He kicked hard, out toward the south bank of the river, making his diagonal line to the towering southern edifice of the Saint-Nazaire Bridge. He counted as he kicked, clocking off the minutes, knowing that every three he knocked off another hundred yards.
The GPS confirmed that in the first twenty minutes he had moved almost a half mile offshore, and thus far he had not been edged off course by the ebbing tide. Like all rivers, the central tidal stream of the Loire is less defined on the ebb than it is on the flow, and Mack was aware that life was going to be a lot tougher sometime in the next fifteen minutes.
He calculated he was a tad ahead of schedule, but so far there was only a very faint pain in his upper thighs, same spot it always hurt on a long swim. He’d even felt that on those hard-driving laps in Harry’s country club pool. He’d felt it as he drove through the water to Saddam’s oil rig. Jesus Christ, he’d felt it that night. But he’d fought it then, and he could fight it now, no matter how hard the journey.
I’m coming home, Tommy.
Mack was kicking along at his cruising depth of twenty feet, listening for the approach of engine propellers. Not many ships draw twenty feet—in fact, most of them draw well under ten—but he did not much want to be sliced in half by the gigantic blades behind a soft-running oil tanker.
At this depth almost all surface sound was deadened, but props running shallow in the water make a serious din, and he’d already heard two or three way back behind him, going fast. The coast guard helicopters were aloft now, one hovering over the harbor and two flying low, clattering over the inshore surface, close to the jetties.
And with every passing three minutes, their quarry powered another hundred yards farther away, kicking and gliding, ramming the water with those huge flippers—
BAM! BAM! . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four.
The north shore search was intense. Eleven hundred men, three helos, six patrol boats, radar, sonar in the harbor, machine guns raking the surface. Only rarely in the history of modern crime has so much hardware and brainpower been leveled at one man, in so short a time, and in such a limited area.
Pierre was growing more anxious by the minute. This had been going on for nearly an hour. And every coast guard commander, every security officer, even Paul Ravel, believed there was only one certainty—Gunther, whatever the hell’s his name, could not possibly be alive and out in the middle of the river. The chances were he’d either drowned, failed to survive the death-defying drop to the water, or been shot in the harbor. How could the Swiss assassin possibly be alive against such an onslaught?
Yet Pierre was not so sure. This Gunther character had evaded every police officer in France on his way to Saint-Nazaire. He’d penetrated the steel cordon that surrounded Henri Foche. And as far as Pierre could tell, no one had ever seen him and lived to tell the tale, except for old Laporte at the Val André garage.
All right. So he’s not in the middle of the river. I accept that. But he’s still got to be somewhere. And I won’t believe he’s dead ’til I see his body.
Those were the thoughts of Chief Savary, who’d never even had a moment to mourn his lost friend, Henri, and who also, as a result of
“this fucking fiasco,”
might have to resign from the police department.
He punched numbers into his cell phone and asked the coast guard to call in another helicopter, one with the latest dipping sonar that he knew they had, somewhere.
“Sir, that’s stationed at Cherbourg, 180 miles away. It would take an hour minimum to get it here. That would be two hours after the suspect jumped, probably far too late, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose I would,” said Pierre, adding, ungraciously,
“Merde!”
Back under the water, Mack’s clock on the attack board read 1805. He’d been swimming for more than an hour, and the pain was beginning to kick in. The lactic acid coursing through his system was getting worse by the minute. Mack ached. He ached like hell. He ached in an agonizing way, most often experienced by only two other breeds of elite sportsmen, international rowers and cross-country skiers. And Mack wasn’t even a sportsman, except when he had a fishing rod in his grip.
All he could do was to repeat in his mind the timeless creed of the SEAL under intense physical pressure—
I’ve sucked it up before, and I can suck it up again.
Worse yet, his attack board was giving him bad news. The line of latitude, 47.17, was not important; the two-mile crossing would tick down to 47.15 as he headed south to the far shore. And the tide would not drag him backward. It would drag him sideways, to the west. Thus, the second set of numbers, depicting the lines of longitude, were the most significant. That 2.120 West would click to 2.119 as he swam, then 2.118, then 2.117. And he was storing the numbers in his mind. Right now he was coming to the halfway point north-south. But the 2.117 had flicked back to 2.118. The tide was pulling him off course, out into the Atlantic. By the time he reached 47.16 North, he might be at 2.119 West, almost as far from the span as when he started.
He was tired, and the twinge of concern he felt deep in his stomach was just a few degrees short of mild panic. He couldn’t fight everything, not this monstrous eight-hundred-mile-long French river that could drown him without mercy.
He knew what to do. He needed to change course, to face the oncoming tidal surge head-on, to reduce his body area, to lead into the current with the slim top of his shiny rubberized head, rendering him a black arrow, not a six-foot-three log, going sideways.
Mack swerved east, swimming zero-nine-zero on the attack board compass. He felt faster, as if the water was sliding past him more smoothly. That was just an instinct, and a hopeful one at that. But he kept kicking and counting, and sure enough the GPS numbers flicked forward to 2.117, as he powered on at right angles to the bridge, striving to get under it, to make it upstream.
The judgment call, which he knew he must make, was how far east should he swim? How quickly would that tide sweep him west, maybe even back to the wrong side of the bridge again? Mack now ached from head to foot. Every kick was painful. But if he stopped he would die. If he came to the surface he might be arrested, or even shot.
