Wild Card

SIX

“Good on ya, luv. Take hold a’ me hand’ere and I’ll getcha right up.”

His shoulder-length golden mane sweeping around his tanned face in the onshore breeze, Blake the Bronze leaned over from the pontoon boat Annie had reserved and extended a sculpted arm toward the pier. He wore a pookah shell choker, a yellow tank top, paisley swim trunks with a lot of bright pink and blue in the print, root-beer-colored wraparound Oakley sunglasses with reddish-pink lenses, and flip-flops.

Annie reached out from where she and Nimec stood on the floating gangplank and let him help her onto the boat’s flat fiberglass stern platform.

“Okeydoke, mate, you’re next!” Blake shouted over the side at Nimec. “Or don’t you need an assist now?”

“Think I can manage on my own,” Nimec said.

He grabbed the boat’s rail, climbed aboard, and a moment later was standing next to Annie under the twenty-footer’s sun canopy. Both were wearing swimsuits and windbreakers, their snorkeling equipment in mesh totes on the deck. Nimec, in addition, had a pair of standard rangefinder binoculars on a strap around his neck. All around them a diversity of pleasure boats were making their way to and from the busy marina, one of them a double-deck cruiser booming hip-hop music from its cabin as it left a nearby slip.

Nimec pulled a face. “Loud,” he muttered.

Annie rolled her shoulders to the beat.

“Paa-aarty!” she said with a grin, playfully bumping her hip against his.

Nimec looked at her and, before he knew it, had a wet kiss planted on the tip of his nose — an instant frown-killer despite everything on his mind. He had deliberately failed to tell her what he’d hashed over with Vince earlier, and when she asked about it had just offered a few general words about them having to look into some things. No sense getting Annie disturbed over what were really just questions at this stage of the game. It was possible that by the time he and Vince consulted again, Vince might have cleared them up.

He put his arm around her waist and moved toward the middle of the boat, walking easily on the wide, well-balanced deck mounted atop its pontoon hull. Blake, meanwhile, had reeled in the aft mooring line, then started forward to do the same at the bow.

“It’s really great of you to take us out,” Annie said, turning to him. “I wouldn’t have even asked if I’d known we’d be imposing on your day off.”

Blake smiled as he unfastened the bowline from its support.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “The reefs’re in a favorite spot a’ mine, and it’s a joy sharin’ it with a lovely couple like yourselves.” He neatly wound the line in his hands and set it down. “Gem of an afternoon like this, it’s fair odds I would’ve gotten my bathers on and headed out to relax on me own.”

The Aussie went into the helm station, slid in behind its console, and adjusted the tilt wheel.

“Another bit an’ we’re off ’n’ away, won’t be more’n a half hour’s ride,” he said, and then tipped his head toward the plush lounge chairs to his left. “Settle back if you’d like, friends; the seats’re comfy’s can be an’ you’ve got acres a’ room. And if you lift the top a’ that ottoman there in front a’ your legs, it’ll open into a cooler full up with drinks ’n’ sandwiches, though I’d wait on the food till after your dive — cramps, y’know.”

Nimec sat with Annie on the cushioned chair, listened to the engine throttle up, and gazed out at the water.

He was thinking he might have enjoyed being a spectator to the aquatic goings-on at a coral reef under different circumstances.

Right now, though, he would rather have been headed out to get a closer look at those feeder ships he’d seen last night.

Wherever on the deep blue sea they might have gone.

“I believe I’ve covered it all,” Tolland Eckers said, and slid his GPS pocket navigator into the pouch on his belt. “If any of you still have questions, or need something clarified, let’s hear it before we get moving.”

None of the other three men assembled on the beach spoke. They were in a sandy little cove formed between two lumpish masses of black igneous rock, wearing skintight neoprene wetsuits with short trunks, and ankle-high zippered booties. Behind them, at the surfline, their semi-rigid inflatable strike boat sat where it had been delivered ashore, its scalloped Kevlar-reinforced hull painted bright yellow, a custom touch added to give it the appearance of a sport racer. And while the Steyr 9mm TMP compact submachine guns stowed in compartments near the speedcraft’s straddle seats could hardly be considered standard sporting equipment, Eckers had stressed that they were only to be used in an extreme pinch.

It was what had been loaded in with them that would be the unlikely weapons of choice.

Eckers looked from one face to the other. This was a team of skilled professionals, men who knew what they were doing. Having already made his critical points, he ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered to hammer on them again. But he also would not have led the group out himself under ordinary circumstances. The job they were about to launch was of greater consequence than most, and he decided it could do no harm for them to have a quick final review before kickoff.

