Hell or High Water

by Julie Ann Walker

  Maddy lifted a brow at the captain—Quick thinking, Harry, old boy!—before sitting forward to crane her head to try to get a peek out the bridge’s windows. Squinting her eyes, she searched the port-side horizon for the mysterious Wayfarer-I.

  There! Far enough in the distance that only when the Black Gold bobbed to the top of a wave could she see the salvage ship’s gray hull glinting dully in the afternoon sun.

  “Ahoy, Black Gold,” the voice crackled from the radio. The man’s accent spoke of his Southern heritage. Louisiana or Alabama would be Maddy’s guess. His slow drawl and the way he elongated his vowels was different from the Texas twang she was used to hearing. “It’s a great day to be at sea, over?”

  “A great day, indeed,” the captain responded. “Which is why we decided to throw anchor and have a bit of a stay, over?”

  Maddy settled stiffly back into the love seat, her mind racing with possibilities. Was the salvage ship far enough away to call in a Mayday without risking reprisal from the men aboard the Black Gold? Yessiree, Bob. She’d bet her best boots it was. Even though the Black Gold was one smooth-sailing vessel, under full steam that salvage ship surely had enough oomph to outpace her.

  But how to let the crew on board Wayfarer-I know that things on the Black Gold were hell and gone from copacetic? How to get them to call in that Mayday?

  And then she knew…

  The next time Captain Harry depressed the button on the handset, she’d scream her lungs out for help. Oh, sure. She might get a bullet in her brain for the effort. But she might also save Harry, Nigel, and Bruce in the process. And since it was her fault they were in the mess to begin with…

  Her blood sizzled with adrenaline, her muscles bunching in readiness. She could do this. She could. Get ready, Maddy!

  “Good to hear,” came the voice over the airwaves. “We’ll be passing by on your starboard side.”

  She must have been vibrating or something, because Captain Harry dug a pointy elbow into her ribs. Hard. She glanced over at him, noting the nearly imperceptible shake of his chin. She widened her eyes slightly, the facial equivalent of Now’s our chance. In response, his chin shake became a little more distinct.

  Lead A-hole snatched the handset from Harry. Without the button pressed, the connection to the other ship was lost. “Enough,” he snarled, leaning in so that some of his spittle landed on the captain’s cheek. Knowing just how rank that stuff was, Maddy jerked back, out of the way of the flying dreck. “End it. Now!”

  He shoved the handset back at Harry, and the captain took it while still managing to keep his elbow planted firmly in her ribs. “Roger that, Wayfarer-I, over and out.” He said the seven words so quickly that they sounded like one big word. Damnit! There went our chance!

  “Over and out,” came the reply as Lead A-hole snatched the handset from Harry and turned to replace it on the receiver.

  Maddy narrowed her eyes at the captain.

  “This is no time to play the heroine,” he grumbled softly, barely moving his lips. But it wouldn’t have mattered had he said the words flat out. Their captors were no longer paying them any attention.

  Lead A-hole was pacing the length of the bridge, yelling and gesturing wildly. He seemed to be repeating one word a lot. Banoo. Banoo. Banoo. What the heck did “banoo” mean?

  As for Skinny A-hole Number Two, he’d picked up the binoculars and was staring in the direction of the salvage ship. Occasionally, he answered his cohort with a shrug of his thin shoulders or a quick shake of his head.

  Suddenly Lead A-hole, a.k.a. Mr. Rotten Mouth, stomped over to stand in front of the love seat. His face was contorted with rage. His hands clenched into fists. “CIA?” he yelled, flinging his arm out to point a finger toward the approaching vessel.

  Maddy and Captain Harry exchanged a look. “Huh?” she asked at the same time the captain said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “The ship! The ship!” Their captor was so worked up his voice screeched like a pubescent boy’s. Maddy wondered if the big blood vessel pumping in the side of his neck was about to explode.

  One can always hope!

  “They CIA?” he screamed. “They CIA?”

  If the guy thought repeating himself twice made his crazy ramblings any more coherent, he had another think coming.

