BLACK COBRA (Aaron Quinn thriller series, No. 2) (23 page)

Finally, due to Aaron’s skill and wealth of diving experience, the three escapees managed to buddy breathe their way through a cold, dark, disorienting, and terrifyingly long ascent to the surface.

---

They came up together, splashing, choking, and gasping for air.

Aaron quickly got his bearings. They had drifted into the middle of the harbor and were facing a long swim in every direction. The girls were clearly nearing exhaustion, unable to tread water much longer.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, an inflatable outboard came racing toward them from the south, and for a desperate moment the survivors thought they’d been spotted.

They yelled and screamed and waved and splashed with everything they had, but soon it became clear that on its present course, their best hope of rescue would pass them forever.

---

Detective Harness held on as the Zodiac bounded across the bay, his eyes straining to see through the blackness.

Suddenly he saw what looked like a commotion on the water. He looked again — there were
swimmers
in the water, and they were in trouble.

“
Come about, Holt, hard to port!
” he shouted.

Holt yanked on the tiller and the Zodiac arced hard left.

“Hold her on course,” Harness commanded. “We have three swimmers dead ahead.”

He grabbed the boat’s only two life vests from under his seat and prepared to throw.

Chapter 66

The toss was perfect, the life vests landing within reach of all three swimmers.

Aaron made sure his companions had a firm grip, and then he grabbed a handful of the orange canvas for himself.

---

Holt pulled the boat up next to them and set the prop to neutral.

“Is anyone injured?” Harness said, doing a quick assessment.

Aaron looked at his companions and determined that other than being severely hypothermic and nearly drowned, everyone was in one piece.

“We’re okay,” he said quickly. “Please, help the ladies first.” Holt used his superior strength to haul the girls on board.

Harness gave Aaron a hand up, and in spite of the darkness he recognized him immediately. “Aaron Quinn?” he said. “Is that you?”

Aaron stared back at him for a long moment. “Detective Harness?” he said at last, both shocked and extremely happy to recognize his friend.

“We stayed away as long as we could,” Harness quipped. “But after cruising the harbor for over an hour, we got bored.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Aaron said, and shook Harness’s hand gratefully.

Harness and Holt took off their jackets and wrapped them around the girls, seating them together on the boat’s small front seat. Aaron managed to squeeze in next to the men.

 “The President?” he asked, shivering. “I-is he okay?”

“A little shaken up, but fine,” Harness said. “Commander Byrd of the
USS Hampton
called to apologize for his staff. I guess they took a pretty good hit from
something
, but there was no real damage. Were the three of you on board the Cobra submarine?”

“We were,” Aaron said.

“How the hell did
that
happen?”

“We were all invited to the same party,” Aaron said.

“Was Jason Souther aboard, as well?”

“He was.”

“Did he get out?”

“No,” Aaron said. “He didn’t get out.” He looked at the girls. “Other than the three of us, there were no survivors. Cobra and her crew are dead on the bottom.”

---

The girls were exhausted and numb with cold, and Harness kept them as warm and dry as possible as they motored back up the bay toward the MMSD.

Chapter 67

Back on land, Officer Holt broke into the MMSD gift shop and scrounged some dry clothes for the survivors. Detective Harness used the museum’s small kitchen to prepare them a late dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and hot tomato soup.

The men left the three alone for while, checking in on them from time to time, figuring they needed time to gather themselves and come to grips with what had happened to them. As soon as Harness was sure the survivors were well on their way to recovery, he and Holt returned to the room and sat down with them.

---

“I’m Detective James Harness, by the way,” he said. “This is my partner in crime, Officer Larry Holt.” He gestured to Holt.

Holt nodded respectfully.

Harness looked at Ashley. “Aaron and I met previously,” he said. “You must be his sister.”

Ashley blushed. She assumed Harness was kidding, but he did have a certain charm about him, and she appreciated the flattery — at her stage in life she took whatever she could get.

She looked at Aaron and smiled. “How did you guess, Detective?” she said, offering Harness her hand.

