Wild Storm (28 page)

CHAPTER 31

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, SOUTH OF GIBRALTAR

he twin 220-horsepower engines underneath Thami Harif’s thirty-five-foot cabin cruiser—named the
One-Legged Bandit
, in ode to his anatomical deficit—churned with only limited effectiveness in a sea that kept slipping out from under them with the passing of each wave.

From afar, Storm had thought the swells were thirty feet. Now that he was out in it, they were more like forty. From the bottom of one wave, the peak of the next wave felt like a small mountain about to crash on their heads. They’d climb until the height was vertiginous. And then they’d begin their drop back to the trough, which made Storm sure they were going to keep plummeting until they reached the bottom of the ocean.

Tommy had buttoned up every part of the boat that could be buttoned and jettisoned as much equipment as he could, both because he didn’t want it to get swept away by the furious sea and because they needed every bit of buoyancy they could muster. About every twenty waves or so, a particularly large swell would come along and turn the boat into a submarine for a moment or two. The cabin was watertight, so Storm and Tommy would be treated to the surreal sight of watching the water close around them, then overtop of them.

Each time, a tiny, worried voice in Storm would swear this was the wave that was going to overwhelm them; or knock out the engines, rendering them powerless against drifting to wherever the hurricane wanted to blow them; or tear off some important piece of the boat and sink them without mercy.

And yet each time, the
One-Legged Bandit
would somehow float up to the top, its propellers still spinning through the wind-whipped fury. From underneath, Storm could hear the bilge pumps working double-time to excrete the water that was managing to find its way into the hull.

Tommy was hanging on to the wheel for all he was worth, his old seaman’s arms tested to the limit of their strength. His titanium leg was braced against one side of the bulkhead. His flesh leg was curled tightly around the captain’s chair.

Storm was, likewise, using a considerable amount of energy just to hang on through the unending roller-coaster ride. His task was made more difficult by the gear he had strapped on: scuba apparatus on his back; a modest amount of C-4 taped to the inside of his left leg; blasting caps and a small wireless detonator taped to the inside of the right one; a KA-BAR in a sheath on his right ankle; a bulletproof vest snug around his torso; a dry bag that included a grappling gun, a ring of single-loop plastic restraints, a Sig Sauer P229, and enough bullets to take on whatever hostile personnel he encountered once on board. It weighed him down, but it was a necessary concession. Getting equipped on a small boat in the middle of this maelstrom would have been impossible.

On flat seas, the
One-Legged Bandit
could have easily covered the distance it needed to travel in fifteen minutes. In these conditions, it had been fighting for two hours with no promise of an end. They had left with what Storm thought was plenty of time before dark. Now he wasn’t so sure.

There was no conversation between the passengers. Each man was simply concentrating on surviving the next wave.

Every once in a while, at the crest of a wave, Storm’s eyes would flit to the anemometer on the dashboard. He had yet to see the wind speed dip below seventy miles per hour. Most of the time it was in the eighties. The device topped out at a hundred. One or two gusts pushed the needle against its stop. The noise alone was deafening.

Finally, when they reached the peak of one particularly colossal wave, Tommy shouted over the howling, “I think I see it. We’re heading right for it. Look at your one o’clock.”

Storm had to wait for seven waves to pass until they again got high enough that he could make out a glimpse of Ingrid Karlsson’s billion-dollar ocean liner. It was still roughly two miles off, which was the extent of the visibility in this tempest.

“Think they’ve seen us?” Storm asked.

“I hope not. I didn’t make this thing torpedo-proof.”

“That was poor planning.”

“Look, Storm, not that this hasn’t been a lot of fun, but this is about as close as I want to go.”

“I understand. I’ll take my leave of you now.”

“Okay, my friend. Good luck.”

They plunged down a particularly steep slope of a wave and sank underwater for three terrifying seconds. Storm held his breath until they popped up again, then clapped Tommy twice on the shoulder.

“Thanks, my friend. I owe you one. Again.”

“You owe me nothing,” he shouted. “Or at least nothing that those hundred thousand euros didn’t take care of.”

