Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Bourne Initiative (Jason Bourne series)(17)
Abruptly, he held up one fist, and the vessel came to a halt. Then he lifted a forefinger, circling it. The boat’s engines engaged with a deeper sound, and with a roar, the boat made a neat one-eighty, its wake bright in the moonlight.
“Okay,” Bourne said. Mala shipped the oars while he moved to the helm, fired up the engine, which would not be heard over the larger vessel’s roar. They took off after the hit team, all running lights extinguished, the glow from the instrument panel masked by a towel.
Luck was with them: the lowering moon had been occluded by a bank of thickening clouds within which, every so often, flashes, like jagged shards of glass, winked on and off, semaphoring an oncoming storm.
The wind had picked up; it was against their faces. The chop increased. In their wake, the smoke had vanished. The night was clear, the last of the Nym gone to its watery grave. Somewhere back there, dorsal fins would be cleaving the wave-tops. Sharks would be circling.
Bourne’s face was grim as he followed the hit team’s vessel as it made a wide, sweeping curve to port in what he now believed would be a semicircle heading back to Skyros.
The Americans’ pursuit reminded him that the purge of Boris’s friends, colleagues, and family was still under way, both in Russia and the U.S. It wouldn’t be complete until all signs of him and his affairs had been eradicated, his past achievements credited to others in typical Russian revisionism fashion. In Bourne’s heart only would the real Boris Illyich Karpov remain alive.
A change in pitch on the boat they were following knifed through his sorrow. Immediately, he cut the engine on the runabout, listened to the sea and the night. The rising wind was now at their backs; the runabout wallowed in the deepening troughs. Behind them, the first throaty rolls of thunder could be heard. The night was now very dark as storm clouds continued to overrun the starlight.
Bourne could make out the looming cliffs of Skyros, blacker than black, sensed their solidity as the wind struck them and lifted off them. Now he had no doubt that the hit team was headed to the island, rather than to a ship lying to. Anyway, the team had had no time to mobilize a ship, as it had no idea where the Nym was headed; even the captain hadn’t known until almost the last moment.
Their runabout, having a smaller engine, couldn’t hope to keep pace with the hit team’s vessel, but that wasn’t Bourne’s objective. All he needed was to ascertain where the boat was headed. Whether he got them there before or after the team debarked was immaterial.
And, indeed, by the time he guided the bucking runabout into shore, the vessel was deserted, lying to at anchor. The team was on dry land. A sudden gust of wind turned the runabout broadside, nearly shoving it against the sharp-toothed rocks, outliers of the cliff wall. Bourne restarted the engine, confident that it would not be heard over the wailing of the wind and the crashing of the waves. Surely, the larger vessel would bear the brunt of the storm and be smashed to pieces on the jagged teeth. Possibly that’s precisely what the team wanted. If so, they had another means of egress off Skyros.
Bourne guided the runabout around the narrow headland, which would act as a natural barrier to the storm. The water was now shallow enough for Bourne to jump out, bring the runabout in via the nylon bow line. Water, pushed by the approaching storm, rushed up his thighs, over his waist, before momentarily being sucked away again. He made the line fast around a rock, hoped that thus protected leeward the runabout would survive.
Back in the runabout, he checked through all the cleverly concealed cabinets under the seat cushions, found fishing rods and rolls of lines, hooks, a scaling knife, which he jammed into his waistband. He stuffed all the rest of these, except the rods, into a well-used waterproof canvas bag, zipped it up. Then he went down on one knee, fiddling with a black box that depended from the bottom of the instrument panel.
“What are you doing?” Mala asked, but he made no reply.
Now both of them were in the churning surf, then onto the slippery rocks, picking their way to what passed for dry land in this inhospitable area of the island; there wasn’t even a thin line of shingle to distinguish sea from land.
They ascended the cliff, finding hand-and footholds where they could. They rose into the wind, which, in no time at all, would seek to tear them off the rocks. The rain hadn’t yet hit, but, like the pounding hooves of a charging cavalry, it was coming. Bourne knew they had to reach the cliff’s summit and find shelter behind its peaks before that happened.
Mala was lighter than he was, which made her faster, but also more prone to being dislodged by the storm. Bourne struggled to keep up with her, prepared to catch her if she slipped or fell. They were nearing the top when the first raindrops, fat and far between, struck his back. The rock face, already slippery, would soon enough become impassable.
Sure enough, in the next instant Mala’s anchor foot slipped as her other leg lifted upward for new purchase. Reaching out, Bourne grabbed her ankle, held her foot steady as she found a handhold above.
The raindrops became smaller, more numerous, until they were like needles trying to penetrate the climbers’ sopping clothes. Bourne and Mala continued their assault on the cliff unabated; to slow or falter now would be fatal.
With her left hand, Mala grasped a vertical finger that jutted out from the body of the cliff. Using it as a fulcrum, she swung her body to the right, drawing her knees up to her chest just enough to miss crashing into a trio of rocks. Bourne followed her, grasping the rock finger higher up to accommodate his taller body, then swung himself as hard as she had.