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Maya paused a hundred yards from her apartment building, wary of surveillance. Further down the block, a dog barked – a pit bull that she knew from experience was mostly attitude. But the tone of the barking, strident and agitated, gave her pause – there was an unusual urgency to it.
The few cars in the neighborhood were dilapidated, beaten by time, their exteriors corroded by the salt air and decades of neglect. She didn’t see any unfamiliar vehicles, so if her pursuers knew where she lived, they weren’t mounting a watch from the road.
A few porch lamps provided scant illumination, the street lights long ago having burned out, the city’s promises of replacement as hollow as most of the other assurances of change. She moved cautiously in the shadows, senses on alert. There was still at least the one man from the bar out there somewhere, and quite possibly more, although the number sent to terminate one target would likely be low, and her adversaries might continue to underestimate her.
Circling the block, she didn’t see anything suspicious. Maya always paid for the apartment in cash every month, no lease, so there was no way to track her to it short of following her, which she almost surely would have detected. Even if she was a little rusty, she still had the sixth sense for being watched that she’d honed. Many of the better field operatives developed it over time, and she had been the best.
On second approach, she came in from the back of the complex, having climbed over a wall separating the garbage area from the neighbor. Her second floor apartment was dark, and there was no sign that anyone had been there. No watchers in the trees, no suspicious loitering figures.
A black and white cat tore across her path with a hiss. Startled, she whipped out the pistol before registering what it was. Seeing its furry form scurry away, she took several deep breaths to slow the pulse pounding in her ears back to normal.
Maybe she was more than a little rusty.
In the old days, none of this would have raised her heart rate above eighty.
As she took another few silent steps, she caught movement on the periphery of her vision. The glint of something by the parking area. Maybe a watch. She peered into the gloom, eyes searching, but she didn’t see anything more.
It didn’t matter.
It was enough.
Someone was there.
The gunfire came with no warning. She rolled behind a low cinderblock wall, listening to the rapid-fire cracking of the silenced pistol some forty yards away.
The slugs slammed harmlessly against the concrete. The dark had helped her. Just enough. She’d caught a break at last. Now the question was whether to fight or run.
Her instinct was to fight, but she had no information about her attackers, which placed her at a distinct disadvantage.
She emptied seven shots at what she guessed was the shooter’s position and sprinted for the back of the building, weaving as she ran. It was dark enough and with sufficient cover, so she wasn’t worried. The gunman had probably been waiting for her to go into the apartment, having planned to take her there – if he hadn’t wired it with explosives already. Or there was someone inside waiting patiently for her to make the last mistake of her life.
Moments later, Maya was over the wall and snaking across the property. She didn’t hear any more shots, so her pursuer was probably wasting a few precious seconds debating what to do – seconds that would be the difference between escape and death.
She ran efficiently, effortlessly, with an economy that spoke to endurance. If necessary, she could keep up a good pace for an hour. Every morning she did so, part of her routine.
A bullet grazed her shoulder, burning as it seared a groove across her deltoid muscle – she abruptly cut between two small houses. As Maya regained her breath, she heard the arrival of a car motor and the squeal of poorly maintained brakes, followed by the distinctive sound of two doors slamming. Another car revved, and tires squealed.
She vaulted over a fence, barely slowing for it, and cut back, returning the way she’d come, but three houses down from where she’d heard the car. That would be the last thing they’d expect – her doubling back.
Three slugs struck the wall behind her.
She saw the flash from a vehicle sixty yards away – a black sedan, all of its windows down. Ducking, she emptied the silenced pistol at it as she scrambled for cover. A round whistled by her head, so she threw herself behind a brick garbage enclosure.
Enough of this shit.
She slipped off the backpack, unzipped it, then gripped the handle of the MP7 and pulled it free. Another round thumped into the brick as she methodically screwed the sound suppressor into place, and then she slipped the extra magazines into her back pockets before dropping the pistol into the backpack and pulling it back on.
Maya rolled from the cover of the structure, took aim, then fired a slew of two-round bursts into the sedan. The submachine gun’s armor-piercing bullets sliced through the doors like they were warm butter; the horn sounded as the driver’s head smashed forward against the steering wheel. The shooting from the car stopped.
