In Rides Trouble: Black Knights Inc.

by Julie Ann Walker

  Under normal circumstances, she’d be the first to appreciate the irony. Unfortunately, these were anything but normal circumstances.

  The youngest and shortest of the pirates—he wore an eye patch…seriously?—flicked a tight look in her direction, and she threw her hands in the air, palms out in the universal I’m unarmed and cooperating signal. But a quick glance was all he allotted her before he returned the fierce attention of his one good eye to Eve.

  She snuck another peek at her friend and…oh no. Oh crap.

  “Slowly, very slowly, Eve, I want you to lay the knife on the deck and kick it away from you.” She was careful to keep her tone cool and unthreatening. Pirates made their money from the ransom of ships and captives. If she could keep Eve from doing something stupid—like, oh, say flying at the heavily armed pirates like a blade-wielding banshee—they’d likely make it out of this thing alive.

  Unfortunately, it appeared Eve had stopped listening to her.

  “Eve!” she hissed. “Lay down the knife. Slowly. And kick it away from you.”

  This time she got through.

  Eve glanced down at the long, thin blade clutched in her fist. From the brief flicker of confusion that flashed through her eyes, it was obvious she’d been unaware she still held the knife she’d been using to fillet the bonito they’d caught for lunch. But realization quickly dawned, and her bewildered expression morphed into something frighteningly desperate.

  Becky dropped all pretense of remaining cool and collected. “Don’t you even think about it,” she barked.

  Two of the men on deck jerked their shaggy heads in her direction, the wooden butts of their automatic weapons made contact with their scrawny shoulders as the evil black eyes of the Kalashnikovs’ barrels focused on her thundering heart.

  “You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight,” she whispered, lifting her hands higher and gulping past a Sahara-dry knot in her throat. “Everyone knows that.”

  From the corner of her eye, she watched Eve slowly bend at the waist, and the unmistakable thunk of the blade hitting the wooden deck was music to her ears.

  “Look, guys,” she addressed the group, grateful beyond belief when the ominous barrels of those old, but still deadly, rifles once more pointed toward the deck. That’s the thing about AKs, Billy once told her, they buck like a damned bronco, are simpler than a kindergarten math test, but they’ll fire with a barrel full of sand. Those Russians sure know how to make one hell of a reliable weapon—which, given her current situation, was just frickin’ great. Not. “These are Seychelles waters. You don’t have any authority here.”

  “No, no, no,” the little pirate wearing the eye patch answered in heavily accented English. “We only authority on water. We Somali pirate.”

  “Oh boy,” Eve wheezed, putting a trembling hand to her throat as her eyes rolled back in her head.

  “Don’t you dare pass out on me, Evelyn Edens!” Becky commanded, her brain threatening to explode at the mere thought of what might happen to a beautiful, unconscious woman in the hands of Somali pirates out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

  Eve swayed but managed to remain standing, her legs firmly planted on the softly rolling deck.

  Okay, good.

  “We have no money. Our families have no money,” she declared. Which was true for the most part as far as she was concerned. Eve, however, was as rich as Croesus. Thankfully, there was no way for the pirates to know that. “You’ll get no ransom from us. It’ll cost you more to feed and shelter us than you’ll ever receive from our families. And this boat is twenty years old. She’s not worth the fuel it’ll cost you to sail her back to Somalia. Just let us go, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

  “No, no, no,” the young pirate shook his head—it appeared the negatives in his vocabulary only came in threes. His one black eye was bright with excitement, and she noticed his eye patch had a tacky little rhinestone glued to the center, shades of One-Eyed Willie from The Goonies.

  Geez, this just keeps getting better and better.

  “You American.” He grinned happily, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. Wowza, she would bet her best TIG welder those chompers had never seen a toothbrush or a tube of Colgate. “America pay big money.”

  She snorted; she couldn’t help it. The little man was delusional. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but it’s the policy of the U.S. government not to negotiate with terrorists.”

