56
A mile from shore, Cade backed the throttle down until the unlighted boat slid through the darkness in a wakeless crawl. "Jimi, take the helm." Cade sat on a storage bench and tugged on his flippers.
"What the hell are you up to?" Jimi said.
"I'm going to try to get Lana and Haven out."
"Are you nuts? Just how do you think you're going to accomplish that?"
"I don't know. Get creative." Cade fitted his regulator on top of a fresh air tank. "You take the boat over to Taylor's. Better yet, take it to The Palms. It's closer. We'll meet you at the yacht club."
"No, you listen, Cade. Gen's safe. Eberhard's never going to find her. And what's he going to do to us? See those field hospitals? It's a quarantine operation. Big deal. Don't do something stupid that's going to get you or anybody else shot."
Cade stopped and stared at him. "We don't know what Eberhard is capable of. The man's a sadist. And all he's got to do is spout the magic words-'national security emergency'-and there's no telling what he can get away with. He's going to try to force Lana and Haven to tell him everything they know, and he's got high rank and military secrecy to cover up anything he does to them."
"But there are witnesses."
"Not for long. Eberhard is treating this as a biowarfare contamination site, with soldiers in full biohazard gear. He'll quarantine anybody he finds anywhere near the inn. Get them out of the way, so he can capture Gen." He spit into his dive mask and smeared the puddle around the faceplate, to prevent fogging. "Only thing is, Gen isn't there. So he'll be angry, and desperate to find out where she is. An angry, desperate sadist with too much power-that's a very bad combo."
Jimi swallowed. "Damn...I see your point."
Cade clamped the air tank to the back of his BC vest, shrugged on the vest like a backpack, buckled and tightened the straps. Then he pulled on his mask and snorkel with a snap and stepped backward to the side of the boat, sat on the gunwale.
"Jesus, Cade."
"I'm Hercules Cade."
"Just...you be careful."
Cade grinned. "Nothing can hurt me...well, except kryptonite."
"Then watch out for the kryptonite, super-bro'. I'll be waiting for you at the yacht club."
"If we're not there in an hour or so, it means we're in quarantine, getting interrogated by Colonel Asshole."
Jimi nodded. "I'll keep my cell phone on."
Cade worked his lips around the rubber mouthpiece of the air hose, pressed his mask onto his face and slipped over the side of the boat without a splash.
He snorkeled toward the docks at Willingham's Marina in a smooth, fast Australian crawl. A quarter mile from the docks, he submerged and swam the rest of the distance underwater. When the wooden planks appeared over his head, he quietly breached the water's surface only yards from the beach. A dead pompano drifted by on a platter of seagrapes, but all Cade could smell was the oily reek of jet engine fumes.
A dozen mobile field hospitals parked in the sand, slung under huge Skycrane helicopters. Soldiers in inflated orange spacesuits waited near the hospitals for the first evacuees to arrive for quarantine.
One Skycrane straddled a stainless steel capsule that Cade didn't recognize. Refrigerator-sized metal cylinders and a clutter of pipes bulged from the curved sides of the unit. Then it dawned on him: the container for transporting Gen. He clenched his jaw and surveyed the nearest soldiers.
One of the orange-clad warriors had wandered to the edge of the dock and was looking out over the bay. The guy probably had nothing to do until the first quarantine patients arrived. What if he could disable the guy, take his spacesuit? Hell, yes. Perfect disguise.
Cade floated forward in the darkness, silently removing his flippers and mask. He reached over the stern of Hank Townsend's vintage cabin cruiser and laid the items softly on the wooden deck. Then he shirked out of his vest, and noiselessly placed the vest and air tank beside the other gear. The whine of idling jet turbines covered any sounds he might make, short of setting off a string of firecrackers, but he followed his stealth training by habit.
Cade glided toward the spacesuited man at the foot of the dock until his feet stood on the sandy bottom and the slush of small waves surged around him, buffeting him slightly. The soles of the man's boots were now directly above Cade's head, showing through the chinks between the planks.
Come on, buddy. Turn around. Face the hill again. There, that's it. Now just stand there a few more seconds...
Cade moved out from beneath the dock, crouched so low his nostrils were barely above water, legs coiled under him like a spring. But the guy started talking to someone over his helmet mike. Cade couldn't make out words, just radio static and babble. At least he's preoccupied, not looking down at me.