A dark Ford Explorer screeched around the corner and raced directly at her. She could see a figure leaning out of the passenger side window with a pistol, and she didn’t hesitate to use the MP7’s superior range. She flipped the weapon to full auto and emptied the gun into the SUV. Without taking her eyes off the Explorer as it bore down on her, she ejected the spent magazine and slammed another one home, then continued firing burst after burst at close range. The gunman fell back into the cab with a grunt, and his pistol clattered to the ground.
The vehicle slowed, then veered away from her before bouncing onto the sidewalk and crashing into a parked Mitsubishi. Maya emptied the rest of the second magazine at it and slapped the third into place.
A light illuminated in the house behind the vehicle.
The bullet-riddled SUV showed no signs of life.
She listened intently for any more cars but couldn’t discern much over the din of the dead sedan’s horn, which was still blaring.
A porch light went on in another nearby home. Glancing around, Maya spun and ran as fast as her legs would carry her, reversing her direction to take her farther from her apartment.
At the end of the block, she stopped and unscrewed the suppressor, then stowed the weapon back in the bag. No point in terrifying everyone she came across.
She kept moving until, two blocks away from the gun battle, she saw a solitary headlight bouncing toward her. A motor scooter whined its way down the little street, moving along at no more than twenty miles per hour. Maya stopped and waved until it slowed and then rolled to a stop. A young man looked her up and down in the faint lighting.
Maya threw him a luminescent smile. “Hey. Are you going to the party by the water? My ankle’s hurting…”
He returned the smile. “Sure. Hop on. I’m Kyle.”
“Nice to meet you, Kyle. Veronique.”
She put her arms around him and they sped off. Her pursuers, and the police, if they were now part of her problems, would be looking for a single woman, not a couple on a motorbike.
Maya removed her left arm from his waist and felt the bullet graze on her shoulder. Her hand came away with blood on it, but she could tell it was only a flesh wound. Still, she had the problem of how to conceal it – she’d hoped by now it would have stopped bleeding.
A block from the beach Kyle eased to a stop to avoid a swarm of drunken pedestrians, and she abruptly hopped off the back.
“Thanks, Kyle. See you around,” she said, vanishing into the crowd as he tried to process what had just happened.
Maya ducked into the first trinket shop she came to and bought a black T-shirt with a PADI symbol on the front, tossing payment at the bored shopkeeper before dashing out. She slipped into a grimy space between two buildings, pulled off her bloody long-sleeved shirt and dropped it into the gutter before pulling on the new one. The bleeding from her shoulder had finally slowed, and the shirt’s da
rk color would mask any leakage. She reached into her purse and retrieved one of the gauze pads Roberto had given her, then stuck it up the sleeve and onto the graze.
That was all she could do for now. She checked the time and saw that it was already ten thirty. The ferries had stopped running, and the airport would be a non-starter. The corpses would result in a full-court press by the police, and even the controlled chaos of a big weekend like Carnival wouldn’t be enough cover. That left two choices – either find someplace remote to hide for at least a day or two, or steal a boat tonight and try to make it to the Venezuelan mainland.
She didn’t like her prospects hiding. The shootings would be the biggest news to hit the island in years, so even the normally relaxed locals would be scared, shocked, and on high alert. And once they put her identity together with the bodies at the café…
Her picture would be everywhere. All the authorities had was her passport photo, which now looked almost nothing like her – in the picture, she had shorter auburn hair parted on the side, with blond highlights along the front, whereas now it was her natural black color and three years longer – but she could only change her face so much.
She was going to have to find a boat.
Several marinas dotted the stretch of shore nearest Venezuela, just west of Port of Spain. The good news was that the whole town went a little crazy during Carnival so security was likely to be lax. Anyone working would be wishing they had the night off so they could enjoy the show, not watching for boat thieves.
She fished the feathered mask out of her purse and donned it, then glided back into the mass of celebrants, this time just another anonymous merrymaker enjoying the festivities. The volume of the music had increased, as had the beat, the intensity matching the growing atmosphere of capricious mayhem that was spilling onto the streets. A woman in a beaded dress wearing an elaborate headdress danced by, her hips performing impossible undulations to the island rhythms, while a group of younger girls giggled as they watched a trio of tough-looking youths eyeing them from the other side of the road.
A hand nudged her purse, and she grabbed it, simultaneously twisting as she flicked open her butterfly knife. A wide-eyed islander found himself with the razor-sharp blade at his throat; the heavy scent of fear and sweat and coconut rum assaulted her with each of his panicked exhalations. He backed off, hands raised, muttering that it was a mistake.
