Spyder Web

57

Stone reached the open slip, winded but uninjured. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re doing down here, Kilkenny, but I’m very thankful just the same.’

Kilkenny accepted Stone’s hand, which trembled a little as they shook. ‘I’ve been there a few times myself, Pete.’

‘So, Nolan, who’s your friend?’

‘Andrei Yakushev,’ the retired spymaster replied, ‘at your service.’

Stone arched an eyebrow at Yakushev. ‘We’ve been looking for you all week.’

Kilkenny looked at Stone’s bullet-torn uniform. ‘You okay?’

Stone’s chest felt sore where several rounds had hammered against his Kevlar vest. ‘I guess I’m okay, thanks to you. I’d just like to take another crack at those bastards. They’ve taken out five of our men today.’

Kilkenny eyed the Heckler-Koch MP5-K Stone was cradling. ‘Would you really like another shot at them?’

‘Damn right I would!’ Stone replied. ‘What do you have in mind?’

Kilkenny thumped the side of the green offshore racer berthed beside them. ‘Simple. We go after ’em.’

‘If that’s the case, we’re going to need some more firepower. Here,’ Stone said as he tossed his rifle to Kilkenny, ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

While Stone sprinted back to collect arms and ammunition from his fallen men, Kilkenny and Yakushev prepared to commandeer the offshore racing boat. Kilkenny’s luck held out as he discovered the keys in a bin beside the wheel. Stone returned and leapt on board as Kilkenny fired up the boat’s engines and familiarized himself with its controls. The boat was obviously the toy of a very wealthy man; it had been custom-fitted for its owner and bore an unusual paint scheme. The needlepointed bow was emblazoned with the same tooth-filled shark’s mouth design found on RAF fighter planes. The boat’s markings finally made sense to him as he pulled it out of the slip and noticed the name painted across the foredeck: Spitfire.

‘Well, girl,’ Nolan muttered to himself, ‘I hope your owner named you well, because I’m about to see what you’re made of.’

Kilkenny took a little more care than Parnell in navigating the Spitfire out of the marina, but the wake radiating behind him still sent the docked ships clattering in their berths. When he last saw Merlin, the Cigarette boat had turned downriver toward the sea. Slamming the throttle forward, even Kilkenny was surprised by the boat’s response. Backing up the boat’s name were a pair of jet-turbine helicopter engines refitted for marine use. The owner had named his ocean racer after the RAF Spitfires he watched as a youth, battling over Britain against the Luftwaffe. The marine incarnation of the Spitfire was a fifty-foot-long hull of honeycombed Kevlar hurtling down the Thames.

‘Pete,’ Nolan shouted over the engine’s thunderous roar, ‘see if you can raise Axton and Mosley on your headset. Let them know what’s happened, and tell them we’ll try to slow Parnell down until help arrives. We don’t want them thinking we’re part of Kang’s team.’

‘I’m on it.’ Covering both ears to block out the engine noise, Stone tried to connect with Looking Glass.

‘I’d hate to have both sides shooting at us,’ Kilkenny muttered under his breath.

Stone contacted Axton and gave a concise report on his situation, starting from the ambush at the marina elevator to their current boat pursuit. Axton was pleased with Stone’s initiative, until he learned who was with him.

‘Say again, Stone!’ Axton demanded. ‘Who’s in that boat with you?’

Stone shouted his answer slowly and clearly. ‘Nolan Kilkenny and Andrei Yakushev. They saved my life, sir.’

One side of the conversation was enough for Yakushev to figure out what was being said. He leaned close to Kilkenny. ‘I don’t think Stone’s superiors approve of his current choice of company.’

‘They damn well better, or their spies are going out to sea.’ Kilkenny turned his head and shouted over the engine noise. ‘How far to the coast?’

Stone took a quick look at the shoreline to get his bearings. ‘It’s about forty-five or fifty kilometers to the Thames estuary and another thirty to the open sea.’

Kilkenny ran through the math in his head. ‘Our best chance of catching these guys is if we can keep them bottled up in the river. Once they hit the ocean, your people will never be able to catch them. See if Axton agrees with me on that. If he can block the river before it widens too much, we can run them down. At this speed, we’ve got about twenty minutes before they hit the estuary.’

Axton and Mosley concurred with Kilkenny’s assessment and issued a frantic series of calls from Looking Glass. Below, strike teams broke from their positions and began moving downriver by land.

