Siege at Tiamat Bluff Read online

  The barracuda suddenly swerved hard to starboard, right at Flipper.

  Bannon couldn’t veer out of the way without risking running into McMurphy on his starboard side.

  Instead, he called out a warning to his friend, then shoved the handsticks forward and the foot pedals down, forcing Flipper into a steep dive. Like an airplane, the craft could pitch, roll, and yaw. Submerged, Bannon pulled the right handstick back and kept the left one forward, executing a roll, twisting away from the barracuda as it sped into his space overhead.

  Flipper jerked violently. Her tail clipped by the reckless watercraft above him.

  Tossed violently in the cockpit, Bannon was held in his seat by the five-point canvas racing harness he wore. He rolled with the impact, twisted Flipper down and away before pulling back on the handsticks and pedals and surging the dolphin-like craft toward the surface.

  At a steep angle, Flipper breached the surface and completed a 360-degree barrel roll before splashing back down into the water, sending a cascading fan of water into the air. A maneuver that was sure to please the spectators crowding the beach.

  That was the furthest concern from Bannon’s mind.

  Anger bubbled up inside him at the recklessness of the barracuda’s pilot. He urged Flipper into a tight turn, returning her to the racecourse lane, but with the intention of chasing after the barracuda. The race be damned.

  But in doing so, he saw a bad situation that had suddenly turned worse.

  Bannon watched in stunned silence as the barracuda leaped into the air, timing its jump to match McMurphy’s own bounding twist, executed in an attempt to avoid a collision.

  But without success.

  In midair, like two battling rams, the barracuda crashed into Orca.

  The crafts’ flanks slammed into each other just forward of their dorsal fins. Made of lightweight Kevlar, the watercrafts’ hulls shredded upon impact, making a terrible renting noise.

  As designed, Orca’s rear section split open and detached, jettisoning the fuel tank to avoid an explosion. What remained of Orca rolled and splashed back into the water, belly up. McMurphy’s canopy still open.

  With its forward hull cracked and broken, the barracuda wobbled as it sped away, veering north, far off the racecourse.

  Bannon angled Flipper toward Orca’s overturned cockpit section. He counted the seconds before the neutrally buoyant craft rolled, automatically righting itself.

  When it did, the open, waterlogged cockpit was empty.

  McMurphy was gone!

  CHAPTER TWO

  The United States Secretary of Homeland Security Elizabeth Grayson sat in the plush beige chair in the senior staff meeting room looking out the window of Air Force One. Located over the forward portion of the wing, she could see the ground thirty-five thousand feet below through the partial breaks in the low cloud cover. The flight, a relatively short hour and a half, from Washington, D.C. to Boston’s Logan Airport, hadn’t been in Grayson’s plans until two hours earlier.

  Her Chief of Staff, James Williamson, had burst into her office, flush-faced and breathless, with an urgent, last-minute message from the Oval Office. POTUS had requested her presence on the flight to Massachusetts. Wheels up in thirty minutes.

  When you serve at the pleasure of the President a request is never simply a request. And never not to be granted. Still, it left her more than a bit annoyed and after a half-hour into the flight, she’d still not had an audience with President David Kingsley. When she’d made inquiries with Amal Haddad, POTUS’s Chief of Staff, about why Kingsley wanted to see her, Amal shrugged and said she had no idea.

  Grayson believed her.

  Over the last three years, the two women had formed, if not a friendship, a close professional bond. Though Haddad was twenty years Grayson’s junior they viewed the world in similar ways and had worked well together since Kingsley named the Lebanese-born attorney to be his Chief of Staff.

  If Haddad told her she didn’t know what Kingsley wanted, then it meant the President hadn’t shared that information with her. A rarity.

  And thus, further piquing Grayson’s curiosity.

  She declined a drink offer from the steward and went back to gazing out the window.

  Ten minutes later, Haddad tapped on the open door. She wore a rose-colored pantsuit that complimented her dark skin nicely. “He’s ready for you now, Liz.”

