“I was thinking Trinidad and Tobago, west of here by about a hundred nautical miles, which we can do in five hours. As soon as we land, we contact the U.S. embassy. The FBI can bring us in from the cold, or the tropical equivalent.”
“Any idea what Dr. Wade would have told us?”
“Probably another lie. Which wouldn’t have been bad because it would be one more service that we could have ruled out.”
“Who have you eliminated so far?”
“NSA, CIA, FBI, maybe the military. Which still leaves fifteen American intelligence services — that I know of — none of whom would even confess to employing a black site interrogator. Still, Wade could be a decent clue.”
“What makes you think we’re dealing with Americans?”
“They’ve been playing by our rules, or at least our unwritten rules, taking us offshore in order to use interrogation techniques that are illegal back home.”
Compassion welled in her. “What did they do to you?”
He glanced at the instruments. “Nothing worse than I’ve had at the periodontist’s.”
“What’s keeping them from trumping up charges, so that as soon as we show our faces, they can take us right back?”
“They may well try, but whoever they are, we’ll be better off with U.S. embassy officials and marines around.”
The five-hour delay troubled her. “Why not call for help right now?”
“I imagine the Torture Island team is already searching for us. Using the ship’s radio would be the same thing as transmitting our location.”
“Wouldn’t a boat like this have a transponder?”
“Yeah. First thing I did after you fell asleep was tie the thing to a life vest and set it adrift. In hindsight, my first order of business should have been radioing the FBI.”
Mallery was confused. “But if you had used the radio—?”
She stopped short when the noise she’d initially taken for wind grew into propeller chops. Starlight delineated the helicopter, swooping out of the night like a bat.
“I figured this was coming when they didn’t do anything to stop us from escaping,” Thornton said, taking up the beer cans. “So I worked up a plan.”
35
Despite the three Red Bulls he’d found in the galley, exhaustion blunted Thornton’s senses. Crouched on the deck, he judged the helicopter to be 1,000 feet off the stern. Could be 500, though. Hard to gauge. Either way, too high to make out much more than the general shape, an all-purpose craft with main and tail rotors, like a Bell JetRanger 206. Maybe a 206A. Equipped with a thirty-millimeter chain gun that could turn the fishing boat to splinters at 850 rounds per minute. The good news was that such a helicopter was better for their sake than a craft with coaxial rotors — one above the other, eliminating the need for a tail rotor. Much better.
His search of the boat had netted two safety flares, each in its own disposable launcher. He held one of the launchers away from his body now, aiming the flare at the dark patch of sky where he anticipated the helicopter would momentarily slow to a hover.
“Is that a flare?” asked Mallery from the cabin. Safer below deck, he’d thought, because the copter surely had night vision.
“Yes.”
“But if they’re not here to rescue us …?”
“This thing burns with thirty thousand candle-power. Ought to severely screw up their night vision.”
“I like it.”
“Got the beer cans ready?”
“Just about.”
“Great.” He pulled the cord at the base of the launcher. With a hiss like a just-opened Coke, the round shot into the sky but didn’t ignite.
“Dud?” Mallery asked.
“It doesn’t ignite until it reaches maximum altitude.” He clambered down the steps into the dark cabin. “I think.”
Just as he hit bottom, the bunks, tiny galley, and various compartments lit red in reflection of the flare, now a luminous ball, turning the sky around it purple. A parachute popped up, reducing the flare’s rate of descent to that of a feather.
As Thornton had hoped, Mallery was spraying the deodorant can into the dime-size hole he’d gouged in the side of the lowest of the eight cans forming the tube. The chalky aerosol fumes rose through gaps he’d created by cutting off the lids and punching three tiny holes in the bases of all but the bottom can. Into the open mouth of the top can, he’d wedged the plastic compass ball from the control panel.
Over the splutter of spray against aluminum, Mallery said, “Miller time.” Her nonchalance belied her apprehension.
“Cheers,” Thornton said as he took the cans.
Snatching the box of matches from the galley, he lay prone against the staircase, the coarse all-weather carpeting nicking his elbows and knees. Now he just needed to light a match and stick it into the hole in the lowest can. The flame would ignite the de facto propellant gas in the tube, firing the compass ball.
The helicopter slowed to a hover at about thirty feet above the waterline and 150 feet off the starboard side, or almost exactly where Thornton had anticipated, figuring the pilot would choose to stay just outside the effective range of a handgun. The heavy fwump-fwump-fwump of the main rotor dwarfed all other sounds.
Thornton drew a match. The rotor blades’ wash sucked up seawater, raining it onto the stern deck and splashing the cabin. He hadn’t planned on contending with any water, and this was a deluge. Spinning away from the open cabin door, he flattened himself against the wall in an effort to keep the match dry.
Mallery was shouting something. He couldn’t make out what over the noise of the helicopter. Following her stare through the starboard porthole, he saw the helicopter obscured by a burst of golden smoke. He couldn’t fully process the accompanying scream, like a steam whistle, until the rocket smashed into the fishing boat above deck.
The boat heaved to port, about to capsize, it seemed. Shattered glass and shrapnel rained from the wheelhouse into the cabin, cutting Thornton’s arms and neck. Mallery dropped to the floor, using a cushion to shield herself. Everything not tied down or bolted in place slid, fell, or flew sideways, including Thornton, the match that had been in his hand, and the matchbox.
Stretching like a first baseman, he snared the matchbox, then was flung back to starboard as the boat righted itself. The hull boomed back onto the waves, raising a two-story wall of water. Through the open cabin door, Thornton saw the wheelhouse roof splash down 100 yards to port. Seawater sprayed into the cabin.
All in all, he told himself, this was good. If it hadn’t been for the flare, the helicopter would have delivered more than what amounted to a glancing blow.
He plucked a fresh match from the box, threw himself up the stairs, aligned the mouth of the beer-can tube with the helicopter, and lit the match. Cupping his free hand to shield the flame, he dipped it into the hole in the side of the lowest can. The gas in the tube sizzled, igniting. With a bang and a streak of fire, the compass ball shot toward the tail of the helicopter before disappearing into darkness.
The target was the helicopter’s tail rotor, which combatted the twisting force produced by the main rotor. With a malfunctioning tail rotor, forward speed could keep a helicopter flying straight. A helicopter with a malfunctioning tail rotor would lose control in a hover, however. And if the fragile tail rotor, which spun at 2,000 revolutions per minute — or about 400 miles per hour at the tips — were impacted by a ball traveling 100-plus miles per hour, the results could be catastrophic.
“Please,” Thornton said to no one in particular.
He heard no impact and saw no further evidence of the compass ball.
Then the helicopter pitched forward, somersaulted, and plummeted into the waves, all in about three seconds, before transforming into a yellow fireball, parts flying every which way.