Then all hell broke loose.
Holloway returned fire, shooting at nothing because there was nothing to see. Other men did the same while some took cover behind whatever they could manage.
Small boats appeared aft of the enemy yacht, zipping at them with alarming bursts of speed. The men onboard brandished machine guns that spat bullets like dragon fire.
“Sink those fucking things,” Holloway screamed. “Then shoot them like fish in a barrel.”
But the barrels had already fanned out. The crew of the Frozen Cocktail divided their attention between breaches, opening fire on the invaders as barking sniper fire coming from the center of the yacht continued to dwindle their ranks.
Blake dove for a discarded rifle smeared with blood. He scooped it and tugged at Sara who had taken a handgun off the deck in much the same way. They fell back toward the rear of the ship so the sniper fire couldn’t easily reach them.
Holloway and two stragglers were falling back in a similar fashion. The rest of the crew already decimated.
The survivors regrouped aft, hiding behind the cabin wall. They had inadvertently made life easier for the sniper because now there was only two thin planks of deck to watch.
“We should go below,” Blake said.
“They’ll sink us,” Sara screamed.
“If we’re lucky,” Holloway said.
A portable ladder lifted up from the ocean and hooked onto the railing. Blake called it out and Holloway barked that a second one had appeared on his side. In a moment, dark faces appeared level with the railings. Holloway and his men shot them, rappelling the boarding efforts.
“They’re going to keep climbing,” the captain said.
They killed the next two faces just like the first. And as soon as that appeared to be a losing strategy for the pirates, the yacht began to rumble and float around to the port side, only it couldn’t get as close as it wanted due to the capsizing resort barge floating between the vessels.
“Only so many places a sharpshooter can be,” Holloway said. His men were crouched in cover looking through scoped rifles, fixing to take the sniper out before he could do any more damage.
Sara moved below deck, sighting one of the siege ladders while under the benefit of cover. Nobody else tried to board. Across from her, one of Holloway’s crewmen covered the starboard ladder wrung.
Visibility was dropping fast. The swirling storm turned the world into shadows.
“The windows,” Holloway said.
Blake’s heart smashed like a hammer against an anvil. If the sniper was parked in a window, Blake couldn’t see him. He slid the scope across the deck and found the blonde woman, thinking she deserved death for her part in this. The way she’d flagged them down, hoping they’d lower their defenses. He spied her ankle jutting out from behind some diving equipment and felt a great deal of power as he thought about amputating it.
Blake sighted those toes.
His sweaty finger started to squeeze the trigger—
And a gunshot exploded in his ear. Blake lowered the rifle and pushed on his eardrum, stumbling inside as the gun fell from his hands and dropped below deck. Sara spun and said something, her words lost beneath the high-pitch ringing.
Blake balanced himself in the jamb and squinted to see a black man stumbling around on the deck of the opposing ship, blood pumping from his throat with such force it looked like an exaggerated movie effect.
And the blonde woman was back on her feet, waving again, screaming in what Blake’s ears interpreted as tinnitus rings.
By the time Blake saw what she was pointing at, it was already too late.
Two pirates stood aft of the Frozen Cocktail, having just cleared the boarding ladder. They charged the small group of holdouts with raised machetes. It was the captain who opened fire and cut them down.
The Frozen Cocktail rocked on increasingly agitated water, leaving the two corpses to slide around in a thin puddle of blood.
One of Holloway’s crewmen rushed the ladder and unhooked it from the railing, dropping it back into the ocean.
“The other ladders,” Holloway screamed. “Now that the sniper’s down, get the other ladders!” He pushed one of his men along the portside and then shoved Blake against the starboard rail.
Blake and the crewman rushed up like they were racing. The crewman reached his ladder first and stuck his gun barrel overboard in a display of caution. No need to fire. He lifted the top metal wrung and let the ladder fall away from the hull.
Blake got to his ladder next and reached overboard. A machete blade lunged forward and sliced his neck with the speed of a striking cobra. He tried to scream but his voice was already a ghost. He tumbled back with wide eyes, powerless to watch as the large man came aboard with frightening speed. The pirate lifted the machete and swung it again. The blade struck Blake’s shoulder. His nerves cried out louder than his voice, which had been reduced to a pathetic and near-silent rasp.
Beyond his murderer, another pirate hopped over the rail and opened fire on the port crewman sprinting now to assist Blake. That body hit the deck and a puddle of blood rushed beneath Blake’s feet.
The machete went high. Blake could only stare into the eyes of the madman who swung it. The eyes weren’t angry, but tired. And as two more invading men hopped the rail and moved aft across Blake’s peripheral, the blade came down into his skull one final time with a fatal crack that echoed in eternity.
Blake’s body smashed to the ground like a bag of bricks and all he saw at the end of his life was the bare feet of the man who’d murdered him.
The sky overhead split. A torrential rain fell like God himself was pissing on him.
It was the last thought Blake had before everything went permanently black.
Part Two
THE GLARING TWINS
Twenty-Three
Kaahin strode across the deck of his latest acquisition, bare feet splashing through thin streams of watery blood. The rifle in his hands trembled. He needed to keep this display of weakness from his men. They were busy corralling the survivors below deck, and he needed to steady his nerves before joining them.
