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I tipped my head to the right. The VHF radio was in easy reach, even for somebody chained to the wheel.
“Bien,” she said. She gestured again. “Soyez un bon garçon et faites ce que je dis.” She gave me a frequency and told me what to say—and I thought about calling out a Mayday instead. I gave that up in under two seconds. There was nobody to answer it out here, except the FBI and DGSE, and I was not eager to talk to them. Anyway, it would take them maybe an hour to get here—if they could find me at all. It’s not as easy as you might think to find a small boat on a big ocean, even when you know approximately where it is. As far as I could see it, my only chance was to do exactly what Bernadette said and hope for some small opening. She scared the hell out of me, but she was beat to shit, and I thought I could take her out if I got half a chance. Until then, it seemed like a good idea to be a good boy. I picked up the microphone.
She had me call Boniface’s guys at the little hangar where he kept his jet. Repeating her word for word, I told them to get the plane ready and meet us at the dock. They wanted to know why. Bernadette snatched the microphone from me and told them why: Because she said so. They didn’t argue anymore after that.
And then she sat on the bench, just out of my reach. Her back was to the open deck below, and her eyes were on me. Behind her and just to the side I could see the big cargo hook Étienne had used to load and unload the boat. It was run all the way up now, of course, so it wouldn’t swing. Beyond that, the boat’s wake churned and burbled. I couldn’t see any of the deck below us. If Monique was there, living or dead, I would have to step back until I was just about in Bernadette’s lap before I could see. I wasn’t eager to try that.
And anyway, Bernadette caught me looking. She half stood, waved the gun at me, and said, “Allons-y!” in a tone of voice that could scare the stink out of a skunk. I went.
I watched her for the next half hour, quick glances out of the corner of my eye. Not because I admired her profile. Like I said, she’d lost a lot of blood. On top of that, she’d just done a few things that would make anybody tired, even if they were in the peak of health. She’d been running on adrenaline, and even though it had gotten her here, alive and in charge, there had to be a letdown now. All the adrenaline would be burned off. The excitement of her escape and jumping me—that was all over. She was safe for the time being. She had to be feeling a major letdown, right? A little nap would start to look like a really good idea about now, wouldn’t it?
So I watched her, looking for any small sign that she wasn’t all aboard mentally. At first, nothing. She kept her eyes open and the Glock pointed at me. Once or twice it wavered and she nodded forward a little and I thought maybe she would fall asleep or black out. No such luck. Each time she jerked upright again.
But it had to come. She had to reach the point when she nodded, dozed just for a second, didn’t she? I mean, any human being who had gone through what Bernadette had gone through would just absolutely have to nod off now, and she was, after all, human—wasn’t she? Underneath there somewhere, maybe?
Maybe not. Over the next hour she sagged a few more times, but she always snapped right back up again. I kept watching, but it started to matter less. Because over that same hour, something else was happening, and it had given me an idea. With just one little break, that idea could turn into a plan.
Remember that storm I was worried about? The one headed straight for our boat? It was coming closer, and it was looking like it might be a rough one. And that was a very, very good thing—for me. With a little luck, it might not be quite as good for Bernadette. I just needed one small favor from the storm god. I tried to remember who that was in these waters, so I could ask politely. All I could come up with was Freyr, the Norse god of rain. I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to ask anybody from that group, not after what I’d done to Arvid on that statue of Njord. Njord couldn’t have been happy about me getting all that gooey crap on his spear. Besides, Freyr was Njord’s son, and gods hold a grudge a really long time. And anyway I was in the Indian Ocean—so was it the Hindu deity I should try for? Not Vishnu. Was it Indra? That felt right. How did I pray to Indra?
And why the hell was I thinking about that kind of crazy shit? I was about to get ripped apart by a psychotic monster, if the boat didn’t go under in the coming storm. I pulled my focus back.
The storm was much closer. The boat had started to roll a lot more in the increasing swell. Normally, that would have worried me a little. Right now it was just what I wanted. If only Indra would step in and swing that roll just a few degrees to the right . . .
No such luck. Ten more minutes and it hadn’t happened, and it looked like it wasn’t going to. Maybe Indra had been talking to Njord. I was going to have to make this happen myself.
I glanced quickly at Bernadette. She was still doing her weird little dance—slump for a second, then jerk back upright. I looked back to the front, but I turned my body to a slight angle, so that every time she sagged I could see it out of the corner of my eye. And every time she did that, I slipped a hand down and toggled a little switch that was right there on the right side of the wheel. The one that controlled the cargo hook. You know, the hook on the end of that nice steel arm? The one that let down a cable so they could hoist big boxes on and off Étienne’s boat?
Yeah, that was my idea. And if the hook started to swing just right, it might help me do something a lot more interesting than lifting boxes.
I let out the cable, two seconds at a time, five or six times. But I couldn’t tell how much cable I’d unspooled. So the next time Bernadette slumped forward and closed her eyes, I risked a quick glance straight back. Just for a half second, but long enough.
The cargo hook was about halfway down, and the roll of the storm swell had it swinging. But right now it was swinging out over the right side of the boat, which did me no good at all. I’d been hoping that Indra or Freyr or somebody would turn the storm just a couple of degrees. They’d let me down. Or paid me back, whatever. Either way, I was going to have to make my own luck.
I looked at the GPS. If there hadn’t been a storm in the way, we would be seeing our destination in a little while. It had to be now.
Slowly, just a tiny bit at a time, I started to ease the wheel to the left. It had to be so gradual Bernadette wouldn’t see what I was doing—but quick enough to make it happen before our boat ride was over. And with it my life. And almost certainly Monique’s, if that hadn’t happened already.
I turned us as slowly as I could with my heart thumping like a Ginger Baker solo. Slowly, unnoticeably at first, the boat swung further into the wind . . .
Bernadette slumped again, and I took another look. The cargo hook was swinging faster, bigger arcs, and only a little bit off the line I needed it to take. I snapped my head forward again and eased us one more degree to the left. And the next time Bernadette sagged, I let out a little more cable. Then a little more . . .
I looked at the GPS. We were noticeably off course now but close enough so any break in the clouds would show the island, off to the side instead of straight ahead. The clouds were not breaking—they were getting bigger, darker, and closer. Storms on the open ocean can get worse faster than you can turn the wheel—but they can disappear just as fast, and if that happened and Bernadette saw how far off course we were, my guess was she would be unhappy. I had to do this soon—very soon.
Bernadette slumped. I let out a little more cable. Then I jerked around for a quick look—perfect. The cable was swinging the hook just right. And now if I could only—
I flicked my eyes down. Bernadette’s eyes were open. And she was looking right at me and watching me look backward.
She snarled and stood up and I thought she would come for me—but instead she whipped around, gun raised, to see what I had been looking at, and—
It was really rotten timing on her part.
The cargo hook—the nice, big, heavy, beautiful steel cargo hook—swung back with perfect timing and hit her dead between the eyes.
And Bernadette—superhuman, unstoppable, shoot-me-and-I-keep-coming Bernadette—dropped to the deck like a bag of cement.
I watched her for a few seconds, almost as stunned as she was. I couldn’t believe something as simple as getting clobbered with a heavy steel hook could stop her. But it could. It did. She wasn’t moving. She lay there on the deck and I couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive, but she was definitely out of it, and that was all that mattered. The key to the chain that bound me to the wheel had to be right there in her pocket. And that raised a small problem.
Bernadette was right there—but “right there” was six feet away.