“First thing to remember: Nature’s given us a window of opportunity. We have more speed than we should need, and water and sky patrols making sure nobody else comes near it,” he said. “It’s up to us to get in the window when it opens, get the job done, and get out.”

Eckers saw nods.

“Second thing: We can assume our targets will be the objects of an exhaustive search, and that they’ll be given equally thorough postmortems when they’re found,” he said. “This must — I stress must—pass for an accident under intense scrutiny. I don’t expect it to happen, but the moment one of us has to fire a shot is when we’ll know something’s gone critically wrong, got me?”

Eckers saw more nods around him and left it at that.

“Time’s come,” he said, and then turned toward their waiting craft.

The Aug Stingray was into its third pass of the overflight zone when its pilot sighted an immense yacht nearing the cordoned off area… surprisingly the first boat he’d encountered, but he’d heard reports of several perimeter interceptions on the shared communications channel.

He tapped his copilot’s shoulder, pointed to the tuna tower aft of the enclosed bridge.

“Looks as if’n ’twere headin’ out t’fetch some big yellers,” he said. “Gon’ be some bloody disappointed faces on that fishin’ tub, don’ ’e think?”

The copilot nodded, withholding a frown. The perils of multinationalism, he thought. A Frenchman who’d once flown with the DAOS special operations aviation unit in a squadron attached to Henri Beauchart’s Group d’Intervention, he often had to strain to decipher his fellow crewman’s pronounced Yorkshire accent.

“I’ll notify a patrol boat to turn them aside,” he said in perfectly enunciated English, and toggled on his radio headset.

Nimec had assumed the pontoon boat would provide a smooth, quiet, and comfortable ride — that was the whole idea behind its low-drag design — but he’d thought it would be kind of weak in the horsepower department. All told, though, it moved at a faster clip than he might have expected, and he guessed Blake the Bronze must have pushed it up to a speed of about forty knots getting them to the reef area.

In the stern with Annie, Nimec was also surprised by the sense of well-being that gradually came to possess him. It didn’t quite shut out his thoughts of what he’d observed at the harbor, and he would have felt delinquent if it had. But the pleasures of the ride swung him away from those thoughts, removed him from them mentally as he gained physical distance from Los Rayos, to find himself in a seemingly endless space absent of anything but blue water and sky. Within ten or fifteen minutes after setting out, he’d even ceased to notice other watercraft nearby. And while the faint, recurrent drone of patrolling helicopters would occasionally remind him of the island at his rear, its tug at his consciousness lost insistence as the trip went along, the choppers seeming far off and peripheral in their unseen flight patterns.

At one point he’d gotten up to lean quietly out over the rail, the breeze streaming over him, when Annie came over and gently took hold of his arm.

“This is how it’s always been for me on an airplane,” she said. “Even before the Air Force or NASA. When I was a teenager flying in my dad’s rattletrap Beech.”

Nimec had looked at her, smiled, gone back to staring out at the water.

They had been standing there together for a few minutes when her fingers tightened around him a bit.

“Pete, honey, look at them!” she said, and gestured excitedly to their rear with her other hand. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

Nimec had glanced down and seen the scythe-like dorsal fins and curved backs of dolphins breaking the water as a bunch of them raced toward the boat, stayed alongside it for a while, then shot past like light gray torpedoes.

He’d returned his eyes to Annie’s face.

“Beautiful,” he’d said, his throat inexplicably tight.

Fifteen minutes or so later Blake had cut the engine and come around out of the pilot’s station. Turning toward him, Nimec noticed a group of steel deepwater buoys some distance from the bow… far enough away, in fact, so that they might have been small red and green apples bobbing on the calm surface. He lifted his binoculars and had a look.

“That where the reef is?” he’d asked, wondering why they would have stopped so short of it.

Blake had shaken his head.

“Attaboy, ace — nice to see you payin’ attention even if you’re a tick off the mark,” he’d said with a throaty laugh. “I suggest you leave the sailin’ to me, though. We’re sitting right over the coral banks. The water’s shallow enough hereabouts, too right. Those warning buoys are to steer you ’round an underwater ledge three quarters, a half mile on… you wouldn’t want to conk into it when the tide’s low, and that’ll be soon enough by my figurin’.”

Nimec had grunted. Had his question really been that funny? Nothing like somebody having a chuckle at your expense, he’d thought.

But Blake had hardily slapped his back before he could get too annoyed. “C’mon, mate, hand off the binocs, an’ let’s see if we can’t get you an’ the missus ready for a dive,” said the Aussie.

Upon which he’d gone back across the deck to where they had deposited their equipment bags.

Although Nimec hadn’t needed assistance gearing up, Blake was determined to provide it, and it seemed more trouble than it was worth to even consider fending him off… a sentiment Annie indicated she shared with a private little wink. As she sat to slip into her fins, clip her snorkel to her diving mask, and fit the mask over her face, Blake bent over her to make some vague added adjustments, then sidled over toward Nimec and did the same for him.

