Twister (11 page)

'Quickly, Angelo,' Ben shouted. 'The alligators – they're slipping into the water.' He had just seen one of the scaly beasts disappear into the marsh despite the conditions. That must mean it was hungry enough to risk the dangers of the water in its search for food. And if it was food the gator wanted, Danny would be first choice from the menu.

Angelo stood up in the boat, steadied himself and hurled the ring overboard.

It landed close to Danny, but not quite close enough. The older man had to struggle through the water to grab it. 'Pull me in!' he shouted just as his fingers clutched the edge of the ring. There was panic in his voice. Angelo pulled, heaving on the rope like it was a tug o' war. It was obviously a struggle for him, so Ben left the steering wheel and went to help him. They stayed standing with difficulty, but gradually managed to pull him towards them.

Danny stretched out and grabbed the side of the boat. It wasn't a big vessel, and as he pulled himself up, it tilted sharply.

'
Alligator!
' Ben screamed. Only metres behind Danny he had caught a glimpse of the reptile surging through the water. He and Angelo grabbed Danny's arms and pulled him on board.

Not a moment too soon.

The alligator emerged from the water with terrifying swiftness. Its jaws snapped in the air, but they caught nothing.

Danny was on board. Soaked, breathless and white with fear. But safe.

For now, at least.

At the South Miami Oil Refinery, it was panic stations.

Nobody there knew about the plane. Nobody knew how close they had come to disaster. And nobody cared. They had other things to worry about. The hurricane was on its way, and the whole place was being shut down. All non-essential staff had already been evacuated from the premises. The final hangers-on – a few management and some security guards – would be out of there within half an hour. They all knew that an oil refinery was the last place you wanted to be in conditions like this.

In the chaos and the confusion, however, one man had managed to slip in unobserved.

He was a good-looking person, tall and with chiselled features. He hadn't shaved for a day or two, but somehow that only made him look more distinguished. More trustworthy. And he liked it that way. His black jeans fitted him well, as did his black jacket; and as he approached the oil refinery he had a small but heavy black rucksack slung over his right shoulder.

The winds were already strong here – not as strong as they were going to get, he knew, but fierce enough to make the high, wire-mesh fences that cordoned off the boundary to the refinery rattle in the breeze.

He was approaching from the south side. His car had been dumped at a nearby parking lot, and he had crossed a highway to get here. The road had been full of traffic – everyone was fleeing the area – and as he crouched by the wire fence he knew that although people
could
see him from the highway, none of them would be paying him any attention.

The fence was shaking violently. He pulled a pair of wire-cutters from his bag, then held the rattling fence in one hand and started to snip away at the mesh. It was difficult, and he was glad of the black leather gloves he was wearing. But before long he had cut a hole big enough for him to crawl through.

He skirted round the edge of the boundary towards the western entrance. There was an entry checkpoint here, but now he was inside the oil refinery's boundary fence he didn't need to be bothered by that. Hidden by a long line of low, breeze-block buildings, he walked towards the edges of the refinery itself.

It was like a small city. Huge, metallic, industrial-looking towers stretched up into the sky. Some of them had flames coming out of the top that licked into the sky; others were billowing smoke that was hardly any different to the grey clouds scudding overhead. A number of the towers had metal ladders fixed to their sides, but of course no one was using them now. Hardly anybody was on the site, in any case. There were enormous containers the size of several houses – these too had ladders on them – and everywhere there were more of the little breeze-block office buildings that he was using to hide behind. A main road led up into the centre of the refinery, and lines of lorries were parked along it in neat little groups. He supposed that ordinarily there were fewer trucks here, but no one was going to be delivering oil at the moment. Not until the storm had passed.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, there was a sudden howling of the wind. It threatened to knock him over so, quite calmly, he pressed his back against one of the breeze-block walls and waited for it to pass. Then he continued on his way.

For five minutes he headed towards the refinery. He was going to have to be careful here. He wasn't dressed for this area.

He stopped, caught his breath, and looked around.

At the base of one of the towers he saw what he wanted: an oil-refinery worker. They were few and far between, and he knew how important it was for him not to get away. The worker wore jeans and a luminous green jacket. His head was covered by a yellow hard hat.

Quickly, the man rummaged in his rucksack before pulling something out and hiding it inside his leather jacket. Only then did he step out into the main road.

'Hey!' he called. 'You there. You heading out?' Ordinarily the man's accent was English, but for the purposes of this conversation he put on an American accent.

The worker turned to look at him. He shook his head and pointed in the air as if to say that he couldn't hear what the man was saying because of the wind.

'You heading out of the refinery?' the man repeated himself, his voice louder now. 'I could use a lift.' As he spoke he hurried across the road towards where the worker was standing.

The worker looked at him curiously as he approached, clearly surprised that someone dressed in jeans and a leather jacket should be this far into the refinery. But he seemed on edge, keen to get off the site and away to a place of relative safety – so if he was concerned about the man's presence here, he didn't say so. Instead he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 'This way, pal,' he called. 'I'm parked up back here. You're in luck – I was just leaving.'

He turned and walked in the direction he had pointed.

Now that the worker's back was turned, the man worked quickly and deftly. The Beretta 92FS that he pulled from inside his jacket was his favourite pistol, and he would only need one of its fifteen rounds to carry out the job in hand. He swiftly raised it so that it was pointing at the back of the man's head.

And then he fired.

The shot rang out, echoing around the refinery. It was loud, but somehow it didn't seem out of place here, and he wasn't worried that anyone would come running. They would probably just think it was something to do with the wind.

