Angler paced. The whole plan was flawed. Separating Stallion and Calypso from the rest of them was idiotic. Unless… unless it wasn’t. He stopped pacing. Turning on his heel, he went down into the hold in the bow, staring at the bulky case he’d delivered there at Palantir’s insistence. The man’s drone. Said he would need this for reconnaissance of the safehouse neighborhood until the ransom was secured. Angler took hold of the handle and brought the suitcase-sized container up on deck.
He set the case down near the stern and crouched, reaching for the latches… then halted. Stood again. “Potluck! Take over the wheel. Tolstoy, get over here. Bring your tools.”
“I’m not killing anyone!” Emily cried, taking her hands off the wheel.
“Oh, you’re no fun. Fine. You don’t have to push the actual detonator, I’ll handle that. You can use the remote control for Nicky’s upc and play ‘let’s pretend.’ But you will push a button and I’m going to use my phone to film you doing it as their boat goes boom. Either that, or I do to Boone… what I did to Stallion. And he’s much better looking than Stallion, so it will be far more tragic.”
“You… you’re evil!” Em cried.
“That’s what they said about Machiavelli,” Calypso scoffed. “I’m actually being quite practical. And I believe a combination of carrots and sticks will be best, to ensure you two go on your way and I never hear from you again.” Calypso twitched the gun barrel at Emily. “Hands at ten and two. You’re deviating from our heading.”
Emily returned to the controls, making a course correction.
“That’s better,” Calypso said. “First, the ‘carrot.’ I will deposit one million dollars into your dive company’s account. Isn’t that generous of me? Guess what? That’s also part of the ‘stick.’ The source account will be the same one that paid my merry band of guns-for-hire. If you ever return with wild tales of Calypso killing her family, the money trail leading to you will suddenly become visible. The same goes for footage of you using what looks like a remote to blow up the Castor.”
“Thought it all through, haven’t you?” Boone muttered.
“Yes, I have, actually.” She gave a bitter snort. “Everyone thinks Nicky is the smart one. I can run rings around the gimp.”
“Unless he drains your inheritance down to practically nothing,” Boone reminded her.
Calypso shot him a glare. “Good thing you’ll be telling me how he’s going to do it. Right?”
“I’ve got a blip. Four miles,” Emily said in a hollow voice.
“Should be close enough. Kill the running lights, engage the autopilot, and come back to the main cabin. Boone… scoot your tight little buns across the floor and join us. Try anything… and I’ll start with the kneecaps.”
“Is drone. So?”
Angler had asked Tolstoy to check for any boobytraps on the latches to the case. Finding none, they had opened it. What lay within was just a large quadcopter drone, its four rotor-arms folded back against its midsection.
Angler chewed on his lip, holding a flashlight beam on the case. “Potluck? Gimme a look aft.”
Potluck left the wheel and climbed halfway up the flybridge ladder. “Nothing y— wait! I see it! It’s the Pollux. Quite a bow wave on her!”
Angler felt a sudden surge of urgency as he peered into the gloom astern. No running lights… “Tolstoy, can you see anything… I don’t know… wrong with this drone?”
The Russian shrugged. “It look similar to ones we use in Wagner Group.” He reached in and took hold of the main body, lifting it from the case. “Camera assembly should be on the bott—ooookaaaay… that not normal.”
A pair of cables ran from the underside of the drone into the bottom of the case, disappearing into the foam padding.
“Don’t move!” Angler reached out, gingerly taking the drone from him. “Where do those wires lead?”
Tolstoy removed a small flashlight from his bag and clamped it in his teeth. Between the toilet paper nostril-plugs and the mouth-light, the Russian made for a strange sight. He moved his face closer to the foam, parting it carefully with his fingers, then retreated and removed the flashlight from his teeth.
“Well?” Angler asked impatiently.
“Well… remember our fake bombs on doors?”
“Yeah…?”
“This one not fake.”
“Shit! Can you deactivate it?”