“A few tips I’ll have you remember while you’re dippin’ under,” he said, fiddling with the strap of Nimec’s mask for no apparent reason. “Twenty feet down, twenty feet from the boat’s my rule of thumb. And don’t pet the cute little fishies, ’cause it can hurt’em. And don’t go reachin’ into any holes or crevices’cause some wonky creature hidin’ inside’m might want to hurt you.” He paused, looked the two of them over with his hands on his hips, nodded pridefully as if at a job well done. “Summin’ up, don’t bother anythin’ with scales, tentacles, or a jelly bod, or get bit, stung, or snagged on the coral and you’ll be jake… an’ much as I’d like to accompany you lovebirds, I’ll be up here keepin’ lookout if there should be any problems.”

They waited until he was finished talking, got up, and flapped toward the stern in their fins.

Crouching beside Annie on the dive platform, Nimec glanced back over his shoulder at Blake.

“Forgot to ask,” he said. “There sharks in these waters?”

Blake grinned from where he stood on the deck.

“Just of the laid-back variety, mate!” he said.

And before Nimec could manage a frown, Annie grabbed his wrist, let out a yip of frisky delight, and rolled into the water, pulling him in with a splash.

Steering his regular course to the yellowfin tuna grounds about thirty kilometers out from his dock at Los Rayos, Greger Fisk, the captain of the sportfisherman charter Norwegian Wind, had scarcely taken notice of the helicopters overhead. The least well-off passengers on his luxurious Netherlands-built Heesen were millionaires, and they were looked upon with near scorn by the truly prosperous aboard, who were in turn thought of as a bare step up from crude bourgeoisie by the wealthiest of the resort’s guests — sheiks, royals, and business tycoons of celestial power and financial means who would sail their own motor yachts or none at all, in search of prized finned specimens.

In the air for purposes of security, the helicopters were constants in these parts and, like hovering gulls and clouds, had come within range of the captain’s awareness only as familiar aspects of the scenery. To be sure, Fisk was used to them. But he had sometimes found it a comfort to see them in his first months captaining a ship based on the island, given that he’d known he must navigate his important and valuable patrons — prize specimens in their separate right — through a dangerous world of terrorists, hijackers, and modern pirates.

The coastal patrol boat with a Los Rayos Security emblem on its prow, however, caught his attention even before it came speeding up on his port side to hail him on its public address system. And unbeknownst to Captain Fisk, his newbie spotter on the radar-equipped tuna-and-marlin tower had reacted to the sudden, deafening alert with a startlement that nearly sent him tumbling down from his high platform to the bridge.

“You are entering a temporarily restricted zone, Norwegian Wind,” the voice blared over the cutter’s loudspeaker. “Inform us at once of your destination over intership channel twenty-two B — that is two-two-Bertha — and we will reroute. Over.”

Fisk reached for the radio handset on his helm console, identified himself, gave the coordinates of the tuna grounds, and then listened to the specifics of the detour with chagrin… It would cost him an hour, or even longer. Then he thought about the level of ire it would bring about in his fanatical anglers and almost shuddered. A year or so back, his ship had been just ten miles short of a teeming pod of fish when a British prime minister’s vacation yacht had crossed its path, the attendant patrol boat escort forcing him into a circuitous, lengthy, and in Fisk’s opinion unnecessary course change that had left his infuriated passengers with limp lines, empty hooks, and many, many vocal complaints.

He pressed his handset’s talk button, mindful of past experience. Perhaps today he might succeed in a compromise.

“Captain Fisk, again, coastal patrol. I roger your alternate coordinates,” he said. And then took his stab. “Request permission to stand by and wait if that would be shorter, over.”

“Negative, Captain. Our action will take a while.”

“I’m going to have some very unhappy passengers,” Fisk pressed.

“We apologize, Captain. This area’s off limits and must be cleared of traffic.”

Fisk felt the wind go out of him.

“Can you help me with explanations for when they chew my head off?”

“We’ve received a Mayday distress call and are taking appropriate action. That’s all I can tell you, Captain. Out.”

Fisk expelled a long, defeated breath and set the handset into its clip, wondering how serious the Mayday might be. With so many amateur boaters in the water panicking if they so much as got splashed by a wave, one never knew. Nine times out of ten it was something minor.

Captain Greger Fisk sighed again, girding for his announcement over the ship’s intercom, thinking he might as well throw himself overboard afterward and give the patrols a real problem to worry about.

Nimec and Annie swam a few feet from the boat in the warm, placid green water, then floated facedown on the surface and immediately saw the great reef below them.

