The Pirate (3 page)

Laz didn't know if he'd stay in this business if he had a woman like Olivia waiting at home for him.

“Laz?” Savage said through the wireless earpiece.

“Here.”

“We just got word that the pirate group is moving to attack tonight. They are looking for Americans and they had some intel on our doctors. Someone in that group has a connection to a U.S. Senator.”

“Nice. Who is it?”

“It's the woman…Daphne Bennett, she's the ex-wife of Senator Paul Maxell,” Savage said.

“Fucking hell. That's all we need,” Hamm said.

“Thanks, Savage, we will handle her protection here,” Laz said. “Tanker out.”

“Why did they let her come here? Don't they know what kind of hotbed this is?” Hamm asked

Laz had no idea what motivated anyone to do anything. He only knew that he and Hamm and the rest of the Savage Seven would do their damnedest to protect Daphne and the other doctors in their group.

“I guess it doesn't matter,” Hamm said.

“Not really. She's the kind of bait that could draw Samatan out of hiding.”

“Indeed. She'll make nice bait but I'm not sure she'll agree. And capturing Samatan is our goal,” Hamm said.

Getting Samatan—the leader and possible trainer of most of the pirate groups that operated in this area—was their ultimate goal. The man was elusive and deadly. And, Laz suspected, smart. Samatan had been operating in this area for over three years and had never been caught. He was very good at raking in the dough.

“We'll do it without using the woman,” Laz said. “We always get our man.”

“Yes, we do. I'm not sure I like this setup with the civilians.”

“No one does. It's really the wrong place and wrong time for them to be here.”

“Damned straight,” Hamm said.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Check the radio room and the communications that have gone out. I want to know if they found out about the doctor from someone onboard this tanker.”

“Will do.”

“Let me know as soon as you find anything. I want to keep a low profile on the radio waves if we can. Not contact Savage again or have him back on the ship.”

“I think we can manage that,” Hamm said, walking away.

Laz stayed where he was—staring out over the sea. One of the reasons he'd always liked being on the water was the sense of isolation. That feeling of being alone in the world. He rubbed the back of his neck. No doubt a therapist would have a field day exploring why he needed to be alone.

But he didn't give a crap. He liked it. And tonight in the quiet before the storm that he knew would be coming he felt at home with his place and purpose and that was enough for him.

Lately he'd felt…empty. Unsure of his reasons for always moving on. Maybe it was the fact that both Savage and Mann had married. It made him aware of the fact that he was closing in on forty and still alone.

He checked his weapon and walked across the deck. Laz pulled his night-vision goggles out of his pocket and put them on. He skimmed the horizon around the boat and saw…nothing. Maybe the faint shadow of something but nothing concrete.

Damn, he was restless. He really wished that Fridjtof had given him an excuse to fight. He needed the physical release of sparring with someone.

He sent a wordless message to Savage using clicks on his wireless mike and earpiece to be on alert that the pirates may have been signaled and continued about the business of running the ship on alert for an attack from pirates.

Laz tried not to think of the lovely doctor who might be risking her neck by just being on this mission, but it was hard not to. She had captured his attention whether or not he wanted the distraction of her. His secret fantasy woman had dropped in his lap—here of all places.

He had combed bars and bowling alleys back home looking for a woman like Daphne…hell, that was probably why he hadn't found her. She wasn't a honky-tonk barfly but a real sophisticated woman.

He didn't waste time worrying about the class differences between them. He knew that he could overcome any of those superficial differences. Talking to her tonight had made him realize that he wanted to overcome them. He wanted to have something with Daphne. If it turned out to be a fling, well he knew he'd be better for it.

Damn, maybe it had been too long since he'd had some R&R. Maybe what he should have done before they'd left Madrid was found a lovely Spanish señorita and spent a few days in her bed.

But somehow he suspected no matter how many women he'd had, Daphne still would have affected him the way she did. If the threat of pirates wasn't imminent, he knew he'd have found a way to seduce her tonight.

“Laz, you there?” Savage said in his ear.

“Go ahead,” Laz said.

“Wenz has picked up an unmonitored call coming from fifty nautical miles from your location. This beacon sounds like it might be a distress call.”

“Do you think it's the pirates?” Laz asked.

