Hell or High Water

by Julie Ann Walker

  “So much for Morales’s calculations,” Bran grumbled, stopping beside Leo and Olivia. The clanking sound his M4 made as he swung it around to the front of his body registered in the subconscious portion of Leo’s brain. He’d hoped he was being overly cautious when he’d instructed his friends to lock and load. But he should have known better. Like most missions, this one was turning out to have more curves than a barrel full of snakes. Son of a frickin’-frackin’ bitch!

  “I don’t understand it,” Olivia said. “Morales isn’t wrong about these things. Maybe the marina’s records were tampered with or—”

  “Oh, ay! Who cares how it happened,” Bran interrupted her.

  “I do,” she hissed. “It doesn’t make any sense. Even if the terrorists somehow had ties with the yacht or the captain or the Texas oil tycoon, why would they toss the chemicals overboard? Why would they—”

  That’s as much as Leo heard, because right then he noticed a man standing on the landing by the back door of the Black Gold’s bridge. The guy was looking through his own set of binoculars, and Leo knew the instant he saw the weapon in Bran’s hand because the man lowered his field glasses and yelled something to the four guys on deck.

  Leo quickly adjusted his sights to the yacht’s lower level. And what he saw through the magnified lenses had his heart growing frog legs and jumping into his throat. Unlike most folks who froze in the face of danger or imminent death, spec-ops warriors were trained to use their adrenaline to sharpen their minds and enhance their reactions. Which was why, without a moment’s hesitation, he dropped his field glasses overboard and grabbed Olivia’s arm.

  “Rocket launchers!” he bellowed, yanking her away from the rail. “Run!”

  Chapter Ten

  2:13 p.m.…

  Olivia wasn’t sure if she was running across Wayfarer-I’s deck or being carried by Leo. She felt like her legs were spinning uselessly in the air, Scooby-Doo style. But one thing she was certain of was that the two words a person never wanted to hear back-to-back were “rocket” and “launchers.” That is what he’d yelled, right?

  Holy shit! What the hell is happening?

  She didn’t have time to think of an answer to that question because Leo grabbed the back waistband of her shorts and, with a mighty heave-ho, promptly tossed her overboard.

  “Go with Olivia!” she thought she heard him yell. She couldn’t be sure. Not with the humid air whipping by her ears and the bright turquoise water rushing up at her at an alarming rate.

  Oh God! Oh God! Oh—

  Sploosh!

  She’d read somewhere that hitting the water from any sort of height was pretty much the same as hitting concrete. Sure as shit, she could vouch. The wind was punched out of her by the impact, her belly and chest on fire from the blow. She was immediately enveloped in the arms of the ocean, the warm water sucking her down, down, down…

  Swim, Olivia! Kick your legs!

  Yep. That’s what she should be doing all right. And it’s certainly what she wanted to be doing. But her body seemed to be experiencing some sort of disconnect from her brain. The shock of the collision with the water’s surface had scrambled her synapses. Deeper and deeper she sank until the sea began to press in on her, squeezing her, lulling her with its liquid embrace even though her lungs burned.

  A hard hand suddenly gripped her shoulder. And that physical human touch was all she needed to break the dark spell of the ocean, to jump-start her brain-body connection. Hip-hip-hooray! Her legs and arms were working again!

  The first thing she did was let go of the binoculars that, strangely enough, she’d managed to hold on to during her free fall and subsequent brutal introduction to the sea. Then she kicked as hard as she could toward the surface, clawing against the water. She knew Bran was swimming beside her, a strong hand pulling her upward toward the light sparkling on the rippling waves overhead. Still, even with the two of them working…

  Oh God! I’m not going to make it! She’d waited too long, allowed herself to sink too deep. The urge to suck in a breath was overwhelming. Her mouth opened of its own accord, filling with salty water. And just when she started to convulse against the need to breathe—“Ahhhhh!”—she broke the surface, sucking in a lungful of sweet, glorious air. Water too, from the wave that immediately slammed her square in the face.

  She doubled in on herself, coughing and hacking.

  “Are you okay?” Bran shouted, paddling beside her and helping her tread water as waves carelessly bobbed them up and down like so much living flotsam and jetsam.

