A sour regret ran through Regers’ drugged consciousness. His mind flashed on that split second decision that had led him to the engine room bashing in Flip’s skull. He’d made the move to take out Flip first, then Choko. Could he have saved her from this trauma?
Marise fumbled in a blank daze to put on grime-smeared white cotton pants and black blouse. Regers wrapped his jacket tightly around her quivering shoulders. Stumbling out of the room, he knelt over Choko’s bullet-ridden body. He snatched up the satchel of Devirol caps off his bloody torso, tucked it in his own pocket. The touch and sight of them triggered a fierce craving deep in his body, of hunger, unfulfilled need. Succumbing to the sudden urge, he popped a pellet in his mouth then another, broke them with his teeth, sucking the tart chalky substance with relish, letting the synthetic narcotic glide down his throat and tingle the nerve centers on the way. Addiction was a long and deadly road…
More gunshots. Regers instinctively ducked back. Biggs was still on the rampage. Regers swore. One last fucker to take down.
He left Marise there, gazing in blankness at the blood-smeared body of her abuser. Over his shoulder, Regers caught a glimpse of her crouching at Choko’s side, carving his eyes out with a piece of broken glass—glass that quickly descended to his groin.
Feet racing down the deck, he felt the blood pounding in his ears. The surge of adrenalin pushed him on. His body had taken a beating over the last few days. Three-day-old memories flitted in his mind of the ravaged bodies and the bombs mincing human flesh. Drug-induced flashbacks of the most violent nature…
The hovercraft pitched and barreled toward the shore out of control, engines revving to the max as the navigator pushed them beyond their capacity. The left rear propeller blew and made a horrible ratchety sound. The tall black rocks near the shore reared up with menace.
A scream came from the pilot cabin. Gunshots echoed from behind.
Damn that fucker Biggs! He must have wasted the navigator. The rudder jerked, nose pointed straight for the rocks. Regers reeled back in horror.
The boat tore itself up on the rocks, bottom ripped clear out. Regers went flying back, hitting his back hard against the wall. The ship listed, stern sinking, propeller engines churning out a murky foam of seawater, diesel fuel and debris. Regers struggled for air, knee deep in water. The surface hissed and frothed to the hot engines sizzling in the salt water. The vessel slid into the waves, jettisoning passengers into the churning froth, a blue, deep, dark death.
Regers gulped a mouthful of seawater, gagging at the salt in the back of his throat. He clawed, kicked, hoping to chase some sense back into his foggy brain. Gargling foam, he felt the wrath of underwater currents, the muted drone of whining engines, greasy backflush then murk. The tug of unseen currents pulled in different directions and far worse, the suction created by the rapidly sinking ship. All bore Regers spiraling down, sucking him closer to oblivion. Grasping fingers pawed at the brine. His left hand snagged on a slender arm, warm skin in the roiling water. He gripped at it with all his strength then kicked up with his feet. His head broke the surface, mouth gasping a lungful of air. Another head surfaced beside him. A young boy. Twelve, thirteen? The brown-matted hair covered his eyes like a wig of seaweed. The boy was half drowned, coughing up seawater.
Regers struggled for the shore, catching sight of some styrofoam wrapped in a tangled web of wood. He kept the boy’s head up, draped the youth’s limp arm over a drifting plank. Other heads bobbed up, men, women, struggling for the shore. All too few. Nine, maybe ten? Was Marise among them? He could not tell in that chaotic nightmare where a stone’s throw away, the hovercraft turned up its bow, piked like a fish, and started its final descent down to the murky bottom. Baggage and wreckage floated by, clogging the sea like upturned cauliflower in a storm-tossed field.
Regers kept his mind focused on saving the boy. Hollowness gnawed at him for having failed Marise. Wait! That dark-haired head bobbing over there—was it her? Two other heads had appeared and arms reached out to grab some flotsam nearby. Damn, he couldn’t save everybody! To his surprise, figures now ranged the foreshore. The movement of armored vehicles?
He kicked through the cresting waves, kept the boy afloat. Sandy bottom appeared. He felt his feet touch bottom. Dragging the kid to the shore, he staggered a few steps, then caught his breath, heard the roar of swat team vehicles. With a silent curse, he reached into his bedraggled pants pocket, chucked the satchel of Devirol into the scrub bushes, feeling a fuzzy need to retrieve it at a later time.
He staggered a few more steps in the hot sand to swim back for Marise but footfalls sounded behind him. Muscled, khaki arms pulled him back, snapped cuffs on his wrists. The jingle of chains rattled at his ankles as they dragged his struggling body into an armored van.
Chapter 12
“This man’s a hero,” croaked one of the survivors. His hair was matted, disheveled, encrusted with salt. These words and others echoed in his hazy brain.
A long time later, after intense interrogation, hours of endless, repetitive questions under glaring fluorescent lights, a mustached officer dressed in military fatigues and with a sunbrowned face and bleached eyebrows released the shackles on Regers’ wrists.
“You’re free to go.”
Regers bared his teeth in cold appraisal.
“Our men wanted to take you in for more questioning, seeing as you have a long line of prior police infractions, but in this instance, I’ve determined you were on the right side of the law.”
Another officer spoke in
