by Cap Daniels
I was about to die with eight million dollars in the bank and the woman I so desperately desired kneeling on my spine. After what I had endured at The Ranch, and doing what only a handful of people on Earth could accomplish in Havana, I was going to die in mere inches of water.
I heard Ace’s voice ringing in my head. You’re something special. You’re your father made over, only better.
I couldn’t let them down. Not Ace. And definitely not my father. What would Beater think if he knew I’d let a ballerina get the jump on me twice in one night?
I felt the hard metal frame of the Makarov pistol through the rubbery material of the dry bag pinned to my hip. I found the curve of the trigger guard and pressed my index finger against what I hoped was the trigger. If I got lucky, the barrel of the Makarov would be pointed toward the Russian, and the bullet would find enough flesh to get her off my back. When I felt the trigger collapse beneath the pressure of my finger and I heard the report of the pistol from within the dry bag, part of my brain expected to feel the heat of the bullet burn through my own flesh, but the burn didn’t come. Before the echo of the shot could resound, I heard the Russian scream, and I felt her nimble body collapse beside me in the shallow lagoon.
Breathless and desperate, I rolled with all of my strength and sat upright, coughing and spraying sand and saltwater from my mouth. I quickly scanned the horizon for security guards who had to have heard the shot, but no lights were approaching.
I squirmed and wiggled, flexing my arms until I freed myself from the lasso she’d draped over my body. I saw the shadow of her body squirming and splashing at my side. I knew she was a wounded animal and deadlier than ever, so I took two deep breaths before wrapping my arms around her thin frame and trapping her arms against her body in a bear hug from behind.
I liked how her body felt in my arms. I liked her strength and the taste of her wet hair. I didn’t know how badly she was wounded, nor where I had shot her, but I knew she must’ve been in the worst pain of her life. It was time to play half psychologist and half professional wrestler.
Like an anaconda, I squeezed her powerful body until I felt the breath leave her lungs. She was bucking like a bull and trying desperately to strike my face with the back of her head as I squeezed her against my chest. Fantasies of the passion that boiled within her body flashed through my mind, but I couldn’t let myself forget that she was deadly. For the briefest moment, I considered plunging her into the water to get her to submit, but that was no good. She would simply exhaust herself fighting against me until she had no strength and no air. Then, she’d willfully inhale two lungs full of water and let herself die in my arms rather than become my prisoner. I wouldn’t give her that option. I would keep her alive, and I would subdue her no matter how long it took. I needed her to know how I felt about her. I wanted her to feel my desire, but there was no way for any of that to happen until I got her calmed down. I was much stronger than her, and depending on where the bullet had struck, I was in far less pain. For the first time, I had the upper hand, and I wasn’t going to lose it again. I sat there on the sandy bottom with my chin buried solidly into her neck, and I squeezed her tighter with every breath. Sooner or later, she would pass out from exhaustion or blood loss.
I finally felt her body relax. Her breaths came with marked brevity. She sobbed in agony and perhaps fear. I wanted to comfort her, but I couldn’t let myself forget the danger she represented.
I began to talk to her in a slow, confident voice. “Just Relax. I know you’re hurt, but I’m not going to hurt you anymore. I want to talk to you. I can help you. I can give you the medical care that you need. Relax. I’m not your enemy. I was not sent to kill Barkov. I wasn’t there for him. He simply got in the way. He wasn’t my target. I was there for the other man.”
I felt her body relax when I said the words, “I wasn’t sent to kill Barkov.”
I had found her trigger. That was the first time I believed that one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of psychological education may have had some practical use after all.
In breathless, gasping Russian, she cried, “What do you mean you were not there for Barkov?”
I relaxed my grip almost imperceptibly, but she detected the weakening of my grasp and responded by twisting her thin, powerful body in my arms until we were face-to-face, only inches apart.
I could taste her breath and smell her blood. I could feel her heart beating against my chest. I thought I detected the slightest softening of her expression as our eyes met. I savored the moment and treasured the closeness, but she was in the perfect position to drive her forehead into my nose. The pain I’d experience would be unbearable, and I’d be forced to release her.
If she rolled her head backward to build momentum to strike at my nose, I’d drive my forehead into her face as quickly as possible to hopefully stop the coming blow. The blow that came was not a head-butt, but something far more powerful and potentially deadly.
She didn’t roll her head backward. Instead, she tilted her head to the right and slowly and deliberately put her lips on mine. With her legs wrapped around my waist, and her body pressed against mine, she kissed me.
The kiss was tender and delicate but felt sincere and powerful. For what felt like an eternity, I forgot that my tongue looked like an eggplant and felt like a broken arm. The woman I desired, dreamed of, and prayed for was in my arms, sitting on my lap with her lips on mine. I felt her pulse quicken and her body quiver as the kiss continued. It appeared that neither of us wanted the moment to end.
Finally, she gasped and bit her lip. “Please get me to boat. I am bleeding to death. You shot me in foot, you bastard.”
I lifted her body from mine and sat her in the shallow water. She made no effort to escape or lash out at me, but I kept my eyes on hers, looking for any sign of aggression. She gave me no reason to believe that she would fight or flee.