  “Y-yes,” she managed, dragging in another gulp of oxygen only to dissolve into more retching coughs.

  That seemed to be all the confirmation he needed because as soon as she was able to keep herself afloat, he released her to yell, “LT! What’s doing up there, bro?”

  There was no response.

  Olivia brushed the water from her eyes, blinking as more dripped down from her sodden hair. They’d already drifted some distance from the salvage ship, the currents in the Straits being wickedly fast. She scanned the hull of Wayfarer-I for Leo, then the rail. Nothing. No shaggy blond hair. No broad, T-shirt-covered shoulders. Just a big, gray boat.

  “D-did I hear him correctly?” she managed, coughing again and expelling the last of the moisture from her lungs. Her heart was pounding so hard her whole body throbbed in rhythm to it. “Did he say rocket launchers?”

  “That’s what I thought he—”

  BOOM!

  Wayfarer-I was rocked by a massive explosion. Olivia felt the percussive effects in her chest, like fireworks on New Year’s Eve or mortar rounds in Syria. The displaced air blew her sodden hair back from her face.

  He had said “rocket launchers.” She couldn’t believe it! Nor could she see exactly where the ship was hit. Somewhere low on the hull on the opposite side would be her guess, given the thin puff of smoke that drifted like a crooked, gray finger into the air. And although Wayfarer-I still seemed to be mostly intact, her metal hull was squealing like a dying pig.

  Where was Leo? Was he anywhere near where that rocket struck? Olivia became paralyzed by fear. Her heart stopped, her lungs froze, and her muscles went completely slack. Only her vocal cords continued to work as she screamed, her throat shredding with the effort, “Leo! Where are you?”

  * * *

  2:15 p.m.…

  Leo cursed, his shoulder slamming into the bulkhead of the stairwell when Wayfarer-I took a direct hit to her hull. The ship groaned with the impact, shuddering and whimpering in the aftermath. The lights flickered on and off, on and off, then went out altogether. Somewhere up on the bridge an alarm sounded.

  Shit on a shovel! This will be the end of her.

  He knew it as surely as he knew his name was Leonardo David Anderson. And all that money, all that time and effort to clean up Wayfarer-I and make her into a vessel capable of hunting for the Santa Cristina had come to naught with one well-placed, likely Soviet-era rocket launcher.

  And what are the odds?

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Reckoned he didn’t have time for either.

  “Wolf!” he yelled, sprinting up the stairs toward the pilothouse. “Mason!” He’d only climbed two treads when Wolf appeared in front of him, dark and quiet as a shadow. A well-armed shadow. Wolf’s Colt was clutched in his right hand. In his left was Olivia’s satellite phone. Good thinkin’, man.

  Before Leo could say the words aloud, Wolf growled, “Sonofabitching rocket launcher. Can you believe it? We need to abandon—”

  “I know!” Leo cut him off. “Where’s Mason?”

  “He said he was moving the dive tanks from the computer room to the deck. I’ll go find him.”

  “No.” Leo shook his head. “Bran and Olivia are already overboard.” Olivia… He hoped to hell he hadn’t hurt her when he sent her flying—would never forgive himself if he had—but he’d seen no other way. The rocket could have hit the deck where they were standing, or it could have hit the fue
l tanks and sent the whole ship up in flames, and he’d wanted…no, he’d needed to know she was overboard and safe. “You launch the dinghy. I’ll grab Mason and meet you on deck.”

  “Copy that.” Wolf followed him down the stairs, adding, “And damn it all to hell,” which was as close as the guy ever came to expressing surprise or concern about anything.

  “You said it,” Leo concurred as they hit the landing. He turned toward the interior of the ship, but Wolf stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Hurry. They may not stop with one shot.”

  “Ten-four.” Leo jerked his chin, their eyes meeting just as they had on countless missions and over myriad battlefields. The look they exchanged said it all. Stay frosty, watch your six, and soldier the fuck up.

