"I'll have to do what Flynt did to me..."
Bryce Jenkins walked up and removed the hat from his bald head. He wiped the sweat back, his fingertips brushing over the stubble of his once mirror-like dome. "What do you want to do?"
Cisco shook his head. He couldn't fully confide in Jenkins, not like Lopez. But the man was trying—he wasn't la Raza, the race—but his heart was in the right place, and he'd been loyal to Cisco. He hadn’t been eager to take Lopez's position—which had been another point in his favor—or Cisco probably would've killed him outright as he drowned in grief.
Still, he had to rely on someone, or Cisco knew he would crack under the strain of leading so many men. He wasn't a general, he was more of a loose cannon, the thing parents told their children to be frightened of in the middle of the night. Flynt evidently had been more of a tactician and strategist than Cisco had surmised. He wouldn’t make that mistake twice.
Cisco put his hands on his hips. "I think we've only got one way forward, that's to hit back."
Jenkins stared at him and nodded slowly. The man had no death wish, that much was clear, yet he wasn’t afraid of a fight, either—Cisco had witnessed him during the attack, and Jenkins had availed himself admirably. He hadn’t flinched at the incoming fire and took command of his little squad at the north entrance without a second word—unlike most of the men who’d quailed at the onslaught the residents had thrown at them.
"I hate to say it, but I think you're right," Jenkins said dismally.
Cisco understood where the man came from. "We ain't charging back in there, guns blazing, not like we did the first time."
Jenkins’ shoulders relaxed. "That's a relief—I think they'll be ready for us if we do that."
Cisco nodded, then looked away, unable to shirk the feeling that he'd somehow failed. "We have to take our time and think about this." He frowned. "This is going to be a small group job. Maybe two small groups. We go in, we hit them hard, and we slip away."
"Nighttime raid?" asked Jenkins with one raised eyebrow on his sunburned face.
Cisco grunted. "No other way, ese. These jokers don't have night vision, so they won't see us coming."
"You sure about that? One of them locals had a big freakin’ gun."
Cisco nodded. "I saw the hole it put in that armored pig out there. Nah, we’ll take ‘em by surprise, so they don't have a chance to use that against us again." He didn’t mention that he’d seen Lopez’ head turned into a cloud of pink mist as well.
“Fair enough,” Jenkins said, clearly unconvinced. It was a measure of his loyalty that despite his body language, he was willing to go along with whatever Cisco said.
Cisco clapped Jenkins on the back like a long-lost friend. “Come on, don’t look so sad—you’re gonna make me upset. Why don’t you help me teach our guest how to be respectful?”
The gleam in Jenkins’ eyes told Cisco he’d made the right suggestion. Jenkins was slim, not powerful, but had a deep, dangerous intelligence behind his eyes that Cisco himself only partly trusted—and that was mostly because he had little other choice, thanks to Cami Lavelle, Darien Flynt, and the rest of the do-gooders in Bee’s Landing. Jenkins looked like he’d relish being able to put a hurting on someone who couldn’t fight back.
Normally Cisco didn’t care who he hurt—if they had something he wanted, that was enough justification in his mind. Theft, revenge, or asserting dominance—those were the motivators that led him to violent action. Usually.
He looked askance at Jenkins as they walked back toward the smoking ruin of his fleet of trucks. Jenkins was the type of person that shocked people when they found out how depraved he really was. He was the one that made everyone say, “I never suspected a thing, he was so quiet and polite…”
Something about Lavelle made Cisco hesitate, though. There was a defiance in her eyes that he recognized in himself. He’d never back down, never give in to someone trying to dominate him—and neither would she. So why did it make him hesitate? What did he recognize? A kindred spirit?
As they walked back to the main encampment, Cisco’s mood darkened on its eternal roller coaster once more as thoughts of Lopez slipped unbidden through his mind. The wind broke through the trees and brushed the back of his neck. Just like…
Cisco stumbled and cursed in Spanish, then kicked at a rock to cover his emotional volatility. “Getting too dark out here, anyway.” He cracked his knuckles. Perhaps it was time to just shelve all the thinking and hit someone. The woman from Bee’s Landing was convenient, and he needed to make an example of someone to keep his men in line.