  Alone, they were on a first-name basis.

  Grayson got up and smoothed her skirt. “Thank you, Amal.”

  She followed the woman to the nose of the plane where the President’s office was located under the aircraft’s flight deck and crew lounge. The office, along with the President’s suite, was in the forward most compartments. Behind that was a fully-functional medical bay, complete with an operating theater staffed by a doctor and nurses anytime the President traveled. Further back was the dining room and galley that could prepare up to two thousand meals, then staff and secretarial quarters. The midsection held the guest quarters, and finally, in the rear of the plane, the press corps.

  Grayson had noticed they were traveling unusually light with only a minimal number of support staff and only a handful of the regular press personnel were onboard.

  A Secret Service agent, a large black man named Franklin Gregg, stood stoically guarding the President’s office door. The Secret Service fell under the umbrella of Homeland Security and as such reported ultimately to Grayson.

  “Good to see you again, Agent Gregg,” Grayson said.

  A year earlier there’d been a specific and credible threat made against her life. Gregg had led the temporary protection detail assigned to her, in addition to the bodyguard she already had, ordered by the President against her wishes. Luckily, that had been as far as it went and the detail was pulled a few months later. Grayson had been impressed with the young man’s professionalism and good nature.

  “And you, ma’am,” he said with just the slightest trace of a smile.

  Haddad knocked on the office door.

  From inside, Kingsley’s Boston Harvard voice called out, “Come.”

  Gregg opened the door. Haddad stepped inside, and Grayson joined her.

  Agent Gregg pulled the door closed behind them.

  Inside the presidential office, Haddad said, “Madam Secretary Grayson, sir.”

  David Kingsley sat behind his desk in a dress shirt and red power tie, his sleeves rolled up his arms. He leaned so far back in his chair as to be practically laying down, his feet propped up on the desk with his shoes off. Wearing gold toe socks. A computer tablet on his lap. This was a pose he’d never take in the Oval Office. His reverence for the office was legendary. He never stepped into the office in anything less than a business suit and even then, rarely took his suit jacket off.

  Kingsley looked up from the computer tablet and remove his reading glasses. “Oh, Liz. Great.”

  He plopped his feet to the floor and sat up.

  “Would you like me to stay, Mr. President?” Haddad asked.

  “No, Amal. We’re good. Thanks. Go get some rest before we arrive in Boston. I suspect it’s going to be a long night.”

  “Yes, sir.” She backed out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  Kingsley got up and crossed the room. “Sorry to shanghai you from Washington last minute like that.” At the wet bar, he asked, “Drink?”

  “Only if you’re having one, sir.”

  “I am.”

  “Then a bourbon neat.”

  He poured the drinks from a crystal decanter into two matching crystal glasses. Three fingers, he dropped two ice cubes in his. He handed Grayson hers neat. “Come. Sit.”

  He directed her to the plush brown leather sofas that lined two-thirds of the room. They sat.

  “What are we drinking to?”

  He shrugged, swirling his glass. The ice rattled. “I just needed a drink.”

  Grayson received the President’s itinerary daily, so she knew he was going to Boston for a pol
itical fundraiser that was doubling as his official re-election campaign kickoff. A college professor and successful manufacturing CEO before his foray into the political arena. He’d twice served as Governor of Connecticut before his successful long-shot race for President four years earlier. Grayson knew he wanted a second term, and this was to be the beginning of it.

  She asked, “Why am I here, David?”

  He smiled. “Always right to the point. Are you sure you’re not from New York?”

  He knew she wasn’t. A former four-star Army General, Elizabeth Grayson had been a Senator for one term from her home state of Louisiana. She’d been the Deputy Secretary of Defense briefly before Kingsley’s predecessor tapped her to run Homeland Security. A job she’d held ever since.

  Kingsley stood up and paced the small area in front of his desk. “I’ve made two decisions.” He rattled the ice around his glass and took a sip. “One an easy one. The other one? Not so much.”