It was, Nimec thought, spectacular. What he might have described as a sort of forest masquerading as crusted, irregular shelves of rock. The growth of new living coral flared off it in shoots, spurs, and willowy masses of different shapes, all of them covered in seaweed that ribboned out and out in long, drifting strands.

They kept looking down through their face masks a bit, pulling regular breaths into their snorkels. Then they filled their lungs and dove.

Nimec had expected to catch a glimpse of some underwater life, but the reef was teeming with creatures everywhere. It was, he thought, almost too much to take in all at once. Schools of tiny silvery-blue fish darting between coral branches that swayed and undulated in the gentle current; some spidery, leggy thing that fled through a nook in the formation in a scattery cloud of sand; a great bugeyed fish with iridescent red scales, blotchy blue spots on its massive head, and what seemed to be dozens of fins spraying from its sides. It at first moved slowly past them, and then put on a sudden, explosive burst of speed to plow away through a dense clump of plant growth.

Then Nimec felt Annie tap his shoulder, looked over at her, nodded.

They went up for air.

The racing boat moved at idle speed like a restrained thoroughbred, its twin 225hp outboards humming in low gear.

Beside his pilot in the forward bow seat, Eckers checked the time with his digital wristwatch, fingered on its compass display for a moment, and then shifted his glance to the GPS marine chart on his handheld. The latter device would have sufficed to give him all the information he wanted, but he was a cautious man, and a comparison check could only back up and refine his situational awareness.

He brought his binoculars up to his eyes, spotted the target at rest in the clear distance ahead, turned the zoom knob with his thumb, studied it more closely, and nodded to himself.

“Kick it, Harrison,” he said at last, glancing over at the pilot. “They’re ours.”

Nimec had plunged down for his fourth or fifth dive to the reef when he heard the distinctive thrum of an engine somewhere above. It made him curious. He turned to Annie, who was beside him exploring a huge knob of coral that was plastered with starfish and other tentacled, suctiony things. He pointed to his ear, then pointed toward the surface, and up they went to investigate.

On his deck enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, Blake was a touch perplexed when he noticed the yellow racer planing across the water toward him. This was not because crafts of that sort were rare sights in themselves, but because they usually came in pairs or threesomes… hard for a crew to stage a race if they didn’t have any competition. Course, he thought, these blokes might be on a solo practice run. Made good sense, since they were traveling at a moderate speed, and the environmentalists looked upon contests near the reef formations with sneering disapproval. Did all sorts of bad, said they in their cries for legal restrictions — damaged the coral heads, tore apart the seaweed growth, disturbed and injured the sea life. And who with a right brain and working eyes could dispute it?

Blake watched the racer continue to approach from starboard, the sound of its engines growing louder by the second. Then he thought about his lovebirds and glanced to the left, making sure they were still safely on the opposite side of his boat, where he’d last seen them… and there he found them surfacing for air within the approximate twenty-foot boundary he’d laid out. Fine couple, they were. And took instruction with no flapping of the lips, which made them all the finer.

He saw Pete wave to him, waved back, noticed him stay on top looking his way, and made the OK sign to let him know everything was all right, betting he’d heard the hum of the racer’s outboards and gotten curious. It was easy to hear a noise like that when you were underwater, tough to judge the direction it was coming from because of the way vibrations scattered.

Blake smiled. Maybe old Pete was worried he’d scram off with the boat. It was dotty to even think he’d be concerned about that, sure, and wasn’t something that struck Blake in a serious-minded vein… or not too much so anyway. Hard to put a finger on it, but there was quite a bit more to that fellow than might seem. Always on the watch, he was. And three or four thoughts deeper into his head than he let on.

Blake turned toward the sled-shaped racing boat again. It was still coming on apace, and had gotten near enough for him to tally a crew of four aboard, men in gray shortie wetsuits. A few minutes later it had almost pulled abeam and was throttling down.

He moved to the starboard safety rail, watched the racer slow to a halt in the water several yards away.

“Hello!” hollered the man seated beside the pilot. He was an American, to tell from his accent. “Embarrasses me to say this, but we’ve gotten ourselves lost.”

Blake stood with his hands on the rail. Well, he thought, that answered a question or two.

“Sorry to hear it, mate,” he said. “You out of Los Rayos?”

“And trying to find our way back,” the man replied with a nod. “Our GPS unit went on the blink.”

Blake gave him a commiserative look. Lord knew why, but it was just the sort of thing that happened with tourists.

“Got to love those gizmos… It’s why I always bring a good, old-fashioned reliable map for backup,” he said. “No need to fret, ’owever, I could shout you directions if you’d like. The island’s no more’n forty minutes due east, with a small twist this way ’n’ that.” He paused. “You gents set for petrol an’ supplies?”