The blonde woman standing on the Star Time’s bow wore disgust on her face. Kaahin threw her a patronizing wave and she turned away.
You are still my slave, he thought and took great satisfaction in the way her posture slouched.
Her sobs were silent at this distance and looked more like dry heaves.
Kaahin grinned at the sight.
He went below and found the Frozen Cocktail’s three survivors on their knees and wearing the blood of their friends and lovers. The dark skinned woman wept openly for the mutilated white boy they had just tossed overboard. This incensed him.
“Silence.” His voice was a whip crack of English that reduced her sobs to whispers.
Through the nearest portal, Kaahin watched the sunken resort vessel at last surrender to the cresting waves. The busted hull drifted into watery oblivion.
He drew a sharp breath as he realized what it meant. Death’s Head was beneath them. The battle for this ship had thinned Kaahin’s ranks beyond comfort, but the fresh corpses would make good bait.
He rushed topside where discarded bodies floated through the whitecaps, staining the fizzy water cherry red. The corpses fanned out, becoming driftwood on the horizon.
Death’s Head had already decided to ignore the bait. Whatever hunted them wouldn’t be lured out by something so obvious. This creature was a hunter and it desired sport.
Kaahin’s other ship, the Star Time ran parallel to the Frozen Cocktail. He wanted nothing more than to shoot the blonde woman through her million-dollar face, but knew he could not. He was going to need all the leverage he could get.
“Bring her,” Kaahin commanded as he looked across the water. “And bring the rest of them up.”
The Star Time closed the gap between ships. One of Kaahin’s men across the way put a pistol to the blonde’s head and motioned for her to jump.
She hesitated and caught a pistol whip against the back of her head for that insubordination. She shrieked and hopped the railing, balancing her back against it before leaping.
The chasm between ships was insignificant. She made the jump down because of the height differential between decks. She came crashing aboard on her shoulder, sliding across the deck like an animal carcass, eventually looking up with a battered face.
Kaahin’s men dragged her across the deck and tossed her against the knees of his other prisoners.
The only captive that concerned him was the white man. He was of comparable age to Kaahin. Of the two males they had taken prisoner, only the American projected any sense of danger. It was the unpredictable glare in his eyes. The sort of crazy that promised he’d sink this fucking ship and ride it to the ocean floor before handing it over.
Kaahin needed to humble him quickly. “Put your crew to work,” he told him. “Clean this deck as if this ship still belonged to you.”
The American grinned. He stared over Kaahin’s head in protest. Quiet showmanship to prove to his crew he was not happy to comply, but would. Then he began giving orders, inaudibly at first but soon much louder.
The white woman groveled in a puddle of blood that receded steadily in pouring rain. She curled into the tightest fetal position she could make. Kaahin allowed her to lie there shivering for now. She had one use and this was not it.
The American handed out cleaning supplies like weapons and the prisoners went to work on cleaning the bloodstains that had spilled below deck. They scrubbed the ship of hardened splatter, some of it clinging stubbornly even in the face of constantly lashing rain, removing as much trace evidence as possible.
All corpses got tossed, regardless of affiliation and Kaahin watched for signs of Death’s Head, desperate to see the cursed thing. What fish refused even the freshest bait?
It took a little more than an hour to sweep the Frozen Cocktail clean. The prisoners were stored below deck, all of them in the same quarters. All but the white woman, who hadn’t moved from her cat-curled position.
Kaahin stepped over her and ordered his ships to deeper waters, knowing Death’s Head would follow.
They headed north, eager to distance his makeshift fleet from the resort wreckage. People would come looking for that.
The sky refused to let up as they sailed. The decks were permanently slick beneath sheets of rainwater. The ships rocked harder and the men used the rails to traverse, clinging to the metal for fear of falling overboard.
Kaahin went below deck to the prisoners’ room. He pointed to the dark-skinned woman and waited in the hall for his men to untie her.
She came out glaring. That temperament took him by surprise. He thought of the blonde waiting above deck, more whimpering animal than woman, and assumed any western bitch would crumble that way. Usually, they could not even look him in the eye. Not this one, though. He admired her strength.
Kaahin hated speaking English, but it was a necessity when it came to ignorant Americans. Over the years he’d learned not to waste time asking if they knew another tongue.
“Your husband was looking for Roche’s resting place,” he told her.
She said nothing.
“Turn over your materials to me.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway.”
“I’m going to give you a choice.”
“What choice?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I meant to say chance.”
They reached the end of the hall and he stepped aside so she could climb above deck first. One of Kaahin’s men greeted her there with an automatic rifle to the face.
“All you can do is decide not to die,” Kaahin said.
She took a plastic bag out from beneath her waistline. He knew it was there from the way her shirt outlined the square shape of its contents, but he was glad to see her cooperating. He liked to know how far people were willing to go. How smart they were.
“All I got,” she said.
He picked it up and leafed through the sheets. Tears poured down her face. Her tummy stuttered and she gagged, certain she had just handed over her only bargaining chip.
