Page 98

CHAPTER 97

WE REFUELED IN Mbala, and again in Dar es Salaam. We waited at the airfield there for nightfall. Now we were out over open water, heading north toward the Arabian Sea. Kira stayed low, barely brushing the waves. We could see the lights from oil tankers and cargo ships glowing the distance.

“What am I looking for?” I asked, scanning the horizon.

“An invisible yacht,” said Kira.

I glanced over to look at her in the glow of the cockpit lights. One of the young mine workers had donated a tank top and a pair of gym shorts to replace Kira’s bloody clothes. I could see the puncture wounds on her thigh below the hem. The bruises looked red and angry on her pale skin.

“How’s the leg?” I asked.

Kira shrugged. Since the day I first met her, she’d never talked about injuries. Never complained about pain. She just sucked it up. “If it was poison,” she said, “I’d already be dead.”

I felt a lurch as she dropped the airspeed. In a few seconds, we were hovering over the water like a huge dragonfly. Kira pointed through the cabin bubble into the distance. “There.”

The moon was casting bright reflections on the water. For a few seconds, I couldn’t see anything else. I shifted in my seat and leaned forward. I squinted. Wait. Yes! I could make it out now—a faint unnatural outline blending with the sea and sky, about a half mile away. The camouflage was nearly foolproof, especially at night.

“That’s the Prizrak ,” said Kira. “Cal Savage’s ghost.”

I felt a bitter taste rising in my throat. I thought about the assassins who tried to kill us in Chicago and the murdered boys on the beach. I now realized that it was Cal Savage who had sent Aaron Vail to find me. I thought about being dragged and nearly drowned behind that speedboat. I thought about what Cal Savage had done to Kira, kidnapping her, then sending her off to one of the deadliest places on the planet. All to serve his maniacal plans. Who knows how many deaths he’d been responsible for along the way?

“Are you ready?” Kira asked.

I nodded. Eighteen hours ago, I didn’t even know Cal Savage existed. Now, relative or not, I wanted to wipe him off the face of the earth. The world would be better for it.

“Is there a helipad?” I asked.

Kira shook her head. “They’d shoot us down before we even got close.”

She was right. It’s hard to sneak up on somebody in a helicopter, even in the dark. But we were now hovering over the sea, with no land in sight. What did she have in mind?

“Grab the duffel,” she said.

I reached behind my seat and pulled out the plastic-wrapped bag. I felt the chopper descending even closer to the water.

“Open your door,” Kira ordered.

Was she kidding? I yanked the handle and let the door fly open. The chopper tilted hard to the right.

“Jump!” shouted Kira. We were banked so far over, I had to look up to see her. She jabbed her finger toward the open door. “Now!”

“What about you?” I shouted.

“I’ll be right behind you!” she shouted back.

I pulled off my headphones and held the bag to my chest with one hand. I grabbed the sack with my money and cutlass in the other. I unstrapped and took a deep breath. I slid out of the seat feetfirst and dropped about twenty feet straight into the water and down into the darkness. As I kicked my way back up, I worked my shoes loose and let them drop. Too much deadweight.

As soon as I resurfaced, I saw the chopper hovering off to my left, about twenty yards away. The engine was laboring, and waves were slapping the skids. Kira was ditching! Suddenly, the nose tilted forward and the rotor hit the water, throwing up a huge wall of spray. When it cleared, the fuselage was bent and the cabin was flooded and sinking.

“Kira!!”

The cockpit was almost totally under now. The cabin lights were sparking and blinking out. I started kicking toward the wreck. Then I felt something grab my leg. I whipped around.

Kira surfaced right behind me and spit out a stream of seawater. “Let’s go, Doc,” she said. “Beautiful night for a swim.”