Close Protection (19 page)

Ramon looked down at his watch. 10am. Time to move.

He pulled the wetsuit out of the cargo hold and put it on. He hated wetsuits, they made him feel like he was drowning whether he was in the water or not. But even the warm waters of the Gulf would freeze his body and sap his strength if he didn’t wear it.

Gabe had “borrowed” a dolphin from God knows where. The dolphin was a submersible, impeller driven personal watercraft. Basically, an underwater motorcycle. He’d trained on it, way back in the day, but never thought he’d actually use one. It wasn’t much faster than a good swimmer with fins, but it was a hell of a lot less work, and the GPS system would make sure that he arrived on time and on target.

The damn thing weighed a ton. It had an inflatable swim bladder that would keep it afloat, but Ramon didn’t understand how it didn’t sink like a stone. He heaved it overboard, dropped anchor, and jumped into the cool waters of the Gulf of Mexico. On his back was a wet bag with a carbine and a handgun, and one spare magazine for both. He did not intend to turn this expedition into a shootout, but he was prepared should the situation arise.

He took the controls of the dolphin and submerged into the bright blue water. He’d stay near the surface until he was within half a kilometer of the boat. Then he’d have to descend to fifteen feet or so, just to be safe. Ramon did his best not to look down into the impenetrable depths of the ocean beneath him. He knew well enough what lurked down there, and as long as they stayed where they were, he’d be happy.

The trip took a little more than an hour. It was an uneventful ride. Apart from a small school of fish that came to investigate their strange visitor, it was just empty blue ocean the whole way. When his GPS said he was getting close, he dove down into the midnight blue expanse of water beneath him and continued the rest of the way in that murky zone between light and darkness. Looking up, he could still see fairly clearly. The yacht was huge. Ramon was used to big boats, but some how he’d never gotten
used
to them.

Ramon was hoping that all of the security on the boat was tending to the guests. They’d be looking for intruders, sure, but their search would hopefully not include underwater attackers. He surfaced next to the boat and suction cupped the dolphin to the underbelly of the yacht. He didn’t have a lot of faith in the big plastic disc to keep his escape plan in place, but it was better than nothing.

He was still invisible from the top decks of the boat. The curvature of the hull blocked him from vision, just the way he wanted. Climbing aboard the dolphin, he pushed off a little from the boat and looked above him. There was a lower deck above him, used for loading and unloading at port. There shouldn’t be anybody there now, since port was so very far away. He opened his wet bag and pulled out the grappling hook. It went over the railing and caught on the first toss. Ramon tugged it, saw that it was in place, and began to climb the knotted rope up to the ship.

Lena was in tears when she was whisked below deck for pictures. The guests would mingle above her while the crew prepared the ballroom for the reception. She knew that Ramon was still in the dungeon in Florida. She’d heard Zeus order two goons to kill him before they left. But she’d still hoped.

Those dreams were dead now, and she tried to make herself focus on the challenge at hand. She had a new life with new struggles. She’d taken what Marie had said to heart. She couldn’t change that now. She needed to survive until she could.

She put on her best fake smile for the pictures and pretended to be in love with her terrible husband. The pictures seemed to go on forever. They walked past the presidential suite and Damien pointed it out to her.

“Guess what’s going to happen in there as soon as we go to bed?” He stretched his arms out and yawned. “I’m already feeling sleepy. Maybe we should skip the reception.”

His mother reached up behind him and flicked the back of his ears with such tenacity that everybody in the wedding party turned around to see Damien clutching his ear and pouting. He looked back at her with a scowl, but she paid no attention to his childlike response. Lena didn’t understand why everyone was always so hard on their mother-in-laws.

A man in a poorly fitted black suit came up to Ivan and whispered in his ear. He looked around and whispered something back to the man who put his hand on his holster and ran off.

“What’s wrong?” Lena asked.

“Nothing sweet flower. Just maybe we have some trouble. All taken care of, no worry.”

Even Ivan was doing his best to play the doting in-law. It was terrifying.

Lena’s heart skipped. Over the last few days, she’d gotten used to “trouble” being a thinly veiled euphemism for Ramon. She knew better than to let herself get her hopes up, but the smile she wore for the rest of the shoot was a little more genuine.

Her hopes crashed when the man came back fifteen minutes later and told Ivan that everything had been taken care of.

