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“They have no idea we can hear every word, do they?” Oli said in a low tone.
“Not a fucking clue.” Shakespeare glanced to his friend. “And we’re not letting on that we heard.” Before his island best friend could lay claim, he announced, “All the women are taken except Lei Lu. She’s mine.” Now that he knew exactly what she wanted in a man he was willing to fill her every need. At least for a little while.
“Hey, do you remember the name of the guy who Lei Lu supposedly killed?” Oli had his satellite phone out, ready to tap in the name.
It took Shakespeare a minute, but then he remembered. “Ghazali. The first name might’ve been Rafe, or Rafi. Something like that. I’m pretty sure they said she killed him in Dubai, but he was actually a Yemen terrorist.”
Oli had the information within minutes. “According to MI6, Rafi Ghazali died of an apparent heart attack while visiting his brother in Dubai day before yesterday. The agency believes the story is bullshit because his bodyguards and chauffeur are all missing.” He chuckled. “It seems the CIA has sequestered his airplane looking for smuggled weapons.”
Shakespeare looked down on the six women stretched out on the seats in his bow, sunning themselves as though they hadn’t a care in the world. Lei Lu—and wasn’t that an interesting name?—wore a crimson bikini that covered most of her small breasts. He wondered what was underneath the tiny red triangle at the apex of her thighs. Did she shave completely? He hoped not. On her small frame, it would make her look like a child and he was not into pedophilia. That would turn him off completely.
He hoped there a small square patch of curly black hair, big enough to run his fingers through before he slid down, parting her hot wet folds. He’d run his rope-roughened fingers over her swollen clit, then just before she came, he’d shove his fingers deep inside her.
“Shakespeare.” He jolted hearing his name on her lips. Looking over his shoulder, he found the woman of his dreams standing behind him.
“Le—” he caught himself and corrected, “Lady Kite. What can I do for you?” Oh, he had so many ideas, none of them appropriate for their current situation. He wondered how soon he could get her alone.
“I should have asked sooner, but what did you set the oxygen and nitrogen mixture to in the tanks?” She then added, “I’m going to need to know exactly so we can set our bottom time.”
He’d given this a great deal of thought. “I filled the tanks to EANx36. Although the drone indicated the plane was in eighty-five feet of water, we might need to dive a few feet deeper. Not that I don’t trust your new little toy, but I trust my own gauges. At one hundred feet breathing thirty-six percent oxygen, we can stay at the plane twenty-five minutes. That gives us ten minutes to decompress at twenty feet. You’ve flown at thirty-five thousand—”
“We fly at fifty-two thousand,” she interjected.
Shakespeare nodded. “All the more reason for you to take an extra few minutes at the rest stop.” He thought about it for a few minutes. “The new woman, I’m not sure I was introduced to her.”
“Agent Tambini.” Lei Lu shook her head. “She recently got married so she’s now Agent Silva. I’m sorry, I’ll introduce you as soon as we arrive.”
“I don’t want her diving today. Hard rule.” He insisted.
Lei Lu nodded. “I was going to suggest the same. We need someone topside anyway.” She turned her attention to Oli. “I take it you’re going down as well?”
“Absolutely. We are retrieving bodies, and as police commissioner, it’s my duty to be sure British procedures are followed to the letter.” Oli crossed his powerful arms over his broad chest, daring her to argue.
She looked away before returning her gaze to the two men. “I suggest we bring the bodies up last. Since I’m not sure how long it’s going to take to retrieve all the boxes, I don’t think it’s a good idea having bodies encased in black bags sitting on the deck in the sun.”
Shakespeare nodded in admiration. He’d thought the exact same thing. “We’re going to need to move them out of the way, though, so we can get to the boxes. I was going to suggest that we place them in body bags first and anchor them to the bottom. That will keep fish, and most especially sharks, away from where we’re working. The last thing we’ll do today is bring up the bodies.”
“Agreed,” Lei Lu and Oli said at the same time. “So, first dive we’ll deal with the bodies. We’ll come back up on deck and rest, and have some lunch. Second dive we’ll bring up the boxes. I suggest first dive include Lady Harrier since she’s our doctor. I think it would be best if she stay topside during second dive so we can send up the boxes for her to deal with.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Shakespeare checked his depth gauges. Something had pinged at two thousand feet when the bottom should have been closer to five thousand. Perhaps it was a whale. Humpbacks often could be seen in the Turks and Caicos area that time of year, although he’d never seen any over near Mouchoir Banks, but he hadn’t spent that much time there. “Warn your friends that the humpbacks are calving this time of year. They are baleen whales and harmless to humans unless they get too close to their babies.”
