****
Dani lay in her berth fully clothed, a cheap cell phone set to silent mode on the pillow beside her head. She couldn't tell if Liz had dropped off to sleep or not, but they had all agreed they would turn off the lights at 11 p.m. and try to sleep. Clarence's people were positioned along the waterfront in Ste. Anne, some concealed, some hiding in plain sight, posing as drunks. Two were in third floor hotel rooms with views of the anchorage and night vision binoculars. An assault team was concealed with a high-speed RIB among the anchored boats about a half a mile farther north, near the big all-inclusive beach resort. Dani wasn't good at waiting; she much preferred to take the initiative, but they had no idea where the killer might come from or when he would choose to strike.
She knew that chances were his attack would come sooner rather than later, but his use of the military mine in the Saintes was worrying her. If he had access to that kind of ordnance, he could blow them out of the water from anywhere along the shoreline. She reminded herself that Clarence's people had that covered. They had spent the afternoon combing the areas that might offer concealment for someone with a shoulder-fired rocket launcher or something similar, but she still felt like the goat tethered outside a village to draw a man-eating tiger into an ambush.
The last bit of breeze had died as they were going to bed; Vengeance lay still in the quiet water. Dani could picture the glass-like surface that must surround them; she reasoned that this was to their advantage, making it easier for the shore-side observers to spot any movement out in the anchorage, but it also meant the boat was on the warm side of comfortable, even with all the ports and hatches open. She could hear one of the Fitzgeralds snoring softly — probably Bill. She looked at the luminous dial of her watch, annoyed to see they had only gone to bed 45 minutes ago. She knew this guy would wait until the wee hours of the morning to make his move when people slept most soundly. He might not even attack tonight; she needed to go to sleep and trust her instincts and the watchers to awaken her if anything happened. She concentrated on relaxing her muscles, one by one, and breathing steadily.
****
The next Dani knew, her eyes were open; she twitched involuntarily, realizing she had been asleep. She felt the cell phone against her cheek; it wasn't vibrating. She lay still, scanning her surroundings with all her senses. She noticed Liz was no longer breathing in a deep, regular rhythm; something had awakened them both. She gripped the commando knife that was in her right hand, thinking she would roll out of her berth and creep over to have a whispered conversation with Liz. Before she could get up, the door to their cabin began to open, moving in barely perceptible increments. She tensed her muscles, ready to strike as a figure in a dark, dripping wetsuit came into view.
Liz rolled to a sitting position and turned on a tactical flashlight, blinding the intruder and Dani as she raised her pistol. "Freeze or you're dead," she said.
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she convulsed, the flashlight and the pistol flying from her hands.
"Taser," Dani thought as she struck blindly, rolling out of bed into a crouch and bringing the knife around in an arc intended to catch the intruder's legs. She felt the blade snag on the neoprene wetsuit as the man dove for her. She put her weight behind the blade and changed the direction of her thrust, feeling resistance as the man grunted and cursed softly. She rolled out from under him as he fell toward her, yanking the knife from his hip as she moved away, but his flailing left hand caught her hair.
He clenched his fist, and she could feel her hair tearing from her scalp as she stood up, ignoring the pain. Moving as fast as she could, she cupped his elbow with her left hand and rose to her full height, putting her weight on his elbow and locking his hyper-extended left arm between his shoulder and her head, forcing him to his knees, his face and chest pressed into the bedding. As he tried to roll away and release his arm, she drove the knife into the back of his left thigh, feeling it catch behind the tendon. Releasing his elbow, she gripped the knife with both hands and pulled back with all her strength. He began to scream as she felt the tendon part, and she fell backwards. Bouncing up into a crouch, she drove the knife into the back of his right leg, severing that tendon as well. He slumped forward, shrieking, reaching back for his wounds with both hands.
