He tugged off his work boots and unclipped his big flippers, pulling one onto each foot. In the gloom of the deep water he could still see his painted BUDs numbers, Class 242, right on the instep. Which was, more or less, when the bullets began to fly.
A line of guards now in formation at the low wall, under the personal orders of Pierre Savary, opened fire at the surface of the water. Someone was shouting,
“I thought I saw him! Right there, sir. Something went into the water. I’m sure it was a person.”
They pumped round after round into the harbor, and the bullets zinged deep, leaving sharp, straight, white lines in the water. But they were losing velocity all the way. By the time they reached Mack Bedford’s area he could have caught them with one hand.
Savary ordered his men to fan out along the harbor walls, right to the entrance that led to the mighty Loire River, and to keep firing no matter what. The problem was, the guards were strangers to great waters. They were men who were essentially out of their element. And they were up against an underwater machine named Mack Bedford.
He kicked to the floor of the harbor and found the toolbox, which he clipped shut and shoved down into the silt and sand. There was little tidal movement down here in the enclosed waters, and he left it, a slightly exposed metallic object, unlikely to be disturbed by men searching for his body.
Then he held out his attack board and kicked around to face the south, checking the board and swerving until the compass aimed him southwest, out toward the harbor entrance. With the bullets still flying, but oblivious to the shouts and commands of the security forces above, Mack stayed deep and kicked, slow and steady, directly to this inner gateway to the great river.
Any long swim conducted by the SEALs requires colossal discipline. For starters there can be no gasping, forcing, rushing, or panicking. That way the Draeger will run out of gas in about half the time it was meant to last. Mack’s Mk-V model had a cylinder that held thirteen cubic feet of oxygen at two thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. On land it weighed a hefty thirty-five pounds, but it was weightless in the water.
The trick was to breath normally, nothing erratic, no stress or adrenaline. That way this particular design provides recycled, breathable air for almost four hours. Mack did not think he would need it for that long. The Loire estuary was two miles directly across, and in the big BUDs swimming pool at Coronado that would have taken approximately forty minutes with flippers. A trained Olympic swimmer can knock off fifteen hundred meters in under fifteen minutes. But the second mile would take a lot longer.
And this huge tidal flow, swirling out of the heartland of central France, had about as much to do with a swimming pool as a popgun to a guided missile. Mack’s diagonal course to the far bank, on the far side of the Saint-Nazaire Bridge, would be one-three-five, southeast, and the distance possibly two and a half miles, maybe more. The true distance would depend on the outward pull of the tide that would be doing its level best to drag Mack into the Atlantic.
The ballpark numbers for a long-distance swim in tidal waters by a U.S. Navy SEAL were approximately ten powerful double kicks per minute, each one taking the swimmer ten feet, or one hundred feet per minute, fifty minutes for a mile. But those distances could vary. As every seaman knows, it’s possible to run an engine at five knots and remain dead still over the ocean floor while the tide rages past.
Mack had no reason to think it would be that bad at the mouth of the Loire, but all big rivers have variable degrees of “pull,” especially on the ebb, as the Loire now was. In fact, low tide would be around six thirty, which meant the last part of Mack’s swim would be in slack water, which would be one heck of a respite.
For the rest of the way, he would use the time-honored SEAL rhythm—
BIG DOUBLE KICK, BAM! BAM!
. . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four—
BIG DOUBLE KICK
. . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four—kick and glide . . . kick and glide . . . and hope to hell he wasn’t standing still.
The bullets continued to rain down on the surface of the water. Guards were shouting and shooting. First they saw something, then they didn’t. Pierre Savary had been informed about the death of Raul Declerc. And it seemed so bizarre, less than one day after the three of them had dined together at the Foche residence, making their elaborate plans, plans that now lay shattered on the blacktop of Saint-Nazaire Maritime.
Detective Inspector Paul Ravel had arrived from out of the blue at Pierre Savary’s side. “Things are changing fast,” the chief told the man he had promoted on the beach only thirty-six hours previously.
“Not so much for me,” replied Ravel. “I came here in search of one murderer who had just killed two civilians at Val André. Right now I’m still looking for the guy, except he’s now killed at least five more men. The only real difference is, I’ve got a much better idea where he is—either in the water, down there somewhere, or hiding along the wharves.”
Pierre Savary looked up at him sharply. “What d’you mean, five more—surely only two?”
“Nossir. We have three guards brutally murdered on the sixth floor of the building, shocking wounds, two caved-in skulls, one slit throat.”
“Jesus Christ. How d’you know?”
“I just saw them. Lying on the floor in the room where he fired from, before he jumped.”
“How do you know he jumped?”
“There’s no other way down. Not unless he was one of the security guards and just walked out with his mates.”
“I’ll tell you what, Paul, that was one helluva jump. But he won’t get far, and you still think he’s definitely in the harbor, right?”
“Not definitely, sir. He was. But he might have gotten out. Could be just about anywhere now.”
“What’s your best guess, Paul?”
“I don’t think he’s still in the water, sir. I think he just used it for a soft landing. But the coast guard boats are going out right now, with radar. And if he’s there he’s finished. But this cat tends to stay one jump in front of the pack. I’m betting he’s out, on dry land, getting changed, ready to run, or maybe get picked up by whoever hired him.”
“D’you think he’ll kill again?”
“That all depends, sir. Depends if anyone gets in his way.”