The man nodded.

“No problems there, thanks,” he said. Then he tilted his head toward his pilot. “Hope I’m not imposing, but it’d be a help if we could have a look at that map of yours.”

Blake thought about it a second and then shrugged his broad shoulders.

“No imposition ’t all,” he said. “Pull yourselves broadside, toss a line across, ’n’ we’ll bring the two of you aboard — how’s that?”

The man offered a big smile.

“Sounds perfect,” he said.

“I ’ave a spare chart in this chamber a’ horrors somewhere, worst part’s findin’ it ’midst the rest a’ my junk,” Blake was saying a few minutes later. He was in his pilot station bent over a storage compartment below the butterfly wheel, the men from the racer’s bow seat standing behind him, their craft bound fast to his gunwale. “Soon’s I pull it out, I can get the route ’ighlighted with a marker an’ you’ll be on your way right quick.”

“Can’t tell you often enough how much we appreciate it,” Eckers said. He nodded to his companion, who reached into a belt pouch against his hip.

Blake fumbled in the compartment, moving aside a first aid kit, a pack of facial tissues, a bottle of sunblocker, a box of toothpicks, and a two-year-old program for the Matildas women’s soccer team with a feature article on a particularly sexy goalie.

“You blokes keep thankin’ me, I might start to believe I’m doin’ somethin’ that deserves it,” he said without turning, his hand still in the box. What on earth was a plastic bag filled with marbles, metal jacks, and a red rubber ball doing in there? One of these days he’d have to tidy up. “By the way, m’name’s Blake Davies. Didn’t catch either a’ yours.”

Eckers glanced at the man beside him, saw that he’d taken the blunt wedge of stone from the pouch into his hand, and nodded again.

“They call us Grim and Reaper,” he said as the rock was smashed forcefully against the left side of Blake’s skull.

Nimec had surfaced to look over at the pontooner several times after Blake flashed the OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t think much of it when he saw the yellow racer approach, except that maybe the Aussie had run across a couple of his water-loving buddies having their own little jaunt off the island.

On the instance he came up to see lines being cast between the boats, it drew his closer attention.

“Annie,” he said. “What do you make of ’em? Those guys who came in that racing boat, that is.”

Swimming in place beside Nimec, she watched a couple of them board the pontooner.

“They seem friendly with Blake,” she said, and kind of shrugged her shoulders out of the water. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Nimec said.

He kept watching the boat. Blake had gone around into his pilot’s console, followed by the two men.

“Pete?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you thinking something’s wrong?”

He took a moment to consider that, lifted his dive mask over his forehead.

“I’m not sure what I’m looking at, and I’d like to be,” he said, glancing over at her. “If that makes sense.”

Annie read the expression on his face.

“It does,” she said. “Should we go back to the boat?”

“Maybe I should,” Nimec said.

“You?”

“Right.”

“By yourself?”

“Right,” Nimec said, shooting another look at the boat. “Find out what’s up, then come on back.”

She shook her head.

“No, Pete. Where you go, I go—”

Annie broke off, the words dying on her tongue, her eyes grown wide with shock and confusion as she saw what was suddenly happening on the boat, happening all in a terrible second — the one man raising something in his hand, bringing it down on Blake’s head, then Blake slumping over the console, falling below it onto the deck.

“Pete!” she cried, and reached out to grip his arm. “Pete!”

Nimec turned to her.

“Annie, stay put,” he said.

“What about you?”

“I need to swim over there,” he said. “It’s our best chance.”

Annie shook her head again vehemently.

“How, Pete?” she said, clinging to him. “What can you do against them alone?”

He looked at her, unable to think of a reply.

And then the men aboard the pontooner made any answer he could have settled upon irrelevent as they hurried to the side of the boat, pulled guns from under their wetsuit jackets, and pointed them at Nimec and Annie over the safety rail.

“Over here,” one of them shouted in a voice that carried clearly over the water. “Both of you. Now.”

Tolland Eckers faced Nimec and Annie across the pontoon boat’s deck, the Steyr 9mm in his right hand leveled on them. He had donned thin black boater’s gloves as a precaution against fingerprints.

“It fascinates me how quickly a person’s situation can change,” he said. “Turn from one thing to another overnight. Or sometimes in the blink of an eye. You never know what might happen next.”

Still dripping water, Nimec stood there in the booties he’d worn under his fins before removing them on the dive platform. He lowered his gaze to where Blake lay fallen in a motionless heap, blood oozing from his temple to mat his thick blond hair against the side of his face. Then he shifted his eyes onto those of the man with the semiautomatic.

“What you did to him tells me everything I need to know,” he said.

Eckers shrugged.

