The Shift: Book II of the Wildfire Saga (26 page)

"Here we go," he said.
 
He cast off the small boat.

"
See you at the rendezvous point,"
said Charlie.

Cooper waved them off before turning to face the abandoned boat shed.
 
"Sparky, let's move it."

"
Oscar Mike."
 

Cooper moved back to his own boat, went down below to check on Mike, and came back up to find his sniper scaling the boat shed’s roof access ladder.
 
Cooper could see through his night vision monocular the bloodstained bandage wrapped around Sparky’s leg as he limped.
 

Sparky shouldered his long-barreled sniper rifle, grabbed the last of the supply packs and worked his way down the steps to the dock.
 
Cooper took the bag of supplies and offered a hand aboard.
 

As Cooper threw off the last of the dock lines, he heard a splash.
 
Sparky had dropped the portside forward facing-window from the cabin into the water.
 
"
There, that's better."

"How's your field of view?" asked Cooper as he gave one final push against the dock and felt the boat move into the current.

"
Not bad.
 
I’ve had worse
."
 

Cooper moved into the cabin, careful to bring his steering guides and keep them in hand.
 
The cabin was sealed in darkness when he secured the hatch.
 
Starlight illuminated a small column through the open window.
 
He watched as Sparky slid the barrel of his rifle through the opening and padded the weapon with some rags so it could rest on the window sill without making any noise.
 
Sparky removed his HAHO helmet with a soft hiss.
 
He put it on the floor next to him and switched on the night vision scope of his rifle before he brought it to his eye, scanning downriver.

Cooper was glad Sparky had survived the Great Pandemic—it was one less thing he needed to worry about on their little pleasure cruise.
 
He took one last look through the porthole, decided that he couldn't see well enough to steer through the small opening, and sighed.
 
He relished the cool night air as it caressed his face.
 
Cooper settled into position and got comfortable, letting his body get used to the gentle rock and sway of the boat as it was carried along on the current.

“Make sure you give me good directions.”

"Never sailed blind before, huh?" muttered the sniper, keeping his eye on the scope.

Cooper grinned in the darkness.
 
"First time for everything… Been sayin’ that a lot lately," he said thoughtfully.

"Got that bridge coming up, thousand yards."

Cooper keyed his squad transmission frequency.
 
"Jax, you got the bridge?"

"Eyes on target.
 
No movement, no lights."

"You got eyes on the other boats?
 
Everything still holding together?"

"
Yeah
," whispered Jax from the lead boat.
 
"
The others are nicely spaced out.
 
Looks like it could've been an accident.
 
Everybody's adrift.
 
Looks real."

"Charlie?" asked Cooper.

"
We're good to go
," replied Charlie.

"Jax just passed under the bridge," muttered the sniper.

"One down…" whispered Cooper.

A few tense minutes later, when Cooper's boat drifted past the bridge, he was able to relax.
 
So far, things were going well.
 
They had seen no sign of Germans on the riverbank.
 
Although they had heard the occasional siren off in the distance thus far, they had been completely undetected.
 

Cooper was cautiously optimistic that his scheme might actually work.
 
There were nine boats in all, lazily floating at random down the Mystic River.
 
To the casual observer, Cooper hoped that it looked like the boats had slipped their moorings while unattended and drifted away in the night.

"Coop, man, we got a problem
…" whispered Jax.

Damn
.
 
“What is it?" asked Cooper.
 
He sat up and gripped the steering ropes tighter.

"Jax and Swede approaching the bridge with lights.
 
I got movement on the bridge, 800 yards,” reported Sparky.

Cooper admired the coolness in the sniper’s voice.
 
It seemed nothing could faze the man.

"
Looks like the Germans spotted the first boat
…" whispered Jax.
 
"I'm watching them through the porthole now—they're all pointing down into the river.”

Cooper heard the echo of automatic gunfire.
 
"Jax!"
 
He hissed.

"
We’re okay
," Jax whispered.
 
“
They’re shooting at the lead boat.
 
They put a couple rounds into the second one, too.
 
I think they're giving up.
 
I swear I heard someone laughing
," he said.

"Confirm that," said Sparky.
 
"Looks like they're moving back and forth across the bridge, watching the boats.
 
Somebody walked out of a vehicle parked at the north end of the bridge when those guys started shooting.
 
Got to be the CO.”
 
Sparky clucked his tongue.
 
"Officers always gotta spoil all the fun…"

"I'm sitting right here," muttered Cooper.
 

"
Here we go
…" said Jax.
 

"They’re under the bridge," said Sparky.

A moment later: "
We’re on the other side,"
said Jax.
 
"
They're not bothering to watch anymore, looks like they're paying attention upriver now…"

"
Approaching the bridge
," whispered Charlie.

"Annnnd, they’re on the other side…" muttered Sparky a few moments later.

A string of three empty boats passed under the bridge before Cooper approached.
 
Sparky slowly removed his rifle from the porthole and lifted one of the seat cushions into place and held it there.
 
"
Now
we’re blind," he said.

Cooper closed his eyes and counted to ten, feeling the slight tug of the strings in his hands as the river massaged the boat’s rudder.
 
He let the rudder play in the current to make sure that the boat looked like it was drifting haphazardly, but he was leery of letting the strings go completely slack.
 
It would do no good if their boat slammed into the side of one of the bridge pylons.
 
He just hoped they were far enough out in the Mystic to stay away from any structures.

As they passed under the bridge, Cooper heard a soldier hoot with laughter.
 
Another voice replied in German.
 
The words were indistinct, but the meaning was clear: they were bored, tired, and stuck out on a bridge in the middle of the night, thousands of miles from home.
 
