Troubled Waters td-133

by Warren Murphy

  Troubled Waters

  ( The Destroyer - 133 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Not So Jolly Roger . . .

  Complete with skull and crossbones fluttering in the wind, "Captain" Thomas Kidd is the new scourge of the Caribbean, raiding unsuspecting pleasure craft and pursuing the great piratical tradition of looting, pillaging and plant walking. The bloodthirsty crew tosses the lucky ones overboard, while saving the women for dessert at Kidd's private island hell.

  When these maritime marauders kidnap the daughter of a senator, CURE sets out to kick some serious pirate booty. Posing as rich tourists. Remo and Chiun set a course for the tropics to tempt these freebooters into the mistake of their career. But Remo soon fines himself swimming with sharks while Chiun senses some illicit treasure in his future. Even so, they are ready to dispatch the sea raiders to an afterlife between the devil and the deep blue sea.

  Destroyer 133: Troubled Waters

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  The woman was lost but tried to deny it, as if by withholding the information from herself she could somehow magically discover an exit from her private hell on Earth. She was a city girl and proud of it, dependent on street signs and landmarks to negotiate her way through daily life. The jungle that surrounded her seemed vast and alien.

  She made a conscious effort to control the fear that stalked her like a silent predator. Panic would finish her, destroy whatever tiny, fragile hope she had of breaking free, saving herself. They might be after her by now, and if she didn't keep her wits about her, she was dead-or something infinitely worse.

  Her body ached from the abuse she had endured since being taken prisoner. Was it three days? A week? A lifetime? She had no idea what day it was, but dawn was approaching to mark another morning of captivity, another day and night of torment.

  Only this time, when her jailers came for her, they would be in for a surprise. She knew that her impression of the jungle's vastness was illusory. Her prison was an island-that much she was certain of-and not a huge one, from the way her captors spoke of it. An island meant the jungle was bounded by the sea on every side, and all she had to do was strike a course, stick to it, keep herself from wandering in circles to escape the brooding darkness of the trees.

  And then what?

  She had never been an athlete, even though she kept herself in decent shape, a trim size six, with just a bit more in the bust than most women her size. But on the best day that she ever had, it would have been impossible for her to swim an ocean. Going where? From where?

  She didn't have a compass and couldn't have read it accurately if she had. Besides, direction was a useless concept when your world was ringed with fathomless green water, the depths teeming with predatory life.

  Swimming was suicide, but she would risk it anyway before she let herself be dragged back to her cage and what was waiting for her.

  A root or vine reached out to trip her, and she went down on all fours, unable to suppress a muffled yelp of pain. Her bruised, aching body protested the jolt, and now her palms were skinned, her knees raw, a small but nagging pain radiating from her ankle, where a splinter or a thorn had pierced her flesh.

  It wasn't the first time she had fallen since she fled her captors, and she had a feeling that it wouldn't be the last. Each time she fell, she hesitated, braced on hands and knees or sprawled on the forest floor, listening for sounds of pursuit, anything that would tell her the men were behind her, drawing closer, perhaps homing in on the sound of her fall.

  Perhaps there was a way that she could make them kill her, if they cornered her and she resisted to the point that taking her alive was too much effort. That was a hope she could cling to, as a last resort, but she preferred to think of the slim chance of escape that remained.

  At the moment she was taken, she had logically assumed that ransom was the goal of her abductors. Why they had not spared her husband was a mystery that haunted her, the image of his violent ending branded on her soul, but she supposed men were more difficult to manage. And they offered less amusement to their captors while they waited for the final payoff.

  Scrambling to her feet, the woman started moving once again, following what seemed to be the ghost of an old game trail, barely visible now, overgrown completely in spots.

  IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY when she first smelled the ocean. When she stopped, she could hear the first faint sound of breakers crashing onto sand.

