The Last Family

45

The group was getting comfortable in the lounge of the Shadowfax while Laura set about checking the stocks and selecting a couple bottles of wine from the cabinet.

Alton Vance and Tom Nelson were standing in the galley door, which opened to the cockpit, in still-dripping rain gear. They had Uzi machine pistols hanging in plain sight under their arms.

“Woody, do you or the other men want a drink-a beer or a coke?”

The agents shook their heads.

Alton Vance turned to Woody. “We’ll cover the pier,” he said. “If someone made a pot of strong coffee, I imagine we’d drink it.”

“It’s going to be wet out there. I’ve got a couple sets of foul-weather gear in the hall storage closet,” Reid said.

“These coats are fine,” Alton said. The two agents disappeared up the ladder to the cockpit. Their feet could be heard as they walked aft.

“Hard shoes,” Reid said, frowning. “They’re scuffing the deck.”

“Sorry,” Woody said. “They weren’t thinking they’d be walking on boat decks when they chose their shoes.”

Reid went out to the hall closet and brought back a yellow rain jacket and a pair of pants. “Gore-Tex,” he said. “If I need to go outside.”

Woody waited for the coffee and then stepped out to deliver it to the guards on the pier.

Wolf sniffed at the door, then turned three tight circles before lying down at Reb’s feet.

Thorne and Sean were in position across the marina, Thorne scanning the piers through binoculars and Sean waiting his turn at watch. He saw Woody hand the steaming mugs to the agents on the pier. The rain was falling harder, and Thorne turned up the collar of his coat to help keep out the wind.

“I guess we can relax a bit. I mean, there’s a fucking army out here,” Sean offered. “Man’d be nut cakes to try anything.” He looked again at the sniper on the roof of a boathouse and at the one directly across, set up in the flying bridge of a fifty-foot powerboat moored less than one hundred yards away.

“The man is nut cakes, kid. The sniper on the boat there has a Winchester model seventy, looks like,” Thorne said.

“A two-seventy you reckon?” Sean asked. “That’s a flat shootin’ round. At this range I’d imagine thirty-oh-six with a one-hundred-eighty-grain boat tail would be perfect.”

Thorne exhaled. “For deer hunting, maybe. They use three-oh-eight, kid. Every sniper on earth uses a three-oh-eight. He can pierce your earlobe at five times that distance and not even make a heat line on your cheek.”

“I used to hunt. Growing up, I mean,” Sean said, trying to make conversation. “I used a thirty-oh-six.”

“And one-hundred-eighty-grain boat tails, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Was a sniper in Nam I knew. Marine Corps fellow. Sheriff now in Utah. This guy took a VC’s head right off his shoulders. Shot measured out to a quarter mile. VC never knew what hit him.”

“You an atheist?”

“I’m a Libra,” Thorne said dryly.

“It’s almost like hunting from a stand.”

“Right,” Thorne said. He trained the binoculars on the diver who was surfacing beside the Coast Guard launch and the men on the aft, standing under the awning, looking miserable in their rain gear. God, I’d hate to have that fucker’s job, he thought to himself. He watched as the diver said something to the guardsmen. One of them handed him a set of fresh tanks and took the old set up onto the deck. Then Thorne watched as the bubble trail headed toward the Hatteras where the prone SWAT sniper watched the Shadowfax through his scope.

All evening, swimming in that murky shit. Like being a friggin’ earthworm.