“Jesus, Jacob, you never change,” Agent Tania said. “The shooting’s going to start any minute, and you think I’m going to jump in bed with you.”
Guess those days were behind us.
“Just an idea,” I said. I sat up on an elbow and watched her stagger back a step, then forward as the deck rolled under her feet. She grabbed the edge of a bookcase near the door, steadied herself a second, then let go. “Sabel Security paid a lot to rent this little boat; no need to waste it.”
Truth was, I only wanted to know what the bed on a super yacht felt like. My sheets didn’t have a thread count on the package. Mine had a 70% off sticker and crooked stitches. Tossing aside yards of silk, I stood up just as the ship lurched. Tania pitched over and landed in my arms.
Her eyes flashed with anger. “Don’t touch me.”
I shrugged and dropped her on the floor.
Apparently, that wasn’t funny.
“Put some clothes on and get topside,” she said. She pulled herself up, using the bookcase for support, and stalked out of the stateroom, sneaking a peek on her way out.
Maybe those days weren’t so far behind us after all.
I kicked a pair of boxers into my hand, slipped them on with a T-shirt, and climbed to the Inanna II’s bridge.
Captain Ashley Chamberlain stood with his feet planted wide and his hand gripping the First Officer’s chair. He lifted his chin and gazed down his nose at me.
“We there yet?” I said, shouting above the winds raging outside.
“Hardly,” he said. “The storm is worsening and has changed direction. Your National Hurricane Center’s upgraded Dolly to a category one hurricane. They’ll upgrade it again before long, I should think. We’d best turn back.”
“Not happening.”
I stepped forward between Chamberlain and his First Officer. Giant wipers swept across the windows, the bridge glowed from the scattered instrument screens. There was nothing to see in the darkness except rain smashing against the glass. I looked at the high-tech displays on the console. They could’ve been written in Greek for all I knew. “How far out are we?”
“An hour, at least.” He hesitated, then looked me up and down. “I’m not keen on your bridge attire.”
“I’m not keen on being late.”
He pointed to a display with circles and arrows all over it. “We’re fighting the seas. We’re under full power, but the weather is against us, and we’re making little headway. All our efforts are spent climbing up one wave and down the next.”
As if to punctuate his statement, the bow climbed like a roller coaster going to the top. We hesitated for an unearthly second, as if the storm had suddenly stopped, then plunged down into the darkness. I grabbed the console in front of me and tried not to push any buttons. When we hit the trough, a million tons of white water hit the glass. For a second, I thought we’d gone under. I buckled over the console and had to push hard to get myself upright.
Captain Chamberlain watched me without so much as a flinch. “It’s my duty to emphasize the danger should you press on. Whomever your client is, if you intend to save him,” he paused as the ship crashed into another wave and the hull groaned, “making the attempt after the risk of drowning at sea has subsided could raise his chances of survival from nil to something more agreeable.”
“Not happening.”
Since our journey began, my stomach had been churning at the thought of leading my fellow agents on such a risky mission. The odds started out bad and were getting worse by the minute. And so was my digestion. But damned if I was going to let Chamberlain know.
He stared at me as if he could hear me thinking.
I said, “You know the Sabels have a mega yacht based in Tampa.”
“The Asteria, yes, I know,” he said. “I’m also aware it’s captained by an impressive old salt scheduled to retire at year’s end. That fact is the only reason we left port. Tell me, have you any influence in that part of the Sabel Empire?”
“Nope. But when I write my report, I will highlight people who risked everything to help. The Sabels rank bravery at the top of their list.”
“I see. And where, pray tell, do they rank abject stupidity?”
“Uh…”
“I expected as much. There’s no talking you out of this, then?”
“No.”
“Very well.” He motioned me to the grand saloon.
Everything small had been stowed somewhere, and the furniture was lashed to the deck. A sixty-inch display showed the Isla de la Mona from a satellite photo taken on a sunnier day. Chamberlain stood in front of it as his arm swept across the bottom half.
