‘I can’t just let you go,’ the detective said again, though part of him wished it were otherwise. But that couldn’t be, and he would not have made it so, for his life had rules, too.
‘Can you give me an hour? I know you’ll keep looking. One hour. It’ll make things better for everybody.’
The request caught Ryan by surprise. It was against everything he stood for – but then, so were the monsters the man had killed. We owe him something… would I have cleared those cases without him? Who would have spoken for the dead… and besides, what could the guy do – where could he go?… Ryan, have you gone nuts? Yes, maybe he had …
‘You’ve got your hour. After that I can recommend you to a good lawyer. Who knows, a good one might just get you off.’
Ryan rose and headed for the side door without looking back. He stopped at the door just for a second.
‘You spared when you could have killed, Mr Kelly. That’s why. Your hour starts now.’
Kelly didn’t watch him leave. He hit his engine controls, wanning up the diesels. One hour should just about do it. He scrambled out on the deck, slipping his lines, leaving them attached to the dock piles, and by the time he got back inside the salon, the diesels were ready for turning. They caught at once, and he pivoted the boat, heading out into the harbor. As soon as he was out of the yacht basin he firewalled both throttles, bringing Springer to her top speed of twenty-two knots. With the channel empty, Kelly set his autopilot and rushed to make the necessary preparations. He cut the corner at Bodkin Point. He had to. He knew who they’d send after him.
‘Coast Guard, Thomas Point.’
This is the Baltimore City Police.’
Ensign Tomlinson took the call. A new graduate of the Coast Guard Academy at New London, he was here for seasoning, and though he ranked the Chief Warrant Officer who ran the station, both the boy and the man understood what this was all about. Only twenty-two, young enough that his gold officer’s bars still had the original shine, it was time to turn him loose on a mission, Paul English thought, but only because Portagee would really be running things. Forty-One-Bravo, the second of the station’s big patrol craft, was warmed up and ready. The young ensign sprinted out, as though they might leave without him, much to the amusement of CWO English. Five seconds after the lad had snapped on his life vest, Forty-One-Bravo rumbled away from the dock, turning north short of the Thomas Point Light.
The man sure didn’t give me any slack, Kelly thought, seeing the cutter closing from starboard. Well, he’d asked for an hour, and an hour he’d received. Kelly almost flipped on his radio for a parting salute, but that wouldn’t have been right, and more was the pity. One of his diesels was running hot, and that was also a pity, though it wouldn’t be running hot much longer.
It was a kind of race now, and there was a complication, a large French freighter standing out to sea; right where Kelly needed to be, and he would soon be caught between her and the Coast Guard.
‘Well, here we are,’ Ritter said, dismissing the security guard who’d followed them like a shadow all afternoon. He pulled a ticket from his pocket. ‘First class. The booze is free, Colonel.’ They’d been able to skip passport control on the strength of an earlier phone call.
‘Thank you for your hospitality.’
Ritter chuckled. ‘Yeah, the US government’s flown you three quarters of the way around the world. I guess Aeroflot can handle the rest.’ Ritter paused and went on formally. ‘Your behavior to our prisoners was as correct as circumstances allowed. Thank you for that.’
‘It is my wish that they get home safely. They are not bad men.’
‘Neither are you.’ Ritter led him to the gate, where a large transfer vehicle waited to take him out to a brand-new Boeing 747. ‘Come back sometime. I’ll show you more of Washington.’ Ritter watched him board and turned to Voloshin.
‘A good man, Sergey. Will this injure his career?’
‘With what he has in his head? I think not.’
‘Fine with me,’ Ritter said, walking away.