Savary decided this was a waterfront situation, and he summoned the Saint-Nazaire police, the officer commanding the national security forces, and the coast guard captain conducting the seaward operations. He advised everyone to concentrate on the land on the north shore, the docks, jetties, and hulls. “This guy is trying to get out of the water on this side of the river,” he said. “That’s where we’re going to catch him. That’s where he is.”
More than one thousand trained men began to make their way to the outer edges of the yard, waiting and preparing for the black-bearded Gunther Marc Roche to emerge from the deep.
Mack was essentially missing all the strife. He never heard the two ambulances come racing into the shipyard, sirens wailing. And he never heard the audible gasp of the crowd, as Monsieur Henri Foche was lifted on a stretcher into the rear doors, with a white sheet covering his body and face. Many of those who could not get close still thought he had merely been taken ill.
When Claudette made her way out from behind the limousine, her entire outfit, yellow Chanel, was covered in blood. Women screamed. And the shipyard’s Klaxon fire alarm blared out their ship’s emergency call—
BAHAA . . . BAHAA . . . BAHAA!
With three separate forces in full operation—the local police, the national guard, and the coast guard—there was the inevitable uproar, dissent, and too many chiefs. Bodies were being carried out of the warehouse, someone had spotted the killer, someone else swore to God he was still in the harbor.
One commander ordered his men to the roof of the warehouse for the better vantage point; Savary insisted every gun in the shipyard head for the harbor entrance, through which any swimmer must pass, if he hadn’t already. The coast guard was unused to homicide and demanded formal orders from the police to launch every patrol boat in the area, and for the cutters in the near range of the Atlantic to head up the estuary.
Pierre, in his soul, believed the assassin was still in the water, even if he might be trying to get out. He told the coast guard commander, “Get every small boat into the harbor, or just beyond, as fast as possible. Then keep combing the north shore. He’s got to land somewhere. He’s not a fucking fish, right?”
“No, sir. He’s not a fish. And we’ll keep the security radar sweeping the surface at all times. Helicopters launch in fifteen minutes. We got three. North shore and harbor, sir?”
“I think so. But tell me, Commander, could he get to the other side?”
“If he’d had a fast boat waiting, he could, I suppose. But he didn’t. We were sweeping the surface within three minutes of Monsieur Foche’s death. We have permanent radar projected out there. The navy has always insisted.”
“I actually meant could anyone swim across?”
“Swim! Oh, no, not swim. I don’t think anyone could do that, not without a safety boat running alongside. People have drowned out there, or been pulled out to sea by the tide.”
Pierre Savary stared across the broad waters of the estuary, all the way to the distant shore. “Well,” he said, “how about the greatest swimmer on earth? An Olympic champion, with a safety boat, no tide? How long would it take him?”
“Well, it’s all of two miles in a dead straight line. Hard to imagine anyone crossing right here, where it’s so wide, in an hour. I guess it would take an hour and a half . . . I don’t know . . . maybe a little more. Swimmers get slower as they go, right? Not faster. If you ask me that swim could not be done without a couple of large scuba tanks and an electric motor.”
“I suppose so. And that means he’s got to be still here, either in the harbor or along the jetties.”
“If he’s in the harbor, sir, he’s dead. Because he’s been in there for at least twelve minutes. If you ask me, we’re already looking for a body.”
Mack, swimming toward the outer harbor wall, was unhurried, still thirty feet below the surface, conserving his oxygen on a journey that basically had not even started. With no wide, flailing, or driving arms to disturb the water around him, he moved as smoothly as a long black eel. His arms were pole-straight out in front, gripping the attack board, his Draeger released no bubbles, his gunmetal-gray underwater goggles made no glint in the water, and the turbo charge of the SEAL flippers made no swirl, no ripple, like the flicking tail of a cruising tiger shark.
The numbers on the attack board read:
Time 1658. Compass two-two-five. GPS 47.17 North 2.12 West.
At almost five Mack knew the sun would be sinking in the west
,
and he crossed the channel, under the gunfire, still deep, seeking the western wall of the harbor, where the shadows would be greatest. When the looming concrete darkness appeared immediately to his right, he came four degrees left, and moved forward, almost touching the wall, kicking along under the eyes but out of the sight line of the guards.
Above him the bright-white streaks of the gunfire were intense as he reached the exit. He guessed the sky had clouded over, because he could just discern the flashing red light up and to his left. The water looked cleaner now, bigger, clearer, and he made his turn, a full 86 degrees left—in his old SEAL mode,
come eight-six red to course one-three-five.
Ahead of him was the longest, hardest swim he’d ever attempted. People can die in currents like this, just get swept away, out to sea, never to be seen again. Mack knew the danger. He’d been preparing himself mentally for a long swim for the biggest part of three weeks, somehow to get away from the datum, somewhere, probably across a shipyard estuary.
He’d been living it, reliving it. He would never have attempted it without his attack board, that supreme handheld electronic navigator that had saved the lives of a thousand SEALs. The board would show him the way, make sure he stayed on the right course, correct him, guide him, warn him when he was losing the battle.
And deep beneath the tidal sweep of the Loire, he caught the bright black-silver flash of an Atlantic turbot cruising the estuary. And it reminded him of Tommy; Tommy the fisherman, Tommy the catcher. Always Tommy. And it galvanized him for the swim, just the thought of his little boy. . . .
I’m coming home, kid. Trust me, I’m coming home.