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Kimo watched the Hispanic dude fly off the back of the boat and hit the water with a splash. The man held a rifle in one hand, and it would only take him a couple of seconds of recovery from being dunked in the water before he could shoot. Kimo only had a knife. He didn’t think he’d need a gun on a yacht.
Where had the guy come from? Who was he yelling at? There was a boat next to them. It rocked him when the sterns banged together. He heard a woman cursing.
More gunfire rattled from above and behind him, as if somebody was firing from the salon onto the rear deck with the picnic table. A black man in a tan windbreaker appeared at the rear of the other yacht. Kimo registered the AK and dived back into the crew companionway as the man fired. Rounds chased him, some hitting the open door with dull thunks.
“Who the fuck are you guys?” he yelled from his back.
A double thud vibrated through the deck—probably the black guy jumping on board the Kekepi. Kimo scrambled down the narrow companionway and up the stairs leading to the salon level. The door at the top opened out onto the picnic deck, and from there, he could bolt right, heading into the salon and back to the room where he’d left his guns.
At the top, the stairway terminated in a human-sized closet next to the salon, with a door that swung out. Kimo cracked it open and peeked through. Crap.
Both sliding glass doors into the salon were blown out, and half an acre of broken glass littered the deck. Kimo wiggled his bare toes and winced. Running across the open space, even for a short distance, would shred his feet and leave him damn near crippled. And that was assuming the trigger-happy son of a bitch guarding the salon didn’t mow him down.
Nope. It was better to face anyone who decided to come up the stairs from the crew quarters. In that situation, a knife wouldn’t be a bad thing to have in a gunfight. The stairs curved right, which meant a right-handed shooter would be in a bad position to bring his weapon to bear. He would be exposed and his weapon pinned against the inside wall as he climbed.
Kimo settled down to await events.
#
YEAGER DUCKED BACK down the ladder as the glass doors exploded outward, shattered by automatic weapons’ fire. He crouched against the wooden treads, which were coated with a clear nonslip resin that smelled of salt spray and seaweed.
“Abel! Watch out!” Victor yelled from below.
An instant later, Pettigrew appeared at the stern of the Guppy and raked the swim deck of the Hatteras yacht with a burst from his AK. Yeager eased back down the ladder and found Victor in the sea, doing the sidestroke one-handed, rifle held overhead.
“Hold up.” Pettigrew leaped onto the deck and held up a palm to Yeager. He’d exchanged his automatic rifle for the Mossberg pump shotgun. “One of ’em went in here.”
Here turned out to be the hatch that Yeager had decided not to storm earlier. As he watched, the hatch swung shut, pulled by the motion of the ship or by air currents. Yeager went to help Victor, but his muscular pal had already scrambled out of the ocean and gotten to his feet, dripping large quantities of seawater.
“You okay?” Yeager asked.
“I ain’t fucking dead,” Victor groused. “Second time today somebody come at me with a knife.”
Monalisa throttled up the Guppy’s engines and moved the Cobalt away, per the plan. They wanted some space, both to prevent a counterattack and to preserve their exfil in case things went to shit—though Yeager didn’t plan to exfil without Charlie. One way or another, he wasn’t leaving this boat without his wife.
“Pettigrew,” he said, “guard the back door. Por Que, take the port ladder. When you get to the top, lay down covering fire into the room past the glass doors. I’ll assault it after you cut loose. Don’t shoot me.”
Victor swiped water off his face. “Don’t tempt me.”
Pettigrew nodded and moved to the blind side of the hatch. Those who opened the door would have to exit fully, exposing themselves to his shotgun before they could engage him.
Yeager told Pettigrew, “If it ain’t one of us or a redheaded woman, kill it. Ready? Let’s roll.”
#
CHARLIE LAY IN A COFFIN—WORSE than a coffin. Tight, dusty, cramped, smelly, you name it—the under-bunk storage compartment had all those discomforts and more. She had discovered the storage space under the bunk while poking around the cabin for a weapon. Running the length of the bunk, the storage space was accessed by lifting the bunk like a lid. In it were clean sheets, towels, socks, and underwear. It also contained personal mementos of the crewman who had last used the bunk: photo albums, books, a tablet computer—with a dead battery—and some Japanese manga porn.
