07:34.
Charlie could call 911, explain that he was aboard a yacht with two dead bodies and a nuclear bomb, although it wasn’t really nuclear-part of a secret CIA program-yet it still packed enough high-grade plastic explosive to take out a good percentage of the people in the vicinity, and it had been triggered, so you really ought to hurry.
If he succeeded, the bomb squad would then have 00:04 to arrive and do its job.
Discarding that idea, he dug the boat keys from Steve’s pocket and raced up the stairs. He intended to untie the yacht and drive it as far from shore as he could. A mile or two out, the device might detonate causing relatively little harm-the fog and general gloom had kept most boaters home.
Needing first to untie the heavy ropes tethering the yacht to the dock, he charged through the cabin door and onto the deck at the stern, where he found himself staring into the barrel of a shotgun.
Time seemed to slow, adrenaline again shifting his senses and thinking into higher gears. He had anticipated myriad obstacles and plotted countermaneuvers. Still the sight of Glenny made him jump.
“Stop right there, Mr. Pulitzer. Hands up where I can see them.”
He raised both arms above his head. “Just listen for a second.”
“No, sir.” Squinting through the sights, she tightened her finger around the trigger.
“Just one second, please.”
“One second.” She eyed the pale sky. “Time’s up.”
“The man you know as Tom the Campodonicos’ nephew is actually a very bad bad guy.” Glenny’s finger didn’t move. “This boat currently has a bomb with a hundred pounds of plastic explosive, enough to take out the marina and everything within a quarter mile. It’s going to detonate in seven minutes. I have no way to turn it off, so I need to get it out of harm’s way.”
Glenny paused to reflect. “Bullshit. You’re a yacht thief.”
Glancing at the parking lot, Charlie sighed in relief. “Here’s the Secret Service. They’ll straighten this out.”
She turned to look and saw only a deserted marina. When she looked back, readying a curse, she found Bream’s Glock leveled at her by Charlie. She blanched.
“If I were the bad guy, you’d be in some trouble now,” he said.
She acknowledged this with a grunt. And fired the shotgun.
Having anticipated that she would, he dropped to the deck. Through a scupper, he saw the thick bowline split in two, freeing the yacht’s bow from the cleat on the dock.
Swinging the barrel toward the stern, Glenny said, “I saw Tom this morning passing my office two different times with Arab guys who kinda kept looking over their shoulders.” She blasted the stern line free, destroying the bulky metal cleat in the process. “You’d best shove off, shipmate.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said, barging into the wheelhouse.
He glanced at the LED he’d ripped from the washer. 04:58.
He inserted Steve’s key into the ignition, weighing the odds that this key, like the remote, was a dud. The engines roared, churning the surrounding water.
On the dock, Glenny shouted into her cell phone and waved Charlie on.
The yacht’s controls were similar to the Riva Aquarama’s, a good thing as Charlie would have thrust the throttle in the direction common sense dictated was reverse and accidentally sent the yacht into the parking lot. He managed to back away from the dock, clocking the wheel. Shifting into forward, he launched the yacht toward what he thought was the middle of the bay. The fog, essentially low-lying cloud banks, made it impossible to tell that he wasn’t simply hugging the coast. Or about to crash into it.
The twin-tiered, state-of-the-art navigational equipment was of no more use to him than it would be to a caveman, with the exception of the hot-pink ball compass, a novelty item held by a rubber suction cup to the windshield. If the compass was working, the boat was headed due west. Toward the center of the bay.
He stood at the wheel, using all of his weight to absorb blows from oncoming waves.
When the clock flashed 3:00, he had put more than a mile between him and the marina. Or far enough.
Now to get overboard with the life raft.
Lest the yacht continue smack into a commercial freighter, he cut the engines, plummeting the dusky vicinity into graveyard silence broken only by the slapping of the water and his own heavy breathing as he ran out onto the bow.
He slid to a stop and tore away the Velcro straps binding the bright red Zodiac raft to the inside of the railing. About ten feet long, it had a stern-mounted outboard motor that looked like it had plenty of zip.
The raft wouldn’t budge. A padlock at the end of a thick stern line fastened it to the yacht’s uppermost rail. Charlie looked on the back of the lock. No miniature keyhole. He might be able to cut the line with a knife or saw, however. And a couple of minutes.
He had 1:43.
He considered diving overboard and swimming away. Hypothermia beat disintegration.
Instead he held the barrel of the Glock two feet from the padlock. He shielded his face, and pulled the trigger. Either the sound or the shrapnel stabbed his eardrums; he couldn’t be sure which. Regardless, there was no longer any trace of the lock.
He heaved the Zodiac into the water. Trying not to think about the fifteen-foot drop, he straddled the rail. He glimpsed the LED blink from 1:00 to:59 as he leaped.
His weight and momentum torpedoed him into water that felt so cold it should have been ice.
He resurfaced to find the Zodiac drifting away, faster than he could swim. Ordinarily. Lungs shrieking for air, he reached the raft, perhaps seventy-five feet from the yacht, or a good thousand feet closer than he needed to be.
As he climbed aboard, he jerked the cord, starting the little outboard motor on the stern. Grabbing the tiller, he set a straight course. The raft shot ahead like a dragster just as a blinding flash cleaved the fog, followed by a boom so intense that his hearing quit, replaced by sticky blood and maddening pain.
A tower of water of biblical proportions rose from the disintegrating yacht. The force of the explosion swatted a helicopter out of the sky and tipped over sailboats as far away as the eastern shore.
The Zodiac shot into the air like a kite, Charlie clinging to it until he was no longer able to stay conscious.