In Too Deep (22 page)

Tally smiled. "And how long ago was that?"

"Twenty-four years. Twenty-four
good
years. The best. We were never blessed with children of our own. We came to Paradise, to take care of Leli'a, when Auntie's youngest sister died." While he talked, he polished off the pupus. "When she left for school, we opened the hotel to give us something to do other than make love all day." Henri grinned.

Michael stepped onto the lanai. The two men exchanged glances, then Henri pushed himself up with his hands on the table. "Better go back in and see what the boss wants me to do," he said with a lugubrious sigh.

"Thanks for the snacks," Tally said dryly, handing him the empty plate.

"No problem. I'll tell her you enjoyed them."

Still smiling, Tally glanced at Michael as he pulled out a chair and sat down. "Find my pearls?"

"No. They're gone."

Chapter Twelve

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"This never happen before," Auntie complained, huffing up the stairs with a handful of large, plastic garbage bags. She shuffled into Tally's room and started stuffing one of the bags with bits of leather suitcase she found on the floor, her mountainous bottom, draped in grape-colored cotton, pointed to the ceiling, her voice muffled by her own large breasts. Tally wondered how the poor woman could breathe in there. "I no like this nonsense. No, I surely do
not
."

"Thanks for the garbage bags." Tally tried to take them. Auntie held on. "There's no need for you to help. Michael's coming back to help me get everything cleaned up—"

"I no like some no-good travelin'
tané
comin' into my place of business and messing things up." Auntie righted herself, her face flushed and screwed up in anger.

Until Tally knew, 100 percent, that Leli'a was responsible for the damage to her room, and for stealing her pearls, she bit her tongue. "I'm sure you ar—"

"I'll be finding that—a
hi'o
!" Auntie held up a scrap of Tally's underwear. The pale pink cotton had been sliced into shreds. "What doin'
this
for? You tell me that?
No te aha
? Make no sense."

Tally reached for the bag the older woman was dragging about the room. "Let m—"

"Here, you take." The woman shoved the crackling plastic at her. "Auntie get new sheets. Fresh outta the bag from Sears catalog. Downstair. I be quick-quick."

Michael flattened himself against the door as Auntie stomped past him.

"I see we got some garbage bags," he said laconically, stepping into the room and surveying the damage. "No sign of Leli'a. But then she can't have gone far. Stop being so damn finicky. Everything's trashed. Toss it in here and we're done. Did you tell her Leli'a did this? And stole your necklace?"

She felt sick about the necklace. "No."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because I'm not one hundred percent sure she did. I'll have a little chat with the juvie first,
before
I involve Auntie."

"You'd probably cut the baby in half, too. Just to be fair. Fine. Your call." Michael scooped up the rest of her clothing off the floor and stuffed it into the bag. "Any of your clothes left intact?"

"Nope." Her fashion-conscious soul cringed at the desecration to her carefully selected, high-end wardrobe.

"Go into my room, help yourself to anything that'll work. My mast came in. I'm going down to the marina to work on the boat for a couple of hours."

Tally smiled. "What size bra do you wear?" She rather liked the idea of wearing Michael's shorts and T-shirts.

He walked up to her and dropped a quick kiss on her mouth. "Honey, leave off the bra. You don't need one. Besides, I like knowing you're naked under my clothes."

He started for the door, paused, and came back. He didn't touch Tally, but it was as though he'd tossed a sensual net over her as their gazes locked.

"You need to rethink your line in the sand, sweetheart. I find I'm not that patient after all."

The e-mail from his brothers was waiting for him on his computer when Michael went belowdecks.

Ah, the miracles of modern technology. The Musketeers could find him damn near anywhere. The message was brief, and pithy. Their code a mishmash of things each had learned over the years, and only the four of them could understand.

He'd kept them off his back for the last month. They knew
what
, and
how
, but he refused to tell them
where
.