Axton studied the map closely, then called out to the helicopter for a visual report. ‘Eagle, has Parnell cleared the flood barrier at Silvertown?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the pilot reported, ‘about two minutes ago. Kilkenny and Stone are passing through right now and closing. The two boats should be in sight of each other in another minute.’

‘That gives them another ten kilometers before the next barrier.’ Axton switched his microphone back on. ‘This is Looking Glass to Home Office, do you copy?’

‘Home Office here, Looking Glass. We’ve been monitoring your situation. What assistance do you require?’

Axton marked the stretch of river where they would trap Parnell’s boat. ‘I need the Thames flood barriers closed down between Silvertown and Tilbury and I need it done now!’

Spitfire was approaching the turn in the river near North Woolwich when the automated gates began to close. Up ahead, Kilkenny saw the white-water rooster tail of Merlin. The Thames had opened up into a relatively straight passage of water, allowing Kilkenny to push his engines full throttle. Spitfire’s screws bit into the calm river water, bringing it to a boil behind her blades. The bow of the boat rose high in the water, baring her teeth to those in her way.

A thundering sound reverberated off the river, echoing with an explosion of power behind them. Parnell and his passengers looked upriver and saw a man-made shark flying across the water in their direction. The pursuing ship’s vicious image was not lost on any of them.

‘Faster, Parnell!’ Kang ordered. ‘They’re gaining on us!’

‘She’s at full throttle now, but it won’t do much good,’ Parnell replied. ‘I know that boat. They’ll run us down before we can reach the sea.’

Kang slammed a fresh clip into his weapon. ‘Then we’ll have to deal with them here.’

Merlin’s bow rode high, as if the boat was trying to break free of the water. Kang and his lieutenant positioned themselves in the stern of the boat. Both men crouched into a squat position that provided adequate cover and additional support for their arms as they trained their weapons on the approaching craft.

Parnell was right — even with his boat pushed to the limit, the monstrous green vessel kept closing the distance. Kang crouched by the rear deck and waited until Spitfire loomed large enough to provide clear targets.

A voice from above crackled in Stone’s headset. ‘Spitfire, this is Eagle. Do you read me?’

Stone began scanning the skies for the surveillance helicopter. He was unable to hear Eagle’s thumping rotors over Spitfire’s engines. ‘Eagle, where the hell are you?’

‘Ahead of you,’ the pilot answered. ‘I’m skirting the shore parallel to the boat you’re chasing.’

Kilkenny noticed that Stone was talking over his headset and looking around for something. ‘What are you looking for?’

Stone looked ahead over the port side. He found Eagle darting in and out of the low cloud cover ahead of their boat. He pointed at the helicopter and Kilkenny nodded. Stone then crawled into the bow cabin, where he could hear more clearly.

On the basis of Stone’s first signal, Looking Glass had ordered the helicopter downriver to keep pace with Merlin. At full speed and traveling as the crow flies, the helicopter had easily caught up with her. Unfortunately, Eagle wasn’t a gunship, or it could have done more than just watch the action from above. Stone finished the update with the helicopter pilot and emerged from the cabin.

‘What’s the word?’ Kilkenny asked.

‘It seems that the chaps up ahead of us have noticed our approach.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ Kilkenny commented sarcastically; Spitfire was loud and fast. ‘What are they doing?’

‘Eagle reports that they’re running flat out, but we’re closing quickly. Two of them have taken up position on the stern with weapons ready.’

‘And they’ll be firing once we’re in range.’ Kilkenny studied the shortening distance of water that separated the two speeding boats. ‘All right, everybody, hang tight. I’m going to throw this green beast through some moves.’

The Thames began widening as they approached the sea, the river stretching nearly five hundred meters across as Kilkenny turned the boat on a sharp diagonal course. Spitfire reveled in the challenge, sending foaming white sheets of water into the air.

Kilkenny’s evasive maneuvers slowed their approach toward Merlin somewhat, but it successfully kept the spies from taking an easy shot at them. Kilkenny cut wide toward shore before sharply turning to port again, bringing his side of the boat close in for their first strafing pass. With his left hand on the wheel, Kilkenny raised the MP5 with his right and strafed the metallic blue craft. Stone and Yakushev followed his lead and fired over the starboard side.

Bullets tore into Merlin’s hull, splintering the fiberglass and ripping through the cushioned seating. Stone took careful aim and clustered three rounds in a tight circle on the forehead of Kang’s lieutenant, killing him instantly. Kilkenny pulled the boat away, holding his course toward the north shore before swinging back for another pass.

