Chasing Gold

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Michael Crouch’s entire body was a traumatic world of hurt. His lungs were on fire, the blood that streamed through his veins was red-hot poison. The muscles in his thighs and calves were painful slabs; he could barely keep his feet.

Ricci forced him on, pounding his back when he faltered, squeezing his throat when he stopped. Crouch found it easier to just keep going, despite the agony. A gun was lodged between his ribs, making them sore. From the corner of his eye he made out the much younger Terri being forced along with them, still running freely but looking battered and bruised.

Terrorists surrounded them and ran ahead of them. Their world was crowded by bearded men that stank of sweat, carrying guns and knives as well as burdens real and imagined: hate, as well as new and old wounds. The sand clogged his feet, but he tried to skip over it. Curses and rants came left and right. Terri half-fell and was then hauled along by her shirt, her feet scrambling to catch up.

He didn’t see Alicia fall back. He saw the FBI to the right, but distant. He made out the boats ahead that were fast becoming clearer and clearer.

The only thing waiting for you out there is a gigantic oil tanker, torture and death.

But how could they hope to escape? The game was up now, surely. Even if they made it to the oil tanker, the FBI and Hawaiian authorities had choppers, coastguard cruisers, battleships. There was nowhere to go.

It made him ultra-wary. So far, Ricci had always proven to be a step ahead. A somewhat ironic thought considering the journey from DC to Hawaii had been one long chase. The longest chase in history? Crouch wasn’t sure.

He entertained these thoughts purely to stave off the agony.

They arrived at the boats and Ricci threw Crouch temporarily to the ground. He hit hard, face first, sliding with a bow wave of sand in front of his nose. The stuff made him choke and cough and stung his eyes, but he rolled and tried to sit up to appraise the situation.

Bollocks.

The FBI were slowing too, hands gripping their weapons but faces wary. Two of their leaders were shouting into radios. The entire beach was clear of civilians. Alicia and Russo were well behind now, but sprinting fast to close the gap.

Crouch looked closer, at his own predicament. He was almost at the point where he’d be happy for the police to start taking potshots.

Terri was sitting by his side, covered in sand and sweat. Her body heaved but she still seemed fresh. Two men had climbed onto the jetty and were being passed the banner. Ricci ordered five more men to get up there and watch their backs by shooting anything that moved. The banner was thrown aboard a motorboat. It was a small affair, with a single cabin covered by a white tarpaulin and a restricted triangular-shaped rear where people could sit or stand. Ricci was already jumping aboard a second and starting the engine.

“Get them up here!”

Men reached down for Crouch. He found he could hardly move; the old legs betraying him. With a heave he managed to rise and was then pulled the rest of the way up. Terri moved to help but was warned off by one of the men.

“What am I going to do?” she said in exasperation. “Run?”

They dragged her up onto the jetty and then made Crouch follow. Alicia was closing rapidly by now and some terrorists opened fire. Crouch managed to jostle two of them on his way past. Bullets flew at the skies.

The second motorboat started up. Someone made the engine roar. The banner was in the bottom, freeing up all of the terrorists. Ricci glared at the horizon.

“Put bullets in all these other boats,” he said. “So they can’t follow us.”

“There’s nowhere to go!” Crouch said quietly, since he was on the same boat. “You can’t escape on the ocean.”

Ricci gave him speculative eyes. “We’ll see about that, soldier. I always have backup plans for my backup plans.”

“Is that what the Army taught you?”

Ricci ignored him, just started easing the boat out of its resting place. Crouch stood at the rear, feeling the waves rolling beneath the hull now, and watched as Ricci’s men gave their attention to the rest of the boats.

But only one bullet was loosed before Alicia and Russo sent lead flying among them, hopefully realizing the situation. Men dived this way and that, falling into the back of the second boat, and couldn’t regain their feet as the pilot moved off at speed. Soon, the waves were billowing out around it.

Nobody shouted the failure over to Ricci. Crouch didn’t blame them. His throat was so raw and stretched he could hardly speak without rasping. It was also clear that Ricci took pleasure in inflicting pain. Thankfully, he hadn’t properly taken issue with Terri yet. Crouch stared back at the beach as Alicia and Russo leaped up onto the jetty.

