Chapter 14
Swimming for shore was out of the question. I was too damn tired. A sea-change had occurred--I now wanted to live another day. Swimming for Japan was postponed. The god of death, having jumped up and run to the balcony railing to watch my undoing now returned to his seat to wait for another try at me later.
I had been thoroughly drown-proofed in the SEALS and although too tired to swim to the certain safety of land, assumed the position, floating just beneath the surface, gulping a breath, floating some more, fluttering the hands to bob to the surface, gulping and so forth. I could go on like this for hours if need be. After a time, I felt a little stronger and began a slow lazy backstroke towards the shore. Time and tide had carried me perhaps a hundred yards south of the beach house, so I relaxed and made slow but steady progress. Which was when I heard the boat coming. Heard, rather than saw, because it was approaching slowly from the open ocean, running lights out. I nearly laughed in spite of myself as it came into view. It was a 15-foot Zodiac raft, a boat with which I am well-acquainted. There were four men besides the coxswain at the tiller, and nothing about their menacing outlines against the faintly glowing Los Angeles nighttime sky suggested lost tourists. No, this was something launched from a yacht somewhere farther out specifically to insert a lightly armed raiding party into the Malibu colony. Except this was no ordinary group. The fortuitous identity of the coxswain was not lost to me. It was none other than Lenny Poon himself.
Lenny was going to run straight over me, not looking, as he should have been, for his personal demise to be awaiting him in the form of a big naked man a hundred yards off shore out for a midnight swim. I adjusted my angle slightly and began to crawl into his path just in time to snag my hand on a rope and enjoy the tow into shore. The craft lurched slightly as it picked up my bulk, but nobody went crazy or anything. As I said, nobody was looking for death to suddenly arrive from a hitchhiker in the breakers. The craft beached and four men headed quickly up the beach to a place where, I was certain, Johnson and his dog would be more than a match. Meanwhile, I had business with the coxswain, who stayed behind to provide security for the craft.
Bobby, I thought, moving up to within inches of Poon from behind. It is time for retribution.
The End
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