Shoot First(Stone Barrington #45)(34)

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“OKAY,” DIRTY JOE said to Jungle Jane, “you want to take your shot?”

“I’ve got her in my sights,” Jane replied. “I’m just waiting for the captain to move away from her.”



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THREE THINGS HAPPENED in quick succession: Captain Bret dropped a pen and bent to pick it up, Meg stood and began to move toward the boarding steps, and a crack was heard, simultaneous with the sound of breaking glass. Stone yanked Meg to the deck.



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—

ON THE FANTAIL, Ed Rawls sighted, took a deep breath, let half of it out, and squeezed the trigger. A woman was the shooter, and there was a man behind her at the helm. His rifle made a tenth of the noise the rifle had. He stood up. “Somebody’s down over there,” he said, pointing toward a picnic boat a couple of hundred yards away.



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STONE LOOKED back toward the yacht’s saloon: a corner window had a fist-size hole in it and around the corner there was an exit hole, bigger. He followed Rawls’s finger to the picnic boat, which seemed adrift now. “Bret,” he said, “I think you’d better call the state police and ask them to come by the boat and bring a stretcher.”



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THE MAINE STATE POLICE didn’t arrive by boat; they were there in twenty minutes in a helicopter, which they set down on the water on its pontoons. Half a dozen people climbed out, and Captain Bret sent Breeze’s tender for them. Instead of coming directly to the yacht, they motored over to the picnic boat in question, weapons at the ready.

Stone could see them climbing aboard, and he picked up the binoculars. Everybody in the picnic boat’s cockpit was looking down. Then two of them got back into the tender and it motored back to the yacht.

Stone knew one of the men from a couple of years before; they shook hands. “That boat has been stalking us since yesterday,” Stone said, “and after we anchored we were fired on”— Stone pointed at the holes in the saloon windows—“and we felt it necessary for our safety to return fire.” Ed Rawls came over with his weapon, popped the magazine, cleared the breach, and handed it to the cop.

“What have you got over there?” Stone asked the cop, nodding in the direction of the picnic boat.

“We’ve got two corpses,” the man replied, “both dead of gunshot wounds.”

“I think you’ll find they were both struck with the same round,” Ed said.

“How’s that?” the cop asked.

“At the moment I fired, immediately after they did, they were lined up, just for a millisecond, and I fired only one round. The shooter was the woman.”

“What round does this thing take?” the cop asked, checking out the weapon.

“A .223.”

“Well, that would have enough muzzle velocity to take down both of them. What sort of weapon is this?”

“It’s custom-made,” Rawls said. “Until now, it’s only been fired at targets and deer that got in the way.”

“We’ll need it for a while for ballistics. Your round ended up in the man’s chest, after traveling through the woman’s head, so the ME can recover it.”

“Keep it as long as you need it,” Rawls said, “but I would like to have it back when you’re done.”

Stone addressed the cop. “Is it all right if we go ashore, to my house? You can catch up with us there if you have more questions.”

“Sure, go ahead, and I expect we will have.”

Stone, Meg, and Rawls boarded the tender and were taken back to his dock. Once inside the house, he lit a fire and gave everybody a drink.

“That’s three rounds to us,” Stone said to Meg. “Any idea what Mr. Bellini might try next?”

“Not a clue,” Meg replied.





26




Stone took the two policemen through Meg’s history with the assassins. “We didn’t know they had traced us here, until our captain noticed, on radar, a boat following us half a mile back. Then we got fogged in. This morning they were only thirty meters away, but still hidden by the fog. We heard a magazine being shoved home—you know how sound carries across water—and then we headed for home. They followed, then disappeared. Apparently they used their speed to get ahead of us and wait for us to anchor.”

Both cops were taking notes and nodding. “And you think they were hired by this Gino Bellini fellow?”

“We do, but we can’t prove it, now that Joe Cross and his lady friend are dead.”

“My report will go in tomorrow morning,” the lead cop said, “and it will say justified homicide, self-defense. I’ve no doubt that the lethal round came from Mr. Rawls’s very impressive weapon, but that will be affirmed by our lab.”

“In that case,” Stone said, “would you like to switch from coffee to something more soothing?”

“I’d like to,” he replied, “but our chopper’s waiting, along with the rest of our crew and the two corpses. We’ll take them back to our headquarters for processing.” They stood up, shook hands, and Stone escorted them to the door.