing that infuriating kiss good-bye from the van’s passenger seat. The van. A white Ford van. A minute ago, he’d spotted a similar white van as Harv turned into the Bahia. It was backed into a stall with its rear doors facing the grass.
Nathan surfaced, took a gulp of air, and submerged for three more strokes.
Once again, he rewound back to Kallstrom’s residence, to the closed study door. Inside the study, he’d destroyed an expensive Tiffany lamp. Rage overwhelmed him and while everything became a blur, Harv helped him control his anger. Then what? He calmed down and looked around the office again. This led him to connect many of Montez’s recent tactics to water. He opened his eyes and pointed at the photograph of the yacht. Harv understood immediately and broke into the file drawer, but the file wasn’t there. It lay on top of the desk. Had Nathan subconsciously seen it before thinking about Montez and water?
He took a deep breath and went under for three more strokes. When he broke the surface again, he looked left and saw the yacht rounding the corner.
To his surprise, it was cutting through the water far slower than he’d anticipated.
He ducked below the surface for three more strokes.
A visual of Kramer sinking to the bottom of Lake Powell invaded his mind. Fueled by anger, he stroked harder before resurfacing for air, something Kramer hadn’t been able to do. The horror and fear the man must’ve felt had to be the worst imaginable. Knowing death was the only escape. How long had he held his breath before inhaling water? A minute? Longer?
Kallstrom’s mansion.
The study.
The photo of the yacht.
The file sitting on the desk.
The images wouldn’t go away.…
Harvey followed Nate’s swim through the field glasses. It was hard to judge how much farther Nate had gone. He stole a look at the yacht. It looked to be doing two or three knots at best. Why so slowly? He did a quick calculation. Three knots was roughly four or five feet per second. It was going to be tight, but he thought Nate would have a reasonable chance of getting hold of the rear diving deck. Part of him wished Nate would miss and return to shore unharmed-chilled to the bone, but otherwise intact.
He refocused the binoculars on the spot where he’d last seen Nate. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he started another underwater swim? Harv focused on the area where he guessed Nate would surface next, but he detected nothing except wind-chopped water.
Harv heard them before he saw the source. Footsteps. Coming from his left. He watched a man appear in dark clothing, hands in pockets, walking down the center of Gleason Road. What the hell is he doing out here at this hour? And alone? He ducked deeper into the cover of the hedge.
Silently moving forward, the man with the stun gun smiled.
Since the yacht had passed his position, Harvey wasn’t worried about being seen from that direction. He needed to check this new arrival, make sure it was only someone taking a late-night stroll. He looked behind before moving away from the cover of the palms, crouching low to take advantage of a boxed hedge. The guy looked harmless enough, but the timing felt wrong.
The man in the street doubled over, dropped to his knees, and began labored coughing. Harvey stared for a few seconds, wondering if he should offer assistance. The man didn’t look well at all.
He turned to check his blind spot again and caught the faint odor of tobacco a fraction of a second too late.
A hideous electric charge ripped through the left side of his neck and short-circuited his muscle control. He recognized the crippling sensation from his Taser training.
His nervous system exploded in fiery agony as hundreds of on-off electrical pulses shot through his spinal column. An instant before falling to his side, a single thought glowed, then faded in his mind.
Juan Montez de Oca, former colonel of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, plunged the stun gun against the man’s neck and pulled the trigger. He delivered a full five seconds of juice with a glorious result. The man went stiff, issued a grunt of pain, and keeled over. Tall and Latino, this was almost certainly one of the two men associated with the helicopter from Bullfrog Bay.
Arturo ended his phony coughing and ran over. Within seconds they had their captive’s wrists and ankles secured with duct tape.
Montez scanned the area. All quiet.
He kept his voice low and addressed his captive. “How are you feeling? Not well, I trust. Well, we’ll be sure to let you recover a little bit before our discussion. We have much to talk about.”
“Up yours.”
“I think not.” He removed the man’s sidearm and tossed it several feet away. “We’re going to become good friends, you and I. As a matter of fact, I’m going to become your