Storm Rising

by Steven Becker

  The voices moved to the rear deck, and he could see two women standing by the transom. One was the woman from the bar; the other looked like she could be her sister, but Mako knew it was her mother—Mei Li. A uniformed man skillfully pulled the boat alongside the yacht and waited there while the women boarded. Mako realized he was exposed now that they were on the same level. He ducked and pulled the dinghy under the closest dock and out of sight, waiting there until the man pushed the speedboat away from the yacht and accelerated into the night.

  The night was dark, and Mako could easily see the white anchor light of the boat as it sped away. Pulling the dinghy from its hiding place, he sped after them, knowing he had no chance to catch them. He just wanted to keep them in sight. The speedboat passed the Bitter End and headed toward several dots of light marking the resort and marina at Saba Rock. He arrived at the dock just in time to see the women step out of the speedboat and enter the restaurant.

  “What the hell are you doing?” a voice came out of the darkness.

  He turned to see John Storm in a dinghy almost identical to his.

  “Following them. The same as you, I suspect. And thanks, by the way, for ruining my shot at her.”

  “You fool. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. There’s venom running through her mother’s veins, and I suspect it’s the same for the daughter,” Storm said.

  Mako stared at him. “And why the concern?”

  “You blow your cover, they’ll be on alert and make things difficult for me.”

  “So, I’m just supposed to go away and leave you to collect on the contract?” Mako wondered why the older agent had even shown himself.

  “In a perfect world, yes. But there’s more going on here than you or your techie partner know. This could be big enough for both of us.”

  Mako was not sure what to say. It was out of character for Storm to work with anyone else—especially him. He tried to decide if this was a deception or if he was sincere—or how badly he needed Alicia. “Go on,” he said.

  “Go on what? Are you in or out?”

  He had nothing to lose. “In. What’d you have?”

  “Let’s get out of here before they see us. Meet me at the dinghy dock at the Bitter End,” Storm said and started his outboard.

  Mako watched him speed away, wondering if he should follow. There really was nothing to lose. With the women in the restaurant on Saba Rock, he expected the yacht would remain here overnight. He started the engine and followed Storm into the night.

  They tied up next to each other at the Bitter End.

  “You be needin’ the phone again?” the dockmaster asked Mako.

  He shook his head and followed Storm to the bar. They sat at a corner table with their backs to the wall in typical spy fashion and ordered beers and chips. Storm drained half his glass before talking. In a hushed voice, he told Mako about Mei Li and the two cases he had seen offloaded from the helicopter.

  “We know about the mom-and-daughter team,” Mako said.

  “How does that digital ninja of a partner of yours know this stuff?” Storm asked. “I saw it with my own eyes. She’s a thousand miles away and figures it out.”

  Mako didn’t bother to answer. In truth, he had no idea how she did it either. “So, about the cases. Are you thinking this is above and beyond the contract?”

  Storm finished his beer and waved for the check. “Only one way to find out, and that’s to see what they have.” He got up, fished a bill out of his pocket and dropped it on the table. “Coming?”

  Mako was surprised by the invitation from a man who typically scorned him. He got up and followed Storm from the bar to the dinghy dock.

  “We’ll take yours. They might be out looking for mine by now,” he said and stepped down to the dinghy.

  With the weight of both men, the soft-sided boat was heavier in the water, causing Mako to adjust the throttle to stop the spray coming over the bow as it slammed into the small waves. Mako steered to a spot that Storm pointed out near another yacht that would give them cover.

  “Are we going aboard?” Mako asked, as the inflatable gunwale hit the dock a little harder than he would have liked.

  “Not we. I’ll go. You stay here,” Storm said and jumped onto the dock.

  Before Mako could reply, Storm had disappeared into the shadows. He sat on the pier with his feet on the dinghy, thinking about what he had landed in now. Working with Storm was a little like playing Russian roulette with every chamber loaded. He’d had a reputation in the old days as a star, but had been released from the Agency for his cowboy antics. They got the job done, but the trail of collateral damage he left behind him was unacceptable to the suits in D.C.

  Mako looked over at the yacht, sitting quietly at the pier, when suddenly an alarm went off and the yacht lit up. Floodlights hit the deck and surrounding water, and he saw a splash off the bow. He jumped down into the dinghy and fired the engine, taking off in the direction of the disturbance. Steering close to the yacht’s hull, which blocked much of the light, he was able to stay out of sight until he saw Storm swimming away. Gunshots came from the bow. He was out of range of the lights now, but not the bullets. Mako looked back at the gunmen and opened up the throttle, steering for the swimmer. Storm was ten feet ahead of the dinghy when the bullet hit.

  Air hissed from the inflatable sides of the dinghy just as Storm grabbed the line running around the gunwales.

  “Gun it!” he yelled.

  Bullets struck around the boat, at least one hitting the other side. With its sides deflating rapidly, even with the throttle opened all the way, the boat dragged through the water, and with Storm being pulled behind, they were slowly sinking. Going back to the sailboat was out of the question. The men on the yacht would see them for sure. Instead he chose the closest dock and the protection of Biras Creek.

