Hell or High Water

by Julie Ann Walker

  “Cuban refugees?” the captain suggested. “Trying to make their way to America?”

  “I suspect you’re right,” Maddy agreed, swinging her binoculars to the boat’s single outboard engine. “They’re not under any power. I think they must’ve run out of fuel.”

  “We should call in a Coast Guard cutter. Let them deal with these men.” He reached for the satellite phone sitting on a charger atop the bridge’s main console.

  Maddy lowered the binoculars and turned to face the captain. His long, quintessentially English face was full of lament though his jaw was clenched resolutely. She placed a gentle hand on his sleeve, keeping him from pressing the button that would connect them to the authorities.

  “Surely there’s another way,” she told him. “You know if we call in the Coast Guard they’ll repatriate those men to Cuba quicker ’n you can say ‘Hail to the Queen.’”

  “It is their home, is it not?” Captain Harry insisted, his accent making the word “not” sound more like “nawt.” Between her thick Texas twang and his highfalutin inflections, it was a wonder they were able to communicate with one another. And, to be really honest, when she’d first hopped aboard the Black Gold in Bermuda, she’d had some trouble understanding him. But it hadn’t taken long for her ears to attune themselves to the particular diction and phraseology that he shared with his two English crewmates—Nigel, the deckhand, and Bruce, the engineer. And theirs to hers, she figured. Which was good. Since she had an earful of an answer to the captain’s last question.

  “Their home?” She made a face. “I know the U.S. has made moves to lessen sanctions and reform diplomatic ties with the country, but have you been to Cuba lately? The people there still aren’t allowed to own property. They still can’t own their own businesses. Their sweat and toil brings them no hope of a brighter future. It simply allows them the means to scrape by day after day. There’s still no freedom of the press. Still no freedom of religion. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like my definition of a home I’d want to go back to. Besides, these men could be political dissenters tryin’ to escape communism and the Castro regime.”

  “Or they could be convicts.”

  “I think political dissenters are convicts in Cuba.”

  Captain Harry’s expression turned even more sour. “What would you have me do?” he asked. “If we leave them out there, they could float out to the Atlantic where they will die of dehydration or starvation, or both. But if we take them aboard the Black Gold, we will be forced to report the rescue to the authorities. And then they’ll be in the exact same boat.” He shook his head when he realized what he’d said. “There was no pun intended there, I assure you, Miss Madison.”

  “How many times do I have to ask you to call me Maddy?” she said, softening her tone and her expression.

  “Your father hired me for my unblemished record and my professionalism,” Captain Harry said, puffing up like a game hen. She figured now was not the time to inform him that the only reason her roughneck father had hired him was because he got a Texas-sized hoot out of English accents and thought it would be more fun than you could shake a stick at to have a stuffed-shirt Brit captaining his boat. Her father was nothing if not full of piss and vinegar mixed with a heaping helping of whimsy. “It wouldn’t be right for me to address you by a pet name.”

  She punched the captain in the arm. The move caused his eyes to go round. “Lighten up, Harry.”

  He cleared his throat, adjusting his navy-blue double-breasted captain’s jacket. “I am English, Miss Madison. I do not lighten up.”

  She snorted, shaking her head at him. There was a sense of humor buried somewhere under that thinning coif of salt-and-pepper hair and that stiff upper lip. She was sure of it. And before they docked in Houston, she was determined to find it. But for right now…

  “Can’t we just…I don’t know…give them some fuel and food and send them on their way? If they make it to the Keys—”

  “Yes, I am well aware of your country’s wet-foot, dry-foot policy,” he interrupted, referring to the 1995 amendment to the Cuban Adjustment Act. It stipulated if a Cuban immigrant placed one foot, just one foot on U.S. soil, then he or she was allowed legal permanent-resident status and the opportunity for citizenship.