  “You mean the Central Intelligence Agency?” Captain Harry asked.

  Maddy’s eyes widened as her gaze flew up to Rotten Mouth. “Yes!” he bellowed, his extended arm vibrating with tension. His lips pulled back in a sneer made more revolting by those discolored teeth. And then there it was again. Something moved behind his eyes. Instinctively she shrank away from it.

  “Why would they be the CIA?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. All that rage that had been fueling her since Lead A-hole hopped on board and punched her in the throat suddenly leaked out of her as if she’d turned into a human sieve. In its place was the fear she should have been feeling all along. The CIA? For Pete’s sake! “Wh-who are you guys?”

  Bam! The backhanded blow happened so fast Maddy didn’t have time to duck. Which meant she caught the full force of it square on her cheekbone. Pain exploded. Her brain scrambled. And it took her a solid five seconds to realize she hadn’t been run over by a bus or swept up by a hurricane.

  Opening her jaw to try to relieve the acute throb in her cheek, it occurred to her that the cartoons got it all wrong. They always showed little birdies floating around the head of someone who was knocked silly, but they should have used bees instead. There was a definite buzzing in her ears.

  “Stop it!” Captain Harry yelled, throwing up his hands in front of her. She looked through tear-moist eyes and realized their captor had lifted his arm for another blow.

  Lead A-hole slowly lowered his hand, glancing back and forth between her and the captain. And for a heartbeat or two, Maddy got the distinct impression he was considering swinging the machine gun strapped to his back around to the front of his body so he could squeeze the trigger and fill their heads full of lead.

  Her mouth went as dry as a West Texas well in a drought, and each of her nerve endings set itself ablaze until her whole body felt like it was covered in fire ants. They say when you’re close to death, your life flashes before your eyes. But the only thing filling her vision was the hate-filled face of their captor. And just when she thought they were goners for sure, he turned toward Skinny A-hole Number Two and snarled, “Get rocket launchers.”

  Número Dos just blinked at him, and that’s when Rotten Mouth realized he’d spoken in English. He repeated his order in whatever language they were speaking, and their skinny guard hopped into motion, quickly racing out the door.

  “Did he just say rocket launchers?” Maddy husked, her breath wheezing out of her.

  “I’m afraid so,” Captain Harry answered, shaking his head in disbelief as Lead A-hole pulled a small satellite phone from the pocket of his trousers.

  Her mind flashed back to those strange metal tubes she’d seen in the bottom of the dinghy. And she spoke aloud the words that had been circling around in her head for the last ninety minutes. “What did I get us into?”

  * * *

  1:48 p.m.…

  “See if you can understand what Nassar is saying.” Banu angrily handed his satellite phone to Ahmed. “He’s all worked up. And when he gets like that, what little English he speaks becomes completely incomprehensible.”

  Ahmed grabbed the phone, quickly asking a question in Arabic. Then he plugged his ear against the noise of the outboards and the waves splashing against the hull of the rented vessel.

  I really should learn the language, Banu thought, leaning back in his seat in the wheelhouse. After his spectacular grand finale as CIA agent Jonathan Wilson, he’d most likely be seeking asylum in a country where Arabic was the mother tongue. And speaking of Jonathan Wilson…he wondered if his boss had noted his absence from work this morning.

  Probably not, he figured. Even CIA agents were allowed to call
in sick. Of course, his absenteeism would be noted eventually. Probably not today or tomorrow or even the day after. But soon. Fortunately, by then it would be too late. By then it—

  “He says there is a salvage ship in the area,” Ahmed shouted just as the fishing boat hit the bottom of a wave. It nearly had him dropping the phone. “He wants to know if you want him to sink it with the RPGs?”

  “What?” Banu yelled, sitting forward. Between the whistle of the wind through the open windows of the wheelhouse and the roar of the engines, he wasn’t sure he’d heard the man correctly.

  “He wants to sink a salvage ship by using the rocket launchers!”

