Troubled Waters td-133

by Warren Murphy

"Basique Boutique."

  Remo honestly couldn't tell if it was a male voice or a female voice. It sure did lilt a lot. He said, "Give me Smith."

  "We have a Judith working tomorrow." Remo realized that he was, in fact, talking to a computer. "Also a Maximillian."

  "I want Smith."

  "Well, actually, there's a new stylist starting tomorrow. Not sure of his name. You realize we're closed now, don't you?"

  "If I don't get Smith, Harold W., in the next five seconds I'll call up Armitage, Senator Chester, and let him handle this problem."

  "Remo, it's me," Smith said, coming on the line abruptly.

  "Hey, Smitty, I don't appreciate having my chain jerked by your fruity little mainframes."

  "It's a new system, Remo. Just be a little patient. It's not always easy to get a positive voice ID, especially on the poor audio signal a telephone provides."

  "Is this screening really necessary?"

  "My old methods of screening out bad calls just aren't as effective as they used to be," Smith explained curtly. "If I could convince you to learn a few basic code numbers-"

  "Forget it," Remo sniped. "Where's the ferry?"

  "On its way. Let's see. ETA twenty minutes."

  "Who's handling the pickup?" Remo asked. "DEA."

  "They know the plan?"

  "Yes, they were fully briefed."

  "I'd rather not go swimming this evening if they screw it up."

  "They won't."

  "Twenty minutes," Remo said.

  "Make it nineteen," Smith answered tartly.

  REMO DIDN'T WEAR A WATCH. He didn't need to. He had a clock in his head and it kept perfect time. He went belowdecks, moving silently. Not a floorboard creaked. He paused outside the economy berth belonging to Pablo Altamira and listened to the breathing of the man inside. Pablo was asleep. Then he went to the luxury stateroom where Stacy Armitage waited. She was in her vast, circular bed wearing only the ivory satin topsheet and a perky smile.

  "I thought you wouldn't come," she said. He could read the arousal in the pattern of her breathing, in the dilation of her pupils.

  He sat on the bed alongside her. She dropped the sheet. Remo nodded sadly and said, "Unfortunately, I won't."

  She was confused for just a moment, then he touched her neck. She slumped over, unconscious, breathing peacefully. It took him minutes to stuff her limp limbs back into sweatpants, sandals and an oversize T-shirt from a Puerta Plata souvenir shop. It featured a large toucan lounging on a beach towel and drinking a tropical drink from a pineapple. It was emblazoned with the message, "I changed my attitude in Puerta Plata!"

  "Not really, you didn't," Remo said to the sleeping daughter of a U.S. senator, who simply didn't know when to leave well enough alone.

  He draped her over one shoulder and toted her onto the deck. He heard Pablo still sleeping, but knew he had someone waiting for him outside. "Oh, Remo, are these the tactics to which you are reduced to procure female companionship?" Chiun asked, shaking his head sadly.

  "I wish. I'll have you know she was ready for a hay roll. Instead I put her to sleep and got her dressed without any hanky-panky."

  "Because?"

  "She was responding to the pheromones or whatever, just like all the others. No, thanks."

  "Maybe it wasn't your Sinanju essence. Maybe she was attracted to you, Remo Williams." Chiun followed him down the length of the Melody.

  "Come off it, Chiun."

  "Unlikely, I know, but still possible. Stranger things have happened. I have seen the most hideous and deformed human beings with mates, so why not you, my son?"

  "What, with this big head?"

  "It is a comically oversized brainpan, yes, but there must be a woman somewhere who can overlook this trait. Perhaps the trollop sprung from the senator's loins was the one."

  "I don't think so," Remo said as he yanked out a life raft and pulled the plug, hoisting it off the aft end of the Melody as it expanded from a tight rubber wad into an eight-person raft. He handed Chiun the line that held it and leaped down to the raft. He laid the unconscious woman inside it.

  "Of course, there are also the ears, which are genuinely repulsive," Chiun mentioned. "And then there are your flabby, slobbering lips. They disgust me, but perhaps a woman in desperate straits would see past them."

