“Lose the doobie, Boom-Boom, we got a gas leak back here.”
The only response was a flash of sparks off the joint’s tip when he flicked it.
All eyes were on the massive yacht that grew larger every minute we drew closer. She was huge, one of the biggest I’d ever seen. In the daytime she was midnight blue, sleek, wide and long. By night, she eclipsed everything behind her.
How many people would it take to crew that ship? Would they all be armed? Maybe some were real sailors, unaware they were in the employ of the Russian mob.
Yeah, right.
A sudden dizziness made me drop the motor’s handle and put my hands on the gunwale. The dinghy slowed. Boom-Boom and Diego turned back to me with eyebrows raised. I grabbed the handle again and the dinghy jerked forward. Our lack of plan, frontal assault, and limited armaments had me unconsciously holding my breath.
What the hell was the plan?
Maybe it was the smell of gas, or the disorientation caused by driving in the near darkness, or our steering straight toward a no doubt heavily armed billion-dollar yacht with an unknown number of hardened criminals aboard, but… When the odds are so stacked against you, ignoring that reality can sometimes provide the boldness to try for a miracle. Not the kind of odds I wanted to risk my life on, but as we closed in on the yacht, the question became moot.
A man appeared on the bow of the Shashka, the black shape of an assault rifle in his arms. I tried to swallow, but the cottonmouth and stench of gasoline caused instant reflux. Diego nodded toward the guard on the bow.
I raised a casual wave and never looked up, continuing down the length of the ship about 75 feet off its port side, headed toward its stern. Sailors returning from a night at the Bomba Shack, that’s what we were. Certainly not three fools plotting to board the monster ship in an attempt to attack the Russian mob and free the captive they’d been torturing all week.
Once amidships, I killed the motor. The side of the ship went nearly 60 feet straight up to the top, but there was a lower deck thirty feet above the water. I hoped the guard on the bow hadn’t alerted his associate on the back end of our presence. I took one of the oars and started to paddle toward the rear of the dark monster. Boom-Boom caught on and grabbed the other oar. The water ahead was lit up and I realized they had lights on under the waterline.
Of course.
If we were discovered, we’d say the engine failed. If they threatened us—
“What’s the plan?” Diego whispered.
I nodded toward the back of the yacht. It was the logical place to try and board, but with the water lit up—
In the darkness I spotted a white line hanging down the side of the ship from the lower deck above, not more than ten feet above the water. From that lower deck the superstructure tiered down toward the back of the yacht, with what I assumed to be three different deck levels.
“Psst!”
They turned toward me. I nodded toward the rope.
“Paddle over there.”
From the bow, Boom-Boom switched sides and turned us toward the yacht. If they had radar or any other types of perimeter alarms, we’d know soon enough. I pitched in with deep thrusts into the black water, which produced a swirl of phosphorescence around our paddles, and in what seemed a long couple of minutes we zigzagged our way up to the hull of the yacht.
Next to it, I felt infinitesimal.
“Now what?” The urgency in Diego’s whisper made it clear he thought I was nuts.
“See that rope hanging down from the second deck? If I get up on Boom-Boom’s shoulders, maybe I can reach it and climb up. You continue toward the back. When the guard sees you, steer close and if he says anything, chat him up for a minute.”
“Can you climb that fucking thing?” Diego said.
“We’re about to find out.”
TWENTY FEET UP THE wall of fiberglass I knew I’d made a foolish decision. My palms oozed blood and my arms weighed a hundred pounds each. I focused on my breathing and tried not to flop against the side of the ship.
A flashback to reruns of Batman my father used to make me and my brother watch when we were kids. This looked a hell of a lot easier on TV.
One hand after the other…
My hand slipped. I slid—my toe caught—I stopped. I held my breath.
A glance down spied my right big toe clutching a piece of black metal trim.
With the rope wrapped around my forearm, I rubbed a blister-bubbled palm against my sweat-soaked shirt and risked a glance all the way down. The dinghy, which now looked tiny, had just entered the radius of light that emanated from beneath the ship.
I sucked in a deep breath—I was behind schedule. I gritted my teeth and renewed the ascent.
One hand after another…come on, Batman…one hand…after…the other.
So focused on each inch of ascent, I was surprised when the rope turned at a ninety degree angle below the railing—I’d reached the top. I glanced up and down the walkway. To the left were stairs going up. To the right was about a twenty-foot straightaway that dropped off in what I assumed were more steps.
No people. My arms shook like a luffing sail in a twenty-knot wind as I pulled myself up over the edge. I lay flat on the teak deck for a moment. The sound of my heart throbbed in my head, my hands were raw meat, my legs wet spaghetti. A voice sounded below—
Shit!
I got up off the deck, rushed ahead in a crouch, and found stairs down toward the back. I descended into darkness. A line of soft lights were imbedded in the outer edge of the deck, and what had appeared as dark blue fiberglass along the side was actually glass tinted the same color as the hull. Perfect. For all I knew, I was being watched right now as I ran down the stairs toward another straightaway that again dropped into oblivion.
I hadn’t heard any more voices, but I assumed—hoped—it was the guard on the back calling out to the dinghy. And that it was only one guard.