What had happened to the crewmember? Dead, she guessed.
Stuffing the contents into every available space took several minutes of one-handed effort. Climbing inside the compartment and lowering the bunk on top of her took an act of will. Claustrophobia torqued her nerves to the snapping point. Her nose itched, and she wanted to sneeze.
And then Kimo stomped in and started tearing the place up. Charlie clamped down hard to avoid wetting herself. Given time, she had no doubt Kimo would find her hiding place, and there was no latch or lock on the inside that would prevent him from ripping her out of it. Wooden support slats on the bed’s underside were nailed or glued tight to the lid. She dug at them with the fingertips of her uninjured hand but could find no purchase. Holding the lid closed was not an option.
So she hid. And cursed herself for her helplessness. Charlie listened carefully from the tight, dark space as Kimo addressed the locked bathroom door. She’d pressed the pushbutton lock and closed the door prior to hiding—a delaying tactic, nothing more. A faint smile broke through her despair when she heard the giant trying to kick down the door, which opened outward.
“What the fuck?” growled Kimo’s dismayed voice.
Thumping footsteps vibrated the deck. Gunshots rattled from somewhere on the ship. Kimo’s footsteps pounded out of the room and away.
She heard some shouting and then possibly some lowered voices, but it was hard to tell. More gunshots. Was someone attacking the ship, or had the terrorists fallen out with each other?
Hope you die first, Kimo.
Charlie put her palm against the lid and hesitated. “Come on,” she whispered. “Get a grip.”
Shoving the lid open, Charlie winced at the relatively bright light. The cabin was empty. More importantly, the door to the room swung open, revealing the unguarded hallway.
#
KEKEPI, Pacific Ocean
Monday, 10 May
0630 Local
Yeager pounded up the starboard ladder again and waited for Por Que to reach a firing position on the other side. The Ruger was a semiautomatic, but Victor could crank a semi almost as fast as someone firing full auto. He rapped out fifteen rounds of .308 like a drum solo in a marching band, punching out more chunks of glass from the shattered salon doors. Hopefully, the defenders inside would be feeling some heat and getting under cover.
If not, I’m a dead man.
At round number ten, Yeager vaulted the top step and charged the gaping hole in the plate-glass doors. He dived and rolled behind a sofa. A hot lead bullet burned a line under his armpit. He ignored it.
More rounds popped holes in the leather side of the sofa just above his head. Leather means concealment, not cover. Check. Yeager wriggled left, toward the sofa’s back side, away from where he’d landed. He had the fleeting impression of a single shooter crouched behind a wet bar, almost dead center against the far wall of the salon.
“Covering!” Yeager yelled and popped up. He fired at the shooter’s position, clacking off all eight rounds in a concussive roar of sound and fury. The man ducked down an instant before the wet bar began splintering from impacts of full-metal-jacket ammo. Yeager shifted aim partway through emptying the magazine and smashed some liquor bottles on the shelves behind the bar.
“Got it!” Victor shouted as he came in behind Yeager and ducked right, setting up behind an armchair and training his rifle downrange. He took over the covering fire as Yeager swapped mags and toggled the slide release. The lone shooter made a break for the far door, and Yeager snapped off a shot that had the man spinning to the deck, clutching at his leg.
“I got this,” Yeager said when Victor started to his feet. Yeager stepped forward for a better angle and fired twice more, both rounds punching the black-clad soldier in the chest. Gun smoke drifted on the air, its burnt metal tang harsh in Yeager’s lungs. His ears rang, but he was used to that—he’d sometimes wonder what was wrong when his ears weren’t ringing and his nose wasn’t inhaling powder smoke.
“Only one door,” Victor said. He’d swapped magazines during the lull. Yeager did the same once Victor had finished.
The door through which the commando had tried to exit was on the starboard side, near the windows lining the salon. Beyond the windows, the Guppy was silhouetted against a fiery sunrise. A bulkhead blocked most of Yeager’s view of what lay beyond the door. Victor squinted over the rifle’s open sights.
