Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 129

Tas hauled in the anchor. He took one of the outboard engines out of neutral and into forwards. He rotated the tiller. The engine went from grumble to growl. Koenig felt the deck vibrate. Like he was sitting on a massage chair. He was too low to see anything other than the sky, but he knew the boat was sailing towards the dam. The clouds were moving. Koenig wondered if there would be any warning. He wasn’t expecting the kooouuuueeee of a Second World War bomb. Those bombs had whistles attached to weaken enemy morale. As they dropped and accelerated towards the ground, the pitch changed due to the Doppler effect. Civilians on the ground could hear the bombs, but they didn’t know if that was their last moment on Earth. It was a way of terrorising the people you didn’t manage to hit. As if war weren’t cruel enough. The missiles the F-35s fired were state-of-the-art. They wouldn’t whistle. Koenig thought he’d just go from being alive to being dead. No big bang. No flash of light. From flesh and bone to red mist.

What a pedestrian way to die, he thought. Waiting. Helpless, like a rabbit in headlights. And there wasn’t anything he could do to change it. Nothing out of left field. No oil-filled Coca-Cola bottles. He was naked and he was immobile. He was weak with blood loss. He was unarmed and he was unlegged.

He’d hoped either he or Carlyle would shoot Tas from the water; in his wildest dreams he hadn’t thought Tas would drag him on board, unconscious. Strip him naked. Take his Fairbairn– Sykes. He should have concealed a weapon. The suture needle from the Gulfstream’s first aid box could have been hidden in his hair. It could have been pushed into his skin, all the way up to the needle’s eye. He’d seen prisoners do it with paperclips. Used them later to open their restraints.

He thought back to his training. Multiple instructors from multiple countries and multiple backgrounds – kind of like the convergent evolution of the chipped-stone blade Tas had been babbling about earlier – had told him that the only difference between an object and a weapon was intent. But Tas hadn’t even given him that chance. He kept a clean deck; there wasn’t anything to hand. Nothing he could use as a weapon. No anchors. No boat hooks. Not even rope. He pressed backwards against the cabin door, but it didn’t budge.

Tas had done his job well.

Unbidden and unwelcome, part of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer popped into Koenig’s mind. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Alcoholics Anonymous used it. It seemed apt. It anchored AA’s core message: you cannot control everything. And trying to was the reason you were addicted to mood-altering substances. Which was ironic, as Koenig wouldn’t have minded a drink. A cold bottle of Sam Adams. Maybe two. He’d have to settle for the next best thing.

‘I’ll have that cigar now, Jakob,’ he said.

Maybe he could send up a smoke signal.

Tas didn’t respond. It seemed like he was concentrating. He was looking forwards with his hand resting lightly on the tiller. Nothing but small adjustments. Appeared they were headed in the right direction. Koenig thought Tas would want to attract the F-35s before the boat reached the canyon that led to the dam. Ecological-disaster-wise, it made sense to blow up his spent nuclear fuel rods where the water was deepest. Koenig figured Tas was five minutes away from going full throttle.

Koenig tried again.

‘We’re about to see the business end of an F-35 strike,’ he said. ‘If that doesn’t deserve a Cuban, I don’t know what does.’

Without taking his eyes off the horizon, Tas picked up his case and tapped out a cigar. He threw it towards Koenig. It flipped over in the air, like the bone the hominid throws in 2001: A Space Odyssey ’s opening sequence. The one he’d just used to beat a rival to death. It implied the invention of the first tool was the beginning of the hominid transition to human. It was the dawn of man. Stanley Kubrick was Koenig’s favourite director, but although he liked 2001 , he didn’t love it. He thought it was disjointed. Segments of the movie weren’t connected. The final scene was flawed. And if he was being hypercritical, parts were a bit boring. It hadn’t stopped him from having an original poster hanging in his hallway, though. It was a Stanley Kubrick film.

The cigar landed in Koenig’s lap. He made no attempt to pick it up. He stared at it. His mouth went dry. He knew what he had to do. It was the only play he had left. He felt a prickle of something. He was so surprised he didn’t immediately recognise it.

It was fear. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just the memory of fear.

Koenig didn’t care. It was inconsequential.

So he did what he’d almost forgotten to do after all these years without it. He leaned into his fear and embraced it like an old friend.