“Sorry, chica…” he muttered. “But not sorry.”
Chapter 6
Sailing Vessel Intrepid
30 Miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, NC
Reese gripped the shivering boat's wheel and clenched his jaw as he strained to keep Intrepid on course through the choppy water. They were running before the wind, still a few miles offshore of the Outer Banks, but had passed well south of Nags Head on their way to Cape Lookout as the day wore on into a murky twilight. Two more brief squall lines had moved through during the afternoon, battering the boat and the two of them before passing over the Outer Banks and onto the mainland. As the day crept on toward night, however, the wind continued to increase—he estimated the wind was sustained now around 40 miles an hour. They were approaching Tropical Storm territory.
"Startin' to get pretty rough out here," Jo hollered from the cockpit next to him.
Reese relaxed as Intrepid crested another wave and sailed down into the shallow trough between rollers, and the rudder temporarily stopped fighting him. "This is just a taste of what's to come, Jo. We haven't even reached tropical storm strength yet."
"All the more reason I'm happy we're heading closer to shore, then," she replied. A gust of wind snapped at their backs and threatened to pull her wide-brimmed campaign hat clear off her head. She untied the strap, pulled the hat off, then tucked it protectively under one arm. "Ain't it about time we turn on the motor?"
Reese grinned. "It's been on for the past half hour—the wind's so loud you can't hear it."
Jo looked up at him, surprise registering on her face. "Well, I'll be dipped in—" she began, when a sharp gust of wind buffeted the sailboat, and the mainmast groaned.
It made an uncomfortable sound in the best of times, but with a hurricane bearing down on them, the noise made Reese's bowels liquefy. He swallowed as he stared up at the mast that shimmered in the wind, even with a second reef on the mainsail.
"This boat sure does make a lot of noise." Jo complained.
"She's a cruiser, not built for heavy weather like this." Reese replied.
"As long as she holds together until we get to Charleston, she can be whatever she dang well pleases." Jo retorted.
Reese patted the heavy wooden wheel as the bow lifted up over the crest of the next roller. "Hear that baby? Just hold together a little longer."
As if in reply to his pleading, the rudder hit the next wave, and tugged under his grip.
The wind whistled through the rigging and thunder crashed overhead. Low, steel gray clouds scudded across the claustrophobic sky in what little light remained of the day. As lightning lit up the world around them, Reese took note of the waves that pushed them closer to shore.
"This doesn't look good!" Jo hollered
Reese grimaced as he gripped the wheel "I've been in worse," he said trying to soothe her. "Not by much..." he muttered to himself, “but I’ve been in worse.”
Jet black waves, topped by phosphorescent bioluminescent crests of foam, surged all around them, illuminated from above as lightning crackled in the distance, sending arcs of light up into the clouds. Thunder roared in his ears and Reese felt the urge to yell back at the menacing storm.
The fast-moving waves went in the same direction Intrepid traveled, so the boat rocked forward to aft instead of side to side, and the wind pushed them steadily toward the North Carolina shore. Reese stole a gla
nce at the GPS monitor mounted to the steering column and realized that soon enough he'd have to turn and run down the troughs to avoid smashing into the shoreline.
"How long is this going to last?" Jo said, her face illuminated in pink light from a close lightning strike. Her eyes were wide, and her gray hair whipped and slapped around her face, saturated with rain and saltwater. She clung to the railing, and to the bench she rode as Intrepid rose up over yet another roller and slipped down into the trough between waves.
Reese opened his mouth to reply, then closed it as sea water splashed over the side and hit him in the face. He shook it off and maintained their course. "Hopefully not much longer! These are squall lines—don’t last more than an hour at most this far out. We’re still in the outer bands."