Still holding the knife at the ready, Dani retrieved a pair of handcuffs from the pocket of her shorts and snapped one on his left wrist. He jerked his arms forward, preventing her from fastening the second one. She put her left hand on the small of his back and brought the knife up between his bloody thighs, feeling the blade catch in the neoprene material at the crotch. She made a measured thrust, pushing the blade through the fabric until she felt the resistance of flesh. She put her weight on her left arm and pulled up on the knife in her right hand until she felt it pierce his flesh. He screamed again.
"The pain is just beginning unless you put your arms where I can cuff you behind your back. It's up to you, asshole. You've already bled all over my sheets, so I've got no reason not to just finish you right here." She pulled up on the blade again for emphasis. He brought his wrists together behind his back and she fastened the second handcuff. She gave the knife a last jerk, watching with satisfaction as he flinched.
Standing up, she reached to the side and switched on one of the cabin lights, surveying the damage. Liz was recovering, trying to sit up. "Just take it easy," Dani counseled. "Give yourself a few minutes. You'll be okay, but you'll feel weak for a while, and you'll probably have some sore muscles."
"What did he …"
"Taser." Dani bent and picked it up from the cabin sole, noticing the LED indicated it had recharged. "Watch," she said impulsively, and pressed it to the back of the man's exposed neck. She stood back as his muscles went into spasms. "That's for scratching my varnish, you worthless bag of testosterone."
Only after Liz was sitting up did they hear the Fitzgeralds calling out and banging on their cabin door. "Don't try to stand up yet," Dani said. "No rush. Can you call the assault team to pick up this garbage while I go see about them?"
"Sure, give me the phone."
Chapter 30
"I'm lost," Bill said, setting his half-empty wine glass on the coaster by his place mat. They were on the veranda at Phillip's house where they had just had a farewell dinner; Vengeance and the Fitzgeralds were bound for Dominica early in the morning. They had spent yesterday answering questions from the police in several countries, all relayed through James Lawson, the lawyer in St. Lucia. "As soon as Dani let us out of the stateroom, those guys came and took this Pat Nolan character away, but then what happened? I thought they were going to take him out to the patrol boat from St. Lucia and turn him over to the cops."
"They did," Dani said. "It spun out of control once the police took him aboard the patrol boat. Did you get a straight story on that, Phillip?"
"Only what I heard through Lawson, but then there's that puzzling comment from Paul's DEA friend, too."
"What did Lawson say?" Jane asked.
"After Clarence's people delivered him to the patrol boat, the cops took up a course for Rodney Bay. About ten minutes later, the patrol boat was stopped and boarded by some people in an unmarked, military-type RIB that came out of nowhere."
"How did they stop an armed police patrol boat?" Bill asked.
"A blinding spotlight and a burst across the bow from a heavy machine gun, from what the Chief Inspector told Lawson. Then a big, black RIB with no markings came alongside with a four-man boarding party and took the prisoner. They were wearing black uniforms with no markings, and they balanced him on the side of their boat and put a weight belt on him. Shot him in the head twice, and dumped him while the cops watched. Then they roared away toward the spotlight. Once the light went out, the police couldn't find a sign of anybody — no radar sighting, nothing. The Chief Inspector told Lawson his best estimate was the whole thing was over within 90 seconds after the spotlight hit them."
"How could they disappear like that?
" Bill asked. "I mean, the radar should have picked up a ship within 30 miles, or something, right?"
"Give or take," Phillip agreed, "but the RIB may not have come from a ship."
"Now I'm really lost."
"The water's over a mile deep out there," Phillip said. "They could have come from a submarine."
"A submarine? The Navy? Our Navy?"
Phillip shrugged.
"Tell them what Paul said," Dani prompted.
"Paul's DEA friend, the one that got chewed out for running those fingerprints?"
"Yes."
"He got another phone call from on high yesterday. The basic message was, 'Tell your friends the guy that matches those prints you ran won't be killing anybody else. And stay out of stuff that doesn't concern you.' Paul said his friend couldn't make sense out of it, until Paul told him about the hit in the St. Lucia channel."
"Jesus," Bill murmured. "So you think some government agency killed this Nolan guy?"
"We'll never know any more than we know now. That's one possibility; it fits the facts."