  “Well, then?” she asked, tightening the sash on her knee-length terrycloth robe. She’d just hopped out of the shower when Captain Harry summoned her with a sharp knock on her cabin door after spotting the little boat. And given the circumstances as he’d explained them to her, she hadn’t taken the time to do more than throw on a robe over her bra and panties, which didn’t bother her a lick. Having grown up with four nosy and rambunctious older brothers, there’d been no opportunity for her to develop any sense of modesty. However, considering the way Captain Harry quickly glanced away from her bare feet and legs, her state of dishabille obviously discombobulated him.

  Stuffy-O fart, she thought with affection.

  Of course, some of that affection waned when he said, “I may be overstepping my bounds here, but are you sure you aren’t letting your bleeding heart influence your head in this decision? It would be far better to—”

  “Just because I oversee the charitable enterprises of my father’s businesses”—her old man was one of Texas’s wealthiest oil tycoons—“doesn’t mean I’m a bleedin’ heart. There’s a difference between folks who genuinely need a helpin’ hand and those who are just lookin’ for a handout. Believe me, I’ve gotten real good at spottin’ the difference over the years. And these guys?” She gestured out the window at the turquoise ocean. A golden ray of sun happened to catch the dinghy just right, spotlighting the heartbreaking plight of the men. “These guys need a helpin’ hand.”

  Captain Harry seemed to hesitate a second more, then said, “We mustn’t tell anyone we did this. Ever.”

  She pantomimed zipping her mouth shut. “My lips are sealed, oh captain, my captain.”

  “And we mustn’t involve Nigel and Bruce in this business,” he continued. “I’ll tell them to remain belowdecks. They’ll know something is off, of course. But they have enough training not to ask what it is.”

  “You’re the boss,” she told him, winking saucily.

  “Hmph.” He frowned at her, his cornflower-blue eyes narrowing. But he grabbed the Black Gold’s throttle and pushed it up without further argument. The yacht’s big engines responded with a well-tuned purr, and they soon halved the distance to the men in the boat.

  Maddy kept an eye on the dinghy through the binoculars until they were close enough for her to make out the black hair and dark skin of its inhabitants—definitely Cubans, poor souls. Captain Harry hailed the two deckhands via their shipboard walkie-talkies. Just as he’d claimed, the men didn’t make a peep of protest. They simply replied with a couple of Aye, aye, Captains and headed to their cabins.

  “Former Royal Navy men like myself,” Captain Harry boasted. “Very disciplined. Very stoic.”

  “So I see.” Maddy curled her lip, knowing she was neither of those things. Lifting the binoculars again, she could now make out the holey T-shirts and grubby appearance of the men. “I don’t suppose you speak Spanish, do you?” she asked.

  “I speak French.”

  “Well, that won’t do us a piddlee-O bit of good,” she grumbled, setting the binoculars on the console and turning for the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Out on the back deck,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ve picked up a little español here and there. Hopefully I know enough to get across the point that we’re friends and not foes.”

  “I—”

  Whatever Captain Harry’s objection might have been was lost when she let the bridge’s rear door slide shut behind her.

  The afternoon air was warm and welcoming. It smelled of salty sea and the stainless-steel polish that Nigel used on the yacht’s endless metal accoutrements. Lifting her face into the breeze, Maddy breathed deeply, letting th
e wind tunnel through her hair to caress her scalp. Then she turned to make her way down the stairs to the back deck, reaching up to twirl a strand of her ponytail and realizing, quite shockingly, that it was gone. On impulse she’d had her stylist give her a pixie cut—her father wasn’t the only one given to whimsy—right before she hopped the plane to Bermuda. She was having trouble getting used to the new ’do.

  Make me look chic and super cute, she’d told her hairdresser. Like Pink or Michelle Williams. Unfortunately, after having studied her reflection in the mirror a time or two over the last few days, she was a little worried that her stylist had missed that whole Pink and Michelle Williams mark and instead saddled her with the Justin Bieber.

