The Obsidian Chamber

32

Come on, Filipov told himself. Think. Think.

And then, suddenly, he knew what he had to do. He had to get the son of a bitch off guard.

Scuttle the boat. The water temperature was forty degrees. The bastard would fall unconscious and drown within fifteen minutes. If they could get into the cabin, they could pull on immersion suits, then scuttle. It was a steel boat; it would go down fast.

And when the boat went down, the EPIRB, the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, would pop free and — as it was designed to do when becoming submerged — send out its emergency beacon. The Coast Guard would be there in two hours. They would be rescued. Pendergast would be dead, the Moneyball and all its incriminating evidence would be at the bottom of the ocean — there would be nothing to get them convicted. Pendergast’s corpse, if it was floating at all, would have been taken far away in the quarter-knot current. Just a freak boating accident.

The moon was setting. It would soon be pitch dark.

He grasped Smith’s shoulder. “We go into the pilothouse. And down into the cabin.”

Smith nodded. He was paralyzed with fear.

“Just follow my lead.”

Another nod.

Filipov raised his weapon and fired at the Plexiglas window once, twice, popping it into slivers.

“In!”

Smith scrambled through the window frame and Filipov followed, half falling into the pilothouse and rushing down the companionway into the cabin. As Filipov swung the steel cabin door shut he saw a black shadow chasing them into the pilothouse; he dogged the hatch shut just as the fed threw himself against it.

They had taken him by surprise.

He heard the man try the hatch again. Filipov realized the first thing he would do was get on the VHF radio and broadcast an SOS — the wrong kind of SOS. Also, they were vulnerable through the portholes, which were too small to fit a man but could be fired through.

“Cover the portholes!” he barked.

He lunged forward, opened the breaker box, and grabbed a fistful of wires, yanking them loose in a shower of sparks. He then opened the battery compartment. There were four marine batteries: two main and two backup. He yanked open a tool drawer, pulled out a pair of rubber-handled snips, and, with more snapping of electricity, cut the positive cables — one, two, three, four.

The boat was plunged into darkness. So much for the VHF.

The EPIRB. Did the bastard realize all he needed to do was throw it in the water for it to go off, and get his SOS? Unless he was a sailor, he wouldn’t know that. Filipov was banking on this ignorance.

He went to the emergency locker, threw it open, and pulled out two immersion suits, frantically putting one on and tossing the other one to Smith. He heard Smith yell, firing twice through one of the ceiling hatches.

“Put it on. I’ll cover.”

Smith grabbed it and began wrestling himself into it, while Filipov backed up against the hull. The portholes were covered, but the air hatches were not. It was dark and he saw a shadow moving fast by the ceiling air hatch; he fired, shattering it. And then it occurred to him: there was a second way into the cabin, through the forepeak hatch and anchor locker. It was the only hatch big enough to fit a person. If the fed knew it was there, they’d be in trouble. And there were two smaller hatches in the forepeak itself.

He scurried over to the forepeak and looked up at the two dark air hatches in the ceiling. The fed couldn’t see down at them in the darkness, but there was enough ambient moonlight above that he could see the man if he peered in. He waited. Now he could hear movement, ever so quiet, along the side of the boat toward the bow. A slow footstep on the cabin roof; another; then another. Then he saw a faint shadow cover the hatch; he was ready and fired.

The hatch shattered, blown out. He waited, controlling his breathing, his heart pounding so violently he could hardly hear. Was he dead? Filipov knew in his gut that he wasn’t. The way the fed had just risen up like that, those demonic, silvery eyes, the machine-like way he’d killed three people in less than as many seconds…

And then suddenly the fed’s chalky face appeared in the shattered hatch, with that same contemptuous smile and a buttery comment: “Unluckiest man alive.”

With a furious roar Filipov fired again and again at the porthole where the face had been, followed by clicks as he realized his magazine was empty. The son of a bitch.

Smith appeared next to him, dressed in the orange immersion suit. “What now?” He was terrified, waiting child-like for orders, freaked out by Filipov’s loss of control.

He tried to get a grip. “Grab a sledgehammer out of the toolbox. We’re going to break off the engine cooling intake at the hull.”

Smith hesitated. “We’ll sink.”

“That’s the fucking point.”

“But—”

“The suits will save us. The fed will freeze. The EPIRB will be activated when the boat is scuttled and automatically call us a rescue.”

Now Smith understood. He threw open the door to the engine compartment and undogged the broad hatch on the floor, exposing the intake valve.

“Wait. The cash.” God, he’d almost forgotten. Filipov unlocked the storage compartment. There were six small waterproof gym bags, each with a share. He yanked them all out, slung three around his shoulder, gave the other three to Smith. “They’ll float.”

“But the Coast Guard will wonder—”

Fuck. “Why would they open them and do a search? We’ll just say they’re our clothing.”

Smith nodded.

“Okay, now hit that intake valve. Hard.”

Smith swung the sledge. It banged off the valve, the cooling pipe bending.

“Again!” The fed was like a fucking bat, flitting about, looking for a way in. He hadn’t noticed the forepeak hatch yet. Nor had he deployed the EPIRB. So the man wasn’t a sailor. Good.

Bang! Smith wielded the sledge. There was sudden spurting of water.