  Armed with a new, improved sense of direction, the woman veered left, leaving the vestigial trail as it wound away through the trees--curving, she now saw, away from the sound of the ocean. If she had not paused then and there, at that precise moment, she might well have missed her goal entirely and continued on through the jungle until she was cornered or simply collapsed from exhaustion.

  She emerged from the jungle and turned right, then began to move along the beach as quickly as her legs would carry her. She stayed close to the tree line, walking on sand to give her lacerated feet a rest, still close enough to cover that she could vanish in a heartbeat if she saw trackers in front of her or heard them behind her.

  In the sunlight, growing brighter by the moment, she possessed a stronger, clearer sense of time. Her watch was long gone, with the other jewelry and cash aboard their yacht, and while she had no fixed idea of what time she had fled the camp, she knew it had to be coming up on 6:00 a.m. by now. Each moment with the sun above her multiplied her odds of being spotted, run to ground, but it was still her only chance, as slim as it might be.

  The woman guessed she had been following the island's coastline for an hour and a half, at least, before she struck the river. It was small, as rivers go-more of a creek, in fact-but it supplied fresh water, and she fell to hands and knees once more, burying her face in the sweet, cool current, splashing water over her hair and the back of her head with cut and bleeding hands. She drank deeply, unmindful of old movies she had seen, in which parched travelers were warned to sip a little at a time to ward off some calamity never specified. She filled her belly with the sweet, fresh water, taking it in place of food, to stop the growling in her stomach, feeling it revive her like a draft from the mythical Fountain of Youth.

  And when she raised her dripping head, to shake it like a dog's, she spotted the canoe.

  It wasn't native craftsmanship. If anything, in fact, it looked like something from an old Sears catalog that had been roughly used for years, perhaps for decades, and abandoned on the rough bank of this island creek. A paddle was lying in the old canoe, with scars around the blade, its handle satin smooth.

  Stepping into the middle of the creek, surprised at the sudden chill of its water on her bare feet and legs, the woman dragged her only means of transportation into the gentle current. The creek was shallow, and she had to stoop painfully, pulling the old canoe along, but it was infinitely better than trying to carry the boat fifty yards to the sea.

  Gentle breakers curled in toward the shore at the point where creek spilled into ocean, fresh and salt water mingling briefly before the former was lost. Without another backward glance to check for spotters, she plunged into the surf, dragging the canoe behind her until it was suddenly buoyant. The old canoe was thirty yards from shore when the woman finally succeeded in crawling over the gunwale and dropping inside, almost tipping the boat in the process. She shifted to prevent the paddle gouging her back, then reluctantly sat up and stared back at the island.

  There was no one on the beach, no sign of movement in the shadows of the tree line. Could it be that she had managed to outwit her captors after all? It seemed impossible, but the woman was wasting no more precious time. Fac
ing the sea, she lifted the paddle and began to dig in, remembering to shift her strokes from port to starboard to prevent the canoe from circling back toward the island.

  Muscle cramps set in eventually, and she was forced to stop paddling, almost collapsing where she sat, pain-racked and sobbing. Even then, the ocean carried her beyond sight of the island, and no ships came after her to drag her back or sink her, let her drown.

  By slow degrees her strength returned, and the agonizing cramps began to fade. Now thirst and hunger took their turn, but there was nothing she could do except force her mind to concentrate on escape, find a new rhythm with the paddle, hold exhaustion at bay by the sheer force of her will.

  At some point in the endless afternoon, she slumped against the gunwale, briefly losing consciousness, revived when water slapped her in the face. She roused herself, tongue thick enough to nearly fill the dry cave of her mouth, and reaching for the paddle, found that it was gone. She had to have dropped it overboard when she passed out. With no means of propelling the canoe, she was completely at the ocean's mercy, as she had been in the hands of her abductors.

  No, that wasn't right. The sea would kill her, certainly, and it would not be gentle in the process, but at least it wouldn't rape her, make her a slave to filthy strangers who could use her at their will because they had the knives, the guns, the power.