  Wolf disappeared through the exit. When the door slammed shut, Leo made his way farther into the ship. He was standing at the opening to the empty computer room when the second rocket hit the back of the vessel. BOOOOMMM! Wayfarer-I shimmied, her rivets popping, her seams bursting. He stumbled backward on impact, slamming into the hallway bulkhead. His weapon dug into his back, pinching skin and muscle, but his adrenaline levels were running at damn near full capacity, which meant he barely felt it. With effort, he steadied himself against the now-listing ship.

  That one was near the fuel tanks. Fuck. A. Duck!

  “Mason!” he yelled down the stairs leading to the galley and the crew’s quarters. “Mason! You down there?” He couldn’t see much; the only illumination belowdecks came from the few stray beams of sunlight drifting in through the portholes. He cocked an ear. Didn’t hear a thing other that the death groans of his beloved Wayfarer-I and the high-pitched bee-doo-bee-doo-bee-doo of the alarm in the pilothouse. Acrid smoke drifted into the interior of the ship, scratching the inside of his throat like he’d swallowed chunks of coral. His eyes watered.

  “Hold together just a couple minutes more, ol’ girl,” he begged as he raced back down the not-quite-horizontal hall toward the exit. He burst through the door like the Kool-Aid Pitcher Guy used to burst through the walls on those old commercials. But he decided to forgo the accompanying Oh yeah. The sun momentarily blinded him when he stumbled onto the deck, skidding to a halt to get his bearings and allow his eyes to adjust.

  Once they did, he saw smoke curling from the ship’s hull, a thin gray stream near the forward section, and a menacing black cloud puffing rhythmically from the aft. Wolf was by the railing, sawing away at the nylon ropes attaching the dinghy to the hydraulic crane meant to lower it into the water.

  “Power’s out!” Wolf yelled when he spotted Leo.

  “I know!” Leo hollered back, frantically searching the deck for Mason. Nothing. Where are you? Was it possible the big guy had been down in the engine room or generator room when that second rocket hit? No. Leo refused to consider it. He would not lose a man on this mission, by God!

  “Have you seen Mason up here?” he yelled just as the water rushing into the ship’s hull reached a tipping point.

  The whole vessel lurched, groaning mightily. Leo hopped out of his flip-flops to use his bare feet for better traction on a deck that was now angled at about twenty degrees from horizontal. For added security, he had a white-knuckled grip on the corner of the bridge house.

  Not much time now…

  “Haven’t seen him!” Wolf yelled. He’d managed to cut the front of the dinghy free. The little boat dangled precariously over the side of the vessel by a single rope attached to one plastic cleat. Having already steadied himself against Wayfarer-I’s new list, Wolf was hard at work slicing at the remaining rope. “And she won’t stay afloat much longer!” he continued. “We need to—”

  Snap! Whack! The nylon cord succumbed to the razor-sharp edge of Wolf’s blade, and the front of the rubber boat hit the ship’s railing. The whole thing somersaulted over itself before falling into the sea.

  “I’m not leavin’ until I find Mason!”

  Wolf scanned the ocean, then the ship. “There!” he pointed, and Leo raced, or more like climbed—the deck was now at something approaching a thirty-degree angle—to the railing in time to see Mason emerge from the back of the vessel near the J-frame winch they were supposed to use to haul riches from the seabed. So much for that!

  Mason held up an armful of orange life jackets—Leo’s friends were nothing if not good in a pinch—then snapped Leo a saucy salute, climbed the railing, and chucked himself overboard. He hit the water like a bag of boulders and started stroking toward the dinghy that had landed upside down. Leo breathed a sigh of relief.

  “After you,” he told Wolf, gesturing toward the little boat below while adjusting the strap of his M4 more securely over his shoulder.

  “Nah.” Wolf shook his head. “After you.”

  “Don’t make me kick your ass up between your shoulder blades, Wolf.”

  Wolf grinned, his face splitting around a mouthful of blinding white teeth. “Right on. Luck belongs to the brave and the…uh…stubborn, yeah?” Then he mirrored Mason’s salute before leaping from the ship, an ululating Cherokee war cry piercing the air on his way down.

  Only after all his men…his friends…were in the water did Leo jump.