“You see anything?” Yeager asked.
“Nada for squat. Dark on the other side. Unfriendly, huh?”
A shotgun boomed from somewhere near the stern.
“Pettigrew!” Yeager was spinning when motion from the far side caught his eye. He froze for an instant, half-turned, his instincts caught between the threat to Pettigrew and the motion from the forward part of the ship. He recognized the spherical object lofting into the salon an instant after Por Que.
“Grenade!” Victor yelled.
#
WINSTON PETTIGREW JUMPED in his socks when the hatch flew open. He blinked, and his brain short-circuited. Good guy or bad guy? Shoot or don’t shoot? By the time it clicked—Bad guy, shoot now!—a big motherfucker in shorts and a red jersey had grabbed the Mossberg’s barrel.
Pettigrew jerked the trigger, and the shot went high and wide. The big man ripped the shotgun from him with one hand and tossed it to the deck behind him. The other hand held a shining steel combat knife that nearly took Pettigrew’s head off on the first swing. He bent backward and avoided the blade, though he could’ve sworn it shaved off a few stray beard hairs as it went by.
More twisting and belly dancing in a wide circle bought him some distance, though not much. The swim deck was about the size of a small kitchen and slippery with sloshing water. He circled around the knife-wielding giant, ducking one swipe and twisting around another. Then the shotgun was behind him, though he had no chance of reaching it before the big man poked a big hole in Pettigrew’s hide and made him some kind of dead.
A boom shuddered through the boat, but Pettigrew had no time to worry about that. He avoided two more swings of the giant’s short sword with moves that taxed his brittle joints to the breaking point. His spine crackled like popcorn.
The giant laughed when Pettigrew whipped out Little Bessie. “What is it with you old fucks? First that big mofo, and now you. They let you outta da home today?”
The heat rose up under Pettigrew’s collar. “You killed Osterchuk? The white guy in the Hawaiian shirt, back at the camp?”
“Snapped da fool’s neck.” Godzilla snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
“Shit, you gonna die now, boy.”
The monster laughed. “Sure, old man. Bring it on.”
Pettigrew dropped into a knife-fighter’s crouch. Godzilla was a slasher, not a stabber, which meant he was both untrained and clumsy. On the flip side, he had the wingspan of a 747, so he could sweep that big blade like a scythe, and there was only so much ducking Pettigrew could do before he’d be driven overboard or slashed in two.
Godzilla encouraged him with a come on gesture, grinning, as if daring Pettigrew to take the first shot. Well, okay, then. Pettigrew darted in, feinted high, and stabbed low. Bessie flickered in and out of the giant’s thigh, slick as two frogs fucking, and Pettigrew danced back, ducking under the tree limb swinging from his left. He left a slash on the underside of the big man’s arm just for good measure.
“Goddamn you, little fucker!” Godzilla stepped out of reach and examined the blood slicking his forearm. “You fucked up my Montana jersey.” Apparently, he hadn’t even felt the stab wound in his thigh.
Sweat dripped off Pettigrew’s eyebrows and burned his eyes. His breath came hoarse, and he wanted a cigarette in the worst kind of way. The rising sun burned the surface of the sea to a warm gold. The yacht swayed a little on the swells, rocking, soft as a lullaby. A good day for a cocktail on the sundeck—not so good for a knife-fighting monster.
The giant bull-rushed him, and Pettigrew went low again. This time, he rolled in a ball and dived past Godzilla’s knees. Flick-flick—another slash was added, this one to Godzilla’s calf. Pettigrew rolled to his feet in time to catch a face full of fist as Godzilla spun and swung with his off hand. The punch clipped his cheek and rocked his lights out for a half second.
And a half-second in a knife fight was all it took. Steel glittered, and Godzilla slashed him. Hard. It didn’t hurt at first, but he was cut badly—that much he knew.
That slash was followed by another fist, which tagged him squarely on the chin. Pettigrew’s world exploded, and the deck hit him in the back. The lights went out.