City of War (23 page)

I did know. People who’ve been parted by sudden death—especially estranged ones—want to reconnect. They go to the same places, drive the other person’s car, sometimes sleep in their beds. They want to see ordinary things through their loved one’s—or not so loved one’s—eyes. To try to imagine what they might have been thinking at a particular time. And every once in a while something special occurs. It’s why I put more faith in the perceptions of lovers and family members than I do in psychics. If they let themselves, sometimes those who were closest feel things others can’t.

I noticed that Archer’s breathing had become deep and regular. I got a blanket, covered her and turned off the television.

I was tired too, but I had some calls to make.

When I awoke, the sun was well up, and Archer was swimming. Her eye was uncovered, and she seemed not to be self-conscious at all.

“Not a good idea unless you tell someone,” I called out over the rail.

“If there’s a shark around, I’ll just wish him a good morning. How can you not love a day like this?”

“Mostly, it’s about getting a cramp.”

“Oh, please, other than from your parents, when was the last time you heard of anyone drowning from a cramp? Especially in weather like this.”

I had to admit, it was California at its best. Warm sun, no clouds.

“Come on in,” she shouted. “Work up an appetite for that sumptuous breakfast I’m going to unwrap.”

I looked at her, but it wasn’t Archer any longer.

Sanrevelle was waving, holding up a large piece of pink coral as she snorkeled off the stern. Damn it, I thought, how
many times had I told her not to go out there alone. Especially not now. Hadn’t she been listening when the doctor told her not to take unnecessary risks? That her mother had miscarried twice before giving birth to her?

But Sanrevelle never listened to anyone. She just smiled and tossed her head and did whatever she wanted. It was maddening sometimes, but it was also one of the things I loved most about her. Like the jaguars in her native Brazil, she couldn’t be tamed, and I was now the second generation of Black men unable to resist a Carioca wild streak.

I turned, looking for one of the crew to relay a message to Captain Long that I was going in with her, but I didn’t see anyone. I motioned for Sanrevelle to get closer to the boat. Though the beach of Clarissima lay only half a mile away, we had seen barracuda yesterday, and they have a habit of lying in ambush, then swooping in to tear off a piece of flesh.

At 235 feet, my father’s ship, the
Amarante,
was still magnificent, but it was getting long in the tooth. Wildly expensive to operate, it had been an extravagance Lord Black could not bring himself to give up, using her to cross to England twice a year and holding board meetings aboard to defray some of the cost. With his death, I had kept her, more out of loyalty to the crew than for any practical reason.

I climbed two flights and went forward through the center passageway. My table in the owner’s dining room was half set for lunch, but none of the four stewards was in sight. I had pared the permanent crew from thirty to seventeen, but even so, it was strange not to see someone, even a deckhand going about his business.

I crossed the dining room and looked into the galley. The chef lay on the floor, eyes open but seeing nothing, a bullet hole in his chest. I left and ran forward.

As I passed a guest stateroom, I heard a muffled cry. I tried the door. Locked. Using my master key, I entered and found a steward on his knees, moaning, his hands pressed against his scalp, blood running between his fingers. The
other four stewards lay facedown beside him, dead, a single bullet hole in the back of each man’s head.

“Holden,” hissed the wounded steward, “and Quinn.”

Tony Holden was the ship’s engineer. He’d been with us less than a month, hired on an emergency basis by Captain Long after our longtime engineer had taken ill and returned home to Glasgow. Norris Quinn, Holden’s cousin, had come aboard as a deckhand. We hadn’t needed him, but we couldn’t sail without an engineer, and it had been a package deal.

I got the steward a towel for his head and headed for the bridge, remembering what I could about Holden and Quinn. Long had hired them through our London crew broker, Oceania Personnel, but the men had said they had come directly from holiday in Greece and weren’t carrying their engineer and seaman’s certificates. Technically, this made it illegal to have them aboard as crew, but when faxed copies of the certificates arrived from Oceania, Long accepted them pending arrival of the originals from the men’s homes in Liverpool.