“We’ll approach the southern coast,” he said. “Dolly’s tracking to the north, putting us in the navigable semicircle. Swells and storm surge will be lower but still extremely dangerous. Should she turn south, we’ll be in the dangerous semicircle and I’ll not faff about looking for you. But then, you’ll be dead and won’t care.”
“Nice. The what semicircle?”
“Navigable and dangerous, or left hand and right hand, two sides of the hurricane. Dolly’s moving at twenty-five knots west by southwest with winds rising over seventy-five knots. If you stand on the north of her, those winds hit you at one hundred knots, but on the south, only fifty.”
I’m not much at math and science—I shoot people for a living—so I nodded as if I understood.
“Your drop-off—if we can launch our Zodiacs at all—will be here. Please note the coral reef.” His hand motioned to a lighter area that hugged the coast. “The storm surge on this side will be low, perhaps four feet. The surf is lower as well, yet unpredictable. It might carry you over the rocks and straight onto the beach, or dash you headfirst into the coral.”
“Roger that.” I looked at the map.
A nasty wolf-whistle came from behind me. Carmen, Dhanpal, and Miguel stood at the entry, dressed in jungle fatigues and grinning at me. Miguel kept one hand pressed to the ceiling for balance, while his other hand held Carmen’s upper arm. The broad-shouldered Navajo, who rarely spoke more than two words at a time, nodded at me. Carmen reminded me of a farm wife: sturdy, hard-working, late-thirties, and serious. Dhanpal was your typical former SEAL, mid-twenties, shorter than average, and ripped like a movie star with a pearly white grin to match.
A wave rolled the deck to what felt like forty-five degrees. In a rare act of charity, Chamberlain grabbed my arm in time to keep me from crashing out the window.
“This blurred area here,” his hand swept the coastline again, “has been withdrawn by the cartographers, so we’ve no idea if there are any structures. Should you ride a wave onto the shore, it could easily carry you to certain death against the cliff here, or leave you nicely on the beach to be drowned under the next wave. With any luck, the currents will carry you out to sea where I won’t be haunted by your screams.”
I looked him over. “Let me guess—you used to be a motivational speaker.”
“I’m trying to impress upon you Mother Nature’s disdain for the barking mad.”
“You’re going to drop us a hundred yards offshore. That’s not bad, right?”
He shook his head slowly and pursed his lips.
The ship pitched and rolled, tossed by the seas. Tania’s multiracial beauty warmed up the room when she came in behind Miguel and gripped a couch for balance. Tony, our former FBI agent and my carousing buddy, came alongside her and held onto a table. Both of them looked green and sick.
“Understood,” Miguel said. “Farther north?”
“No. That’s a two-hundred-foot cliff of broken limestone. This is the only location where we can put you ashore, unless you’re keen to have a go at the landing strip. Not that it matters much. Right, then. Which of you is the sailor?”
Miguel said, “Kayaked once.”
“I have a little experience,” I said. I’d been on the Mississippi during some nasty storms and I figured water is water.
Dhanpal said nothing.
The ship rolled with the Captain’s eyes. “And you’re all determined to go?”
No one spoke.
“Very well then, you’ve been warned,” he said. “Will there be anything else?”
“Coffee,” I said.
“No,” he said, looking me up and down. “You’ll vomit.”
Couldn’t argue that one. The only reason I hadn’t yet was due to skipping a few meals.
We sat on the silk-covered couches, holding onto anything solid, and reviewed the intel gleaned from Ms. Sabel’s last phone call. We still had nothing on TGW, the presumed mastermind behind Operation Snare Drum. Ms. Sabel’s phone still transmitted its exact GPS coordinates, but she hadn’t answered for over an hour. We talked about tactics and methods, about landing zones and weaponry.
Agent Tony gave us the latest update from DC.
When he finished, Tania said. “Talk to me about hardware, Jacob. What’d you bring?”
I pointed to the metal shipping crates secured to the walls. They ripped into them like kids opening birthday presents. I raised my voice. “Careful, there are thermal binoculars in there.”