  He stopped pacing and faced her. “I’ve decided to drop Vice-President Wright from the ticket.”

  Grayson arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

  That the two men didn’t get along was well known. The previous election had been a tooth and nail battle between Kingsley and the one-term Democratic incumbent. Both men were considered moderates and so catered to the same broad base while both pretty effectively alienating the fringe extremists of their parties. Conventional wisdom, with history as its guide, gave the advantage to the incumbent. To break that log jam, Kingsley tapped former Marine General E. Forrester Wright, a darling of the far-right, to serve as his V.P. Thus, satisfying the more conservative members of the party, the Kingsley/Wright ticket narrowly defeated the sitting president in a close election that once more fueled the electoral college debate with the outcome still questioned in many quarters.

  The camaraderie between the two men ended the next day.

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Grayson asked.

  She’d had her time in the barrel during her one successful run for senator of Louisiana. Once had been more than enough.

  “I’m not an unknown, untested entity this time. I have three-plus years of accomplishments I can run on now,” he said, justifying his decision. “The changes we’ve made, the good work we’ve done. They’re a record the American people can see. That we can show them. My opposition isn’t nearly as formidable as last time. I don’t need him this time around. If Wright’s supporters don’t like it…I can weather that.”

  Grayson sipped her drink. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

  He smiled. “That’s why you’re here, Liz. You cut through all the crap like no one I know.”

  “I’m not your political advisor, David.” She finished her drink and stood up. “I’ve got a job already.”

  He held up a hand, stopping her. “Which brings me to my second decision. The easy one.” He took her empty glass and put it alongside his on the wet bar. He turned around. “I’m smart enough to know dropping Wright is going to sting, politically. There’s no doubt. Enough to prevent my reelection? I don’t think so. On its own, probably not.”

  “There’s more?”

  “I’m concerned about what Wright will do. What he’ll say. He can be a vindictive son-of-a—”

  Concerned soured Grayson’s gut. “Does he have something on you? Something incriminating?”

  “What? No.” Kingsley waved his hand. “Nothing like that. But you know Wright. He’s not the sort to accept my decision without—retaliating. What he says, what he does, whether truthful or not, you know that won’t matter. Not in today’s climate. Couple that with what I’ll lose organically by dropping him.”

  “Double whammy.”

  “Exactly.”

  Grayson got along well with Wright. They were both military people, they agreed on a lot of the same things. They came at problems and issues the same way. Face forward and direct. They often disagreed with Kingsley together. The difference had always been, Grayson could be diplomatic while Wright lacked a certain—any—tact.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You don’t want me to talk to him. To be the one to tell him?”

  “No. No, of course not.” Kingsley began to pace again. “Thinking this all through. I’ve made up my mind, I can’t work with Wright any longer. He’s got to go. But that means I have to mitigate, reduce the fallout, the damage of any attacks he’ll lob against me. It’ll be mud-slinging at its very worst, and from a member of my own party. I’ll lose a lot of his supporters, but I need to try and keep as many of them from abandoning the party as I can.”

  He meant abandoning him. But also support for others in the party. There were House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections to think about, too.

  Kingsley stopped pacing again and looked her square in the eyes. “That’s why I’m asking you to run with me.” He paused before proposing. “Elizabeth Grayson. I want you to be the next Vice-President of the United States.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Bannon’s heart pounded in his chest.

  He moved Flipper alongside the damaged Orca. He slammed open the watercraft’s canopy and was hit with a bracing, cold wind that he ignored. He forced the anger he felt down, and made a wide circle around the wrecked submersible, leaning out, searching the dark water for a shadow, bubbles, any sign of McMurphy in the water.

  A forty-five-foot Coast Guard response boat assigned to patrol the water was on standby in case of an emergency. This certainly qualified, Bannon thought bitterly, catching sight of the boat speeding toward the wreck from the corner of his eye. The boat crewed with four guardsmen, and while they’d be proficient in first-aid there’d be no medical personnel on board.