He stood for a moment, scanned the missive once more. His brother Kane, he suspected, had sent this. Methodical, orderly Kane's renowned patience must've come to an end. Probably aided and abetted by his twin, Derek, and stirred up by Kyle. And the only reason they'd be
this
hysterical was if
Jake
had spilled his guts. Dolan fit into the family like the fifth finger on a glove.

Damn.

No way was Michael letting Church anywhere near his brothers. No fucking way.

Life was fragile. Death final. The double-edged sword of guilt and survival wasn't going to touch the people he loved most in the world.

He swiftly tapped out an equally cryptic response. Then routed it through various addresses, and set a time delay on it. They'd receive it on Friday morning. By then it would all be over but the shouting.

That done, he quickly assembled what he needed. He'd come to Paradise loaded for bear; everything from a little bang, to a giant big bang. He'd lucked out. Church's stash of ordnance was in such a confined space, it wouldn't take much to do a spectacular disposal.

It was its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Michael liked the poetic justice in that.

He slung the MK 138 satchel charge canvas bag casually over his shoulder, went topside, and locked the door behind him. The door wasn't meant to keep anyone determined out—but he'd know if anyone other than himself opened it. No one had boarded the
Nemesis
all day.

SEALs had the ability to travel very light, and very fast. He had to get from the marina to the cave, set the detonating timer, and be back in time for Auntie's luau without anyone noticing how long he'd been gone.

He guesstimated he'd been gone four minutes by the time he hit the beach. The sunset was spectacular, brilliant, and gaudy.

He ignored it as he jogged the three miles to the cove, the forty-pound satchel charge riding comfortably on his back.

The cliff face glowed devil dog red in the dusk light. Michael removed the pack, withdrew a small powerful pen-light, and slipped into the fissure.

It was twenty degrees cooler inside, the dark welcome. The anticipation that had hummed through him for months blossomed into a sensation that was almost orgasmic in its intensity.

"This big bang is for you, Bud."

God, Hugo had loved to blow things to hell and back. Matter of fact, so did he. Michael grinned. The narrow beam picked up interesting side passages, but he didn't waste time exploring.

He jogged across the sand to the back of the cave, then took the stairs two at a time, zigging and zagging his way to the top. As were most things in life, the rough-cut steps were easier to navigate with a little light.

The chamber was bathed with an eerie orange-red glow from the hovering sun. The crates were stacked six deep from floor to ceiling.

Four months ago, Church had pirated a vessel innocently disguised as a tanker, bound for a small African nation. How Church had discovered the vessel was carrying this amount of high-tech weaponry was still a mystery.

With a few well-placed people, he'd overtaken his quarry, boarded, killed all thirty-eight crewmen, and then made the tanker
Cheung Hu
disappear into thin air.

International intelligence—hell, entire
countries
—continued to search for the
Cheung Hu
. Good guys, as well as bad, would trip over their own protocol to get their hands on the ship's cargo.

And here it was.

Michael set the canvas sack on the floor and moved between the boxes, looking for a good spot. If, for any reason, anyone came up here before the transfer, he didn't want them stumbling over the bag.

It was all here. Stencils on the crates designated the contents in military jargon. CAR-15s, Ml6s, rocket launchers, all the necessary ammo. His heart pumped hard and fast when he saw the piece de resistance, the pulse generator.

The pulse generator was state of the art. The power behind this machine, if the damn thing worked like they claimed, would be off the charts. Uncle Sam would've liked a look-see, but Church had obviously offered it to the highest bidder. Michael was here to see that none of them got what they'd requested from Santa.

Jesus. He rested his palm on the crate, and closed his eye. Logic had told him Church would keep this baby as the trump card. The high-bidding tangos must've negotiated the pulse generator into the deal.

The difference between Michael and the rest of Church's pursuers was that he'd known where to look.

He'd recognized Church's work. Many modern-day pirates kidnapped their victims, or set them adrift in one of the life boats, tied up, but relatively unharmed. Church's M.O. was to brutally murder the crewmen before loading the bodies on one of the lifeboats.

