Darkest Instinct

TWENTY-FOUR

Despite the ship’s teakwood beauty and its huge, golden- orange, godlike eye-a glowing sunrise against a silken white sail-Jessica saw that it was indeed now eerily deserted, bereft of human occupancy; it was oddly still and silent even as it ran before the wind at top speed. It presented a strange, sleek, modern version of a ghost ship, its colors bright and beautifully new-too new. The other ships in the race showed tattered sails by comparison. Something strange and unusual crept over Jessica as she stared down over the silent schooner. It was as if the ship had a secret life of its own, one which it wanted to tell Jessica all about. She felt a cold stab of ice like a knife blade at her spine. Something rancid skittered about the recesses of her brain. Something told her this was it, Patric Allain’s killing ground, Warren Tauman’s place of revenge on a world that had been too unkind to him.

“ We all three saw someone on the earlier pass,” said Lansing, a master of the obvious, Jessica thought.

“ He’s hiding below,” added Jessica into her microphone. “We know he must have a fully automated ship to sail alone across the Atlantic. The weasel’s hiding in the cabin below.”

Lansing was approaching for a third pass now, but this time he brought the bird into a hovering stance directly over the boat, approximately thirty feet above the bow, then eased her downward. They buzzed about, circling like an enormous bee, each of them staring, searching for any sign of Warren Tauman, a.k.a. Patric Allain, but he seemed to be playing hide-and-seek with them for the moment. Had it been like this with Manley and Stallings out on that fogbound bay? Jessica wondered. This time a clear sky and bright sunshine burned down on the killer, as if God had turned his eye on Tauman.

“ Bring us in closer,” said Eriq. “I’m going to board that ship.”

“ What?” Lansing asked, his amazement complete. “Are you nuts?”

“ There’s a rope ladder coiled at my feet, and I’m readying it to go over the side, and I’m going over after it. “You ever do a thing like that?” asked Lansing.

Jessica knew that Eriq may have trained for such moments in his younger days, but she was certain he hadn’t made such a maneuver in some time, and very possibly never in anything but a simulated situation. “Eriq, are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “I’m sure. I’m dropping the ladder over the side.” Eriq kicked the small door wide while continuing to shout through his headphones at Lansing. “Take the bird in lower.” But Lansing held the bird in place, the noise from the rotors and the powerful wind filling the cockpit now. “I won’t be responsible for your getting yourself killed, Agent Santiva.”

“ Hey, you’re not in charge here, kid! I am! Now do as I say, now! Bring this chopper closer down over the boat well. I want that ladder kissing the deck. Got it?”

Lansing scratched at the back of his head, looked to Jessica for help and asked, “Why don’t we just follow the guy into Grand Cayman?”

“ We want to take him here, while we’re in international waters.” she reminded him. “Besides, if the guy thinks he’s cornered, given our profile on this creep, he’s liable to either attack or kill himself, if he hasn’t already done so.”

“ But we would’ve heard the gunshot if he’s committed suicide.”

“ Ever hear of cyanide pills. Drano, Tilex? Any of them will clean your clock,” Jessica told Don.

Meanwhile, Eriq had managed to wrestle the rope ladder over the side. Jessica quickly and momentarily glanced back at Eriq, who’d remained frustrated at so many stages of the investigation. He’d had to wait on information to come available; he’d had to run interference for her; and he’d had to act as front man for the politicians throughout the case. He’d been equally frustrated by the killer’s notes and his handwriting, which while it had revealed so much about Tauman had remained useless without a suspect to attach it to. Now, the possibility that Tauman would be taking the quick and dirty and easy way out was too much for him, as it was for Jessica. She understood his need- compulsion, rather-to simply take action.

Lansing began a tentative, downward spiral which was more like an awkward air-machine dance toward the moving boat, since the sea breeze was not cooperative in the endeavor to place Eriq aboard the Smiling Jack.

“ Feed me any cover I might need,” Eriq asked Jessica, who readied her Browning automatic, her eyes now on any movement below, riveted to the windows and the hatches, her weapon pointed. But as the bird hovered and was snatched in updrafts and downdrafts, she would lose targeted points and had to wait to refocus. It wasn’t the best of circumstances by any means, but every minute was taking Tauman closer and closer toward Cayman waters, and she and Eriq both knew that Ja wanted custody of their monster.

Eriq tore off his headphones and started down the whipping ladder.

