by Dale Mayer
With his bag collected, he reached out a hand, and instinctively she placed hers in it.
“This is becoming a habit,” she joked.
“Which part’s a habit? Holding hands or moving from place to place under the cover of darkness?”
“Both,” she said. “I don’t mind the first, but the second one sucks.”
At that, Keane gave a peal of shallow laughter. “He’s single and available, so you can keep doing the hand-holding thing.”
She rolled her eyes at him. They were already outside and in the hallway. But, once they got to the stairs, they climbed and climbed and climbed. She took several deep breaths at one of the landings and asked, “How much farther?”
“Just a few more,” Nico said patiently as he stood two steps above, waiting for her.
“Are we going to the roof or something?”
“Or something,” he said with a nod.
She stared at him in surprise, then gave a head shake and quickly gathered up her energy and followed. When they came to the door at the very top and entered onto the roof, she laughed. “You weren’t kidding.” But then she saw the helicopter, sitting there, waiting for them. It was off, and the rotors were still. “Is there a pilot for that thing?”
“Yeah,” Nico said. “Me.” They walked over, and he quickly helped her up into the side, then looked over at Keane. “Might need you up front.”
“Yeah,” Keane said.
Nico hopped into the front, put on his headset, and started up the engine. “What I don’t have is any navigational markers for where we’re going,” Nico said.
She leaned forward from the back seat. “Are you saying that you don’t know where we’re flying to?”
“Oh, I know where we’re flying to,” he said. “The trouble is, our destination’s on the move too.”
And, with that, he laughed and slowly navigated the helicopter into the night.
Nico was never happier than when he was flying, unless maybe when on a big ship. He was definitely an air and sea boy, and it didn’t matter to him which. He’d picked up his helicopter license when he was quite young, and it had come in handy through all his navy training as well. His years as a SEAL meant that he, even though not scheduled as a pilot for a lot of the missions, was a pinch hitter when needed. He had stepped in and taken some of these birds home after pilots were shot or injured. In other words, Nico did what needed to be done, many times over. But now, flying over the ocean, it was special. He smiled and looked at the scenery all around him, then said, “You almost forget.”
“Almost,” Keane said. He was busy contacting their landing position. “I have it up here. You’re heading forward another twenty-seven nautical miles, and we’re going due east another twelve degrees.”
He quickly made his adjustments. “And they’re expecting us?”
“They are.”
Nico nodded. “That’s good. This bird will fly for a while, but we’ll have to fuel up somewhere.”
“Our destination is out in international waters right now, and she’s a little bit farther ahead, so we’ll probably take about an hour to get there.”
“Good enough.” He tapped his comm on his headset and called back to Charlotte. “We have about an hour of flight time,” he said. “Sit back, relax, and enjoy.”
“Will do,” she said. Then she added, “You’re a man of amazing mystery.”
“I’m just a man,” he said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
She didn’t answer that, but he could see that she was settled in and staring out at the ocean below.
“I always find that I fall asleep if I’m sitting and looking at the water,” Keane said.
“It’s pretty special,” Nico said with a nod. “There’s just something about the endless waves on the horizon.”
But he could see up ahead the lights of where he was going.
They landed four minutes early, coming down on the huge USS Bainbridge. It brought back so many memories for Nico, and it felt almost like coming home. By the time he shut off his rotors, hopped out, and walked around to open up the passenger side and to assist Charlotte onto the deck, he was as comfortable here as he had been up there.
She looked around at the completely different scenario and stared at him. “Are we on a warship?”
“Well, we’re on one of America’s ships, compliments of the US Navy, yes,” he said. “But we’re hardly at war.”
“I didn’t really mean that we’re at war.”
He nodded. “I know what you meant. And, yes, this is the USS Bainbridge.”
She nodded and smiled. “Am I allowed to be here?”
“Well, not very many people will know you’re here,” he said. And with his bag and once again holding her hand gently, he led her toward one seaman, standing but not looking at them, yet he saluted nonetheless as Nico and his party went past. Nico nodded to the sailor and kept on going.
“Have you ever been on this one before?” she asked.
“I have,” he said cheerfully. He led her down to the cabin area, marked off the one that they’d been assigned, quickly opened it, and pointed her inside. “Up or down bunk?”
She looked to see four bunks and shrugged. “I’ll take an upper bunk.”
“Done,” he said. He picked her up and gently popped her onto the top bunk.
She let out half a shriek and said, “That’s it? We’re just here now?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Now sleep. It’s been a rough night.”
“You’re not kidding.” She rolled over and faced the wall. “You’ll wake me if anything happens, right?”
“Hasn’t enough happened yet?”
She chuckled. “Absolutely. I’m just too damn tired now to watch and wait and see for myself.”
And, with that, she fell into a deep sleep. He dropped his bag at the end of the bunk below her. With Keane crashing on the opposite bunk, he stepped out to see if anybody was around. Instead he found an envelope on the floor outside his door. He picked it up and stepped back inside.
“What have we got?” Keane asked.
