The Target Page 4

  “Stay away from the fuel tanks,” Mayo continued like a government official giving directions to brainwashed drones. “The foundations are weak, and the tanks could collapse. Not only that, the corrosion has probably left a lot of sharp, rusty edges.”

  Jake was getting more eager by the second to get to work. Still, he needed to know what was going on, especially considering that one of them might be the person who set off the explosion.

  “Other than our scientists, don’t crowd the animals.” Mayo blathered on like he didn’t care about what he was saying. Jake had the sense that he could pull out a handgun, shoot the nearest seal, and Mayo would just keep talking in the monotone of a man who for some reason felt he needed to get through his checklist. Mayo was trying to kill the human spirit with excessive rules and regulations. Jake just hoped that the buff field guide wouldn’t try to kill a man in the flesh under the curtain of fog, which was moving in slowly off the water.

  Mayo listed one danger after another. What minutes ago had seemed like a peaceful ghost town was starting to sound like a mine field. While Mayo was talking, Jake looked out at the ship, and something caught his attention. The radar antenna above the wheelhouse was smashed up, and so were the other antennas. Apparently, Mayo wasn’t telling them everything that was going on.

  Mayo said, “The seals are wild and could act aggressively if they feel threatened. If anyone is bitten, you’ll need antibiotics right away to avoid a serious infection. Stay at least ten yards away from them, obviously farther if they’re acting up. The skiff will be back here in four hours with news.” Jake wondered why Mayo didn’t mention the most important rule, which was watch your backside for a psychotic killer with a familiar face.

  “If anyone sees the caretaker,” Mayo said, “tell him I need to talk to him right away. I’m going to track down the crew from the research station. The captain thinks there around here somewhere. If anyone runs into them, tell them I need to talk to them right away.”

  Jake was glad the meeting was over. It seemed a shame to talk in a place like this anyway. Maybe it was something to do with the fog and the quiescence of the place. An amazing, stark beauty surrounded the ghostly whaling station—the rippling bay waters, the white hills, and the fresh-water stream that threaded its way down icy slopes. What was Mayo hiding?

  The passengers wandered off in small groups, but Jake stood there in the sand watching the ship, which swung at anchor in rough currents with waves that were suddenly bigger, and he noticed an Easterly breeze click up to something that could be called wind. It wasn’t much of a wind for South Georgia Island, but it was gaining strength and coming from the wrong direction.

  The group of sailors broke up and fanned out across the area. Jake was listening to a motor-like sound in the distance when he approached a young sailor, a short man with a paunch belly.

  “How the repairs going?” Jake said.

  The little guy adjusted his tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. “Better than the captain expected. Engineer says we’ll be on our way in a couple of days.”

  Jake nodded. “So you’re heading back to port then?”

  “We have to. The engineer is Jerry-rigging the repairs. For a permanent fix, we’ll need new parts.”

  “You guys just checking out the whaling station then?”

  “Yeah, man. They’re searching for another device. For now, they sent us ashore because we’re new on the crew, and they don’t know who planted explosives.” He took off his glasses and began wiping the lenses with his handkerchief. “I gotta take some pictures for my kid.”

  “Oh, yeah, this is quite a ghost town. Shackleton’s grave is around here somewhere. Be sure and get a picture of that.”

  “You mean Ernest Shackleton, the explorer?”

  “You bet. If you want, I’ll take a picture of you by his tombstone.”

  The guy started to say something, but Jake interrupted. “Wait. Be quiet for just a minute.”

  The sailor quit talking.

  “Listen,” Jake said. “What do you hear?”

  “Sounds like a boat engine.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like it’s really moving. What kind of boat do you think it is?” Jake gazed out across the water, but all he could see was the Atlas and a wall of fog out beyond it.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jake didn’t have to wait long to find out. Half a mile out, a green 30-foot gunboat soared out of the fog, riding over the choppy water at high speed. Jake noticed a mounted machine gun attached to the front of the housing near the bow. Rising from an open round hatch located just behind the gun was a man in a green jacket. The gunner’s long, flowing hair blew in the wind like a flag.

  “Help is here,” the big man said. “We lucked out. They must have –”

  As loud as a jackhammer from hell, the gunman opened fire, raking the shore.