God, he’s gutsy, she thought. Her memory led her to a fond remembrance of a strong-willed, determined, bull- headed old friend whose like bravado had gotten him killed some four-plus years ago in Chicago-Chief Otto Boutine, with whom she’d been in love. She cared deeply about Eriq; she didn’t want anything happening to him. She also wondered if she’d have the guts to climb out of this chopper while it remained in midair, hovering above the speeding boat. She wondered if it might not come to that should something happen to Eriq, and at the same time, crowding her mind was the question of where Tauman was lurking, if he was indeed on his back from self-inflicted wounds or was merely playing the trapdoor spider, biding his time, preparing an ambush. Hadn’t Kim Desinor called him exactly that? This seemed more Tauman’s style, since he didn’t care for the sight of blood and likely didn’t care for pain of any sort either.

She shouted her fears to Eriq in a stream of warnings which he could not hear, since now he was without headphones and the noise of the machine wind alone penetrated his hearing. Still she shouted, “Be careful! Go easy! Remember what happened to those FMP cops!”

“ Your friend’s damned crazy,” Lansing, the only one who could hear her warnings, replied.

“ The guy down there may’ve slashed his wrists or taken pills,” she shouted in defense of Santiva, “and the more time we waste now, the more time he has to check out on us.”

“ The guy’s got to be alive; he’s steering the boat from inside the cabin.”

“ Could be on autopilot. That damned ship is so state of the art, it can likely run this course by itself.”

“ No, no… his course is keeping pace with the others, and he’s corrected his helm more than once since we spotted him. No auto’U do that, not in these conditions, surrounded by other boats.”

“ I’ve been told differently,” she countered. “That boat can set its own radar, respond to its own radar signals.”

“ Damn chancey to bet on it with your partner’s life, Dr. Coran.”

Jessica took hold of his arm and said, “You ever tell a Latino he couldn’t do something? There’s no way Eriq was going to listen to reason once he decided to go down that ladder. Right now, we have to do all we can to help him.”

“ I’m trying to get him down as quickly as possible, but part of my brain is asking, Should we do that or take him up? Better wc all come out of this alive, even if you do lose your prisoner. You can have him extradited later. Get the State Department to threaten sanctions or something.”

“ Maybe you’re right.”

“ I know I’m-”

Suddenly, a metal rod slammed into the bubble top, creating a spidery web of cracks that began to spread over the glass before them. “Damn! What was that?”

“ A metal part from the rotor, I think! Damn!”

“ What’s it mean?”

“ If it’s part of the rotor, we’re going down. Something like a hundred moveable parts in that damned old rotor shaft, any one of which, if it gives, we sink like a stone. Helicopters don’t glide down with the wind the way a plane does.”

“ I knew this damned old thing was old but…”

“ Are you kidding? The glass isn’t even shatterproof. We’ll be lucky if it holds.”

“ Eriq! Oh, my God!” Over Lansing’s protests, she tore off her headphone set and ripped her seat belt away. She then climbed into the rear, where Eriq had disappeared over the side. She stared down to see him holding so tightly to the rope ladder that it appeared now to have become a giant rosary upon which to plant a kiss and a prayer.

Jessica watched a dangling Eriq as Lansing fought the chopper for control, and she saw the dark, sinister shadow in an open hatch on the boat. She saw the metal spear rise like a bullet toward Eriq. When the ladder was snatched and whipped again by the struggling chopper, the spear missed Eriq by inches.

Jessica grabbed up the headphones she found on the floor and shouted into them, “Lansing! He’s firing a speargun at us! It’s not the chopper! Repeat, it’s not the rotor!”

“ Speargun!” echoed Lansing.

Jessica continued to monitor for any sign of Tauman, realizing now that Eriq was between her and the killer, but that if he showed himself at the hatchway again or at the entryway to the cabin she’d have a clear shot-if Lansing could get the damned bird stabilized.

Just then she saw Tauman-muscular, tall, ruddy- complexioned with wild hair blowing in the wind. He was armed now with a huge pistol.

“ Damnit, it’s a flare gun!” she shouted.

Lansing took the warning, instantly pulling up, but at the same time Eriq leapt for the boat, and as Tauman’s fiery missile slammed into the chopper and bounced harmlessly away and into the sea, Jessica fired. But Lansing had jammed the chopper sharply to the right, sending Jessica’s shot astray.

“ Turn back! Get us around! Eriq’s on board with that maniac, and he’s got a flare gun!”

Lansing didn’t hesitate, bringing the chopper back around in a tight arc, returning to the pursuit. “Now that sonofabitch’s tried to kill me!” he barked.