“Does it?” he said. “The poor fellow was enjoying himself when he slipped and took a nasty fall. What I’d call a piece of bad luck, or couldn’t you see?”

Nimec nodded toward the other man, who was now busy loosening the ropes that secured the racer to the pontoon boat’s gunwale, his own portable weapon in a sling harness at his side.

“I saw your friend hit him with whatever was in his hand,” he said. “Go ahead and call that a fall, or anything you want.”

“You know what you know, is that it?”

Nimec didn’t answer.

Eckers looked at him and smiled coldly.

“It’s your knowing too much that changed your situation,” he said. “Changed it in a sudden, drastic way. Turning you from an invited guest to an interloper.”

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” Nimec said.

“Nothing to what I’m saying, is that it?” Eckers motioned toward Annie with the Steyr. “And you? Also without any ideas about why we’re all here? Or do you mean to keep them to yourself like your husband?”

She just stared at him in silence, as if simply trying to process what was going on. Eckers’s companion, meanwhile, had finished unfastening the lines between the boats and come around to stand slightly off to one side of Nimec.

“Whatever I saw, or you think I saw, I didn’t tell my wife.”

Eckers shrugged a third time.

“Maybe, or maybe not,” he said. “Sadly, I won’t leave maybes swirling around.”

Nimec felt his stomach tighten.

“Whatever you intend to do out here, you’re out of your mind to think you’ll get away with it.”

“Because?”

“Because of who I work for,” Nimec said. “Because they won’t let up on you or the people you work for.”

Eckers continued to look at him, his weapon steady in his grip.

“Accidental deaths happen,” he said. “Your employers can have suspicions. They can search, and investigate, and they can be left with their nagging doubts. But in the end, if the evidence still points to an accident, none of that will matter.”

Nimec was silent. He hadn’t wanted to use words like death or kill or murder, had hoped to protect Annie from hearing them. But while he’d done a lousy job of protecting her from anything so far, that might be about to change.

If the evidence still points to an accident, he thought.

But how could it, if both he and Annie had bullet holes in them?

He stood watching as Eckers glanced over at the racing boat.

“Take it out to the ledge,” he said to the two men inside it. “Kettering and I will join you shortly.”

The man at the wheel nodded, and a moment later the racer’s powerful engines roared to life. Then it turned in the water and sped off westward toward the buoys, churning up a long, white wake of foam.

“We’re almost finished now,” Eckers said, looking back at Nimec. “This may give you small comfort, but I’m a professional and will be”—he hesitated a beat—“as efficient as possible.”

Nimec had kept his eyes locked on Eckers’s, peripherally aware of the man he’d called Kettering sidling closer. How did they intend to do it? He needed to buy some time. Seconds, minutes, whatever he could.

“Except your plan won’t work,” he said, thinking hard. “You figure you’ll ride this boat out to the ledge, or outcrop, or whatever it is. Wait there till the tide goes down, make it look like it crashed and took on water, then head away with your friends. Could be you’ve even got a Mayday logged somewhere so you’re covered on that end.” Nimec paused a second, took a deep breath, wishing again that he could have spared Annie from what he needed to say. “But we won’t stand around waiting for you to drive us into the rocks,” he resumed, then. “Not if we’re going to die anyway. We’ll try to stop you and you’ll have to use that gun of yours to stop us. And the people who come out searching won’t stop till they find our bodies. You know that. You need them to find us for this to seem real. And they see bullet holes, there goes your accident.”

Eckers’s cold smile reappeared, but Nimec believed he saw something in his eyes that conflicted with it.

“Gamma hydrooxybutyrate,” he said. “Ever hear of it?”

Nimec looked at him. He hadn’t, but he wasn’t giving that away.

“It’s a drug classified as a sedative and anesthetic,” Eckers said. “Short form nomenclature, GHB. Common street names ‘soap,’ ‘scoop,’ ‘grievous bodily harm,’ ‘easy lay’… although by now the kids who use it for date rape have probably replaced them with a dozen others, our youth culture always being in a hurry to move on.”

Nimec watched him silently. Watched his eyes. And at the same time remained watchful of Kettering.

“As far as you’re concerned, the important things to understand about GHB are that it’s odorless, tasteless, and instantaneously induces rapid sleep or coma at elevated doses. And it becomes undetectable soon afterward,” Eckers said. “In fact, it’s synthesized from a chemical that’s normally manufactured in our brains… that’s present in every one of us… and that increases its concentration in a human body as death occurs. Which makes it a forensic pathologist’s nightmare, and a defense attorney’s dream. Especially in the form my own people have developed.”

Silence. Nimec had realized he was almost out of time, his thoughts racing along as he listened.

