Minotaur (11 page)

38.

F
irst, before he got up, he checked his pockets. He hadn’t had time to secure his pistols, and all but one of them had fallen out in the water. He lifted the remaining handgun and checked its magazine—­no easy feat with one hand, even in the best of times. The magazine was half full, with six bullets inside. It would have to be enough.

Slowly, careful of his wounds, Chapel rolled himself over onto his knees. He kept his head low, rising to a crouch, and scanned the back of the boat. To one side of him stood the big wheel that controlled the rudder. It had been lashed in place so it wouldn’t turn—­freeing Favorov up to work the sails while the boat steered itself. Ahead of Chapel lay the low cabin, all dark glass and brass fittings. The door leading belowdecks was ajar, flapping back and forth in its frame. The single mast rose from the top of the cabin and a long boom stuck out from it at a right angle. The mast showed a fair amount of sail now—­Favorov had been busy while Chapel caught his breath. The sailboat was flying along over the calm, dark sea, no doubt headed straight for international waters.

Chapel imagined it would be next to impossible for Angel to track the boat as long as its lights stayed off and she had only a rough idea of where it was. As much as he’d come to think of her as omniscient she was limited by what imaging and data sources she had, and she couldn’t work magic. A Coast Guard craft might spot the boat, even in the dark, but it would have to be close by. Scanning the horizon Chapel failed to see any lights that might indicate a boat within range. It was up to him to finish this, with no help.

Chapel padded forward toward the cabin, listening carefully for any sign that Favorov was inside. He could only hear water dripping off his own pants. As he got close to the door an errant breeze made it slam against its frame and then swing open again, vibrating, as if it were a pair of jaws snapping at him. Chapel reached out and grabbed the edge of the door to steady it.

Looking inside he could see only darkness. No—­there was a single red light glowing in there, a tiny LED on a radio console or something. He slipped inside the cabin and let his eyes adjust for a second.

The cabin was small and its ceiling was low, almost brushing the top of Chapel’s head. There wasn’t much room to maneuver inside. There was a narrow cot, a table where Favorov could take quick meals, and a ladder leading down to the hold. One wall was lined with instruments and gear, radios, controls for the boat’s electrical systems, a complicated GPS rig. Chapel held his breath. Nothing moved in the cabin—­nothing stirred the air, no clothing rustled. He could smell diesel fuel and mildew, but not Favorov’s cologne. The cabin was empty.

He could lay an ambush there. Favorov would have to come inside eventually, and Chapel could be waiting for him, gun in his hand. It might take hours, though, and Chapel knew he was too exhausted for that. If he crouched down in the dark and just waited with no stimulation at all he would fall asleep. It couldn’t be helped.

He moved over to where he’d seen the tiny red light. It turned out to be a chart light, poised over a map of the Atlantic showing currents and islands for much of the American coastline. The red light was there so that Favorov could check the charts without ruining his night vision. Chapel lifted up the chart and saw others underneath, a whole sheaf of them. They covered the entire route to Cuba in minute detail.

He went to the ladder that led down to the hold and peered into the dark, but there was no light down there at all. By now the starlight coming in through the cabin’s windows was enough to see by, but the hold might have been a coal mine for as much as he could see down there.

Favorov could be down there. Maybe he knew Chapel was on board. Maybe he was down there lying in wait, ready to kill Chapel the moment he stuck his head down the ladder.

But no. Chapel doubted it. That would be a terrible tactical position for the Russian to take. There were no other exits from the hold, and in the dark Favorov would be as blind as Chapel. Favorov wouldn’t go down there while an enemy was on the boat, not unless he was out of options.

Chapel went back to the cabin’s door. Favorov had to be on the bow, he thought, up at the front of the boat, making sure the way forward was clear. He opened the door to the deck, feeling the skin on the back of his neck prickle as if he were being watched from behind. As if someone in the hold was just waiting for him to turn away so they could pounce on him. But that was just nerves. He was sure of it. He was just jumpy, and likely to do something stupid if he listened to the fight-­or-­flight signals his body was sending him. He opened the door and stepped back out into the night air.

The first thing he saw was that the wheel wasn’t lashed anymore. It spun freely, which meant the boat would just follow whatever current caught it. Maybe the lashing had just broken on its own, or maybe Favorov had removed the cord for some reason. Chapel took a step forward, his head down, his hand outstretched, holding his weapon in front of him where he could aim at anything that moved.

From behind his shoulder something long and hard smashed down and struck at his hand. Chapel felt the pain even before he felt the pistol fall out of his fingers.

39.