  One-Eyed Willie threw back his head and laughed, his ribs poking painfully through the dark skin of his torso. “We no terrorists. We Somali pirates.”

  Whatever.

  “Same thing,” she murmured, glancing around at the other men who wore the alert, but slightly vacant, look of those who don’t comprehend a word of what was being said.

  Okay, so Willie was the only one who spoke English. She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

  “Not terrorists!” he yelled, spittle flying out of his mouth. “Pirates!”

  “Okay, okay,” she placated, softening her tone and biting on her sarcastic tongue. “You’re pirates, not terrorists. I get it. That doesn’t change the simple fact that our government will give you nothing but a severe case of lead poisoning. And our families don’t have a cent to pay you.”

  “Oh, they pay,” he smiled, once again exposing those urine-colored teeth. “They always pay.”

  Which, sadly, was probably true. Someone always came up with the coin—bargaining everything they had and usually a lot more they didn’t—when the life of a loved one was on the line.

  “So,” he said as he came to stand beside her, eyeing her up and down until a shiver of revulsion raced down her spine, “we go Somalia now.”

  And she swore she’d swallow her own tongue before she ever even thought these next words—because for three and a half very long years the big dill-hole had refused to give her the time of day despite the fact that she was just a little in love with him, okay a lot in love with him—but it all came down to this…she needed Frank.

  Because, just like he always swore would happen, she’d managed to step in a big, stinking pile of trouble from which there was no hope of escape.

  She absolutely hated proving that man right.

  ***

  Briefing room onboard the navy destroyer, USS Patton

  Six days later…

  Sometimes Frank hated being proved right.

  “Well Bill,” he said as he skimmed through the plans detailing Becky and Eve’s rescue for what seemed like the umpteenth time. No way was he letting this op go off with even the slightest hiccup, not with Becky’s neck on the chopping block. “It appears your little sister has finally landed herself in a big, stinking pile of trouble. I always knew it’d happen.”

  Bill sat at the conference table with his desert-tan combat boots propped up, placidly reading a dog-eared copy of The Grapes of Wrath as if his kid sister wasn’t currently in the hands of gun-toting Somali pirates.

  Un-fucking-believable.

  But that was Bill for you. The sonofabitch was the epitome of serenity, always, even when balls-deep in the wiry guts of an IED. Which was why two hours after Frank made the decision to open his own private shop, he’d recruited Bill from Alpha Platoon. The commanding officer of Alpha still hadn’t forgiven him for that little maneuver, but Frank didn’t much care, considering it was a known fact within the spec-ops community that no one knew his way around things that went kaboom like Wild Bill Reichert. And Frank accepted nothing but the absolute best personnel—the elite of the elite—for Black Knights Inc.

  “It’s not like she intentionally put herself in the path of Somali pirates, Boss,” Bill murmured as he licked his finger and turned a page.

  “I don’t care if she intentionally put herself in the path of Somali pirates or not.” He nearly popped an aneurism when the words evoke
d a starburst image of Becky in the merciless hands of those ruthless cutthroats. “The fact remains, she should’ve known better than to travel to this part of the world.”

  “Seychelios waters are considered secure. Pirates have never attacked a vessel so close to Assumption Island, so it is reasonable to assume the women believed they would be perfectly safe,” rasped Jamin Agassi.

  Frank glanced over at one of Black Knights Inc.’s newest employees and, not for the first time, felt a shiver of trepidation run down his spine. How could you trust a guy who knew the adjective form of Seychelles was Seychellios?

  And it didn’t help matters in the least that Agassi had been dubbed “Angel” by Becky because the man’s features were so perfect they were almost unearthly. Of course, the plastic surgeries he’d undergone after defecting from the Israeli Mossad and before Uncle Sam decided to conceal him within the ranks of Frank’s Black Knights no doubt had something to do with the perfection of the man’s mug.

  Goddamn pretty boy.

