by Linda Ladd
Remaining in the shadows, he cut through some shrubbery beds instead of taking the solar-lit pathways. He moved quickly down some steps that led to the sidewalk in front of the hotel, avoiding lampposts. On the other side of the street, the marina appeared tucked in for the night, the boats dark, the water still. The air smelled of fish and the sea and engine oil. The breeze had started to gust. The cool night air felt good on his skin. Palm fronds rattled and scraped above him. He crossed the thoroughfare at a fast walk that wouldn’t draw undue attention and descended a shallow flight of steps to the main pier. Looming shadows protected him there. He waited a moment, found Jenn’s suite on the top floor across the street. Lights were off. He was good to go. He couldn’t see the parking lot where the Mayan had parked earlier from where he stood, but Jenn could.
There were half a dozen piers, all of which stretched fifty yards or so out into the water. The Mayan’s boat was on a branch of the pier closest to the outlet into the ocean, chosen for a hasty escape, no doubt. Well, good. The docks were planked, some floating, with ropes stretching between posts along the way, and some with sturdy pilings. Each was about six feet wide, with berths lined up on each side, facing each other. Nearly every berth held a boat. Most lights were turned off. Somebody was having a party way off to Novak’s right somewhere, in an adjacent marina. He could hear the music—Pharrell, singing “Happy.” The people listening sounded happy as well. Novak wouldn’t be happy until he got on that boat and had her miles away. He looked up at the suite again, found it dark, and then moved on, his sneakers silent on the planks. Halfway to the boat, he heard a television program coming from inside a big sailboat similar to the Sweet Sarah. Sounded like some late-night comedy with canned laughter, all in Spanish. A streak of anger flashed through him, thinking of his prized sailboat sitting on the bottom at the end of that pirate dock. But first things first.
The Mayan’s boat was battened down, expertly done, nice and tight, dark and quiet. Novak hunkered down at the end of the gangplank and listened. This guy was stealthy, and Novak better remember that. Nobody ever seemed to hear him coming or live to tell about it. The TV he’d heard had been turned off now. Gentle waves lapped, and the boats bumped up against the rubber tires. Far away, deep in the suburbs somewhere, he heard the sound of a police siren, faint and strident, until it faded away. He glanced back up at the balcony. No lights.
After a moment spent searching the shadows, he made it across the gangplank and stepped down onto the starboard deck. He squatted there and waited. The boat was a real beauty, equipped for ocean voyages, three big outboards in the stern. Raised pilot’s seat with double steering wheels. There was a line of lights built into the floor, just enough of a soft glow to guide his way. He proceeded cautiously, glancing often up at Jenn’s surveillance point. He wasn’t positive that he was alone on the boat. The Mayan could have made it back without them seeing him. Unlikely, but stranger things had happened. He broke the lock on the stern hatch, and then opened the doors and looked down the steps. It was like looking into a deep black well. Nothing. No lights. No sounds.
Novak listened a minute or two longer and then eased down inside. At the bottom, he switched on his flashlight. He was impressed. This boat was a top-of-the-line luxury vessel. The Mayan made good money with his deadly arts. Hired assassinations were expensive propositions. The interior looked like a layout in Ladies’ Home Journal—yellow walls, flowered couches, scented candles, bouquets of artificial flowers. Maybe this guy had a grandma from Indiana decorate the boat, or maybe he had a girlfriend or a wife who liked frilly stuff. Or, maybe he had a feminine partner who killed right alongside him. Novak hoped to hell not.
After a few moments, he moved across the salon and into the narrow galley. The boat’s interior was laid out similarly to his own boat. Larger, maybe. A little more powerful. A couple more staterooms. There were some round portholes, others high and rectangular, and a large window down low beside the galley’s table. He moved there and looked up at the hotel again. No lights. Nobody coming. Then he opened the stateroom doors, one at a time, searching each cabin with his flashlight beam. Nobody aboard. He stopped again in the galley and listened. He found the head, one that was larger than most bathrooms aboard boats, and a small storage/engine room in the stern. He moved inside it and flashed his light around. Mayan spears and hatchets hung on the walls, colorful strings of beads hanging off the handles. Handwoven baskets on the floor. And some scalps. Maybe a dozen, inside the baskets. Good God, this guy was nuts. Probably hair that belonged to the unfortunate pirates that had taken Novak. One scalp had long black hair like Li Liu’s. Novak swallowed down revulsion, pretty sure it was the woman’s straight and silky hair, sliced off from the forehead back. A cold chill pebbled his arms, and he felt an odd twinge of fear, in a way that he rarely ever felt fear. He ignored it. He had been afraid before—in battle, in life-and-death altercations, and in firefights with the enemy. But this guy? This guy was different. This guy was a monster.
