Ticktock (24 page)

“I don't know,” he said worriedly, putting the guns down on the console behind her. He began to unzip pockets on the ski jacket. “It's still out there somewhere.”

“But we're outrunning it now, on the move and safe.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said as he added nine rounds of ammo to the Desert Eagle magazine, replenishing the thirteen-shot capacity as quickly as his trembling hands could cope with the cartridges. “How long to cross the harbor?”

Bringing the Bluewater sharply and expertly around to port, she said, “We're starting the run right now. Going so fast, I'll have to throttle back just a little, but it should still take like maybe two minutes.”

At various points down the center of the broad harbor, clusters of boats bobbled at permanent moorings, gray shapes in the gloom that effectively divided the expanse of water into channels. But as far as could be seen in the rain, theirs was the only craft currently making way.

Del said, “Problem is—when we get to Balboa Island, I need to find an empty slip, a suitable dock to tie up to, and that might take some time. Thank God, it's high tide and this baby has such a low draft, 'cause we can slide in almost anywhere.”

Reloading the Mossberg, he said, “How'd you start the engines without keys?”

“Hot-wired the sucker.”

“I don't think so.”

“Found a key.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well,” she said airily, “those are your choices.”

Outside on the open top deck, Scootie began to bark ferociously.

Tommy's stomach fluttered nervously, and his heart swelled with dread. “Jesus, here we go already.”

Armed with both the shotgun and the pistol, he pushed through the vinyl flaps, into the night and rain.

Scootie still stood vigilant on the sunbathing pad, staring down at the churning wake.

Balboa Peninsula was swiftly receding.

Tommy stepped quickly past the dining table and the upholstered horseshoe bench that encircled it, to the platform on which the dog stood.

No railing encircled the outer edge of the sunbathing pad, only a low wall, and Tommy didn't want to risk standing on it and perhaps pitching over the stern. He wriggled forward on his belly, across the wet canvas-upholstered pad, beside the Labrador, where he peered down at the turbulent wake.

In the murk, he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

The dog barked more savagely than ever.

“What is it, fella?”

Scootie glanced at him and whined.

He could see the wake but nothing of the boat's stern, which was recessed beneath the top deck. Easing forward, his upper body extended over the low sun-deck wall, Tommy squinted down and back at the lower portion of the yacht.

Under Tommy, behind the enclosed first deck, was a back-porch-type afterdeck. It was overhung by the sunbathing platform on which he lay, and was therefore largely concealed.

Sans raincoat, the fat man was climbing out of the harbor and over the afterdeck railing. He disappeared under the overhang before Tommy could take a shot at him.

The dog scrambled to a closed stairhead hatch immediately starboard of the sunbathing platform.

Joining the Labrador, Tommy put down the pistol. Holding the Mossberg in one hand, he opened the hatch.

A small light glowed at the bottom of molded-fiberglass steps, revealing that the Samaritan-thing was already clambering upward. Its serpent eyes flashed, and it shrieked at Tommy.

Grasping the shotgun with both hands, Tommy pumped the entire magazine into the beast.

It grasped at a rail and held on tenaciously, but the last two blasts tore it loose and hurled it to the bottom of the steps. The thing rolled out of the stairwell, onto the afterdeck again, out of sight.

The indomitable creature would be stunned, as before. Judging by experience, however, it wouldn't be out of action for long. There wasn't even any blood on the steps. It seemed to absorb the buckshot and bullets without sustaining any real wounds.

Dropping the shotgun, Tommy retrieved the .44 pistol. Thirteen rounds. That might be enough ammunition to knock the beast back down the stairs twice more, but then there would be no time to reload.

Del appeared at his side, looking gaunt and more worried than she had been before. “Give me the gun,” she said urgently.

“Who's driving?”

“I locked the wheel. Give me the gun and go forward, down the port stairs to the foredeck.”

“What are you going to do?” he demanded, reluctant to leave her there even if she had the Desert Eagle.