I slid my hand down her leg and found what was left of her shoe. In the dark, it was almost impossible to tell how badly she was wounded, so I slid the remnants of her shoe from her foot and removed my shirt. I tied my shirt around her foot, forming a field-expedient pressure dressing. I saw her trying to smile as I finished tying the knot.
I reached for her body so I could pull her through the water as I swam back to my boat, but she flinched and pulled away.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “I’m just going to swim you to the boat.”
“No!” she said sharply. “I can swim. Is only flesh wound. Give me fin. We will swim together.”
Arguing with her would be nothing more than wasted effort, so I surrendered, removed one of my fins, and handed it to her. She slid it on her good foot, rolled on her back, and began finning like a mermaid toward the sea. Her thin, muscular body continually tried to sink as she powered herself through the gentle waves, but she kept her head above the water enough to breathe jerky breaths.
We finally reached Aegis, and I climbed aboard first before pulling her over the stern and laying her on one of the cockpit cushions. She looked at me with countless emotions pouring across her face, and she whispered, “Spasibo, Amerikanec.”
I smiled and whispered back, “You’re welcome, Russian.”
23
Welcome Aboard . . . Again
Water dripped from her long hair, and her gorgeous eyes gleamed, but I could see she was in pain. I regretted pulling the trigger and causing such pain, but I had done it to save my life. Being alive is always the most important thing. I’d been trained to give no thought to the agony my target would endure, as there could be nothing more detrimental to the concentration my work required.
I’d not only been trained to avoid that catastrophic mistake, but I had dedicated countless hours of self-exploration to the psychology of taking the lives of other humans. I’d developed an ability to focus on the necessity of moving through a target without letting him or her become human. Blindness to the humanity of my targets was essential. When I pulled the trigger min
utes before, I truly believed that I would die if I didn’t take the shot.
Seeing her lying there, seemingly vulnerable and trembling in pain, I didn’t want to believe that she was capable and willing to take my life. I should’ve been doing everything in my power to flip her, but there were too many things to worry about at the moment to try talking her into joining the good guys.
I feared she hadn’t softened, that she’d just become more patient than before. Her tradecraft was exquisite. She killed Dutch. Not only did she kill him, but she killed him in his own bungalow and left the site looking like it’d been professionally cleaned on her way out. Clearly, she was more seasoned, more skilled, and more violent than me.
I believed she was playing me. There’s no way that an assassin of her skill would surrender to physical attraction in the field. She saw how I looked at her. She recognized the desire in my eyes. It had, no doubt, been a familiar look for her. There could be no man capable of looking into her eyes without feeling her drawing his soul through his skin. She obviously used everything in her environment to her advantage. Her beauty and sensuality would be no exception. It was up to me to steel myself against my desire for her, to find a way to be more cunning and smarter, and to remain one step ahead of the game she was playing. There may be nothing I will ever do that was closer to impossible, but there were no other options.
“Welcome aboard Aegis,” I said. “The last time you were here, you hadn’t been invited, if I remember correctly.”
She smiled. The last time I saw her smile was the day I’d unexpectedly met Dutch at the bar, and I watched her walking along the beach, staring into the sky, causing every man on the island to melt in his shoes.
“I have been on boat many times and you did not know. This is first time for being invited. I have been watching you. You drink too much, Chase Fulton.”
How does she know my name?
I tried to hide my look of surprise and self-disappointment, but apparently, I did a very poor job. She tilted her head and several long strands of wet hair fell across her shoulder. Resisting her was not going to be possible. I didn’t have whatever it would take to look at her without drowning in those eyes.
“Do not be hard on yourself. I am very good. Now, you must help my foot. You did shoot me. Remember?”
Still reeling from the revelation that she not only knew my name, but that she’d been watching me for some time, I bounced down the companionway to retrieve the medical bag that Dutch had used to sew up my tongue only a few hours earlier. I was going to need to restock my med kit very soon. I returned topside with a highball glass and a bottle of vodka in one hand, and my kit in the other. I poured three fingers of vodka and handed her the glass.
She accepted it and stared into the glass before drawing her wounded foot into her lap with the flexibility of a gymnast. She briefly glanced at me, then untied my bloody shirt from her foot and poured the vodka into her wound.
Not quite certain what to make of her unexpected use of the vodka, I looked into her eyes with what must’ve looked like confusion, and perhaps a little personal offense.
She furrowed her brow. “Is okay, Chase. You did not know.”
“What didn’t I know?”
“You did not know I am terrible Russian. I do not drink vodka. I detest cold, and I cannot eat caviar . . . is terrible. I drink tea. Vodka makes my mind soft. I eat chocolate because it tastes better than fish egg. I rather chase you through Caribbean than build snegovik in Mother Russia.”
Her command of English was impressive, but at times, her accent was strong. I chuckled to myself when she used the Russian word for snowman. She was testing me to determine how much Russian I knew. I played along.
I asked, “Snegovik? Is that Russian for igloo?”
She laughed, “Yes, Chase. Snegovik is igloo if you say so.”