The shot itself was well placed: just below the rim of the hard hat, just above the line of his luminous green jacket. The worker fell instantly to the ground. The man didn't waste any time: he dragged him out of sight of the road and quickly, before the blood could spoil his clothes, he started to undress him. Moments later he was wearing the regulation uniform of a South Miami Oil Refinery employee. He left his own clothes in a bundle by the corpse before, without a moment's remorse for what he had done, he slung his rucksack back over his shoulder and started hurrying further into the refinery.

There was a job to do.

There was money to be earned.

Everything was going according to plan. He just prayed that it would continue to do so.

Ben, Angelo and Danny gripped on tightly to the side of the boat. It was still being jostled and blown around by the wind, but for the moment they had something else to worry about. It wasn't far to the shore and in any other circumstances they'd have made straight for it. But there was no way they could do that. No way at all. Because all along the shoreline the alligators had congregated – not just the four or five that had chased them off the pier, but dozens. More than they could count.

'What are we going to do?' Angelo shouted.

Ben stared at the gators, his brow furrowed. It was dangerous in the water, but it was far more dangerous back on land. 'We haven't got any choice,' he screamed back. 'We can't get back to the shore, and we still need to warn the others. We need to try and get the boat past the plane wreckage, see what things are like back there.'

As he spoke, the three of them looked in the direction of the plane. It was out of sight, but there was still an ominous orange glow lighting up the sky from that direction. And the water looked threatening to say the least.

'OK,' Danny called. 'If we're going to do it, let's do it.' As he spoke, he secreted the shotgun and ammo in a long compartment under one of the seats. 'Do you feel like you've got the hang of this thing?'

Ben nodded.

'All right, then. You drive. Angelo and I will use our weight to try and keep the boat steady.'

Ben took his seat at the helm of the boat. As gently as possible, he turned it round. Almost immediately there was a howling gust of wind. It filled the canopy above them like a sail and suddenly they were toppling to one side. He heard Angelo screaming as the edge of the boat tipped to the water's edge; Ben himself had to clutch onto the steering wheel with all his might before Danny hurled his weight to the other side of the boat and it righted itself again.

He gritted his teeth. 'Most of the gusts are coming offshore,' he said. 'We're sailing square to the wind – that's what filling the canopy.'

'So what do we do?' Angelo demanded.

Ben could only give it a moment's thought. 'Tack in and out,' he shouted. 'That way we can keep better control of the boat.' He turned the vessel so they were pointing out to sea at an angle towards the plane.

It was tough going. Waves kept splashing over the side and the motor barely seemed powerful enough to counteract the force of the winds. The canopy above them flapped noisily. Ben was blinded by the spray; he struggled to be able to tell where he was going and more than once he found himself pointing in a completely different direction to what he thought. When he had motored out perhaps thirty metres he prepared to turn the boat and tack back in.

That was when it all went wrong.

Ben didn't know what it was that upturned the boat. A combination of things, probably: the wind, an awkward wave, the way he was turning. But suddenly he found himself under. Lungfuls of water crashed up his nose and for a moment he couldn't tell which way up he was. He kicked his legs hard and felt himself move through the water, but as he did so there was a brutal crack against his head. He only had a split second to realize that he had whacked his head against the body of the boat before he lost consciousness.

He didn't know how long he was out. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, because next thing he knew, Angelo was dragging him to the surface. The Italian boy had his arms wrapped around Ben's torso and was grunting with exertion as their heads broke through the water. Ben coughed and spluttered – half the marsh seemed to explode from his lungs – and he only had a brief moment to see Danny standing on the upturned hull of the boat, desperately trying to right it, before they went under again.

After the noise of the wind, it was peculiarly silent underwater. Peaceful almost. As soon as they emerged again, however, the howling filled their ears. Ben was still dizzy from the bump on his head. It was disorientating. The thought of the alligators, though, soon brought him back to reality.

'It's OK,' he spluttered to Angelo. 'I can swim.'

'You sure?'

'Only one way to find out.' He struggled out of Angelo's grasp and started treading water.

Danny was about ten metres away from them. He was standing on the edge of the boat now and as Ben watched he saw the older man use his weight slowly to right the boat. It creaked upright as Danny scrambled aboard; Ben and Angelo started swimming with all their strength towards it. Ben's chest burned from the exhaustion, and it seemed to take an age before Danny's strong grasp was pulling first him and then Angelo back up onto the boat. His Italian friend fell to the floor, lying on his back and gasping for much-needed air. Ben wanted to do the same, but he couldn't. Not yet.

'The canopy!' he shouted to Danny. 'We should rip it down, stop it filling with air.'

Danny nodded and together they started clawing at the fabric. It was tough, though, and difficult to tear. Only when Ben remembered he had a set of keys in his soaking wet jeans did he manage to stab a hole in the fabric. Once that was done, it was much easier to bring down the canopy.

It made an instant difference. The boat still rocked precariously with the force of the water, but at least the canopy wasn't now acting as an out-of-control sail. When Ben, sore and soaking, took the helm, it was by no means easy. But at least it wasn't as difficult as before, and they started making better headway through the howling winds towards the plane.

As they approached the aircraft from the water, they could see that it was still burning and smouldering, as was the grass surrounding it. There was no way they could have passed it by land. The alligators became fewer and fewer, though, the nearer they got to the plane, and it was easy to tell why. Even from the water, and even in the high winds, Ben could feel the heat of the burning aircraft against his skin. It was uncomfortably hot. He manoeuvred the boat away from land and passed the aeroplane at quite some distance.