Piranha

by Clive Cussler

  “You’ve suspected him for some time,” Bazin said. “I just did you a favor.”

  Tallon stared at Bazin holding his hidden gun. “How did you—”

  “I told you. Magic. Do we have an arrangement?”

  Tallon nodded dumbly, then waved off the guards who had rushed through the door and now stood gaping at Portilla’s corpse.

  Bazin walked over to the desk and dropped the Glock on it. He withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket and laid it on top of the gun. “The first number is the Cayman account where Portilla was stashing the skim. The second number is my bank account. I expect to see monthly deposits. And I will know if you’re holding back. By the way, he was also sleeping with your wife.”

  Bazin left the office and made his way back to the helicopter. While his men got back on, his phone rang. It was the Doctor, likely calling to check on his progress.

  “Where are you?” the Doctor said without preamble.

  “I’ve just finished the business in Colombia. Another success.”

  “Good. I’ve got another job for you.”

  “I’m planning to go to Mexico tomorrow to meet with one of the cartel members.”

  “It can wait. There’s a bigger problem. An unusual ship. It’s called the Oregon. They’ve got some information that could damage our whole operation, and they don’t even know it.”

  “If they don’t know it, why is that a problem?”

  “Because it’s only a matter of time before they do know. Can you have an assassination squad in Jamaica by tomorrow?”

  Montego Bay, Jamaica

  A light breeze ruffled the palm fronds above the outdoor section of the Sunset Cliff Spa. The idyllic setting had been carefully chosen by the resort to take advantage of the spectacular view of the Caribbean Sea. Tourists frolicked along the picturesque beach that stretched from the twenty-foot-high cliffs that gave the resort its name. During the day, white canvas tents were erected atop the grassy cliff so that guests could receive an open-air massage free from the prying eyes of passersby. Before dusk, the tents were removed, giving guests and sightseers an unobstructed view of the sun’s red and orange hues as it dipped below the horizon.

  Linda relaxed on a chaise longue and sipped from a champagne flute as a pedicurist attended to her toes. Julia sat next to her with her own dedicated attendant. The two of them had been the first ones off the Oregon when it docked in Montego Bay that morning. They were both swaddled in plush white robes.

  “It has been forever since I’ve had one of these,” Linda said, gesturing at the pedicurist’s work.

  Julia grinned at her. “Aren’t you glad I talked you into it?”

  “I could get used to this.” Although the Oregon was equipped with a Jacuzzi hot tub and a sauna, it just wasn’t the same as a full-service spa.

  “We should ask Juan to hire a dedicated nail technician for the shipboard mani-pedis,” Julia said. “As the resident doctor, I know personally that some of the guys could sure use one. Their nails are disgusting.”

  “Can you imagine Maurice giving a mani-pedi?”

  They both laughed until they cried at the thought of the distinguished steward buffing Franklin Lincoln’s nails. The fit of giggles continued until the pedicurists had finished their work and took away their kits.

  “I’ll admit you were right for us to go windsurfing first,” Linda said, rotating her sore shoulder. “I’m looking forward to a good massage.”

  “And I’ll admit I had fun. But this is better.”

  An attendant returned to escort them to the tents. Linda and Julia followed her to the two bays where they would get their massages. Light classical music drifted from hidden speakers, easily heard now that they were far from the tourists at the beach. Each was open to the ocean, and Linda could hear the waves crashing against the rocks below them. Privacy between the bays was provided by a white canvas drape. None of the tents were currently occupied.

  The attendant said that their masseuses would be along in a few minutes and asked them to lay facedown on the tables. She told them there was a coatrack in each bay for their robes and left.

  “You know,” Julia said, “if they’re going to be a few minutes, I might go for a bit more champagne to tide me over.”

  “Allow me,” Linda said, taking her glass. “I could use another, too.”

  While Julia entered the tent on the end, Linda turned to leave. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the movement of shadows against the white canvas. Not one shadow but two.

  Someone was already in the tent with Julia. A muffled whimper confirmed that it wasn’t the masseuse.

  Linda’s senses went on full alert. She tossed the glasses to the grass and flung the canvas aside to see a man dressed in black holding his hand over Julia’s mouth and withdrawing a knife from his hip sheath.

  Acting on instinct and relying on the weekly self-defense training everyone on the Oregon was required to take no matter their position, Linda grabbed the bamboo coatrack and swung it like a kendo stick. The assailant saw her at the last instant and released Julia to keep from being knocked out by the vicious blow, but even though he was able to get a hand up, the rack made solid contact with his shoulder.

  “Get help!” Linda yelled. But before Julia could run, a second attacker rushed through from the adjoining bay, where he must have been waiting for Linda. He dived across the massage table and grasped Julia’s ponytail. Linda shoved the coatrack in his gut and he grunted, let go of the ponytail, and dropped his knife, a mean-looking weapon with a serrated edge.

  Julia teetered backward and pulled the massage table’s headrest free in her attempt to keep from falling. She landed hard but still held on to the padded headrest, its long, thin steel mounting pins facing out.