He crossed the deck quickly and took the stairs leading to the bridge two at a time.

“Thor, take a break. I've got the bridge,” he said to the crewman working in the bridge.

“Yes, sir. I've been dying for a cigarette,” Thor said.

“Enjoy,” Laz said. Once the man was gone, he pulled up the navigation maps on the computer.

“Go ahead with the coordinates, Savage,” Laz said.

Savage gave him the coordinates and Laz logged them into the computer program. “We don't have a history of attacks in that area.”

“Affirmative. Check your logs and let me know if any previous captains experienced distress calls before being attacked.”

“Will do,” Laz said. That was one way to get his mind off Daphne and back on the job, he thought ruefully.

It wasn't usual for him to woo a woman, and he'd never been tempted before this. The job—this mission—was the most important thing in his life. Like all the missions before this one. And the ones that would come after.

The lovely doctor was just a woman, and he knew he'd do well to remember that. She was someone he could enjoy for the length of this mission but beyond that she was from a different world.

And a man who changed his name and his persona every few months wasn't the kind of man who could offer her anything more than a few hours' pleasure in bed.

And he did want that. She was sweet yet sexy at the same time. She was smart and sassy and everything he wanted in a woman.

He shook his head. The job, he thought. He needed to stay focused on the job. Men who didn't often ended up dead.

And he sure as hell wasn't ready to check out of the game yet.

D
aphne was a bit unsure of herself this morning. Her “alarm” last night had been for naught and she felt very foolish. The rest of the team didn't censure her and they all still remained on guard. Daphne and Bob were still planning to send a message to Paul as soon as they received permission from the captain.

Bob was seasick and asked her to wait a few hours before they went to use the radio and contact Paul. She wondered if he was having second thoughts now that it was daylight. She was. With the heat of the sun on her shoulders and the fresh air in her hair, she didn't believe there was any threat to them.

This trip, which had seemed the answer to so many of her problems, now just seemed foolish. Her intent to help impoverished children didn't feel silly to her. Even at home she had always done that by making sure her practice treated kids from all income levels. What worried her was the desire to have an adventure so she wouldn't feel like the left-behind woman anymore.

No matter that they hadn't been attacked by pirates last night, she knew that Laz was up to something. And this morning, as she jogged through the crates lining the deck of the tanker, she tried to clear her mind. Her iPod Shuffle was cranking out Black Sabbath and Trick Daddy but her mind wasn't going any further than the bridge of the ship.

She was tired of being lied to by men. And though Laz didn't come right out and lie to her, he hadn't exactly been honest with any of them either. He was a pirate. That was the only explanation that she could come up with. Why else would he be beckoning men onto the tanker in the middle of the night?

She slowed to a walk to do her warm down and sensed someone behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see Laz. She turned off her iPod as he approached.

“Mind if I join you?”

“I guess not.”

“That's not very gracious. I must have made a bad impression last night. How about I make it up to you?”

She shook her head. How could she admit to him that his impression had been fine until she'd spied on him from the gangway? “You were charming, as I'm sure you know.”

“Charming?” he asked, arching one eyebrow at her. “Well, that's promising.”

“It's your tanker so I guess you can do what you want,” she said, not wanting him to read too much into her allowing him to join her.

“But I still want to respect your space,” Laz said.

“Please sit down,” she said.

He sat down next to her and the first thing she noticed was that he smelled good—a mixture of soap and mint. She took a deep breath.

“How many more days until we arrive at our destination?”

“Maybe a day,” Laz said. “The seas have been calm and we are making good time.”

“That'll be great,” she said.

“Anxious to get to doctoring?” he asked.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I don't know if I can really explain it without sounding stupid but I feel like I'm half-alive when I'm not working.”

“That makes sense. Being a doctor is more than a job—it's a calling. Not many people are lucky enough to find that.”

“Did you?”

He shrugged. “I think so. What I do is a necessary evil but I'm very good at it.”

“What you do? Captaining a tanker isn't evil, Laz.”

“Nah, I guess you're right. It's just that compared to being a doctor captaining a tanker isn't all that glamorous a calling.”

Daphne looked at him. He still had that aura of danger that surrounded him, but there was sincerity to his words.

