Abreu half dragged the agent to where the tarps were laid out, then let him drop. He looked hideous, his face bruised from the recent beating. His eyes were slits, swollen like sooty holes in a lump of dough, blood crusted around the nose. His body flopped onto the tarp, his cuffed hands lying stretched out over his head.
“Let’s get this over with,” Filipov said. “Miller — you do it.”
“With pleasure.” Miller stepped over, right above the agent, raised his .45 in both hands, and aimed at the head. “Eat this, motherfucker.”
At that moment the fed’s eyes sprang open, sudden white spots in the black holes. Miller, startled, pulled the trigger, but the shot went wide as Miller simultaneously jerked sideways and fell. Filipov saw it as if in slow motion: the fed had swiped at Miller’s ankle, sending it skidding out from under him on the slippery tarp; and as he was falling the man rose up in a smooth motion, his face suddenly charged with a demon-like intensity; he snagged the .45 from Miller’s hand and shot him, then turned and fired at Abreu. It happened with incredible swiftness and yet, for Filipov, time seemed to have slowed into a kind of horrifying ballet. Pendergast kept rotating like a machine; firing next at the cook. One after the other, the tops of Abreu’s and the cook’s heads came off. Pendergast was swiftly moving on, swiveling toward Smith.
Filipov, shaking off his surprise and gathering his wits, began firing his own weapon, as did DeJesus. But they were caught off guard, panicked, firing too fast, and the fed evaded their fire by dropping and swinging sideways, scuttling to a place of cover behind the pilothouse. Now Smith began firing as well, and the three of them engaged in a terrific, useless fusillade that Filipov could see was doing nothing but peppering the empty space where the man had just stood.
Realizing his exposure, Filipov scrambled back, taking cover behind the pilothouse, joined immediately by Smith and DeJesus. They crouched behind the steel wall, near the rail, and a momentary silence fell.
“He’s on the other side of the pilothouse,” said DeJesus. “I’m going over the top.”
“No,” said Filipov, breathing hard. “We need a plan.”
“I’ve got a plan. I’m going over the top before he comes over on top onto us. That motherfucker killed my friend. He’s going to run out of ammo; Miller’s piece held seven plus one and he’s shot three. I’m going to smoke his ass.”
“He’s too fast. It’s just what I said: he’s been faking. Give me a second to think this through—”
“Fuck thinking. I was special forces, I know what I’m doing. You and Smith go forward and come around the front — we’ll squeeze him in a pincer movement. Get him to start firing. He’ll go through his magazine — and then he’s fucked.”
Filipov saw the wisdom in the plan and stopped protesting. He watched DeJesus grasp the handhold at the edge of the pilothouse roof and, in one fast motion, pull himself up and over, on his belly, creeping forward.
DeJesus is right, he thought. Take the high ground. He motioned to Smith and they began creeping forward, crouching low. Where the pilothouse swept around to the helm windshields, he paused to listen. There was no sound at all. The fed was on the port side, no doubt taking cover around or behind the tied-down Zodiac. The three of them would draw his fire and he’d run out of ammo. They, on the other hand, had plenty of spare magazines.
He signaled to Smith to follow as he crept toward the corner. What was DeJesus doing? Strange that there was no sound.
And then it happened: a sudden, controlled burst of shooting, in groups of two. A pause, and then more shooting. DeJesus. He could hear the rounds hitting the Zodiac, hear the drum-like gasps of air as the pontoons were shot full of holes. The Zodiac was like butter to a .45 round — no cover at all. DeJesus was just going to riddle him. Or so Filipov hoped.
A third set of shots; DeJesus was on his third magazine.
Silence fell again. He crept forward. The man was dead, had to be, with DeJesus shooting down on him from above.
Just as he reached the far corner and crouched, hesitating, he heard a single shot; then a scream and a splash.
Silence again.
Filipov felt himself go cold all over. That scream had sounded like DeJesus. One shot?
With a jab behind he felt around for Smith. He signaled for him to turn around, and together they retreated to the other side of the pilothouse, crouching, breathing hard. Filipov had never been so frightened in his life. Smith looked equally spooked.
“What the fuck do we do?” Smith whispered, his voice cracking.
Filipov’s mind was racing. They had to do something, and do it immediately. But for the life of him, he couldn’t think what.
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.