“Your drug doesn’t change anything,” he said. “You use it on one of us, you think the other’s going to stand and watch? Knowing you can’t chance shooting that damned gun of yours? Or you want to convince me you’ve got designer bullets that evaporate and close their own wounds?”

Eckers looked at him. Again something turned in his eyes. And again Kettering slipped closer to Nimec, easing slightly behind him, almost breathing down his neck.

And then Eckers extended the Steyr further in front of him.

“I don’t need both of your bodies to be found,” he said. “There’s Blake, whose skull will have been pounded by the ocean rocks. And then there’s one or the other of you that will be dredged up, it makes no difference whom. Two floaters, a third body lost to the sea, and that will be that.”

No, Nimec thought. No, it wouldn’t. Because the man holding him at gunpoint was professional, and smart enough to figure he’d probably have gotten in touch with somebody at UpLink about his sightings at the harbor, and that UpLink’s investigators would be more than suspicious if he was the one who disappeared. That happened, they would know without question what took place out here. They would know, and wouldn’t quit till they found a way to prove it.

Which exposed the gunman’s bluff. He needed Nimec. Needed his body intact to pull off his scheme.

Leaving Annie — and Annie alone — immediately vulnerable to the gun.

Nimec did not wait so much as another heartbeat to make his move. Glancing quickly around, he spun in a half circle and snatched hold of Kettering’s wrist with his right hand, wrenching it up and backward as he jammed his left shoulder against Kettering’s chest, driving into him with all the momentum he could summon. Kettering grunted and began to stumble backward, but Nimec held on to his wrist, seeing the hank of cloth bunched in his gloved hand, saturated with the goddamn sleep drug he’d been about to smother him with. Nimec simultaneously jerked the hand up again and twisted it over and around, slapping it over Kettering’s face, holding it there over his nose and mouth.

“Stop or I’ll kill the bitch!” Eckers yelled, waving his Steyr as he moved forward in a kind of charge. “You hear me, I said sto—”

“Down, Annie!” Nimec said, shouting over him. And she did, hurling herself flat to the deck as he whipped Kettering around in front of him, pushing his suddenly limp body between Eckers and himself while reaching for the stock of the submachine gun against Kettering’s side, tearing it from its harness, and getting his finger around the trigger to squeeze off a two-round burst.

His chest soaked with blood, Eckers wobbled on his feet a moment, looking straight at Nimec as Kettering sagged and then fully collapsed between them. Then his eyes rolled up in his sockets so that only their whites were visible, and he also dropped to the deck.

Nimec turned, hurried to Annie, knelt beside her.

“You all right?” he said, taking hold of her arm.

She nodded, started to push herself onto her knees, trembling all over.

“C’mon, honey,” Nimec said, helping her up. He shot a glance around toward the buoys across the water. “We’ve got to move fast.”

“That’s it,” said the racer’s copilot. He’d heard the report of the Steyr TMP come echoing across the water perhaps a second before. “They’ve done the woman.”

At the wheel in the silence following the gunshots, Harrison lifted his binoculars to his eyes and peered eastward. Having reached the safe passage lane marked by the buoys, yards from where the broken points of the ledge had emerged above the receding tide, he had only to follow orders and wait for Eckers and Kettering to bring the pontooner in their direction. By the time it arrived, enough of the formation would be out of the water for the pleasure boat and its unconscious passengers to be driven into the rocks, a seeming mishap that would claim the lives of both the guide and their prime target. The woman’s body would need to be transferred to the racer and disposed of separately, and Harrison assumed the job would fall on him, as it had with that bookkeeper and the hired men who’d come to take him off the island. Carving them up had been unpleasant but not unprecedented — Harrison did whatever was required and accepted his pay, that was all.

His lenses focused on the pontoon boat now, he suddenly straightened and cursed under his breath.

The racer’s copilot looked at him. “What’s wrong?” he said.

Harrison let the binocs sink down from his face.

“They’re still standing,” he said, disconcerted. “Both targets.”

A stunned pause.

“How about Eckers?”

“I can’t see him,” Harrison said.

“Kettering?”

Harrison had raised the glasses back to his eyes.

“No,” he said.

The copilot looked at him again. “Shit,” he said. “This is unbelievable.”

Harrison shook his head.

“You read reports on that Sword op,” he said. “There was nothing in them to indicate it would be simple.”

Silence.

“How do we carry on?” said the copilot.

Harrison reached for the ignition and their engine revved.

“First we’ll need to get on top of that boat,” he said. “Then we need to decide.”

His hands on the pontoon boat’s wheel, Nimec glanced back over his shoulder and spotted the racer approaching from the vicinity of the underwater ledge. When he’d heard its outboards come to life only moments ago, it had been too far off to see with the naked eye. The pilot was pushing it hard.