Thunder rumbled, followed by another bolt of lightning directly ahead. Reese took that to mean the worst of the squall had indeed passed them. He glanced up at the angry sky hidden in darkness. Was it his imagination, or had the wind slackened just a bit? The pitch of the wind as it whistled through the rigging and slapped against the second reefed sail had changed slightly from a squeal to a low moan.
Reese struggled with the recalcitrant rudder a moment longer, then blinked to clear the water from his eyes as he stared at Jo. He exhaled a sigh of relief. At last, the squall was indeed loosening its grip on Intrepid. He could see Jo more clearly than he could just a few moments before. "I think she's letting up..."
Jo turned and looked over Reese's shoulder, up into the sky. "Looks a little lighter back that way—that's a good sign, right?"
Reese smiled at the exhaustion on Jo's face. They hadn't even gotten into the real meat of the hurricane yet. "Yep, before long, things’ll calm down again and we’ll be able to raise the main and make up for lost time."
"What's the rush? I thought you liked being out on the ocean and the clean salt air with a stiff breeze at your back?" Jo asked with a lopsided grin that made her look even more ludicrous, since her skin had taken on a green tint.
Reese laughed as he used two hands to steady the wheel. "Under normal circumstances, I couldn't agree more—but right now we need to start making a turn to avoid running aground on the Outer Banks. The water gets shallow up here in a ways and we need to stay parallel to the shore. But that's a lot harder to do when the wind is coming at 40 miles an hour straight behind you. If we turn parallel to the shore, it'll be off our port quarter," Reese said as he took his left hand off the wheel and pointed toward the port side of the boat over the transom. "It's not exactly the best place to be with a storm breathing down your neck."
"Wouldn't that make us go faster?"
Reese grunted. "Yeah, but at the sustained winds we’re talking—and they’re only gonna get stronger—it's also a good recipe for capsizing."
Jo nodded. "Point taken. By all means, then,” Jo said as she pointed parallel to the shore. “That way!"
Reese pointed at the mainsail. "Can you reach the reefs and untie them? You can see the sail better now that the clouds are breaking up. I can hoist it from back here, but we need to pick up some speed..." He kept a careful eye on the waves coming in off the port side as he made the slight adjustment in course to bring them into the troughs and keep parallel with the shoreline. The boat’s motion shifted from fore-aft to port-starboard, and still wasn't what Reese would call violent, but it was enough to unseat Jo and send her sprawling onto the cockpit deck.
Muttering curses like a drunken sailor, she staggered to her feet, favoring her injured leg, and managed to reach the boom. She unlatched the reef points, then collapsed back into her seat and gripped the rail. Reese loosened the line that allowed the boom to swing out over the starboard side and collect the wind as the mainsail went up. Intrepid heeled slightly, but with all the rocking from the waves, he didn't notice much of a difference.
What Reese did notice was the rudder fought him—considerably—as he tried to keep them angled into the trough and prevent a sudden clash at the bow with a gathering wave. "Hold on!" He barked just in time as the boat shuddered on impact. Salt spray flew up and over the bow, then cascaded down on both of them. Jo screamed, and Reese cursed as he struggled with the rudder.
"Something's not right," he warned. “She's fighting me!"
"What's the problem now?" Jo growled from the deck as she got up in ankle deep water. One second the water splashed around their feet, then the boat moved, and it all slipped out the scuppers.
"It's like we’re too heavy..." Reese looked forward, then back at Jo. "It's the machine gun!"
Jo scrambled forward unbidden and checked the tarp over the gun. "The tarp’s still good!” she hollered over the wind. "It's still secure!"
A sudden weight settled in Reese's stomach and fear traveled up the back of his legs like a mouse with creeping delicacy. "Can you get down below? Check to see if we’re taking on water!"
Jo struggled mightily as the waves bombarded the bow, but finally managed to make it to the companionway and disappeared below. A second later, one of the lights came on, and Reese heard Jo cry out in alarm.
"What is it?" he called down the open hatch over the wind.
Jo reappeared below, her face slack and her eyes wide. "Every time a wave hits, buckets of water come pouring in around the base of that stupid machine gun!"