  “Get down!” Jake yelled.

  He dove to the ground. As he did so, he watched as a burst of lead tore through the sailor’s chest. The man jerked backwards and fell to the ground.

  As the boat executed a hard curve and ripped across the bay, another barrage rattled vacant buildings. Jake heard screams beneath the hostile assault. The gunboat slowed and came up alongside the cargo ship. As Jake rolled toward the fallen sailor, he looked over and saw gunmen climbing up the Atlas’s rope ladder.

  Saving the fallen sailor looked hopeless, but Jake checked him for a pulse. He’d taken two direct shots. Jake rose and dragged the fallen man for a line of rusty old tanks. Even as he did so, the shooter on the gunboat swung his weapon around and opened fire. Jake dove behind the nearest tank, and a barrage of lead tore into his cover. When the gunner shifted his aim to another building, Jake heard a frantic voice that sounded like Ava.

  “They shot at us. They tried to kill us. Oh, my god!”

  “Shut up and calm down.” Jake recognized Talia’s voice. “Stay there.”

  As gunfire raked the shore, seals and penguins fled into the water.

  The other crewmen had all taken cover in the decrepit buildings, and quiet settled upon the station like a funeral in the wild. The only noise was the barking seals and the sound of the gunboat’s idling engine as it hovered alongside the anchored cargo ship. After a couple of minutes, Jake saw the gunmen hustle seven crewmen out onto the ship’s weather deck. The sailors were lined up along the rail and gunned down by a firing-squad. Some of them dropped to the deck. Two of them flipped backwards and dropped twenty feet into the cold bay water. Jake could not believe his eyes. He could not believe that he had just watched the assassination of a seven men, including the captain.

  The assassins climbed down the rope ladder and back onto the gunboat. As one thug threw down all the survival suits from the Atlas, others caught them in a theft which could prove disasterous to Jake and the Atlas’s crew now that they were castaways. Without them, escape from the island by open boat, already a highly-risky alternative, was made twice as dangerous. As the boat slowly motored away from the ship, an explosion blew out the wheelhouse windows and ripped open her walls and roof. Jake didn’t need to do an inspection to know that all the electronics were destroyed.

  As the gunboat motored slowly away from the ship, a voice over a loudspeaker said, “Come out onto the beach right now, and you will not be harmed.”

  “No,” Jake said. “Don’t do it.”

  The gunner unleashed another hail storm on the shore, concentrating his fire in the general area of Jake’s position. The boat accelerated, curved around, and leaped across the bay. It dropped off three gunmen over at the research facility by King Edwards Point research facility. Then it disappeared into the fog bank. Jake lay there for a moment, shaking with adrenaline. He felt sick to his stomach and wanted to vomit. He could see a sailor draped over the rail of the ship, stone dead.

  Jake was stunned. Who would have murdered a bunch of innocent sailors? Who, other than the British Royal Navy would be running gun boats around South Georgia? Obviously this was not the Royal Navy.
The Argentines had squabbled over the island in the past, but Jake doubted that those cold-blooded killers were Argentine special forces.

  The artists, scientists, and sailors among the crew began to emerge from the tattered buildings and ruins of the whaling station. Jake stood up as well and looked around at his shipmates. Nobody said a word. Every face showed confusion and shock. For thirty seconds, a choking silence squeezed the air. The castaways stared out at the ship and the dead men hanging over the rail. A couple of sailors came over and checked out the man that had been gunned down next to Jake. After checking him out, they rose and shook their head.

  “Did you know him?” Jake said.

  A super-thin bald man with a stricken face started to answer, but Len Jackson shoved him aside and said, “What difference does that make? Can’t you see he’s dead? Didn’t you see what happened to the ship? If you don’t think we’re all going to die here, you need your head examined. You really think they’re just gonna commit murder right in front of us and then leave us here? Haven’t you heard of covering your tracks? I’m looking at you, mister, and I’m looking at a dead man.”

  The thin sailor’s lip curled in disgust. “You’re loco.”

  Len turned on him. His face screwed up and his neck muscles bulged out like strained ropes. “I’ll kill you for that.”

