Unlucky 13

Chapter 87

Yuki heard the gun go off. She didn’t know who’d been executed, but she knew how the victim had felt. First the shocked terror of being pulled out of the crowd. Then disbelief. Then not-not-not ready to leave her friends, her family, her life because it wasn’t her time. Then the pleading, followed by…maybe relief in the sharp report of the gun. That she couldn’t know.

She kept her eyes down as she stepped around clumps of passengers huddled on the deck. She edged along the narrow path between the pool and the railing, keeping tabs on her new best friend, Becky, who was whimpering behind her, “Don’t let it be Carl or Luke. Please God. Not them.”

Yuki and Becky had been to the stinking waste bucket, each of them acting as a privacy curtain for the other, while a gunman in fatigues and mask watched over them with an assault rifle and hurried them along.

Taking along a buddy to use the bucket was more for company and support than for protection from men’s eyes. This late in the game, Yuki didn’t care who saw her squatting over a bucket. She just didn’t care anymore.

This ship was a prison camp.

And soon another hour would pass. Another one of them would be murdered.

Becky touched her arm and whispered, “This will be over soon. They’ll pay.”

“I know,” said Yuki.

Becky dropped down beside her husband and son, and Yuki headed toward the spot where Brady waited for her. He raised his hand and she went to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. He helped her down beside him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Freakin’ fabulous,” she said.

She handed him the bottle of water the gunman had given her. Brady twisted off the cap. He returned the bottle to Yuki, who took a few gulps and then passed it back to Brady.

Twenty yards away, on the other side of the pool, three guards leaned against railings. One smoked, one paced, and one talked on his radio, speaking to someone in their militia, checking in as they did every half hour.

Another goon was on the track above them. He swept the mass of prisoners with his torchlight, three or four times before shutting the light off.

Brady put his hand to the back of Yuki’s head and, drawing her close, kissed her temple. She hugged her knees in the chilly dark, glad for the comforting weight of Brady’s arm around her shoulders.

The guard who had been pacing went to the rail on their side of the pool. He flicked his cigarette into the water, then, still with his back to them, lit a match and bent his head. Brady was on his feet fast, like a panther.

The match was still burning when Brady reached his left hand around the man’s face and hooked his mouth with his fingers, getting a grip on his skull with his right.

It took less than the count of three.

Before the gunman even got his hands up, Brady had twisted his head with a powerful jerk.

The gunman went slack and Brady lowered him soundlessly to the deck.

Yuki put her hand over her mouth to muffle a scream as Lazaroff got up to help Brady. The two worked as one in the dark, wordlessly stripping off the dead pirate’s clothes and mask, then sliding his body under one of the lounge chairs piled nearby.

As soon as that was done, Lazaroff melted into the amorphous blackness of the crowd and Brady sat down beside her.

He lifted his shirt, took her hand, and placed it on the terrorist’s fatigues and mask. Then he put her hand to the waistband of his jeans, before wrapping his arm around her again.

My God. My God.

Brady had on pirate gear, and more than that, he had a gun.