Novak moved back to the big window and looked up at the hotel. The light was on. Shit. Novak wasted no more time. He moved back quickly and climbed up through the stern hatch. He stopped, dropped to one knee in the darkness, and looked down the pier. He didn’t see him yet. That meant Novak had some time. He pulled in the gangplank and let it clatter down on the deck and then quickly untied the mooring lines and threw them off. Then he took the steps up to the helm. It took him about twenty seconds to hot-wire the engines. He reversed her slowly out of the berth, about the same time the Mayan emerged from the shadows at the other end of the pier. Too late now, buddy. Surprise, surprise.
Once he had the boat out, he got her turned around and idled her out past the warning buoys and into the open bay. There, he opened her up a little more and headed toward the ocean outlet. When he was about fifty yards out, he looked back. The Mayan had made it to the empty berth. When Novak saw the killer searching the water, he gave the guy a two-fingered salute. Your boat is mine now, my friend. Turnabout is fair play.
After that, Novak eased the throttle forward and increased his speed. He didn’t have to worry about the killer calling the cops, not when he’d just got done tangling with them. But he did have to worry about him calling in some buddies from the Ruiz cartel, if that was who he was working for. Didn’t matter. Novak would be long gone by then, well on his way down to Jenn’s beach house in Belize. First and more importantly, though, he was taking the Calakmul out to open seas, far enough to feel safe, and then he was going to search the boat from stem to stern. Maybe, just maybe, he would uncover enough information to help him find out where the Mayan lived. Then he would pay him a call at his house some dark night and even up the score for good.
Chapter Fifteen
Once Novak reached the ocean, he turned the boat south and headed down the coast toward Belize. It wouldn’t take him long to get there. After Jenn crossed the border over the Rio Hondo, it wouldn’t take her long to get home, either. But he would have time enough to search the boat before he anchored off Jenn’s beach. The Mayan was now stranded in Chetumal, but Novak wasn’t stupid enough to stop worrying. The killer was no doubt already on the move. He was too well trained and methodical not to have alternatives in case of trouble. Novak sure as hell took him seriously. He tried to call Jenn on the sat phone to make sure they had gotten out of the hotel without problems. She didn’t answer. That troubled him a bit, but she often didn’t answer her phone when on the move with an asset, he knew that. Or maybe she was just out of range. He’d try again later.
Right now, he wanted to search the cabins below and see what he could find. About thirty miles offshore, he switched off the engines, climbed down to the stern, and scanned the horizon. He felt a bit paranoid. It was unlike him, but it paid to be paranoid with this guy. He didn’t see any boats. Light had brightened the horizon, dawn trying to break through the gloom. Didn’t see anything but whitecaps and cresting waves. Then he scanned the sky for black helicopters. He was never s
ure what might happen next, not on this trip. He had been cursed from the moment he awoke from his nightmare about Mariah. But the sky stretched out over him, slowly clearing to blue and empty of threats. He was alone on a vast expanse of salt water, and it felt good to be out there. In time, the rising sun burned down on his bare head, and the glare of the choppy dark blue water made his eyes ache. He poked on the sunglasses he’d found at the helm. Maybe, though—maybe—he was finally on the receiving end of a stroke of good luck.
