Commander-in-Chief

57

John Clark had decided to bunk in the cockpit of his sailboat to keep more in tune with the sounds on and around the cove. There were certainly more comfortable digs down in the master stateroom, but down there he’d be completely unaware of anyone entering the area, or any threats that might arise. It was a little warm up in the cockpit, but Clark decided to give up a little comfort for a little security, so he slept on the cushioned sofa alongside the helm.

He knew his op down here would be a lot tighter with more personnel, but even before Sam’s death it had been tough to work multiple operations at the same time. Since Sam had died, however, the concept of having The Campus’s operational staff involved in three different areas of operation simultaneously was ludicrous. Still… Clark recognized, the enemy gets a vote, so here he was, while Jack was in Virginia on one task and Ding and Dom were in Lithuania on another.

Clark figured he had it the easiest, but that would be only until he boarded the gray catamaran and confirmed the presence of the Walkers on board. Then things down here would get interesting.

But not tonight. Tonight he just had to go back to sleep so he could be ready to hit the Spinnaker II.

He was somewhere between sleep and consciousness when he heard a noise and opened his eyes.

Clark lay there unmoving for several seconds, trying to determine what had stirred him. But he heard nothing other than the natural sounds of a healthy boat in a peaceful little cove.

He started to go back to sleep, but then he sat up, deciding that he needed to go to the head.

He stood on tired legs, took a pair of steps through the cockpit; his next footstep would have brought him to the top of the companionway down to the saloon. But he sensed something again, close. Not like before, this time he was certain enough to swing around, pulling his pistol out of his linen pants as he did so.

He didn’t make it.

He never even knew it was a fourteen-inch steel-and-chrome marine wrench that dropped him. He heard the crack, felt the impact just behind his right ear, and sensed the loss of balance — the feeling of falling. He didn’t realize he’d dropped the pistol. His hands were no longer under his control and he was unable to hold his body erect.

Weightless now, he didn’t understand how he could possibly fall so far to the cockpit deck that had been right there, under his feet, just a second earlier.

The blow to the head, perfectly and savagely delivered, rendered him unconscious in just over one second, so he was out before he made his first impact with the companionway stairs, halfway down into the saloon. His body took blows in the arms, hip, and all across his middle back as he tumbled down, finally ending up in a still heap on the deeply lacquered floor of the saloon.

For several seconds Clark lay alone, still knocked out completely, but then he was joined by two men, who descended the companionway stairs into the saloon. They wore wetsuits but no other scuba gear; they were barefoot, their faces covered with neoprene head coverings that revealed only mouths, eyes, and noses. Only the glow from a few green lights on the radios and other electronics at the navigation console showed them their way around the saloon.

They stood over the body, looking down.

After a few seconds, the American drew his diving knife from the sheath on his ankle, knelt down over the shirtless man in the white linen pants, and lifted the head by a tuft of silver hair. He reached the knife around in front of the man’s neck, placing the four-inch blade against the man’s carotid artery.

“Wait,” the South African said, looking around at the scene while he spoke.

The American responded, “But you told me to—”

“Forget what I told you. This is even better. When they find him they will think the old fuck bashed his head in rushing down the stairs in a panic. It will look like natural causes, so there will be fewer cops running around the islands asking questions.”

“Why would he panic?”

“Because he realized he was sinking.”

The American looked around himself now. He knew he was a subordinate on this op, the mercenary from Joburg called the shots, but the man from Cincinnati was bright enough to recognize this boat wasn’t sinking.

Before he could bring up this rather obvious point, the South African said, “Disable the bilge alarm.”

“Where’s that?” The American didn’t know boats, but the South African did.

“Never mind. I’ll do it.”

“You want me to snap his neck?”

“Is he out?”

“He’s out, but he might still be alive.”

“I don’t want any more unnatural marks on his body. Leave him just like that.”

“I think we should kill him.”

“I think you should do what I tell you to do, man. I cracked his skull like an egg, and a bloke this old will have broken every bone in his body falling down here. Even if he comes to, he won’t be swimming to shore.”

Together they lifted the access panel in the floor to the bilge pump and shut it off, then found the bilge pump alarm and disabled it. The South African found a second alarm, this under the table in the middle of the saloon, and he unplugged it, then tossed it on the floor.

While he did this the American found a large toolbox in the closet of the master stateroom, and he began to go through it.

Back topside the two mercs looked around the cockpit for a moment, checking the scene for any evidence they had been there. The American found the SIG Sauer .45-caliber pistol on the floor of the cockpit and he took it as a prize, and in another minute the South African had pulled two curtain rods off the curtains in the master stateroom. He joined his partner on the deck, then they both climbed back down the anchor chain and descended back into the water. Their scuba gear was lashed where they had left it, and they climbed back into their buoyancy-control devices and pulled on their fins.

The men descended under the boat and used the metal curtain rods to reach up through the intake hoses, then jam them in violently, breaking the seacocks and knocking the hose clamps off the seacock nipples.

They broke through the sea strainer as well, sending water gushing out near the bilge pump inside the boat, adding to the leaks.

All the damage was done below the floor of the saloon, the staterooms, and the hallway to the master stateroom; anyone diving on this wreck tomorrow would find no obvious evidence of any holes or breaches.

It took the two men much longer than they would have liked; they spent ten minutes jamming rods through the ports, but eventually they had created a dozen major leaks in the hull of the boat.

It was already listing to port by the time the men swam out of the area and back toward their dinghy, hidden in an inlet a quarter-mile away.