"The tarp’s not helping?" He grunted as the wheel tried to turn with the force of the water hitting the rudder. One of the handles clipped him on the shoulder and drove him to his knees before he was able to manhandle it back and get them on course again. The boat groaned, but finally heeded his commands. "I don't know how much more of this I can take!"
"I'll start bailing," Jo announced as she grabbed a cook pot, dumped the utensils to clatter on the gimbled stovetop, and scooped up water. She staggered up the steps and tossed the water overboard, then went back down for more. "I can keep this up all night," she informed him, "but only if you can keep our nose out of the waves."
Reese tried to warn her, but a wave reared up in front of them too fast and swamped the bow. Jo screamed as a torrent of water shot down below decks through the crude opening the National Guard on Long Island had hacked in the foredeck to mount the machine gun. "I said keep us out of the waves!"
"I'm trying!" Reese yelled back as he struggled to keep the rudder straight.
"Well try harder, dang it!" Jo said as she emerged back on deck and dumped another bucket of water overboard.
Eastern clouds rolled in once more and dimmed the ambient light level. Reese squinted into the darkness, but even the lightning had moved too far away to provide much illumination. It was getting harder and harder to see the waves as they stacked up around them.
Reese sailed them blindly into the night, the glowing little GPS screen his only guide. He shook his head in resignation. "We’re never gonna make it at this rate," he admitted to himself.
"What's that?" Jo asked around a gasp for air. She tossed another bucket full of water overboard and waited for his response.
"It's too dark—I can't see the waves before they’re on top of us, and if I make any mistake at all, they go right over the bow and water pours into that hole."
"Tell me something I don't know, Sherlock," Jo grumbled as she turned and waddled back down the companionway.
"We gotta ditch it," Reese decided.
“Say again?” asked Jo.
“The machine gun! Forget bailing for a minute—see if you can get all the attachment points down there loosened up."
"We’re going to throw the machine gun overboard?"
"I know it's come in handy...” Reese began.
"It saved our bacon more than once already!" Jo argued. "We don't know what we’re walking into when we get to Charleston…I don’t think ditching our most powerful weapon is the right thing to do…”
Reese grunted and pushed the misbehaving wheel back into place, then strained to hold the rudder steady again. "I know that! But that thing’s going to sink us! Our only option is to pitch i
t overboard, and lash that tarp down as tight as possible. That's the only way you're going to be able to make headway against all the water in the cabin!"
"Well…” Jo said reluctantly, “we’re almost out of ammo anyway..."
Reese looked down at her through the companionway as she braced herself against the open hatch with both arms. She looked up and smiled. Her teeth flashed white in the darkness. "I'm keeping the last of the ammo, though…”
Reese laughed over the wind and rain that pelted his back. "Fine, just get moving before we swan dive to the bottom of the ocean!”
Chapter 7
Braaten Forest Preserve
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
When Cisco returned, he wasn't alone. He flowed into the tent like a force of nature, allowing a gust of wind—warm and humid—to blow through and stir dust into her eyes. She coughed, her throat still raw, and tried to focus on the other person who followed Cisco.
"Why are you still on the floor?" Cisco demanded.
Cami glared at him.
"Don't think she can use those hands very well at the moment," the newcomer said with a lecherous grin on his face. "That's just the way I like ‘em," he added.
Cami's eyes shifted from a grinning Cisco to the newcomer. Whatever hesitation or fear Cami thought she detected behind Cisco's eyes was completely absent on the stranger's face. She'd seen him before, and recognized him as Cisco's lieutenant, the one who’d told him about the mini-mutiny earlier. She hadn’t heard anyone call him by name yet.
Cisco elbowed the wiry man in the ribs. "Look at that, you see that? She's afraid of you."
The lackey licked his lips, and his eyes bored into Cami's. She felt naked and exposed before the glaring look. The man was dangerous, no less so than Cisco, but in a different way. He didn’t have a tank-like body, like Cisco, and probably would have a hard time restraining her with his bare hands if she were free from her own shackles.
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 5