  AS SHE DRIFTED ON THE ocean, the woman drifted in and out of consciousness, with frequent detours into stark delirium. The sun went down, replaced by an impressive moon, and she was still alive somehow, although not certain she was sane.

  In time, the sun came up and started baking her again, leaching the final, precious moisture from her body, leaving her a blistered shell.

  The sharks turned up that afternoon, following the canoe for miles, rubbing their flat snouts and rough hides against the drab metal hull, rocking the woman in her cradle, barely conscious of the changing rhythm. One great fish turned on its side and raked the canoe's flank with its teeth before giving up, deciding there was no food there. Reluctantly, the killers turned away and left her, moving on to more productive hunting grounds.

  Too late, the woman rose from her delirium and found the sea around her flat, apparently devoid of life. She would have welcomed dorsal fins at that point, any promise of relief, but as it was, the sea would have to do.

  She dragged herself across the gunwale, somehow managed to avoid capsizing the canoe. The water swallowed her, then spit her out again, the buoyancy of her slim body dragging her back to the surface. She was floating on her back, the sun bright in her eyes, and tried rolling over, the better to drown, but the sea had a mind of its own, rejecting her sacrifice, tossing her onto her back and forcing her to breathe again.

  She started weeping, tearless, since her body had no moisture left to spare. She didn't see the cabin cruiser coming, barely registered the throbbing of its engine, the churning of its screws in the water. A part of her mind acknowledged the shadow that fell across her face, but she had found the secret weakness of her adversary now, and she was sinking, expelling the breath from her lungs to prevent herself from floating, ready to suck in the water she needed to carry her down.

  A sudden pain almost revived her, lancing into the flesh and muscle of her armpit, and she struggled as some unknown force again brought her back to the surface. Her flailing arm met something like a strand of a spiderweb, the contact sending a fresh jolt of pain through her flesh.

  Above her, miles away it seemed, she heard a gruff voice whooping. They had found her after all, but she took refuge in the thought that she would surely die before they had a chance to take her back, make her their slave again.

  "Hot damn!" the voice above her crowed. "Come look at this, Joe Bob! I done caught me a mermaid!"

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo, and he didn't play well with others. He especially didn't like mixing with amateurs-and to him, everybody was an amateur, except for this one old grumpy guy he knew.

  That wasn't strictly fair, of course. The U.S. Navy SEALs were specialists, presumably the world's best at the job they had been trained to do. But they were a long way from the ocean, several hundred miles in fact. The New Mexico desert seemed a world away from the SEALs' normal operating environment.

  The decrepit ghost town-once a thriving population center in the days when silver virtually streamed out of the nearby Sacramento Mountains into greedy, waiting hands-had been refurbished somewhat for its modern role, but no one would mistake it for a seaport. Situated in the northeast corner of the Fort Bliss Military Reservation, it was used for special training exercises when a desert setting was required. Away to the northwest, some eighty miles, stood Roswell, Mecca to the tired old UFO believers who were still convinced the truth was out there, hidden by a shifting veil of desert sand and the fluid denials of the Federal Department of Obfuscation.

  The SEALs were not, in fact, restricted to naval operations, even though their roots lay in the old UDTs-underwater demolition teams-that had cleared invasion beaches for the Army and Marines in World War II. Today the Navy SEALs were scuba divers, paratroopers, all-around commandos who derived their name from their sea-air-land proficiency in combat.

  Hence the desert, which had been selected as a likeness of the Middle East, North Africa-wherever Allah's warriors waged jihad against the West, assassinating diplomats and tourists, snatching hostages. The call could come at any time, and they had to be prepared for anything.

  Which still didn't explain how Remo happened to be standing in the dusty foyer of the ghost town's three-story hotel.