“Instructions apparently,” he said. “Sitting there and waiting outside.”
“It always blows me away that you can be on a ship so full of men, and yet nobody sees anything.”
“It’s what the military is good for, following orders,” Nico muttered. He walked over to the far end, where a tiny table was, and sat down. He brought out everything and took a look. “Interesting,” he said. “Included a photo of her assistant in here.”
“And why is that?”
“Because she’s dead.”
Immediately Keane hopped off his bunk and came over. “The previous assistant or the new assistant?”
“The previous one,” Nico said, his voice dark. He held up the image and said, “She can’t be twenty-seven or -eight.”
Keane looked at it and nodded. “And do we know how she died?”
“Hit-and-run apparently. She never had a chance, mowed down while she was walking home one evening.”
“I wonder if it’s connected.”
Nico tossed a glance at Charlotte. “I don’t see how it can’t be.”
“Ditto. More coincidences than I’m prepared to accept at this point.” Keane sat down and tugged some of the other papers toward him. Together, they went through every bit of information they’d been given, but there wasn’t a whole lot. Mostly just their travel plans. “This should be fun,” he said.
“Yeah. But at least part of the journey will be on a private jet.”
“I’m all for that too,” he said. “I wasn’t really thinking that we would make it home that fast, but this way we’ll be there soon.”
“And I’m thinking that’s a good thing for her to disappear from sight even when we get her home—at least until this is over.”
“Unless they’re waiting for her to show up back home again.”
“That’s my concern,” Nico said. He opened up his laptop and sent off a message, making su
re that undercover security would be at her house before they arrived and continuing until the kidnapping mastermind was caught. As an afterthought, he added, Make sure you sweep for bugs.
Will check came the response.
“And why would the previous assistant be killed, even if her death is connected? Other than tying up loose ends. We still don’t know why Charlotte is even involved,” Keane said thoughtfully.
“I don’t know,” Nico said in bewilderment. “None of it makes any sense.”
“And unfortunately what we do know,” Keane said, “is that, as soon as it does make sense, we’ll be in crunch time.”
“Yeah. We never really find out the actual details until we get to the end of this shit, do we?”
“No, it’s usually a FUBAR session when everybody finds out what’s going on.”
“It’d be nice to change that for once,” Nico said. “We could maybe get answers before everyone is in danger.”
“Yeah? Let me know how that works out for you,” Keane said.
Chapter 6
When Charlotte woke up the next morning, her bladder screamed at her. She rolled over to see the room was lit, if it could even be considered a room. It was small and sparse of furniture, very military, with double bunks on both sides and a very small table at the far end. There was a little bit more, but nothing that really caught her eye as her bladder screamed for release. She slowly slid down over the edge of her upper bunk and stepped onto the cold floor. She gasped, and instantly Nico sat up on the bunker below hers. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, but I need the washroom.”
He led her to the bathroom and said, “We have our own.”
Grateful, she walked in and closed the small door. It was almost as small as an airline bathroom. A little bit bigger but still it was a bathroom. And when she used the facilities and stood and washed her hands, she was beyond relieved. She checked her face, but she looked pretty decent, considering her kidnapping and all. Although she was still tired from the night’s goings-on, she had had some rest. As she opened the door, Nico leaned against the wall. She got out of his way so he could use it behind her. And then she returned to the bunks.
Keane lay on the other lower bunk with his eyes closed. She didn’t know if he was asleep or awake. She sat down on the lower bunk that Nico had vacated and waited until he came back. When he saw her sitting there, he stretched out and patted the bed beside her. “At least this way we can talk,” he murmured.
Not wanting to wake Keane, she stretched out beside Nico and whispered, “How long are we here for?”
“Quite a while,” he said. “But we’re on the move, and we’re heading off to a new destination. We’ve got several different legs to this journey, but they will get us home again.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said with a yawn.
He whispered, “Can you sleep some more?”
“I don’t think so,” she murmured, but she could already feel the drowsiness coming over her. “Or maybe I can.” She curled her knees up to her chest and whispered, “I should have gone to my bunk.”
“No need. Just rest.”
Her eyes already closed, she smiled. “What about you though?”
“I’m a big boy,” he said. “Besides, I have work to do.”
She heard him, but that’s about all she heard. She nodded. “Make sure you wake me if anything happens.” She knew it was becoming a habit to ask that of him. She just didn’t know why it was so important.
“Just forget about everything, and go back to sleep.”
Nico watched as she drifted back to sleep again; then he slowly sat up and shifted around her.
Keane opened his eyes and looked over with a smile. “Just like a homing pigeon.”
“Ha,” Nico said. “I’ll check our time schedule.”
“We’ve still got six more hours.”
Just then there was a beep. Nico checked the chat box to see transportation changes. He softly called over to Keane. “They’ve changed our plan. The private jet is no longer in the mix.”
“I wonder why.”
“No way to know,” he said. “But one of the stations, Thailand, is sending a military plane back home again.”
“And we’re going on it?”
