Chapter 44
THE MOVE FLOORED me. I’d seen kiteboarders in action before, but this guy was a superstar.
I down-throttled, drifted the Sea-Doo one hundred and eighty degrees, and accelerated, following the beams of the helicopters playing on the boarder. He’d landed and was speeding out to sea.
“This is the L.A. Sheriff’s Department!” one of the pilots barked out of a loudspeaker. “Drop your kite.”
The boarder never slowed, but I was gaining ground again. Fifty yards separated us when the other kiteboarder appeared out of nowhere, launching from a wave to my left, and tried to take my head off with the steel fin that jutted from the bottom of his board. I ducked and almost dumped the sled but managed to keep it upright, right there on the verge of disaster.
I’d had enough by that point, and I had immunity, so I tore open the shoulder holster, freed the Glock, and went back after the first boarder, mindful that the second might reappear at any moment. These people had caused mass death. I would not hesitate to shoot one of them, aim for the legs, break them down for capture. But then I remembered what else was in the dry bags.
“This is Morgan,” I shouted. “Tell Kloppenberg to blow the tanks. Repeat, tell Sci to blow the tanks.”
Before there was any response, the second kiteboarder flew through the air and landed in front of me, skimmed up beside his partner, both heading straight up the face of the oncoming, cresting wave, a ten-footer easy.
I instantly realized I’d probably be thrown into a backflip if I stayed on their course, and I cut the sled left where the shoulder of the wave wasn’t breaking yet, watching the two kiteboarders reach the crest. The helicopter search lamps were on them when they exploded off the wave and out into space, sailing on their kites, thirty, maybe forty feet in the air.
Right at the apex of their flight, Sci triggered the CO2 tanks.
They released with such force that the dry bags instantly inflated, straining against the cords that held them to the boards. The sudden change in aerodynamics threw both kiteboarders out of control.
The gusting wind caught the kites at the same time the dry bags burst, throwing a small amount of currency and a large amount of cut newspaper out into the sky like so much confetti. The boarders went flipping through the night, board over kite, somersaulting until the blade wash of one of the helicopters caught and hurled them like rag dolls straight down, twenty feet, through the swirling paper bills.
They crashed hard against the sea.
I sped up, sure now that I was looking for bodies, injured or dead. I spotted the first one facedown, partially covered by his kite. One of the Baywatch boats was on the scene now, heading for the other kiteboarder.
I grabbed mine by the back of his harness and yanked him up out of the water alongside the Sea-Doo. He hung there a second, then started choking and hacking. After several moments, he looked up at me in a daze.
“What the fuck, dude?” he moaned. “Blowing us out of the sky was definitely not part of the script.”