White Hot (20 page)

She had to take a deep breath when the memories hit her all over again. The sight of the windows lining the poop deck brought back even more, of how she and Clint had been together just inside them earlier in their quest for weapons.

Had it really been mere hours ago all that had happened?

Raised voices brought her abruptly back to the present. She pressed herself against the freezing bulkhead of the back side of the quarterdeck and held her breath.

The mess, crew lounge, and officers’ wardroom all had windows and doors opening onto the poop deck. But just as she’d guessed, the voices were coming from the mess hall.

She shut her eyes tight and fought a sudden stab of fear. Her plan was to creep under the windows and steal a quick peek between the curtains, as Clint had done this morning.

Clint had made it seem so easy. Hell, she’d even been angry at him for making her stay behind.

Where was her courage now?

She gathered it up and told herself not to be a damn coward. Without giving herself time to think, she bent over and crept to the wardroom window, then raised her head just high enough to look inside.

Her heart leapt in excitement, then squeezed.

Yes!
Her crew was here, huddled together on the two couches. A hooded-eyed guard stood splay-legged in front of the door, cradling an ugly machine gun in his arms.

The crew’s wrists and ankles had all been duct-taped, and the men had been gagged. Johnny and Frank had their heads tipped back on the couch, eyes closed. Ginger was curled up in one corner looking fetal, Spiros sat brooding at the other end. Carin dozed fitfully with her head against Lars Bolun’s broad chest, his arm curved protectively around her shoulders. Even asleep she looked terrified. The two kids, Matty and Jeeter, did, too.

Hell, they all looked haggard and frightened but at least they were unhurt. Well, except for the second mate. She could only see the side of Bolun’s face, but it was blotched with livid purple bruises; a nasty open cut bisected one temple.

As though he sensed her presence, Lars turned his head a fraction, and his gaze collided with hers. He blinked, and a flash of raw emotion streaked through his eyes but was gone in an instant. His impassive expression didn’t alter.

She wanted to say something he could read on her lips, something encouraging, to tell him help was on the way, that everything would turn out fine.

But the words wouldn’t form. She’d never been good at prevarication. She knew damn well there wasn’t going to be any rescue. Clint hadn’t even made it to the radio before being cut down. And she was suddenly terrified she wouldn’t be able to do a goddamn thing to save them.

Again the second mate seemed to read her mind. His gaze softened and filled with understanding and forgiveness. The ghost of a smile played over his mouth for the barest moment. “It’s okay,” his expression seemed to be saying. “We know you did your best.”

It didn’t help. It made her feel ten times worse.

She glanced over at the guard, who stared straight ahead with cold, dead eyes, as though the captives were invisible, of no consequence whatsoever.

And at that moment, she knew with paralyzing certainty, her worst fears were going to come true. Men like these would never let their hostages live. The bastards were going to kill them all. God knew what they’d do with the ship. She didn’t even want to think about what her own fate might be.

A choking fury swept through her and was just the mental kick in the ass she needed to reclaim her courage. In spades.

She could do this.

She
would
do this.

She clenched her jaw and looked back at Bolun. “Don’t give up,” she mouthed. “I’m getting you out of there.”

With iron resolve, she left Bolun staring after her, and made her way deep into the bowels of the ship. Past the orlop, all the way to the bottommost deck, down, down, to the cargo holds.

She went straight to one of the cargo hatches and pulled it open. She knew exactly which one she needed.

Cargo hold three.

The one with the fireworks.

Hiding in the cramped head, Clint listened as Tango One stormed through the salon, spewing a torrent of shouts and exclamations, heading for the crew quarters.

Holding his breath, he eased the lock home. Not that it mattered. This was his Alamo, and Clint knew it. Damned if he ran, damned if he stayed. Damned if he shot the bastard, damned if he didn’t.

Tango One marched along the passageway slamming open stateroom doors. When he got to the head and found it locked, he pounded on the door with his fist.

Okay, then.
Shoot the bastard it is.

Oddly calmed by the resolution, Clint’s body went instinctively
into a fighting stance. He raised his gun for the killing shot.

Tango One’s barked order was followed by another fist bang.

Clint coiled his muscles in readiness, which made the chocolate bar in his gut twinge….

Suddenly an idea blossomed.

What the hell.
He splayed his free hand over his mouth and let out a low, pathetic moan.

Tango One growled something and pounded again with his fist. Significantly, the door handle did not wiggle.

A good sign? Clint drew in a breath and made a very rude sound using his lips and tongue, then moaned again. He flushed the head for good measure.

Tango One was silent for a long moment.

Seriously?

On a roll, Clint made himself burp, let out another nasty noise, and mumbled some muted Arapaho words behind his hand that he hoped to hell at least remotely resembled garbled Chinese.

After a huffed expletive, Tango One barked another order at the door then stomped off.

Unbelievable.
Clint let out the mental breath he’d been holding and slowly lowered the gun as Tango One clomped back up to the pilothouse. Yeah, this may be a temporary reprieve, but he’d take it.

If nothing else, it would give him time to deal with those rocket launchers.

He checked the passageway and started back across, but another sound caught his attention. He halted in the darkness. A soft clicking noise ticked down from the bridge. He frowned. It sounded like…

Like switches being flipped and settings being keyed in on the helm controls.

His back went arrow straight as he spun toward the dim square of light at the top of the companionway.
What the
—

Suddenly, the trawler’s engines wheezed, farted twice,
and fired to life with a powerful rumble that made the whole boat vibrate—and Clint’s blood chill.

