by Evan Graver
Greg dropped his hand to where he kept his cell phone clipped to his belt loop. With quick little glances at the screen, he pecked out a message one handed and sent it to Landis.
Greg looked up to find Volk taking a seat beside him.
“You know why I am here, tovarishch.”
“I don’t speak Russian, comrade,” Greg said dryly.
Volk laughed and slapped a dinner plate-sized hand on Greg’s back. “Tovarishch means comrade.”
Greg smiled. “How ironic.”
This time Volk looked puzzled.
“I was being sarcastic.”
The Russian narrowed his brow.
“I was making fun of you, Wolfie.”
Volk’s eyebrows raised, and he laid his lips back over his teeth in what passed for his smile. “My reputation precedes me.”
“Da.” Greg sipped his beer.
Volk laughed again. “I like you, Greg Olsen.”
“I’m guessing you’re not here to make small talk.”
“You are smart man. You will tell me where comrades are, da.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you find out soon. By then we be good friends.” Volk looked out at the marina shadowed by the mountains blocking the setting sun. “I like your boat.”
Greg had a decision to make. He knew where Ryan was going to be, and he wanted to get into position to help him if he could. With Volk here, Greg could not leave without either taking the Russian with him, or having Volk tail him. The third option was to do nothing and sit here until Ryan told him the weapons transfer was complete.
None of the options were appealing. The only way Volk could obtain the information he wanted was to either hack Greg’s electronic devices, or to torture him. Greg knew a little about torture, having been through the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school. The instructors had subjected him, and the other students, to torture and one thing always rang true. Everyone broke. It was just a matter of time before the pain became unbearable.
Volk put his hand on Greg’s shoulder. “You will tell me.” He began to squeeze.
Greg kept his face a mask even as the Russian dug his fingers deep into his muscles. Pain shot up through his neck and down his arm.
Again, he cursed the uselessness of his body and his lack of ability to fight off the bounty hunter. He would just have to outsmart them and to do that he would have to be on his guard.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Emily Hunt ran the shower as hot as she could stand. She had just finished a three-mile run and was ready to sit on the sofa, sip a glass of wine, and watch some television. She wanted to relax. Instead, she worried about her boyfriend. She let the water pound her back, feeling the heat loosen the muscles along her five-foot-ten frame.
“Damn you, Ryan,” she muttered, wiping water from her cornflower-blue eyes and running her hands over her bra-length blonde hair, wringing the water from it. Darkened with water, it wasn’t the normal color of harvest wheat. She pulled the thick mane over her shoulder and twisted it. Ryan had called it her Viking hair. The memory made her smile, but it didn’t last long.
Once again, he was in trouble, and she was stuck at home worrying about him. The worry had been constant since Greg’s phone call. Emily had once been involved with a fellow officer when she’d been a deputy in the Broward County Sheriff’s Department. She understood what it was like to be the loved one of a deployed service member or police officer and to fear for his safety. It was something she never wanted to do again after she’d broken up with her former beau. Yet, she had chosen to get involved with Ryan.
Emily cocked her head to hear over the roar of the water. She thought she heard her cell phone chime. Shutting off the shower, she grabbed a towel and dried her hands before picking up the phone. A text message icon blinked on the screen. She tapped the icon, and a message from Greg appeared. She read it twice silently, then once out loud. “Russian is here. Has tracker on Dark Water. S.O.S.”
“Why did you send this to me, Greg?”
She dried herself and pulled on pajamas pants and a T-shirt while pondering the mystery. On her way to the kitchen, she thumbed the phone icon, opened the favorites, and tapped the picture of Shelly Hughes. She waited for the phone to ring then put it to her ear. Shelly didn’t answer.
Emily dialed the number again. This time Shelly picked up as Emily poured a glass of Moscato.
Without preamble, Emily blurted, “Have you heard from Greg?”
“He called me from Jamaica. He said he was waiting to hear from Ryan.”
“He told me the same thing. But I just got a text from him that said some Russian was with him and they were tracking Dark Water.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Shelly admitted.
“Do you have the number for the DHS guy, Landis?”
“Yes. Didn’t Ryan give it to you?”
“No,” Emily said. “I didn’t think I’d need it. I should have known better. Whenever Ryan’s involved things go pear shape.”
“This is true,” Shelly said before reciting Landis’s office and cell phone numbers. Emily wrote them down in a notebook she kept on the coffee table.
“Thanks, Shelly.”
“Keep me in the loop.”
Emily hung up and looked at the numbers scrawled across the paper. She fingered the phone and scrolled back to the text message. She composed a message, erased it, and wrote another one. “Do you need help?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Greg’s phone chimed, and he looked down at the screen. Volk had left the bar, leaving one of his men in his stead. He swatted a mosquito while he read the text from Emily, puzzled for a minute until he read the sender information above it and realized she had been the inadvertent recipient of his S.O.S.
He keyed a new message:
Russian bounty hunter Volk tracking Ryan and Mango. He’s using me to find Ryan. Get Ryan’s tracker number from Ryan’s office and send him message. Call Landis.
