Jayhawk Down (16 page)

“The usual. Money. They claim he was supposed to pay them in cash, he’s claiming they will get their money only if the bomb is real. Normal terrorist bickering.”

Stillman stared at Yasin till the man returned his look. “What else aren’t you telling me? My gut’s on high-alert for a reason.” Right now it was churning out enough acid to cut a hole through the plate-steel deck they were standing on.

Yasin scanned the two separate groups of men and talked through barely moving lips. “Hell if I know. But damned if my gut and yours aren’t in agreement.” He darted a glance at the helicopter. “My guess, and it really is just a guess on my part, is there’s a double cross in the works. And no, I don’t know who’s doing the crossing.”

The four men returned carrying a seven-or eight-foot-long wooden crate. Their awkward slow steps and sweating faces attested to the weight of their burden.

Atwah turned and yelled at Yasin and Stillman over the engine noise. “Help them load this!”

Stillman and Yasin bent low and trotted to the men with the crate and grabbed the stiff rope handles that looped down the sides. The sisal bit into his hands when he lifted. Shit, it was a hell of load. His heart rate climbed when he thought of a reason. It would be lead-lined to protect the handlers from radiation.

Jacksonville, FL,
Saturday, 24 September, 2215 hours

Valerie thought her skin would fly off from the tension crawling all over it like fire ants. The waiting had everyone in the conference room sniping at each other or locked away in silent brooding. Which appeared to be Munson’s way of handling the stress. She sat on a leather side chair near the windows and watched him.

He rubbed closed eyes impatiently, then quickly returned his fingers to the laptop’s keyboard to tap in short bursts. His dark blond hairline showed signs of receding. It gave a hint of vulnerability to his otherwise pleasant good looks. She guessed his age somewhere on the far side of thirty. Maybe even a well-preserved forty. And those silvery eyes. Val shivered. They could go from white-hot anger to cold-blooded rage in, well, the blink of an eye.

The phone on the end of the twelve-foot table buzzed and everyone jumped. That multi-line phone hadn’t so much as blinked all evening. Munson grabbed it on the second insect-like buzz. “Munson.”

His face paled then turned red. “That son of a bitch! Get a damn boat launched. You have a couple of helicopters standing by, don’t you? Jesus, put them in the air!” He acted like he wanted to slam the phone down, but instead, gripped it hard enough for his knuckles to whiten.

Valerie’s heart swam in her chest, as it filled with enough renewed fear to drown in. Had the Coast Guard helicopter gone down in the ocean? Could it have exploded? She sat forward, her gaze locked on Munson’s granite expression. He was pissed with a capital
P
.

The other agents and administrative assistants in the room stood or sat perfectly still, watching Munson just like she did. No one typed on a computer, or talked into a cell phone. No one even shuffled a paper or file folder.

The waiting was killing Valerie. Worse, Munson wasn’t talking. He was listening with so much concentration she thought his hand would break the handset.

“If you’re wrong, it’s your career,” he said in a near-normal voice. He returned the handset to its cradle with exaggerated gentleness.

Val wouldn’t have crossed him now if someone offered her a twenty-million-dollar bonus in cash. He looked ready to kill—slowly and painfully—anything that got in his path.

“The helicopter landed on a container ship sitting in the Gulf about thirty minutes ago,” he said to the room at large.

Valerie shot to her feet and blurted, “Thirty minutes? Why the hell did it take them so long to figure that out?”

His silver gaze settled on her. “Good question. Unfortunately, there is an equally good reason. And Atwah, the bastard, knows it.”

Munson stood and walked to the huge map they’d been using to mark Ali’s known warehouses and assorted business interests in South Florida. He studied it for a moment, then traced his finger in a zigzagged path. “The helicopter is flying without lights, so it can only be tracked accurately by radio or radar. But Atwah has Stone flying at low altitudes. That leaves radio signals to the Coast Guard’s C-130 flying high-altitude surveillance.”

His cold gaze swept the room until it landed on Valerie and she shivered before she could stop herself. The man gave off some seriously harsh vibes.

“The boat they apparently landed on is scrambling all radio transmissions in the area. I say apparently, because there is a helicopter-landing pad on this particular ship, with a large helicopter sitting on it. So far, onboard lights have prevented our guys from getting a positive ID.”