  “Serves you right for leapin’ before you looked,” she scolded herself as she pulled the two halves of her robe closer together and skipped across the deck as the Black Gold sliced through the seas like a greased torpedo, all sleek and sure. She chided herself for not taking her father up on his offer of some time spent alone on the yacht before now. But for the last seven years she’d needed all of her waking hours—and some of her should-be-sleeping hours—to get to the point where Powers Petroleum Company’s myriad charities were staffed by good, upstanding folks and running smoothly enough for her to take a break.

  And what a break it’s turnin’ out to be!

  Her heart beat with happiness at the thought that she was here this morning to help these unfortunate men. And even though she didn’t believe in destiny or kismet or any of that other woo-woo hoopla-hoo, she couldn’t help but think it awfully coincidental that she—a bona fide professional philanthropist—happened to be making the ocean crossing with Captain Harry the one time he came upon a boatful of stranded would-be immigrants.

  Captain Harry pulled back on the throttle when the dinghy was still a good way off the bow, deftly maneuvering the big yacht parallel.

  “Hola!” she called when the men were within ear reach, leaning over the rail and trying to see into the bottom of the dinghy. She hoped they carried fuel cans that she could fill with gasoline from the Black Gold’s mammoth tanks, because the only other containers she could think to use were the pots from the yacht’s kitchen. Unfortunately, the men were still too far away and the angle wasn’t right for her to see inside the little boat.

  “Me llamo Maddy! Uh…we…have la gasolina and…I mean y…uh…” She made a face and murmured to herself under her breath, “Damnit, Maddy! What’s the word for ‘food’?” She snapped her fingers and started over. “La gasolina y la comida! Sí?”

  The men blinked at her, then glanced around at each other. They were bone-thin with scraggly beards, and she couldn’t help but wonder if, in fact, they were escaped convicts, just like Captain Harry had said. They certainly had the air of a group who’d been on the run or in hiding for a while.

  A niggle of apprehension skated up her spine, but the sensation was short-lived because one of the men yelled back in broken English. “Thank you! Please throw rope!”

  “You speak English!” she hollered delightedly, the smile returning to her face. Common Cuban street thugs surely wouldn’t know English, would they? Maybe she was the one who was right before. Maybe these men were political dissidents. How cool would that be?

  “Yes!” the man yelled again. “Rope?”

  “Of course!” She ran down the edge of the deck until she came to one of the bright-white life-preserver doughnuts attached to the railing. Pulling the floatation ring off its peg, she took a step back, wound up, and threw the sucker with all her might. The attached rope sailed out after the ring, creating a pristine alabaster arc over the turquoise water.

  Much to her surprise, she actually got fairly close to her target. Within a couple feet of it anyway. The men were able to lean over the rubber raft and paddle until two of them could reach the life preserver. After they got a firm handhold, she grabbed her end of the rope and walked toward the aft of the yacht, pulling the dinghy closer and closer with every step. By the time she descended the stairs to the teak swim deck, the men in the rubber boat were already securing the rope to one of the Black Gold’s glistening stainless-steel cleats.

  Shoot. No gas canisters. Just a couple of weird-looking metal tubes. Well, no matter. She’d make do.

  “It’s a good thing we saw you—” That was all she managed before the yawning black mouth of a gun barrel was shoved in her face.

  She blinked twice, stumbling back as her entire body flashed hot and cold. The hair on her head tried to crawl off her scalp, the traitorous stuff, and she opened her mouth to scream. But when the man drawing down on her saw her gearing up for a bloodcurdling yell, he quickly jumped from the boat onto the deck. He punched her straight in the throat, and that was the end of that. The only sound to issue from her open mouth was a wheezing, “Uhhhhh! Uhhhhh!”

  The pain and shock of the blow played second fiddle to the fact that she could…not…breathe. She clutched at her paralyzed neck, falling back another step. Her eyes watered; her chest ached from lack of oxygen.

  This can’t be happening!