“Da, no problem,” Tolstoy said. He took the drone from Angler, replacing it in the case, before closing the lid and hurling it overboard. “Huh. What you know? It float.”
“Fuck! Potluck! Floor it!”
“Showtime.” Calypso kept her gun on Boone, positioning herself in front of her briefcase, which now stood open and powered up. “Open the upc case and get the remote.”
Boone watched as Emily retrieved the black case and removed the scooter from it, catching Boone’s eyes as she did so. Emily’s earlier tears had dried and he knew she was transitioning to anger. Good.
Boone had watched Calypso carefully as she had offered up the use of the upc and its distress beacon, and then went through her whole “carrot and stick” schtick. He was certain it was just a deliberately complicated smokescreen to give them hope. He had seen it in her eyes: she would kill them the second they told her what she wanted to know.
“Hurry up!” Calypso shouted.
“Sorry, the remote’s underneath.” Emily set the scooter down near Boone’s feet and gave him a meaningful look, then removed the remote from the bottom of the case. “Got it.”
“Good. Get over by the window. I’ve got the original remote to the drone wired into my little box of fun.” She tapped a few keys, then lifted her smartphone. “Now, Emily… hold your prop up a little—I want to get it in the light.”
Emily raised the control unit, looking back at Callie questioningly.
“Good. Right there,” Calypso said, eyes on the smartphone screen as Emily held the upc controller up. “Look out the window toward the bow.”
Boone quickly slipped off his dress shoes.
“Try and look a little bloodthirsty, for fuck’s sake,” Calypso cursed. “Oh, nice… good. Now pick a button, any button. And… on three…”
Boone extended a foot, sliding the upc closer to Calypso.
“One…” Calypso kept her smartphone on Emily, but dipped her gun hand to the keyboard, extending a pinky. “Two…”
Emily mashed her fingers to the scooter’s controls. A loud hiss and blinding strobe light filled the cabin, along with a zipping sound as a thin, black tendril whipped crazily across the floor. Calypso, startled, swung her barrel toward the sudden movement.
Boone struck. Planting his hands behind his butt, he tensed his muscles, rocked back on his palms, and snapped his long legs out, clamping his sizeable feet onto Calypso’s gun hand. Twisting savagely, he tore the pistol from her grasp, sending it clattering into a corner. Calypso dropped her smartphone and punched a key in her briefcase.
“No!” Boone shouted from the floor, as a flash of light in the night sky flickered in the windows, followed by a distant boom.
Calypso’s face lit up with rapture. “Two down, one to go!”
Emily was already moving. As Calypso turned to go after the gun, Emily stepped in close and hammered a picture-perfect haymaker punch into Calypso’s jaw. The murderous Othonos crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Damn…” Boone breathed, impressed. “What happened to all the Krav Maga tricks Sophie taught you?”
“Sometimes you just want to punch the seven bells out of someone,” Emily hissed, wincing as she nursed her hand. “God, I’ve been wanting to do that since the moment I met her!”
“You wanna turn that thing off?” Boone tucked his knees up toward his chest as he stretched his lanky arms out beneath him. He had always been freakishly limber and it only took a mo
ment to bring his bound hands around his feet. Wish I’d kept those clippers, he thought. But I wasn’t exactly expecting a repeat.
Emily lifted the remote for the upc, tapping three controls in sequence. “Noisy little purge valve, and… emergency strobe, and… spooling antenna.” In moments, the twitching, hissing, flashing object ceased its spectacle. “And actually… let’s turn on the emergency beacon, yeah?” She did so as she watched Boone rise, his bound wrists now in front. “Look at you, Houdini. Well… half-a-Houdini.” Suddenly, her face grew solemn. “Oh, shite… Lyra and Achilles! Come on!” She dashed forward.
Boone scooped up the pistol and went to the open-air wheelhouse. Tossing the gun into a cubby, he stepped up to peer over the glass, expecting to see the glow of flames. Instead, the only visible illumination was the moon overhead and its reflection on the waves. He looked down at the radar screen, looking for the dot that would represent the Castor. There it is. But it wasn’t four miles out and it wasn’t stationary.
