The Deep Blue Alibi

Forty-six

Who the hell is Conchy Conklin? And why does he want to kill me?

Killing Fowles, Steve could understand. The Brit was a poached egg, ready to crack. When he did, he'd implicate Conklin and whoever hired them both. From everything Willis Rask had said, Conklin was a lowlife without the brains to pull off a sophisticated bribery scheme. His boss was the one who wanted Griffin convicted of murder and Oceania buried at sea. But who was his boss? Fowles never said.

As the chariot descended, bullets streaked through the water. Dying with a whoosh-whoosh above their heads. Steve felt his heart racing, and he had a case of cotton mouth from the tank air. Then another sound, the rumble of the Cigarette's props, plowing overhead.

They were at twenty feet and descending at a steep angle. Safe as long as their air held out. But no way to outrun the boat. Or to sneak away. Their bubbles could be followed as surely as Hansel's trail of bread crumbs.

When they reached the bottom, Fowles put the chariot down hard. The craft bounced twice in the sand, scattering some spiny lobsters. The sounds above them dimmed, the speedboat idling, Conklin waiting for their next move.

But there was no move. Nothing to be done. The chariot was their metal coffin. Wasn't your whole life supposed to flash before your eyes when you faced death? But no. Steve was thinking they should try something. Anything.

In the front seat, Fowles craned his neck, looking up. Steve tapped him on the shoulder, then gestured with both hands. He pointed toward the boat above, then touched Fowles' chest and pointed one direction, then touched his own chest and pointed another.

Send the chariot up toward the boat, and you and I swim off in different directions.

Fowles' eyes seemed to squint behind his mask. Then he shook his head.

Steve checked his air gauge. The needle was at the red line. Maybe five hundred pounds of air. God, had he been sprinting? Just a few minutes left.

Now, images did appear to Steve. Quick ones, flashing by. His mother, dead all these years from a vicious cancer. His father, young, handsome, and prosperous. Bobby the day Steve carried him out of the hellhole where Janice kept him caged. Herbert would have to take care of the boy now.

I can live with that. Or die with it. My old man's a better grandfather than he ever was a father.

Then Victoria's face floated by. He smiled and almost laughed, exhaling through his nostrils and momentarily fogging his mask.

She made me laugh. So upright and uptight. From that first day in the jail cells together, she made me laugh.

Realizing that he was thinking in past tense, that his life would soon be discussed by others, if at all, in past tense.

Fowles was banging something against the metal hull. Trying to get his attention.

The magnetic slate.

Okay, what?

Fowles wrote something on the slate, showed it to Steve.

"I killed Stubbs."

Yeah. Yeah. We've been through that, Steve thought. You sort-of killed Stubbs. You're morally responsible. What of it? Why now?

Steve shrugged and raised both hands, palms up, showing his confusion.

Fowles scrawled something else and held up the slate.

"Clive A. Fowles."

I get it now, buddy. A signed confession. To help Griffin. That's great. But only if someone is alive to haul it into court.

Fowles grabbed Steve by the shoulder and motioned for him to get out of the chariot. When Steve didn't move, Fowles grabbed his air hose and pulled.

Okay. Okay.

Steve unbuckled and floated out of the chariot. Fowles punched his fist toward the sandy bottom: "Stay here!" Then he thrust the slate at Steve and made one final gesture. Raising his right hand above his head, he flashed the V for Victory sign. A second later, he purged the ballast tank and pulled back on the joystick. The chariot flew upward at a sharp angle.

Maybe it was the fatigue or the fear or the oxygen-nitrogen mixture that fogged his brain. Whatever the reason, it took Steve several seconds to figure out exactly what Fowles was doing.

He was attacking Conklin the same way his grandfather had attacked the Tirpitz.

Gripping the slate, Steve swam after the chariot.

Why? He didn't know exactly. Except it seemed unmanly to sit on the bottom of the ocean while Clive Fowles chased the Victoria Cross his grandfather had won.

Steve kicked hard but, above him, the chariot rapidly picked up speed, putting distance between them. Without a heavy warhead in the bow, without Steve's weight, and with its ballast tank blowing, the chariot could burst from the water like a Polaris missile. Except it was headed straight for the hull of the Cigarette.

The chariot's propeller churned white water, and Steve didn't have a good view. Still, he knew Fowles was aiming for a spot where the fuel lines came out of the Cigarette's lightweight aluminum tanks.

He felt the explosion before he heard it.

The shock wave compressed his chest.

The sound pounded at his eardrums with a thunderclap of pain.

He tumbled toward the bottom with terrifying speed.

Arse-over-tits. That's what Fowles would have called it if he could have survived the explosion and fireball. That was Steve's last thought before his head crunched into the sandy bottom, and everything went dark.