With the setting sun behind him, he would have no early warning of the bridge, no long shadow into which he could swim and gauge his line of approach. The bridge was at once his objective, his friendly landmark, and his nemesis. For all he knew there were dipping sonar systems up there on the span, aimed down into the water to trap him.
With the sun in the wrong place, he might be under the bridge before he knew it. And he might first have to come to a depth of only ten feet a few minutes from now. But when he saw the span, he would go as deep as he dared, as far from human and electronic eyes as he could manage, as deep as the river if he could.
The numbers flicked again—2.116 West. Beautiful. If he could just keep going, he’d make it. He’d make it for Tommy and Anne. And he double kicked again, hard—
BAM! BAM! . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . four.
The bridge must be close, and at 1829 on the attack board clock he angled up, until he was just seven or eight feet from the surface. Somewhere to the south he could hear the steady beat of a relatively small engine, maybe a tug or even a fishing trawler—he was an expert on those.
And there was the bridge. He could see it through the goggles, maybe a hundred yards ahead. He was just beyond the middle of the river, since the latitude still showed 47.16 North. He went deep, kicking down, until the water grew very gloomy, and up ahead there was only darkness.
Back on shore, Pierre Savary was just about at the end of his tether. The search was still roaring ahead with boats, helicopters, and people, all doing their level best. They had located everything that could ever be located along the north shore. They’d questioned local fishermen, grilled freighter skippers, started to dredge the harbor for Gunther’s body. Low-swooping helicopters, thundering ten feet above the surface, had terrified the turbot.
Pierre had more or less had enough of what must now be a dead-end operation. “Paul,” he said to his equally worried assistant, “we have to check the south shore. We need to switch this operation right across the river.”
“But we know it’s impossible for him to be over there,” replied Ravel. “The coast guard say it’s out of the question. He couldn’t have gotten there. He could not have survived.”
“Quite frankly, kid, I don’t give a shit what they say, not at this stage. We’re going to hit the opposite shore with the big battalions. Cars, boats, choppers, and people.”
Pierre Savary was one of those educated Frenchmen who looked as if he had just stepped out of the front row of a rugby scrum. He could scarcely help that, but his face looked as if he was scowling even when he was chuckling. He had a permanent five o’clock shadow, and there was a tough aura about him that he knew and cultivated. But the scowl he wore this afternoon was genuine. He didn’t know why this was such a complete screwup, but it was, and Pierre was angry.
“Paul,” he growled, “I’m going to catch this fucker. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m going to catch him.”
CHAPTER
13
At 1830, the tide turned. The flow of water out of the river into the ocean
petered out and died. The twice-daily miracle of the planet Earth was in progress, and out beyond Pointe de Saint-Gildas, the Atlantic’s turbulent, cresting swells prepared for their onward drive up the Loire estuary.
As ever, it took the long rollers a half hour to brace themselves, to get organized, and to begin the big push into the river. During this time, a tired Mack Bedford gained the first respite of his swim. The water went slack, running neither one way nor the other. For the next twenty minutes the center of the Loire, up there under the road bridge, would resemble the BUDs swimming pool back at Coronado. But it would be for only twenty minutes. Mack knew that as well as the river gods themselves. And with all of his remaining strength he kicked under the bridge, and then came a full ninety degrees right, heading south, straight across the now placid, good-natured stream, toward the far bank.
He was more than a quarter of a mile south of the center line of the river, which left him with around 1,250 yards to swim. If he was ever going to gain time, this was the moment. He drew on every last vestige of his strength; he kicked and counted, kicked and glided, kicked until he thought he must surely give up and drown. But as that BUDs instructor once said,
There ain’t no quit in you, kid.
And Mack kept going, uncertain whether his next kick, that big double
BAM! BAM!
would be his last. The lactic acid pounded through his body, and his muscles throbbed. His thighs felt as if they were made of stone, tight, aching, but still driving on, through the pain barrier.
Mack remembered his “bible,” that book about the 1983 America’s Cup when the Australians fought a bloodcurdling tacking duel against the Americans on the last leg of the last race. The big winch grinders called it the “red zone,” the state where everything hurts so badly a man almost loses consciousness, but somehow keeps going. He remembered the calls of the big Aussie winch men, hammering away in the “engine room” of the boat, shouting, dedicating each murderous tack to some beloved member of the team, trying somehow to personalize the agony, to make it count more—
“THIS ONE’S FOR YOU, JOHN!” “AND NOW ONE FOR HUGHIE!”
Holding Denis Conner’s big red boat at bay—closing their eyes and driving the winches with massive arms that felt like jelly. The shouts of the tactician, the screams of the sheets flying off the reels. The sheer bloody pain of the contest.
A long time ago, Mack had lived it through the words of the legendary Aussie helmsman John Bertrand. Now, for the first time in his life, he felt it, the experience of total, all-encompassing pain. Finally, he knew. And he too began to dedicate, not the tacks, but the minutes. He did not need an entire crew to give him a choice. He understood too well how to personalize the agony, and he pounded into the shallows of the river, with the same words in his mind that he would have for all of his days. Anne and Tommy. Just Anne and Tommy.
He felt the jolt of the attack board as it hit the river bottom. The clock said 1850, and he had to get the hell out of the water. He stuck his head into fresh air for the first time in almost two hours. He spat out his Draeger line, and breathed deeply. But he was too exhausted to stand, and for a few moments, he lay wallowing in the water, feeling the strength ebb back into his body, as the tiredness evaporated, the way it surely must in the iron constitution of a man who has just achieved the impossible. The swim, that is. Not the assassination.