Lei Lu’s eyes lit up. “Whales? Really? I always wanted to go diving near the tip of the Yucatán with the young whale sharks. From the videos I’ve seen, that breed is very friendly, almost playful. Damn, I hope I see a whale.”
Shakespeare didn’t bother to hold back his grin. Fuck, she was so cute when she was excited. If he could convince her to stay after the mission was completed, he’d love to see her elation while diving on a shipwreck.
“You might just get lucky. They pass through this channel on their way to the deep trench that runs between Cuba and the Cayman Islands and toward Jamaica. They’re able to find plenty of food there. Several hang around the side of Grand Turk too.”
She could barely hold in her enthusiasm.
Immediately, Shakespeare started searching the surface for a spout. If they had just passed over a whale, it would have to surface soon for air. “If I see one, I’ll point it out.”
Lei Lu was practically jumping up and down. “Yes, please.” She, too, searched the water.
After a few minutes, Shakespeare broke the silence. “Do you ladies have rash shirts for diving?”
She looked at him as though he were stupid. “Of course. The BCD would rub if we didn’t,” she said of the buoyancy compensator. “Although I don’t believe we’ll need them here, I had everybody bring their wetsuit. We also carry two types of fins, the rocket and speedy. Most of us prefer to wear the latter.”
“I’ll perform a gear check before anyone goes down.” That was another point on which Shakespeare wouldn’t budge.
“I will too, including yours.” She stood easily on the swaying deck. Although he didn’t say anything, her back straightened defensively. “I got my dive instructor certification at Coronado three years ago and worked at BUDs for more than a thousand dives. Trust me, Shakespeare, I’ll be checking out your...equipment.” She let her gaze drop over his body.
He didn’t miss the double entendre. She was flirting with him, again. He liked it. “We should be to the dive site in twenty minutes, if you want your team to get started. We’ll anchor in shallower water then run a line down to the sunken plane.”
“I’ll be going down with you.” She held his gaze. “The others can follow when we’ve deemed it safe.” She held up her hand in the universal stop sign. “Yes. I’ll probably dive three times today, just like you. We all have dive computers so I will stay topside for whatever amount is recommended.”
He could tell she wasn’t going to let him establish the line by himself, or with just Oli. Looks like they would be diving together all day.
They reached Mouchoir Bank and anchored in forty-five feet of water, about seventy feet from the plane.
Shakespeare grabbed several lengths of rope and clipped them to his BCD while Nita and Oli dealt with the body bags. Lei Lu was busy expertly checking everybody’s equipment. Shakespeare had already done his check, impressed with the high quality equipment the women owned.
Katlin was going down to video the entire process. Once topside, everything would be transmitted to USSOCOM and probably the CDC. It was primarily a means of covering their asses.
Stepping onto the dive platform, it’d been agreed that Shakespeare would go first. Slowly kicking his feet back and forth to hold his position at ten feet of water, he waited for everyone on this dive to enter the seventy-five-degree water. With the bright sunshine overhead, he could see the bottom, which wasn’t unusual for that part of the world.
He was surprised when Katlin entered second, immediately recording everything, starting with him. She wore a small go cam on her head, had a second attached to her chest, and carried a third camera. She made sure to get footage of each person as they entered.
After tying off the rope that would lead them back to the boat, Lei Lu led the way to the downed airplane, using a handheld GPS that she’d programmed the night before. At the front of the airplane, they read the gauges. Depth was eighty-six feet. With the nitrogen and oxygen mix he’d put in the tanks, they only had twenty-three minutes remaining at this depth.
The clock was ticking.
Oli knocked out the residual glass shards of the windshield on both sides. They quickly saw that someone needed to go inside the cockpit and help lift the bodies from behind. Lei Lu volunteered, indicating through hand signals that she was the smallest and the best choice. She swam into the airplane and unbuckled the pilot. He practically floated out of the seat, which indicated that he was dead when they went into the water because his lungs still had air. Lei Lu shoved him through the open windshield but held tight until their friends had a good grip on the man.
Oli and Nita immediately grabbed the pilot. The unzipped body bag kept catching in the current, wanting to pull away. After a moment of fighting with it, they allowed the water to fill the bag first before encasing the pilot’s body.