  "I doubt it," Remo said, half listening to Chiun as he peered into the wake of the Melody. The nineteen and a half minutes were up when he saw the strobing light, so distant as to be nothing more than a glimmer on the horizon.

  "Let her go," Remo said.

  Chiun shrugged and released the line.

  Stacy Armitage, sleeping quietly, floated off into the blackness of the Caribbean night.

  Remo watched the raft until even his sharp eyes could no longer make out the black shape on the black ocean.

  "Wow, is she gonna be pissed," he observed.

  "Yes," Chiun agreed. Remo could hear the amusement in his voice.

  He returned to the helm and phoned Rye, New York, and found himself talking to Jude, the nightshift manager of Pets? You Bet! Pet Supply Warehouse, "where all rawhide chew toys are on sale for two weeks only!" Of course it was the new CURE call-filtering system. In order to provide the system with a sufficient audio signal from which to make a positive voice print ID, Remo began an in-depth description of what use she should make of her discounted rawhide bones.

  "Does your mother hen know that kind of talk comes out of your mouth?" interrupted a familiar voice-but it was not Harold W. Smith's.

  "That's nothing compared to some of the creative Korean stuff he says when the TV reception goes bad," Remo answered. "What's the status on our pickup, Junior?"

  "Dr. Smith is in contact with the DEA agents, but it hasn't happened yet," reported Mark Howard, CURE's assistant director.

  "Is there a problem? There better not be a problem."

  "No. They've spotted her. They're just letting her float in. It'll be a few minutes."

  "I'll hold."

  Five minutes later Howard reported, "They've got her. Safe and sound and sleeping like a baby."

  "My advice is that they stay clear when she wakes up," Remo said. "The fish are gonna fly."

  THE MORNING WAS PEACEFUL. Remo enjoyed the quiet. Pablo was at the helm and hadn't blinked an eye when told Mrs. Rubble was feeling sick and was staying in her cabin. He'd have to think of a better excuse later if he needed to.

  But Pablo started getting agitated later in the morning. He shifted his feet frequently. Remo saw Pablo scanning the horizon too intently, using the helm binoculars too often.

  It was coming soon.

  He wasn't surprised when he spotted the speck on the ocean.

  Minutes later the speck was much bigger and he turned to Pablo Altamira, back on station at the helm, raising his voice to be heard above the sounds of the sea and their engine. He pointed out the other watercraft. "Can you make out what that is?" he called.

  "Not yet," the young Dominican replied. "Too far."

  Remo went belowdecks and found Chiun in front of the TV, sending hate rays from his eyes at a TV that alternated a snowstorm of static with a scene of two weeping and impeccably manicured women speaking Spanish.

  "We may have company," Remo announced.

  "I heard you bellowing. Are they pirates?"

  "I don't know yet. You want to have a look?"

  "Later," said Chiun.

  "Fine," Remo muttered. "This is the worst three-hour tour I've ever been on." As he strolled back on deck he felt a minute shifting in the Melody's course. He glanced at Pablo in the helm seat, thought of saying something to the young Dominican and then decided it was better to keep still. Let the plan play out.

  The speck, still better than a mile away, now appeared to be some kind of trawler, neither new nor very well maintained. He spotted one man at the helm, another at the stern, though Remo couldn't tell what he was doing. Neither man was obviously armed, but both had faces turned toward the Melody. He waved. />
  The trawler's helmsman turned, said something to his crewman in the stern, and Remo watched the second man move forward, pausing at the cockpit long enough to reach inside a cabinet and take out something. Remo couldn't have said exactly what it was, but the package resembled a square of folded cloth, partly red and partly black.

  The crewman moved toward the stern, where the trawler's stubby flagpole was mounted. Now he separated one part of the bundle in his hands from another, shaking the first one open before he clipped it to the flagpole's halyard, briskly running it aloft. A crimson pennant caught the wind, unfurled and started flapping in the breeze.

  Above and behind him, Remo heard Pablo call out, "They show a red flag. We must help if we can."

  "Right!" he replied to their pilot. "Let's go, then."

