They passed the second check easily enough, and one of the men escorted them to the side where a speed boat awaited them. The man climbed down, carefully placed his M-16 on the prow and then helped Akira down. She climbed the rickety ladder gingerly.
Brand clambered down agilely after her, and placed her down gently beside him.
“Go slow.” He instructed their guide and the man nodded.
The woman looked like a fairytale come alive in her ball gown and he didn’t want to be responsible for making her wet…he went slow.
~~~~~
The yacht was everything it was promised to be. Bold, bright and beautiful.
Fortunately, there was no ladder for Akira to climb on, just a gang plank; a really strong gang plank that she could walk on by digging her manicured nails in Brand’s Armani’d arm.
They made it up in fifteen minutes, through another check. And, at the very entrance to the main lounge, on the lobby, Brand could see the very last check point. Where people had to pass through an X-ray.
They had thought of everything.
The line to the last check moved slowly, as there was only one walk-in machine and about twenty people to walk through it.
Brand made an instant decision.
“I want you to carry my knife for me,” he murmured, speaking in low tones that nobody else heard.
Guards with M-16s were posted every few feet on the main deck and they patrolled constantly too.
She glanced up at the man who now held it without even knowing about it, and asked back, “And how exactly will I do that?”
“Your garter. Use it.” He bent down, to brush a speck of his pants and straightened almost immediately. The guard patrolling on their side just stared pointedly at him and walked on.
He slipped the folded knife into her hand, under the pretext of holding it, and then said, “Wait a few minutes. And then do it. Don’t want the guards getting suspicious.”
“Of course not.”
They waited in silence and in murmurs, while the line straggled forward. Then, suddenly, Akira bent down, like her shoe had twisted on her.
Brand clutched at her waist, while she adjusted her shoe straps, and very discreetly managed to work the knife up to the garter.
“I should have been a contortionist,” she murmured in his ears.
Then she smiled at Brand and sagged against him for a second. They straightened together, and the people ahead of them smiled sympathetically.
The arrival of the launch could be heard with the fog horn, which meant more people would be joining them.
Finally, it was their turn at the X-ray machines. Brand went first and was cleared almost immediately.
Akira went in next. And the alarms clanged. Just like it had for almost all the ladies present. Any metal set the thing off, and the guards couldn’t ask the women present to strip down or even pat them down, without tearing off something incredibly expensive.
Her purse was turned inside out, even after Akira warned them to treat it carefully. It was a part of Barnie’s family heirloom collection.
Her cell phone and lip gloss were taken apart, then given back to her.
Finally, she was cleared and walked to the other side. Linked her arm through Brand’s who was waiting for her at the entrance to the steps that led to the ball room.
They walked down, an incredibly beautiful woman in a dream of a dress and a handsome, perfectly attired man. Very attractive, very compelling.
~~~~~~
In his private command center, one floor above decks, Prince Kharaan impeccably attired in Ermengildo Zegna looked at his own bank of monitors to watch the progress of the attractive Quinton couple.
Behind him stood a phalanx of fifteen guards. They formed the core of the Royal Asharfil Guard. He’d picked each of these men himself and put them through training that Hercules would have been proud of.
Their leader was Castle, an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire who’d been sent into Asharfil many years ago to kill a child. Instead, Castle had stayed back and helped raise the child. Married and created a life in the tiny, harsh kingdom of Asharfil.
It was Castle’s second son who’d been sent to America to deal with the infidels. His anger, his thirst for bloody revenge, cold and ruthless, shimmered under his black armor and shone in the merciless green of his eyes.
He’d been promised Brandon Rice and the woman. He would toss the woman to his lieutenants, but the white man, he would deal with him himself.
Nobody killed Castle Scimitar’s son and lived to tell the tale.
“Sidi, it is time,” he said.
Prince Kharaan nodded. Yes, indeed it was.
At a sharp command from Castle, three of the Royal Guard left the room and ran full-speed towards the ballroom entrance.
The prince stood watching for a couple seconds more, while Akira reached up to straighten up Brand’s bowtie in a domestic gesture and he smiled gently at her. The next second, three guards surrounded them at the base of the steps.
These men toted AK-47s and looked a lot meaner than the guards patrolling the rest of the ship.
“You are to come with us, Monsieur Rice.” The man to the right spoke up.
Brand nodded, while he gripped Akira’s hand in silent warning.
She said, “You’re a really good strategist, Brand. Come on, let’s go be good prisoners.”
Kharaan turned from the screen and addressed Castle. “You will see to their ends, yes?”