C
hapel spun around to see his attacker, simultaneously dropping to one knee so he could reach down and scoop the weapon up again.

Favorov was up on top of the cabin, wielding a long boat hook on a pole. He swung it around again and smacked at Chapel’s hand before it could close on the gun.

“Leave that,” the Russian told him.

Chapel lifted his hand away, spreading the fingers to show that he was complying. He took a step back, away from the gun. He doubted Favorov could seriously wound him with the boat hook, but the Russian could probably knock him over with it—­or knock him off the boat. Chapel was too tired to try swimming back on board.

“Impressive. You’re still alive,” Favorov said. “You must be half bull to keep going looking like you do. Is that a gunshot wound on your torso?”

Chapel ignored the question. “You’ve got a problem, here,” he said.

“Interesting,” Favorov told him. “I was about to suggest something similar.”

“You don’t have a firearm on you. If you did you would have just shot me. You’re holding your only weapon.”

“Handguns are so difficult to explain to customs officials, even where I’m going,” Favorov said.

“If you come down here,” Chapel said, “you’ll need to put that hook down so you can get to the pistol before I grab it. It’ll just take too long otherwise to climb down while trying to cover me. If you just stay up there, pointing that thing at me, the boat’s going to sail around in circles all night and not get any closer to Cuba.”

Favorov smiled. For the moment, it seemed, he was perfectly willing to maintain the impasse. “I don’t know how you followed me, Chapel. Did you put a tracking device on me while we dined?”

“No.”

The Russian nodded. “I imagine I would have noticed.” The nasty end of the boat hook hovered right in front of Chapel’s face. “So you tracked me with your satellites. I did not think they were so good.”

“Nope, no satellites,” Chapel said.

Favorov’s face wrinkled as if he were trying to solve a complicated math problem. “Hmm. Then how did you do it? How did you find me before I could even get away from the dock?”

“Fiona,” Chapel said. “Your wife.”

“She betrayed me? That stupid cow. But just smart enough to know I would take the
Phaedra
. I would say let this be a lesson to you, Chapel, except you won’t live long enough to make use of it. Never marry a beautiful woman. They are vipers, all of them.”

“She didn’t seem that way to me.”

Chapel hadn’t actually meant to taunt Favorov. He’d figured to keep the man talking, knowing that eventually, if the boat stayed in American waters, the Coast Guard would pick it up. It was a slim hope but better than nothing.

But now, as he watched Favorov’s face darken in anger, he thought maybe he had a better plan.

“She seemed pretty nice, honestly,” Chapel continued. Favorov squinted at him. “
Really
nice, if you catch my drift. When she begged me to let her go with her kids. She would have done anything to get away.”

“If you laid a hand on her—­”

“What do you care, Favorov? She’s just a viper, right? What do you care if she got down on her knees and begged me to—­”

“Shut up!” Favorov said. “She is mine! I won her fairly. I gave her everything she could have ever wanted!”

“Except for one thing,” Chapel said. He’d never been very good at sleazy innuendo. It just wasn’t his style. As angry as Favorov was, though, it wasn’t going to take much nuance. “One thing I was
very
happy to give her.”

Favorov’s hands kneaded the pole of the boat hook as if he wanted very much to stab it right through Chapel’s heart. He seemed too angry to speak.

“I’m talking about an orgasm,” Chapel pointed out, grinning wickedly.

With a bestial roar Favorov tossed the boat hook away and ran forward, leaping off the top of the cabin. Chapel hadn’t been expecting that. The Russian smashed into him, knocking them both down. Chapel’s head hit the fiberglass deck hard enough to make him see stars—­especially considering it wasn’t his first head trauma of the night. For a split second he lost consciousness.

When he came to again, Favorov’s hands were wrapped around his throat.

40.

T
he Russian was twenty years older than Chapel, and he’d run to fat in his self-­imposed exile, but still his fingers were like an iron vise as they dug into Chapel’s windpipe. His lungs were already empty and as he struggled to pull in any breath he could feel his wounds throbbing, feel fatigue pulling him down toward the deck as if gravity had suddenly been doubled.

The Russian’s eyes were bugging out of their sockets and his mouth was twisted in a horrible grimace as if he were the one being strangled. He stared right into Chapel’s eyes and Chapel had no doubt that Favorov intended to murder him, right here, right now.

He had to fight back, but he felt no stronger than a wet kitten. He lifted his arm and tried to bash his fist into the side of Favorov’s head. The blow landed but the Russian barely flinched. The pressure on Chapel’s neck didn’t let up at all.