  The remaining six men crawled from the bobbing dinghy onto the deck, each of them shouldering what looked to be a machine gun. She couldn’t be absolutely sure of the make of the weapons since her only experience with firearms was limited to the shotguns and rifles her father and brothers used to hunt pheasant and white-tailed deer. But she’d seen Black Hawk Down and Apocalypse Now, and the lethal black weapons clutched so casually in these men’s hands certainly looked like machine guns.

  “Do not speak,” the first guy said, spinning her around so he could snake an arm around her neck and shoving the barrel of his gun into her right kidney.

  Do not speak? Holy shitfire! As if she could with a crushed windpipe!

  The man turned to say something to one of his compatriots in a language that didn’t sound a thing like Spanish.

  This can’t be happening! her mind yelled again, unable to get its ass in gear and come to terms with the harsh reality of her situation. It’s a nightmare. You’re having a nightmare. Wake up, Maddy! Wake up!

  “Move!” the man holding her hostage hissed in her ear. His breath smelled like something had up and died inside him. And that was better than any pinch to the arm, because even her wild imagination couldn’t have conjured up that stench. She wasn’t dreaming. This was happening. Which meant that all that darkness edging into her vision was real, all those prickling sensations along her nerve endings were genuine, and if she didn’t get some oxygen to her brain in about five seconds, she was going to pass out flat.

  “Uhhhhh! Uhhhhh!” Her lungs worked to expand her ribs, even though her crippled neck refused to let one drop of life-sustaining oxygen through. But just as her vision tunneled down to a single dot, just as her legs began to crumple beneath her, her throat chose that exact moment to open itself up. Praise be to Jesus and all his followers! She sucked in a burning, desperate breath and was disgusted to discover that her captor’s rancid mouth wasn’t the only thing that could stand a good, solid scrubbing. The air around her was filled with the smell of tangy sweat and nauseating body odor. So strong she could almost taste it.

  Who the hell are these men? Not Cubans. The man’s accent was decidedly…off.

  Terrorists.

  The idea bloomed in her mind like a poisonous flower, but she refused to pluck it. Terrorists? No, surely not. Surely she was just predisposed to labeling them as such because of all the stories in the news. Because why in the world would terrorists be floating in a dinghy out in the middle of the Florida Straits? It didn’t make a lick of sense! Though the racing of her heart and the throbbing of the blood in her brain told her that, sense or no sense, terrorists or no terrorists, she’d allowed her father’s yacht to be boarded by a group of very nasty men.

  “Move!” the man behind her hissed again, his foul breath making her gag. And when he punched the barrel of his machine gun into her side, causing her to cry out, she was left with no recourse b
ut to do as she was told.

  Someone had replaced her kneecaps with jelly. Which didn’t do a damn thing to make her journey up the stairs to the back deck any easier, especially not with the man’s arm secured around her neck.

  “Miss Madison?” Captain Harry’s posh accent drifted around the corner. “Do you want me to pack a box with foodstuffs, or would you prefer—”

  “Run! Lock yourself in the engine room!” Maddy screamed. A sweaty hand clamped over her mouth, and her kidney took another blow from the barrel of her captor’s weapon.

  Three of the gunmen raced passed her before Captain Harry could act on her shrieked instructions. They grabbed the captain by his arm and yanked him into view. Harry’s eyes popped out of his head and his face flashed florid when he realized a couple of brutal-looking machine guns were aimed under his jaw.

  “How many more on boat?” the man behind her asked, removing his hand from her mouth to once more snake his hairy arm around her abused throat. She could taste the sweat clinging to her lips. The sweat and the grime. It took everything she had not to double over and retch like the time she was four and her mama had dosed her with ipecac after she’d gotten into the bathroom cleaner beneath the sink.

  Instead, she gritted her teeth and shook her head, refusing to answer. Even though the Black Gold was a sturdily built ship, sound traveled far on the water. It was possible Nigel and Bruce had heard her scream and were, even at this moment, making their way to the engine room where they could lock themselves behind the heavy steel door and use the satellite phone down there to alert the authorities to their…er… she supposed this was a hijacking? And if that was the case, she was determined to give the two crewmen as much time as she could.