Meanwhile, Shakespeare and Lei Lu dealt with getting the copilot out of the plane. The man’s leg had been broken, which made it easier to move his body that had been pinned under the yoke. He too tried to float away but Lei Lu dragged the man’s body out and straight to the open body bag. As though they’d worked side-by-side underwater for years, they quickly secured the copilot. Shakespeare held the bagged body while Lei Lu maneuvered the long zipper.
Time check. They were down to thirteen minutes at this depth.
Shakespeare handed Oli one of the lengths of rope. They’d decided topside to bring the bodies back closer to the boat, yet keep them in the deeper, somewhat cooler, water. He’d noticed an outcropping on their way down. The rock had very little coral which could be destroyed by the movement of the body bags in the current. Mouchoir was pristine and Shakespeare wanted to keep it that way. Even the destruction of a few inches of coral that had taken hundreds of years to build, was a loss forever.
As Shakespeare wrapped the length of rope around a large knob, memories of BUDs training popped into his mind. They had been required to free dive to the bottom of the pool and tie several standard sailor knots on a board. Their trainers watched every move while breathing through scuba gear. They would shake their head and point to a specific knot and they’d be required to re-tie the knot before surfacing for a fresh breath.
Since he’d grown up on yachts, Shakespeare had learned all the basic knots and many of the fancy ones as a very young boy tagging behind the captain and crew. His parents were very happy to let someone else entertain him. He knew his knots had been perfect, but the point of the exercise was to learn to control your frustration even while your lungs burned, screaming for oxygen. It was all part of the harassment package, but it had served many lessons.
By the time Shakespeare had secured his end of the rope to the rock, Lei Lu had expertly tied two corners of the bag to the other end. Excellent. Should one fail, there was a backup. Their body secured, they both looked at Nita and Oli who were struggling a bit on the other side of the large outcrop.
As soon as Lei Lu approached, the good doctor held up her hands and relinquished her attempts. The three of them together quickly bound the second body to the rock.
They were down to seven minutes. They quickly moved to twenty feet and began the clock. At a minimum, they needed to stay at that depth for at least three minutes. The safety stop always seemed to take so much longer than one hundred eighty seconds, but they needed the rest. Wrestling bodies at nearly one-hundred feet below the surface was taxing.
As though in sync, Lei Lu and Shakespeare looked at each other and nodded. Time to go topside.
Since Shakespeare was the first one down, he was also the first one out. Surfacing, he gave the tap-on-the-head signal that he was good. He slid off his flippers and tossed them onto the deck, but didn’t take his mouthpiece out. One of the first things you learn in diving, is that most drownings take place while the diver is trying to get into the boat. That one-hundred-pound steel tank on his back could pull him under before he’d have a chance to take a breath.
Someone had grabbed his flippers and tossed them into the boat by the time he was halfway up the ladder. Obviously, this team of women had been diving before because one stood on either side of him and pulled him completely onto the deck and over the stern. When he looked up, two pairs of feminine hands were unbuckling his equipment.
Within seconds, Katlin was standing right beside him being stripped out of her gear.
“Hurry,” Tori told her. “I swear I saw a submarine running on the surface at the horizon.”
“Lady Eagle, get General Lyon on the phone,” the team leader ordered. “Lady Falcon, find the big eyes.” The women scrambled. Shakespeare suddenly remembered that he wasn’t supposed to know the women’s real names. He needed to be careful when speaking directly to them.
Splashing from the dive deck brought Shakespeare’s attention to the rest of the divers. He immediately moved to the stern and practically lifted Lei Lu out of the water and onto the main deck. Nita was right behind her, her ass being shoved up the ladder by Oli.
When Shakespeare turned around, Katlin—no, he needed to think of her as Lady Hawk—had her eye glued to a spotting scope. She shook her beautiful blond hair then dashed up the ladder to the flying bridge.
“What the hell is going on?” Lady Harrier asked as she collapsed onto one of the benches near the bow.
“Possible submarine sighting.” Lady Eagle had a pair of huge binoculars around her neck as she scooted up the ladder to the upper bridge. Tucked into the side of her bikini bottom was a satellite phone.
Lady Falcon raised her sniper rifle to her shoulder, staring down the scope. Without lifting her head, she said, “I was looking for whale spouts, hoping to see a humpback, when something huge rose on the horizon. I immediately knew that it wasn’t an animal. I pulled out my scope in time to see the silhouette of a submarine. It’s disappeared over the edge and reappeared several times, moving in the opposite direction, as though they’re zigzagging, looking for something.”
“Fuck. Why didn’t I think of that?” Lady Harrier sat up and started tearing down her gear. “They have the same technologies we do. Of course they’re looking for the plane. Hell. They might have been the ones to shoot it down.”