Storm could not reply. He had already pulled down his scuba mask and strapped it as tight as it would go to his head. The mask had the regulator built in. Storm twisted a knob and the oxygen started flowing.

With one hand steadying himself, he used his other hand to unstrap the diver propulsion vehicle from the side of the cabin. The DPV was the latest in individual underwater propulsion, a slick little unit developed for military purposes that delivered both speed and durability, along with lights, a navigation system, and other useful features. Storm didn’t want to know how Tommy had procured one. He got it loose, then gripped it tight.

Then he crabbed over to the cabin door and timed his exit. If he opened it at the wrong moment—or, more accurately, if he didn’t get it closed quickly—the cabin would be inundated with Tommy inside it. Without the buoyancy of the air-filled cabin, the boat might not make it up from one of the larger depressions.

Storm waited until the boat had rolled through off one of the smaller troughs and was heading for one of the peaks. Just as soon as he was confident enough water had rolled off the decks, he opened the door and ran through it, slamming it shut with all his strength.

From there, gravity did the rest. The boat’s stern was tilted down at forty-five degrees. Storm followed the slope at an involuntary run, leaping when he reached the gunwale so he could clear over the side.

He was immediately in near total darkness. For one sickening moment, he thought the DPV had been ripped out of his hand by the force of his entry. Then he realized it was still tight in his fist.

As he sank in the water, breathing comfortably the whole time, he got his other hand on the DPV and switched it on. He let his weight belt take him fifty feet below the lowest trough, pressurizing his ears every ten feet or so, then filled his buoyancy regulator.

He switched on the headlight, and next took a look at the navigation system to make sure he was pointed in the correct heading. Then he turned on the propellers and started his journey toward the
Warrior Princess
.

NOTES FOR TRAVELING IN A HURRICANE:
staying under the waves makes progress infinitely easier than trying to fight it out on top of them.

Fifty feet down, Storm was still dimly aware of the frothy, white-capped bedlam above him. But it did not impede his progress.

As he neared his target, Storm started aiming more erratically, but doing so purposefully. To the
Warrior Princess
’s great variety of sensors, he wanted to seem more like a seven-foot-long, four-hundred-pound tuna meandering through the depths than a six-foot-two, two-hundred-thirty-pound man about to mount a raid.

He had ninety minutes of oxygen. He used sixty of it, knowing that would be enough for full darkness to set in. His dry suit kept him warm enough, with its insulated layer of air allowing his body to keep enough of its heat so that hypothermia was not an issue.

By the time he resurfaced, about thirty yards from the
Warrior Princess
, the dim traces of daylight that had been penetrating the cloud cover were gone. It was now fully nighttime.

The edges of the boat were lit from stem to stern. Only a few of the staterooms were illuminated. She was not being tossed about like Tommy’s small craft, but she was still feeling every inch of those forty-foot swells. According to her technical specifications, the
Warrior Princess
could withstand a Category 5 hurricane. That didn’t mean riding out a Category 1 or 2 storm was a lot of fun. Certainly, no one was on the upper deck, shooting skeet.

No one was topside at all. And that was to Storm’s advantage. He didn’t worry about being spotted while he was in the water—he was just one tiny head bobbing in the huge waves.

But he did worry about being spotted while doing what came next. Releasing his grip on the DPV and letting it sink slowly to the bottom of the strait—a thirty-thousand-dollar piece of military equipment turned into another piece of trash on the ocean floor—he swam to within ten yards of the ship. The
Warrior Princess
’s engines were going just fast enough to keep her pointed into the waves and prevent her from getting broadsided. But she wasn’t really going anywhere. It made her easy enough to keep up with, for as much as swimming in a hurricane was ever easy.

The nearer Storm got to the boat, the more he felt her hull looming over him as the waves bucked her about. It was difficult to quell the fear the boat was simply going to fall on top of him in the wild seas.

Eventually, he got close enough. Pumping up his buoyancy regulator until it was acting as a powerful life vest, floating him like a cork, he unzipped his watertight bag and withdrew the first of its treasures: a grappling gun.