The closer I got to the rear deck, the brighter the red light became.
“Stay back!” A voice ahead sounded.
I stopped so fast I slid on the wet teak.
Another voice responded from below, but all I heard was “brudda.”
Boom-Boom.
“No closer!” the man on the deck said.
Hunched over, I crept up to the corner. A sentry in black was peering over the edge. He held a machine pistol behind him so they couldn’t see it from below. A quick glance around revealed he was alone.
The distance was about fifty-feet—
“I said get back!” The guard swung the gun forward.
I rushed toward him, and halfway there it occurred to me I needed a plan. On a table ahead of me was a silver thermos. I grabbed it as I hurried past, making a metallic scrape. The guard half-turned as I closed the distance—
“You want some weed!” Boom-Boom bellowed from below.
Apparently he did, because he turned back as I lunged forward and beaned the side of his head with the thermos.
The guard’s legs buckled. As he fell toward the edge of the deck he pulled the trigger on the gun and it exploded into the night with a flame a foot long. I grabbed the gun while he kept going, fell the twenty feet and made a large splash ten feet away from the dinghy.
Boom-Boom and Diego stared up at me, their eyes bathed in the brilliant red light I now stood under. Boom-Boom held up both hands, palms up, and shook his head. They paddled toward the dive platform on the bottom deck.
The sound of an alarm broke the silence.
So much for our plan to be super stealth.
BOOM-BOOM AND DIEGO TIED the dinghy off and scrambled aboard. A shot sounded from below. Diego raised the Kimber and fired a round inside the boat.
Shit!
More alarms sounded.
Boom-Boom looked up at me— the crazy son-of-a-bitch was smiling!
“Find the dude!” he said.
He then lit his lighter and tossed it back into the dinghy.
WHOOSH!
A fireball blew me back on my ass.
I got to my feet and ran toward the salon door, which was tinted so dark I couldn’t see who or what was on the other side. I glanced at the gun still in my hand. Last thing I wanted to do was shoot someone.
The salon door opened automatically when I approached it. There was nothing inside but a few muted lights which reflected off of chrome-framed contemporary furniture, glass tables, chandeliers—
A door opened ahead at the top of a stair, and four men dressed in black and carrying guns ran out. They hustled down the steps without even looking my way. I swallowed to force my heart down out of my throat. There was shouting below but no more shots.
I entered the hallway and peeked around the corner where the men had come from—and found yet another hallway. Damn this boat was big!
There were only kitchen and food storage facilities in this corridor, so I continued down and turned toward the outside of the ship. In that hall were six doors, one after the other. I tried the first one—unlocked, so I pushed it open and pointed the gun inside. It was a cabin with four bunks, all empty. I repeated the same maneuver in the next three rooms with the same result. The fact that I’d found four rooms with twenty empty bunks told me what we were up against.
Two doors left. I opened the next one—a crewman inside was reaching for the handle. In the second it took him to grab at his shoulder holster I dove into him and rammed his body hard against the wall.
“Ooph!”
He kneed me in my quadriceps—just missed my balls.
His elbow swung up. Stars erupted when he connected to my nose. The pain squeezed a few tears out of me. He squirmed and I crunched him into the wall again, then pounded him with uppercuts. He deflected them. I caught his chin—his legs buckled.
A left cross finished him. I caught him so his body didn’t make a thud on the teak floor.
My breath was ragged, but with alarms and gunfire sounding I didn’t bother to tie him up. I glanced both ways down the hall, then hurried to the last door.
Please be the one!
I jiggled the handle—locked. A muffled noise came from inside. I held my ear to the door, hoping I might be able to hear something above the sirens—
“What the hell’s going on?” a voice said.
“Are you John Thedford?”
I pressed my ear up against the door again.
“Yes, it’s me!”
I stepped back, kicked the door hard, and it flew open. I fell inside.
Thedford—I recognized him from the photos—was handcuffed to a railing with his hand wrapped in gauze.
“I’m Buck Reilly, I’ve come to get you out of here.”
“Buck who?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I took hold of the metal railing the handcuffs were attached to and pulled. “I’m a charter pilot hired by your wife.”
He was pale and his leading man features were a bit worn, but his eyes were alert.
“Some charter pilot.”
I jumped to the other side of the railing and tried to leverage it at another angle—nothing!
“I’ve tried everything to pry that—”
“Cover your face!” I said.
He leaned back as I pointed the machine pistol toward the bolts where the rail was attached to the wall. I squeezed the trigger and the gun jumped in my hand to the sound of an ear-shattering crack.
Wood and metal flew in all directions as the burst of lead splintered the wall and fitting that secured the railing. It came free and John Thedford wasted no time jumping up and sliding the handcuff over the now loose end.
“Son of a bitch!” he said. “I thought I was a goner.”
“Let’s go!”
I looked down the hall in both directions and saw nothing. The alarm was deafening. I imagined twenty-plus men surrounding Boom-Boom and Diego—
“How many police are here? You have a helicopter or boat?”
I paused. What was I going to tell him? My mind processed options like a high-speed slot machine, but every thought came up lemons and bananas.