They were too closely matched. The other boat had a slight advantage, since it was in the lead, and able to choose, while the cutter needed her half-knot speed advantage to draw closer so painfully slowly. It was a question of skill, really, and that, too, was down to whiskers of difference from one to the other. Oreza watched the other man slide his boat across the wake of the freighter, surfing it, really, sliding her onto the front of the ship-generated wave and riding it to port, gaining perhaps half a knot’s momentary advantage. Oreza had to admire it. He couldn’t do anything else. The man really was sailing his boat downhill as though a joke against the laws of wind and wave. But there was nothing funny about this, was there? Not with his men standing around the wheelhouse carrying loaded guns. Not with what he had to do to a friend.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Oreza snarled, easing the wheel to starboard a little. ‘Be careful with those goddamned guns!’ The other crewmen in the wheelhouse snapped the covers down on their holsters and ceased fingering their weapons.
‘He’s a dangerous man,’ the man behind Oreza said.
‘No, he isn’t, not to us!’
‘What about all the people he -‘
‘Maybe the bastards had it comin’!’ A little more throttle and Oreza slid back to port. He was at the point of scanning the waves for smooth spots, moving the forty-one-foot patrol boat a few feet left and right to make use of the surface chop and so gain a few precious yards in his pursuit, just as the other was doing. No America’s Cup race off to Newport had ever been as exciting as this, and inwardly Oreza raged at the other man that the purpose of the race should be so perverse.
‘Maybe you should let -‘
Oreza didn’t turn his head. ‘Mr Tomlinson, you think anybody else can conn the boat better’n me?’
‘No, Petty Officer Oreza,’ the Ensign said formally. Oreza snorted at the windowglass. ‘Maybe call a helicopter from the Navy?’ Tomlinson asked lamely.
‘What for, sir? Where you think he’s goin’, Cuba, maybe? I have double his bunkerage and half a knot more speed, and he’s only three hundred yards ahead. Do the math, sir. We’re alongside in twenty minutes any way you cut it, no matter how good he is.’ Treat the man with respect, Oreza didn’t say.
‘But he’s dangerous,’ Ensign Tomlinson repeated.
‘I’ll take my chances. There…’ Oreza started his slide to port now, riding through the freighter’s wake, using the energy generated by the ship to gain speed. Interesting, this is how a dolphin does it… that got me a whole knot’s worth and my hull’s better at this than his is … Contrary to everything he should have felt, Manuel Oreza smiled. He’d just learned something new about boat-handling, courtesy of a friend he was trying to arrest for murder. For murdering people who needed killing, he reminded himself, wondering what the lawyers would do about that.
No, he had to treat him with respect, let him run his race as best he could, take his shot at freedom, doomed though he might be. To do less would demean the man, and, Oreza admitted, demean himself. When all else failed there was still honor. It was perhaps the last law of the sea, and Oreza, like his quarry, was a man of the sea.
It was devilishly close. Portagee was just too damned good at driving his boat, and for that reason all the harder to risk what he’d planned. Kelly did everything he knew how. Planing Springer diagonally across the ship’s wake was the cleverest thing he’d ever done afloat, but that damned Coastie matched it, deep hull and all. Both bis engines were redlined now, and both were running hot, and this damned freighter was going just a little too fast for things. Why couldn’t Ryan have waited another ten friggin’ minutes? Kelly wondered. The control for the pyro charge was next to him. Five seconds after he hit that, the fuel tanks would blow, but that wasn’t worth a damn with a Coast Guard cutter two hundred goddamned yards back. Now what?
‘We just gained twenty yards,’ Oreza noted with both satisfaction and sorrow.
He wasn’t even looking back, the petty officer saw. He knew. He had to know. God, you’re good, the Quartermaster First Class tried to say with his mind, regretting all the needling he’d inflicted upon the man, but he had to know that it had only been banter, one seaman to another. And in running the race this way he, too, was doing honor to Oreza. He’d have weapons there, and he could have turned and fired to distract and annoy his pursuers. But he didn’t, and Portagee Oreza knew why. It would have violated the rules of a race such as this. He’d run the race as best he could, and when the time came he’d accept defeat, and there would be both pride and sadness for both men to share, but each would still have the respect of the other.