“Please, call me James,” Harness said, kissing the back of her hand.

His unshaven face was a little scratchy, but not unpleasant. “I’m Ashley,” she said.

Aaron remembered his manners. “This is Katya,” he said, putting his arm around her.

“Hello, Katya,” Harness said, thinking,
If Aaron’s with you,
he’s a lucky guy.

---

The group engaged in small talk for a few minutes and presently the conversation turned to the assassination plot.

“I bet you didn’t know the assassins had planned on using a nuke,” Aaron said.

“A
nuke?
” Harness said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The conspirators
thought
they were firing a nuclear warhead at the President,” Aaron explained. “But I got really lucky and was able to make the switch to the dummy torpedo.”

Harness could only stare at Aaron for a moment, thinking,
How on earth could you do that?
“Well done, Aaron,” he said at last. “Extremely well done. I’ll see that you are commended.”

Aaron hesitated. He knew he’d been incredibly lucky to have gotten away with killing Johnny Souther two years ago, and he thought it best to continue keeping a low profile.

“If it’s okay with you, Detective, I’d rather remain anonymous on this one. And I’m sure the ladies feel the same way.”

The girls looked at each other and nodded.

“Whatever you wish,” Harness said. “But if it’s all right with you, I need to ask a few more questions.”

Aaron was exhausted, but he figured he owed Harness. “I’m listening …”

 “Did you know that after plowing through your Aston Martin, that son-of-a-bitch Jason Souther drove straight to Sally’s Diner and gunned down his brother Johnny?”

Aaron swallowed hard and looked at his mother. “Really?”

“Yeah, and why the crazy bastard couldn’t just walk through the front door, I’ll never know. He blasted Souther from
outside
the diner through the damn window — with
two
assault rifles, no less, like some kind of Rambo or something.”

Aaron and Ashley listened, but didn’t say a word, figuring what Harness didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“Sadly, when I confronted him, he killed my damn partner,” Harness said. “I’ve been looking for Jason Souther for over two years now ... two very long years.”

“How will you ever know for sure you got him?” Aaron asked. He looked at the girls. “I mean,
we
know he’s dead, but how will you?”

“I’ll take your word for it, for starters,” Harness said. “And we’ll probably attempt to I.D. him when we float the sub — you know, to please the lawyers.”

Cayman Islands

Three Months Later ...

Chapter 68

Aaron Quinn leaned over in his woven banana-leaf lounge chair and tossed a tortilla chip in the direction of a brown-spotted Rock Iguana, an indigenous Cayman Brac lizard that had just scurried across a nearby slab of rock.

“You’re going to make him fat,” Katya said.

“A little salt won’t hurt him,” Aaron said, “and it looks to me like he could use the carbs.”

Katya laughed, and Aaron refilled their glasses from an iced pitcher of Mojitos.

---

Aaron’s mother came up the seashell-strewn path from the beach and approached their thatched-roof bamboo hut, taking a seat next to him.

“I’ve been meaning to give you something,” she said. “I’ve been keeping it safe for a long time, yet never knowing why, or for whom. But now I know I was saving it for you.”

She handed him a small, dog-eared photo. It was the snapshot of Ashley hugging Aaron’s father, Danny, in the alpine meadow.

Aaron held the precious photo gently between his fingers. “I remember handing this to you in the car, right before —”

He stopped himself as suddenly he was back in the Aston Martin. Michael was driving, and Willy was in the back seat with his mother. Three of the most important people in his life had been snatched from him in a ball of fire. And then, through an almost unimaginable set of coincidences, one of them was returned to him.

He gave his mother a warm hug, and then clutched the photo to his chest. “Thank you,” he said. “I thought I’d lost it forever.”

---

Ashley stood and looked up and down the beach. “Speaking of lost,” she said. “Have you seen James? He’s late for dinner again.”

“I think he’s down at the Holt’s,” Katya said. “They’ve been pit barbecuing a pig since yesterday and I guess he wanted to make sure they were doing it right, and that they weren’t planning on eating the whole thing themselves.”