Bang!

Now Filipov heard a rushing sound. Smith backed out, dropping the sledgehammer. “Okay. It’s coming in like a son of a bitch.”

The water was boiling up like a gusher. It would be only a moment before it reached the floor of the cabin.

“We go out the forepeak hatch. Just get off the fucking boat and as far away as possible, out of range. He’s only got four rounds left, and he’ll soon have more important things to worry about than shooting us.”

“Right.”

Smith unlatched the anchor locker in the forepeak, pulled open the door, and crawled inside, over the anchor chain.

“Quietly,” Filipov whispered. “Don’t open it until I signal.”

A nod. Smith reached up and undogged the hatch from below. Then he waited, looking to Filipov for the signal. It was so dark Filipov could barely see him. He eased himself in the locker, pressed up against Smith inside the small space.

“You lift me up. I’ll turn and pull you up.” Even as he said this, it occurred to Filipov that it would be mighty convenient for Smith to go down with the ship, leaving him the only survivor.

“Okay,” Smith said.

“On three.” He stepped into Smith’s handhold.

“One, two, three.” Smith stiffened and Filipov stepped up, throwing open the hatch, grasping the edges, and pulling himself out. He turned, slamming the hatch behind him.

A muffled cry came up. “What the fuck?”

Filipov raced for the gunnel, intending to dive into the sea; but something unexpected happened and he suddenly fell sprawling over the foredeck, his three bags of money scattering. Even before he could recover himself, he felt a foot press painfully against his back and the cold steel of a muzzle screwed violently into his ear.

A quiet voice said: “Take off your suit. Or die.”

The forepeak hatch, which was operated from the bottom only, opened and Smith emerged. The gun muzzle went away, there was a single shot and a scream, and then the muzzle was jammed back into Filipov’s ear, more painfully than before. “I dislike having to repeat myself.”

His pistol was underneath the suit, and if he could get to it… He fumbled with the zipper and began struggling to get it off, but then he remembered the magazine was empty. He stopped.

“Do continue undressing.”

Filipov stared at him. The deck was already tilting. “But… we’re sinking.”

“You’re stating the obvious. I need your suit.”

Filipov hesitated and the fed fired the gun, the round hitting the deck so close to his ear that it sprayed him with cutting fiberglass.

“Okay. I’ll take it off, I’ll take it off!” He struggled out of it. He might have a chance when the fed was putting it on. It was damned awkward.

“Hands in sight, if you please,” the fed said, dragging the suit toward himself. “Now lean forward, a little more, like that. Excellent!”

He smacked him across the temple with his gun.

When he woke, the fed was standing over him, fully dressed in the orange immersion suit, gun in his hand.

“Welcome back to the sinking ship,” he said. “I’m sorry to say you are the one who’s now going to die of hypothermia. Unless, of course, you know a way to stop the boat from going down. Without the suit you now have the proper incentive.”

Filipov lay on the deck, staring up at him, head pounding. The deck was tilting sharply, the boat already a third under. “There… There is no way.”

“Ah! What a pity.”

“For God’s sake, let me go below and get another suit for myself!”

A hesitation.

“It’ll be cold-blooded murder if you let me freeze.”

“Quite true,” said the man, “and my conscience is rather tender. Very well. You may rise, but please don’t try anything stupid. Get the suit and come back up without delay.”

Filipov rose, almost fainting from the headache, sliding on the tilting deck, grasping handholds as he opened the forepeak hatch. He saw, to his horror, that it was already half full of water. He would have to swim down, in pitch darkness, to get another suit.

“The Zodiac?” he asked weakly.

“Riddled with holes, thanks to your enthusiastic friends.”

Filipov suddenly felt overwhelmed with panic. There was only one way: dive in and feel his way to the suit locker.

“I… I have to dive in,” he said.

“Be my guest.”

Filipov lowered himself into the forepeak hatch. The water was up to his waist. The EPIRB would have been activated by now and the Coast Guard alerted and on their way, but he couldn’t worry about that. He inhaled hard a few times, then held his breath and dove in.

The icy water was like a hammer to his body. Kicking down, he pulled himself through the forepeak door into the cabin, his eyes open — but all was pitch black. Already his lungs were bursting as he felt along the port side, trying to orient himself in the blackness. The current of the inflowing water pushed him to one side and he became disoriented, his diaphragm going into spasms. Realizing he had run out of breath, he reversed and swam back for the forepeak, but instead collided with a wall and suddenly surfaced in an air pocket at the top of the cabin. Gasping for breath, he desperately reoriented himself. The water was rising fast and the pocket was shrinking, the air rushing out with a moaning sound through the broken hatch in the ceiling. Fuck, the steel boat would go down any moment. He dove again, feeling along the sides of the cabin… and there it was. The suit locker! Still open. He fumbled inside, grabbed a handful of rubber, and hauled it out, resurfacing. But now there was only two feet of air left in the cabin. Fumbling with the suit, he tried to put it on in the water, but it was twisted and his hands were numb. He could hardly move his arms, he was so cold, and as he thrashed about the air pocket shrank further, the wheeze of air louder. And then, quite suddenly, he felt the boat shift hard, the air pocket disappeared, and he realized they were going down, down, into the deep cold Atlantic…