“Em! We have incoming!”
Emily looked up from the wheel, taking control. “Where?”
A rattle of automatic weapons fire from the port bow answered her question. Boone thought fast, then reached over, tapping Emily’s bare shoulder. “Cut the engine!”
Em killed the throttle, and in a moment, only the lap of the waves against the hull was audible, along with the distant burble of another engine. The Castor was visible in the moonlight, a black-clad figure with a raised weapon visible atop the flybridge. Then, a voice—gravelly and familiar—floated across the expanse between the two vessels.
“Ahoy the Pollux!”
Boone raised his long arms above the windscreen, waving them back and forth, zip-tied as they were. “Ahoy the Castor! vhf channel sixty-eight!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. He’d picked one that wasn’t the go-to for emergencies or Coast Guard, in the hopes they’d realize he was suggesting a parley. Boone reached over and switched their marine radio to that channel. “Hold the mic,” he said to Emily.
“Hope you know what you’re doing.” She grabbed the handset, keying it for him.
“This is the Castor, broadcasting on sixty-eight,” came a voice.
“I read you, Castor,” Boone responded.
“Palantir? That you?”
“Negative, uh… Angler? Do I have that right?”
There was a long pause, then. “Who is this?”
“Well, since you like code names… this is Beanpole. Or, uh… Dog Owner. Or ‘Guy-who-headbutts-Russians.’”
Laughter was clearly audible over the connection. “Yeah, you tagged him good. What the hell are you doing over there?”
“I went from one hostage situation to another,” Boone said. “Guess I’m just that kind of lucky. Look, Angler… I got news for you. You’ve been had.”
“Yeah, I figured that much out,” the voice said darkly. “Finding a bomb under our feet kinda clued me in. Put Palantir on.”
“Well, I would, but…”
“She’s resting,” Emily said into the mic.
There was a long pause. “Say again. She?”
“She was using a voice changer,” Boone said. “It’s Calypso Othonos.”
The radio went silent, but across the waves he could hear angry shouting. Boone nodded to Emily to open up the channel again.
“Angler, you there?” Boone asked.
The voice came back on, rage clearly audible in it. “I’m here.”
“Listen, I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. You were hired to kidnap the Othonos heirs… then Calypso was going to blow all of you up on the helicopter. Make it look like the kidnapping went wrong. When her brother screwed that up, well… you can figure out the rest. There was never going to be a ransom.”
Emily tilted the handset her way. “But look, it’s not completely bodged… you got paid something substantial up front, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So leave Achilles and Lyra with us and go. Whatever the rest of the plan was… that plan never existed. You were s’posed to be dead by now.”
“Stallion is dead,” Angler said. “Calypso do that?”
Boone started to interject, but Em silenced him and continued. “There was a gun on the bridge. A grenade of some kind went off. It was chaos.”
A female voice came onto the channel. “We want Calypso! You can have the other two.”
“Look, Calypso is a young woman who has totally lost the plot,” Emily pleaded. “She’s going away for a long time.”
Boone leaned in. “Plus… we set off an emergency beacon when we took Calypso down. Coast Guard is likely on the way. You get caught with any of the Othonos kids on board, that might be hard to talk your way out of. Leave them with us and go.”
Voices across the lapping waves, then: “We’re putting life vests on the hostages now. Pick them up after we’re gone. There’s been enough killing today, but if you come after us…”
“We won’t,” Emily said.
Boone looked back at the cabin. Calypso was stirring. “Hey, Angler… one request?”
“What?”
“You got any more zip-ties? And… something to cut zip-ties?”
“Callie… how could you?” Lyra asked in horrified disbelief, tears streaming down her cheeks.
The youngest Othonos made no reply as she sat upon the deck of the cabin, hands bound, glaring silently at her eldest siblings.