He slammed his fist against the map. “And if it’s not that ship we’re totally screwed. Because they’ve lost the signal they were following.”

Chapter Fourteen

The Gulf near
Naples,
FL, Saturday, 24 September, 2228 hours

Caitlyn divided her attention between the oil temperature gauge and Stillman standing on the ship’s deck. He stood almost a head taller than the men that surrounded him. The gauge edged ever so slowly toward the red zone. Overheating wouldn’t do at all. She sought Stillman’s form again.

She exhaled a slow breath through pursed lips. His
I love you
played over and over in her head. She didn’t doubt he’d meant it. His motivation, however, was more than a little suspect. Guys like him generally only said things like that under circumstances like these—because they thought there was a chance they wouldn’t be sticking around to prove them.

When they’d loaded the crate, which had to be the bomb, she thought they’d take off. Her stomach did a lousy imitation of an aerobatic roll. Her great rescue plan had already failed miserably because they’d used a ship for the rendezvous. She couldn’t leave Stillman and Yasin on the ship without knowing if a rescue was at hand. Now she would have Stillman
and
Yasin to worry about when she hijacked Atwah.

She closed her eyes for a little mental beating. For some stupid reason she’d totally forgotten about Yasin being onboard. While he was armed, he was another potential hostage. Another potential victim she couldn’t ignore.

Goddamned bastards. Her eyes burned and she concentrated on the instrument panel in front of her. The little guy had grown on her; at least once she knew he hadn’t really killed Joe. Or Ryan. She sucked in a deep breath. He’d risked his life for her crew. She couldn’t let him down.

The
pop
of automatic gunfire jerked her attention away from the instrument panel and toward figures running in the direction of her helo. She boosted the throttle and did a quick scan of her gauges. Too hot or not, they were lifting off as soon as—

“Take off! Take off!” Atwah yelled as he threw himself into the helo’s belly.

She couldn’t see shit behind her, but didn’t see Stillman on the landing zone either. “Are Stillman and Yasin onboard?” she asked as she flipped more switches and tried in vain to see over her left shoulder. Several bullets pinged into
Fly Baby
’s fuselage and she flinched. Sons of bitches.

“Yes, yes,” Atwah said over the intercom. “Lift off now!” He screamed as more bullets ripped into the metal and hopefully his flesh.

She yanked the collective up as the copilot’s window shattered. Atwah’s harsh breathing and guttural curses sounded loud in her headset. Dammit, she had a really bad feeling about this. The sporadic
ping
of bullets fed her anger. The bastards weren’t even good shots. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t get lucky.

“Why isn’t Stillman talking?” she yelled over the intercom as she took off over the water at a steep angle. Her blood was roaring though her veins as good as any storm-induced adrenaline rush. Who knew bullets could do the same thing?

Ha, Stillman surely did. And he’d kept it to himself.

“He was hit. Not badly.” Atwah sucked air loudly over the intercom. “B-but I can’t get his helmet on,” Atwah managed to add in a breathless voice. “Yasin says it’s only a flesh wound, not serious.”

Caitlyn’s heart stopped. Then thundered as loud as
Fly Baby
’s engines. With little thought to the consequences, she tightened her turn and headed straight back to the ship’s deck like she was flying an Apache attack helicopter.

She was in full fire-breathing, ass-kicking BITCH mode now. If any of those bastards were still standing on that deck, she’d slice them like so much pastrami at the deli. For the first time, Caitlyn understood hate—and the hunger for revenge.

* * *

Stillman’s jaw ached from slamming into the ship’s metal decking under Yasin’s bodyweight. He heard the occasional bark of an automatic weapon, but it didn’t seem to be aimed at him. Or Yasin.

“Get off me. And what the hell just happened?” he said as he rolled the smaller man over. And discovered why he was so damn quiet. “Fuck. How bad?”

Blood soaked Yasin’s thigh but he shook his head without speaking. His lips were clamped together in a white line of pain. Suddenly his eyes grew wide and Stillman looked over his shoulder to see what the hell was happening now. “Holy shit. Grab something and keep your head down. And keep your eyes closed!” he shouted and grabbed a metal tie-down ring sunk in the metal plate.

“W-what the hell is she d-doing?” Yasin spat out.

