It was just at the waterline, and within seconds the other boat lowered its own ramp.
Impossible, Gabriel thought as he watched Detectives Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald pull an Evel Knievel across the makeshift bridge and disappear into the cargo hold of the Shell Game.
Im-freaking-possible. They were supposed to be dead, but there they were. Coming for him.
A third cop, decked in black fatigues and weighted down with a vest full of gear, stepped up to the edge of the ramp. Bomb squad goon here to put me out of business.
But the man in black wasn’t so lucky. Just as he was about to leap, the boat tilted, and he bounced off the ramp and into the water.
One less cop to worry about, but now there was no time to plant the bonus bomb. The three in the engine room were more than enough.
Gabriel had no idea how the two cops had managed to avoid getting blown up and then track him here. But it didn’t matter.
He stormed down the metal steps to the lower deck. “Glad to have you on board, Detectives,” he said, the tears in his eyes now replaced with white-hot rage. “You’ll be dead before the sun sets.”
Chapter 89
“ENGINE ROOM,” I said to the two crew members who helped us board.
“We can take you,” one of them said.
“Just point,” I said. “Then leave.”
They were trained not to argue with authority. One pointed, and they both left.
“This is my first time on a yacht,” I said to Kylie. “I hope they weren’t expecting a tip.”
We drew our guns and found the metal door that warned us to stay out in five languages.
The engine room looked exactly like the picture Rothlein had showed us, but it wasn’t nearly as loud as I expected. I was prepared for the clanking and banging I’ve heard in the movies, but this was more like the low rumble of a high-performance car.
We headed straight for the forward section, and there, molded to the hull, exactly where Ordway predicted it would be, was a thick gray block of C4, still bearing Benoit’s handprints. There were red, white, blue, and yellow wires buried inside the plastic along with a cell phone waiting to be triggered by a signal from a cell phone.
“It’s armed,” I whispered.
“Then we better find him before he jumps ship,” Kylie said. “We’ll split up. You go upstairs, and I’ll—”
The thud was loud, clear, and completely out of sequence with the steady rhythmic beat of the engine.
Kylie mouthed the word Benoit.
A second thud.
Engine rooms are not known for their acoustics, and we couldn’t tell exactly where the thuds were coming from. I went left, Kylie went right, and we slowly advanced in the general direction of the sound.
And then, a new sound. This one was human, but muffled. Déjà vu. It was the same thing I had heard from Spence less than an hour ago. Only this time, I couldn’t trust the source.
Benoit was smart, and for all I knew it could be a trap. He could have heard us come in and figured a muffled cry for help would get us out in the open.
I motioned for Kylie to stay down.
“NYPD!” I yelled. “Come out with your hands over your head.”
The voice came back loud now, desperate, angry, and totally unintelligible. I pointed my body and my gun in the direction of the sound. And then I saw him. An older guy, obviously a crew member, duct-taped to a pipe.
“Over here!” I yelled to Kylie, and I dropped down and peeled the tape from the mouth of Benoit’s latest victim.
“NYPD,” I repeated.
“Bomb squad, I hope,” the man said.
“No.”
“Then cut me loose and get me the hell out of—Mother of God—Kylie? Kylie Harrington? Is that you?”
“Hey, Charles. Right now, I’m Detective MacDonald,” she said as I slashed the tape from the man’s arms and legs. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine as soon as I get the hell off this ship. There are three bombs down here, and somewhere topside there’s a maniac with a cell phone who’s planning to set them off.”
“Benoit—how long ago did he leave?” I said.
“Maybe five minutes. He’s crazy. He thinks he’s making a movie. No camera, but this whack job is making a movie.”
“He can’t blow these till he’s off the boat,” I said. “Do you have any idea how he plans to get off?”
“He’s going to steal one of the Zodiacs, put some distance between us and him, then speed-dial us all to kingdom come.”
“Not if we can stop him first,” Kylie said, helping the man to his feet.
He was a little wobbly, and he grabbed onto a thick chrome pipe.
“Charles, you’re on your own,” she said. “What’s the fastest way to where Shelley keeps the Zodiacs?”