  The Melody was changing course, swiftly and smoothly, with Pablo's sure hands on the wheel. Remo saw the older, smaller boat turning to meet them now, assuming what was nearly a collision course. Her pilot and the crewman in the stern were still the only humans visible on board. Remo reached out over the water, trying to listen past the thrum of the engines and the distortion of the sea.

  The distance between the two boats had halved, when the trawler's crewman turned back to the flagpole, swiftly lowered the red distress pennant and raised a square flag in its place. This one was black, except for the grinning skull and crossbones in the center of its field.

  "You gotta be kidding me," said Remo to nobody, then turned to get Chiun.

  "Stay where you are!"

  Pablo Altamira's voice was no real shock to Remo. Neither was the pistol in his hand, its muzzle held rock steady at Remo's chest.

  "Can we talk about this?" Remo asked the slim Dominican.

  "Indeed we can-and will," said Pablo, grinning brightly now. "My friends will be most happy to discuss the situation with you. In the meantime, though, while we are waiting for them, please do nothing stupid that will make me kill you. Por favor?"

  Chapter 11

  "She don't look all that rich to me," the first mate said.

  "Nobody asked you, Wink," Billy Teach replied.

  "No, sir."

  The first mate's given name was Lester Suff, but that would never do among the rowdy boys. They called him Wink because he had a nervous tic that made his left eye twitch an average of twice a minute, giving him the aspect of a chronic winker. It wasn't a bad nickname, as pirate handles went: less fearsome than a few, less embarrassing than most.

  Wink didn't know what he was talking about, either. The cabin cruiser looked tame enough, but Teach could read the signs of her subtle luxury. He saw hand-hewed teak rails on the inner decks, and enough antennas for a small television studio. She wasn't flashy, but the Melody was worth big, big bucks.

  It had better be, Teach thought. Better be worth the risk.

  The word had come from port, their man in Puerta Plata, and it had been Teach's task to take the trawler out to sea. Most of his crew were concealed belowdecks, sweating in the hold and clutching weapons as they struck an intercepting course.

  With this crew of merciless rabble, taking the floating puss parlor named the Melody would be a piece of cake-unlike the deadly and unexpected encounter of the night before.

  They had run into the small, utilitarian craft almost by accident. Teach had been planning to leave it alone, but the men on the small boat had other plans. They had approached Teach's ship. To flee would have invited suspicion-and it turned out, these were very suspicious boaters.

  They weren't suspicious anymore.

  They were closing on the Melody now, their Jolly Roger flapping in the breeze, and Teach's men were lined up on the deck just like a proper firing squad, prepared to spray the yacht with bullets if their man on board couldn't control the passengers.

  If anyone had asked for his opinion, Billy Teach would have informed them that he didn't care so much for planting men aboard the boats they meant to raid. His reasons were twofold. First, you couldn't really trust another pirate much beyond your line of sight, and he was always worried that the men they sent ashore to work as plants would turn somehow, betray them to the law, or else go into business for themselves. It hadn't happened so far, but there was a first time for everything, and it made Billy nervous. The second reason was that he preferred the old ways, coming at your target in a rush, catching him unawares if possible, or else compelling him by brute force to submit. It felt wrong, somehow, when the work was more than half done by a single man on board the target vessel, and the raiders hadn't even stepped aboard yet. Where was the adventure, then? The risk? The rush of spilling blood in combat?

  He recognized the need for bloody action as a failing of his own. God knew, Kidd had reminded him of that time and again, telling him that the smart thief was the one who bagged his loot without a struggle, then disposed of witnesses as quickly and efficiently as possible. No fuss, no muss. Each time potential targets were engaged in combat, there was risk to Billy's crew, to Teach himself-and all for what? The path of least resistance was the road of preference for wily buccaneers, and those who lived to see old age would verify that fact.

  Teach knew all that, and still he missed the action on an easy raid. Perhaps this time they would get lucky. Maybe someone on the tub they were about to loot would have more balls than brains and try to make a fight of it.

  On the other hand, there were incidents like their predawn encounter. Those men had been nosy and stupid, a combination sure to get you killed. And it did get them killed. But the killing had been simple butchery. Very efficient, over within seconds and not very exciting.

