“Zach, if you’re waiting for them to lock together like a couple of Legos, it’s not going to happen,” Rothlein said. “This is as close as we’re going to get.”
It was only a three-foot jump. Half my height. Easy on dry land. Not so easy when point A and point B are bobbing and weaving like two staggering drunks trying to cross Broadway against a red light.
“Go,” Rothlein said.
I watched the rhythm of the two ramps as they moved back and forth, up and down, hoping to pick up on a pattern. There was none. The water was too choppy.
“Don’t think about it, Six,” came the familiar taunting voice from behind me.
I jumped just as the Kristina caught some chop, and what had started out as a graceful leap turned into a flailing lunge. But both feet hit the ramp, and I stumbled into the arms of two crew members who broke my momentum and lowered me to the steel floor of the cargo hold.
Within seconds, Kylie was right behind me.
“Have you ever tried to get on the escalator at Bloomie’s during the Christmas rush?” she said. “This was actually easier.”
“I hate you,” I said.
Ordway stepped to the edge of the Kristina’s ramp, sized up the gap, took a few steps backward, and got a running start.
Just as he was about to spring off, a crosscurrent caught the Kristina, tilting it, and dropping the front end of the ramp into the river. He didn’t have a chance. He pitched forward, and his chest slammed into the hard steel of the opposite ramp.
He slid into the water, floundering against the weight of his equipment to keep from going under.
I could hear Rothlein yell “Kill the throttle,” and the Shell Game zipped ahead, leaving the Kristina in its wake.
I radioed Rothlein. “Is he okay?”
“One of my guys dove in after him as soon as he hit the water,” Rothlein said. “We’ll have him back on board in two minutes, and if he’s game, we can line up another pass. Five minutes tops.”
If he’s game? Five extra minutes for Benoit to get off the boat? Another pass for him to spot us?
I keyed the mic. “Negative. Hang back. I’ll call you as soon as we have Benoit in custody.”
I turned to the two crew members. “Lock it up,” I said.
They retracted the ramp, and I took one last look at the Kristina as it slowly faded into the distance.
The steel door clanged shut.
Kylie looked at me. “Good call, Zach,” she said. “Let’s go find Benoit.”
Chapter 88
GABRIEL STOOD ON the main deck looking out at the splashes of red and orange in the western sky. “Magic hour,” he whispered, using the time-honored film term reserved for sunsets as glorious as this one.
No director could ask for more perfect lighting. And there in the distance was the star of the scene. She was still just a gray shape, but he could make out the torch held high in her right hand, welcoming the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “but you’re going to have to settle for the rich, the oppressive, and the toxically greedy.”
The yacht had turned around and had just sailed under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which links Brooklyn to Staten Island. Miss Liberty would be ready for her star turn in about ten minutes. Plenty of time to plant the final bomb in the galley, go back downstairs to the Zodiac, and line up the parting shot.
He stood at the rail for one last lingering look, quietly marveling at the sun-streaked horizon, when he felt the first tear trickle down his cheek.
I can’t be crying. It wasn’t in the script. Everything was going so perfectly. It was all coming together as writ, but the tears—that caught him by surprise.
“Damn you, Lexi. You’re ruining my makeup,” he said, laughing into the warm evening breeze. “I miss you, baby. I should have let you have a bigger role. Maybe you wouldn’t have gone out on your own and—what the hell?”
It was another boat.
The river was filled with all kinds of fishing vessels and pleasure craft, but this one stood out because it was coming straight at them. The guy at the wheel was probably some millionaire, either drunk, stupid, or both.
It drew closer. But this guy wasn’t drunk. He was a pro, and Gabriel watched as he swung around and pulled up parallel to the bigger yacht.
He looked around to see if any of his shipmates saw it, but the buffet must have opened because there were fewer than a dozen people on deck, all of them too absorbed in themselves to notice the world around them.
Gabriel watched as the smaller boat kept pace with the bigger one, wave for wave, side by side, with military precision. And then, out of nowhere, a ramp extended from the yacht. A boarding ramp.