  Okay, so he had heard him correctly. “For the love of—” He could feel his blood pressure rise so quickly that his face flushed hot. Nassar was a wonderful asset. Always quick to follow a lead, ever ready to forward the cause. But he was also a crazy sonofabitch. Fanatical to the point of psychosis. “No! He doesn’t need to draw any unneeded attention to himself. Tell him to let the ship pass.” And in case that wasn’t clear enough, he added, “Tell him to stand the fuck down!”

  Ahmed relayed his words, then his eyes rounded as he listened to Nassar’s reply.

  Banu’s stomach tightened into an uneasy fist. “What?” he demanded. “What is he saying?”

  “He says he thinks they are CIA!”

  “Why the hell would he think that?” Banu yelled, getting the distinct feeling that Nassar’s psychosis had slipped over the line into full-on paranoia. No, no, no! He’ll ruin everything!

  “He says the CIA knows everything, has eyes everywhere! He is determined to sink the ship!”

  “Give me the phone,” Banu growled, yanking the device from Ahmed’s hand. “And cut the engines!” he yelled to one of the men Ahmed had brought with them.

  Ahmed repeated his command, and the fishing boat’s outboards choked off. For a couple of moments, their forward momentum carried them across the tops of the waves. Banu waited. Only when the boat finally glided to a stop, bobbing gently with the tide, did he lift the phone to his ear. Breathing deeply of the salty air and trying to ignore the overpowering aroma of marine fuel, he was careful to keep his tone modulated when he spoke.

  “Nassar, I know you think the CIA knows everything. But the movies lie. This is a big world and the Central Intelligence Agency can’t have eyes everywhere at all times. And I would know, right? I’ve been working for them for a very long time.”

  It took a brief moment to hear Nassar’s reply, since the phones they were using routed their signals through fifteen different satellites to avoid detection and to thwart anyone from possibly trying to triangulate their position. Yeah, Banu knew all the tricks.

  “They coming,” Nassar hissed, then raised his voice until his tone bordered on berserk. In response, the hairs along the back of Banu’s neck lifted. “The ship coming!”

  “It’s fine,” he soothed. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “No,” Nassar insisted. “CIA know chemicals missing. They try trick us! They try—”

  “Shut up and listen!” Banu yelled into the phone. Trying to calm the idiot wasn’t working. So now he’d move on to tough love. “They are not the CIA! Yes”—he glanced down at his watch—“you’re right. The Company probably knows the chemicals are missing by now. But with the security system malfunctioning in the warehouse, they won’t have the first clue where to start looking.”

  “But—”

  Banu continued speaking as if Nassar hadn’t tried to interrupt. “It will take them hours, maybe days, to connect the dots to you and your men. And it will take longer than that for them to figure out you left Cuba by boat. But even if somehow they have already figured out it was you and that you left by boat, they’ll be looking for that wreck of a boat you bought, not a big, shiny yacht.”

  And that had been a stroke of luck he hadn’t counted on. When Nassar called a bit ago to say he’d hijacked the passing vessel, Banu began to suspect this mission—despite the one little hiccup of the sinking trawler— was indeed blessed by Allah. Too many pieces of the puzzle were falling into place for it not to be. Of course, the four people aboard the yacht would have to be killed once they weren’t needed as possible hostages, but that was a minor inconvenience best left for later. For now, he just had to make sure Nassar didn’t do anything stupid.

  “Do you hear me, Nassar?” he asked. “Do you understand?” It was a rhetorical question. Even though Nassar’s spoken English was atrocious, the man comprehended every word of the language.

  Banu waited a beat for the signal to bounce around the globe and back. Finally, “Yes, Banu. I understand.”

  “Good.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. Now, hold steady until we get there. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes. Good,” Nassar said, and before Banu could add anything more, the signal went dead. Ah, well. He blew out a breath, soothing himself with the knowledge that Nassar had sounded far less hysterical there at the end.

  “All is as it should be?” Ahmed asked.

  “I think so.” He silently added, I hope so.

  “Nassar is a passionate man. And sometimes he is too quick to act. But he knows how important this is. He will not disappoint you, brother.”

  This time Banu spoke the words aloud. “I hope so.” Then he waved a hand at the man behind the wheel. “Okay, let’s go.”