"But why?"
"Our tax dollars pay for some strange things. If Nolan was some kind of rogue agent, somebody could have decided they couldn't afford to have him imprisoned somewhere where he might talk. My guess is he was a liability in somebody's view; he must have known too much about something or somebody," Phillip said.
"I'm still stunned," Jane said, breaking a long silence. "I still can't believe I recognized him after all this time; he was such a dweeb when he was pestering me to go out with him back then."
"He kind of confirmed your identification when he cursed you for laughing at him in Cardile's class," Liz said.
"I missed that," Phillip said. "What happened?"
"Oh, that's about it," Liz said. "It was while we were waiting for Clarence's guys to come. He looked at Jane and said, 'You bitch; you deserve what Cardile got. I should have killed you both right in that class when I read my poem about you,' or something like that."
"That's when I recognized him for sure," Jane said. "Before he opened his mouth, he looked kind of familiar, but I couldn't place him."
"Did he say anything else?" Phillip asked.
"No. Dani hit him with the Taser again."
"Guys like him piss me off," Dani said. "He needed killing; he got what he deserved."
"Who would have thought that a loser like him could do such damage?" Jane asked. "I wouldn't have pegged him for a killer in a million years."
"It's hard to generalize about killers," Bill said, casting a strange look in Dani's direction. "They don't all fit standard profiles."
"Basta!" Sandrine interjected. "It is enough of this, this, ah …, memorizing. He is gone; we do not allow him to stay in our thoughts. You will have good sailings now, and no one on the stalk … that is not the right words … Phillip?"
"To no more stalkers!" Phillip said, raising his glass.
They touched their glasses and drained them.
"I'm looking forward to the rest of our cruise," Jane said.
"Me, too," Bill added, putting an arm around his wife.
Trading smiles with Dani, Liz said, "Vengeance is yours."
****
Read an excerpt from Bluewater Bullion, the next book in the series ...
Chapter 1
"These guys aren't on the level, Liz," Dani grumbled. "Gerald's whole story reeks of bullshit. Why not just tell us they're looking for sunken treasure? Something bad's going to come of this. I can feel it in my gut."
"They've been down for a while," Liz said, looking at her wristwatch.
"Maybe they found the wreck. They should be coming up soon, though. They'll have to allow time to decompress; it's 70 feet deep, give or take," Dani said.
Vengeance was anchored about 14 miles west of Barbuda. Their guests were searching for the wreck of the Phaedra, lost in a storm during the U.S. Civil War. Gerald Yates, the man who had chartered Vengeance, was a well-to-do writer from an old Southern family, and Phaedra had belonged to an ancestor of his.
According to Yates, the vessel was lost after she had run the blockade from Savannah, bound for Barbuda, where the Yates family had a plantation. Phaedra had been carrying family belongings to preserve them from the marauding Northern army when she foundered. Yates said he was less concerned with recovering the cargo than he was with verifying the facts for a book that he had in mind.
"Gerald's kind of hot," Liz said, hoping to distract Dani.
"Not my type," Dani replied. "He's a little too limp-wristed."
"So you like Nick better?" Liz was referring to their other guest. Nick Thompson was a former Navy SEAL, employed by Yates to help him find the wreck.
Dani shook her head. "Loser. My bet is he got run out of the Navy. He strikes me as a bully, and he's way too quick to tell you about his experiences."
"He's sure built like a Greek god," Liz said.
"Like they say in Texas, 'big hat, no cattle.' That body comes from too much time wasted in the gym — not useful muscle."
Liz laughed. "There's no pleasing you. At least they're both easy to look at."
"Sorry, Liz. I'm having some trouble with this whole situation. I don't trust either one of these guys. I'm feeling like we should find them a dive boat and refund their money. This isn't our kind of business. I'm not sure why Elaine booked them with us to start with. They need a research vessel — not a sailboat."
"We can't do that, Dani. Elaine thought she was doing us a favor; she'd be upset if we backed out, especially at this point. We need her goodwill; she could make or break our business. Besides, if we backed out, she'd lose her commission for booking the charter with us."