A red aura surrounded his vision and he knew that in another few seconds his lungs would just give out, that his body, starved for oxygen, would simply quit on him. He had never been closer to death than in that moment, never so certain that his life was over. Even the urge to fight back was leaving him, replaced by a strange calm, a sort of relief. He’d tried his best. He hadn’t given up, even when the odds kept stacking up against him. Director Hollingshead couldn’t have asked more of him, or of any man. He was going to die, but he was surprisingly okay with that.

He let his hand fall back. Before it struck the deck it brushed against his pocket and his knuckles rapped against something hard there. Something small and oblong. Not that it mattered, not in the slightest. He could feel his eyes rolling back in his head. He couldn’t see anything any more. Couldn’t hear anything.

What was that thing in his pocket? He couldn’t seem to remember. It was of no consequence, and it was hardly the time to think of such things. But somehow the question nagged him, as if it were the last thing he needed to figure out before he went to sleep. Before he died. What was it?

Tired as he was he didn’t want to expend the energy even to shove his hand in his pocket. He got a few fingers in there and had to rest for a moment. That was all right. There was plenty of time. The last few seconds of his life seemed to have stretched out almost infinitely long.

He shoved his fingers a little deeper into his pocket. There—­he could just touch the thing. Its shape felt odd, unknown. It wasn’t his hands-­free set, which had been one possibility. It wasn’t anything he recognized. It was made of metal and it had a little ring on one end. A . . . pocketknife?

A Cub Scout knife. Of course! The one he’d taken away from Daniel. The one that had stabbed him twice in the leg. How funny that he’d managed to hold on to it, all through the escape from the house, the ride down the coastline, the swim in the icy water. He’d lost so much else. His phone. His weapons. His arm. Now his life.

But he still had the pocketknife.

Afterward Chapel would not remember making a conscious decision to do what came next. It would all be a blur in his memory.

He had very little strength left. Somehow he had enough to get the knife out of his pocket and, one-­handed, swing out one of its blades. Just a tiny little knife, shorter than his thumb and thinner than a paring knife. It was probably meant for fine whittling work and nothing more. Maybe for cutting knots.

It had gone into Chapel’s leg with ease, so it had to be pretty sharp.

Chapel had been trained so thoroughly he didn’t need to think about what to do. His hand just moved. Favorov’s body was on top of him, in easy reach. The Russian was kneeling on the deck, his legs parted just a little. The blade went up and into his thigh with almost no resistance.

Chapel felt hot blood splash across his hand. And then, quite suddenly the fingers were gone from his throat. Favorov’s weight was off of him. And he could breathe.

41.

F
or a while Chapel could do nothing else. Air hit his lungs with every new breath like a tiny grenade going off in his chest. His vision started to return but only so he could see sparks shooting across his vision in every direction. His whole body prickled with agony as oxygen-­rich blood surged back through his blood vessels. His chest heaved and he thought he might throw up.

He rolled over onto his knees. Rubbed at his throat with his hand, feeling the bruises that were already blooming on the skin there. He twisted his head around, trying so see, trying to figure out where Favorov had gone.

Vision returned slowly, and if time had seemed to stretch out before, it sped up now like a rubber band released from tension. Little slices of the world around him were all he could see, and his brain worked feverishly trying to assemble a clear picture out of those little swatches.

It looked like Favorov had staggered backward, hand pressed tight against a wound on the inside of his left thigh. Blood was pouring down his leg and sheeting away across the deck, more blood than a tiny wound like that should have been able to produce.

Chapel knew right away what had happened. What his little knife had achieved.

Favorov’s face had gone white. He was breathing heavily, like a racehorse after the Preakness. He was staring at Chapel in horror. It seemed the Russian knew what had happened as well.

Crawling like an infant, Chapel started moving again. Over to his left. Toward the pistol he’d dropped when Favorov hit him the first time with the boat hook. Favorov saw what he was doing and tried to beat him there, but it looked like the Russian could barely walk. He staggered closer to the gun, ever closer, as he clutched at his wound with one hand and grabbed for any support he could find with the other.

It was the world’s slowest race, and Chapel couldn’t have said for sure which of them was going to win. If Favorov got the pistol first, there was no question he would shoot to kill. Chapel put every ounce of strength he had left into moving faster, bashing his knees against the deck, scrambling for the pistol.

They both reached for it at the same time. Chapel could hear nothing but Favorov’s ragged breathing. And his own. He flung out his hand to get the pistol. Favorov dropped to the deck and grabbed for it simultaneously.

“Wait,” Chapel said.

Surprisingly, the Russian did.