Private L.A. (Private 6)

My instinct was to swim straight to him, to get him down and in the water. But I held on to my reeling sea sled and shouted into the microphone, “Del Rio burned and injured on pylon below explosion. Probable spinal injury. Rankin, report. Do you see anyone coming from your position? Chief Fescoe?”

But there was no answer, only the soaring chatter of the L.A. sheriff, police, and fire departments being summ

oned to the scene. Then the Kid came on, choked up. “It’s Bud, Jack. I saw him thrown off the roof. I think he’s—”

In my peripheral vision, I caught a large, swift, dark blur, like some huge bird swooping out of the night just northwest of the pier. He rode a short, stubby black surfboard. He’d kicked his feet into bindings of some sort and was dressed much as I was, head to toe in a black wet suit.

But instead of a lineman’s belt, he wore a full harness that connected him to a taut black sail about six feet by four that bellied out like a spinnaker in front of him. I figured he was traveling forty, maybe fifty miles an hour, some kind of kiteboarding genius; he knifed into the light surrounding the pier, spotted the dry bags, tacked hard toward them, leaned into his harness, and snatched the first bag up. He blew south into the smoke before I could utter a word.

“Pickup!” I shouted at last, scrambling to get aboard the Sea-Doo.

I was straddling the sled, hitting the start, when the second kiteboarder appeared from the northwest and snagged the second dry bag in a move as brilliant as the first rider’s.

The Sea-Doo roared to life. I tugged a knife from a calf sheath, cut the mooring line, drifted, and then hit the throttle. In a split second the sled gathered power, blew seawater through its turbine, and leaped from beneath the pylons like a bucking horse freed of a chute.

Chapter 43

THE SEA-DOO LAUNCHED off the first roller at an odd angle, which caused it to cant hard left and down, the turbine whining against the air. Throwing my weight the exact opposite way, I managed to level it before skipping up the face of the coming wave and out into the air again.

I’d ridden a similar sled chasing the three sisters who’d gone on a killing spree at the London Olympics four months before. But then I’d been out on the Thames, a tidal river, not in this chaos of waves that surrounded the pier.

The kiteboarders had danced across swells. I crashed through them past the pier, glancing at the scorched, smoking breach on its southern flank and the blown-out windows at Ruby’s Diner. “This is Morgan,” I shouted. “Two of them riding black kiteboards, bearing southwest of the pier. In pursuit. Need support.”

“We are one minute out, Morgan,” came the voice of one of the sheriff’s helicopter pilots.

“Baywatch vessels converging on your position,” came a second voice. “Time of intercept two minutes ten.”

Del Rio had had powerful search lamps mounted on the handlebars of the Sea-Doo. I flipped them on the second I broke free of the halo of light surrounding the pier. Rick’s back’s broken, I thought as I disappeared into the darkness.

I’d called in Del Rio’s condition and position. But there was nothing more I could do for him other than make sure the people behind the killings, the extortion, and now this bombing were made to pay.

I kept the throttle wide open, peering along the brilliant beam of light that shot almost a quarter mile out in front of me. Had they stayed on this same bearing? Or had they tacked? And if they had tacked, were they heading inland, or farther out to sea? Was there a boat waiting for them? A vehicle? Where …?

The beam picked up a shadow ahead of me in the waves. It was moving to my left, heading east for shore about two hundred and fifty yards out. I arced after the shadow, found the waves at my back, and surfed down them so fast that it felt like flight.

At one hundred and fifty yards I caught one of the kiteboarders fully in my beam, his back to me. He was cutting across the face of the swells. I could see the dry bag lashed there beside him on the board.

He looked over his shoulder, back at my light, and for a second I was sure he was going to draw a weapon and open fire. Instead, he tacked hard, came about, came right at me as fast as I was bearing down on him. It was a game of chicken I felt sure I’d win. The Sea-Doo weighed more than four hundred and fifty pounds. I doubted the board and kite weighed more than thirty.

I could hear intensifying chatter on the radio inside my wet suit hood. There were fatalities back on the pier. I also could hear the choppers closing now. Their searchlights joined mine, throwing a near-blinding glare on the kiteboarder, who never hesitated and never slowed.

At thirty-five yards, I ducked down, preparing myself for impact.

At twenty-five yards, a wave came between us. I lost him for a second.

At ten yards, he reappeared, launched off the crest, soared up and over me at least three stories, dangling below the kite, as calm as a bird.

Chapter 44

THE MOVE FLOORED me. I’d seen kiteboarders in action before, but this guy was a superstar.

I down-throttled, drifted the Sea-Doo one hundred and eighty degrees, and accelerated, following the beams of the helicopters playing on the boarder. He’d landed and was speeding out to sea.

“This is the L.A. Sheriff’s Department!” one of the pilots barked out of a loudspeaker. “Drop your kite.”

The boarder never slowed, but I was gaining ground again. Fifty yards separated us when the other kiteboarder appeared out of nowhere, launching from a wave to my left, and tried to take my head off with the steel fin that jutted from the bottom of his board. I ducked and almost dumped the sled but managed to keep it upright, right there on the verge of disaster.

I’d had enough by that point, and I had immunity, so I tore open the shoulder holster, freed the Glock, and went back after the first boarder, mindful that the second might reappear at any moment. These people had caused mass death. I would not hesitate to shoot one of them, aim for the legs, break them down for capture. But then I remembered what else was in the dry bags.