  Which only served to remind Frank of all the other goddamned pretty boys who worked for him. The ones who’d been out on assignment when the call for Becky’s ransom came in, leaving him to catch the next transport onto the USS Patton with only Bill and the FNG—the military’s warm and fuzzy acronym for the fucking new guy.

  “Yes, Seychellios waters,” he unnecessarily emphasized the word, “have never before seen pirate attacks, but military ships from across the globe have increased patrols and secured the shipping lanes around the bottlenecked Gulf of Aden, which anyone with a smidge of gray matter will tell you has only chased the pirates farther south around the Horn of Africa. So it stands to reason that it was only a matter of time before the waters around the Seychelles and Madagascar started seeing pirate activity.”

  See, just because he didn’t know the adjective form of Seychelles didn’t necessarily mean he was a slavering idiot. He knew some shit about some shit even though his vocabulary—liberally sprinkled with four-letter words on a good day—tended to indicate otherwise.

  “It’s not really their fault, you know,” Bill said quietly, never taking his eyes off the text as he turned another page.

  “Of course it is,” Frank rumbled, throwing his hands in the air and wincing when his trick shoulder howled in protest of the sudden movement. Damn, getting old sucked…hard. “She didn’t have to go on this asinine vacation halfway around the world to potentially pirate-infested waters. If she wanted to get some sand and sun, I know of some very nice beaches in Florida and California, on U.S. soil,” he emphasized as he rolled his shoulder and reached into a zippered pocket on his cargo shorts to pull out his trusty bottle of ibuprofen.

  He was never without the pain pills these days…

  Goddamnit.

  And that fun little fact was beginning to make him feel like he was just one step away from Metamucil and Viagra, and that just pissed him off.

  “I wasn’t talking about Becky,” Bill said, “although you know as well as I do a mere weekend stroll along a beach in Florida or California wasn’t going to do it for her. She needed to get away, far away, to clear her head.”

  Ah God. Why did no one agree with his decision to keep Becky from risking her fool neck by becoming an operator? Had everyone suddenly gone completely kill-the-bunny crazy?

  Obviously. Because before he’d found out and eighty-sixed their activities, a few of the Knights had been teaching her—upon her repeating wheedling, no doubt—such dubious skills as computer hacking, sniping, explosives, demolitions, FBI investigative techniques…and God only knew what else. He was still mulling over some really inventive ways to kill his men for that.

  She was supposed to be their cover. Nothing more. End of story.

  Of course, she’d become so much more to him. The bane of his existence and the fantasy he didn’t dare allow himself to fully contemplate all rolled into one.

  “When I said it’s not really their fault, I was talking about the pirates,” Bill continued.

  Say what?

  Frank stopped with a couple of pain tablets halfway to his mouth. “What the hell do you mean by that? Of course the pirates are at fault.”

  “I’m not giving them a get-out-of-jail-free card, but Somalia hasn’t had a functioning government in twenty years,” Bill explained, keeping his place in the novel with one callused finger. “As a result, its fisheries were nearly poached dry by foreigners. Not to mention that the tsunami in 2004 washed ashore tons of toxic waste.”

  “The snot-green sea,” Angel murmured. “The scrotum-tightening sea.”

  What the hell? Frank thought.

  Bill’s head snapped around, his expression shocked. “Ulysses?”

  Angel shrugged. “Seemed appropriate.”

  Okay, so they were talking about a book? Now?

  “For fuck’s sake!” Frank roared, incredulous. “Can we all just get back to the point?”

  “Yes,” Angel agreed, “Bill’s point is that, because of the pollution and tsunami and overfishing, early episodes of piracy close to the coast were a form of self-preservation. Simple people protecting their only economic resource. The sea.”

  “Exactly.” Bill nodded toward the ex-Mossad agent.

  “Great! Just fucking great!” Frank threw the pills in his hand to the back of his throat and swallowed them down without benefit of water. “Of all the Knights who could’ve been between missions, I get stuck with Plato and Aristotle. And I swear to God, if you two keep bobbing your heads like that at each other, we’re going to start buying you matching outfits.”

