OUTCAST Ops: The Poseidon Initiative

FORTY-ONE

They sat on a park bench, Tanner pretending to read a local newspaper as he overlooked the bay, occasionally directing Liam to scope out particular things in more detail with the binoculars. He flipped a page of the paper and then registered motion out of his peripheral vision. Well outside the bay, a speedboat appeared to his right, visible only as a white streak that Tanner knew was the huge wake from the craft’s powerful engines. He continued to watch the boat move from right to left.

He glanced around at the crowd in the Seafood Festival, seeing nothing that raised his internal alarm sense. But when he looked back out at the water, the white streak that represented the speedboat was oriented differently. Instead of lying horizontally, it now appeared as a vertical line, meaning that the vessel had changed direction. It was traveling toward the bay. There was nothing unusual about that, Tanner knew. Lots of fast boats plied the waters outside of the bay at high speeds. Inside the bay, though, traffic was heavier and the speeds were lower. He was sure this one was returning home after a day of boating and would slow down any minute as it approached the bay.

But as he continued to watch the incoming craft, its speed didn’t waver. When it reached the mouth of the bay and proceeded to motor toward the harbor at high throttle, Tanner nudged Liam, who had the binoculars trained on the president’s yacht.

“Take a look at the speedboat.”

Liam looked up from the glasses and immediately spotted the approaching watercraft. He lined up his spyglasses and focused the optics on the moving target. “Jet boat,” he observed, referencing a type of boat that used an unconventional engine to suck water in and expel it in order to provide high thrust, similar to a waverunner engine, but scaled up. “Only one man aboard. Don’t see any weapons.”

“Okay. Stay with him.” Tanner had the bird’s eye view of the boat’s overall direction relative to the president’s boat and the harbor, while Liam monitored activity onboard. They continued to observe in this manner for another minute, until it became clear to Tanner that something was wrong.

“I think we may have a problem, Liam. This boat’s not slowing down.”

“Oh crap!”

“What is it?”

“The pilot just put a plastic tank up onto the bow.”

Tanner’s heart sank. If it contained a liquid STX solution, it would likely shatter on impact if the boat hit anything. Yet as he watched, the swift boat veered sharply away from the Lincoln.

“Heading away from the target,” Tanner stated for Liam, who was still glued to the binoculars.

“Where to?”

Tanner assessed the view below. After the president’s yacht, he didn’t see an obvious target for the speeding boat. Was it possible that the pilot of the fast vessel was simply a recreational boater who had lost control of his craft — mechanical problems — the tank containing only extra fuel or perhaps even just water?

But then his gaze tracked inwards, all the way to shore, extrapolating the vessel’s current course. If it didn’t deviate from the heading it was on now, the boat would run into the seawall in front of a busy waterfront walkway, lined with shops and restaurants.

Damn! Tanner felt helpless as he clutched his fists. They’d been so worried about the president that they hadn’t considered the general populace, like a football team concentrating all of their defense on covering the star receiver, and meanwhile the ball is handed off to a no-name running back with a clear path to the end zone. He hadn’t known what exactly they were expecting, but he didn’t think the attack would be so open, so brazen. If that’s in fact what this was.

“Ooooh!” Liam sucked in his breath. “He just ran down a paddle-boarder!”

“Accident?”

“Don’t think so. Even if for some reason you couldn’t shut down the boat’s power, you could still steer it out of the way. What are the chances that he’s lost both the ability to shut off the engine and the steering cable broke?”

“About the same as us being able to stop that boat from hitting whatever it’s going to hit.”