  The second assailant lunged for Julia, but he was still unbalanced from the blow to his stomach. Linda tripped him and he went down in Julia’s direction. He landed on her and immediately went limp. One of the mounting pins was poking out of his side, the other was lodged deeply in his chest.

  Before Linda could help Julia up, she felt her arms pinned against her sides in a bear hug. The assailant wrestled her across the tent toward the cliff, intent on casting her onto the rocks below. She took a deep breath to fight the instinctual panic that threatened to consume her and her mind flashed back to her training.

  The man was too tall for her, so she couldn’t slam her head back and crush his nose with her skull. Instead, she shifted her weight and stepped to the side, freeing her fist to strike down at his crotch. Just with the strength of her triceps, she was able to connect with a devastating blow.

  The attacker let go, and Linda used the opportunity to smash her elbow into his chin. His head flew upward, spittle flying. Linda kicked him in the chest, and his momentum took him tumbling over the side. She ran to the edge and saw his dead body sprawled across the jagged volcanic rocks, the torso submerged in the water. A small boat bobbed in the cove below.

  Linda returned to the tent to find Julia struggling to crawl out from under the other corpse. Linda pushed it aside and helped her up.

  “Are you all right?” Linda asked.

  Julia looked shaken but nodded. “How about you?”

  “Nothing a massage wouldn’t fix.”

  “I don’t think we should wait around for one.”

  “Me neither. Let’s toss this guy over the cliff, too. We don’t want to be answering a lot of questions from the local police.”

  Linda searched the man’s pockets and found only a small amount of cash and a cell phone. Julia pulled the massage table headrest from his torso and they hauled the body to the cliff, where they threw it over. It came to rest next to the other one. By the time the police made sense of the strange configuration, they’d be long gone.

  “What just happened?” Julia asked, folding the bloody headrest in a towel a
nd tucking it under her robe.

  “This was no random attack,” Linda said. “We were targeted.”

  “For what? All our belongings are in the lockers.”

  “Exactly. This seems like an assassination attempt. They wanted to do it very quietly, so they anchored their boat down there and climbed up to wait for us.”

  “What in the world . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. Let me check the phone.”

  It was a disposable, probably purchased this morning and meant to be thrown in the ocean after the assignment. Its user hadn’t even bothered to password-protect it. The contact list had only five numbers and no names.

  “We were lucky to survive this,” Linda said. “Those guys were pros.” There was nothing to lead back to anyone. If the assassin had thought there was even a chance he wouldn’t succeed, he would have entered a password.

  She checked the text messages. Only one was still in memory. It had been sent to all of the contact numbers and was written in French.

  Tous ont été aperçus. Attaquer dès que vous voyez une opportunité.

  “Do you know French?” she asked Julia.

  “I took French literature in college, but it’s been awhile.” She peered at the message, whispering the words as she read. After a moment, her eyes became as big as saucers.

  “What does it say?”

  Julia swallowed hard. “‘All of them have been sighted. Attack as soon as you see an opportunity.’”

  Not the two of them. All of them.

  “We have to warn the others. Somebody’s going after the whole crew.”

  She and Julia sprinted toward the locker room to get Linda’s phone, nearly knocking over their approaching masseuses in their scramble to save the entire Oregon crew from being murdered.

  The steel deck of the Oregon baked under the cloudless sky where it was moored against the dock of Montego Bay’s Freeport terminal. Eric’s shirt was already soaked with perspiration from helping Murph construct the portable ramps, grind rails, and eight-foot-tall half-pipe that Juan reluctantly allowed him to install, turning the ship into a makeshift skateboard park. Eric lowered his sunglasses so they wouldn’t steam up as he peered at the screen of his brand-new video camera. He was kneeling to get the best angle for the shot, an enormous cruise ship providing the backdrop.

  The lens was trained on Murph as he hurtled across the obstacles, bobbing his head to the beat of heavy metal music only he could hear in his headphones. Every time he whipped around in a turn, sweat flew from hair that poked from the edge of his helmet. Eric had caught some good tumbles already, but Murph, who was dressed in baggy shorts and a black T-shirt that said “Welcome to Nuketown” and was protected by kneepads and elbow pads, popped back up every time. Only a true face-plant would slow him down.

  Eric’s phone rang, and he kept the video recording as he answered it.

  “This is Eric.”

  “Eric, it’s Linda,” she said, her voice breathy and urgent. “We’re in trouble.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Julia and I were attacked.”

  “My God! Are you all right?”

  “We’re okay, but we have reason to believe the rest of the crew might be targeted as well.”

  “Targeted? By whom?”

  She described her attackers, including her assessment that they were either French or Haitian, neither of which made sense to Eric. But the danger implied in the message was undeniable: All of them have been sighted. Attack as soon as you see an opportunity.

  The hairs on the back of Eric’s neck stood on end. He suddenly felt exposed on the deck.

  “Contact everyone who’s on leave and tell them to get back to the ship,” Linda said. “When that’s done, get the Oregon ready for departure. She’s a sitting duck. Julia and I are on our way back now. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Got it.”

