He remained motionless, not thinking yet about the why of his predicament. That would come later. Now all that was on his mind was survival. The rounds were coming in from the port side of the ship, so he could leap through the starboard window and hide behind the bulk of the ship, but a hundred yards of open desert separated him from the 4×4. He’d be picked off the instant he emerged from under the vessel’s shadow.
He had nothing he could use to distract the sniper. His bag was back in the UAZ, and the artificial limb he had was basically a commercial model since he hadn’t thought the risk of smuggling a weapon through Moscow was worth it.
He considered waiting out the other man until nightfall. Cabrillo was an excellent shot but lacked a sniper’s special training. He knew from talks with Franklin Lincoln, the ex-SEAL crewmate who was the Corporation’s sniper, that a skilled marksman could remain immobile in a blind for days. The man above him wouldn’t just pack it in, and with a thermal scope Juan’s body heat would appear like a vaporous apparition against the desert backdrop. If anything, an easier shot at night than during the day.
A trio of shots rifled into the bridge, mangling steel and kicking up more sand.
The sniper didn’t know if he’d hit his target. He was trying to keep Cabrillo pinned, which likely meant he had more men with him, and they were sneaking up under covering fire.
Juan couldn’t move and he couldn’t stay.
He snatched off his sunglasses and held the mirrored lens up and just over the windowsill, moving so slowly that it looked as though it was nothing more than a creeping shadow. In its convex reflection he could see the plain separating his position from the sniper’s. He breathed a small sigh of relief. There was no assault team threading their way across the desert. Another shot cracked. The round passed through a window well aft of Cabrillo. The sniper hadn’t seen the glasses and was just firing for effect, but now Juan had his blind pegged thanks to a tiny spark of fire from the weapon’s muzzle.
The gunman was a little above Cabrillo’s first estimate, tucked into a fold in the hillside. Juan wondered how long the man had been up there. This situation was obvious proof that there was something important about Karl Petrovski’s eerie boat, though Cabrillo had yet to discern any significance. It was just another rusted hulk littering what had once been the seafloor.
If there were no additional troops coming, why keep an unarmed man pinned down? Why not come yourself and finish the job?
One explanation popped into Cabrillo’s mind and jolted him into action. The sniper was about to get his wish, but Juan had a trick up his sleeve. He was certain that the vessel had been rigged with explosives. The sniper had been out here eradicating all traces of Petrovski’s discovery. From the sniper’s point of view, either his prey died when the bombs detonated or he would make a run for it and the sniper would pick him off from his aerie. Mission accomplished.
“Like hell,” Juan spat as he reached the door leading to the aft compartments.
The hinges were located inside the hallway, so he had to crawl through and partially close the metal door. Protected from the wind, the steel was as hard as the day it had been forged. The hinge pins had bulbous caps that made pulling them out easier for the ship’s crew if the need ever arose. The center one eased out of the hinge as easy as a weed from the ground. The next one came much harder, but Cabrillo managed to free it as well. It was the bottom pin that refused to budge no matter how hard he pulled, and sweat quickly slicked it so he couldn’t find purchase.
Cursing, Juan pulled up his trouser and peeled back the sock holding his prosthesis in place. The top of the leg where it met his flesh was smooth and rounded to prevent chafing, but there was a hard ridge down by the articulated part of the ankle. He wedged this ridge under the stubborn hinge pin’s cap and hammered on the leg’s heel with his hand. The pin remained rusted in place as though it had been welded.
He had no idea how much time he had but could imagine the clichéd image of a digital timer ticking down so only seconds remained. He slammed his palm into the leg’s heel again. And again.
“Come on.” Again. And again.
Rust particles puffed up from the pin, and then the pin itself moved upward ever so slightly. Each blow to the leg raised it more and more. An eighth of an inch. The next shot pushed it another quarter inch. And then a half.
Cabrillo’s palm was numb by the time the recalcitrant pin finally popped free and fell to the deck.
The door dropped against him, bashing his good leg on the shin hard enough to break skin. He estimated the door weighed at least a hundred fifty pounds.
He dropped to the deck and refitted his artificial leg.
The unattached door loomed over him, a deadweight that was about to become both his best friend and his worst nightmare.
Grasping the hot metal, Cabrillo wrestled the door back onto the bridge, making sure to keep his improvised shield between him and the sniper. It took only seconds for the gunman to figure out something was wrong because a pair of quick shots slammed into the door. It felt like someone had swung a sledgehammer with everything he had. The double impacts staggered Juan back a pace so that he was hard up against the pilothouse’s starboard wall.
He crawled through and heaved the door over the sill after him. The sniper fired two more rounds but could not reach his prey. Juan thrust his shield hard over and jumped down to the main deck. As he intended, the door hit the ship’s outside rail and crushed it flat before falling all the way to the desert floor.
He had no idea how long it would take the sniper to figure out his plan, so he moved quickly, jumping the ten feet to the ground. He manhandled the door into position so that he could drag it backward while he crouched in its shadow. His fingers barely grabbed hold, and the door drove its trailing edge into the loose gravel.
In seconds, lactic acid was already building in Cabrillo’s thighs and back, and his fingers were going numb. He continued inching forward, dragging the door behind him and staying low so as not to show himself to the sniper. A moment after he emerged from under the side of the derelict ship, the sniper zeroed in and triggered off three shots in rapid succession. Each one hit the door in almost the exact same place.
The kinetic force of the high-powered rounds made Juan lose his grip, and the door fell down on top of him. He quickly scrambled back to his feet, heaving the door nearly vertical. The sniper fired again, and again his round ricocheted off the door. The metal was dimpled by each hit, and energy transfer made the steel scalding hot, but the rounds just wouldn’t penetrate.
Juan knew now that the race was really on. The sniper couldn’t shoot him so he’d have to come after him. Cabrillo had to cover a hundred yards to reach his sport utility vehicle. The gunman had almost a quarter mile, but a lot of that was downhill. He was unencumbered while the Chairman had to lug his shield all the way back to the truck or else the sniper would stop charging, raise his rifle, and shoot Cabrillo as he fled.
Juan hauled the heavy door across the open plain like an anchor he could not drop. Gravel and sand built up where the metal hit the ground, and it felt like he was dragging half the desert with him. His back was screaming by the time he was a quarter of the way to his destination, and his legs shook like jackhammers, yet he didn’t slow or pause. Pain was the body’s way of telling a person to stop doing something. Holding a hand to a candle hurt, so the instinct was to pull it away, but the mind ultimately controlled the body, and you could leave your hand there until the flesh roasted off.
Cabrillo’s body was telling him to drop the door and rest, but his intellect knew something his body didn’t. If he abandoned his shield, he would die, so he bulled through the pain and kept dragging the door. All the while, the gunman was surely out of his hiding place and running with everything he had.
As if to verify his suspicion, the sniper fired at him again. The sound of the rifle was much closer—too close—and the impact felt much stronger as the bullet had lost little of its power over the shortened distance.
Juan craned his head around. The fishing boat he had first thought was the eerie boat was only twenty yards away. The gunman? A hundred? Two? Juan had no way of knowing and risked getting his head blown off if he peeked around the door.