The chopper skimmed straight over the water now, catching up with Tauman’s boat. When they neared, they could see that Eriq had lost his gun in his mad jump onto the boat, but that he’d somehow managed to get hold of Tauman before he could reload the flare gun. The two men were fighting for control of the gun now, and it was pointed overhead.

Tauman viciously kicked Eriq in the groin, bringing him to his knees, but Eriq wouldn’t let go of the gun, and Tauman, too, went to his knees, unable to free the gun and control it. “Is it loaded?” Lansing wanted to know. Jessica could not say. “I don’t know. Get me closer, and I’ll put a bullet in the bastard.”

“ You got it.”

They dipped now over the boat, which the wind carried just ahead of them. The other boaters racing these waters had all slowed, staring, pointing, wondering what was going on and who were the good guys and who the bad in this confusing set of circumstances. “Get on that radio and tell those others to stay back. Inform them we’re FBI,” she ordered Lansing.

“ Good idea,” agreed Lansing, who was about to find the necessary frequency when Jessica screamed and the second flare went sailing across the cracked glass bubble. “Sonofabitch!” Lansing shouted into the open frequency, the chopper rolling and banking again in response to his reaction to the near hit. But this time Lansing held on to his emotions and the controls, keeping the chopper fairly well in place.

Jessica again leaned far out over the side, trying to draw a bead on Tauman, but Eriq was all over the monster now, pounding him and pummeling him, looking as if he might kill him with his bare fists. Tauman wouldn’t stay down, however. Then suddenly Tauman slumped into a heap, appearing either dead or deeply unconscious. She watched as Eriq lifted Tauman by his hair and battered his head against the gunwale. Satisfied that the creature had finally been rendered harmless, Eriq went below to get the ship under control. Jessica took that as her cue to board the boat. She didn’t want Eriq turning his back on this serpent.

She quickly holstered her weapon and breathed deeply in relief. It was over-finally over. They had the Night Crawler in custody, and the Night Crawler’s boat deck was painted in the demon’s blood. And somewhere aboard the boat, they would find incriminating evidence to prove this was indeed Patric Allain, indeed Warren Tauman, indeed the Night Crawler.

“ God, we were right in tracking him here,” she said as much to herself as to Lansing and the cockpit. “We’ve got him. We’ve really got him.”

“ It would appear so,” agreed Lansing, smiling, breathing easier now. “I guess that’s what you guys call probable cause, huh? I mean, the sonofabitch tried to kill us. So your boss had every right boarding the guy’s boat the way he did.”

“ Carte blanche. Now we start the long process of prosecuting this bastard carefully, by the book, so that we don’t violate his civil rights. He is, after all, innocent until proven guilty.”

Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on Don Lansing, who replied, “Like those cowardly mothers who planted that bomb in Oklahoma City in ‘95?”

“ Yeah, how we had to look after their precious civil rights. Provide them with defense attorneys, provide them with a judge and a jury and a forum-as if they still had rights as American citizens, as if they were human. Bastards deserved to be stripped of any and all rights. You don’t give civil rights to murderers and baby-killers. They forfeit the right to be assumed human when they turn to taking human life, so far as I’m concerned.”

“ You… you were part of the force that tracked those guys in Oklahoma down, weren’t you?”

“ Part of the BSU sent to Oklahoma, yeah.”

“ BSU?”

“ Behavioral Science Unit, part of a larger division. We profile killers, try to get into their heads, track them through understanding them as best we can.”

He nodded. “So, maybe if we shipped the cretin back to England it’d be better all around. Isn’t he guilty over there until proven innocent?”

“ You might have a great idea there, Don. Imagine the Menendez trial in England. The defense would’ve had to prove innocence, and all the prosecution would’ve needed to do would’ve been to burn incense, blow smoke and hold up mirrors, rather than the other way around. As it was, it was just the opposite in California.”

“ Why not extradite this guy to England then?”

“ Good point. Maybe we’ll consider it, but I doubt the American public will stand for it. Everybody wants him fried in Florida. Trouble with that is the electric chair’s too good for the likes of this mother-”

“ Death row food for how long?”

She shook her head, unable to answer.

“ So, what do we do now?”

“ We take the bastard back to the States to stand trial.”

“ Maybe we should let the Cayman authorities have him?” he wondered aloud. “Maybe their brand of justice would be swifter, surer?”