  * * *

  2:20 p.m.…

  Olivia’s muscles burned with the effort of fighting the waves and the current, but she didn’t register any pain. The relief and elation she felt watching Leo haul himself into the dinghy after the three men managed to flip it over eclipsed everything else.

  Thank God!

  If she thought she’d been paralyzed by fear when that first rocket slammed into Wayfarer-I, it was nothing compared to the soul-shredding terror she experienced when that second rocket hit, accompanied by a huge fireball that had risen some thirty feet into the air. She’d frantically searched the railing, looking, looking, hoping he hadn’t been anywhere near the point of impact. Then ash fell like great, gray snowflakes into the sea. She’d caught herself watching them detachedly, her mind struggling to grasp the reality of just how badly this entire mission had gone off the rails.

  Like a locomotive driven by the devil and shooting straight to hell…

  Weird how that phrase had come back to her after all these years. It’d been Timmy’s favorite expression during that summer he spent with her in the orphanage while his mother did a stint in the county jail. He’d been her friend. The only friend she’d ever made there, actually. But then his mother got out, picked him up, and the letters he promised to write never came. Olivia had been heartbroken at the time, and maybe that sense of heartbreak was what had brought the memory back.

  Next thing she’d known, Mason was flying off Wayfarer-I, an armful of life jackets trailing their straps behind him. Then Wolf took the plunge, his banshee scream enough to raise goose bumps on the dead. And then, finally, finally…Leo appeared. He climbed the rail, turned to give his beloved ship one last glance—even from a distance, the look on his face had completely gutted her—and jumped.

  She noticed he was the last to abandon the vessel. No doubt waiting until all of his men were safe before saving his own neck, the big, brave, foolish sonofabitch.

  Now she heard the choking cough of the dinghy’s small outboard engine trying to come to life. Wolf was yanking on the pull cord with all he had, his deeply tanned skin shiny with water. But the sound of the unresponsive engine was soon drowned out by the shriek of the salvage ship as her hull buckled with the heat of the fire burning somewhere deep in her belly. Wayfarer-I was listing severely now, tipped almost completely on her side.

  Come on, come on, Olivia silently begged the dinghy’s engine. Start. START!

  “I can’t see the yacht. Can you?” Bran asked, spitting out a mouthful of briny water when a wave momentarily washed over his face.

  She craned her neck, kicking her bare feet harder in an effort to lift herself higher out of the water. Lord knew where her flip-flops were. Somewhere on the bottom of the Straits, along with her binoculars and Leo’s sunglasses, no doubt.
<
br />   “No dice,” she told him. “The salvage ship’s hull is in the way.”

  “So we have no idea if they’re satisfied with sinking the Wayfarer,” he said, unconsciously reaching behind his head to finger the butt of the weapon protruding over his left shoulder, “or if they plan to come and finish us off.”

  “I can’t even think about what happens next,” she said before she considered her words, her eyes glued to Leo’s broad shoulders. “He needs to get the hell away from the ship in case she blows. For right now, that’s all that matters.”

  She felt Bran’s intense gaze land on her face and realized exactly what she’d said, exactly what she’d revealed.

  “You care about him, don’t you?” he asked, his voice so low she could have pretended she didn’t hear him over the shushing of the warm waves around them. But she was no coward.

  Or at least that’s what she told herself when she admitted, “Of course I do.” Then she hedged her bets and proved she was just a wee bit chickenhearted when she added, “I care about all of you. And I’m so sorry I dragged you guys into this m—”

  “Forget that,” he cut her off. “I wanna know your intentions toward LT.”

  She turned to him, lifting a dubious brow as she continued to kick and paddle like mad. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. His soaking hair curled against his forehead, his brown eyes were sullen, and his expression? Well, it appeared for all the world as if he was being completely, one hundred percent, deadeye serious.

  “Okay, first of all, this isn’t the antebellum South, Leo’s not a debutante, and you’re not his shotgun-toting father. So I don’t see how my intentions are any of your business. Secondly”—she panted with the effort to remain afloat—“you really want to do this now?”

  “First of all, I’m his best friend, and that means it is my business. Secondly,” he said, mimicking her and maybe mocking her a little too, “I can’t think of a better time to do this, can you?”