Suddenly there was movement on the boat and Slaton saw the ex-soldier astern, sorting through a pile of equipment. Wysinski was still in no hurry. The kidon cocked his head and looked back to where the young girl had been tending her flower boxes. For some reason he wanted to see her again, in all her faithful purpose and innocence. She was gone.
His approach was completely silent. The pier was wide, and along each side lay a solid row of boats and wooden finger slips that blocked the view almost continuously. If any passerby had happened to look in just the right gaps, they would have seen the vague, dark silhouette of a small inflatable Zodiac beneath the pier. It moved so slowly that anyone who might watch it for a moment or two would see nothing other than the motion one would expect from such a craft if it were moored on a loose painter, drifting randomly back and forth. Indeed, it moved in two directions — six inches slowly shoreward, then a foot toward the end of the pier. Six inches in, another foot out. In the dim light there was no way anyone could make out the man who was crouched inside, his head just clearing under the dock’s stringer planks as he inched his way out.
Slaton worked his fingers into the gaps between the wooden two-by-sixes, careful to never let the tips protrude above the top surface. At one point, someone, probably a dockhand, walked directly overhead and stopped. Slaton, motionless, saw the soles of a pair of deck shoes through the cracks, and heard the man grunt as he tossed a sailbag onto the deck of a nearby boat. It landed with a thud, then the shoes retreated back up the pier toward shore. Slaton pressed on, finally stopping twenty feet short of Wysinski’s boat. He pulled out the Beretta and released the safety.
For a full five minutes he listened, mentally logging the sounds, the patterns of movement, and selecting a point of entry. The boat was stern to the pier and had a large, flat swimming platform behind the transom. It was clearly the quickest and easiest way aboard, assuming he could get there unseen. The name on the stern was artfully scripted, Lorraine II, home port Casablanca.
Slaton wondered if this was the boat that had been used to retrieve the weapons. It was not a salvage ship by any means, but could have done the work. There were two small davits astern, of the type normally used to hoist and carry a small skiff. But there was no skiff, and a few strong men would have had no trouble swinging a pair of five-hundred pounders aboard.
Slaton heard Wysinski go below and he edged closer. The last ten feet would be the toughest. Wysinski would have a narrow line of sight, over the transom and under the dock. Slaton saw the coast was clear and moved fast to the platform. He stepped across silently while pushing the Zodiac back into the shadows, then stayed low until he heard Wysinski back on deck. When Slaton stood, the gun was sighted and ready.
Wysinski had his back to Slaton, but he sensed a presence and turned. Slaton saw something in the man’s expression. But it wasn’t surprise. There should have been surprise. And maybe a trace of fear, even in an old soldier. Alarms went off in Slaton’s head. Something was very wrong. He quickly glanced up and down the pier but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“Get below!” Slaton ordered, wanting to get out of the open. “Hands behind your back!”
A sneering Wysinski complied, moving slowly to the boat’s cabin. Slaton followed, every sense on alert for the slightest deviation. Wysinski was a few steps in front as they reached the big main cabin, and as Slaton passed through the companionway, he assessed the interior. Aside from Wysinski’s steady movement, there was nothing. Then he spotted the two descending stairwells, one to his left and one to the right, passageways that led back and down, probably to a stateroom below the aft deck. If he followed Wysinski forward—
A barely audible creak. Slaton heard the sound just as Wysinski’s eyes gave it away. He twisted right, saw movement and fired without waiting to focus on the target. There was a groan as the man fell back, tumbling down the staircase.
Slaton spun left and saw a glint arcing toward him from the opposite stairwell. He lifted an arm to parry the blow, but felt the knife slice across his chest and wrist. In close, Slaton dropped his gun and grabbed the arm that held the knife. With all his strength he turned, letting the weight of his body do the work. The attacker lost his balance and stumbled against Slaton. At that moment a shot rang out from Wysinski’s direction and Slaton felt the man he was struggling against go limp. He dove down the stairs to his left as another shot rang out, this one shattering a nearby porthole and spraying glass everywhere.
Slaton crashed painfully to the bottom of the stairs, banging his head against a rail. He saw the first man he’d taken, lying crumpled on the floor with a crimson pool spread across his chest. The man’s gun lay on the floor and Slaton grabbed it as he rolled behind the central bulkhead for cover. He got his first look at the stateroom under the aft deck. It was stunning.
Not ten feet away, chained to a wooden cradle, was a ten kiloton nuclear weapon. Resting snugly in Eastbourne’s harbor. He could easily see how they’d done it. There was a large hatch overhead, near the port davit, and Slaton noticed that the furniture and trimmings in the state room had been torn apart to make room for the weapon. He heard movement above. Wysinski wasn’t giving up.
Slaton checked how many rounds remained in the gun’s clip and was glad to find it full. He then looked down and evaluated his wound. The cut on his chest wasn’t deep, but his arm was stinging in pain. The sounds above stopped. Wysinski was waiting for him to make the next move. Slaton wondered how long it would take for the police to react, then mused that, at the rate he was going, he could soon write an authoritative treatise on the subject.
He looked again at the hatch above the cradled weapon, then noticed that the port stairway had a privacy curtain at the bottom. It wouldn’t stop bullets, but it would conceal his activities. Slaton reached across the stairwell and yanked the curtain closed, his action drawing fire through the flimsy fabric. Three rounds, one of them clinking to rest in something metallic. He looked at the bomb to see a nice round hole in the nose cone. Slaton was grateful it wasn’t a conventional, high-explosive type, or he and Wysinski might both be at the bottom of the harbor. Curling his wrist into the starboard stairwell, he fired four shots blindly. He then ran to the hatch, unlatched it, and threw it open. The big fiberglass door swung up slowly on pneumatic lifts and stopped in a vertical position. Slaton moved quickly.
Victor Wysinski stood watching the two stairwells. He didn’t see the hatch rise until it was nearly straight up. It hinged forward, blocking his view of the opening. Wysinski fired three shots that easily penetrated the thin fiberglass. There was a moan, and a gun slid out onto the deck. Then a muffled thud. Wysinski moved out on deck, keeping his firearm trained on the hatch. Slaton was nowhere to be seen, but there was blood around the opening. Wysinski rushed to the hatch and pointed his gun downward, certain he’d scored a hit. He saw nothing.