“ You got a point, Lansing… you have a point, but once again the U.S. isn’t likely to stand for it. Our government and the State of Florida’ll be looking to control this one, not to mention America’s Most Wanted.”

Jessica took in another deep breath of the rushing, hurricanelike air all around her. “Bring the chopper in as low as you can. I’m going down to the boat.”

Lansing was doing gyrations both in his seat and in his head, asking, “What? What’d you say?”

“ I’m going down there… on the ladder.”

“ Hey, we’re not talking child’s play here, Dr. Coran.”

“ I want to be with my partner, and I want on that ship, now, Don!”

“ But-”

“ No buts! Just do it.”

Jessica snatched off her headphones and looked out over the side. The straight drop gave her renewed respect for Eriq. Tauman was still unconscious, but she hadn’t recalled his lying half on, half off the back of the boat where those thick, black nylon ropes were still draped. She wondered if any bodies dangled there now, but she rather doubted it. She also wondered if he’d moved, or if he had been moved. Had the boat simply shifted his deadweight? Had Eriq come back to kick him a few times?

Or had the Night Crawler, she wondered again, moved himself?

With the chopper lower now over the slowing boat, the bottom rungs of the ladder were loosely coiled aboard the ship when Jessica began her descent, doing so with one eye on the evil below her while the wind tore at her body, whipping wildly at her blouse and slacks. She thanked God she’d been wise enough to wear cotton pants and comfortable sneakers.

Each rung down the rope ladder brought her nearer Tauman, and she couldn’t help but recall her father’s long-ago words to her when they were on a hunting trip once in Minnesota. Her father had had to kill a snake, and she went to pick it up, curious to examine it as closely as possible. It was beautiful in its size, and variegated color scheme and surprising in its dead heft. She was thirteen at the time.

“ Never assume a snake is dead until you cut off its head and feed on its heart,” her father had warned.

“ Oh, yuck. Dad. Whataya mean? Eat its heart?”

“ Old Indian proverb-American Indian, Lakota, I think. If you don’t cut off the head and eat the heart of your enemy, he will rise again to strike you when you least suspect it.”

Another glance at Tauman told her this particular snake was stone still. Maybe Eriq had indeed killed Warren Tauman. It would certainly save the taxpayers a bundle if it were true; still, she wanted this devil alive. Florida had the death penalty, and she would conduct hundreds of hours of laboratory tests over the remnants of his victims to prove Warren Tauman more than just the “alleged” killer.

Jessica was two rungs from the boat deck now, twirling uncontrollably around and about over the deck of a still moving ship, dangling from the chopper overhead, holding on tightly. Maybe Don Lansing was right. Maybe she was a fool to risk life and limb in this manner, but for so long now they had tracked this beast, and so she felt she had to get a closer look and be certain that her partner was all right.

She didn’t want to jump too soon, didn’t want to lose her balance as Eriq had. In the meantime, due to the buffeting winds here, Don Lansing had had to bring the helicopter a bit higher, and looking down at her feet, she realized there were no rungs lying on the deck any longer. In fact, she had reached the final rung, and there remained a three-foot drop, with the boat still going at quite a speed. She took a final look at the snake whose blood was dripping over the gunwale and into the salt sea.

Tauman lay there like a broken granite statue; he hadn’t so much as flinched. He was exactly as she had seen him from the top. Maybe he was dead; maybe Eriq had used deadly force, which would mean a review of every moment of every second of this past hour. The Bureau and the attorney general of the United States would be studying Eriq’s behavior instead of the killer’s, trying to determine if deadly force had been necessary, and the eyewitnesses to that deadly force would be Lansing and Jessica.

She saw Eriq coming up from below, his wild, adrenaline- fed eyes meeting hers just as she jumped on deck, and he cried out, “Nooooo!”

When she hit the deck, the momentum of the ship sent her directly back, and she fell into the grasp of Warren Tauman who’d gotten to his feet. Tauman snatched her gun from her shoulder holster before she could get at it, both of them fighting for balance, and now pointed her weapon at Eriq, focusing through blood that streaked from his forehead and half blinded him. Eriq, in that same instant, surged forward, trying to react, but froze in place when he saw the gun pointed directly between his eyes.

At that moment, Jessica half heard, half saw the flare which Lansing had suddenly fired across the boat; reacting immediately, she stomped on Tauman’s foot with all her weight and forced both Tauman and herself back toward the aft, until both of them again lost their footing.

Together, they went over the back of the ship and into the water, the boat moving swiftly away from their falling bodies.