“Yes, sir. I’m trying to send you a picture of it now.” Lady Hawk had moved one her cameras to the eye of the spotting scope. “Definitely Russian,” she called to everyone down below. “Yes, sir. I understand.” She was carrying on two conversations at the same time.
The women’s team leader practically slid down the ladder. “Okay, this has just become a pleasure excursion. General Lyon wants this to look as innocent as possible until he clears everything through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This has the makings of an international incident.”
She looked at her teammates. “Bikinis.” One glance at the diver down flag and Lady Falcon trotted to her bag. Within minutes, the diver down flag had been replaced with a purple lace bra and matching thong.
“Gentlemen, Lady Hawk’s gaze took them both in. “You just became the luckiest two men in the Caribbean Sea. Six women and two men. I suggest we cover up the tanks and station one of the women on top of them, sunning herself. Their eyes aren’t going to be able to leave half-naked women, especially if they’ve been underwater since leaving Russia.”
Lady Harrier emerged from the bow cabin where she’d hung up all the BCD’s. “Those men are going to be jerking off to the sight of this boat for the next six months.” She picked up the used tanks and attached them to the opposite side of the boat from the fresh tanks.
Damn. This wasn’t their first rodeo, and for that, Shakespeare was extremely thankful. He checked his dive computer, which indicated he needed to stay topside for at least ninety minutes before diving again.
“They’ve seen us,” Lady Falcon announced from the flybridge. “They’re launching a rigid inflatable boat. Looks like four men.”
“Weapons,” Lady Hawk called. “Get General Lyon back on the line. Prancing and giggling. We’re innocents.”
Shakespeare and Oli secured the last of the depleted tanks then covered them with one of the padded seats. Lady Harrier immediately stretched out on top. Lady Eagle threw a cushion over the filled tanks and posed, waving her bright red hair in the sun.
Standing beside Lady Hawk, hidden in the shadow of the main deck control area, they surveyed their handiwork. They were ready.
Everyone except Lady Kite. She was feverishly typing on her computer.
“What are you doing?” Shakespeare asked.
“I’m trying to block the black box. It’s pinging on a specific frequency.” She shook her head. “If I can mask that frequency, or divert it, they won’t find the airplane. We don’t know if they have their equivalent of SEALs on board that submarine. If so, they could booby-trap it and we would never recover the vials of viruses.”
“Keep working on that,” Lady Hawk ordered.
“They’re waving to us,” Lady Falcon announced.
“Wave back,” the team leader ordered. “We’re just a bunch of very friendly women out here, with two men, playing in the water.” As though she just thought of it, she went to the bow and dove into the clear blue water. Agent Silva was right behind her, after she gave a sexy wave to the men in the approaching boat.
“I don’t quite have it yet,” Lei Lu said quietly.
“You’d better hurry,” Oli cautioned as he moved to the starboard side.
Lei Lu laid over top of the large stool, her ass toward Shakespeare. She laid her computer on the dashboard and continued to work. “Pull your pants down. Pretend to be fucking me.”
Shakespeare couldn’t move.
The most perfect white ass was positioned directly in front of his cock.
His hard cock.
The tiny scrap of bikini barely covered her most private parts. He wondered if she was wet. It would be so easy for him to find out.
Jet black hair flew over her shoulder as her face appeared staring back at him. “Hurry up. They’re getting closer...and so am I. I’ve almost got it.” She picked up the satellite phone and instantly had the operations control center on the line. “Can you block the signal now?”
“No.” He heard the man’s voice answer. “Try the next channel.”
Glancing to the dive platform, Shakespeare watched Lady Hawk and the agent climb back into the boat. His gaze met the team leader’s. She pumped her hips. Oh, fuck. He needed to hide Lei Lu.
Bending over her, he whispered in her ear, “Do any of you speak Russian?”
“Yes. That’s one of my languages. As soon as I get this jammed, you and I are going to go out there and greet our visitors.” She wiggled her ass against his erection. “You’re not putting on a very good show. You’d better get to work.”
“Got it,” the tech on the satellite phone screamed. “Blocking the signal now.”
The small Russian boat stopped about a hundred and twenty-five feet away.
“They lost the signal,” Lady Kite whispered. She stood up and faced Shakespeare. She reached around and hiked up his board shorts as though they’d been pulled down while he took her from behind.
She wound her arms around his neck and went on tiptoes, burying her face on the opposite side from the Russian boat. Damn. That felt nice. He wished he were holding her for real, but at this point, he’d take anything he could get.