  The command didn’t need a translation. As the motorboat’s engines came to life with a coughing sputter, Banu turned his mind away from the disturbing thoughts of Nassar and the possibility the man might indeed fuck everything up to more pleasant things. Things like the blow he’d deliver to the U.S. and its overfed, overconfident, overly entitled populace. Things like the scores of people who, after exposure to the cyclosarin, would foam at the mouth and scratch at their throats and eyes until they drew blood. Things like the news stories that would echo around the world.

  He smiled with the knowledge that, as the mastermind of the whole thing, his name would go down in the annals of time, remembered by most, discussed by many, and revered by some. He would be like Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin Laden! The man to strike at the heart of an empire!

  His dick twitched to life, swelling at the thought of what was to come. He had to covertly hook his heel over his knee and drop his hands into his lap. He sure as shit didn’t want to give these guys the wrong idea…

  Chapter Nine

  1:58 p.m.…

  Olivia thumbed off the secure satellite phone and turned toward the group still gathered in the pilothouse.

  “Well?” Leo asked, unhooking the sunglasses from the collar of his T-shirt and sliding them onto his face when a beam of sunlight caught the crest of a wave and glinted in through the window. She couldn’t help but recall how he’d casually tossed them onto the table in the galley right before he— “What did Morales have to say?”

  “Morales? Oh yeah. Right.” She shook her head. What is your problem? But she knew. It was Leo Anderson. Leo Anderson and his too-handsome face. Leo Anderson and his mind-numbing kisses. Leo Anderson and his—

  “Y’okay there, Agent Mortier?” Bran asked. When she glanced over at him, there was a smug, knowing grin tilting his lips. Like Leo, Bran was nothing if not perceptive.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him, skewering him with her iciest expression¸ hoping to freeze that smile right off his face. To her utter annoyance, it didn’t work. Bran’s grin only became sunnier.

  Jerk.

  “Director Morales said the Black Gold is registered to some sort of Texas oil tycoon out of Houston.” She turned her attention from Bran to Leo. Nope. That was no good. Not if she wanted to remember whatever the hell she was talking about. Because those lips…those fabulous male lips made her forget her own name, much less anything else. His ear, then. She would focus her gaze on his very innocuous earlobe…that she wanted to suck straight into her mouth. Friggin’-A! Okay, so that left…Wolf. There. Good. She would keep her gaze squarely on Wolf�
��s fierce, uncompromising face.

  “Its captain is listed as one Harold Tripplehorn, and its marine logs show it has docked in ports all over the Caribbean and some in Central and South America. Pretty standard for the yacht of a rich Texas businessman.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Morales seems to think it’s legit.”

  “And he doesn’t think it’s awfully coincidental that this yacht is anchored less than two hundred yards from the GPS coordinates those signals are sendin’ us?” Leo asked.

  Damnit. She was left with no recourse but to turn to him. To address Wolf when answering Leo’s question would be…well…weird. Girding herself against that bearded jaw and that flyaway thatch of golden hair, she shook her head. “He checked the port registries. According to the marina in Nassau, the Black Gold checked out of customs and weighed anchor yesterday evening for a return trip to Houston. A slow sail would pretty much put her right about here.”

  “And a fast sail might have had her somewhere around Gitmo last night and out here this morning,” Wolf said.

  “That’s a negative.” She shook her head, thankful for a reason to turn her attention back to him. “According to Morales’s calculations, even if the Black Gold was steaming at full speed, she couldn’t have left Bermuda and made it to Gitmo in time to pick up the terrorists last night. Not by a long shot.”

  “And you trust Morales and his calculations?” Bran asked, his expression suddenly serious. It was beyond bizarre how the guy could do that. Go from frivolous to fierce in two seconds flat.

  “He didn’t get to his position by being an idiot,” she assured him. Then she glanced around at the faces of the three remaining SEALs. Despite their retirement, they were still SEALs. She’d worked with the spec-ops community long enough to know there was no such thing as a “former” SEAL. Once a SEAL, always a SEAL.