Cade glided back under the dock. That was stupid. He couldn't believe his oversight: He hadn't considered helmet mikes, the latest in battlefield communications. Now it was a whole new game show. The trick would be to get the man incapacitated before he had time to yelp to his buddies over his helmet mike.
Cade peered up between the planks, running the problem through his mind. After rejecting a dozen strike zones because they were too deadly, he decided to grab the guy from behind in a choke-hold. The suit was inflated, but it was made of soft plastic. A tight enough squeeze should keep the guy quiet until he lost consciousness.
Again, he slipped out from under the dock, glided to the shoreline, and tensed his lower body to spring up behind the soldier. But the soldier turned around once more to stare across the bay.
Don't look down here, buddy. Don't look down. Nothing down here but seaweed and dead fish.
After a seemingly endless moment, the soldier turned to face north toward The Palms, his back to Cade.
Now! Cade lunged up from the darkness, raced two steps, hooked his arm around the man's throat and dragged him backward off the dock into the water. Cade shoved the back of the man's head forward, compressing his throat in the crook of Cade's elbow, which squeezed like plier jaws, pinching off the windpipe and carotid circulation. The man bucked and thrashed, but floating on his back in the water he had no footing or power. After a minute of resistance, he went limp.
Cade towed the spacesuited body like a swimming pool float back to Hank Townsend's cabin cruiser. He scrambled aboard first, clinging to one orange sleeve, then bent low over the stern to haul the limp weight up onto the deck. Now Cade could see the man's face clearly through the suit's faceplate. The bluish lips were quickly turning pink.
Cade popped an airtight seal and, with a half-turn, unscrewed the helmet and lifted it off. He reached inside to the neck ring console and switched off the fan. The man's eyes fluttered and started to open. Cade clipped him hard on the jaw with an uppercut that sent him back to dreamland.
He unzipped the spacesuit's outer nylon zipper and an inner, steel one, splitting the suit down the center of the torso. The heavy rubber gloves attached directly to the sleeves with rubber gaskets; it made tugging the man's hands free like prying meat out of a crab claw. Finally, Cade yanked the sleeves off the man's arms, rolled the body over and dragged the pants off by the attached boots. The man now lay facedown on the deck in a long-sleeved surgical scrubsuit and hood.
Cade opened the cabin door of the Chris-Craft Custom Sedan and dragged the unconscious soldier inside. He rummaged through a stowage bin and found a roll of duct tape, which he used to bind the soldier's wrists and ankles to the steel post of the captain's swivel chair, bolted to the deck. Lastly, he covered the man's mouth with a rectangle of tape, held in place by a long strip that wrapped the back of the head.
By now, Cade's body was slick with sweat. He peeled off his wetsuit, which left him wearing Speedo racing briefs. He walked outside and the sea breeze cooled his damp skin. Then he stepped into the spacesuit, pushed his arms through the sleeves and squeezed his hands into the tight gloves.
He felt an instant of panic when he couldn't shove his feet down into the boots; he wore size fourteen, and the boots were at least two sizes smaller. He used his dive knife to cut out flaps for his toes, and he managed to jam his feet in.
Next, he pulled on the helmet and twisted it to the right until it clicked. The airtight seal muffled the loud whine of the jet engines. Then he zipped up the inner and outer zippers and flipped on the fan, which gave him his second jolt of panic. The suit would not inflate because air rushed out the gash in his boots.
Think, next time.
Oh, well, the suit is so bulky, from a distance who can tell whether the damned thing is inflated or not?
And so what that there's so little air getting to my lungs? At least my toes can breathe.
He gripped his knife, and, careful not to do something really stupid-like stab himself in the throat-he used the point of the blade to punch breathing slots along the bottom of the plastic faceplate. Ah, oxygen.
Good to go.
Cade stepped onto the dock and walked to the beach; headed across the sand to the foot of the hill and started to climb.
Lana and Haven were sitting at the top in the Land Rover. He hoped. He would figure out what to do once he got there. He hoped.
His strategy, meantime, was to act like he was part of the evacuation team and knew exactly what he was doing. But it was hard to seem like a competent team member while shuffling uphill in an uninflated spacesuit with toes spilling out of the boots.