  By the time they covered the quarter mile to the dock of the Fat Virgin, the dinghy’s sides had collapsed, leaving only the deck to keep them afloat. Without bothering to tie up, Mako jumped onto the dock and extended an arm down to Storm, who ignored it and climbed onto the dock.

  “What kind of cowboy shit was that?” Storm said, spitting seawater at Mako.

  “That was saving-your-ass cowboy shit,” Mako spat back.

  “I was fine. You blew our cover completely. Now they know where to look for us.”

  Mako looked down again, knowing he would be unable to please the man. “What now?”

  “There.”

  A water taxi had just pulled up to the dock and several partiers boarded. Before the driver could close the chain across the entrance, Mako and Storm boarded after them.

  “Got a call from Saba Rock. Only stop is the rock,” the man said in a singsong accent.

  Mako was about to speak when Storm looked at him and then moved his eyes to the other passengers, indicating they should wait until they were out of earshot. They rode in silence, dodging the curious looks from the two other couples. Finally the taxi dropped them at the pier. Before they had a chance to talk, they saw the two women leave the building and head toward the dock. Both men ducked behind the gunwale when they approached.

  “Where to now? Great idea to come here,” Mako whispered, risking a look at the speedboat waiting to take the women back to the yacht. The driver was on his phone, talking to someone who sounded like he was ordering him to get the women and find the man who had escaped the ship. Once they boarded, he set the phone down, cast off the lines and gunned the engines.

  Storm reached in his pocket and pulled out a wad of wet money. He peeled off a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to the driver. “Can you get us back to the Virgin and stay out of sight of the speedboat?”

  “They be looking for you? Running away from women gets expensive,” he laughed and reversed the boat, spinning the wheel when it cleared the dock. “Clock’s running—where to?”

  “Bitter End,” Storm said and turned to Mako. “We can grab the dinghy we left there and sneak over to the b
oat.”

  The driver stayed between the mooring field and the shore leading to the Bitter End. Mako looked ahead at the speedboat circling the harbor, thinking they would be screened by the moored boats, but suddenly it picked up speed and started toward them.

  “They’re coming toward us. How did they know?”

  “Didn’t you see the dockmaster giving us the eye at Saba Rock? He must have radioed them. I’m sure there’s a bounty on us.”

  “What do you boys want me to do?” the driver asked.

  “We have to lose them,” Mako said.

  “You got the cash, I can accommodate you.”

  Mako nodded, hoping he took credit cards, and was pulled backwards as the driver gunned the engine and spun the wheel. The speedboat reacted to them and followed.

  “How’s this going to work? They’re gaining on us,” Mako yelled over the engine noise.

  “Not to worry, boys, though you’ll have a bit of a hike.”

  The three men crowded around the helm as the driver headed toward a small gap to the side of the island. Mako turned around and saw the speedboat holding its distance, probably wondering what they were up to. This water was shoal-ridden and dangerous. Unless you were familiar with it, there was a high probability of grounding or sinking. The driver had a smile on his face as he sped through a narrow channel to the left of the Saba Rock. Even in the dark, they could see the silt kicked up by the propeller, and they watched the speedboat hesitate. Mako thought he heard a woman yell an order, and the boat took off after them.

  The three men turned around and watched the speedboat dig in when the driver gunned the motors. If they had maintained speed, they could have made it through the shallows with the boat on plane, but their hesitation had cost them, and the bow lifted high, digging the engines into the muck.

  “Looks like you boys got some luck, then,” the driver chuckled. “They’ll be there for a bit.” He spun the wheel and steered a wide circle around the shallows, reentering the bay through deeper water. Mako looked over at the speedboat; even from this distance, he saw the glares of the women staring at them. Fortunately, Storm had turned off the cabin light, leaving them in darkness, invisible to the other boat.

  CHAPTER 12

  Mako woke sometime after dawn. It was overcast, but from the glow of the sun still penetrating the clouds, he knew it was well into the morning. He reached for his phone, cursing Storm when he remembered it had been ruined. Agency protocol was for anyone in the field to always wear a watch, but they irritated his wrist, and he wasn’t sure how the old rules applied to him now. Getting a new phone was the one and only thing on his list today. Storm had told him he would keep an eye on the yacht, though he got the feeling it wasn’t an agreed-on decision. The older agent clearly distrusted his abilities—as if he could care. Results mattered, and although his methods might look bumbling and lucky to other agents, he got results, even if he was in denial about how much Alicia had to do with his success. Her reputation was such that they said she could direct a monkey through a pharaoh’s tomb and bring him back alive.

  Deciding on a more sublime dress than the Vineyard Vines outfit, he chose khaki shorts and a Hawaiian button-down shirt. He asked the dockmaster to call a cab for him and told him he would be back later to vacate the slip. Even he had trouble swallowing the dock fees. The open-air cab showed up a few minutes later, and the driver motioned him to the bench seats in back. The pink cab sat in the shade of the porte cochere, waiting for an elderly couple who climbed in and sat across from him. The driver opened the sliding rear window of the cab and asked them if they were buckled up; then, without waiting for a response, he slammed the transmission into forward and sped up the hill. Once they were out of the gates, the road degraded quickly, and the three passengers realized the importance of the safety check.

