Hell or High Water

by Julie Ann Walker

  She didn’t think. She just started swimming.

  * * *

  2:35 p.m.…

  “You okay, LT?”

  Leo glanced down at the rip in his T-shirt sleeve and the deep, bloody furrow cutting through the skin on his right shoulder above his tattoo of the Navy SEAL trident. “Just a scratch,” he told Bran. Though that didn’t mean the thing didn’t still bite like a bag full of alligators. Getting shot was never fun. Getting shot and then immediately dousing the wound in seawater was even less of a party.

  “We still need to stop the fuckin’ bleeding,” Mason muttered, reaching beneath the surface of the water to dig in the pocket of his cargo shorts. He came up with a sodden red bandana. Grabbing two corners, he twirled the fabric around on itself, then grunted and jerked his chin, which Leo knew to be the nonverbal equivalent of Lift your arm. He did as instructed and watched Mason give him a slapdash field dressing.

  “Please tell me that thing’s clean,” Leo said, gritting his teeth when Mason tightened the bandana over his wound. “I think I’m due for a tetanus shot.”

  “For the most part,” the big Bostonian said, one corner of his mouth curling. “But maybe you should have Doc dose you once we get home. Worst-case scenario and all.”

  “Perfect,” Leo grumbled. Of course, right about now thoughts of home were so sweet he would have allowed Doc to make a pin cushion out of him if he could somehow transport them all there. Unfortunately, he wasn’t Captain Kirk and Scotty wasn’t going to beam them anywhere. Which meant they were stuck. Here. Using the only part of the skiff that was still afloat—the back section and the motor—as cover. But that wouldn’t last for long.

  The dinghy had a one-way ticket to Davy Jones’s locker, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Luckily, he had managed to take the terrorists’ boat out of action before he and his men were forced to dive overboard. So even if those suckwads weren’t in the drink right now, they would be soon. And that was a good thing. In the water, Leo and his SEALs had all the advantages.

  “So what’s the plan?” Bran asked, floating easily beside him.

  “We wait until their boat goes under. Then we swim over and take ’em out.” He glanced at his men. “Unless you guys can think of a better idea?”

  “Negative.”

  “Mmph.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  “One tiny little caveat though,” Leo said, pulling the strap of his M4 over his head and twisting the weapon around until it lay flat against his back.

  “You mean the fact that our rounds will only travel four feet underwater, and even then they won’t have enough kinetic energy left to do the tangos any real damage?” Wolf lifted a brow.

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “So we swim up from underneath them, drag them down, and slit their throats.”

  “Uh…problem.” Bran lifted a finger out of the water.

  “Wolf’s the only one with a fuckin’ knife,” Mason grumbled.

  “Bingo,” Leo said.

  “We could try to surface close to them,” Bran mused. “Take aim and fire before they get a bead on us. But that’s taking one pisser of a risk. Considering the rat bastards will probably be waiting with fingers on triggers for us to do exactly that.”

  “‘The cruel and evil are feared, especially by the wise,’” Wolf muttered.

  “Buddha again?” Bran rolled his eyes. “I don’t think now is the time to spout your woo-woo religious mumbo-jumbo bullsh—”

  “For the record,” Wolf said, “that was a Hindu proverb. But it doesn’t matter. Because translated into layman’s terms, it means we’d be smart to come up with a better plan.”

  “So Wolf pulls his guy under and slits his fuckin’ throat. The rest of us pull our guys under and do it the dirty way,” Mason said, shrugging one massive shoulder. “We snap their fuckin’ necks.”

  Leo glanced at Wolf and Bran. It meant getting close. Real close. Hand-to-hand combat without a useful weapon was always tricky. Still, it was their best option. “Anyone opposed to Mason’s plan?”

  “Negative,” Bran said.

  “I’m in.” Wolf nodded.

  “And just in time too,” Leo muttered as the dinghy made a wheezing sound followed by a portentous bubbling. “We’ve only got a few seconds of cover left. And on that note…” He peeked around the edge of what was left of the watercraft and made a quick scan of their surroundings before ducking back. “Okay. Their skiff is under. They’re huddled in a pack about sixty yards away. We’ll have to surface three times between here and there. The last time will be close.”