They weren’t waiting for the FBI.

Ahead, the blue Pacific stretched left and right, a beautiful unbroken vista. The bay’s breakers rolled in, white and frothy, but wouldn’t pose any obstruction to the powerful speedboats. Crouch watched the shore in despair.

His heart leapt when he saw a boat leaving the jetty, making out the blond head of hair at its helm. Damn if that girl didn’t understand the meaning of failure. Again, he felt eternally thankful for her, so honored that he had been chosen to help her at a young age. In a long life where, like everyone, he’d done his fair share of wrongs, she was one of the best rights.

A little after Alicia, the FBI came too, commandeering boats of their own.

The chase continued across the waves.

Crouch gauged the mood aboard the boat. In one way he could simply jump now; affect his freedom that way. The bad guys couldn’t exactly turn around and pick him up.

But Crouch wouldn’t leave Terri.

He wasn’t made that way, hadn’t been trained that way, and couldn’t do it. They would escape together or not at all. Terri was handcuffed to one of the seats at the front of this boat — no way to free her. Crouch hadn’t even seen which man pocketed the key. His eyes narrowed then. Alicia was closing on the rear boat.

He sat down, knowing exactly what was coming. His body ought to be less of a target in case errant bullets flew his way. The boat took flight off the tops of the higher waves, crashing down into the deluge below before riding up the next swell and taking flight again.

Gunfire drowned out the noise of the ocean. Crouch saw Alicia piloting with one hand and shooting with the other. He saw Russo sighting over the side, trying to pick off terrorists in the last boat. Bullets thudded into wood and tore through the seas. The clack-clack of return fire was a nightmare to his ears. But still Alicia came on.

Ricci yelled out in glee. A smudge could be seen on the horizon. Crouch fancied it was the Shoshone Star, the oil tanker these bandits had booked passage on. Crouch frowned. Oil tanker? What the hell was he missing here?

Two lead motorboats plowed the seas. Crouch could see Alicia’s bow wave and the spray that filled the air behind her boat. A terrorist caught a bullet in the neck and flew back against the bulwark of the cabin. His colleagues hefted him up and threw him over the side; too fast to have properly checked his wounds. They returned fire at Alicia’s boat. Now, the FBI were coming up alongside Alicia in their bigger, faster crafts. Everything Crouch could see back there was crowded with agents.

And they would be coming by air too, he thought. By sea.

What am I missing?

He figured they’d traveled about fifteen miles. The oil tanker was growing much bigger now, an outsize behemoth simply sitting in their way, blemishing the horizon like a squat, gray stain.

He considered the way they’d been traveling, parallel to the eastern coast of Oahu. Could there be anything else out there?

He didn’t know the area well enough to conclude anything. The gun battle raging behind was intensifying. Russo fired precise shot after shot. The terrorists shot back but hid behind the sides too, popping up only when necessary. A bullet passed through a plank of wood with a splinter and took off the top of a man’s head. Another winged a small youth, spinning him around. One more took a shot from the FBI boat; a bullet that slammed into the pit of his stomach and made him double over.

Again, he was hefted into the ocean.

Crouch’s count was eight terrorists remaining, plus Ricci. Judging by the gap between their boat and the oil tanker, they would arrive alongside in about eight minutes. That put them roughly twenty miles from their starting point.

Did Ricci have an army aboard that ship?

Did he plan to make the video and then kill himself before he could be taken?

Ricci struck Crouch as a leader, a high-level player. Not the kind of man to make such an easy sacrifice. He ducked lower now as wayward bullets flashed past their own boat, two of them slamming into the stern. Nonstop gunfire sounded from behind as the terrorists put on a spurt of speed in order to increase the gap.

Crouch looked over to Terri, a question in his eyes.

What’s next?

She saw it and shrugged. She wanted to live but had already accepted that the decision was out of her hands.

At the helm Ricci was laughing. Dragging a radio from underneath his bullet-proof jacket, he thumbed the button and spoke a single sentence.

“Our choppers are incoming. Get ready to board the tanker.”

Why the hell would he need choppers then?