Ten minutes earlier, as the mercenaries aboard the Castor sped away toward Grand Cayman, Boone had used the multi-tool they had tossed over to free himself before diving in to bring Achilles and Lyra on board. The two had listened with growing shock and horror as Boone outlined what their sister had been planning. Now, with Emily at the wheel, the Pollux was nearing the Apollo. The others remained back in the interior of the limo tender.
“Monster!” Achilles glared at Calypso, his nostrils flaring, fists clenching. Then all of a sudden he sagged, his posture losing all of its aggression. “I’ve lost my baby sister.” Moisture welled in his eyes. “What did we ever do to you?”
Calypso looked at the floor, her face inscrutable.
“And where is Nicholas?” Achilles asked Boone. “She was going to kill him too, right? So where did he take the helicopter?”
“You remember that weird waypoint your co-pilot pointed out to you?” Boone prompted.
“Yes…” Achilles thought hard. “Wait… Nicholas had been taking lessons lately.”
“Quite a few lessons, according to Stavros,” Boone said.
“Why did he run away?” Lyra asked with confusion. “Did he learn of Callie’s plot?”
“No… he had his own plot.”
At this, Calypso looked up. Boone sighed, shaking his head before turning to Achilles.
“Nicholas was resentful you were going to take over the entire business. He’s planning on draining the family’s finances using the… whatever they’re called—Olympus’s proprietary cryptocurrency. He may have already done it.”
“How do you know this?”
“Well… I don’t. Not for certain. It’s a hunch. But we met someone aboard who may be able to tell us if I’m right and do something about it.”
As they approached, the Apollo abruptly lit up, its power restored. Achilles went forward, grabbing the radio to contact the ship. In moments, he was speaking with the bridge. He ordered them to find Stavros and have him contact the police on Grand Cayman, guiding them to the location of the helicopter’s possible landing point.
“Wait!” Emily turned from the wheel. “Make sure he tells them there is a bomb on the helicopter!”
“Oh, my God, yes…”
“Also, tell the crew that the bombs on the dining hall doors are fakes.” Boone quickly interjected. “They can go in and free everyone, if they haven’t already.”
“And
ask the bridge to open up one of the bay doors for us, yeah?” Em asked. “And maybe have someone who knows what they’re doing come down and talk me through the docking procedure?”
Achilles did so, and was instructed to bring the Pollux to the port side. Then Lyra made a request.
“Ask about Father! He fell ill when the attack happened.”
The bridge crew quickly reassured her that Karras Othonos was stable and would be taken to the ship’s medical bay. Achilles thanked them, informing the crew that he and Lyra would go to their father’s side as soon as they were aboard, and to send Stavros down once the pilot had accomplished his task.
“Actually, may I?” Boone reached for the radio mic. “Hey, can you locate a guest and have her go to the med bay to meet us? Her name is Chloe… uh…” He looked to Emily.
“Bollocks, she never gave me a last name,” Emily said. “But she’s got short, red hair… and she used to be in software security.”
In minutes, the tender had been secured and brought aboard. As a security man stepped into the cabin to deal with Calypso, Boone and Emily followed Achilles and Lyra up to the med bay.
In one particularly long passageway, Lyra slowed, then turned. She regarded Boone with her dark eyes, then shifted her gaze to Emily. “Once again, you have saved me. And Achilles. The both of you. We are in your debt.”
Boone tugged the lapels of his jacket. “I got a free suit out of it. I think we’re square.” He looked down at it, the fabric still damp from his plunge into the seawater. “Gonna need a pretty serious trip to the dry cleaner, though.”
Lyra smiled, blinking away tears. “I heard you on the radio… you saved Calypso, too. Many would have let them have her. I am so sorry about what happened. I always knew Callie was a little… different… but this?”
Boone reached out and drew her to him, Emily joining in from her side. Together, they shared a moment of comfort, broken by Achilles as he rushed back around a corner.
“They found the helicopter!”
“What are we gonna do, boss?” Potluck asked, as the lights of Grand Cayman came into view.
Deep Devil (The Deep Book 4) Page 26