Doc Ford 19 - Chasing Midnight (6 page)

The man couldn’t be serious. It was a ploy to lure me back to the enemy’s camp. Even so, I was willing. Judging from all the gunfire, the enemy’s camp was a hell of a lot safer than standing in the water out in the open.

I used the knife to point toward shore, telling Vladimir, “You lead the way. I’ll buy you a vodka or two—we’ve both earned it.”

I would have preferred to watch cops handcuff the big hairy bastard. But first I wanted to humor the guy because there was a lot I wanted to know—including what Tomlinson had said to convince the bodyguard or Kazlov that I’d broken into his yacht. First, my old pal somehow helps a group of eco-extremist trespassers, then he implicates me in a crime? I wanted some answers.

Instead of moving, though, Vladimir stood motionless, his attention fixed on something ashore. Because it was so dark, and because my glasses were hazed with salt, I was slower to figure out what he was looking at.

Someone was standing beneath trees near the reception office. That’s what had caught his attention. No… not standing. It was the
vague shape of a man dressed in dark clothing, his face covered with maybe a scarf, walking toward us. He was carrying what looked like a professor’s laser pointer. The pointer slashed a red streak on the ground with every swing of his arm.

Instantly, I stepped behind Vladimir, using him as a shield because I knew it wasn’t a laser pointer. Too many shots had been fired tonight. It had to be a laser gun sight, probably mounted on a semiautomatic pistol. But maybe the situation wasn’t as threatening as it seemed.

The man coming toward us was inexperienced, that was obvious. No pro would give away his position before he was ready to fire. The guy was probably nervous, unknowingly activating the laser’s pressure switch, his fingers too tight around the pistol grip.

Vladimir realized what we were seeing, too, because he said something in Russian that sounded like “Piz-do-BOL!” and crouched low. I did the same because the laser was suddenly a smoky red cable that panned across the water, then painted a shaky Z stripe on my chest.

I was diving toward the dock when the first round was fired.

T
hree pistol shots later, I was hiding under the dock, near where I had tossed my Rocket fins. As I used feet and hands to search for the fins, my attention shifted from the dark shoreline, to Vladimir, who had been hit at least once.

He lay thrashing on his back, then managed to get to his knees. His face was featureless in the darkness, blank from shock. His left arm dangled in the water, a useless deadweight.

I wondered if he’d been hit anywhere else.

The man’s head turned toward the gunman, then to the dock, where I was crouching. Vladimir’s brain was still working, at least, because he began to crawl toward me. Not crawl, actually. Because of his dead arm, he had to lunge forward, find his balance, then worm his knees beneath him before lunging again—pathetic to witness.

I should have kept moving—especially after I found one fin, then the second, lying on the bottom nearby. With fins, the dock became an effective exit tunnel into deeper water. From there, I could transit beneath a couple of nearby boats to the freedom of open water. Or
I could hide until the gunman tired of searching and then maybe use a VHF radio on one of the boats to call for help.

I couldn’t bring myself to leave, though. It wasn’t because I felt any allegiance to the wounded man—why would I? But I was adrenaline drained and suddenly indecisive—a by-product of fear. Until I understood what was happening, it was impossible to know what to do next or who to trust.

It had been a confusing night, but now I was completely baffled. Had Vladimir just been shot by one of his own people? Or were Kazlov, his two Caspian competitors, or possibly even Lien Bohai, engaged in a private war?

Bohai could be eliminated, I’d decided—the man was in his seventies and he’d arrived without a bodyguard. It was plausible, though, that the men from the Caspian Sea—Talas, Armanie and Kazlov—had squabbled and were now shooting it out.

Black marketeers of Eastern Europe don’t get as much publicity as Mexican narco gangs, but they are as murderous, and markedly more dangerous, because they operated on a more sophisticated level. Circumventing international laws requires political connections, money and brains.

Caviar traffickers commonly recruit key people from special ops teams around the Caspian Sea. It explains the trade’s reputation for precise and ruthless action against anyone who crosses them.

As Vladimir dragged himself toward me, I got an answer to one of my questions—maybe two answers—when the gunman opened fire again.

The pistol didn’t have a silencer, and I ducked instinctively as bullets slapped the water nearby,
WHAP-WHAP-WHAP-WHAP.

Four quick rounds… then two more, all hitting close enough to Vladimir to confirm that he wasn’t the victim of friendly fire.

Yes… Kazlov’s people were being targeted. It suggested that
his Iranian or Turkmenian competitor—maybe both—had decided to stop the Russian’s work on beluga sturgeon or to steal his methodology… or they wanted to settle some old debt.

When the gunman fired twice more, however—and missed both times—I began to doubt my own theory. How could a trained professional score only one hit out of twelve or thirteen rounds? True, it was dark. Yes, the gunman was twenty-some yards away—a very long shot for a pistol—and he was moving. But thirteen rounds?

It caused me to reconsider another possibility—an explanation I had already contemplated but didn’t like because it implicated old enemies… or maybe even an old friend.

Tomlinson.

Exhausted, Vladimir dropped to his belly in water too shallow for him to submerge. When a bullet plowed a furrow near his head, though, he got to his knees and lunged again, landing only two body lengths from where I was hiding.

The gunman was closer, too, but I didn’t know exactly where. Soon, he would be on the dock, probably with a flashlight. I’d been through that once tonight, and once was more than enough. I couldn’t delay my escape much longer.

Intellectually, I knew I should put on my fins and head for deeper water. I hadn’t learned all I wanted to know from the wounded man, but I had seen enough to be convinced there was no safe place on the island. Risky or not, I had to contact law enforcement. Then I had to find Tomlinson and try to help him and anyone else who had been caught in the middle of this lunacy.

