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  We went over the plan several times until we were sure we could carry out the mission with our eyes closed. Flagg has a built-in mental clock so I didn’t even bother to look at my watch when he folded up the chart, zipped his satchel shut and said: “Time to go, Soc.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Flagg’s bag of tricks would have sunk the inflatable, so he left some hardware in the trunk of his car. The inflatable still sagged with our weight and that of the remaining weaponry. I sat in the stern, started the motor, and steered out of the marina into the harbor. Flagg perched in the bow and scanned the harbor through his night vision binoculars.

  The Volga was anchored off by itself around a half mile from shore, away from the flotilla of moored boats that bounced at anchor in the chop kicked up by the freshening breeze. I tried to keep the inflatable at an even keel. The rounded bow was made for skimming the sea rather than cutting through it, so the boat bounced in the wavelets like a rubber duck in a tub. Flagg was having trouble focusing the binocs. He let out a string of curses, followed by a yell of triumph.

  He turned and shouted over the buzz of the outboard, “They’re on their way! Boat just left the yacht and is heading for the island.”

  Timing was crucial. Flagg had called the Coast Guard station using his untraceable cell phone when we were halfway between Siasconset and Nantucket town. He had said that there was a boat with armed men in it heading to the harbor island to make a drug deal.

  He had clicked off his cell phone and grinned. “That should start things rolling.” From his position in the prow of the Zodiac, he did a play-by-play narrative. “Coast Guard boat’s left its dock. Lights moving out into the harbor. Real slow. There’s another boat with it. They’re not taking any chances. Okay, Soc, make your move.”

  My move consisted of a push on the tiller, swinging the inflatable toward the yacht. I put the motor on low idle and let the rising wind push the boat back toward the yacht. We wouldn’t need a grappling hook. The boarding ladder was down in anticipation of the yacht’s launch return with Malloy.

  Quick short bursts of the throttle kept us on track to the ladder. When the Zodiac thumped against the hull, Flagg uncoiled like a Jack-in-the-box, grabbed the lowest rung, and hooked the line onto it. The inflatable came to a jerking stop at the end of the line and we both almost tumbled into the drink.

  Flagg grabbed a backpack, slung it onto his shoulders, and started up the ladder, with me right behind him. He halted at the top, looked around, then waved me on. We hit the deck belly-down, then slithered like salamanders toward the shadow of a large, looming silhouette under the A-frame, which was upright in operational position. It must have been stowed in the hold, because the object wasn’t there when I visited the yacht earlier.

  The object was covered with dark plastic. Flagg lifted the edge of the covering and crawled through the opening. I followed, but couldn’t see him in the darkness. When I whispered his name, he said, “Over here.”

  He flicked on an electric torch that had a red light beam. The shaft moved back and forth, illuminating a honeycombed framework of metal and plastic. Dozens of oblong objects were stacked in rows. Flagg whispered again. “It’s the nest for Malloy’s little fishes.”

  The light went out and we crawled out from under the nest. We stood, and in a hunched-over position, began to make our way forward from the stern. We stepped over a thick cable that ran from the superstructure to the edge of the deck and skirted the pale waters of the swimming pool. A dim light glowed through the tinted windows of the salon. The door was unlocked. We stepped inside and made our way around the sofas and chairs, and past a bar to an exit, marked by a light, at the back of the salon.

  I placed my ear against a door. There was only the hum of the yacht’s power plant. We slowly cracked the door and stepped through into a passageway that bisected the living quarters.

  We moved from cabin to cabin. We’d listen for a second, knock softly, then try a door. None of the cabins were locked, which probably wasn’t thought to be necessary, given the number of armed men on board. It was a risky maneuver; if anyone answered, we’d have to come up with a quick excuse, but none of the luxury cabins were occupied.

  I jerked my thumb down.

  “We’re wasting our time here. They wouldn’t put Tanya in a first class cabin. She’d be down in the crew quarters.”