Lena learned at the reception that a pontoon boat full of men had tried to take over the boat but that the combined security forces on the boat had handled them without incident. A few of the guests had been spooked, and one guard stationed at the loading deck had been knocked out and was still unconscious, but otherwise, no harm had been done.

Zeus didn’t look well, but he hadn’t since they got to Cuba. He kept fixing his collar, smoothing back his hair, looking over his shoulder. He was nervous about something.

Ramon did not envy the headache that the guard on the loading deck was going to have when he woke up. The man had seen the grappling hook hit the deck, but must not have realized what it was. He walked right up to the railing and looked overboard just as Ramon reached the top of the rope. By reflex, Ramon grabbed the man by the back of the neck and slammed his head forward into the railing. He dropped instantly. Ramon pulled up his rope and tucked it back into his back, trading it for the handgun. He searched the man and found an earpiece with a radio and a keycard. The keycard got him into the cargo compartment. Just after he entered, the bulkhead door across from him began to creak open. Ramon dove behind the only thing he could, a big crate, and listened.

“T minus five minutes. Are your people ready to move?”

“They’ll make a big noise. I’ll spring them as soon as security shifts to you. Do you have eyes on target?”

“Zeus is with him now.”

“Remember, clean shots. If you hit the boy, we’re fucked.”

“Ready to move out?”

The bulkhead door slammed behind them. Ramon looked out and saw that the coast was clear.  So
this
had been Zeus’s plan? Take out Ivan? Maybe he thought he could control Damien through Lena. Maybe he thought he could install Lena as the head of the Acala crime family and take on a whole new empire. But what about the suitcases? Ramon was certain that they were bombs. Nothing else made sense. What the hell was he going to do with those?

Ramon had considered his encounter with Zeus’s men a fortunate one, even before he realized that they had left him two tuxedos. He found the larger of the two and dressed himself. It would make getting around a lot easier than in a wetsuit.

As he was straightening his bowtie and putting in his stolen earpiece, the bulkhead door opened again, catching him off guard.

“Where the fuck have you been? Quit jerking around and get back above deck. We’ve got some trouble. All hands on deck.

Ramon followed the man up to the top of the ship. There were a few dozen people milling around. Half of them were probably security. It didn’t look like anything was wrong.

Then he heard shots. The security contingency of the crowd immediately identified itself by putting in earpieces and assuming a more vigilant posture. The guests must have gotten used to lots of strange noises, because none of them seemed to realize that somebody on the boat was shooting.

“Suspects detained on deck three. Transferring to detention now.”

The other guards stood down. Ramon moved through the crowd. He tried to relax and blend in, but knowing that he was dead if anyone on the ship identified him made that tricky.

He was looking for Lena. She was on this boat somewhere. It looked like the wedding ceremony had just ended, and there were no throngs on the above decks wishing good luck to the new couple. They must have gone below deck. It was just after 1:50. Ramon didn’t know what, if anything, would happen in ten minutes, and that made him very nervous. He kept a careful ear on the radio in his ear, wishing that he had any better way of staying ahead of the curve.

Following a chatty couple, he went below deck and continued his search there. His disguise was working perfectly. None of the security people knew all of the security people, everyone just assumed that the musclebound freak with the earpiece and the bad suit was somebody’s detail. It would work as long as nobody looked at him too closely. He moved in straight lines when he could, hesitant to turn around blind corners and potential run right into Zeus or one of the brothers.

“What happened.”

It was Lena’s voice. He heard a man that he didn’t recognize tell her that everything was going to be alright. Ramon peeked around the corner and saw Lena with Damien, Zeus, and another older couple that he assumed were Damien’s parents. There were a few other people with them, a photographer and some others that were probably security. Ramon couldn’t approach them, and he couldn’t exactly sit here lurking around the corner. The decision of what to do was made for him when he heard another volley of shots fired somewhere below deck.

“I’m taking Lena,” Zeus said.

The other man swore and stormed down the hallway towards Ronan. He had Damien with him. Ramon had to think fast. Lena and Zeus were headed the other way. When Damien and his parents were about to turn the corner, Ramon sprinted around it with his hand on his gun and his other at his earpiece. He nearly knocked Damien over, but nobody would have guessed that he was just another dumb guard trying to do his job. He turned down the hall where Lena and Zeus disappeared and glanced back to see that he had not been made out.

He followed them through the bowels of the ship, around corners and up a flight of stairs. They went into a private room and closed the door behind him.