“I'll start a fire,” she said.

“What?”

“You said fire distracted it.”

He remembered the enraptured minikin at the blazing Corvette, lost to all sensation except the dancing flames. “How're you going to start a fire?”

“Trust me.”

“But—”

Below, the recuperated Samaritan-thing shrieked and entered the bottom of the stairwell.

“Give me the damn gun!” she snarled, and virtually tore it out of Tommy's grip.

The Desert Eagle bucked in her hands—once, twice, three times, four times—and the roar echoed back at them out of the stairwell, like cannonfire.

Squealing, spitting, hissing, the creature crashed down to the afterdeck again.

To Tommy, Del shouted, “Go, damn it,
go!
”

He stumbled across the open top deck to the port stairs farther forward, beside the helm station.

More gunfire erupted behind him. The beast had come back at her faster this time than before.

Clutching at the railing, Tommy descended the open port-side stairs, up which he had climbed earlier. At the bottom, the narrow railed passway led forward to the bow but didn't lead back toward the stern, so there was no easy route by which the Samaritan-thing could make its way to him directly from the afterdeck—unless it broke into the enclosed lower deck, rampaged forward through the staterooms, and smashed out at him through a window.

More gunfire crashed above and aft, and the hard sound slapped across the black water, so it seemed as though Newport had gone to war with neighboring Corona Del Mar.

Tommy reached the bow deck, where only a few minutes ago he'd taken a stand against the Samaritan-thing when it had first tried to board the vessel.

In the night ahead, Balboa Island loomed.

“Holy shit,” Tommy said, horrified by what was about to happen.

They were approaching Balboa Island at considerable speed, on a line as direct and true as if they were being guided by a laser beam. With the wheel locked and the throttles set, they would pass between two large private docks and ram the sea wall that surrounded the island.

He turned, intending to go back to the helm and make Del change course, but he halted in astonishment when he saw that the aft end of the yacht was already ablaze. Orange and blue flames leaped into the night. Shimmering with reflections of the fire, the falling rain looked like showers of embers from a celestial blaze.

Scootie padded along the port-side passway and onto the bow deck.

Del was right behind the Labrador. “The damn thing's in the stairwell, burning in ecstasy, like you said. Creepy as hell.”

“How did you set it on fire so quick?” Tommy demanded, half shouting to be heard above the drumming rain and the engines.

“Diesel fuel,” she said, raising her voice as well.

“Where'd you get diesel fuel?”

“There's six hundred gallons aboard.”

“But in tanks somewhere.”

“Not any more.”

“And diesel fuel doesn't burn
that
fiercely.”

“So I used gasoline.”

“Huh?”

“Or napalm.”

“You're lying to me again!” he fumed.

“You're making it necessary.”

“I
hate
this crap.”

“Sit on the deck,” she instructed.

“This is so
nuts!
”

“Sit down, grab hold of the railing.”

“You're some crazy gonzo Amazon witch or something.”

“Whatever you say. Just brace yourself, 'cause we're going to crash, and you don't want to be thrown overboard.”

Tommy looked toward Balboa Island, which was clearly defined by the streetlamps along the sea wall and the dark shapes of houses beyond. “Dear God.”

“As soon as we run aground,” she said, “get up, get off the boat, and follow me.”

She crossed to the starboard flank of the bow deck, sat with her legs splayed in front of her, and grabbed hold of the railing with her right hand. Scootie clambered into her lap, and she put her left arm around him.

Following Del's example, Tommy sat on the deck, facing forward. He didn't have a dog to hug, so he gripped the port railing with
both
hands.

Sleek and swift, the yacht cruised through the rainy darkness toward doom.

If Del had set the fuel tanks on fire, the engines wouldn't be running. Would they?

Don't think, just hold on.

Maybe the fire had come from the same place as the seething flock of birds. Which was—where?

Just hold on.

He expected the boat to explode under him.