“Looks like it. They’re heading to Alaska first.”
“And then what? We’re switching?”
Nico nodded. “Yes.”
“What time frame?”
“Two hours.”
“That’s enough for her to get some more sleep. Cargo planes won’t be an easy way to rest.”
“Nope, definitely not. But that’s all right. She can sit buckled in, and, in time, we’ll get where we need to.”
“I wonder why Alaska.”
“Well, we’re way the hell on the other side of the world, so why not? We have to go one direction or the other.”
“I was hoping for a jaunt into Germany,” Keane said with a half a smile. “Not that we’d get off the base at any time.”
“I was just hoping for a direct from Sydney to San Fran myself,” Nico said, a grin splitting his face.
“It’s never that easy,” Keane said with a laugh.
“No, it never is.”
Nico woke Charlotte fifteen minutes before they were due to leave. When she stared at him with bleary eyes, he smiled and said, “Go wash your face. We’ll leave here soon.”
She nodded and got ready.
With his bag in hand, he grabbed her hand and said, “Don’t say a word as we leave, please.”
Again she nodded, and he went ahead. She followed, with Keane bringing up the rear. Back up on deck, she was led to a different helicopter. Only this time Nico wasn’t flying. She raised her eyebrows at him as he sat down beside her. He shook his head and said, “He’s bringing the helicopter back.”
She nodded in understanding and watched as they took off, staring down at the massive ship below them. “I wish I’d gotten a tour.”
“Not happening,” he said. “As in never happening.”
“Too bad,” she said. “That was an experience of a lifetime.”
“And hopefully the only time you have to hide out on a carrier like that,” he said with half a chuckle.
She smiled. “So, where will we go next?”
He winked at her. “Wait and see.”
Chapter 7
When they landed at a military base, Charlotte smiled and said, “So I guess I get a military escort home?”
“Not quite,” Nico said. “It won’t be anywhere near as comfortable.”
She groaned. “So, no royal treatment for me?”
“No,” he said. “We’re doing this on the side. Nobody here knows who you are or what you are.”
“Good. Anonymity is a great idea, especially right now.” When she was escorted off the helicopter, she turned to thank the pilot, but Nico nudged her forward. “It’s just good manners,” she said. She’d been given a little bit of warning, but she hadn’t expected these conditions. She almost laughed when she walked up to the plane with the two men at her side. Several other military personnel headed onto the same airplane, but it was much less of an airliner and definitely didn’t come with stewardesses or meals or any of the other comforts that she was accustomed to.
It did, however, come with pallets of cargo strapped on tight to the floor and seats at the sides that appeared to be mostly boards, harder and more unyielding than she had ever thought possible. Alongside her was a harness strap that kept her in place, which was a good thing as she soon learned. But her ride didn’t provide earplugs, and she could use those too.
Nico leaned closer and whispered, “If you can sleep, do so.”
She quirked her lips at him. “Meaning that there’s not much else to do?”
He nodded. “You’ll find everybody zoning in and out.”
“It’s awfully noisy,” she murmured.
“It’s a cargo plane that carries personnel,” he said.
“And we hav
e a long way to go, right?”
“We do,” he said with a laugh. “But we’ll get there pretty fast, all things considered.”
She nodded and closed her eyes, but, instead of sleeping, she tried to meditate and to let the stress of the last two days slide off her back. She hated the fact that these men were looking at her assistant Maggie. But Charlotte had heard them earlier, talking about Vanessa, how she’d been found after a hit-and-run. Charlotte couldn’t even believe that the poor young woman was dead.
It never occurred to Charlotte that something like that might have happened. Well, it had occurred to her but not seriously. She’d been sure that Vanessa had taken off with her boyfriend. Charlotte had figured that the job was something Vanessa didn’t want to do anymore. But, to find out that she was dead, and Charlotte hadn’t even known, and that she’d had such negative thoughts about a poor woman who couldn’t even defend herself made Charlotte feel like a heel. “Did they ever find out who killed my assistant?”
Nico’s head pivoted suddenly in her direction. “You heard us?”
She nodded. “Was the hit-and-run driver ever caught?”
“Not according to her file.”
She nodded sadly. “She was such a young woman. She didn’t deserve that.”
“I’m pretty sure nobody in this world deserves to be mowed down on a sidewalk like that.”
“Your terminology?” She rolled her head toward him and looked at him. “Was it deliberate?” He didn’t answer, but she saw it in his eyes anyway. She slowly straightened and looked around. Everybody else had their eyes closed or talked among themselves. She hissed, “Seriously?”
He shrugged. “We don’t have answers yet,” he reminded her gently.
“Why not?” she cried out in a soft voice like a child. “We need answers.”
“And we’re getting a lot of them,” he said.
She nodded and collapsed back, her head leaning against the wall. “But that’s just terrible. I don’t understand why these people would directly target me or those around me.”
“No,” Nico said, “but there’ll be a reason. There’s always a reason, whether we see it at first or not. The worst is when we never uncover a motive. Then it eats at us forever.”