Aaron laughed at the image of Larry Holt and his wife sitting down to eat an entire barbecued pig.

“That’s my James,” Ashley said. “Always the teacher. I may have to walk over and check that out for myself. You two love-birds enjoy your evening.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Aaron said, then watched her walk down the path leading through a grove of palms to the Holt’s beach hut.

---

He sat back and took a sip of his drink, watching the sun as it fell slowly toward the sea.

He had been delighted to hear that his mother had fallen in love with James Harness, and that they had been married, and that they had talked Larry Holt and his wife into coming with them to the Caymans to be near Aaron and Katya. Together on the island, they had become the close-knit family Aaron had yearned so deeply for.

Harness had been true to his word: His official police report made no mention of him, Ashley, or Katya; and as Aaron had requested, James had sold the
Cayman Jewel
anonymously, at auction, with the proceeds going to a home for wayward boys.

---

“If you’d like I could help out down at the dive shop tomorrow,” Katya said, bringing him back to earth.

“That’d be great,” Aaron said. “There’s a cruise ship coming in, and we’re expecting a lot of business. I’ll be spending a lot more time there myself, now that we own the place.”

“You know, Aaron,” Katya said. “You really don’t have to work for a living anymore.”

“I know,” Aaron said. “But I work because I like helping people. Earl’s Reef allows me to do that, and owning it is something I’ve dreamed about for a long time.”

“Read the letter again,” Katya insisted.

“I’ve already read it to you like a thousand times,” Aaron said.

“Pleeease,” Katya said, giving him her best pout.

Reluctantly, Aaron pulled the folded letter out of his shorts pocket.

“I just like hearing it,” Katya said, sitting up.

Aaron unfolded the paper and read it aloud:

Dear Mr. Quinn:

This certified letter is to notify you that you have been named legal beneficiary of the Trust Fund of one Michael Lee St. John, in the amount of $40,000,000. Amount secured by his attorney and deposited in an account in the name of Aaron Daniel Quinn.

“I still can’t believe it’s
real
,” Katya said. “You told me that Michael had written a sequel to
Saturday Night Crash,
but I never expected it to become a
blockbuster hit
. It’s
incredible
.”

“Michael had just finished writing the sequel when I met him,” Aaron explained. “And he must have had some sort of premonition, because he wrote me into his will within three days of meeting me — just before he died. It took years to get the film made and into theaters, and then the lawyers took time to get Michael’s film royalties straightened out and into his trust fund, and eventually to me. It’s a miracle it happened at all.”

“And with Earl’s Dive Shop coming up for sale, the timing couldn’t have been better,” Katya said.

“I know, and with you coming into my life ... Never in my lifetime will I ever begin to thank Michael for what he did for me.”

“I didn’t know writers could make that much
money,
” Katya said.

“Well, when you consider film rights, and the effects a blockbuster hit has on book sales, it starts to add up,” Aaron said. “I expect to be receiving royalties and residual checks for a long, long time.”

He refilled their glasses from the pitcher of Mojitos again, and together they watched the sun dip slowly into the Caribbean.

---

“Do you remember our first time together?” Katya asked, her skin glowing off the warm sunset.

“How could I forget?” Aaron replied, smiling. “We were on a picnic blanket on the beach in Glorietta Bay.” He reached over and curled a few strands of her hair around his index finger. “If the tide hadn’t decided to come in, we’d probably still be there.”

Katya laughed, and then she looked at him, taking a seductive sip of her Mojito. “You know, Aaron,” she said softly. “I still have that blanket. What do you say we drink up and try it on for size?”

~~~~~~

---

John Avery would like to thank the following for their kind and generous assistance in the creation of this book:

Maritime Museum of San Diego

Mr. Jeff Loman

Mr. RD Baker

About the Author

---

John Avery
lives with his wife, Julie, and their horses, dogs, and chickens, on a small ranch in the mountains outside San Diego – where he is currently hard at work on his next story.