  Bannon didn’t wait for them.

  He completed a circle around Orca and still found no sight of McMurphy.

  He shut Flipper off, unsnapped his canvas harness, and dove into the icy cold water of the Atlantic without a moment’s hesitation. Unlike McMurphy, Bannon didn’t wear a parka, he had had no intention of opening his canopy during the race. Diving into the water, he would have discarded it anyway. Wet, it would only serve to drag him downward. Which was surely what had happened to McMurphy.

  The water was a dangerous forty-one degrees Fahrenheit. Without a proper winter wetsuit, 5mm neoprene or thicker, a person could be rendered unconscious from that kind of cold in as little as fifteen minutes.

  Bannon didn’t think about any of that as he dove in.

  The icy water hit him, shocking his system. The cold robbed his lungs of air. He gasped. Kicking hard as he frantically twisted and turned, searching for any sign of McMurphy. Dark and murky it was difficult to see without a facemask. He blinked and continued to search the blurry water. His lungs burned, but he dived deeper.

  Then, he saw it.

  In the darkness, a black and white sneaker, its laces waving in the water like sea kelp. To his great relief, the sneaker was attached to a leg clad in blue jeans.

  Bannon kicked toward it. Swimming harder.

  Within arm’s reach, he grabbed McMurphy’s ankle and pulled.

  Bannon grabbed the pant leg, pulling his large friend from the dark depths below. He clawed his way up McMurphy’s leg as they both were dragged deeper. He grabbed his friend’s belt and pulled harder, twisting him around. McMurphy’s eyes were closed. His red hair swirled. Bannon saw a gash over his left eye, a ribbon of blood drifted around it, darkening the water.

  With his lungs about to burst, Bannon snaked an arm around McMurphy’s barrel chest. He tugged him upward, kicking for all he was worth, desperately clawing for the brighter water above them. He kicked and swam, holding the unconscious McMurphy in a death grip.

  He prayed they’d reach the surface before his lungs gave out. Before he gasped for badly needed oxygen only to fill his lungs with frigid cold ocean water.

  Bannon burst through the surface.

  He gasped and coughed, spitting out water in a splashing frenzy, holding McMurphy around his chest. He gulped
at the icy cold air, exhausted, struggling to keep his unconscious friend’s face about the waterline.

  The welcome sound of water lapping up against a hull greeted him. He twisted, treading water, and found himself in the shadow of the Coast Guard response boat, slipping in close to him and the hydrofoils.

  “There!” A shout out from the stern of the boat. A Coastie stood leaning over the rail waving his dark blue Coast Guard baseball cap. He pointed at Bannon and McMurphy. “There they are!”

  His arm still around McMurphy’s chest, Bannon swam, dragging the big man toward the side of the boat where there was an opening between the rail. The lookout petty officer was joined by another. Together, they lowered a rescue basket into the water.

  Bannon rolled McMurphy into it.

  The Coasties hauled him up on the deck.

  Bannon shouted, “He’s unconscious. Not breathing. Got a gash on his forehead.”

  “We’ve got it,” the petty officer who’d spotted them shouted back. The two men knelt down beside McMurphy still in the basket and started CPR.

  The second Coastie called out in between giving McMurphy breaths, “Captain, better get us to the EMTs.”

  The town had provided police and emergency medical personnel for the race. They were stationed on the beach. The Coast Guard captain stood at the bow, a worried look on his face. He pointed at Bannon. “What about him?”

  “Forget me. Go!” Bannon waved urgently for them to go.

  The captain nodded and jumped into the wheelhouse. He engaged the throaty twin diesel engines as McMurphy sputtered and sprang up into a sitting position. He spit out water and coughed.

  The two Coastie jumped back in surprise.

  McMurphy shoved the one giving him mouth-to-mouth away with a powerful swipe of his arm. “What the hell you doing? Trying to kiss me?”

  Bannon laughed, a release of pent-up anger and worry and unspent adrenaline. He wiped water from his face. His friend was going to be fine.