“What you do?” the Russian minder asked in heavily accented English. He came around the bar and saw the phone in Greg’s hand. Greg glanced around the bar, frantic to keep the man from reading his messages and knowing he was in contact with Landis and Ryan.
The man extended his hand. “You give me phone.”
Greg stared up at the man. He could drop the phone into a glass of water, but that would cut off his communication with Ryan, and anyone else. He had thought about his next move for the past ten minutes. If he wanted to avoid torture, he could give Volk Ryan’s destination, but Volk could kill him just to tie up a loose end. If Emily passed on his message, Landis would know Volk was with him and might send help. She could also pass the word to Ryan. Sending Volk to Haiti would allow him to roam free and strike at any time. Taking Volk to Haiti on Dark Water would allow Greg to keep his enemies close and gain a chance to eliminate them.
Greg clipped the phone back into its holder. “I’ll keep the phone. Let’s go see Wolfie.”
Chapter Forty
Emily stared at the message. Ryan Weller had once again sucked her into the vortex surrounding him. She sent another text to Greg. No response came immediately, and she kept an eye on the clock as she waited.
After fifteen minutes, she dialed Floyd Landis’s cell phone number.
A gruff voice answered, “Landis.”
“Hi, you don’t know me. My name is Emily Hunt and—”
“I am well aware of who you are, Ms. Hunt. What can I do for you?”
“I received a text message from Greg Olsen. He meant to send it to you but got me instead.” She rushed on without waiting for a response. “It says there’s a Russian bounty hunter named Volk following Ryan. He has a tracker on Dark Water and is going to use Greg to find Ryan. Greg said to get Ryan’s tracker information from Ryan’s office and send him a warning.”
“Anything else?”
“Just that I’m worried. Why is a bounty hunter tracking Ryan?”
<
br /> “I want you to know that Ryan is fine. I received a message from him this morning. He’s on his way to Haiti.”
“Haiti,” she exclaimed. “Why is he going to Haiti and you didn’t answer my first question.”
Landis sighed. Emily listened to him move around, heard what she assumed were car keys rattling.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Going to Ryan’s office to send him a message. I’m surprised you don’t have his tracker information.”
A car engine started.
Emily said, “I’m mad that I don’t. Stop changing the subject and answer some questions.”
“The new leader of the Aztlán cartel has placed a two-million-dollar bounty on Ryan and Mango’s heads. Volk is one of several people trying to cash in on the bounty.”
“What about Haiti?” she demanded.
“He’s trying to escape the bounty.”
“Why isn’t Greg with him?”
“They had to separate. Look, I don’t have time to explain it all to you right now. I hope I never have too. Ryan and Mango are going to be fine. We have plans to protect them.”
“I hope they’re more than plans,” she muttered. A knock on the door interrupted her from continuing to give Landis a piece of her mind. She pulled on a robe as she walked to the door.
Emily slid the dead bolt back and opened the door until the chain caught. Through the gap she could see a man and a woman standing in the hallway. The woman’s brown hair was in a bun and she wore jeans and DHS windbreaker. The man stood slightly behind the woman and moved into Emily’s line of sight. He had on a wrinkled suit and his hair had been cut short to the scalp.
She flashed a badge, and said, “Sorry to bother you, ma’am. I’m Agent Boyle. This is Agent Alzario. Floyd Landis, from Homeland, sent us.”
Emily realized she was still clutching the phone to her ear. She hissed at Landis, “Did you send agents to my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” She undid the chain and opened the door before walking back to the sofa.
“You, Shelly, and Jennifer have been threatened by an international arms dealer named Jim Kilroy.”
“Is this part of what Ryan’s involved in?”
“Yes,” Landis confirmed. “I also sent agents to stay with Jennifer and Shelly until this is over. Is there anything else, Ms. Hunt, I need to go?”
“How long until this is over?”
“Not long.”
“I hope.” She hung up the phone and turned to the two agents who were now standing in her living room. The front door was locked, bolted, and chained.
“Please sit down,” Boyle said, motioning to the sofa.
Emily sat down wearily. She was unused to someone ordering her around in her own home. She cradled her phone in her lap, wishing Ryan would call and tell her this was all a bad dream. She looked up at the agents and disliked them immediately. Not because they were there to protect her, but because Ryan had placed her in a position which she needed protection.
Alzario walked through the apartment, checking doors and windows, while Boyle sat down uninvited. Her brown eyes were a little too far apart over a thin nose. She seemed to be examining Emily, and Emily pulled the front of her robe closed as Boyle gave her a condescending sneer. Emily self-consciously patted and smoothed her Viking hair.
She was a trained police officer and a professional insurance investigator, but Emily’s heart raced. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. Finally, she asked, “Why are you here?”
“For your protection. I believe Mr. Landis explained it to you.”
“You have no information other than a threat has been made?”
“Correct,” Alzario said from the kitchen doorway.
“If you’re staying here, I hope you brought your own blankets and food,” Emily retorted. She disliked this inconvenience. This relationship with Ryan was becoming more trouble than it was worth.
Chapter Forty-One
After his daily exercise regimen, Ryan had begun walking the ship, looking in the various rooms, holds, and lockers. The days at sea kept the crew busy and they didn’t focus on the two passengers as much as they had when they’d first left Nicaragua. It gave him time to come up with a plan. So far, he’d found little inspiration.
Today, he knew they were making their way out of the Windward Passage and around Tortuga. He felt the time crunch. A saying of one of his old chiefs echoed in his ears, “If you don’t believe there is a solution, then you won’t find it.” Another day and they’d be off Cap-Haïtien. Having a deadline sharpened his thinking.
In the beginning of his Navy EOD career, he’d used checklists to help guide his decision making when he arrived at the game show⸻the bomb site. Then he began to also navigate by using his intuition gained through experience. One of the things he believed in was assessing the threat and effectively using what the enemy had given him. Now, he made his own checklist to identify what he’d been given and what he could use against the enemy. The two things that married his current foes were gold and guns. All he had to do was deny them both the opportunity to take possession of what they desired.
In a little-used compartment, he found the deck and shelves littered with odd sections of pipe, rusted pieces of metal, ropes, boards, and other assorted items cast off by the crew. He shook his head as he looked at the mess, thinking about the boot camp Recruit Division Commanders—the Navy’s equivalent to drill instructors—screaming about gear adrift. They’d get right in your face and tell you what a worthless, lower-than-whale-poop, shipmate-endangering individual you were for leaving gear, equipment, or personal property unsecured.
Once, when Ryan and his fellow recruits were attending a class, the RDCs went into the barracks and knocked over lockers, scattered gear, toppled bunks, and stripped sheets in what was known as a “hurricane.” The recruits knew it was coming, it was just a matter of when. As they filed back into the barracks, they found everything askew. Amid the chaos, the RDCs made them drop into the push-up position. For the next two hours, they performed physical training with the windows and doors shut and the heat turned up. The floor became slick with sweat and the ceiling dripped condensation in what the RDCs referred to as, “making it rain.” The RDCs had marched up and down the room, screaming and yelling at the recruits, calling out exercise cadences, and harassing individuals they did not find worthy of joining their Navy. It was a lesson none of the recruits would ever forget, and forged in that fire was the deep-seated need to stow everything in its proper place.
Standing in the compartment, with a smile of remembrance on his face, an idea formed in Ryan’s mind. He began to sort through the scrap, and set a few items aside, careful to make everything look as if it hadn’t been disturbed. Which wasn’t hard given the room’s state of disarray.
He had another memory, this one from Iraq. They’d tracked a bombmaker to his factory and raided it. The bombmaker had been killed and the EOD team had taken a large number of explosively formed penetrators off the street. Capable of defeating the armor on Humvees and the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles used to transport troops, the EFP was responsible for more deaths in combat than any other form of IED.
The EFP was essentially a steel tube packed with explosives and capped with a concave piece of metal or copper to act as the projectile. Copper was preferred because it was more malleable. The force of the explosion turned the cap inside out, forming a bullet shaped projectile.
Ryan placed his foot on a small section of pipe as it rolled with the motion of the ship. While the Santo Domingo didn’t have armor, she did have thick steel hull plates. It would take a powerful explosion to damage them. There wasn’t enough C-4 stashed in his cigarette packs for two shape charges large enough to cause the wounds he wished to inflict. He did have enough to build two EFPs. Detonating them on either side of the keel, at the bow of the ship, would ensure the ship went down quickly. The force of water rushing in through the dama
ged hull would tear out her bottom, and the ship would drive herself underwater.
As soon as the gold was onboard, he’d trigger the blast, and then he and Mango would use one of the lifeboats to escape.
Ryan found two pieces of pipe with bolt flanges on one end and then located two caps for them. He loosely secured the caps with bolts and found several thin sheets of metal. Using a hammer and a wooden stake, he formed the metal into cones.
Heading back to his bunk room, Ryan passed Oso, who glanced at his orange hands. Ryan held them up in a gesture of surrender and pointed into the hold. “I was helping to secure a few loose chains on the Humvees. We don’t want them shifting around.”
Oso regarded him with suspicion before turning away. Ryan breathed a sigh of relief and continued to their room.
Mango was lying on his bunk, reading a Clive Cussler novel.
“Which one is that?” Ryan asked, pointing to the book.
“Mediterranean Caper.”
“The first Dirk Pitt. Man, I read every one of those. He and Travis McGee were the best when I was growing up. I wanted to be those guys. Always a cool adventure and always a good-looking woman.”
Mango chuckled. “Now you’re living the life.”
Ryan grinned. “Yeah, something like that.”
Mango swung his legs off the bunk and sat up. “Whatcha doin’, bro?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Ryan said, extracting seven packs of cigarettes from the carton. He stuffed the carton back into his pack. He opened a pack and pulled a cigarette out. He stuck it in his mouth and arranged the rest of the packs in his cargo pockets.
“What do you think?” Ryan asked. “Do they make me look fat?”
“Actually, smoking has gone straight to your hips.”