  Jake stepped forward. “Just calm down, Len. You pushed him.”

  “I’ll do worse than that.”

  At that moment, a bizarre sensation entered Jake’s brain. He got the sense that a sea lion was approaching the shore. When he looked, there was nothing as unexpected as what he saw. It was not a sea lion. It was a scuba diver looking out of the face of a wave.

  CHAPTER 4

  To Jake, the scuba diver looked like a naval special-forces commando, an expert in maritime and underwater operations. Jake’s step-father had been a Navy SEAL, so he knew a little about them. When the scuba diver rose up out of the water, an assault rifle in his hands, Jake’s heart froze. It was almost surely a combat scuba diver or frogman. Two more emerged from the churning broth.

  “Take cover,” Jake said, sprinting toward a building. As he fled, he heard screams, and he saw all his shipmates race for safety. Seizing the moment, the three frogmen opened fire on the scattering rabble.

  As Jake entered the nearest doorway, he felt a sting like a sharp rod stabbing through his leg, and he rolled into the shadows of an abandoned repair shop. As he crawled for cover, his jeans clung to his thigh because of warm blood spreading through the material. He leaned against an old marine engine and saw through a new tear in his jeans that it was probably a flesh wound. All the blood made it look a lot worse than it was. The bullet had clipped his thigh and blown away a thumb of muscle. Sitting back, he checked to make sure his leg still worked by extending it out and then bending the knee. It worked alright, but he gritted his teeth from burning pain.

  A quick glance around the area sent a jolt of fear through his nerves. There was no way to defend this place against three commandos.

  Eagerly, Jake drew his handgun and looked through a gash in the building’s wall that reminded him of his leg. The frogmen were walking up the snowy beach on their murderous errand as if they expected no resistance. Jake saw a few of the remaining sea lions along the beach flee into the water. All three of the assassins laid into the triggers of their automatic weapons. It sounded like a battle, and Jake aimed his handgun. He shot several hollow points at the gunmen, forcing them to take cover behind half-buried ship anchors. The cover was not adequate, and it was clear that the attackers had not expected resistance. In response, they pinned Jake down with withering fire, a daunting barrage that promised death to the unfortunate. A swarm of bullets ripped through the corroded metal siding. While two laid down cover fire, the third sprinted for a better position. Jake opened fire, but missed. Through a broken-out window on his left, he saw movement.

  Now the third man sprung a fatal storm with his assault rifle, and Jake dove behind an engine lathe. Looking out a breech in the siding, he saw the other frogmen rise, but then drop again when someone else shot at them. Because Jake was out of bullets, he was thankful that someone else from his boat was packing, but he was also surprised.

  Who else from his ship had a gun? he wondered.

  Jake slammed in a fresh clip, but he was still in trouble. The third frogman stepped into the repair shop. His dive-suit hood was pulled back, revealing his black hair and an ear that was half gone. He squeezed off long bursts with his weapon, and bullets pinged off the heavy equipment as Jake ducked for cover. He answered using his pistol like a gas handle, but the shooter got off unleaded as he slipped behind an old boiler. As the shooter executed a tactical reload, Jake charged him. When his shoulder touched the frogman, the man’s feet lifted up off the ground, and his back slammed into two marine diesel engines stacked one atop the other. The frogman hit the ground and dropped his assault rifle, but he got his fingers around his pistol.

  Jake’s hand seized the frogman’s wrist just as the man fired a shot. Holding the frogman’s wrist in the sand, Jake elbowed the assassin’s face. The sound of crunching bone cracked in the cold air. Despite any pain he may have felt, the frogman delivered a stunning blow to Jake’s spine, causing him to lurch in reflex.

  The frogman followed up this first blow by trying to roll Jake off his shooting arm by pushing him at the same time he pulled with his arm. This almost worked, but Jake brought his elbow down on the attacker’s wrist. As the assassin’s fingers opened up, Jake stripped the gun away and rolled clear. Just as he gained his feet and brought the gun up, the frogman slammed a bar into his hand. The pistol flew, landing in the sand. The second blow caught Jake on the back.

  While falling, he heard gunfire down the beach.