  Flagg was a step ahead of me. We descended to the lower deck. Flagg slipped a Glock 9 mm pistol with a sound suppressor out of his pack and let it dangle loosely at his side. We knocked, listened and opened doors again. The cabins were a quarter of the size of those in the deck above, and each had bunks for two people. All were empty.

  “Maybe I was wrong about Tanya being aboard.”

  “Or maybe they killed her,” he said.

  “She could have left the yacht on her own.”

  “You really think—”

  He stopped in mid-sentence, brought the pistol up and pointed it at a door that was labeled Laundry. He raised his free forefinger to his lips and took a couple of slow steps forward. Flagg’s hearing is on the subsonic level, but this time I heard the noise, too. A soft moaning sound that came from the storage area. A tight smile creased his jaw. Then he stood back, keeping the gun leveled at the door, and gestured for me to open it.

  I turned the knob and swung the door open. The room was in darkness. I reached around to the inside wall and hit the light switch. Along one wall of the room were a heavy-duty washer and dryer, and across from the appliances were shelves stacked with towels, sheets, soaps, laundry detergents and cases of bottled water. Tanya lay on the floor, her right wrist handcuffed to one of the steel uprights that supported the shelves.

  Tanya had been demoted to the equivalent of baggage. She was dressed only in her bathing suit bottom and a T-shirt and lay on a couple of blankets. She probably didn’t notice the hardness of the floor because she looked unconscious or dead. She was neither, as it turned out. When I knelt by her side and lifted her head, she slowly opened her eyes and blinked as if coming out of a deep sleep. Her eyes widened for a second, then closed and she let out the same kind of moan we had heard outside the door.

  “Drugged, like Malloy,” Flagg said. He tucked his gun into his belt and pulled a pair of metal cutters from his pack, using them to cut the chain between the handcuffs.

  I took a bottle from a shelf, and tried to get some water into her mouth. Most ran down her cheek. I poured water onto a washcloth and pressed it against her forehead. Her eyes opened again. This time there seemed to be recognition in them.

  We lifted Tanya to her feet. Her wobbly legs were incapable of bearing weight. We had to drag her out of the corridor, up the stairway and into the salon. We headed across the room to the door that would take us out onto the deck. We heard voices, and a second later, saw figures moving along the deck on the other side of the wrap-around windows. We ducked behind the bar, dragging Tanya’s limp body with us.

  As we huddled behind the bar, we could hear the voices inside the salon, talking in what sounded like Chinese. Then Chernko’s unmistakable steel-edged voice cut in.

  “Well, gentlemen, we seem to have a bit of excitement,” he said, speaking in English.

  “What is happening, Chernko?” someone said.

  “The Coast Guard checked one of the yacht’s boats and became quite excited when they learned that my crewmen carried arms.”

  Tanya started to move and her eyes and lips opened. Flagg clamped his hand over her mouth. He was trying to be gentle, but she resisted. I put my lips close to her ear and whispered, “Sleep, Tanya. Sleep.” Her eyes drooped and she stopped jerking her head. Flagg removed his hand.

  “I don’t like this, Chernko,” said another accented voice. “This was supposed to be a risk-free operation.”

  “And that’s what it will be. The Coast Guard h
as been assured that my men are all licensed for their weapons as security personnel aboard the Volga. They will soon release them. Once they are on board, we will get underway. Would anyone like a drink in the meantime?”

  Flagg brought his pistol around and pointed it upward. The first person to lean over the top of the bar would have his head blown off. There was a negative murmur of voices.

  “No takers?” Chernko said. “Well later, maybe when we have something to celebrate. Let us go to the bridge where we’ll have the best view of the demonstration. I’ll have our stewards bring up some refreshments for you to have while you enjoy the show.”

  This time the response was more positive, and a second later the salon went dark and quiet again.

