Chapter 43
THE SEA-DOO LAUNCHED off the first roller at an odd angle, which caused it to cant hard left and down, the turbine whining against the air. Throwing my weight the exact opposite way, I managed to level it before skipping up the face of the coming wave and out into the air again.
I’d ridden a similar sled chasing the three sisters who’d gone on a killing spree at the London Olympics four months before. But then I’d been out on the Thames, a tidal river, not in this chaos of waves that surrounded the pier.
The kiteboarders had danced across swells. I crashed through them past the pier, glancing at the scorched, smoking breach on its southern flank and the blown-out windows at Ruby’s Diner. “This is Morgan,” I shouted. “Two of them riding black kiteboards, bearing southwest of the pier. In pursuit. Need support.”
“We are one minute out, Morgan,” came the voice of one of the sheriff’s helicopter pilots.
“Baywatch vessels converging on your position,” came a second voice. “Time of intercept two minutes ten.”
Del Rio had had powerful search lamps mounted on the handlebars of the Sea-Doo. I flipped them on the second I broke free of the halo of light surrounding the pier. Rick’s back’s broken, I thought as I disappeared into the darkness.
I’d called in Del Rio’s condition and position. But there was nothing more I could do for him other than make sure the people behind the killings, the extortion, and now this bombing were made to pay.
I kept the throttle wide open, peering along the brilliant beam of light that shot almost a quarter mile out in front of me. Had they stayed on this same bearing? Or had they tacked? And if they had tacked, were they heading inland, or farther out to sea? Was there a boat waiting for them? A vehicle? Where …?
The beam picked up a shadow ahead of me in the waves. It was moving to my left, heading east for shore about two hundred and fifty yards out. I arced after the shadow, found the waves at my back, and surfed down them so fast that it felt like flight.
At one hundred and fifty yards I caught one of the kiteboarders fully in my beam, his back to me. He was cutting across the face of the swells. I could see the dry bag lashed there beside him on the board.
He looked over his shoulder, back at my light, and for a second I was sure he was going to draw a weapon and open fire. Instead, he tacked hard, came about, came right at me as fast as I was bearing down on him. It was a game of chicken I felt sure I’d win. The Sea-Doo weighed more than four hundred and fifty pounds. I doubted the board and kite weighed more than thirty.
I could hear intensifying chatter on the radio inside my wet suit hood. There were fatalities back on the pier. I also could hear the choppers closing now. Their searchlights joined mine, throwing a near-blinding glare on the kiteboarder, who never hesitated and never slowed.
At thirty-five yards, I ducked down, preparing myself for impact.
At twenty-five yards, a wave came between us. I lost him for a second.
At ten yards, he reappeared, launched off the crest, soared up and over me at least three stories, dangling below the kite, as calm as a bird.