  As he hit the sand and rolled against a pile of big gears, the commando swung the bar like an axe. Jake rolled again. When the bar hit the sand next to him, Jake grabbed the end. Pulling down hard, he kicked the attacker’s knee and watched him collapse. When Jake dove into the fight, he and the assassin struggled for bloody victory. The frogman flashed a knife in his right hand and stabbed at his victim. Jake deflected the wrist, but the frogman came right back with another stab. Jake grabbed the wrist this time and felt pain shoot up his hand from a sprained thumb, but the sensation passed quickly, and adrenaline overcame the minor injury.

  Jake slammed his knee into the frogman’s crotch and crawled free of his superhuman attacker. He snagged the stray handgun, but the frogman rolled away and came up shooting.

  He had another pistol!

  Jake sprinted through the fog into the next building, but then remembered the assault rifle. Standing by the door and behind a big steel grate, Jake ejected the clip from his newly-acquired handgun and verified that he had no bullets remaining. Slamming the clip back into the hand grip, he stood stone still and listened, hearing nothing. Wild thoughts flashed through his mind. The frogman was a professional assassin who was now moving in for the kill against a maritime history professor. The odds were heavily stacked against him. He just hoped Stuart’s training would pay off. Jake glanced around what looked like an old blacksmith’s shop. He saw a forge and three anvils. Four hooks hung by chains from the ceiling beams.

  Jake leaned against the big steel grate. Even though the bullet had only glazed his leg, the muscle was flinching spasmodically and the whole thigh throbbed. He heard more shots down the beach—pistol shots answering bursts from assault rifles. Someone was still shooting back at the other commandos.

  A movement flashed past an opening in the next building. Jake’s legs and shoulder muscles tensed. He gasped from sharp leg pain and wiped drool off his chin. Bursts of automatic fire punctured the metal siding. The big steel grate he was behind saved his life.

  The sound of footsteps told him that the frogman was not only alive but moving fast. Jake picked up a metal rod and ran to the back door, favoring his right leg. He listened to the frogman’s footsteps. The assassin wa
s making his move. When he came through the back door, Jake swung his pole. The metal shaft crashed into his chest, and he fell backwards out the door.

  Jake went after him. Just outside by an old boat and a massive propeller half buried in the sand and snow, Jake swung the pole. The frogman stepped in close, turned, and jerked the shaft out of Jake’s hands. Jake swooped up a block-and-tackle, and ice shavings fell from the ropes. As the frogman came at him, Jake swung the block-and-tackle by its cable rope and deflected the blow, but the frogman spun and attacked him from the other side. Jake took a hard blow in the shoulder that nearly rendered his arm useless. The frogman glanced at Jake’s blood-soaked pant leg, grinned, and jabbed Jake’s chest, knocking him backwards. Jake kept his balance, but pain mushroomed in his thigh.

  He scrambled behind the boat, which was leaning against a four-foot pile of anchor chain. When he glanced back, he realized the frogman wasn’t there. Jake heard footsteps up on the deck of the small boat. The frogman appeared above him, swinging his pole downward. Jake sprung in close to the boat’s hull, making the frogman’s swing awkward and off mark. Jake swung the block-and-tackle upward and hit the frogman’s face. Losing his balance and slipping, the assassin shrieked and fell backwards off the old shore boat’s deck. Jake ran around the bow, but the fight was over. The frogman lay impaled on the sharp edge of a half-buried propeller, the big rusted blade having sliced into his skull. Jake turned away quickly.

  He skulked along the back of the building, looking for another.

  CHAPTER 5

  Finding themselves fired on when they thought they were attacking an unarmed crew, the two other frogmen withdrew. They had slim cover, and to approach the ruins would require them to cross thirty yards of open beach, which would have been dangerous given that two people on the crew had cover, a gun, and a clear line of sight. The commandos took turns laying down cover fire while they retreated back into the bay. No sooner had they sunk below the surface when Jake was upon the fallen frogman, stripping off his dry suit. Jake pulled the suit on and jogged for the man’s scuba gear, which was left near the water’s edge. Hoisting on the buoyancy control device and air tank, Jake donned the mask. He was waist deep and lunging in the frigid water when he shoved the regulator into his mouth and dove in, shoving his toes into the assassin’s fins.