‘How are you two doing back there?’

‘Nothing more than a few scratches to the hull,’ Stone replied.

‘I am also uninjured,’ answered Yakushev.

‘Great! We got one of theirs, but the next pass won’t be so easy. Are you both ready for another run?’

Stone and Yakushev replied by slipping fresh clips of ammunition into their weapons. Kilkenny brought Spitfire about, turning back in the direction of Merlin. He drew an imaginary arc across the water, aiming the boat not for where Merlin was but where it would soon be. Yakushev and Stone crouched on the port side as Spitfire made her next approach.

The dual-opposed engines showed no signs of strain with the grueling paces Kilkenny was running them through. The needle on the engine temperature gauge was centered in the middle of the normal range and the rpms were only three-quarters to the redline. Spitfire was a well-engineered, well-crafted machine.

Kang took aim and fired as the menacing green ship closed upon them. He emptied twenty rounds into Spitfire, raking the bow and shattering the windscreen in front of Kilkenny. Stone and Yakushev popped up briefly just as Kilkenny drove Spitfire over Merlin’s wake. Both fired wildly, their aim disrupted by the hammering of their ship’s hull in the wake behind Merlin. Before Stone could adjust his aim, Kang peppered his chest and arm with several rounds. Stone collapsed backward, landing beside Yakushev as the skirmish ended.

Kilkenny looked over his shoulder and saw Yakushev and the wounded Stone. ‘Andrei, how bad is it?’

‘Difficult to say. He is bleeding extensively, but—’

‘I’m okay,’ Stone said with a start, his head shaking as if he’d just awakened from a bad dream. ‘Just busted up my arm, that’s all.’

Yakushev helped Stone sit up, an effort that caused obvious pain. ‘I am definitely alive — being dead wouldn’t hurt this much.’

‘Sure as hell beats the alternative,’ Kilkenny added, knowing from personal experience. ‘Andrei, there should be a first-aid kit in the bow. See what you can find to patch him up. Hang in there, Stone. You’ll be fine.’

Stone grimaced at Kilkenny, then cupped the hand from his good arm over his ear. ‘Could you ease up on the engines? I’m getting a signal from Looking Glass. They want us to back off.’

‘Back off? All right, but I hope they’ve got something in mind.’ Kilkenny brought Spitfire to a stop while Merlin continued its drive toward the sea. ‘Let me borrow that headset while Andrei cleans you up.’

Kilkenny helped Stone remove his communication gear and body armor. The chest plate had stopped several potentially lethal rounds, leaving only deep bruises on Stone’s chest. His arm, on the other hand, had been torn open. Stone would be fine as long as they could stop the bleeding. Yakushev returned with the first-aid kit and began tending Stone’s injuries.

‘All right, Mosley, what the hell is going on?’ Kilkenny shouted into the microphone.

‘Kilkenny, you dumb son of a bitch,’ Mosley growled back. ‘You really got yourself into it this time. How’s your crew doing?’

‘Stone took a couple rounds on the last pass.’ Kilkenny saw Stone grimace as Yakushev cleaned his wounds. ‘Other than that, we’re fine. The opposition is down to three. What’s the story? Why’d you pull us off?’

‘The river’s blocked about four kilometers ahead of your current position. Parnell’s not getting out that way. Axton’s people are set up to pounce on them as soon as they approach. We also closed the flood barrier you passed through about six kilometers upriver, in case they try to double back.’

Merlin was now a white foaming speck downriver from where Kilkenny stood. ‘Ten kilometers of river is still a lot of area to cover. He may head for shore.’

‘We’ll take our chances,’ Mosley replied, acknowledging the risk. ‘Axton orders you to sit tight and wait for his people to come and get you. You can’t return the boat you stole until they open the floodgates anyway.’

‘I’m deeply offended by your accusation. This vessel was officially commandeered by a legitimate representative of the British government. I merely came along for the ride.’

‘I’ll bet you did, smart-ass. Tell Stone to hang in there; help’s on the way. You guys did real good out there.’

‘Thanks.’

Kilkenny helped Yakushev dress Stone’s wounds. One bullet had left a deep gouge in his forearm, while another had passed through his biceps. Stone was in good spirits despite his pain, keeping a stiff upper lip in proper British fashion.