  He could maybe understand Angel’s ability to disassociate himself from the situation long enough to get a good long peekaroo at the big picture, but Bill? The man’s baby sister was in the hands of Somali pirates and had been for nearly a week!

  “Not that I won’t happily blast them all into the welcoming arms of Allah if they harm one little hair on my sister’s head,” Bill added, a darkly menacing smile tilting one corner of his mouth.

  Frank did a double take, then stared at Bill in astonishment.

  Folks thought he was scary with his fiery temperament, but hearing how calmly Bill spoke of killing the pirates after he’d just been proselytizing on the raw deal they’d been handed? Now that was truly bloodcurdling.

  It was the difference between holding a live grenade in your hand and stepping on a bag of trash on a roadside in Kandahar. The first was going to go off, no doubt about it, so you throw it as hard as you can and let it do its worst. The second looked totally innocuous until it suddenly blasted you into a hundred bloody bits.

  Huh. Well, there you go. Frank was just happy ol’ Billy Boy was on his side.

  “And you?” he turned to Angel. “You have a problem killing poor Somali pirates if it comes to that?”

  The mysterious Israeli lifted one perfectly shaped brow. “Not in the least.”

  Good. At least he could depend—

  The door to the briefing room swung open and Commander John L. Patterson ducked inside.

  ***

  “Why do you keep writing those notes?” Eve asked as Becky closed her spiral notebook, shoving a felt-tip marker inside the wire rings at its spine.

  “Because,” she craned her neck around to make sure One-Eyed Willie wasn’t within earshot, “the surveillance drones flying overhead have crazy accurate cameras. I’m just letting the guys know what’s up, keeping them informed as best I can. I don’t want Billy or any of the others to worry too much.”

  Eve tilted her head back and gazed into the spotless blue bowl of the sky, then slid Becky a skeptical glance.

  Until this morning when One-Eyed Willie shoved her down beside Eve, they’d been sequestered on opposite sides of the deck. Which was probably because within six hours of their capture she’d not only tried to sabotage th
e Serendipity’s engines but also sneak rat poison into the pirates’ food. No doubt the Somalis had thought it best to keep them apart should she attempt to solicit Eve’s help in some new escape scheme.

  “Uh, I don’t…I don’t see any surveillance drones,” Eve said, the look on her tired face clearly telegraphing her belief that the Indian Ocean sun finally had baked Becky’s brain to the rubbery consistency of overcooked shrimp.

  Becky could only smile. Poor Eve. The last six days would frighten anyone, but for someone with Eve’s pampered and protected upbringing, it had to be truly terrifying.

  “It’s long gone,” she explained calmly, trying to infuse her tone with enough confidence to bolster Eve’s waning spirits. “As best as I can figure, it flies by every three or four hours. Only stays in sight for about sixty seconds.”

  Eve swallowed convulsively and glanced into the sky again. “I haven’t noticed anything flying overhead.”

  “You wouldn’t unless you knew what to look for. They fly so high, the only chance you have of seeing one is when the angle of the sun hits its fuselage, causing it to shimmer like a little point of daytime starlight.”

  “Ah,” Eve murmured, once more propping her chin on her raised knees, folding her arms around her legs like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. Like maybe she was trying to disappear completely.

  Becky glanced at her sharply. “You don’t believe me?”

  “It’s not that,” Eve soothed, looping a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  “You don’t believe me,” Becky laughed incredulously, slapping her knee and dislodging Eve’s arm in the process.

  It was just as well. Neither of them had showered in nearly a week, which meant neither of them was particularly daisy-fresh. What she wouldn’t give for a new bar of Dove soap and a smooth stick of deodorant. And while she was wishing for things she couldn’t have, she’d take a big, fat burger from Bull and Bear restaurant and a double side of onion rings.

  If she never saw another fish for the rest of her life, it would be too soon.