Maya lowered the knife and flipped it closed with a lightning motion. Petty thieves were a constant during street festivals like this. She’d have to be more careful. She’d been so busy formulating her plan and watching for potential killers that she hadn’t factored in the local predatory hazards. That couldn’t happen again.
Several streets from the main drag, she flagged down a taxi and told the surly driver to take her to the marina by the yacht club. He grunted assent and crunched the old car into gear, growling a fee that was double what it should have been. She didn’t complain. The marina was in one of the ritzier neighborhoods, and he probably felt there should be a premium.
As he dropped her off a quarter block from the empty parking lot, a warm breeze was wafting from Venezuela, less than twenty miles away. It smelled of the sea and heavy jungle, the vegetation blending with the salt air in a way unique to that stretch of coast. Down at the water, the powerboats rocked gently at the docks, pulling lazily on their creaking lines. The yacht club itself was dark, closed for the night.
A security guard lounged on a folding chair near the main gate, laughing with a woman who was telling a story in the island patois, its musical lilt as distinctive as a primary color. A tinny, calypso rhythm refrained from a portable stereo near the guard shack, the light wind seasoned with the pungent scent of marijuana.
The woman took a swig from a bottle and passed it to the uniformed man, who made an unintelligible comment, laughed, and drank deep. This encounter obviously had a destination before the evening was over, and Maya guessed that the couple would either retreat to the security room for a little privacy, or move to a vacant boat. Such things were not unknown when the trade winds blew.
She checked the time impatiently, resigned herself to waiting, and retreated into a dark recess where she could keep an eye on them.
A disgruntled gull shot her a glum look, annoyed at having its roost intruded on by her presence, and then stalked away before taking up position near a boulder by the shore. Other than the din drifting from the town’s nightlife and the pulsing steel drums on the radio, the water was quiet, and she could make out lights of a few slow-moving sailboats coming in to a nearby bay to anchor.
Forty minutes later, Maya’s chance came in the form of an empty bottle. The guard took his companion by the hand and pulled her toward the security office, her resistance purely obligatory judging by the speed with which her objections turned into peals of inebriated laughter. The door slammed shut, and within a few long moments, the blinds dropped and the lights went out.
Maya didn’t wait to time the couple. She sidled past the office window, crouched out of sight, and made her way down to the main dock entrance. Finding it locked, she climbed around the barbed wire mounted to the sides of the gate, swinging easily past the barricade.
At the mooring closest to the breakwater, she saw what she was hoping for – a well-maintained thirty-two-foot Intrepid sports cruiser with a pair of big Mercury outboard motors. It was low to the water and looked fast, used as a dive boat, judging by the equipment on board – tank racks, plentiful rear deck area and decent electronics. She ducked under the center console and located the ignition wires. After a couple of tries, the engines burbled to life.
She moved carefully around the deck, untying the lines, and within ninety seconds was pulling out of the marina. A yell followed her from the shore, and Maya hastily looked back at the main building. The guard was running toward the gate, his shirt hanging open and one hand holding up his pants, the other gesticulating wildly. She’d hoped that the sound of the engines wouldn’t alert him, but apparently that wasn’t to be the case, which meant she’d need to run flat-out in order to outpace the patrol boats that cruised the channel day and night.
Maya powered the radio on and, once clear of the breakwater, pushed the throttles open. The boat leapt forward, eagerly slicing through the gentle rolling swells. She didn’t illuminate the running lamps, preferring to pilot by the glow of the moon. She could just make out the distant shore of Venezuela, and didn’t think she’d need much else.
A few minutes later, the radio crackled to life, and she heard an alert go out to the police boats. After a brief pause, one responded and gave his location as only two miles east of the marina. She leaned against the wheel and edged the throttles three-quarters forward and watched as the speed gauge blew through forty knots, the motors roaring like a jet on takeoff. Scanning the instruments, she fiddled with the radar. After a few flickers the small screen glowed green. She punched buttons, increasing the range to eight miles. The boats on the water lit up as blips, one of which was moving directly at her.