Stillman took one last look before he buried his face against his arm and held on. “She’s clearing the deck,” he shouted against the roar of twin GE engines putting out close to two thousand horsepower. Whatever their combined redlines were, he had a feeling she’d be pushing it right about
now
.

He cringed as deafening noise and prop-wash hit them with full power. Dirt, pebbles and assorted deck paraphernalia bounced off them, as anything not tied down, or heavy enough to withstand a hurricane-force wind, blew off the deck into the Gulf. From the shouts, and more than a few shrieks, some of the crew hadn’t realized her intent until too late.

The roar of the Jayhawk faded before Stillman chanced a glance up. No one stood guard over them. Hell, no one stood anywhere that he could see. He grabbed Yasin’s shoulder. “What went wrong? Why did they try to shoot Atwah?”

Yasin squinted at Stillman then looked around with a dazed expression.

Stillman swore and scrambled to Yasin’s side. His leg didn’t appear to be bleeding too badly. At least the slug had missed the artery, or he’d be dead already.

“Jesus, was she pissed, or was she pissed?” Yasin said as he sat up awkwardly and looked out over the black Gulf where Caitlyn had disappeared.

A belly laugh of pure relief burst from Stillman. “I think she just redefined dust-off.” He looked around the still deserted deck. “Now, how the hell do we get off this piece of shit?”

Jacksonville, FL,
Saturday, 24 September, 2250 hours

Valerie paced to the Florida map once more. She should have anticipated a ship. A flipping
container
ship, no less.

“Quit it.”

She jumped at Munson’s quiet words. And scowled at him. He’d rolled his white shirtsleeves up, exposing tanned arms covered in golden hair. She turned and stared unseeing at the map. Just wonderful. She was going to start fantasizing about an FBI agent? How totally pathetic she’d become at forty. “Quit what?” she spat without turning around.

He cupped her elbow in his hand and turned her to the door. “Blaming yourself for everything that’s happened. Come on. You need a break. Hell,
I
need a break.”

She allowed him to propel her out the door and down the deserted hall to a small galley only because the touch of his hand fried her brain’s normal resistance. He pushed her toward a chair and went to the refrigerator.

“We have sandwiches left over from the dinner run.” He looked at her over the door. “Which you didn’t eat.”

She smiled. The man had certainly mellowed since his earlier blowup. Her smile faded. “Do you think she’s alive?”

Munson backed out from the refrigerator with two plastic catering platters stacked with sandwiches, cheese and condiments. A roll of Swiss disappeared into his mouth and he nodded. He set the platters on the table and returned for half liters of Coke and Diet Coke. “If you’re talking about the pilot. Yeah, I do. I read her files. The official one from the Coast Guard and the one from our man on the island.”

“Yasin?” Val said with a smile. Munson was getting better-looking as the night wore on. And without her consuming a drop of alcohol.

He grinned, turning his serious features boyishly charming. “Both reports indicate a very capable pilot with the ability to think on her feet. So yeah, my money’s on her.”

He poured Diet Coke into a cup and handed it to her. “What’s your feeling about what’s going down on that container ship?” he asked as he sat across the table from her.

He took one of the sandwiches off the platter and pushed the stack toward her. “Eat. It’s going to be a long night, I’m afraid.”

Valerie selected a turkey on whole wheat and began unwrapping it. “I don’t know how good my instincts are anymore, but...”

He looked up from pouring his Coke and pinned her with those damn sexy eyes. “But what? You’ve been right more than we have since this began.”

She tried not to squirm under his praise. Idiot, concentrate on the plastic wrap. “Atwah hates Ali for a reason. And Ali always comes out on top for that same reason.”

Her glance at Munson brought a nod for her to continue. “If I were Ali, I’d know I couldn’t trust my brother. I’d be working my tail off not only to get rid of him permanently but to make him the fall guy too.” She balled the sandwich wrap and tossed it into the open trash container near the door. All net.

“Two points,” Munson said.

“Three,” she countered. “I think Ali is pulling off a double cross to Atwah’s double cross. Think about it. That container ship belongs to Ali, or one of his companies anyway. He’d have the helicopter and the bomb. Why let Atwah walk away? He can’t do that. Otherwise Atwah will be coming after him. It can’t be a secret that his brother hates him. Who’s been jerking Atwah around by not sending additional men and changing the delivery date and place?

“Their whole lives have been spent trying to outdo each other. The stakes have just gotten bigger over the years. What better way to win than to ensure Atwah dies?”