Kamran nodded while his men straightened at his back. He took eight of them with him. Leaving three for Kharaan’s protection.
The prince had to make his entry at the party again, because Jehan couldn’t hold the fort longer than twenty minutes. He would make his next visit in precisely thirty minutes.
~~~~~
Brandon and Akira were escorted through a side lobby, down a set of stairs and then another until they ended in the underbelly of the ship. They could understand this because of the battering noise they heard in the near distance, where the ships motors and engine worked to keep it running.
The guards released Akira in the middle of a room filled with monitors and she rubbed her hand where one of the men had grabbed her arm roughly.
They’d tied Brand’s hands behind his back, with a machine gun pointed at Akira’s chest.
He pressed a button his Rolex chronograph and the sat phone came to life.
Loudly, before somebody could respond from the other side, he said, “Why are we under the damn ship? We are guests, my father and the old sheikh were mates. We should be up. I demand to see the prince now.”
Then he dropped the watch to the ground behind him, and stood directly over the gold strap.
“All in good time, my man, all in good time.”
A swarthy man, dressed in military fatigues and black chest armor came rounding the bend that put him inside the room. Behind him were eight similarly dressed men, all carrying automatic weapons that would cut them both to ribbons the minute he even stepped in the wrong direction.
Of that, Brand was sure.
He just wasn’t sure how his men were going to rescue the both of them in time.
“For now, it’s Miss Naik’s time. This show is for your entertainment only,” the man said pleasantly, while he looked at Akira with an almost avuncular smile.
He pressed a button in the remote he carried and the monitors, all seven of them flickered to life.
Akira gasped as she saw the person, the child, tied and blindfolded to a chair, crying and screaming. Because there were no gags on the mouth. The child wore a garland of sorts. And there were three large crates near her. They read INFLAMMABLE DANGER in English, French and Arabic.
“Semtex. Dynamite sticks and a grenade pin that would pop if she was moved from there. Just enough to blow this whole place up, Miss Naik. Ingenious, don’t you think?” the man asked her, while she sank to the ground sightlessly.
Brand strained against his bonds and the men, six of the
m who guarded them, trained their guns on him.
“Please. Please. I’ll do anything. Let her go, let her go,” Akira whispered brokenly. Seeing her ten-year old niece, her baby Shanaya, helplessly trussed like a human hydrogen bomb about to go off.
“You bastards.” Brand gritted out, and got a sound blow from one of the guards. His lip split open, but he only glared.
“Let her go, please. Let her go, I’ll do anything. I’ll stop. I swear I’ll stop.” Akira moaned crying desperately, hopelessly, her dress billowing around her like a cloud. Like a child.
Castle turned on Brand and came to a stop in front of him.
“You and I have a score to settle, Mr. Rice,” he said softly, taking a spotless white kerchief and dabbed away the blood that pooled at Brand’s lip.
Brand spat at him, and the man simply pressed a nerve on Brand’s shoulder. Brand slumped forward instantly.
“Miss Naik, I suggest you do not move until my prince gets here. I am going to be taking Mr. Rice for a special…tour.”
Then he took six of his eight men and dragged Brand along with him.
Akira did not hear him. She was just looking at the monitors, at the child and crying. “Not Shanaya. Please don’t hurt her! God, what have I done?”
What in heaven’s name have I done?
Forty-Seven
Brand came to, in a sort of antechamber. He was propped against a chair and guards stood all along the walls of the small chamber.
There was only one entrance to the room, and it was sealed shut with reinforced steel. Suddenly the chair toppled in front of him and hit him in the back of his head when it landed on him.
He slumped even lower on the ground.
Seeing that they’d removed his shoes and socks. He felt for his cuff links and couldn’t find them either. His shirt was open down the chest so they’d taken his studs too. His bow tie was gone, he was weaponless.
Completely.
“Aah, the infidel awakes,” Castle murmured with something close to pleasure.
He’d shed his armor and wore just the fatigues. His arms were inked with tattoos, ancient symbols that Brand couldn’t make out in the dim light provided by the single bulb that swung crazily on the ceiling with the ship’s rocking motion.
His mind was still stuck back to when he’d last seen Akira crumpling on the ground like a broken doll. Sobbing as she saw her niece wired to the better part of a devastating bomb that could blow them all up. Broken, defenseless.
Jesus Christ. How had he never factored the child into his strategy? What had he unleashed?
“Who? Who are you?” He managed in Arabic, while he shook the chair off his back and neck.
“I am the father of the man you killed in Santa Boronia.”
Mr. Accent’s father. Brand struggled to look at the man and saw the family resemblance in the expressionless eyes.