She looked over her shoulder and spotted the flashing lights of a patrol boat in the distance off her port side. A quick glance at the radar and an adjustment confirmed she was now hurtling toward Venezuela at roughly forty-three knots. The likelihood was slim that whatever the police boat had under the hood would be able to overtake her. The only real problem she could think of would be if the Venezuelan navy had a ship in the area and sent it to intercept her, or if the police could get a helicopter scrambled in the next twenty minutes – doubtful at such a late hour, with the island on holiday footing.
The radio blared a burst of static, and a deep baritone voice came over the channel.
“Attention. Stolen boat Courvoisier. This is the Trinidad police. We have you on radar. Shut down your engines. Now. Repeat. Shut down your engines. We are armed and will fire if you don’t immediately comply.”
They were probably broadcasting across all channels.
But what were t
he chances they would shoot? Not very high, she decided. That had probably been a bluff. Besides, at a range of almost a mile and a half, there was little likelihood they would be able to hit anything, even if they had a fifty-caliber machine gun onboard. She knew from experience that their effective range was seventeen hundred yards – about one mile. At two thousand yards, accuracy dropped off. Past that and, while it might still be dangerous at over three thousand yards, there was slim chance of hitting much at night from a moving boat shooting at another fast-moving target – especially in a relatively crowded sea lane.
A metallic voice hailed over the water on the patrol craft’s public address system. She could barely make it out over the engines. It repeated the same message, warning her to stop or they would fire at her. She peered at the radar and saw another blip heading at her from the northwest, coming from La Retraite. No doubt a second patrol boat. Two miles away.
The radio and loudspeaker message sounded again, and she goosed the throttle more. Forty-four knots. No way would the patrol boats be able to catch up to her at that speed.
The water fifty yards in front of her boiled where a burst of fifty-caliber rounds struck the surface, and she heard the rapid-fire booming of the big gun in the distance.
So much for not shooting. That was a warning shot. But the next one might not be.
The police were no doubt in panic mode as calls reporting the shootings had poured in. On a relatively peaceful island like Trinidad, the unprecedented violence had to have unnerved them.
She jammed the throttles all the way forward, and the speed gauge climbed to fifty knots. The water was nearly flat because the island sheltered the shipping lane so she had no problems, but she knew that could end at any time. She cranked the wheel to starboard and cut west, moving toward a slow-cruising sailboat an eighth of a mile away. She could dodge between the boats and the nearby islands until she was completely out of range of the big gun. At fifty knots, she figured that would take five minutes, tops.
The radio warned that the shots across her bow would not be repeated – the next ones would be aimed directly at her. She reached over and turned the volume down.
The Intrepid streaked past the sailboat, and she adjusted her course again, putting the meandering vessel between her and the first patrol boat. The second one was moving somewhat slower and was farther away, so posed no threat, unlike the one with the trigger-happy shooter aboard.
Up ahead loomed a larger ship – commercial, judging by its size. She again cut dangerously close without letting up on speed and saw that it was a private motor yacht, at least a hundred feet long. That would provide even more effective cover.
Now the speedo read fifty-one knots. The engines were redlining, but the temp gauges looked okay, so she kept the throttles firewalled.
There was no more shooting. Her strategy had worked. Cooler heads had prevailed, and the proximity of other craft had acted as a disincentive. Nobody wanted to be the one to blow a bystander’s head off to recover a stolen boat, no matter how excited they were in the heat of the moment.
Watching the blip that represented the patrol boat, she saw that she was pulling steadily away from it and now had almost two and a half miles of distance. She estimated that the pursuit craft was topping out at just under forty knots, which was still very fast, but no match for hers. The second patrol boat appeared to be moving at around thirty-six knots, so either it had a dirty bottom, or different props, or full tanks. Whatever the case, neither would be able to get close enough to pose any further threat. At her current speed, she would be off the Venezuelan coast within no more than ten minutes, and there was a better than good chance that the Trinidad patrol boats would abandon the chase once she was in Venezuelan waters – no one would want an international incident over a stolen pleasure cruiser.
She engaged the autopilot and felt the steering stiffen. The system was intuitive – on and off buttons, with a dial to set direction. Another glance at the radar told her there was now nothing between her and Venezuela, so she moved forward and blew the cuddy cabin lock off with her pistol. Inside, she ferreted around for a few minutes, and then emerged with a dive bag in her hand.