“Annie,” Nimec said. “Think you can hold us steady?”

Beside him in the pilot’s station, Annie stood gripping the radio handset she’d used to contact UpLink’s temporary facility across the channel, providing its operators with Nimec’s coded identifiers for emergency assistance. Nodding, she clipped it into place on the console, eased closer to him.

“I can try,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

Nimec looked at her.

“This boat’ll move at forty-five, fifty miles an hour if I really pour it on,” he said. “The racer can double, maybe triple that speed.”

“We won’t be able to outdistance it.”

“No,” he said. “But we might not have to.”

She shook her head to indicate her confusion.

“Think about it, Annie,” he said. “Those guys on our tail are handcuffed as far as how they can finish their business, same as the ones who stayed aboard with us. Their whole setup depended on making it look like Blake ran us into the outcrop.”

It took barely a second for understanding to flood Annie’s eyes.

“They won’t want to shoot,” she said.

“That’s what I’m betting,” Nimec said. “And fast as their boat travels, ours is a lot bigger and heavier. They try to ram us, it’ll be the racer that takes the worse beating.”

Annie nodded. Then, not quite lost to their hearing under the growl of the vessel at their rear, a low moan rose from where Blake lay sprawled on deck.

“He needs a doctor,” she said. “If we don’t get him some medical help…”

“I know, Annie,” Nimec said. “But we can’t do anything for him until we shake loose that chase boat… and for that I need you to take the wheel.”

She nodded again, shifted places with him.

“I’ve got us headed southeast toward that wilderness preserve Murthy talked about,” Nimec said, and motioned toward the instrument panel’s compass and GPS displays. “Keep us on course.” He hesitated. “And if there’s any gunfire, keep your head down.”

Annie looked at him, fingers around the wheel now.

“I thought we’re betting against that,” she said.

Nimec squeezed her shoulder.

“Just in case,” he said, and slid from behind the console.

Nimec examined the Steyr he’d taken from Annie’s attacker and set its firing lever to full-automatic mode. He’d already ejected its magazine, determined it had plenty of rounds left, then palmed it back into its slot. If he was right and the chase team was still locked into its original plan, a few bullets would be all he needed.

He stood with his back to the pilot’s station and looked out beyond the pontooner’s stern. The speedboat was close and getting closer, spray flying off to either side of its windscreen, water sheeting off its flanks, a white chop of foam trailing behind it. Seabirds squalled overhead or launched from the water in flapping clouds, terrified by the loud roar of its powerplants.

Nimec saw the racer angle off to starboard and hurried to the safety rail. Then he waited, his finger on the trigger.

The speedboat gained by the second. Came closer, closer, closer…

Finally it caught up, nosing past the stern, then rapidly pulling even with the pontooner’s keel, continuing to surge forward until the two vessels were moving along side-by-side.

Nimec stood there waiting some more. The racer trimmed speed to avoid overshooting its target, then veered in sharply as if to broadside it, but Nimec knew that was bluff for the very reasons he’d given Annie. The lightweight strike boat would get the worst of any collision.

He kept watching the racer as it clipped along beside him, a slim band of water separating the two vessels now. He saw the racer’s copilot move to its low portside gunwale, a Steyr in his hand. Then Nimec raised the barrel of his own gun to the safety rail’s upper bar, tilted it upward, and fired a volley high across the racer’s bow.

The copilot stared through his speed goggles, his gun pointed at Nimec over the gunwale. But Nimec didn’t think he would return fire unless directly engaged… these men were pros and it would be clear that his salvo had been a warning.

His gunstock against his arm, he met the copilot’s gaze and waited.

Whatever happened next, Nimec knew the call wasn’t his to make.

“I’m pulling off them.” Harrison said, his voice raised above the sound of the outboards.

The copilot glanced at him, his submachine gun still aimed at the pontoon boat.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

Harrison nodded.

“Those shots were a message,” he said. “He doesn’t want a fight and our orders haven’t changed.”

The copilot understood. Eckers had stressed that they were to avoid using their guns on either the boat or the Sword man, were to refrain from firing at all absent a deadly and immediate threat — and even then there must be absolutely no other recourse. The mission’s success hinged upon it looking like an accident.

He lowered the Steyr’s barrel from the gunwale.

“What now?”

“We radio Beauchart,” Harrison said.

“That gutless prick?”

Harrison nodded.

“Eckers is down,” he said. “Gutless or not he’s next in command.”

The copilot frowned at him. “I don’t like it,” he said.

Harrison wrenched the wheel to his right and went sheering away from the pontooner.

“Beauchart can have the choppers pick this up or do whatever else he bloody well wants,” he said. “It’s out of our hands from here.”