I stared at her as if I were a schoolboy. She widened her eyes and pointed at her foot.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” I said. “Let’s take a look.”
“No. Do not look, Chase Fulton. Do something! You shot off my toe, and it feels like leg is burning. Do something!” she scolded.
I went to work on her foot. I had, indeed, shot her in the foot and left a pretty nasty wound where her pinky toe used to be. One of the good things about gunshot wounds, if there are any good things about them, is that they’re relatively clean until the bullet mushrooms as it starts striking bone. Fortunately, the bones in her missing toe were so small that the bullet didn’t have the inclination to mushroom. It cleanly cut the toe off and yanked a half inch chunk of flesh from the outside of her foot. She’d made a good decision by pouring the vodka into the wound. What the saltwater didn’t clean, the vodka did.
I donned a pair of latex gloves, opened a fresh suture kit, and inserted a small flashlight in my mouth. I made several injections of anesthetic around and into the wound before suturing it closed. I applied a very awkward bandage, because even though I’d been taught to suture, I’d never been trained how to bandage a four-toed foot. She laughed as I struggled with the awkward wrapping.
“You are not very good doctor,” she chuckled.
“No. I’m a terrible doctor, but I’m a pretty good sailor. And right now, I think that might be a more valuable skill. We really have to get out of here. Things are going to get very hot on this island when the sun comes up.”
She looked toward the beach. “I agree. We must go.”
I wasn’t quite sure what would happen if I hauled up the anchor and hoisted a sail or two. Would the authorities on the island come after us? If they did, would she kill them? If they didn’t, would she kill me?
There was only one way to know any of the answers to my questions, so I brought the engine to life, then eased Aegis forward to weigh the anchor before turning for the mouth of the protected anchorage. I locked the wheel and headed forward to rinse the anchor when it came aboard. To my surprise, as the anchor came to rest on the deck, I found a thin piece of line tied to the shackle. I pulled the line and found a large dry bag attached to the other end. My curiosity was piqued, but I didn’t want to draw attention to our departure by turning on the deck lights, nor had I brought a flashlight with me, so I returned to the cockpit with the dry bag in hand.
When she saw the bag, she smiled. “You want to know what is in bag, yes?”
“Da.”
She looked at the deck of my boat is if she were ashamed. “Is my tools and clothes. I was planning to take boat after I killed you on beach. I could not leave bag on boat, so I left on anchor.”
Honesty is an interesting approach.
“Before I turn a Russian assassin loose on my boat with her bag of tools, I think I’ll have a look inside if you don’t mind.” I poured the contents of the bag onto the seat, and to my surprise, there was no pistol in the pile of clothes and personal items. “No gun?”
She looked offended. “I do not shoot.”
“Actually,” I said, “I’ve seen you shoot. So now I’ve caught you in your first lie.”
24
Svetlana?
At barely above idle, we motored cautiously out of the anchorage as the night absorbed us. Although I hadn’t checked the tides, I remembered that the waterline on the beach was lower when I’d shot my visitor than it was when I’d swum ashore, so the tides were receding. That made navigating the shallow waters in the dark even more challenging. When my depth sounder read eighteen feet, I relaxed enough to finally unfurl the headsail. The wind was consistent at just over ten knots out of the southwest. That was just enough breeze to tug Aegis through the water at four knots. When I put up the mainsail, we could make five and a half or maybe six knots. We weren’t going anywhere quickly, but we were going.
I locked the wheel and turned to look at my guest. It was time to get her name. “Don’t go anywhere, Svetlana. I’ll be right back.”
That was the first feminine Russian name that came to mind, so I decided to toss it into the wind and see if it garnered a re
action. It didn’t. Either it was her name and she was smart enough to avoid a reaction, or it wasn’t her name, and she was smart enough to recognize that I was guessing. Either way, I was reminded that she was probably smarter than me.
I strode down the stairs and set a kettle of water on the alcohol stove so I could make Katerina or Svetlana or Brenda some tea since she wasn’t going to drink my vodka. I reached for my bottle of Jack Daniel’s, but remembering her words, “You drink too much, Chase,” I opted to join her for tea. I thought it might go a long way toward establishing some level of trust.
Occasionally, I glanced back up the companionway to make sure she hadn’t dived overboard again. I didn’t want her to leave. I tried telling myself that I wanted her to stay because she was a valuable intelligence asset, but in reality, I was already falling in love with her. My analytical psychologist mind couldn’t rationalize that idea, but trying to rationalize any of this was a colossal waste of time.
When the kettle whistled, I pulled two tea bags and two mugs from the cupboard and headed back on deck with the steaming kettle in my other hand. I’d never tried to balance two mugs and a steaming tea kettle on a pitching, heeling deck before, so I suspect I looked a lot like a drunk juggler.
Trying not to smile, my Russian took both mugs from my hand. She pulled the teabag strings out of the mugs, and let them dangle over the rims. I braced my feet against the deck and poured the steaming water over the teabags. She never took her eyes off mine. She never once looked down at the mugs as I was pouring boiling water only inches from her fingers. I wondered if she realized what an overt demonstration of trust that was on her part.