Chapter 62
MAGNUS HAD JUST LIFTED HIS DRINK to his lips once again when his radio hissed and, a moment later, Dunning’s low voice came through. “Prisoner’s escaped,” he heard in a hoarse whisper. “Tied me up in the main hold. He’s still here. For God’s sake, send backup now.”
Magnus leapt to his feet, spilling his drink as he gestured to Mako John. “You, Rodney, and Goins, get the hell down to cargo and kill that son of a bitch!”
“Yes, sir!”
Magnus lunged across the saloon to the boat’s emergency comm system.
He broke the glass with his fist and pulled the lever.
Immediately, an alarm sounded and red lights began blinking in the ceiling.
He raised his radio, tuned to the ship’s frequency.
“All hands to cargo!” he said. “The prisoner is at large, armed and dangerous—kill on sight!”
He changed frequencies. “Engine room, this is Magnus. Over.”
Silence.
“Engine room, respond.”
Silence.
Magnus switched to the helm frequency. “Helm, this is Magnus. Over.”
More silence. “LaGrange, respond.”
He stared at his radio in disbelief. Could Pendergast have already disabled the captain and engine room personnel—and if so, how was it that the boat was still running? This was insane—
At that moment, he heard a low thump—like the lighting of a gas burner, magnified a hundredfold—and then the entire boat shuddered as if it had struck a reef, causing the chandeliers in the saloon to swing and rattle madly, bottles to fly out of the bar shelves and crash to the ground.
The forward motion of the boat slackened, the vessel lurching to one side as the rudders were apparently shoved hard to port.
A minute later the boat was churning around in a tight circle, not under command.
Magnus sprinted to the saloon staircase, leapt down it to the cargo deck.
The cargo room hatch had been blown off its hinges, and a fire raged within.
He sprinted past the conflagration and yanked open the door to the engine room.
The chief engineer lay on his side, half decapitated, eyes wide open in the horror of death, the entire floor of the room awash in congealed blood.
Magnus, who was almost never shocked, stared in stunned horror at what Pendergast had wrought.
How had he done it, and so fast? It had been a colossal mistake not to dispatch him right away, thinking he could toy with a man like this.
He lifted the radio and pressed the transmit button on the ship’s frequency. “Anyone, respond. Respond.”
He released the button. After a silence, a low voice emerged from the hiss of static. “Greetings, Dorion! This is Pendergast responding from your saloon.”
For a moment, Magnus—thunderstruck—was silent. His saloon? He’d been there himself mere minutes before.
“At the moment, I’m rinsing blood from my hands with some of your A. E. Dor Grande Cru Cognac—I find it makes an excellent cleansing agent.”
It was a bad dream—it had to be. “Robertson,” Magnus heard himself croak into the radio. “Dunning. LaGrange—”
But he was interrupted again by that cultivated drawl from hell that not even the wash of static could disguise. “They are gone, my friend. All gone.”