Tania held up a Heckler & Koch MP5-SD6 rifle. It had a three-round burst mode and a built-in sound suppressor.
I said, “We each get two sidearms: a Glock with Sabel Darts—to use when Ms. Sabel is watching—and a SIG Sauer with real hollow-points.”
Miguel and Carmen laughed at my little joke, but Tania glared at me.
“What the hell’s wrong with you people?” Tania said as she stood. “Pia says we use darts—we use darts.”
“Against guys with .45s?” Dhanpal said. “No thanks.”
“Body armor,” Miguel said. “Darts bounce.”
Tania shook her head. “Think for a minute. The kids Pia came to save are on that island. You can call her naive or whatever, but she wants us using darts ’cause she doesn’t believe those kids are collateral. We’ll do what we have to, but the children don’t get hurt. No way.”
No one argued.
She turned to me. “Sorry, Jacob, this is your op. I’m just telling you what she’d say.”
I went over my plan with them. It was pretty basic: get on shore and wing it.
I went below and put on camouflage utilities and body armor. A minute later, I opened the watertight door marked ‘Toys Bay’ on the lower deck. It was the bay where they launched rich people’s toys like jet skis and Zodiacs. Chamberlain and his crew had two of the small boats with outboard motors facing the rear bulkhead. My agents were crowding around them, waiting for my signal. The hydraulic system screeched and clanked and the entire back wall tilted outward.
It was solid darkness outside, but the storm roared in with savage fury.
I pulled on my fearless-leader face, and everyone turned to me a split second later. I radiated confidence. We were there to bring back Ms. Sabel—hurricanes be damned.
I left the captain with a Sabel Security satellite phone. Dhanpal took the helm of his boat, with Tania and Miguel riding along. Tony and Carmen went with me. We pulled life preservers over our gear, knowing they could do little to float the weight of our body armor, let alone the hardware we carried. But it was only a hundred yards.
We gave each other a thumbs-up. We were ready, determined, and focused.
The crew waited for the right part of the wave and pushed Dhanpal out first. He went right and disappeared immediately.
They pushed my boat off the deck and into the roiling sea. My boat went left—no matter what I did.
* * *
Leaving a 150-foot yacht in a hurricane was the worst idea I’d had since I tried to simultaneously date the McDougal sisters. I couldn’t see anything. Not the yacht, not Tania, not the coast, not even Tony at the bow. My bravado evaporated. I felt the doubts I’d repressed for the last hour whipping into absolute terror.
The waves were shocking. Even in complete darkness, their sheer mass was overwhelming. They loomed over us like monster-mountains intending to pile drive us to the ocean floor. The captain’s warnings about taking a small boat out in a big storm began to make sense.
I cranked the throttle and powered up the backside of a wave, crested it, and we instantly shot downhill as if we’d skied off Mount Everest. Before we hit the trough, the sea rose up underneath us and hurled us into the air. Every joint in my body felt like it was being hit with a sledgehammer.
The wind howled in my ears as if undersea phantoms were screaming to claim our lives. We bounced off another wave. I fell forward and slammed into Carmen. In the next instant, I saw a palm tree just as we rammed it. Our little boat flipped over, centrifugal force pinning us in our seats. It landed right-side up and spun like a top until another wave hit us broadside. We flipped over too many times to count, all three of us flying in different directions.
I landed in sand on all fours, as the outboard motor bounced off my back and disappeared. The wave receded and I sprang to my feet before the pain of broken ribs shot through me, doubling me over. Forcing myself upright, I ran up the beach. Another wave chased me, carrying the empty boat, the motor still running and the propeller slicing everything in its path. It smashed into a wooden structure and popped like bubble wrap under a boot.
Carmen grabbed my arm and pulled me sideways to a wall as another wave crashed on the beach. When the wave went out, we backpedaled uphill until we were out of the surf.
She yelled above the shrieking wind. “Where the hell is Tony?”