Drone Threat

66

Pike stared at the barrel of a pistol. His hands were raised. She stood well outside of his arm’s reach. The weapon was rock steady in her two-handed grip. The Korean was a pro, for sure.

“Irony is a bitch,” Stella said.

“I’m not following you.”

“Tamar was my friend. We ran an op together with Pearce, right here, in these waters.”

Pike wanted to bargain but the cold rage in her pitiless eyes told him it was pointless.

Stella motioned with her pistol. “Turn around.”

Pike hesitated. Her fingertip slid gently from the trigger guard to the trigger. Not good.

He turned around.

So this was it, he told himself. He faced the wide blue Pacific and its vast pale horizon. Tiny whitecaps shimmered in the morning light. He could imagine worse ways to go than a bullet to the back of the head, staring at the sea.

“She was an honorable woman and you’re a piece of shit,” Stella said. “I want those to be the last words you ever hear.”

“Technically, my dear, the last words—”

Stella clocked him on the back of his skull with the butt of her pistol. Hard. He moaned as he fell, hitting the deck with a sickening thud. He wasn’t dead. She was sure of that.

Couldn’t be dead.

That would ruin it.

Pike woke, eyes fluttering, surprised he was still alive.

His head throbbed, an excruciating headache. His shoulders were killing him, too, and pain shot down the length of his back. His wrists were cuffed to the broad wheel of his brand-new yacht, hands purpling. The weight of his body was suspended from his wrists as if he were crucified in reverse on a silver, circular cross.

He stood up on wobbly legs, the locked wheel supporting him. He shook his head to clear it.

He remembered.

That crazy Korean bitch. Something about irony.

He looked around. Miles offshore. Nobody around.

He called out. She was gone.

Thank God for that.

The cuffs dug into his wrists. He twisted them. The plastic bands dug in deeper. He cursed. Tugged again, hard. Tendons popped. He screamed at the top of his lungs, panicked, raging.

A muffled explosion forward shook the deck beneath his feet.

That caught his attention. He listened.

Utter silence.

Except for the gurgling noise.

What the hell?

He twisted all the way around, his stiff neck barely able to rotate enough to look directly behind him.

A boat. About a half mile away.

He squinted. He saw the Korean standing on the bow of another boat with a pair of binoculars.

The deck began tilting forward beneath his feet.

He whipped back around and the deck angled further.

It was going down.

Fast.

Stella watched Pike scream and flail, his wrists still pinned to the big silver wheel. She could hear his anguished cries even from here. Probably from the pain in his two wrists, now broken, but maybe from sheer terror.

She hoped it was both.

The bow submerged, filling with tons of dead ocean weight. The stern stood high out of the water like a shark fin.

She zoomed in on Pike’s manic, jerking dance as the helm filled with surging sea. A moment later the rest of the ship followed the bow, plunging beneath the surface of the cold Pacific, Pike at the wheel, his screams cut off, steering a course for a deep blue hell.

She lowered her binoculars. Tossed the remote-control detonator over the side.

Her phone vibrated. She checked the message. It was Ian.

“14Gipper.”

She smiled. Good timing.

Ian was a good man and a great boss. He owned the company now.

She was glad he decided to tie off the loose ends. They owed Pearce that much, even if he didn’t ask for it.

She texted Ian back. “24Gipper.”

She wished she could tell Pearce it was over now, but he was gone. So was Myers.

Off the grid. Nobody knew where, not even Ian.

They were on a boat, she heard.

She smiled.

Ironic.

She prayed they were happy.