The Mayan would be searching for him, but it would take time, even if the Calakmul had an embedded GPS tracking device hidden somewhere on board. And it probably did. Novak’s boat did. Novak just had to find the device and disable it, because he did not want company. He kept his weapon close while he searched through all the cabinets and compartments above deck. All he found were life preservers, blankets, and lots of other navigation and safety equipment. Scanning the ocean to the west again, he was relieved to see nothing at all but gently surging waves. Then he headed down below and started tossing the girly-decorated salon and staterooms, one at a time, slowly and thoroughly. He found exactly zip in the way of additional condemning evidence. Certainly no smoking gun with a map to the Mayan’s home address. The interior made the killer appear to be a regular kind of guy, not the insane serial killer that Novak knew him to be. No alcohol of any kind to be found, unfortunately. Novak could use a couple of stiff drinks. No drugs, no porn, no indication of vices or obsessions, other than that pesky habit of slitting throats and ripping off the tops of victims’ heads.
This guy apparently lived aboard by himself and had zero personal interests. No mementos of family, no photographs, but lots of black clothes. No videos, no books, no newspapers, not much food in the galley. Nonperishable goods, for the most part: canned soup, rice, flour tortillas, crackers, lots of that kind of stuff. Bags and bags of miniature candy bars, the Hershey’s kind, dark chocolate and milk chocolate and Krackle bars. The guy definitely had a sweet tooth. The staterooms were pristine, beds made, everything just so. Orderly as hell.
This guy was a killing machine. Novak examined the scalps and then looked around the boat again, thinking there might be some clue somewhere as to who the victims had been: a name, or a photo for the Mayan to caress and enjoy on his off-hours. Novak wondered if some of those scalps had been taken aboard this very boat, their owners’ bodies disposed of at sea. Out in the middle of the ocean, the Mayan could weight them and watch them sink to the bottom, gone forever. But he hadn’t been so fastidious at the hijackers’ camp. He had gone about the beach methodically slaughtering everybody in sight, leaving a conspicuous trail of corpses.
Novak returned to the small room in the stern. He stood in the middle of that macabre space and stared at all the bloody souvenirs designating agonizing deaths. It was chilling to consider how these people had suffered, while he stood alone in the dusky light from the one lone porthole. Novak decided the Mayan needed to breathe his last. If it took Novak forever, he would get him. No trial, no prison, no parole. This room was evidence enough for Novak that the Mayan deserved whatever he got.
Sickened by the foul odor of the rancid dried blood on the hair, Novak climbed back up to the deck, breathed in fresh sea air, and tried to reach Jenn again on the boat’s sat phone. No answer. He felt another tingle of alarm, but Jenn had always been cautious. He wasn’t really worried about her, maybe just spooked a bit by the trophy room he’d discovered below. He scanned the horizon again, found no boats approaching, and then he froze when he heard a low thud come from below. The Ruger was out of his waistband and in his hand in seconds. The sound came again, very faint. It sounded almost like something rolling around on the floor, far belowdecks.
Novak descended the steps again and stood motionlessly in the main salon, listening. Nothing. Just the soothing sway of the chop. After several minutes, another thud sounded, coming from under his feet. Novak followed the noise up toward the bow and found nothing. He felt along the walls, which were lined with compartments for stowing gear. On the floor in front of them, he finally found a small handhold in the teak floor. A trapdoor, one that led down into the bilge. He kept the gun in his right hand and placed it up against his shoulder. Then he pulled up the door, and a sickening smell of rank, stagnant water almost made him gag. It smelled like a sewer down there, stomach-turning and foul. Four shallow steps led down into the dark hole. He could hear seawater sloshing around. A thud came again, louder now.
Squatting there, he hesitated a moment, his weapon now pointed down into the darkness below, not sure what he might find. Maybe dead bodies. Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be good. He waited, thinking it might be an ambush. But that didn’t make sense. He heard nothing else. No voices, no breathing, nothing except the sloshing of water as waves rocked the boat. He took one step down and felt along the interior wall for a light switch. His fingers touched one. He flipped it on.
Ducking his head, he gazed around the dank, nasty hole. That’s when he saw her—a little girl, maybe nine or ten years old. She was dressed in a short yellow nightgown with white daisies embroidered across the top. She was across the bilge from him, up against the hull, lying on some kind of a raised platform with a bed on top. It looked clean, with blankets and pillows, and was secured in place with ropes. One end had come loose and was bumping against the hull and making the sound he’d heard. Novak glanced around for the bilge pump, found it a few feet away, and switched it on. Then he stepped down into the water and waded over to her. It hit him ankle deep and felt slick and oily against his bare ankles.