“He was a guttersnipe, a coward,” Brand said conversationally, staggering to his feet.
The men pointed guns at him from six different directions but he spoke only to the leader. “He died on his knees like the coward he was.”
“You speak insolently, boy. You will pay for that too. You will pay for many things,” Castle said quietly, with a deadly smile.
He raised one hand to the men. They stood down, guns at the ready. Ready to riddle him like Swiss cheese with bullets.
“Let the girl and the woman go and I am willing to pay anything,” Brand said equally quietly.
How much time had passed? Five minutes? An hour? God, he hoped his men could rescue Akira and Shanaya.
Kamran shook his head. “Sidi Kharaan wants to talk to the woman. As for the girl,” he shrugged. “Allah save her.”
“She is a child. An innocent. She doesn’t deserve to die. She is ten.” Brand managed to keep his voice even, while his blood roared in his ears.
In his head, he was marking out the positions of all the men so that he could take them out. One by one, or all at once.
“None of us chooses, would ever choose, for our children to die, Mr. Rice. You should have remembered that before you involved the woman in your deadly schemes,” Castle returned with cold anger.
Brand couldn’t refute that, because every word was true. God, was there no end to the destruction he would rain on those he cared about? Was he always destined to hurt the ones he loved, to cause their death? What kind of curse was this?
He didn’t have more than five seconds before the older man charged him with a fist to the nose that he tried to dodge, but those five seconds were enough to remind him why he was always alone.
Why he’d always chosen the alone. Alone meant he was safe. Alone meant others were safe.
Destruction magnets shouldn’t be around other people.
He’d forgotten that vital, crucial lesson in the magic, the healing he’d found in Akira’s arms. And how did he repay her back?
By making her watch her little niece blow-up.
What a hero.
He swerved when the man came at him again, and watched Castle run headlong into one of the soldiers. He pivoted on one heel on such extraordinary balance that Brand couldn’t help but appreciate. He thought fast, improvised on his feet.
The man was going to kill Brand; he could see his death in those emerald hard eyes.
But, he didn’t have time to die.
There was a woman to save and a little girl to rescue. His men would be here in twenty minutes, at best. They needed to make their entry through three different points, meet up and then find him. It was going to take some time.
He figured all this, while he staggered around the room, hands tied behind his back, watching Castle trying to touch him. Hit him, hurt him. He connected about seventy percent of the time, but Brand did manage to sneak around his guard and head butt him once.
The older man was good. Very good. Possibly the best he’d ever come up against. But he had one advantage over the older man.
Age. He was younger, so his reflexes were faster by a fraction of a second.
Then Castle, apparently tired of hand-to-hand combat; removed a wicked looking knife that was curved at the blade. It glinted even in the dim bulb light. A sharp, blinding silver.
A scimitar.
Brand was held in place by two of the guards now, who caught him effortlessly around the shoulders, even when he tried to struggle free of them. His eye was swollen shut again and his lips were bleeding open. His ribs were kicked in, and his kidneys had taken a couple of solid punches.
Castle moved in for his kill, and smiled.
But he didn’t do the expected. He just scratched once, one quick flick over Brand’s right cheek. The gash burst open in a fury of red. Brand felt blood trickling down his white shirt.
“That is for the pain you caused me when I was told my son was dead.”
Castle slashed the other cheek; a wicked wound from under the eyebrow to the lip, and then moved back, as if to admire his handiwork.
Brand knew he wouldn’t have any other opportunity. And his face was beginning to flame like it was ignited. He knew he had maybe minutes before the blood loss got the better of him.
“I won't die tonight,” he muttered.
And they were all so surprised he spoke that the soldiers’ grip slackened on him for a miniscule second.
Using all the forward momentum he could muster, he threw his feet up, sank his ankles around Castle’s shoulders, locked them behind the man’s neck and gave one sharp twist.
The motion caused strength to flow back into him, and he was free of the soldier’s grip and Castle who went down.
Brand swung around, bullets firing all around him. He threw himself down on the ground, found the scimitar and rolling over on his back, picked it up with both his hands. He cut himself on the third try, while bullets hailing around him, mentally counting the number of rounds being fired.
He was pretty sure, they would have to stop in about thirty seconds, and it would be thirty seconds too late. H
is only advantage was that he’d gone down near Castle so they weren’t aiming very directly at him, for fear of hitting their leader.
He waited for the older man to rise.
Castle did a second later and held Brand up by the scruff of his neck, his other hand in a chokehold. In a movement that scared every man in the room, Brand flipped the older, heavier man down to his front, so that he fell face forward.
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