“We’re going to go to the starboard side and welcome our new friends.” As they moved, she remained plastered to half of his body, kissing his neck. “Wave to them and ask them in English if everything is okay.”
“Hello.” Shakespeare purposely looked around the surface of the sea. “Are you guys lost?”
One of the men instantly began speaking Russian. Lei Lu started to translate, whispering into Shakespeare’s ear. It wasn’t until then, he realized she still had the satellite phone in her hand hidden between their bodies. Thank Christ. At least General Lyon was getting every word of this.
“He’s asking what you are doing out here in the middle of nowhere.” Lei Lu translated.
“We don’t speak Spanish,” Oli answered in a horrible version of Spanglish. Through his pasted-on smile, he admitted that he spoke the language perfectly, both Castilian Spanish and the Caribbean version. “But I don’t understand the word of Russian.”
The ladies paraded around the boat, switching places, trying to distract the newly arrived men. Everyone except Lei Lu who covered Shakespeare’s entire side. Her barely-covered breast rubbed across his flat nipple, her hips pinned to him. He held her around the waist, her soft black hair covering his arm. He hoped he would be able to get her in this position again soon, but with both of them wearing less clothing.
“He’s asking about the airplane,” she translated. Shakespeare had gotten the word airplane since it was so similar. He wondered if the man was actually trying to speak English, just failing miserably.
Katlin went to the gunwale. Sticking out her arms to the sides like a child pretending to be a plane, she swept around the deck then stopped back where she started. She nodded vigorously. “Yes. We flew into Grand Turk Island.” She walked over and grabbed Oli, hanging on him salaciously. “Boat ride.” She slowly scanned the surface of the water. “Where. Is. Your. Boat?”
Knowing the rules of the sea, Shakespeare again asked the men in the little boat if they were lost. He considered the small amount of supplies that they’d left port with that morning. The plan had been to eat lunch, dive again, have a hearty snack, dive one last time, then head back to Grand Turk with the fifteen boxes of viruses and two dead bodies. They didn’t have a lot of food to spare, but he was obligated to ask if they were hungry or thirsty.
“We should offer them water and food.” He whispered into Lei Lu’s ear.
“Fuck that shit. We should offer them bullets.” She responded.
Finally, at a loss of what to do next, Lei Lu stepped away from Shakespeare. In the most feminine voice ever heard, she pointed to her phone, “I’m going to use the translation ap.” She held up the phone. “Yell your question.”
In Russian, he asked what they were doing there.
She pretended to listen to the phone before she replied. Giggling, she threw her hands up in the air. “Swimming.” She purposely botched the word.
Shakespeare decided to get in on the act. “We’re just fucking around.” He bent Lei Lu over the side of the boat and stood behind her, pumping his hips, as though he were performing the act.
The men in the boat gave him a thumbs up and deep chuckles.
“Well, I guess that’s a universal language.” She sneered at Shakespeare. She spoke into the phone then pretended to listen. Botching the words, she asked, “Do you need food or water?”
They shook their heads and said nyet—no in Russian. The man who seemed to be in charge signaled for her to hold out the phone. This time, he asked if they had seen an airplane. Once again pretending to listen to the translation, she pointed to the sky.
“Lady Kite, a submarine is scrambling out of Jacksonville, Florida. It should be to your location within fifteen hours. Do you have enough supplies to remain on site?” The tech in operations center asked.
She raised an eyebrow to Shakespeare who nodded affirmatively. “It’ll be tight, and we’ll need to ration, but we’ll survive.”
“We do and we’ll stay until the U.S. submarine arrives.” She confirmed.
“Can you find your boat?” Lady Kite asked in bastardized Russian. “We can tow you back to your boat.”
The men in the other boat quickly shook their heads.
“We’re camping out here tonight. Are you heading back to shore?” she asked in the terrible accent.
“Stupid fucking Americans,” the man in charge said in Russian. He shook his head. Ordering the man at the motor to turn the boat around, they all waved goodbye.
As soon as the Russians were out of sight, the Ladies of Black Swan and the two men congregated in the shadows next to the dashboard.
“Are we going to dive for the boxes?” Nita asked.
“Yes.” Lei Lu and Shakespeare said at the same time.
“We have enough tanks and we’ll dive at night.” Shakespeare then outlined the nighttime retrieval. By morning, all the boxes would be on board, hopefully the U.S. submarine would be there. Then they could head for home.
It sounded like a great plan to Shakespeare and everyone seemed to agree.