Their only entertainment had been to watch a few empty boats bob past on the river.

"
I got eyes on the harbor
," whispered Jax.
 
"
We’re in the home stretch, boys.”

A moment later, Charlie's voice chimed in: "
Boat two just passed the last bend—I got eyes on the harbor.
 
Jax, you got a German patrol on the south bank, parallel to your boat
."

"Everybody stay frosty," whispered Cooper.
 
They were well out of earshot of the Germans on the bridge, but he still felt nervous talking in a normal voice.
 
Sparky slowly pulled the cushion away from the porthole and replaced his rifle.

"Oh," he said.

“‘Oh’?"
 
Cooper said.
 

“Oh—” began Sparky.

"There's no time for ‘oh’, here… What do you mean, ‘
oh’
?"

"We're approaching the bend in the river—I can just about see around it.
 
Someone just got out of a vehicle in that German patrol Charlie spotted.
 
They’re shining lights on Jax’s boat."

"Jax, whatever you do, don't pull on the strings —"

"I got to, man!
 
We can hear the hull scraping bottom.
 
I gotta get us out of the shallows or we’re going to get stuck."

"Shit," said Sparky a moment later.
 
"I think Jerry spotted the string moving."

A rifle barked and echoed across the water an instant before Jax’s voice broke squelch.
 
"
Taking fire!
 
Boat one, is taking fire!
"

"You got a shot?" asked Cooper.

"Yep."
 
The sniper rifle bucked in Sparky’s hands—even though it was suppressed, in the confined space of the little boat cabin, it sounded like a cannon.
 
The rifle fire downriver stopped instantly.
 
"I think they know we're here…" he said as he shifted aim.

Gunfire erupted from the bridge behind them.
 
Cooper could hear bullets smacking the water just aft of their boat.
 
Through the ventilation slits in the hatch, he saw spotlights sweep over the water around them.

"Charlie, get your ass out of here!"

"
Roger that
," was Charlie's calm response.

Cooper kicked the hatch open and saw muzzle flashes in the distance light up the bridge.
 
There were a lot more soldiers than he’d thought.
 
He dropped the steering lines, turned the engine over, and shoved the throttle forward as the engine came to life with throaty roar.
 
He heard the rumble of engines as Jax and Charlie powered up their own boats.
 

Cooper grabbed his night vision monocular from the floor.
 
The world went from coal black to light green.
 
About 200 yards out, he saw the final bend as the river approached downtown Boston and the harbor beyond.
 
Charlie's boat vanished around the bend and left a glowing wake.
 

Cooper’s own boat found its plane and lifted up out of the water, roaring downriver.
 
The powerful engine propelled it forward, adding its own speed to that of the river current.
 
The wind became a roar in his ears that easily muted the increasingly distant popping of the German rifles.

As they swerved around the final bend in the river, Cooper saw German forces along the riverbank begin to approach the river.
 
Only a few were firing, most looked like they were trying to figure out what all the excitement was about.
 

Up ahead, Jax’s boat made a beeline for the open harbor as its two powerful engines began to pull the streamlined craft away from Cooper.
 
Both Jax and Charlie swerved in and around the bobbing decoy boats and left wide glowing wakes for Cooper to follow.

Cooper felt the hull of his boat throb down below as they began to hit chop.
 
He spun the wheel hard and called out, "Hang on!"
 

The boat lurched in the water to starboard and Cooper spun the wheel back to port.
 
The boat answered like the finely tuned vehicle it was, swerved and made a graceful ‘S’ pattern sending spray high into the air behind them as bullets peppered the water all around.
 
Cooper
 
maneuvered their boat to be on the far side of one of the decoy boats.
 
The Germans opened fire as Cooper roared past.
 

He continued to swerve back and forth across the width of the river, paying careful attention to the two German trucks racing alongside the frontage road on the south bank.
 
The lead truck fired its guns harmlessly.
 
A moving target on the water proved too much for the gunner to hit from a moving vehicle with a roof-mounted gun.
 

Cooper swerved around the final decoy boat and slammed the throttle wide open, laying a course for the middle of the river.
 
Up ahead, he saw Jax’s boat slip past the last of the wharfs and into the open waters of Boston Harbor.
 
Spotlights flicked on from one of the warehouses along the last wharf as Charlie's boat approached.

"Yeah, they definitely know we're here!"
called out Charlie.
 
He had to yell over the background noise of his engines.

"Just keep going!" said Cooper.
 
He clenched his jaw as he saw muzzle flashes light up along the south side of the wharfs.
 
One was especially bright.
 
Somebody had a large caliber machine gun down there.
 
Its slower rate of fire created big enough splashes from the rounds impacting the water to be seen with the naked eye in the darkness.

"Sparky, can you do anything?"

“Not from down here.”
 
The sniper emerged from the cabin and braced himself against one of the safety lines on the cockpit’s starboard side.
 
He brought his riflescope to his eye and extended the spring-loaded bipod legs.
 
Cooper tried to keep the boat as steady as possible while he kept an eye on his sniper.

The noise of the wind rushing past his face, the roar of the engine, the crack of Sparky's rifle, and the incoming rounds from the riverbank made such a cacophony of noise that Cooper didn't bother trying to talk.
 
He focused on driving the boat and getting to safety.

Sparks at the bow of their boat flew into Cooper's vision and momentarily blinded him.
 
"Boat three, taking fire!
 
We’re taking damage!" he called out.
 
The sound of the German rounds impacting the fiberglass side of the boat crackled like thunder in his ears.
 
Somebody had a big damn gun on the riverbank.
 
More importantly, they had good aim.