To her surprise, the patrol boat kept coming. Worse, when she panned the radar out to sixteen miles, she saw that a large shape was steaming in her direction from Venezuelan territory, approaching from the south. It didn’t look like it would get close in time to stop her, but the water was getting too crowded for her liking, and if it was a navy ship, it could well fire on her from a considerable range with its deck guns, and she’d be a sitting duck.
After entering the channel between Isla de Patos and the Venezuelan mainland, she slowed the boat to fifteen knots and emptied her backpack. She hated to leave her weapons, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to be searched in Venezuela and have to explain a machine gun. She took her shoes off and put them into the bag, wedged with the money, documents and GPS, and sealed it carefully. After one more glance at the patrol boat in the distance, she slipped her arms through the backpack straps and opened the bilge hatches. Two emergency five-gallon gas tanks sat strapped in place on the deck. She took one and emptied it into the bilge. The stink of raw fuel filled the cockpit as she moved to the radio and lifted the microphone to her mouth, shifting her voice an octave lower than her normal speaking range, holding it away from her mouth so the engines would further garble the sound. With any luck, it would sound like a panicked young man.
“Mayday. Mayday. My gas tank is leaking. A bullet must have punctured it. Oh my God…”
She dropped the mike onto the deck and switched the radio off. Then, gauging her timing, she pulled the pins on both the grenades, dropped them into the bilge, and dived off the transom into the wake, the swimming fins and snorkel she’d found below clenched firmly in her good hand.
The Intrepid continued for sixty yards before exploding in a fireball, lighting up the night as the remaining fuel detonated. Maya felt a surge of heat on her face. She pulled on the swim fins and put the snorkel in her mouth as she watched the crippled boat burn to the waterline and sink into the depths.
Her hand stung from the salt water, as did her shoulder – nothing she couldn’t handle, and in March, the sea temperature was in the low eighties, which was ideal. She quickly guesstimated that she would need to swim six miles to get to shore. With the fins, and in no particular hurry, she could do that standing on her head.
Maya began pulling for the glimmering lights of what appeared to be a small fishing village in the distance, using a smooth, measured stroke, the fins a considerable help in propelling her along. By the time either the Venezuelans or the Trinidad patrol made it to where the boat had exploded, she would be miles away.
Three hours later, she pulled herself up onto a deserted beach a quarter mile west of the little village of Macuro. She cut a solitary figure as she peered out to sea, where in the distance, the spotlights of the naval ship pierced the night, no doubt in position where the Intrepid had sunk. The moon seemed brighter as she stood panting in its eerie glow, dripping salt water onto the sand. She surveyed the few lights on in the sleeping fishing hamlet and decided to wait until morning before making her way in to either catch a bus or hire a local skiff to take her to a larger town.
The warm wind tousled her damp hair as she gazed at the horizon, turning the same thoughts over in her mind that had occupied her for most of the swim.
How had they found her, and who were they? And why were they trying to kill her? Nobody knew that she was still alive. She’d covered her tracks.
She was long dead, the life she’d lived dead as well.
Except it wasn’t.
Somehow, some way, her past had caught up with her.
She ran her fingers through her hair, brushing away the salt and sand, and closed her eyes. Only a select few had ever known her real name was Maya. Everyone else had known her by her operational name, which was the way she liked it. Long ago, Maya had morphed into something deadly
, something awe-inspiring, and she’d left her true identity behind when she’d assumed the code name Jet – the name of a clandestine operative the likes of which the world had never seen. And ultimately, she’d left her Jet identity dead off another coast three years ago, on the far side of the planet, finished with the covert life she’d led and everything that had gone with it.
Jet had been the polar opposite of her donor, Maya, and had never found any use for her weaknesses, no room for her softness, her compassion. Jet was lethality incarnate, the swift hand of vengeance, a deadly visitation from which there was no escape. She was a ghost, untouchable, the reaper, a killing machine revered in hushed tones even in her own elite circle.
And now Jet was back in the land of the living, the beast awakened. Whoever wanted her dead had loosed a primal force of nature that was unstoppable, and as much as Maya had tried to leave Jet behind, the only way she could see any future at all was to become that which she had buried forever.
Jet slowly reopened her eyes, seeing the world as if for the first time, the warm breeze caressing her exotic features like a lover. She inhaled deeply the sweet air, turned, and then padded across the powdery sand to a spot where she could rest until morning.
Dawn would break soon enough.
And there would be work to do.
Jet Page 5