The Gulf south of Naples, FL,
Saturday, 24 September, 2300 hours

Caitlyn’s stomach was churning. Atwah had to be lying. Yasin would have gotten on the intercom to ease her worry, or at the very least leaned into the cockpit to confirm he and Stillman were all right. If Caitlyn could figure out a way to leave the controls, she’d climb in back to confirm—oh dear God, had her foolish stunt across the container ship sent them both overboard?

She forced herself to take a deep breath to stop the shudders that threatened her control of the helo. Stillman was an experienced pilot and knew how strong rotor wash could be. He would have realized what she was doing and taken cover. She had to blink several times to clear her vision. Dammit, she couldn’t afford to let her emotions screw up this mission.

When Atwah crawled forward between the pilot seats, she saw blood glistening on his shirt. So at least the bastard was suffering.

Unfortunately, he still held a MAC-10 pointed at her. And he was cognizant enough to realize she wasn’t heading east like he’d directed.

“What happened to Stillman and Yasin? And don’t bother lying. I know it’s just the two of us.”

Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to Atwah that control had shifted to her.

“My dear brother appears to have had different plans for me,” he said.

Caitlyn glanced at him. Flat black eyes stared back. She looked forward again, suppressing the shudder he evoked. “You have a brother?” Duh, didn’t rats always come in litters?

He chuckled, then coughed. Good, maybe the bullet nicked a lung. Maybe the bastard would die and she wouldn’t have to sacrifice
Fly Baby
. Or herself. A tremor started deep and worked its way outward. Could she be as brave as Johnny? Did she have what it took to make that kind of sacrifice? In her heart she wanted to say yes, but her gut didn’t agree.

He rammed her shoulder with the MAC-10. “Why aren’t you flying east?”

Time for another distraction. She let the helicopter drop sideways in a sloppy slip maneuver. “I’m having a hard time flying it in a straight line. One of those bullets must have damaged a control surface.” Surprisingly enough, she didn’t think they’d done any real damage. Amazing they could be that bad. Then again, they did hit Atwah.

“Why would your brother try to kill you?” And what the hell had happened to Stillman? Was he dead? Being held hostage?
Assuming he wasn’t treading water in the Gulf.

A nasty-sounding chuckle made her look at Atwah again. Unfortunately he was still watching her.

“Maybe he figured out I was double-crossing him.” He poked her with the gun. “Turn east. Immediately. We must land very carefully. The bomb has a trigger set to go off on sudden impact.”

Great. Now he told her. Sweat trickled down her cheek from under her helmet. Johnny’s experience would be a real help about now. “If I don’t do what you say, are you going to shoot me? Do you know how to fly this thing?” she asked and took her hand off the cyclic, giving it a little nudge to the left. The helo rolled to port and Atwah grabbed her shoulder with bruising force.

She took the control back and glanced at him again. “Maybe you should threaten to shoot Stillman so I do what you want. Oh, but that would require Stillman actually being on board. Wouldn’t it?”

He glared at her while digging fingers into her shoulder. “Whore, you think I won’t shoot you?”

She smiled back despite the pain and prayed fervently he wouldn’t call her bluff. “Go ahead. I’m willing to die for what I believe in. Are you?”

* * *

Stillman sat on the deck with Yasin. The crew refused to come near them. Of course, since they hadn’t seen any crew, for all they knew, they’d abandoned ship after Caitlyn’s kamikaze sweep over the deck.

“How’s your leg feeling?” Stillman had wrapped it as best he could with strips torn from his T-shirt.

“Fine.” Yasin was still trying, unsuccessfully, to get a signal on his cell phone.

“What we need is a VHF radio. Why don’t I try to find the captain? Maybe I can bribe him into calling the Coast—”

The blast of a ship’s horn drowned out his words.

“Ahoy
The Red Duchess
. This is the USS
Wentworth.
We request permission to board,” a man’s voice spoke over a public address system. He repeated the statement in Spanish.

Stillman looked at Yasin and grinned. “Hot damn. The cavalry’s arrived.” He helped Yasin stand and they looked around to see a large cutter, lit up like a damn Christmas tree, bearing down on their starboard side. Familiar sounds made him cock his head to one side. Helicopters! He searched the sky until he spotted flashing strobe lights approaching from the north.