He took sadistic pleasure in his work, and it showed. No one was safe. He took boats of all shapes and sizes, either selling them, or using them in his piracy business with deadly effect. No one saw him coming. He was far-reaching in his target of cargoes. Be it ordnance, oil, or sugar. He'd discovered weapons when he'd taken the
Marie Jose
last year and it had already become a lucrative branch of his thriving operation. Church had quickly made a name for himself.

Terrorists had a voracious appetite for weapons and explosives. Church made their dreams come true. He delivered what they wanted, when they wanted it. He had the attention of every major power in the world. So far, he hadn't been caught.

Tahiti was well off the normal beaten track for pirates. Paradise was the perfect spot to bring the ordnance, hide it, send out for bids, and wait.

No hurry.

Lieutenant
Wright would've done it by the book, captured him, and brought the sonofabitch to trial.

Michael was going to write the end to Trevor Church once and for all. By fair means or foul. Whatever it took…

… and, as Church had done to Hugo, smile while he offed him.

Michael found a nice little hidey-hole between two crates of stick dynamite, neatly boxed against the east wall. It was a tight fit, but perfectly obscured, even if someone did make a last-minute inspection before the buy.

He returned to the top of the stairs and brought the satchel back with him, squeezing between the rough wood crates before hunching down awkwardly to tuck the shoulder bag into the space between the boxes.

Normally he'd prime with a nonelectric blasting cap on the end of a section of time fuse, or use Primedet, but in this case he wanted more than an hour or so. He wanted
twenty-four
hours.

He set the timer for seventeen hundred hours on Thursday. The handshaking would happen Thursday evening after everyone arrived. The transfer was scheduled to take place Friday morning.

Timing was everything.

He and Jake had worked on this for days. Once set, there was no going back. No "Mother may I?" No room for error. On Thursday at five in the afternoon, this cavern was going to blow, and with it, Church's ordnance, his clients' faith in him, and half the frigging cliff-side. Nothing anyone said, or did, could change the course of events.

The explosion would trigger every intelligence community with satellite access.

It had to be this way. Church had powerful means of persuasion.

Michael had caved once.

He wouldn't do it again.

He paused with his fingers on the mechanism and smiled grimly. Even if things turned to shit, and for some reason he
didn't
exterminate Church, there was no one on the planet, himself included, who could turn this baby off now.

Knowing it was unlikely for anyone to see the dark green canvas bag, he nevertheless spent another precious twenty minutes efficiently rigging a set of phony M700 fuses, tangles of wires, and enough smoke and mirrors to keep anyone busy from now until seventeen hundred hours on Thursday, trying to disable his handywork.

One last check.

Everything in place.

No room for error.

Perfect.

He rose from his cramped position. A feeling of completion descended over him. For the first time in nearly a year, the forces wailing inside him stilled, and a familiar calm settled. Soon Hugo would rest in peace. Soon.

One more timer to set…

Then time to party.

Michael spent a couple of extra minutes standing on the beach, watching the approach of a tanker far out at sea. No coincidence, the tanker was arriving to remove Church's prize. Because of its size, it would probably drop anchor beyond the reef in readiness for the transfer on Friday morning.

Michael grinned as he walked around the hotel and headed back toward the sound of drums.

"Sorry, pal. You're shit outta luck."

The setting for Auntie's luau was the area behind her hotel. The watermelon and mango color of the setting sun illuminated the tropical clearing surrounded by lush vegetation and tall coconut palms, making everything look almost surreal and otherworldly. Flame trees, in bursts of fiery red, breadfruit trees with their large, delicately etched leaves, and brilliantly hued bougainvillea mingled with lacy green and yellow, big-leafed vines and other flowering shrubs to make up three sides, while the ocean and the Technicolor sky made a dramatic backdrop for the fourth.

The perfume of camellias, frangipani, ginger, and jasmine combined in a thick, heady fragrance, assaulted already overloaded senses.

The Garden of Eden.

Michael wasn't a fanciful man, but the brilliant colors of the evening sky and exotic flowers, coupled with the rhythmic beating of the drums, were enough to give any man pause.