There had been at least two sets of gunshots since the end of the wedding. Lena had no idea what was going on, but she was scared. Zeus grabbed her by the arm.

“I’m taking Lena,” he said.

Damien went the other way with his parents. Zeus dragged her through the winding hallways of the bottom of the ship like a child who carelessly swings their doll into corners and bulkheads and pipes. He would not release her wrist and he would not slow down. They went up a flight of stairs and turned into the presidential bedroom that Damien had taken her to earlier. He slammed the bulkhead door behind them and sat down with her on the bed.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “There are men on the boat. They are dangerous. You need to stay right here. Someone will come and get you when it’s safe. If they are not here by 2:30, you need to get off the boat. It doesn’t matter how. Jump if you have to. Cuba is five miles due south.”

She nodded and watched as Zeus left the room. It was already 2:02. Why the hell did she need to get off the boat? Maybe this would buy her another night free from Damien. Maybe this would buy her a
lifetime
free from Damien.

Not one minute after the bulkhead door closed behind Zeus, it began to open again.

“That was fast,” she said.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t faster,” said Ramon.

“Ramon!” Lena shouted. He held his fingers to his lips and looked around to see if anyone heard her cry. “Ramon!” she whispered as she ran from the bunk to his arms. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him and held her and kissed her and she hugged him and cried because in all her life she had never been so happy to see anyone as she was to see him then.

“I thought you were dead,” she said, her cheek pressed to his heart.

“It was close. But we aren’t out of the woods yet, and I think that everyone on this ship might be in danger.”

“What do you mean?”

“Zeus was making bombs in your garage. Big ones. I saw him loading them into the truck right after you left.”

“He said that I should be off the boat by 2:30.”

“It’s 2:05 now,” he said. “I don’t see why we should wait around.”

“We have to warn the people,” Lena said.

“How? There have been a dozen shots fired in the last half hour and they’re still up there dancing and drinking.”

Lena looked at a very full decanter of brandy and at the sheets on her bed. The room was very full of very flammable things.

“I like how you think,” Ramon said.

They stripped the bed and stuffed the sheet into the mouth of the decanter. The silky material turned a translucent amber color as it soaked up the whisky. Ramon rifled through the drawers of a small table with an ashtray and a cigar cutter on top and found a butane lighter.

“Are you ready?”

Lena nodded.

“Then let’s get out of here.”

“I don’t think so,” Zeus said. He was standing in the doorway, furious. Ramon raised his pistol but the big man was already on top of him. He never would have guessed that the old bastard could move so quickly. Ramon dropped the gun when Zeus slammed into him. He managed to slip to the side and avoid getting pinned under the giant man. They squared off. Zeus made a few feints trying to get Ramon to commit to something. Ramon was a big man, but he looked small next to Lena’s step-father. He was an inch shorter, and at least a hundred pounds light.

Zeus reached for Ramon’s arm and missed. Ramon countered with a quick jab that caught Zeus square in the face. The big man didn’t even seem to notice. Ramon hit him twice more in the nose before he got his guard up. Apart from a trickle of blood, it was impossible to tell that Zeus had just been hit three three times.

The room was small and didn’t afford Ramon a lot of room to move. Zeus knew this and approached him slowly, trying to corner him. Ramon was fast. He struck on Zeus’s open side and slipped under his arm near the wall and got behind him again. The old man lurched forward, caught off balance, and Ramon got a haymaker into his kidney. This caused Zeus to cry out and stand up straight, his back rigid with pain. Ramon attacked the back of his knee and tried to bring the big man down, but Zeus swatted his leg away with laughable ease.

Lena climbed up on the bed to avoid Ramon’s desperate scramble to avoid Zeus’s next charge. She knocked the decanter over and what had not already been absorbed into the sheets spilled onto the bed.

Zeus ran Ramon into the wall, grabbing him by the shoulders. Ramon landed a few blows into Zeus’s immense gut and a knee to his groin, but the big man did not let him go. Zeus slammed him into the wall. Ramon’s head made a nasty crack as it struck metal. Not a second later, he whipped it forward and connected his forehead with Zeus’s nose. He grabbed his face with both hands and Ramon slipped between his legs,both of their blood running down his face.

Zeus turned around, enraged. Ramon was still on his back. The floor was slick and he slipped as he tried to scramble to his feet. He looked scared.