Two seconds.
Okay, maybe three…or four.
That was a long time. He had killed men in less time than that, and he was a lousy shot. This guy, on the other hand…
Four seconds.
Damn. Stuck between the Gulf of Mexico and a wet grave. What a way to go.
Keo put the MP5SD down and pushed both palms against the floor and readied to spring himself up. The first motion would get his feet back under him and the second would send him straight up, just far enough to reach the steering wheel and control lever. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery, and all he’d have to do was keep from getting his head blown off in the four seconds he probably had. Probably. Once he made sure the boat was pointed in the right direction and the motor was at full throttle, he could jump back down and only expose his hand. If the sniper managed to shoot off his arm while he was moving at full speed, then more power to him.
Who needs two arms, anyway?
Keo sucked in a deep breath. It was slightly stale and smelled of dead sea life, not to mention whatever chemical they had been pumping out of those industrial buildings from the nearby areas.
Two breaths…three…
On five, he jumped — got both feet under him, pushed up, twisted to his right, grabbed the rubber-covered steering wheel with one hand and the metal lever with the other and—
Oh, crap.
It was a Jeep. About a hundred meters farther up the channel. The vehicle was bright yellow against the brown and green fields, and men were jumping out of the back. He didn’t need binoculars to know they were probably all armed, and from the way they were running toward the shoreline, they knew exactly where he was and what they were going to do when they reached it, and he reached them.
And then there was the sniper—
The loud crack! of another gunshot split the air, just before something hit him in the right shoulder and spun him slightly. He fought through the pain, ignoring it (or at least telling himself to) and shoved the throttle all the way back up. The motor roared and instead of holding the steering wheel straight, Keo spun it right until the boat turned away from the swarm of men and he was arcing in a wide U-turn.
Water churned under him and he ducked just as another shot zipped over his head, right where he had been standing a brief half-second ago. The boat was swinging around in a wide circle — too wide — and he was holding on for dear life. There was a solid thunk! as he broadsided one of the buoys, warning him that he was getting too close to the shallower parts of the channel.
He waited for the sniper to shoot again, but the man either didn’t have a bead on him or—
Crack! Another round buzzed past his head just as the boat completed its U-turn, coming dangerously close to ramming into the other side of the channel. He righted the vessel, spinning the wheel back left as the sixteen-footer fought against the surface while tearing up the lake, back in the direction he had come moments ago.
He expected to hear the pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire as the men from the Jeep opened up on him, but to his surprise, they didn’t. Not that he spent more than a few seconds thinking about it. He remained kneeling, steering with one hand, hoping something didn’t pop up in front of him and take him out in a collision.
Five seconds…ten seconds…
He had put enough distance between him and the shooter that Keo felt safe enough to stand up. A good thing, too, because he had swerved dangerously too close to the left shore in the last few seconds and had to quickly right the boat again. He slashed underneath the bridge a second time and finally burst back into the wider section of Beaufont Lake.
Then, and only then, did he let himself glance over his shoulder back into the channel.
Silhouetted figures, like twigs in the distance, were scrambling around on land. If the sniper was among them, Keo couldn’t tell. Not that he had seen the man during the whole ordeal. But he had to be somewhere in the weeds, close enough to the water that he could see everything in the channel. He knew for a fact the gunshots had all come from ground level. If the guy had been higher up — positioned on one of those cranes, for instance — Keo would have been a dead man.
The drip-drip of blood on the console reminded him he hadn’t made it out of the channel completely unscathed. The bullet had clipped his right shoulder, taking a quarter inch of flesh for its trouble. He was bleeding, but it looked worse than it really was. A dripping wound was better than a pouring one.
He didn’t stop the boat until he had gone for a few more minutes. Keo opened the compartment under the console and fished out the first aid kit. It was a dirty white box, but the contents were clean the last time he checked. He rolled up the sleeve and disinfected the wound, then wrapped it up with gauze and taped it into place. The pain was slight and nothing he couldn’t handle. After surviving all those months in the woods with a pair of holes in him, this was more of an inconvenience.
He hadn’t finished putting the first aid kit back under the console when he heard a second outboard motor filling the air behind him. Keo glanced back just as a fast-moving white boat blasted out of the mouth of the channel. It was pointed straight in his direction and men clung to it. He couldn’t tell how many, or if they were wearing uniforms or not from the distance.
The sight of them set him off. He wasn’t sure if it was annoyance, anger, or maybe a little of both. Probably a lot of both, now that he thought about it. He picked up the M4 from the floor and pulled back the collapsible stock. He flicked the fire selector to semiautomatic, then moved toward the stern and balanced himself for a few seconds before settling in behind the red dot scope. The optic wasn’t anything fancy, but he could see the moving vessel coming easily enough. Three hundred meters, and closing in fast.
Keo fired, waited, then fired again, then again, and again.
He didn’t know if he hit anything, but by the way the boat slowed down before breaking off the pursuit entirely, he assumed he had gotten close enough to spook them.
He lowered the rifle and waited for a response. He didn’t have to wait long. They fired back in his direction a moment later. Two shooters, and they were apparently just as bad at long-distance shooting as he was, because while a couple of rounds landed in the water off his starboard and one sailed harmlessly over his head, most of them didn’t even come close.
Keo thought about returning fire to let them know he was still standing, but decided they could probably see him just fine. The fact that they hadn’t kept coming was a sign they either weren’t ready to risk their lives chasing him, or they had orders to stay back. He wasn’t keen on either possibilities, but the latter gnawed at him.
By the time they stopped shooting, it was clear they weren’t going to chase him anymore, but they weren’t moving, either. That meant the channel was blocked off to him. Unless, of course, he was willing to shoot his way through. But even if he could get past these bozos, there was still that sniper out there, lying in wait in the weeds. Keo had a feeling that dickhead wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and he probably hadn’t hopped onto the boat along with these other guys.
Keo slung the M4 and walked back to the console. He pushed the throttle, and the boat jumped back to life and headed off. He glanced back once, to see if they would pursue, but they were just shifting back and forth against his waves, content to watch him go. Soon, they faded into the background.