“We are all called to do something different. All those different parts make up the whole.”

“Very wise.”

She started laughing. “My son said that to me before I left.”

“So he's smart like you?”

“And lazy too,” Daphne said. “He was trying to convince me to let him play video games all summer instead of going to the academic camp I signed him up for.”

Laz arched an eyebrow at her, “Did it work?”

“No,” she said. “I want my boys to have every opportunity and only a good education can ensure that.”

She just shook her head at him. He was charming and that was a big part of her problem. She didn't want to like this man, because she didn't trust him.

“Fight!”

Another man yelled something she didn't understand but she recognized the telltale sounds of a crashing chair. She looked over at the tables behind her in time to see two men fighting.

Laz stood and reached the men in two long running strides. He didn't reach into the fighting men but just stood next to them.

“Break it up.”

His voice was a bellow that made her ears ring. The command was clear, but the men he spoke to weren't fazed at all and didn't pause in their fighting. She didn't know what Laz was going to do but he waded into the mess and slammed the men's heads together. They both fell to the deck but continued fighting.

Laz kicked the back of one man's knee and he fell to the floor moaning. He grabbed the other man and punched him in the gut. They were both on the floor. The tall African man whose name she couldn't remember was bleeding.

Daphne walked over to the crowd of men on the deck. The coppery smell of blood brought back memories of her residency days when she'd worked in the ER. She'd enjoyed that time and the adrenaline rush that came from treating patients who had critical needs. There was a lot to be said about doctoring like that. Though she did enjoy her pediatric practice she'd always liked ER medicine.

“Stay where you are,” Laz ordered.

She shook her head. “That man is bleeding profusely, and I can help him. In fact, that's what I'm trained to do, Captain. So let me do my job.”

“In a minute,” he said. “I doubt that Renault's wound is critical. He can wait until I get to the bottom of this ruckus.”

Renault said something in a language that Daphne didn't understand. But Laz nodded and spoke back to the man. How many languages did he speak?

It was another facet of the man she was starting to know, and she realized that the more she learned about him the more questions she had.

Why would a sea captain speak that many different languages? She guessed fluency came from traveling. She was looking for suspicious behavior and kept finding it.

She didn't know if she liked this side of Laz but she did find comfort in the fact that he knew how to handle himself. She felt just a little safer knowing that he wasn't a man who'd run away from a fight.

 

Laz signaled to Hamm and another crew member to take Renault and Fridjtof down below. They had a small first-aid room, which is where he ordered Renault taken. He really needed to bash some heads together to get rid of the excess anger that was riding him.

The tension of waiting for the pirates to attack and of hoping that their plan would work was getting to him. Having his men act like teenagers with no discipline also pissed him off. He needed his men to behave like grown-ups. There was enough tension on this tanker without adding testosterone posturing into the mix.

“Is it safe for me to go with the injured man?” Daphne asked.

“Yes,” Laz said. He didn't want her alone with any of his men. “Hamm, stay with her. I need to talk to Fridjtof.”

Daphne followed Hamm down the gangway. Laz didn't like the trouble that Fridjtof had caused. What was going on with that man?

Laz entered the hold—a rather large room that was used to transport private containers that weren't large enough to make the trip on deck like most of the containers they hauled. Fridjtof was led to a chair and sat down.

“Thanks, Rick,” Laz said. “Go back to your duties.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Fridjtof looked up at Laz with contempt in his eyes.

“What happened?”

Fridjtof shrugged. “It's nothing that you need to worry about. He just gets on my nerves. I can't have someone always watching my every move.”

His accent was stronger now that he was aggravated. Laz noticed that the other man's eyes were bloodshot and sunken.

“Are you ill?” He hoped that Fridjtof wasn't using drugs. But if he was that might explain his erratic behavior both today and last night. He had never met the man before this voyage, so Laz had no idea what to expect from him.

“What?” Fridjtof asked. “Nah, just didn't get any sleep last night.”

“Why don't you go to your bunk for a few hours and catch up on some sleep?”

“Nah—”

“That's an order.”

Fridjtof stood up and paced around the room. Laz watched the other man, waiting to see if he was going to attack. Fridjtof was moving like a caged tiger. And Laz was more than ready for whatever the other man decided to do.