  The cab hugged the steel barriers guarding the hillsides as it climbed to the top of the island. Mako was white-knuckled holding the seat and did a double take, cringing every time a car passed. Despite his time in England, this wrong-side-of-the-road stuff on narrow winding hills was disconcerting. He was momentarily distracted from the ride when the cab crested the hill, allowing the occupants a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the island. The driver stopped and opened the window, giving a brief tour of their surroundings from the comfort of the air-conditioned cab. Behind them lay the North Sound, where they had come from. Mosquito Island guarded the entrance. Richard Branson of Virgin fame was building an ecolodge there, he explained. To their right was Sir Francis Drake Bay, with a chain of smaller islands falling off to the south.. Tortola lay across the other side. Sails dotted the water’s surface. On the left lay the Caribbean Sea, white-capped and angry looking even from here.

  The thirty-second tour over, he closed the window and sped down the hill. If they thought the ride up was harrowing, the ride down was worse. The couple exchanged looks of distress bonding them together as they made their descent to Spanish Town. Finally the road leveled and houses started to appear. They were close together, many built in the third-world fashion: single-story concrete buildings with rebar sticking out of the roofs, waiting for the next generation to grow up and have kids before adding a second story. They reached the main street and Mako hopped out. The cab pulled away, with the older couple talking excitedly about the Baths, a national park further south. Something about huge boulders that held not the least bit of interest to him.

  Half an hour later, he was walking toward the marina with a new phone in his hand. The waitress at a small cafe let him charge the battery while he ate breakfast. Finished, he moved outside and waited while it powered up, then pressed the icon for the web browser. His contact list was lost, and he knew Alicia would scold him for never backing anything up. Without the numbers, he searched the Internet for Cody’s dive shop’s page. It came up, and he hit the call button. After pleading with the man who answered that he really was a personal friend, he was told that Cody was out on a charter, but Alicia was upstairs. The man took his number and said he would let her know.

  While he waited for a call back, he walked down to the dock looking for the harbormaster, much preferring a water-based ride back to his boat.

  ***

  Alicia looked down at the piece of paper with a hastily written phone number she didn’t recognize. After a long morning of texting, calling and emailing him, it appeared Mako had bought a new phone and not had the sense to port his old number or call her to help. She took a deep breath and dialed.

  “Ah, when was the last time I told you how wonderful you are?” he answered, hoping to defuse her anger. “And so sweet—”

  She knew that he was not referring to her voice, often called shrill, a bad Asian mix, she guessed. “I suppose you have a story,” she cut him off.

  He started rambling about the same thing as last night, but her attention picked up when he told the story of the chase.

  “Not to worry, we’re partners now.”

  Those words were enough to put her over the edge. Partnering with John Storm was a suicide mission. “And you made this decision unilaterally?”

  “Uni-what? I had to do something. My phone got wrecked in the pool.”

  She tried to control her temper, thinking it would be easier to get a primate to do his job. “Now slow down and give me everything.” She hit several keys, and a red light appeared on the screen to record the conversation. “Start to finish.”

  Mako told his story. It sounded more like a soap opera than a mission. When he finished, she asked him to share his location in the phone’s settings and waited while the map loaded, showing a small blue dot in Spanish Town.

  “So, mamasan, what’s our next move?” he asked.

  She sat back and thought before answering. “Go back and get that damned boat out of the yacht club. Put it on a mooring ball near the Bitter End and text me.” That ought to give her several hours to come up with a plan. In fact, she had been working most of the night, between his seeming disappearance
and a strange signal coming from the yacht. His mention of Storm seeing two cases being brought aboard had started to fill in the blanks.

  Although not under contract to find out what was in the cases, she was monitoring all communications from the yacht, piecing together the crew and guests from their emails, texts, and Facebook posts. The yacht club, for all its exclusivity, had a primitive Wi-Fi network. She turned toward the captain’s chair. Cody had just run a program he had developed, an algorithm stronger than any she had seen to break the passwords of the gamers he played against. It had astonished her the level of obsessive competition of his peers, taking the game to levels never thought of by the developers. The goal of the program was to hack into another player’s system and leave a piece of code that would spy on and report their moves.

  Cody quickly found the password. “YCCS—Yacht Club Costa Smeralda.”

  She laughed at the simplicity of the rich.

  It only took her a few minutes from there to assemble a profile of the people onboard. There were six crew, all easily identifiable from their Facebook posts. The Iranian never left a digital footprint, but Mako had confirmed seeing him as well as the two women. Mei Li, she had located there last night, but the daughter was a mystery. She had dug through every database she could find—nothing. It didn’t matter, though; for the purposes of the mission, she would be deemed as dangerous as her mother.