  Remo blamed it on Dr. Harold W. Smith, director of CURE, the supersecret government intelligence agency. Or maybe the fault actually lay with Mark Howard, CURE's assistant director. One of them had dropped a great big ball, and dropped it right on Remo's head.

  While the SEALs were practicing war, Remo Williams, Reigning Master of the world's original mar tial art, Sinanju, and the greatest assassin currently living on the planet, was doing dog-catcher duty. The SEALs didn't know that. They thought he was an observer and behind his back had labeled him a spook. They didn't care as long as he didn't screw up their playtime.

  The game was rigged, of course. Both prey and hunters were restricted to a given area, with no real practice in the art of tracking over open ground. The ghost town, for its part, bore no resemblance to a Middle Eastern village, other than the fact that both included man-made structures baked by desert sun and cloaked in gritty dust. It would have been more helpful if the Navy SEALs were training for a trip backward in time-perhaps to face the Clayton gang at the O.K. Corral.

  The sun was setting, casting purple shadows in the dusty street, bringing premature twilight to the hotel lobby where Remo stood, waiting and watching. It would take some time for the 115-degree temperature to drop out there, and even in the ancient, shady building it was hot. But at least it was a dry heat. Remo didn't sweat. Partly because he wasn't weighed down by the equipment load the poor SEALs were waddling around with. He was in khaki Chinos and a white T-shirt. His shoes were handstitched leather-he didn't give two hoots about fashion or style, but he did like his shoes to last through the weekend. Remo had proved the quality of the Italians' workmanship by putting their products through field-testing beyond the shoemakers' wildest imaginings.

  Remo was bored. He'd already scoured the ghost town and had found what he was looking for. Dog poop. Well, actually, wolf poop. Specifically, poop from a genetically mutated Canis lupus baileyi, or Mexican Gray Wolf.

  The wolves themselves were nowhere to be found, and by all reports this pack was nocturnal. So he had to wait for darkness, when the pack might-just might-come sniffing around. Remo wanted to be there if it did.

  He had a thing or two to discuss with this particular pack of mutant, nocturnal, man-eating canines. The war games couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time. Remo had asked Upstairs to cancel the games so that he could find his wolves, but Upstairs-which had the capabi
lity to wield such far-reaching powers in the military-said no.

  Upstairs consisted of Dr. Smith the Really Old and Mark Howard the Young and Dopey. That was all there was to the CURE intelligence-gathering apparatus and bureaucracy. The mountains those two could move with a few keystrokes was impressive, but this time they weren't giving in.

  "It would be most difficult to come up with a rationale for canceling routine war games," Dr. Smith had said. He had the sour voice of a man who had just chomped down on a lemon wedge.

  "The pack's gonna stay out if there's a bunch of paramilitaries romping around," Remo argued.

  "So wait until the games are over," Smith countered.

  "No," Remo said. "First of all, the wolves may still be migrating for all we know. We know where they are right now and I'm gonna grab them right now, before they move on. Second, if the wolves do show themselves, the SEALs are gonna go get their real guns and start shooting. Third, I don't wanna."

  "You have no choice, really," Smith said.

  "Yeah. Put me inside."

  "What?"

  "You know. An observer or something."

  "That's not plausible," Smith replied curtly. Remo sighed. He was at a phone booth at a convenience store in some small town in Arizona, already on his way to New Mexico. "Better to go in with an implausible cover than with no cover at all," he stated flatly.

  "Remo-"

  "Because-listen very closely to this, Smitty-I am going in, one way or another."

  Smith relented, but by the time Remo called him back a hundred miles later, he had thrown a wrench into the works.

  "I anticipated all manner of red flags showing up when the order was issued," Smith said. "I could not hope to quell them all without giving you better cover."

  "Yeah. So what's my cover?"

  "Department of Homeland Security Special Forces Special Scenario Evaluation Specialist," Smith said.

  "Uh-huh."

  "Your role is to offer Special Forces experience with out-of-the-ordinary field events and capabilities," Smith explained.