“Stop right there!”
We spun around to find Viktor Galey behind us. He held a large automatic pistol pointed our way. I lifted the machinegun toward him.
“Viktor?” John Thedford said.
“Buck Reilly,” he said. “You’ve officially become a pain in my ass.”
“Viktor—what the fuck’s going on?” Thedford’s face bunched first in confusion, then anger.
“Galey’s a Russian mobster,” I said. “Your vision for an adoption revolution threatens his plans to manipulate the supply and demand of infants—”
“You had them cut my finger off?”
“Better let us go,” I said. “We’re not alone and the authorities are on their way.”
He turned the gun toward Thedford’s chest.
“I heard you were prone to exaggeration, Reilly. Drop the gun and go into the next room there,” Galey said.
I lowered my weapon. “Are you familiar with Diego Francis?”
He paused. “Local arms conduit into Mexico and South America. Now out of business and on the run for his pathetic life. What about him?”
“He happens to be below deck.”
Galey eyes widened, if only for a moment.
“He’s got enough explosives to sink this tub.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“How many kids would you have to peddle to cover the cost of this yacht?” I said. “Worthwhile trade?”
He stared at me. His radio crackled. Indecipherable words were spoken. I hoped it wasn’t a report that the two men had been captured, or worse, killed.
His lips pursed and he let loose a torrent of verbal ass-kicking into the radio.
Russian, another language I didn’t speak. But I was fluent in body language, and when a bead of sweat ran down his temple, I felt a surge of adrenalin.
Then I realized he must have demanded backup.
A gunshot sounded. Galey whipped the radio down and lifted his weapon to John’s head.
“Contact your associates and have them surrender or he dies! Now!”
“Cant.” I pulled out my phone, pushed the on button. Nothing happened.
“Battery’s dead.”
“What kind of commando are you!?”
“If I don’t meet them on the fantail in five minutes they’ll blow this beauty up,” I said. “Be a shame, really.”
“You’ll die before that happens,” he said.
I checked my watch. “Clock’s running, Galey. You might want to get outside.”
“You’re lying!”
Another roar of gunfire echoed through the bowels of the ship, followed by distant footsteps behind Viktor Galey.
Damn!
Galey glanced backwards toward the rush of feet.
I tried to lunge past Thedford, but he dove forward first and slammed into the Russian.
“Motherfucker!”
BOOM!
Galey’s gun fired when Thedford hit him, but his arm had swung wide—Thedford drove him into the wall—and he crumpled. He was old and didn’t struggle, just fell to his knees with the wind knocked out of him. The sound of footsteps was getting closer.
I kicked his gun toward Thedford, who snapped it up.
“Let’s go!” I said.
We ran toward where the guards were headed when I first arrived, down into the lower levels of the ship. Thedford stuck close but to his credit ran steadily, even with the alarms blaring and his bandaged hand.
“Did you see where the launch area was for their powerboats?” I said.
“The one they brought me here on? Yeah, it’s up ahead to the right.”
The alarms stopped. The quiet that followed was eerie—had they apprehended the boys? Had Galey bought the lie about the explosives?
“This way!” Thedford said as he rushed down the hall ahead of me.
“Wait!”
He turned the corner and vanished.
I
hurried after him and by the time I rounded the corner, he was turning left down the next hall, thirty feet ahead. I wanted to scream, but Thedford was hauling ass and I needed to catch up. I rushed up to the intersection of corridors, peered right, and found nothing—
“They’re up here!” an accented voice shouted from the hall behind me.
I took off after Thedford and about forty-feet up the cocoa leather-walled hallway found a door ajar. A peek inside revealed sporting equipment. I entered, gun first, and found him bent down in one of two matching, blue-hulled speedboats.
“There’s no keys!” he said.
I locked the door and shoved a cart full of scuba tanks in front of it before running over to the second boat—also no keys.
I pulled up the floor mat, found nothing, checked the console—nothing. Felt around the sides of the seats, nothing!
“You find anything?” I said.
“There’re some jet skis.”
I jumped out of the boat—the cramped room was full of water sports equipment. There had to be…there! On the wall near the door was a gray metal box. I pulled at the handle—it was locked.
A quick aim and eruption from the machine pistol knocked the box off the wall. It fell with a clatter to the floor, its door askew. A dozen different keys were inside the box—
The door handle rattled. There was a shout—could it be Boom-Boom? A loud series of knocks, followed by pounding on the door.
I scooped up a handful of keys and tossed them toward Thedford.
“Find one that fits the boat while I try to open the hull wall.”
A loud clanking noise filled the room as the men outside beat on the door with what sounded like a fire extinguisher. Next to the outside wall was a small panel with a half-dozen illuminated lights. They all glowed red.
I stumbled over a pile of swim fins and dive gear, rolled on the floor as more shouting from outside made my heart pound. At the console, each button had writing below it—in Cyrillic.
The pounding on the door began again.
I pushed all the buttons. The red lights turned green and the sound of whirring machinery filled the room. The exterior wall started to slide open.
I turned to Thedford, who held his hands up.
No keys.
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