long gone. The terrorists were desperately trying to get the boat out of firing range, pushing their throttles to the max, but Savoldi was able to stay within a mile of them. Never closer, but never falling too far behind either.
Yet as the seas grew rougher, and both boats poured it on, the opportunities for any kind of accurate shot diminished proportionately. While at first Nolan was firing the M107 every thirty seconds or so, the conditions soon stretched that time frame to just one shot a minute. Then that became one attempt every five minutes as the terrorists were doing their best to stay down and under cover, not easy to do when one was bouncing around so much. Still, from there it went to one attempt every ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty—with all of these rounds falling harmlessly into the sea.
Soon enough, as their ammunition, which had also been spared from being thrown overboard, started to run low and the ocean waves ran even higher, Nolan found himself attempting only one shot every half hour or so.
Then this thing they’d been waiting for, this thing they thought would take just minutes to accomplish once they were in range, stretched into an hour. Then two.
Then three.
Then four …
* * *
NOLAN STAYED WITH it, though. By midafternoon, six hours into the hunt, his good eye was red and running with tears from trying to sight his prey for more than a fraction of a second. He wasn’t able to squeeze off more than a handful of shots in that time—all misses.
Night arrived and the others in the Whiskey contingent, with little else to do, retired back to their corner of the cockpit and began to doze. Emma had stayed by Nolan’s side for a while, but when he told her she should get some rest, she listened to him and retreated to the back of the cockpit, too.
Eventually it was just Nolan and Savoldi: he at the gun, the pilot watching the controls. Even Giuseppe took the time to nap.
The stars came out, the moon came up, and the crazy, frustrating high-speed chase continued, with no real end in sight.
At one point Savoldi told him: “In a lot of Italian literature, the ship is used as a metaphor for the soul. That is why you just can’t give up. This is in your soul.”
“Maybe,” Nolan replied, his eye still glued to the scope, as it had been for almost the entire day. “But it should be easier than this.”
Savoldi laughed. “And why is that?” he asked. “Now that I know what you have gone through in the past few days, and what your friends have gone through, and what this terror weapon you are pursuing is, nothing about any of it has been easy. So, what makes you think this particular part would be that way?”
Nolan took his eye from the sniper scope for a moment and looked over at him. “Are you saying we’ve been wasting our time out here?”
Savoldi shook his head no. “You are on their trail, yes? You are chasing them. You are not letting them get away. But my heart tells me this will not end until the last chapter is written, not until you chase them down to where this bomb is located. I might be wrong, but I just think anything less would just be troppo facile. Too easy.”
As if to prove Savoldi’s point, at that moment, it started to rain.
The bad weather came as a bit of a surprise; most of their trip had been free of annoying atmospherics. But the clouds had gathered, the wind began blowing up, and according to their weather readout screen, the occasional rainsqualls had all coalesced into one large front. Soon they were in the middle of a steady, blustery downpour.
The wind was blowing up from the south, so it didn’t affect the speed of the Numero Two—or that of the Smoke-Lar, either.
But the rain all but killed Nolan’s chances of getting a good shot at the terrorists.
* * *
ONE HOUR INTO the storm, Nolan made the mistake of asking Savoldi for one of his energy drinks.
It tasted like bad soda pop but it did give him a rush—for about thirty minutes. Then he began to lose this artificial vitality as its effects quickly wore off.
Savoldi recognized the problem and handed Nolan two tiny white pills. Nolan knew what they were—amphetamines. He’d downed a lot of them in his special ops days as well as