  CHAPTER 36

  Funny how the mind works in times of stress. I was crammed between an oversized Native American and a stoned-out Bulgarian woman, thinking how strange it was to be on the floor behind a bar instead of in front of one. Fortunately, Flagg wasn’t given to humorous flights of fancy. As soon as the voices faded from the salon, he uttered a half-grunt of a command.

  “Up!”

  We untangled our arms and legs, peered over the top of the bar like a couple of characters in a Mel Brooks movie, then lifted Tanya to her feet and dragged her to the door leading onto the deck. Tanya was as slim as a fashion model, but in her drugged state, her limp body seemed to have gained a hundred pounds.

  We muscled her across the floor. Tanya was too out of it to care. We had to get back to the Zodiac before the boat crew detained by the Coast Guard returned to the yacht. They would find the inflatable, and with no way to get off the yacht as it moved out to sea, we would be hunted down like rats.

  We had one thing working for us. The center of action on the Volga had gravitated to the bridge. The decks were deserted. Once we saw that the coast was clear, we hustled back to the boarding ladder. I was on Tanya’s left, with my arm around her waist, and Flagg was holding her on the other side, his free hand clutching the Glock.

  As we moved along the deck, I glanced off as the cluster of boat lights split in two near the island where the Coast Guard had detained Chernko’s boat crew. The Coast Guard boat was headed back to the station and Chernko’s thugs were on their way to the yacht. Seconds later, we were at the boarding ladder. If we got back into the Zodiac soon, we could make a run for safety. Getting Tanya down the ladder into the inflatable bouncing at the end of the grapnel line was going to be a challenge.

  Flagg told me to go first. He picked Tanya up, threw her over his broad shoulders and backed down the ladder like a fireman making a rescue from a burning building. I stood on the bottom rung and helped ease Tanya into the Zodiac. The inflatable was sloshing around in the waves beating against the hull.

  Flagg was right about getting older and out of shape. I was panting like a leaky organ bellows. My arms and legs had turned to putty.

  Flagg was huffing like the big bad wolf, so I gaped with amazement when he stood on the lowest rung of the ladder and said, “Wait here, Soc. Got something to do.”

  By then, Chernko’s boat had cut the distance to the yacht by half.

  “Are you crazy, Flagg? The bad guys are almost here.”

  “If I’m not back in two minutes, get your ass out of here. Get that girl some medical help. Don’t give me any crap, Soc. This is important!”

  He handed me his Glock, then scrambled up the ladder and disappeared through the opening in the ship’s railing. I turned away at a cry from Tanya, who was stretched out on her side in the boat. The water rolling over the rounded sides of the inflatable had splashed into her face and revived her. She was trying to push herself up, and was having a hard time doing it on the squishy wet boat bottom. I tucked the pistol in my belt and put an arm around her shoulders, trying to calm her. In her disorientation, she tried to push me away.

  Tanya’s panic gave her an unusual strength, and her shove was strong enough to knock me off balance. My arms wind-milled. The Glock fell out of my belt and splashed into the water. It was a comedy of errors, but I wasn’t laughing.

  The sound of Chernko’s boat motor was getting louder. A spotlight probed the water in its path. I had maybe thirty seconds to make my escape.

  My hand went to the ignition switch and the motor caught on the first try. I reached up to loosen the line to the boarding ladder. I could hear voices from the approaching boat. To make things even more interesting, Tanya was trying to stand. She was swaying on her knees and if she got to her feet, she’d topple over the side. I took my hand off the throttle, gave her a quick apology, pushed her back down into the boat and sat on her.

  If not for the delay, I would have been off and running and Flagg would have missed the boat. Literally. As I went back to the throttle, I heard someone yell. Flagg stood on the deck at the top of the ladder. He tossed the knife in his hands out into the water, then half-climbed, half-fell down the ladder. Without the line to hold it, the inflatable was drifting away from the hull. I gave the throttle a quick twist and steered close to the boat so that the rubber pontoon brushed the hull.