Ah, hell.

Before he could pry himself back into action, the engines geared up and
Eliza Jane
began to move.

Okay. This was not good.

He sprinted forward to the salon and shifted aside a porthole curtain to see what direction they were headed in. The boat was chugging in a slow, wide circle. She seemed to be aligning herself to come alongside
Île de Cœur
.

Not a total surprise, but at this hour? It must be well after midnight by now.

He frowned. Maybe a change of guard? Team meeting? Abandoning ship? If so, which ship…?

The good news was, whatever was happening, this would save him one seriously uncomfortable swim—with a bleeding open wound and a ripped wetsuit. Oh, yeah, and dodging hungry sharks.

He grimaced. Of course, jumping across from the trawler to
Île de Cœur
without being seen—or shot—wasn’t going to be a picnic, either.

But first he needed to do something about those ATs.

He sprinted back to the stateroom with the weapons, flicked on the reading light, and examined the rocket launchers lying on the bunk, all gleaming tubes, LED screens, and electronic controls. Fertile fields for sabotage.

But experience had taught him that the simplest idea was usually the best, so on that principle, he shook a pillowcase off one of the bunk pillows, wadded it up, and stuffed it into the rear of one of the launch tubes. After latching the back lock, it looked completely normal. With any luck, when fired, the trapped gasses would blow the bastard pulling the trigger sky-high.

He considered the second AT. If the first one blew, they’d be looking for similar sabotage in the second. What could he do instead? Removing the firing pin was always good, but for that he’d need the pin extractor, or at least a screwdriver.
Maybe the tool kit was in one of the military cases. He needed to go through them anyway.

Quickly, he knelt and opened the nearest one. It was completely empty. Well, hell. He’d hoped for guns and knives, at least.

He tried the next case.
Damn.
They must be using them strictly for transport. Only a few things remained: a gun cleaning kit, a half dozen ammo clips, two dozen or so boxes of cartridges—a few of which he happily slipped into his dry-bag, and—

Hello.

His hand hovered above a box with a familiar drawing on the lid.

Detonators.

He regarded them grimly, letting the unthinkable implications sink in. On the back of his neck, the fine hairs tingled.

In a flash, he ripped open every other box in the case, searching for Semtex, or C-4, or some other explosive that would need a detonator to set it off. He found nothing.

Had they taken it on board
Île de Cœur
with them?

That could only mean one thing, and it wasn’t good.

Silently cursing a blue streak, he shook the detonators into order in the box. Several were missing.

He thought of Samantha and felt his heart race. What would happen to her if he never made it back? If the Coast Guard didn’t find them in time? If he couldn’t figure out a way to take down these conscienceless bastards before the same fate befell
Île de Cœur
as had
Ostrov
…?

Every cell in his body urged him to get his ass up on deck.

Holy fuck.
They were going to blow up
Île de Cœur
.

He had to get back to Samantha!

Sam knew she had to free the crew. One person alone couldn’t fight the whole vicious pack of enemy operatives and win—not
her
anyway—but eight people working together at least had a chance.

She had no weapons. But she did have fireworks—lots and lots of fireworks. Enough to make the bastards think the entire U.S. Coast Guard was attacking them. She’d set them off in the wee hours, and before they figured out what was really going on, she could get past the—hopefully—distracted guard to cut Bolun’s bonds. Lars would help her set the rest free.

The plan wasn’t perfect. Not even close. The likelihood of failure was all too real. But without a gun, and without Clint’s expert help, it was all she had.

She’d rather try, and die with her crew, than stand by and do nothing and have to live with the guilt.

Grabbing the box cutter from the cargo manifest clipboard, she sliced through the plastic around the pallet and ripped open a dozen boxes of fireworks. She couldn’t read the Japanese labels and had no idea what any of them were,
so she chose the box with the biggest mothers of all. They looked like frickin’ mortar rounds. The explosion should be spectacular.

They were big, but not heavy. She set two boxes of them aside, ripped open a dozen more of different kinds, and put together a nice selection of the nastiest looking.

After putting the pallet back together, she crumpled the matching page of the manifest and dropped it behind the pallet so the hijackers couldn’t discover her secret if they came looking.

After careful consideration, she decided to set off the explosion under the old Malaysian trolley car bound for San Francisco. It was up on the weather deck and highly visible, lashed down next to the railroad containers. The trolley was ornately decorated on the outside, but the car itself was built like a tank. The echoes and ricochets of the fireworks between the deck and the solid metal of the trolley’s undercarriage should amplify the noise to epic proportions. She might even put a few inside to blow out the windows.

If she could figure out how to tie the fuses together to make one long fuse, that should give her enough time to run up and take position outside the wardroom before the explosion went off. Even if the man guarding the crew didn’t charge out to the deck with the others, he should at least duck out to see what was going on. She fingered the box cutter in her pocket. That was all the time she’d need to free Bolun.

It took her two trips up and down the four flights of stairs to lug the boxes up to the weather deck. By the time she plopped down behind one of the railroad containers to recover, her legs were like jellyfish and her head was spinning like a dervish. She really needed to find something to eat.

Later.

After a brief respite, she rose and picked up one of the boxes. It slipped through her fingers, crashing back to the deck. She froze, pulse zooming, but no one came running to investigate the noise.
Thank God.

She was about to drag the box over to the trolley, when suddenly she shot up straight. Her mouth dropped open.
Ohmigod!
Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner?