by Scott Cook
“Come on!” I exclaimed, waving Diego forward. “What gives?”
We ran past the galley and down the companionway.
“I know to back the winning horse, meng! Not these fucking cock-a-roaches!” Diego said in what sounded like a very good impression of Tony Montana from Scarface. Then, in almost perfect English with barely a hint of a Hispanic accent at all he stunned me by saying: “Petty Officer first class Robert Diego at your service, Commander. Colonel Grayson sends his compliments.”
“Fuckin’ what!?” I blurted. “How the Christ… later, let’s get this hatch open.”
Outside, the AK-47, I was sure that’s what the rifle was, and I was also sure it was mine, was firing again. There were several answering shots from the sporty. I felt a twinge of worry for Lisa. She had greater range with that rifle but there were at least four baddies on the sporty. Not great odds.
We were in the forward master suite. Diego was undogging the overhead hatch so we could climb out. He eased it up and set the telescoping support so the hatch was vertical.
“What’s the plan?” Diego asked.
I scoffed, “Dude… you tell me.”
He chuckled, “I hate to leave without taking these people in. A dirty FBI agent and Cooper and Paulo. Paulo is nobody, just a hired thug so far as I can tell… but…”
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “But we’ve got one gun against four. I don’t know who’s all out there and why, but it could only be my girlfriend.”
Then there was another sound. Another assault rifle firing in rapid three round bursts. Not as heavy a weapon. Probably shooting 5.56.
“And another one in that rib,” Diego grumbled. “Shit…”
“Fuck it,” I declared. “Gimme the knife. We go up, I’ll go aft along the port side and you cover me. Our goal is the cat in the Zodiac. Then I’ll try and grab Garcia and Nikki. If you can nail the guy in that boat, then follow me and go aboard and grab his weapon.”
“That sounds like a crazy plan,” Diego hissed.
“It’s one of my powers,” I said and grinned. “Ready… go!”
I leapt up through the hatch and crouched on the big foredeck of the sport fisherman. I couldn’t see Cooper or Paulo on the bridge, which meant they were ducking behind the fairing or too far aft for me to spot them. I did see the Zodiac tied alongside the Viking’s port quarter, though. A man was standing in the stern, using the bigger boat as a rampart and firing his rifle to the south.
Diego appeared next to me brandishing his pistol. I pointed. I took off at a run, shouting at the man. I distinctly heard Diego cursing me as I moved aft.
The gunner in the inflatable swung the barrel of his weapon at me, but he never fired. Three shots cracked from behind me, their reports sounding flat over the vast expanse of ocean. The man toppled over and disappeared below the Zodiac’s gunwale.
“Go, go, go!” I hollered to Diego, who was already running and right behind me. As I dove around the after edge of the saloon’s bulkhead and into the cockpit, Diego threw himself over the side and into the rigid inflatable.
I slammed directly into Garcia, knocking him back against the big live bait well next to the saloon door. I pressed the knife against his throat and smiled in his face, “I think it’s time we had a real talk, amigo.”
He only laughed, “Si, is very true.”
That’s when I felt the cold steel of what must be my very own Colt pressing against the back of my neck. A soft voice whispered in my ear.
“Don’t, Scott. Drop the knife.”
Nikki had the drop on me. At first, I didn’t move. Part of me wanted to believe that she wouldn’t shoot me. Part of me wanted to believe that there was still something in her that cared about me. Yet she’d done more than one cold calculated thing since I’d known her.
The first was when she’d faked her own death barely a month after we started seeing each other, after we’d brought Anthony Ravetti up with a round turn. She’d magically appeared again a little over a year later. Now I find she’s mixed up with some very bad people in a drug smuggling and who knew what else ring. As much as I wanted to trust her… I couldn’t.
I let the knife clatter to the fiberglass decking. Nikki pushed me up against the saloon door and pushed her body close against mine. There was enough coverage from the overlap of the angled rear of the saloon on either side that neither Lisa nor Diego could shoot them without possibly hitting me.
“We have Jarvis!” Garcia called out. “Cease fire or we kill him!”
No one had been firing at the moment. Yet no one did now, either. Lisa certainly wouldn’t take a chance and Diego knew better, even from close range.
“What now?” I asked. “We’re in a standoff. Where are your two boys on the bridge?”
“I think they’re dead,” Nikki said. She called out there names but got no response. “Or scared shitless.”
“So what now?” I asked her. “You’re surrounded by automatic weapons. This can’t end well for anybody.”
Garcia snorted, “Of course it can, Jarvis. We have you and that’s what I came for.”
“Lisa!” Nikki shouted. “Don’t shoot, or you’ll hit him! Diego, get your ass over here. I want you to drop that weapon and climb over here with your hands up!”
“Let him go!” Came Lisa’s angry shout from maybe fifty yards to starboard. I couldn’t see her because of the barrier of the saloon.
“Do as she says!” Diego shouted. “It’s all over, agent Sloane. There’s no way you get out of this.”
“Either we do or Jarvis dies,” Garcia shouted.
“Bullshit!” I roared out, “Lisa, shoot through the saloon! Don’t worry about me!”
Nikki actually laughed derisively, “Oh please, like she’d do that.”
I knew she was right, of course. Lisa would no more shoot than I would if she was being held at gunpoint. Stopping the bad guys wasn’t worth it.
“Would you?” I asked softly.
“Don’t’ put it to the test, Scott… please,” Nikki said so earnestly that I couldn’t help but believe her.
There was the sound of something metal clattering to a fiberglass deck behind me. I heard Diego climbing on board. He moved to stand next to the fighting chair with his hands held up at shoulder height.
“Good,” Garcia said amiably.
Then, without warning and without any chance to stop him, the Nicaraguan trained his pistol on Diego and fired. The Navy Petty Officer crumpled to the deck, a fountain of blood blooming from his chest. His head bounced off the padded transom and he settled into a heap that didn’t move.
“Son of a bitch…” I growled low, rage suddenly blooming inside me.
Garcia’s gun barrel dug into my ribs, “That’s what I do to traitors, cabron.”
I seethed. It took considerable effort not to throttle Garcia. I might take a chance that Nikki wouldn’t plug me, but Garcia certainly would. Then again… would he? I was what he came for, he’d said. That meant if I were dead…
“Scott…” Nikki warned, as if reading my mind.
“Let’s go,” Garcia said. “Into the boat.”
The three of us moved awkwardly to the portside gunwale. Nikki climbed over and down into the rib and then Garcia did so. Both of them kept me in front of them. I could now just see the bow of what looked like a cigarette off to the sporty’s starboard side with two shadowy figures behind the windshield.
“Come on!” Garcia barked, jabbing me in the back with his pistol.
Nikki started the big outboard. Garcia poked me again. Resignedly, I clambered into the smaller boat. He had me untie the painter from a midships cleat on the sporty and Nikki slammed the throttles forward, making me stumble and sit down hard on the bench seat in front of the inflatable’s helm.
Garcia laughed out loud, “Excellente! Now that we have him, all we have to do is—“
I only pondered my options for what might have been a micro-second. If Garcia brought me to wherever it was he intended to
bring me, I’d never get back alive. Either he or possibly somebody he worked for wanted that map. They would stop at nothing to get it. That was a certainty. No doubt I’d be tortured and killed either way.
So, all things considered, I felt there was little to lose when I leapt up and dove over the gunwale and into the dark sea. We couldn’t be more than a hundred yards or maybe two hundred from the other two boats. They wouldn’t risk turning around for me with Lisa’s AK trained on them.
Of course, as the finger of white hot fire dragged itself across my back, I briefly wondered if I’d been in error. The cool November Sea didn’t quench the blaze, at least not much. It felt as if somebody had dragged a red hot poker from my right shoulder blade across to my left. As I plunged down, I found that I could still move my arms and legs. The bullet had only grazed me, thankfully.
I swam down a bit and leveled off, using the faint glow of moonlight on the rippling surface to guide me. I struck out as hard as I could, each movement sending electric pulses of pain across my torso. After what seemed like all too short of a time, my body screamed out for air and I surfaced.
The sound of the inflatable’s outboard seemed to be diminishing. I was right, Nikki and Garcia had chosen the prudent course. I turned to find the other two boats and realized they were less than a hundred feet away.
“There he is!” a woman shouted. It wasn’t Lisa.
“Here I am!” I shouted back. “Little help.”
The big cigarette boat idled over to me. It must be George’s. Where else would Lisa have gotten a go fast boat in the middle of the night?
“This is hardly the time for a swim, sir,” Jackie Stevvins said amusedly as I climbed up onto the swim platform and up over the engine cover.
“On the contrary,” I said, gasping. “I can’t think of a better time. Get us back to the sporty. There’s a man on board who was hit. Robert Diego.”
Lisa had turned to me but she’d turned back to the wheel when I said this.
Jackie’s eyes went wide, “Petty Officer Diego? I didn’t know he was on a black op…”
I sighed, “I didn’t even know he existed.”
I groaned as I moved forward between the seats. Jackie looked at me strangely and I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. She held her NVG’s to her face and I turned so she could examine my back.
Her sharp intake of breath was not a good sign, “Fuck… looks like somebody gouged you with a chisel…”
“Stings like a bitch,” I admitted.
“What happened?” Lisa asked as she eased the boat up alongside the Viking. “Are you okay, baby… oh, God?”
She said this as I vaulted up onto the cigarette’s gunwale and jumped down into the cockpit of the Viking. I moved to Diego and pressed my forefinger and middle finger to his neck. No pulse. Even in the low moonlight I could see it was no good. His shirt was soaked through with blood and a pool of it surrounded his body. Garcia’s bullet must have hit him right in the heart.
“Aww, fuck…” Jackie said sadly.
I sighed, “Yeah…”
Jackie ran up the ladder to the bridge and came back down almost immediately. She then did a quick sweep of the interior and came back on deck.
“Two dead men on the bridge. We’d better call this in,” Jackie said gently, placing a hand on my shoulder. “There’s a good first aid kit on the cig. Let me take care of your back.”
We climbed back onto the cigarette and Jackie instructed me to take off my shirt and lie on the long bench in the after part of the cockpit.
“How bad…?” Lisa asked and drew in a sharp gasp. “Ooh… baby…”
“Pretty much a flesh wound,” Jackie said, coming out of the small cabin with a box in her hands. “Missed your spine, thank God. Starts off as a shallow scratch on your right trap, but gets deeper at the left shoulder. Not deep enough to hit the bone, though… good thing you’ve got plenty of muscle… okay, this might sting a little.”
She pressed a wet cloth to my upper back. Whatever it was, it ripped a hoarse bellow of pain from my throat that I only partially managed to choke down into a teeth-clenching string of oaths, “Jesus Christ… what the hell was that, hot sauce?”
Jackie chuckled, “Stop being a pussy.”
I laughed and gasped in pain all at once as she gently ran what was probably an antiseptic down the length of the furrow in my flesh. I had to clamp my eyes shut to keep the tears from running over. There was a soft hand on my other shoulder and one resting on my butt and yet another stroking my hair. It was comforting.
“Damn, that must hurt like a bitch,” Lisa muttered.
Jackie chuckled softly, “Oh God yeah… I was only kidding about being a pussy, Scott. I can’t believe you’re not shrieking in agony right now.”
“He’s always been a brave little soldier,” Lisa quipped.
“Yeah,” Jackie remarked as she plied her torture. “Guy dives off a speeding boat in the middle of the night and the middle of the ocean and gets himself shot in the back… sounds like something an Army puke might do.”
“Doesn’t sound very smart,” Lisa agreed.
“Yeah… maybe even too dumb for the Army,” Jackie observed. “Probably why he’s a squid.”
“Coupla rattles the both of ya’…” I groaned. “You’ll set up for a pair of wits yet… oughta send that one into the Reader’s Digest… Life in these United States or Humor in Uniform… Oh, I know… Christ… two girls too funny to get laid…”
They laughed and Lisa, it had to be Lisa since Jackie was working at the other end, patted my backside, “Oh, pumpkin… we’re hot enough that it doesn’t matter what we say. The men folk can’t even hear us over their boners.”
Jackie chortled with glee and removed the cloth, “Okay, I’m gonna put some Bacitracin on it and some gauze. It’s only the top few inches that concerns me.”
“yeah, that’s what they all say…” I wheezed.
Jackie laughed, “The right side of the graze barely got down to the lower epidermis.”
“Thanks, Gunny,” I said.
“So what happened?” Lisa asked.
I sighed, the medicated cream Jackie was gently applying with her fingers was soothing, although the touch still hurt, “It’s a bit of a story… I’ll tell you on the way back in exchange for you telling me how you got George to let you take his boat out here.”
Lisa cleared her throat, “Ahem… well… we stole it.”
“Technically Lisa stole it,” Jackie added.
“It was your idea,” Lisa accused with a giggle.
“Well… yeah,” Jackie admitted, “but you know I’m a Marine. We have a reputation.”
I chuckled now, “A damned fine one in my book, Jackie.”
Another hand squeezed my shoulder and a pair of soft lips kissed where the hand had been. I turned my head and saw Jackie grinning at me. Lisa moved in and kissed my forehead.
“All right,” I said. “Me and two broads… finally!”
They both scoffed and flipped me off.
20
October 17th, 1797
The hermaphrodite brig Whitby Castle lay gently swaying upon an azure blue sea whose surface was so featureless it could almost be mistaken for a pane of glass. What little movement there was came from the long swell that gently lifted the vessel and gave life to a scene that might have been painted upon canvas. Above the motionless ship hung a cobalt blue dome fading to white along the circle of horizon that surrounded her.
Not a breath of wind blew and the brig’s sails hung limply from their yards. Their weathered fabric serving only as partial shade for those on deck. A cable’s length to larboard, her own sails furled in a body rode the former privateer Sword of Vengeance. The sleek fore and aft rigged schooner was moving through the sea, however, propelled by sweeps as she slowly towed prepared targets into the firing arc of the brig’s great guns.
The one saving grace in all of that stillness was that the temperature was moderate even at four bells in the
forenoon watch. Although the blazing yellow ball that was nearly to its zenith beat down on the becalmed vessels and the placid sea, it did so at something less than full strength. Although warm, it wasn’t uncomfortable to stand on deck in a coat at least.
On the brig’s larboard side stood the gun crews. Each six pound cannon had three men to work it. The two quarterdeck and two focs’l carronades were left unmanned… there simply weren’t any more men to spare. Save the lookout at the foremast cross trees and the quartermaster at the wheel, the brig’s entire compliment stood ready to exercise their pieces.
Catherine Cook stood next to Palander, who stood behind Sankey at the wheel, a somewhat useless gesture as there was no way on the vessel at all. However, both the captain and the master predicted that some breath of wind would come up in relatively short order, which is why both tops’ls were set as well as t’gallants and the outer jib.
Kate watched as the second target was cast loose. An empty beef cask topped by a bit of bunting on a three foot pole. She waited until the schooner swept ahead of the fore chains before addressing her gun crews.
Aside from Palander, Kate had no officers to help work the ship. No lieutenants to stand by their divisions, no midshipmen to divide these any further. In point of fact, it wasn’t necessary at the moment. She would oversee the exercise in any case. Yet in a real battle, the captain needed to rely on the officers to handle the details while she managed the entire situation. Managing the ship, the guns, the setting and taking in of sails and the myriad of other details that coalesced to make the complex machine that was a ship and her people operate smoothly and effectively. Of course, until her crew could serve their pieces even moderately well, it wasn’t worth thinking about anything else.
“Gun crews ready?” Kate called out.
“Number one ready!” The first crew replied. Then number three, five, seven, nine and finally eleven. All six guns of the larboard battery reported ready.
“Ready to mark the time, Pitney?” Kate asked her servant, who was also serving as temporary clerk.
Pitney nodded and held up a slate. Kate pulled out Woodbine’s pocket watch and held it ready as well. She stepped forward to the main mast pin rail so she was closer to the gun crews and could observe their movements more carefully.
