Three sharp blasts of the Polaris’s steam whistle signaled its departure from the pier. Roussard reached down and turned the key, firing up the citron-yellow Cobalt’s engines.
He had already piloted the route several times during the day. As the Polaris passed the subdivision before Abbey Springs known as the Harvard Club, Roussard would uncover the Vulcan and move in for the kill. By the time he reached Meg Cassidy and her guests, they would be parallel with the Yacht Club and the fun could begin.
As he watched the Polaris cruise past a small spit of land that jutted out into the lake, which he’d learned from his maps was called Rainbow Point, he could hear laughter and the tinkling of glasses accompanied by jazz music.
The passengers of the Polaris were blissfully unaware of what was about to happen, and Roussard’s sense of power soared. Nudging his throttles forward, he picked up speed.
He took in the positions of the other boats around him, noting that the lake looked no different than it had over the last two days. The small number of law enforcement boats the lake did have were actively tied up at the Lake Geneva Country Club, preparing for the president’s attendance at a wedding that would never happen. In essence, Roussard’s getaway was all but guaranteed. And if any do-gooder was stupid enough to give him chase after the attack, he would have more than enough ammunition left to blow him right out of the water.
Seeing the Polaris approaching the Harvard Club, Roussard peered beneath the ski tube to make sure the weapon was “hot” and ready to fire.
Satisfied that everything was exactly as he wanted it, he straightened up and focused on the target.
As the steamship neared the Harvard Club, Roussard bumped the throttles farther forward and began to pick up speed again.
When the Polaris pulled even with the Harvard Club’s swim pier, Roussard threw the ski tube overboard and pushed the Cobalt’s throttles all the way forward.
It took only a moment for the speedboat to pop out of the hole, and once the craft was on plane, it accelerated like a jet off an aircraft carrier.
He’d already opened the boat all the way up earlier in the day, but the sensation was nothing like what he was feeling now. He rose from his seat, feeling his body become one with the craft. With the Vulcan, the three of them combined to create the perfect killing machine.
Roussard watched as the distance between him and his unknowing victims aboard the slow-moving Polaris narrowed.
As he got within a thousand meters of the steamship he began to count down in bite-sized chunks. Seven hundred meters. Six hundred meters. Five hundred.
He wanted to shout the attack cry of his ancestors as his boat ripped through the water and he closed in on the final several hundred meters. Already he could see passengers on the Polaris taking notice. At first their faces reflected bewilderment and then terror as they realized what was happening and comprehended that they were powerless to stop it.
He was within a hundred meters of where he needed to bring the boat to a stop so that he could man the Vulcan. Seventy-five. Now fifty meters!
As Roussard cut back the throttles, the engines failed to quiet. Instead they roared and grew louder.
It took the killer but a fraction of a second to comprehend what was happening, and by then it was too late.
Chapter 120
The hull of the bright-red Cigarette boat sliced right through Roussard’s Cobalt. At the moment he realized what had happened, the deed was done. Roussard was barely able to throw his hands up in front of his face before impact.
Passengers aboard the Polaris began screaming as soon as they saw that the low-slung Cigarette boat was doing nothing to avert an impending collision with the bright-yellow Cobalt.
The sound of the impact was sickening. Fiberglass was ripped apart and rent asunder as the Cigarette plowed right through its victim and kept going, grazing the stern of the Polaris.
The Cigarette finally stopped when it ran aground halfway up the rolling hill that met the thin strip of rock, sand, and grass that composed the Harvard Club’s shorefront.
The first thing Harvath heard as he came to were the terrified screams from the Polaris. Blood was dripping into his right eye, and he raised his hand to his forehead and felt a gash several inches long. Looking to his left, he couldn’t find Morrell and assumed he’d been ejected.
Smoke was pouring from the engine compartment. Harvath cut the engines and the wildly spinning props soon fell silent. Stumbling from the boat, he looked for Morrell and found him lying near a rock wall over thirty feet away. He was barely conscious, and Harvath knew better than to move him. He told Morrell to stay still and that he’d be back with help soon.
What he didn’t share with him was that he had something else he had to do first.
Off the end of the Harvard Club boat pier, Harvath could see the two halves of Roussard’s boat upturned and bobbing just above the water line. Ignoring the splitting pain from his head, Harvath took off running down the pier, launching himself at the end of it in a flying leap over the water.
When he plunged beneath the surface, he opened his eyes and began looking for Roussard. He stayed down as long as he could, until he had no choice but to come up again for air. Circling the wreckage in search of the terrorist, he ignored the burning sensation of spilled gasoline that was pouring into his wound.
He was about to submerge himself again when he heard coughing from about seventy-five yards away. It had come from a fleet of moored sailboats. Swimming as quietly as he could, Harvath made for the sound.
From Fontana, the village air raid siren was calling the police, volunteer fire, and rescue workers to duty.
Unobserved, he moved closer to the sailboat, and then, taking a deep breath, Harvath slipped once more beneath the surface of the water.
When he got beneath the sailboat’s heavy, fixed keel he looked up and saw a pair of legs feebly treading water. Sliding his Benchmade from where it was clipped in his pocket, Harvath depressed its lone button and the blade swung up and locked into place.
Like a great white shark circling its prey, Harvath made a loop beneath Roussard and headed upward, quietly breaking the surface behind him.
The man must have sensed Harvath’s presence, because all of a sudden he spun, his eyes wide with fear. Blood was running from his nose as well as both of his ears. When he coughed, great gobs of it came out, and as Harvath positioned himself for the kill, he noticed that one of Roussard’s eyeballs must have become detached, as it remained stationary and didn’t track the way the other one did.
There was no mercy in Harvath’s heart for this terrorist, this killer of innocent men and women. Roussard was beyond rehabilitation, and Harvath knew the greatest gift he could give the American taxpayers was to prevent Roussard from ever standing trial and living out the next twenty years on appeal after appeal in some prison somewhere.
Harvath swung the knife with one fluid slash, and its blade tore through the soft flesh of Roussard’s throat. That which has been taken in blood, can only be answered in blood, he thought to himself.
Watching him die, Harvath began to realize that he’d made a mistake. The blade was so razor-sharp that Roussard probably hadn’t even felt it. Bleeding to death was too good for him. Harvath wanted him to be filled with terror as he died, just as so many of his victims had.
Quickly swimming around behind him, Harvath placed both of his hands upon Roussard’s shoulders and pushed him beneath the surface of the water.