67

One day, water will cover the entire planet. How long after the inundation will civilization entirely disappear?

Rusty tosses a yellow pad across the cabin. It lands on the counter to my right. “Loose ends, Lina, loose ends. I need the identifiers for that Near Bear you so rudely brought by my ranch.”

“Why would I tell you that, if you just plan to kill us anyway?”

“Drowning, they say, is a euphoric death. Plan A is drowning, you and your boy go out seeing rainbows. Plan Be won’t be so pleasant.”

“Ted Lincoln.” It’s the name of a kid I hated in grade school. Long gone. Living in Malaysia now, if you can trust Facebook.

“Write it down. Telephone and address too, darling.”

I place my right elbow on the table to write on the yellow pad, careful not to turn my back to Rusty. “Email?” I ask, stalling.

“I need it all, Miss Lina. I’ve got to wrap this thing up with a nice tight bow.”

“Rusty, it’s not too late.” But of course it is. I know it is. I’m still hunched over the counter, pen in hand. I write Ted’s name down, followed by the address for the Russian embassy in Washington and a fake phone number.

“Give me the pad, darling. Let me check out your penmanship.”

I’m ten feet away from Rusty, a narrow counter between us, maps and depth charts spread across it. The heaters are still going full blast; both of us are sweating. The wind is blowing swells up over the bow and into the window. The ocean is grayish green. The heat in the cabin is unbearable, a scent of Dove soap and peppermint emanating from Rusty’s body, just like Caroline said. Adrenaline rips through me.

“The pad, darling,” he says, wiping his brow.

With my right hand, I toss the yellow pad in his direction, slow, high, and arcing toward him. As his eyes dart upward, catching the trajectory of the pad in the air, I slide my weapon out of the wet suit, across my body. In a flash the barrel of the gun is pointed at Rusty.

They tell you the training will come back without even a thought. They like to call it muscle memory, though that term makes no sense to me. The memory isn’t in your muscles but in your neural cortex, a rapid-fire series of instructions delivered from brain to nerves. I hated all of those hours spent shooting with my left hand, all through the first year at Quantico and four times a year since. Sixteen years, thousands of bullets. Over and over. Five on the left, five on the right, again. It seemed like wasted time. Why shoot with my left hand when my right hand was so much more accurate? “You never know,” the firearms instructor used to say. “You never know.”

All of the training comes back at once. At close range, eyes on the target, no need to pick up a sight picture. Eyes. On. The. Target. Up close, high stress, your gun will shoot where your eyes look.

And in that split second, Rusty looks like a kid, his freshly pressed clothes nearly perfect, his belt notched too tight on his big stomach, mouth open, his eyes focused on the pad floating toward him, anticipating his great catch, like a boy on a playground. And through it all, he doesn’t notice the movements of my left hand.

My body bladed, stable stance, hands forward, fluid motion, smooth and fast. Smooth is fast. From day one that’s what they always said.

Now.

I fire two shots to the body, center mass, and one to the head. Eliminate the threat. Two and one, my eyes focused on him, no hesitation. The Mozambique drill—up close, two to the body, one to the head. The voice in my head, Mozambique, two to the body, one to the head. Repeat. My torso is low, my feet spread, leaning against the counter for support, each shot straight and level, careful there is no ricochet to the deck below.

The noise is deafening, bam-bam-bam.

And then it is silent. The waves hit the starboard side, the boat rocks.

For a moment a cold terror grips me: Could I have missed?

But Rusty is motionless, a look of surprise on his face. The yellow pad and the Ruger fall to the floor. I cover down on him, both hands on my weapon.

A narrow stream of blood rolls down the side of his face. I caught him high and right, just at the hairline. As his right hand reaches feebly toward the blood, a red circle forms at the center of his shirt, quickly spreading outward.

“Oh, Lina, darling,” he mumbles.

He falls forward, the full, massive weight of his body crashing through the counter between us, arms flopping to his side as he collapses onto the floor. The boat shudders with the tremendous crash, all three hundred–plus pounds coming down at once.

With both hands on the weapon, I shuffle around the counter to kick the Ruger across the room and get a better look. His eyes are wide open, but Rusty is gone.

He looks surprised that it ended this way. That was not his plan.

A terrified voice from down below. “Mom?”