Kaahin hooked his elbow around her neck and flexed. He patted her down with his free hand and felt a bulge in her pocket. His hands dove into the fabric and retrieved a sparkling ruby.
The sky flashed blinding white. He released her and she spun to face him. They stayed like that for a split second.
Kaahin found he had seething contempt for her. She mourned a white man. She was young, attractive, and willingly gave her genes to western weakness.
He shoved her. Really shoved her and the slickness of the deck did the rest of the work for him. The girl’s eyes went wide. Whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. She stumbled and hit the rail, took it so fast she flipped over and went face-first toward the water. Crashing and disappearing into the rising emerald waves.
The storm roared, but Kaahin heard her panicked splashes over it. This is the plan now, Kaahin thought. He stormed toward the bow and tore at the lifeless blonde woman cowering beneath the life preservers bolted to the wall.
Her blue eyes fluttered and then snapped open as he dug under her shoulders and dragged. Kaahin had a choice to make, keep her in case the Coast Guard boarded them, which wouldn’t fool anyone, or add a second helping of live bait to the waters behind them.
Suddenly, he needed to rid himself of this eye sore. He spat in her movie star face and smacked her across the eyes with his knuckles. Again and again. Taking the time to make sure she bled first.
She twisted her lip up in a defiant smirk while his phlegm dribbled off her cheek.
Kaahin didn’t care.
He threw her overboard.
Twenty-Four
Sara slipped beneath the waves. The current flung her against the Frozen Cocktail’s hull. She rang it like a bell.
She was off-kilter. If she swam, there’d be no way of knowing which direction she was going. And if she surfaced, they’d shoot her to pieces.
She paddled through the gloom with eyes wide, water stinging.
The Frozen Cocktail’s hull stretched above her no matter the direction she swam.
A long thin stream of fizzy water caught her attention. Golden hair formed a crude yellow halo around a dark shadow. A body straightened and fished toward her with the grace of a mermaid. She kicked past Sara without noting her at all.
Sara twisted around and followed the pale body. The blonde who still had her bearings because her skull hadn’t been smashed on the way down. Sara’s lungs were getting raw, her chest tight. Her eyeballs felt like they suffered bee stings. She couldn’t last much longer.
The blonde arched her back and paddled up. Sara followed and they broke the surface together, gasping and scratching for air and safety. They had reached the other side of the second ship.
Still, the blonde refused to acknowledge Sara. She thrashed around and went aft to the swimmer’s platform. Above it, a ladder led up to the deck.
Just as the blonde reached the platform, Sara caught sight of a pirate scrambling to the edge of the deck high above, pistol in hand.
The blonde was determined to risk it. She scaled the platform and leapt for the ladder with a surprising show of speed. She caught the deck railing just as the shooter fired wide.
The girl reached up overhead and closed a fist around his pants. She tugged him forward and then dropped all her weight so that he flipped the rail and went careening onto the swimmer’s platform.
Sara heard the wet crack from here. Two bodies crashing and wrestling. The pistol slipped from the pirate’s fist and disappeared beneath rising waves. Sara scrambled onto the surface herself, joining the scuffle just as the blonde tried to separate herself from the action. She slipped and fell back gracelessly, knocking the three of them into the drink.
The ocean lifted them on angry swells that seemed determined to throw them back. All three of them reached for the
platform. The pirate’s hand fell over Sara’s head, grabbing a clump of her hair. The blonde hooked an arm around the man’s neck and scaled his back, squeezing his windpipe while his face puffed.
Sara brought her knees up against her belly, feet finding traction against the pirate’s abdomen. She pushed off and left a bloody tuft of her hair in the palm of his hand.
The blonde continued squeezing his neck from the v of her elbow, pulling her wrist with her other hand as if she might wrestle his head right off.
Sara paddled backward, watching and hoping the blonde wouldn’t need her help. Behind the blonde, a pile of rubble floated toward the struggle. Storm debris, Sara guessed.
Except it was worse than that. It was a weathered piece of earth, floating stone somehow.
The debris rose from the ocean like a nightmare, some kind of inanimate object that was at first impossible to comprehend. You’d call it a fish, only it was about the size of a school bus and with a body that seemed cut from pure stone.
The blonde sensed the monster at her back and slipped beneath the waves, leaving the pirate floating atop the water. Sara locked eyes with him for one final moment, and his face flashed helpless. The gigantic fish was behind him, its grinding jaws cleaved him to pieces, slicing through his body like deli meat.
The creature continued forward unsated, as if the food that headed to its belly didn’t register. Its mouth rose and fell in seeming automation. Its massive head glided along, gnawing indifferently on air. Its teeth weren’t teeth at all, but extensions of its stone face. They reached down from its beak and up from the bottom of its jaw. As it approached the yacht, Sara heard the sharpening sound these “teeth” made as the top and bottom rows scraped together.
Sara reached the diving platform and pulled herself up as the fish slipped beneath the waves. Gone as fast as it had appeared.
The blonde broke the surface next, scurrying to the platform and then passing Sara by for the ladder, ascending.
“Jesus Christ, hurry!” she screamed and thrust a hand down at Sara.
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