Lofting its pronged hook over his head, he fired it at the railing of the lowest deck. He overshot it. But as he retracted the line, the hook ended up grabbing the rail on the way back. Storm tugged a few times. The line was firm.

He hit the retract button and let it slowly draw him toward the boat until he got his boots on the sheer side of the hull. Then he began walking his way up. It was just like climbing in the Alps, only it was a lot wetter, and the mountain was being tossed about by enormous waves.

About halfway up, he lost his footing. He went the rest of the way hand over hand, a process made a lot slower by sixty extra pounds of scuba gear.

When he reached the top, he flung himself over the side and went into a crouch. There was still no one about. Not even the security staff was doing patrols outside, possibly on the theory that no one would be stupid enough to try and board a mega-yacht during a hurricane.

Storm quickly shed the scuba gear and tossed it over the side—more expensive trash. Then he peeled off the dry suit and jettisoned it as well. The only item he retained was the dry bag.

Dressed in the same black-and-black outfit he had worn since Egypt and now with his sea legs underneath him, he made his way toward the main aft deck and one special door, behind which he hoped there would be the assistance he would need to succeed in this mad mission.

It was the door to the stateroom that belonged to Tilda, the redhead who had danced with him, drugged him, and now—he prayed—would aid him.

Storm and Tommy had talked out this particular tactical decision and agreed the job was nearly impossible without inside help. After all, Storm didn’t know where Dr. William McRae was being kept. But Tilda did. Storm didn’t know the layout of Ingrid Karlsson’s quarters. But Tilda did. Tilda would know everything about the ship and its vulnerabilities.

She had said she would help save him sometime. This was her chance to prove it.

It was a gamble, yes. But so was getting up each morning. Storm just had to convince her he was, all kidding with Tommy aside, on the side of righteousness. He sensed goodness in her. He hoped he wasn’t wrong.

The rain, which was falling in sheets, quickly soaked him. He walked normally, trying not to look suspicious. He was assuming there were cameras. He mostly was just gambling no one was watching them carefully in the middle of a hurricane. But if they were, he was trying to look like just another crew member, albeit one out of uniform.

He reached the door to Tilda’s room, then listened for a moment. It was pointless. The wind was roaring at a volume that obscured anything else. There were no windows on this side of the stateroom. He was going in blind.

The door was not locked. He twisted the handle and burst into the room. It was empty. No Tilda.

He stood there for a moment, dripping on the carpet. This was not part of his plan.

Then, from the bathroom, he heard a faint hissing sound. It was a shower running. Showering in the middle of a hurricane: that was luxury.

Storm set the dry bag down on the bed, crept toward the door to the bathroom, and cracked it open. Tilda was warbling the tune to what sounded like a Swedish pop song. Storm wedged the door open a little further, giving himself a glimpse inside, feeling altogether too much like a stalker.

Th
e shower was a stand-up stall, encased by an opaque door with a small gap above it. Steam poured out the gap. He slipped in the bathroom, grabbed a towel o
ff
the rack.
Th
e singing continued.

In one quick movement, Storm threw opened the shower door, shut off the water, threw the towel roughly around Tilda’s torso then put his hand over her mouth to stifle the scream that was surely no more than half a second away. He took his other arm and grabbed her from behind, by the shoulders.

Tilda was too stunned to struggle. Her hands had automatically gone to keeping up the towel and not to attacking Storm. Modesty was a powerful force.

“Please be very, very quiet,” Storm said. “I really, really don’t want to have to hurt you. But if you make noise, you’ll give me no choice. Do you understand?”

She nodded her head.

“All you have to do for a moment is just listen to me. Can you do that?”

Another nod. His hand was still clamped on her mouth.

“Thank you. Now, you remember on the rooftop of the place in Monaco, we were talking about good and evil and Einstein and all that stuff?”

Nod.

“Well, you’re going to have to take my word for it that it turns out your boss, Ms. Karlsson, is one of the bad guys. You’ve probably noticed something rather large being airlifted out of here several times in the last few weeks.”