  Eric hung up. He couldn’t help looking around to see if he was being watched, realizing someone could be observing them from any of a hundred spots in the crowded port area.

  He yelled for Murph to stop, but the headphones were pumped to the same earsplitting volume that Murph blasted in his isolated cabin. Eric tried moving over and waving his arms, but Murph was so absorbed in his tricks that he paid no attention.

  Eric felt more than heard a disturbance in the air. A hole appeared in the half-pipe above the spot where Murph had performed a particularly difficult twisting move. There was no accompanying rifle crack, but Eric knew a bullet hole when he saw one.

  The sniper must have been waiting for Murph to pause but was prodded to act early because of Eric’s waving. He had to be using a sound suppressor.

  Murph was oblivious to the threat. He would be up the other side of the half-pipe and back into the sniper’s view in moments.

  Eric sprinted across the floor of the half-pipe. Murph was already curling up the opposite side, preparing to go into his next spin. Eric launched himself at Murph, who gaped in surprise when he saw his friend barreling toward him.

  Eric tackled Murph around the torso and Murph’s momentum took his legs up into the air over the lip of the half-pipe. The two of them flipped around and crashed to the floor. Murph’s headphones were ripped from his ears.

  “What the hell?” Murph yelled, grabbing his leg. “I think my ankle’s twisted, you goober!”

  Eric looked down and saw blood oozing between Murph’s fingers. The sniper hadn’t missed completely.

  “Let me see,” Eric said, lifting Murph’s hand away. A bullet had punched all the way through his calf. Murph blanched at the sight.

  “I’ve been shot?”

  Eric tore off his shirt and wrapped it around Murph’s leg, tightening it as much as he could to keep pressure on the wounds.

  “Linda called,” Eric said. “She and Julia were assaulted at the spa by two attackers. A text on one of their phones implied that the rest of us were also targeted.”

  “Why?” Murph asked, wincing as Eric tied off the bandage.

  “Good question. We may be stuck here unless we can get that sniper off our backs.”

  “Where is he?”

  Since the half-pipe was built on the flattest section of the deck, the nearest hatch to the interior was a hundred feet away, so running for it would make them easy targets. More holes drilled through the polyurethane half-pipe material. The frustrated sniper was firing blindly to flush them out or kill them where they sat. Eric guessed he was somewhere in the direction of the terminal’s oil storage facility. He couldn’t stick his head out without getting it blown off.

  His video camera, however, was state-of-the-art, with a 100× optical/digital zoom built in. Eric edged it around the end of the half-pipe and watched the screen as he panned around, looking for the most likely place for a sniper to hide within range of the Oregon. The assassin would want to be high enough to have a good vantage point.

  Eric zoomed in on the fifty-foot-tall oil tanks until he could see every detail. The first two tanks were barren, but when he got to the third, he could spot the faint outline of a man lying atop the tank. He still had the rifle aimed at the Oregon, waiting for them to show their faces.

  “Got him,” Eric said, showing the image to Murph.

  “He planned that well,” Murph said through clenched teeth. “No way we can take him out with the Gatling gun when he’s on a tank full of oil.”

  “Not that we could open fire here in port anyway.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Eric nodded. “I think it’s time to call the police.” He routed the call through an anonymous server so that it couldn’t be traced back to them and reported that shots had been fired at the oil facility.

  Moments later, police sirens wailed in the distance. The camera showed the gunman scrambling across the tower toward the sta
irs. He would be gone before the police could arrive, but that didn’t matter to Eric anymore.

  He needed to alert the others. He preferred to call Juan first, but since he and Max were at sea and out of cell phone range, the Oregon’s radio would be the only way to reach him. As he helped Murph limp to the medical bay, Eric used his free hand to dial Franklin Lincoln.

  When Linc got the call from Eric, he and Eddie were approaching Ian Fleming International Airport, named to honor northeastern Jamaica’s most famous resident. They were only a few miles away from the GoldenEye resort, Linc on his custom-built Harley and Eddie on a top-of-the-line model rented from Montego Bay’s new dealer. The plan was to get a prime spot at the pool bar, consume a burger and a martini, shaken not stirred, and take in the view of both the oceanographic and bikini-clad varieties. Instead, they’d have to turn around and head straight back to the Oregon. But they first had to contend with the tail they’d picked up.

  During the winding trip along the coast, they’d tested the limits of their bikes, dodging other drivers who paid only minimal attention to the rules of the road. It was a laid-back ride until they reached Ocho Rios, where two guys on a pair of Suzuki crotch rockets had fallen in behind them, careful to maintain a respectful distance. Instead of a T-shirt and shorts, each of them was wearing a black leather jacket that was far too heavy in this heat.

  Linc and Eddie had spotted them almost immediately. It was certainly possible that they were simply motorcycle enthusiasts out for a nice jaunt like they were, but a little variation of speed confirmed that the Suzuki riders were mirroring their pace. Eric’s call about the two run-ins with attackers made it clear that these tails would attempt to succeed where their colleagues had failed.