  Teach kept his fingers crossed and manned the railing as his first mate steered the trawler close enough for them to board the Melody. A sickly sweet name that was, but he reckoned the Colombians would change it soon enough if they agreed to buy the cabin cruiser. There was little fear that they would turn it down, given the way Ramirez and his people went through boats on smuggling runs to the United States. Between the Coast Guard, DEA and mainland hijackers, the cocaine barons never seemed to have sufficient vessels to fulfill their needs.

  Three men were waiting for Teach at the Melody's starboard railing. One of them he recognized, if only vaguely, as their inside man. His name was Paco something, Billy thought, but it made no real difference. The only thing that mattered was that he had done his job, keeping the others covered, making sure they offered no resistance to the boarding party. Too bad.

  Checking out the other two, Teach had to smile. In fact, it was an effort not to laugh out loud. The taller of the men looked soft, as tourists often did, more suited to a desk job than to a sailing tour of the treacherous Caribbean. Teach would have bet his share of any loot they found aboard the cabin cruiser that her skipper had soft hands, together with a yellow streak that ran the full length of his spine.

  It was the Melody's second passenger who made Teach want to crow with laughter as they pulled alongside and prepared to board. He was an ancient Asian, possibly Chinese, whose few remaining strands of hair were baby fine, stirred by a breeze that wafted from the south. He wore some kind of robe that looked as if it were made of silk. Long sleeves almost concealed the old man's hands, but Teach could tell that he was scrawny in the Asian style, a stringy skeleton wrapped up in yellow skin. The man had to be a hundred, and he probably weighed less than that.

  Some kind of servant, Teach decided. Probably the cook. It gave him hope if these two landlubbers were rich enough to drag a Chinese cook along with them when they went on vacation. That could mean there was cash aboard the Melody, perhaps with some expensive jewelry for dessert.

  "Ahoy, there!" he called out to Paco something at the rail.

  The young man raised his free hand in a kind of vague salute, keeping his pistol trained on Melody's passengers. "We ready for joo," he replied. "But there's a problem. I cannot find the woman!"

  "Can't find the woman?" Teach knew the younger man was supposed to have his wife on board. His blood chil
led slightly.

  "We'll find her!" Wink shouted.

  "Hold, dogs!" Teach commanded, and suddenly an odd stillness fell among the expectant, rambunctious crew. "Describe this woman!" Teach shouted.

  "CAN WE KILL THEM NOW?" Chiun asked. He had grudgingly allowed himself to be rousted from the television at gunpoint to join them on deck, and the look he gave Remo spoke volumes. Remo could read those volumes, which mostly described how off-putting this entire charade was, how personally in debt Remo was for Chiun's vast patience with it all and how Chiun would much rather have silently switched Pablo off so he could go on watching his soap opera.

  Pablo had seen the same look on the old Korean's face when he ordered him out of the media room, but to Pablo, ignorant of the fact that those who interrupted Chiun's TV watching were typically committing suicide, interpreted it as an expression of fear.

  "Be my guest and swim on over," Remo replied, voice low and lips barely moving. Pablo was too busy to notice them speaking. "I think I'll wait until the boat is within jumping range. Just remember to leave enough alive to take us to their secret pirate fort."

  "You want me to do all the work," Chiun complained.

  Remo wasn't listening to Chiun any longer as the pirate on the approaching ship shouted to Pablo, "Describe this woman!"

  Pablo looked confused, but shouted back a brief list of Stacy Armitage's physical attributes.

  The pirate captain then looked worried. He turned to one of the crew and barked, "Bring her up."

  "Oh, crap," Remo Williams muttered. He knew what he was going to see next, and Fate didn't disappoint him.

  Stacy Armitage, disheveled, frightened and furious, was dragged up from the depths of the trawler. Chiun sniffed. Remo was more vocal in his frustration.

  "Shut up!" Pablo said savagely. He was scared now. "What is going on?" he demanded of the pirate captain.

  "We took her off a boat we met up with a few hours ago. She was with two DEA agents," the pirate called.

  "Now can we start killing them?" Chiun asked as the pirates tossed padded grappling hooks over the Melody's rail and Pablo took the time to set them fast, still covering his prisoners.