  “‘The only easy day was yesterday,’” Bran said, quoting the Navy SEAL motto, his face like stone. He was in full warrior mode now.

  Mason was his usual silent self, simply jerking his chin in a quick downward motion.

  Wolf replied with, “Wakan takan nici un,” which was his standard comeback when they were about to rush headlong into battle. He’d told them it was Cherokee for “May the Great Spirit walk with you.” From Hindu proverbs to Cherokee incantations. Only Wolf…

  “Okay, men.” Leo nodded. “Let’s do this!”

  He desperately wanted to peek around the other side of the craft to see if he could snatch a quick look at Olivia in her orange life jacket. But there wasn’t time. The dinghy was slipping beneath the surface of the water. He had to trust that she was holding her own—and if anyone could, it was her—as he spit out his gum and then inhaled deeply, expanding his diaphragm and increasing the capacity of his lungs. He quickly blew out all his air until he could exhale no more. Lowering his head as close to the surface as he could without going under, he sucked in oxygen until his lungs couldn’t hold another drop.

  Go time!

  He quickly dove down three feet, far enough that he wouldn’t have to fight the wave action at the top. Within seconds, all his men were beside him. He could see them, blurry though they were since he wasn’t wearing goggles. Each gave him a thumbs-up. And that was the signal to start swimming.

  Then it was all about the muscle memory… All those endless days and weeks spent in hell, otherwise known as the pool at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, California, all those long hours practicing the right stroke for the right conditions, all those training exercises geared toward crushing their fear of the ocean meant their motions were smooth and sure. Instinctual. Their heartbeats a steady tempo to match their pace.

  It was quiet underwater, the only noise a gentle crackling that was the feeding of nearby fish and shrimp and the occasional burble of bubbles that trickled from between their lips. They swam ten yards in a flash. Fifteen came and went as Leo counted his strokes in his head, operating on autopilot. Little by little, he released the air in his lungs until a subtle buzzing sounded between his ears. A harbinger of low blood-oxygen saturation.

  A tap on his ankle had him glancing back. Mason had fallen a bit behind the group. The guy’s muscle mass meant he had to work harder than the rest of them to stay afloat, using up oxygen faster. That ankle tap said his gas tank was running on empty. The rest of them could have continued for a few more yards, but they’d been trained to rise as a team. Reaching over, Leo poked Bran’s shoulder and Bran immediately grabbed Wolf. Slowly, the four of them broke the surface, just their noses and mouths breaching the sanctity of the water.

  Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Dive!

  Back below the waves, they continued their journey, pouring on the speed, cutting the distance to their targets as the warm water sluiced through their hair and over their skin like the gentle fingers of a lover welcoming them home. Little air bubbles tickled and teased. Eddies created by their cupped hands rushed sensuously down their bodies. Some might think it odd that free diving soothed him, calmed him.

  But even as a kid, well before SEAL training had enamored him of the sanctuary found in bosom of the ocean, Leo had liked being underwater. He glanced to his right, watching Bran easily swim, then to his left, seeing
Mason’s big shoulders part the drink like he was fucking Moses and this was the Red Sea, and he knew his friends felt the same.

  Tap, tap.

  Again, Mason was the first to run out of O2. When they bobbed to the surface this time, Leo lifted his head to peek above the swells, blinking the water from his eyes and getting a bead on their enemies. Diving down again, he indicated with exaggerated hand signals—exaggerated because it was difficult to see in salt water—the direction and approximate distance to their targets.

  The four of them took off again. Five more yards. Ten. Twenty. And when the blurry outline of legs kicking in a tangled clump came into sight, like a flock of birds in flight Leo and his men moved in unison, swimming to the surface, careful to ride the rise and fall of the waves as they refilled their lungs for the last time. Sinking deeper, they swam until they were directly below the terrorists, far enough down that their shadows in the water wouldn’t alert their enemies to their presence. There they hung, paddling at depth. He indicated which of them would grab which pair of churning feet. And after receiving a thumbs-up from each of his men, he gave one last hand signal. Go!