Their conversation was interrupted as the two men surfaced next to the dinghy tied alongside Vengeance.
"Any luck?" Dani called to them as they climbed out of the water.
"Well, it's a wreck," Gerald said, "but not the Phaedra."
"Fishing boat," Nick added. "Pretty recent, too."
"So you want to keep up the search?" Dani asked. "This area of shallow water drops off in the next mile or so, and then there's another lump on the bottom with 20 or 30 meters over it not too far out along the course line."
"Nah," Gerald said. "Might as well call it a day. I'm still jet-lagged. This has been a good shakedown for us — not a bad first day out. We got all the gear aboard and working. There's a lot of this shallow water to search. I'm thinking Nick and I should reconsider our strategy. Now that we've seen how things are, we need to do a little homework."
"So you're just after a memento of some kind?" Liz asked. "No family silver or anything?"
Dani saw Gerald give Nick a guarded look before he answered.
"Right. Just something to make it real. I'm not even sure what she was carrying; the old story was that her cargo was just the first load of stuff my great-great-grandmother wanted to send to her family to keep it out of Sherman's hands."
"Probably her dishes and shit, huh?" Nick asked.
"Yeah, maybe." Gerald shrugged and shook his head, grinning up at Dani and Liz. He sat in the dinghy while he removed his gear. Glancing at his watch, he said, "It's pretty late to start sailing another search grid, and we're out of air. Can you take us back to Jolly Harbour for the evening?"
"Sure. No problem," Dani said.
"Good. If we get in before five, we can drop the tanks off to be filled. Nick and I'll have dinner ashore and stay at the villa; it'll give you two a night off. Okay?"
"You're the boss," Liz said, as she and Dani helped the two men heft their dive gear onto Vengeance's side deck.
While the men went below to shower, Dani and Liz raised the anchor and got under way for Antigua, about two hours away. Once Liz secured the anchor in its chocks, she raised the mainsail and unrolled the staysail and the Yankee jib. As Dani shut down the engine, Liz joined her in the cockpit. Satisfied with the sail trim, they passed a few minutes in silence, enjoying the feel of the big ketch cutting through the gentle
ocean swells.
"Not sure I believe him," Dani said in a soft voice.
"About the cargo?" Liz asked.
Dani nodded. "He's going to a lot of trouble just to prove an old family tale. Why chase down some 150-year-old wreck just to say he'd done it?"
"I don't know," Liz said. "He's a best-selling author; I guess he's got the money and the time, and like he said, maybe it's for inspiration. He's trying to write a historical novel about his family."
Dani frowned and shook her head. "I think there's more to it."
"Like what?"
"I'll bet he's looking for something valuable. Nick Thompson's a pro; he's getting paid. I'm sure there's more to this than Yates has told us."
"Why charter Vengeance instead of a dive boat, then?"
"Low profile. Having us sail back and forth while they man the side-scan sonar and the magnetometer makes it look like we're fishing, to anybody who happens to notice."
"But we're outside Antigua's territorial waters. The government won't care. Who else would he be hiding from?" Liz asked.
"Hunting sunken treasure's a competitive business, if that's what he's doing," Dani said.
"What else could he be looking for?"
Dani shrugged. "Anything. Could be a lost drug shipment, for all we know."
Liz smiled and shook her head. "You're a victim of your own devious mind. I think he's just a rich guy chasing down a family fable, like he said."
"We'll see, I guess."
****
Marilyn Muir settled into the aisle seat in first class and buckled her seat belt. She relaxed and closed her eyes, dozing off as the plane began to taxi. The pilot's announcement awakened her a few minutes later. She caught the end of it, happy enough that they were expecting a smooth flight and on-time arrival to Antigua. She would have plenty of time to rent a car and get to the resort before nightfall. She didn't like driving in strange places after dark, especially places where they drove on the left side of the road.
Bluewater Stalker: The Sixth Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Bluewater Thrillers Book 6) Page 21