“Hell. I'm not a boy to be ordered about.”

“On this ship you are,” Laz said.

“Whatever.”

“You can cool off here or in your bunk. It's up to you.”

“My bunk.” The other man stood and stretched. “I get itchy being out to sea for this long.”

“I thought this was your normal run,” Laz said.

“It is. I still get restless. And having women on board…”

Laz wasn't sure what the other man was getting at. “In the old days they used to think women brought bad luck at sea.”

“That's what I mean, man.”

Laz realized the more they talked the more Fridjtof settled down, so he leaned back against the door and thought about the other man's point. “Some curses still are in effect.”

“Yeah, I know. Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.”

“But that's a weather warning system.”

“Women are a distraction, Captain, which you seem to be experiencing firsthand.”

Laz didn't bow to anyone and wasn't about to stop talking to Daphne. “I'm not distracted.”

“We'll see.”

Laz shrugged. He didn't like Fridjtof's attitude but there was little that could be done for it now. “No more fighting or else I'll lock you in the storage closet until we get to port.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Cool off at your bunk for a few hours. I don't want to see you until mealtime.”

Fridjtof nodded and Laz opened the door to let the other man go.

Laz watched until he disappeared down the long gray hallway. Then he started to return to the bridge.

“Savage?”

There was no sound in his earpiece, not even the crackle of an open comm. “Damn it.”

Laz walked down the hallway toward the gangway. “Savage?”

“Here, Laz, what do you need?” The signal was weak and Savage's words faded in and out.

Laz walked farther away from the hold and the sound got better. “Damn, the hold is a blackout zone for communication.”

“Is that a problem?” Savage asked.

“It could be, if the pirates attack while we are down there. I don't know all the scenarios but I'd prefer to be able to talk to you from the entire ship.”

“How'd we miss that?” Savage asked.

“I don't know. I'm going to have Hamm see if he can fix this.”

“Roger that. What did you need from me?”

“Can Wenz do a background check on Fridjtof?”

“We already screened the crew,” Savage said.

“I just feel like we missed something. Last night he was on deck and this morning fighting with another crew member.”

“Not a problem. Wenz will radio if he finds anything. Any sign of trouble yet?”

“Nothing other than the tension on the ship. I think having passengers is making the crew antsy.” Laz hadn't captained the crew of a tanker before. His small sailing yacht back home was just right for himself to crew. He had no problems giving orders, but a part of him was leery of having all these men under his command because he just didn't know them. He trusted Hamm but beyond that he wasn't sure of any of the other men.

“Makes sense,” Savage said. “They are used to being themselves without witnesses.”

“True.”

“You doing okay?” Savage asked.

Laz thought about it for a minute before answering. He didn't want to admit that seeing Savage and then Mann marry had him thinking about his future and whether he'd ever find a girl to settle down with. He especially didn't want to say that now when he was in the middle of a tense mission.

“Yes. I like being at sea and making sure the ship is in top shape. To be honest I could almost see myself doing this.”

“Uh oh, thinking of leaving our group?”

“Never. But this is a glimpse at what my life could have been.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I've got to get back to work. I'll look forward to hearing from Wenz. Laz out.”

“Savage out.”

 

The first-aid office was really all that the medical facility was. It had a battered desk that was bolted to the floor, as was all furniture on the ship. A cabinet held rudimentary medical supplies.

“Does this kind of fighting take place often on board?” Daphne asked Hamm after Renault was patched up and had left to talk to the Captain.

Hamm was the second in command on the ship and had a friendly next-door kind of face. She realized that he had a way of moving that was completely silent.

“Sometimes. Depends on the crew. Tankers are a world of their own for the length of the cruise so we tend to just do our own thing. I'm not sure what those boys were fighting over.”

“Men can be that way,” she said, thinking of her own boys, who just got testy sometimes with each other, and needed to slug it out to get back to normal. She'd been surprised at first at that type of behavior in her boys. She'd done everything to discourage violence, but she'd noticed from a young age that their play involved more physicality.

“Boys can be that way,” Hamm said. “Men learn to control themselves.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I'm sorry. I was only thinking of my boys, who can be that way sometimes. I didn't mean to offend you.”