  Like honest-to-God seals, they shot through the water, grabbing the ankles of the man they’d been assigned, unmercifully yanking their adversaries beneath the waves.

  Rough hands clawed at Leo’s shoulders, his head, as he pulled his foe deeper, deeper, deeper still. The butt of his enemy’s AK grazed his temple, but he was able to twist the weapon out of the man’s hand, letting it go and absently noting its lazy descent toward the bottom. A knee landed in his groin. Oomph! Another blow connected with his midriff, forcing a bubble of air to burst from his lungs. But he was too pumped, too full of purpose and stone-cold determination to feel much of anything.

  He realized his foe wasn’t actually trying to fight him. The man was simply frantic to return to the surface, struggling upward with everything he had, his limbs jerking wildly this way and that. And that was his first mistake.

  With deadly resolve, Leo locked his legs around his opponent’s thighs, effectively thwarting the man’s bid for the surface. Now the terrorist clued in to the real danger. He landed blows on Leo’s face and head. But the water leached all the power from his punches.

  This close, the man’s face was clear, the absolute horror in his dark eyes visible even beneath the sea. Leo hardened his heart just as he’d done many times during his career and grabbed the back of the tango’s head with one hand, his bearded chin with the other. It was the work of an instant to twist. And in the silence of the ocean, the snapping of his enemy’s vertebrae was as sharp as a cracking whip.

  The man was dead before he knew what hit him—a merciful death, really—going slack in Leo’s grip. Leo allowed the body to slip from his hold, barely sparing the sinking corpse a glance.

  He’d heard it said somewhere that guys often entered the services because they had high ideals. But when push came to shove and the bullets started to fly, they didn’t end up fighting for a cause; they didn’t end up fighting for their country. They ended up fighting for the guys in the trenches beside them. And, in his experience, he’d found that to be true. Which was why he was immediately searching the sea around him, looking for his friends.

  Above him, a red cloud blossomed in the water like a macabre flower and the body of a terrorist sank past him, drifting down into the deep, leaving a lingering trail of blood in its wake. Wolf had obviously made quick work of his opponent. Leo glanced to his left, but Bran was nowhere in sight. To his right, he could just make out a mass of writhing shadows, one so big it could only be Mason.

  Without hesitation, and ignoring the whirring between his ears that told him it was time to surface, he kicked with all his might in that direction. He was barely four feet away when a familiar snapping sound echoed dully through the water and Mason pushed away from the dead tango to kick and claw at the water like all get-out. It was obvious the fight had taken too long. Mason was desperately low on air.

  He ain’t the only one, Leo thought as he pulled up beside him, abbreviating his strokes to match the shorter man’s just as black began to edge into his vision. The buzz in his ears was now a roar. His muscles burned as they struggled to work without the benefit of oxygen. It occurred to him things might get pretty dicey when suddenly Wolf and Bran were beside them. They must have surfaced to refill their lungs because their strokes looked damn near spritely.

  Wolf hooked a hand beneath Leo’s armpit, and Bran grabbed on to Mason’s gun strap. Then it was a matter of teamwork. The sun glinting on the waves gave them a bright, golden goal to shoot for. But it was going to be a very close thing. Too close. The need to breathe was overwhelming, speaking to the lizard part of Leo’s brain, trying to overrule all his reasoning and higher functions. Up, up. Higher, higher. Come on, come on! They kicked like mad, but…

  Aw, hell. I think I—

  Just as he felt his lungs begin to spasm against the desire to rake in the air that wasn’t there, Bran gave him a mighty push toward the surface and, “Uhhhh!” bright, delicious oxygen rushed into his lungs. Beside him, Mason’s loud indrawn breath was followed by the harsh sound of a deep, wet cough. The latter told Leo that Mason had choked down a mouthful of ocean water. Somehow, though, Mason had managed to keep from sucking the stuff into his lungs. And that was a damn good thing. Trying to perform CPR in the middle of the drink was a bitch and a half.