  Flagg did a swan dive off the ladder into the inflatable. The impact rocked the boat, and for a second, I thought it would capsize and throw us all into the drink, but his weight actually stabilized us. I cranked up the throttle and steered away from the yacht. Our troubles weren’t over.

  Chernko’s boat had been angling toward the yacht, and was around fifty feet away when the Zodiac started moving off. The spotlight from the boat caught us in its beam. There were shouts from Chernko’s crew and the boat changed course, going into a quick turn to follow our wake.

  Flagg rolled over and scrambled to a kneeling position in the stern.

  He stuck his hand in the air. “Where’s my Glock?”

  I pointed down. “I lost it. In the water. Got an extra?”

  Flagg’s curse was audible against the noise of the motor and wave slap. Tanya was lying on his backpack and he had to shove her out of the way to get to it. He unzipped the bag, stuck his hand in and came out with a pistol so small it was barely visible in his big hand.

  “Is that pea-shooter the best you can do?” I yelled.

  “It is unless you want to dive for my Glock. Stinking little .22 Beretta. About as useful as a cap pistol in this situation.”

  With three people aboard the Zodiac, the outboard pushing the blunt-nosed inflatable through the water was inadequate to the challenge of outrunning the bigger, more powerful boat. Soon, they’d come up beside us and blast away with what I guessed would be bigger guns than the Beretta.

  It was a miracle they hadn’t tried. We were in easy range. My guess was that they didn’t want to attract any more attention to the yacht than was necessary and would make their move once we cleared the Volga, which was about to happen.

  I aimed the Zodiac toward a thicket of moored boats anchored between us and the shore, then did a slow slalom turn around a big cabin cruiser. I heard the staccato popping of gunfire and shattering glass as the bullets slammed into the cruiser’s pilothouse.

  I mumbled a silent apology to the boat owner, then gave the marine insurance companies more claims to pay. I did another S-turn, this time around a pretty sailboat that I commandeered as a bullet buffer. I tried to avoid boats that had cabin lights, which would indicate that there were people aboard. The tricky maneuver may have saved innocent lives, but put ours in jeopardy. The pursuers figured out my strategy, and swung their boat around in a big turn that would cut us off once we emerged into the open again.

  I could delay the inevitable by weaving in and out of the boat fleet, but they were getting closer with each turn. Even if I didn’t run out of gas, they’d catch up. It was only a matter of time and physics. Then I heard a shout from Flagg.

  “We’re losing them!”

  Flagg wasn’t entirely acc
urate. They were losing us. Chernko’s boat had turned around and was now on its way back to the Volga. Maybe Chernko had been feeling the pressure from the guests who had come all the way from China to witness his murderous demonstration. I cut the motor to an idle and we drifted. I was exhausted, frustrated and enraged by overwhelming helplessness. It was Flagg who brought me down to earth.

  “Got to get this girl to a doctor pretty quick,” he said.

  He was cradling Tanya’s head in his lap and brushing her damp hair back away from her pale face. It was an uncharacteristically tender gesture. There are times I forget Flagg is a human being. I glanced around the harbor to get my bearings and saw the flashing beacon of the little Brant Point lighthouse. I goosed the throttle and pointed the boat toward the Coast Guard station near the light. They’d have the emergency medical techs who could tend to Tanya.

  I reasoned that once she was taken care of, we could again turn our attention to Chernko. I could only hope that we wouldn’t be too late.

  CHAPTER 37

  The U.S. Coast Guard may be the best government deal going for the American taxpayer. For a mere fraction of the annual budget, the men and women who work out of the stations along the country’s coasts monitor pollution, combat drug smuggling, and rescue mariners in distress under the most terrifying sea conditions imaginable. They’ve pulled me out of a jam more than once. So it pained me immensely to be upbraiding the commander of the Nantucket station for not doing his job.