Yet, instead of escaping, I remained hidden as Vladimir collapsed on his belly again only yards away. In the sudden silence of wind and lapping waves, I realized the gunman had stopped firing.

There had to be a reason. Had his weapon misfired? Or was he reloading?

Reloading, probably. There are semiautomatic pistols with extended magazines that hold thirty rounds or more. Most, though, have half that capacity. If the gunman was changing magazines, it would take only a few seconds.

I decided to risk a quick look.

Hooking an arm around a piling, I poked my head above the dock for a couple of seconds, then ducked back into the shadows.

The gunman was at the water’s edge, fifteen yards away, his back to me. The way he was hunched over, concentrating, gave the impression that his gun had jammed. Or maybe he didn’t have a second magazine so was now reloading one cartridge at a time.

If I’d been sure that’s what he was doing, I would have charged the guy. It was tempting. The only way to find out, though, was to actually try it. I decided to take another look to confirm.

That’s what I was getting ready to do when I realized that Vladimir was floating facedown, head bobbing in a freshening breeze, his body very still.

Without thinking, I took a long, silent step and grabbed the back of the man’s shirt. As I dragged him under the dock, supporting his head, he inhaled several deep breaths, still alive and possibly conscious.

If the gunman heard us, there was no telltale yelp of protest.

When Vladimir coughed, then opened his eyes, I touched a finger to my lips—a waste of time because it was so dark. Even so, the man seemed to understand, because he turned his head to listen as I whispered, “I need a weapon. Is there anything on Kazlov’s boat?”

The man blinked at me and said, “I bleed to death. Yes?”

Yes… probably. I didn’t want that to happen, though. Not yet, anyway.

Hurrying, I drew my knife and slit his shirtsleeve to the shoulder. The arm was black with shadows and blood, so I felt around until I
discovered a chunk of his deltoid missing, meat and muscle, but no bone fragments that I could feel.

I told him, “It’s not too bad. But, yeah, you’re losing blood.”

The man winced when I applied pressure, but he was alert enough to understand when I asked again if there were weapons aboard Kazlov’s yacht.

“Up there,” he said. “Everything left up there.”

My interpretation: the bodyguard’s extra weapons were housed at the fishing lodge.

With a swipe, I cut the man’s shirtsleeve free and made two fast wraps around his arm. When I clove-hitched the material tight over the wound, he grunted, but that’s all. A tough guy.

I waited for him to take a couple of breaths before motioning toward shore to indicate the gunman. “How many shooters, you think?”

Vladimir’s reaction was unexpected. He grabbed my shirt and yanked me close to his face. “Damn liar! You and him”—the man was talking about the gunman—“him and your longhair friend, they plan this, I think! And you are lying about goddamn bomb!”

He gave me a shove as he released me. “Chemical weapons. Kill people with bombs—something only cowards do. Pretend you do not know.”

I snapped, “Are you talking about those idiot activists? I don’t think they have the brains. You should have called the cops the moment they walked into the fishing lodge.”

Vladimir hissed, “I
tried
. You know reason cannot call!”

We were running out of time. It had been only a minute since I’d seen the gunman working on his pistol. If the weapon was jammed, we might have another minute. If he was only reloading, though, our time was up.

Holding the knife as a reminder, I whispered, “I didn’t save
your ass because I’m a nice person. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Vladimir looked at me for a second—a look of reappraisal, perhaps. Before he could reply, though, he turned an ear to listen.

I heard it, too. The gunman had entered the shallows, water splashing with each careful step. Seconds later, the beam of a flashlight found the dock, panning back and forth.

Not only was the guy a bad marksman, he had chosen the worst possible approach. The dock was high ground. It provided a better vantage point. It would allow him a faster egress if he had to move. In knee-deep water, there’s no such thing as a sprinter.

It was yet more evidence the gunman was not a special ops pro working for caviar traffickers. Worse, it added some validity to Vladimir’s claim that my long-haired pal was involved.

Tomlinson and his fellow members of the eco-elitist group Third Planet Peace Force. If true, they hadn’t come just to crash a party. Tomlinson’s new friends had come to declare war on Kazlov and his fellow “environmental gangsters.”

I
motioned for Vladimir to follow me before moving to a piling on the opposite side of the dock. The water was shallow enough, so I kept my fins over my shoulder as I floated myself into the open, hands pulling me along the bottom.

A hedge of mangrove trees, twenty-five yards away, wasn’t the closest cover, but that’s the direction I headed. It was the safest line of escape because the gunman was stupid. As his flashlight probed among the pilings, the dock shielded us from his view instead of providing the guy an elevated killing platform.

After a minute or so, a glance over my shoulder confirmed that
Vladimir was still with me. He was on his belly, using his feet and one good arm to propel him along the bottom. Impressive, but he was going too slow. Sooner or later, the gunman would figure out that he’d made a strategic error. He would use the dock.

Turned out, it was later. But not late enough.

As I closed on the mangroves, the water was so shallow that I got to my knees and attempted to crawl the last few yards before slipping into the trees. I had landed on an oyster bar, though, shells like razors. My shoes could survive them, my hands and knees couldn’t.

As I got to my feet, I took another look. Vladimir wasn’t far behind. But I also saw that, finally, the gunman was on the dock, and he had spotted me.

No doubt about it, because I saw the man straighten with surprise. Then, suddenly, a spotlight blinded me. I became a solitary figure on an empty stage—not an intimidating figure, I guessed, with my bleeding forehead, my bleeding hands; a cartoon figure wearing khaki BUDS swim shorts and black T-shirt.

Next, the flashlight found Vladimir, who was getting to his knees, dead left arm at his side—and that’s the last I saw of the man for many busy seconds because the gunman started shooting, rapid-fire. Judging from the number of rounds that kicked water nearby or sizzled near my ears, the gunman was targeting me, not Vladimir.