  “What the hell was that, Mason?” Bran demanded, breathing heavily. Leo opened his eyes to see stars dancing in front of them. His head felt like it might blow off his neck at any moment. It was a strange phenomenon, how the body could become drunk on oxygen after it’d been deprived of the stuff for too long. “You nearly got yourself killed! You shoulda surfaced when he pulled that knife on you. You knew it was gonna take too long to disarm him a second time and do the deed. You big asshole!”

  “What?” Leo managed, the waves bobbing him up and down, the warm wind caressing his face and trying its best to sober him up. It was working. Sort of. His head was no longer threatening to float up into the clear, robin’s-egg-blue of the sky. “What knife?”

  “A monster goddamned knife, that’s what knife,” Bran said. “After Mason wrestled his target’s AK away, and before he could get the guy in the right hold to snap his neck, I saw the tango pull a hunting knife the size of my dick from the back of his pants.”

  Leo ignored Bran’s ridiculous allusion to his johnson and wondered how Mason managed that laconic shrug while treading water and still trying to clear the moisture from his windpipe. “Not a lot of”—cough, cough—“options. If I let go, there was a chance the fucker could’ve stuck you in the kidney on his way up. Your hands were full at the time.”

  “So then after you wrestled the blade away?” Bran asked, eyes wide despite the seawater dripping off his eyelashes. “Why the hell didn’t you surface then?”

  “Just seemed easier to”—cough—“finish it.”

  “And nearly drown yourself in the process, you stubborn sonofabitch.”

  One corner of Mason’s mouth curled. “Stubborn and well-endowed.”

  Apparently Bran only enjoyed big dick references when he was the one making them. “Seriously, Mason”—he squinted and lifted a hand to shade his eyes—“your stupidity and misplaced self-sacrificing heroics are blinding me. Would you mind turning them off?”

  “Is this your way of saying you fuckin’ love me and you were worried I’d—”

  “Uh, guys,” Leo interrupted when the engines on the Black Gold thrummed to life with a deep purr. The sleek yacht was still anchored forty yards away. But by the sound of those engines, it wouldn’t be there for long. Shit. And just like that, he was stone-cold sober. “You mind if we file this argument under To Be Continued? Because if we don’t catch that yacht before it takes off—”

  “We’re fucked,” Mason finished unnecessarily.

  “In a word.”

  “You go get Olivia,” Wolf suggested. Olivia… Holy
Christ. Where the hell is she? Leo glanced over his shoulder but couldn’t see her anywhere. “Me, Tweedle Dumb, and Tweedle Dumber will go appropriate ourselves a yacht.”

  “Be careful,” Leo advised. Suddenly, the thought of catching the yacht seemed inconsequential when compared to making sure Olivia was okay. Which, all right, was completely asinine. But there you have it. When it came to her, he had a tendency toward myopia. Complete and total tunnel vision. “There could still be two tangos aboard, not to mention the crew or whoever else was in on this little scheme.”

  “I don’t know about you three,” Bran said as he took off toward the gently bobbing vessel, “but I like those odds. Race you!” Flip! And, just like that, the guy was back to his jovial self.

  Watching his friends cut across the waves, Leo treaded water and kept a close eye on the deck of the yacht through the scope of his rifle to make sure no one came out of the bridge or popped up from below to start taking potshots at his friends. But as the seconds passed…nothing. No one. Hopefully that meant there weren’t many people left on board, making it easy for the guys to mop things up.

  And that wasn’t ego talking. It was the plain ol’ truth. When it came to three armed Navy SEALs who collectively had nearly forty-five years of experience and training under their belts, pretty much nothing short of an exploding volcano or hurricane—i.e., a force of motherfrickin’ nature—could stand in their way. Hooyah!

  When Leo saw they were approaching the back of the vessel and the swim deck, he allowed himself to finally, finally—it had felt like an eternity—turn away. Swinging the strap of his M4 over his shoulder, he yelled, “Olivia!” His eyes searched the vastness of the ocean, looking for that spot of orange that was her life jacket. It was difficult to see. The sea was speckled with debris from the Wayfarer’s sinking. A bright-white life ring here. A dark blue corner of plastic he thought belonged to the cooler he and the guys had kept on deck there. There were buoys and a few chunks of Styrofoam. A whole sleeve of red Solo cups and a couple of cushions from the deck chairs.