He expected the flaming Samaritan-thing to shake off its rapture and, still ablaze, leap upon him.

He closed his eyes.

Just hold on.

If he had just gone home to his mother's for
com tay cam
and stir-fried vegetables with
nuoc mam
sauce, he might not have been home when the doorbell rang, might never have found the doll, might now be in bed, sleeping peacefully, dreaming about the Land of Bliss at the peak of fabled Mount Phi Lai, where everyone was immortal and beautiful and deliriously happy twenty-four hours every day, where everyone lived in perfect harmony and never said one cross word to anyone else and never suffered an identity crisis. But
nooooo,
that wasn't good enough for him.
Nooooo,
he had to offend his mother and make a statement about his independence by going instead to a diner for cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers and french fries, cheeseburgers and french fries and onion rings and a chocolate milk shake, Mr. Big Shot with his own car phone and his new Corvette, intrigued by the blond waitress, flirting with her, when the world was filled with beautiful and intelligent and charming Vietnamese girls—who were perhaps the most lovely women in the world—who never called you “tofu boy,” never hot-wired cars, didn't think they had been abducted by aliens, didn't threaten to blow your head off when you wanted to look at their paintings, never stole yachts and set them on fire,
gorgeous
Vietnamese women who never talked in riddles, never said things like “reality is what you think it is,” didn't have any expertise with throwing knives, hadn't been taught by their fathers to use high explosives, didn't wear father-killing bullets as necklace pendants, didn't run around with big black smartass hounds from hell with farting rubber hotdogs. He couldn't go home and eat
com tay cam,
had to write stupid detective novels instead of becoming a doctor or a baker, and now as payment for his selfishness and his arrogance and his bullheaded determination to be what he could never be, he was going to
die.

Just hold on.

He was going to die.

Just hold.

Here came the big sleep, the long good-bye.

Hold.

He opened his eyes.

Shouldn't have done that.

Balboa Island, where no structure was taller than three stories, where half the houses were bungalows and cottages, seemed as large as Manhattan,
towering.

Screws turning furiously, the fifty-six-foot, merrily blazing Bluewater yacht came into the island at extreme high tide, drawing less than two feet, virtually
skimming
like a cigarette racing boat, for God's sake, in spite of its size, came in between two docks (one of which was already decorated for Christmas), and struck the massive steel-reinforced concrete sea wall with a colossal shattering-ripping-screeching-booming noise that made Tommy cry out in fear and that would have awakened the dead if perhaps any of the islanders had perished in their sleep this night. At the water line, the hull, although as strong as any, was crushed and torn open at the bow. The impact dramatically slowed the yacht, but the diesel engines were so powerful and the screws provided such enormous thrust that the vessel surged forward, striving to climb the sea wall, heaving across the top of it, angling up at the bow, up, over the wide public promenade that ringed the island, up, as though it might churn all the way out of the harbor and sail through the front of one of the large houses that lined the island's waterfront. Then at last it shuddered to a halt, securely hung up on the sea wall and badly weighed down by the tons of sea water pouring through the broken hull into the lower holds.

Tommy had been bounced against the deck and slammed sideways against the low port sill, but he had held fast to the railing, even though at one point he thought that his left arm was going to be dislocated at the shoulder. He came through the wreck without serious injury, however, and when the yacht was fully at rest, he let go of the railing, rose into a crouch, and crabbed sideways across the bow to Del.

She was on her feet by the time he reached her. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

The stern of the yacht burned brighter than ever. The fire was spreading forward, and there were flames behind the windows of the lower-deck staterooms.

An eerie and chilling ululation arose from deep within the crackling blaze. It might have been steam venting or hydraulic fluid singing through a pierced steel line—or the crooning of the enraptured demon.

The bow deck was canted three or four degrees because the boat was ramped up on the sea wall. They walked uphill to the pulpit, which thrust out of the water and was suspended over the deserted pedestrian promenade.