The child was very small. She had long dark hair that was braided into pigtails. She looked as if she was drugged or unconscious, he wasn’t sure which. The bed had a rail to keep her from falling out, and the sheets were bright white and sanitary. There was a pink teddy bear tucked under her right arm. The other arm stretched out to a metal ring on the hull where her wrist was attached with soft cotton ties, the kind hospitals use to restrain restless patients. She had been beaten. Both arms were bruised up pretty good, and she had a swollen black eye. A clean white gauze bandage had been wrapped around her forehead at her hairline. Novak cringed inside, his first thought being that she’d been partially scalped.
Novak held on to the hull and put his fingers against the side of her neck. He felt a pulse, a slow, weak one, but she was still breathing. He could see her chest rising and falling, and when he leaned down close, a low wheezing sound came from her open mouth. God, he hoped she didn’t have a collapsed lung. Whatever it was, she looked in bad shape.
Novak searched the bilge and found nothing else of interest. It was warm down there, and would get warmer as the sun rose. He needed to get this little kid to a doctor. Right now, though, he just wanted to get her the hell out of that dank, dark hold. Who was she? The Mayan’s current victim, left behind to finish off later? But why would he want her? She was little more than a baby. Why would he hurt her and then carefully doctor the wounds he had inflicted? Just to keep her alive for more vicious abuse? The bandages were clean and applied with some expertise. Her face and arms and hair looked clean. That probably meant she hadn’t been with him very long. She could be the daughter of a victim, and he’d brought her aboard to hold for ransom. But that seemed messy for a pro. Maybe she was a young relative of Arturo Ruiz? Ruiz had sent the Mayan after Marisol. Maybe the child had been on his hit list, too. Or perhaps she was just a bargaining chip he was holding in case his relationship with Ruiz went sour. On the other hand, she could just be a witness that he hadn’t had time to get rid of yet. It had to be something like that. Maybe he hadn’t had the heart to cold-bloodedly kill a tiny child. Novak pretty much dismissed that idea. The Mayan was as ruthless and deadly as any man Novak had seen. He was keeping the child alive for his own selfish reasons. Whatever his motive, the little girl was now Novak’s problem and lucky as hell that Novak had found her.
Novak untied the restraint, and then he carefully slid an arm un
der her shoulders and the other under her knees. It felt like she weighed nothing at all. Very frail and tiny. The most terrible surge of fury roiled up and overtook him, black and awful and nearly overwhelming. His heart thudded faster. He was angry to think that anyone could hurt a helpless child the way this little girl had been hurt. He fought down the churning rage, because that’s not what the kid needed right now. She needed a doctor. He carried her up the steps and into the nearest stateroom. He lowered her onto the bed, got her under the covers, and tried to make her comfortable. He slid open a porthole above the bed and let in some fresh air and light. Then he found a towel, wet it, and dabbed the beads of sweat off her face and neck. She felt very hot to the touch, feverish, her face flushed. She was burning up with fever.
Novak cursed inside. How many victims of this guy was he going to have to rescue? First Marisol and then this little kid. He searched the boat for a medicine cabinet, wanting something to bring down her temperature, but found no painkillers, no antibiotics, no aspirin, nothing. He found ice trays in the fridge, wrapped some ice in a clean towel, and used it as an ice pack. He made up a couple more packs and tucked them around her body. That’s when he saw the cuts on her arms and legs, lots of little slits about an inch long, as if someone had sliced her over and over with a razor blade. This guy, this Mayan, was a devil on vacation from hell. It looked to Novak as if he had been toying with her, torturing her, maybe, or just frightening her to death. The wounds were superficial, but no less horrifying to a child feeling a blade slice into her skin again and again. Maybe the Mayan had been after information. But what would a little girl know that an assassin would be interested in? The whereabouts of her parents, maybe? Whatever the reason, this child had suffered greatly. Was still suffering.