But the promised courier never came, and Long had finally confronted the men and told them that if they did not produce the certificates by the end of the week, they would have to leave the ship. That had been yesterday.

Just outside the wheelhouse, I found the first mate. He had obviously struggled with his attackers, because there was blood splattered along a wide stretch of deck. But he had eventually succumbed to several shots in the upper body.

Since I had been in my quarters and heard nothing, the weapons were almost certainly fitted with suppressors. But what the hell was happening? And who were Holden and Quinn?

I feared what I was going to find when I opened the door to the wheelhouse, but it was worse. Three bodies. Captain Long was dead in his chair, shot once in the back of the head, and the second and third mates had been gunned down over the navigation table. I felt under the control con
sole for the Glock Long kept there. I found it and checked the magazine. Full.

There was a loud scraping sound above. I ran outside, leaned over the port railing and craned my neck upward. Suddenly, a jet ski fell out of the sky, coming within inches of taking me out. It hit the water with a tremendous splash, and the scraping sound began again. Moments later, a second jet ski followed. Then two men came hurtling down after them.

Holden and Quinn in wet suits. I aimed and squeezed off two quick shots at each man. A hole opened in Quinn’s wet suit, but both men managed to drag themselves aboard their jet skis, then pull handguns and open fire on me.

Splinters from the railing kicked up, and bullets ricocheted off the ship’s superstructure. Miraculously, I wasn’t hit. I heard the jet skis scream to life and watched as they accelerated quickly out of range. But instead of fleeing toward land, they headed out to sea.

I scanned the water and saw another boat two miles further out, turning and coming to meet them. It was an old trawler, painted gray and with no markings.

Sanrevelle!

I ran back through the ship at breakneck speed, leaping down to the afterdeck. She was swimming toward the ship. When I reached the transom, she was only three feet away. I extended my arm…felt her hand go into mine…

And the
Amarante
exploded.

“So are you coming in or not?” Archer shouted. I had sweated through my shirt and cutoffs. Whitened knuckles gripped the brass railing, my palms as slippery as if they had been greased. Somehow, I managed to leverage myself up and over, knowing the water would soon rush up to meet me.

And like that morning so long ago, it seemed to take forever.

After a shower, I came into the salon, putting on a sport coat over my jeans.

“You going somewhere?” Archer asked.

“Not me.
We
. I’ve got a meeting up the coast, and afterward, we’ll find a nice little clam house, knock back a couple of brews and gorge ourselves on chowder.”

“Not a chance, buster. It’s a 5-Star day, and I’m sitting on a yacht off what might as well be my own private island. And if I want a beer, all I have to do is walk ten steps to the refrig. I wouldn’t leave here on a bet.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s too dangerous for you to be here by yourself.”

“Come here,” she said, and she went out on the forward deck and waved her arm in a circle. “Look around. You see anything ready to jump out and get me? Relax, Rail, you’ve done an incredible job. The only person who knows where we are is maybe God, and if He were a blabbermouth, He’d have slipped me the lottery numbers a long time ago. I sure as hell asked often enough.”

I had to admit it was peaceful, and she was probably right. The chances anyone knew where we were, were remote. I relented, but not all the way.

An hour later, we heard the deep-throated rumble of a pair of racing engines running at high speed. “That’ll be Eddie,” I said.

Archer followed me out on deck. Eddie Buffalo and his petite Asian wife, Liz, were waving from the cockpit of
Zydeco
, Eddie’s fifty-one-foot Outerlimits GTX. The orange flames on the black superstructure made the racing yacht seem fast even at considerably less than its 160-mph top end. Another man rode with them—tall, tapered and heavily muscled. Despite the setting and the weather, he was dressed in black jeans and a black leather jacket. He did not wave.

“Wow,” said Archer, putting her hands over her ears, “that thing sounds like a rocket.”

Just then Eddie cut the engines to idle and drifted
Zydeco
in. When he got astern of us, he threw two fenders over the
side and eased close until the boats touched. Liz stepped up and onto the
Sanrevelle
’s transom with the grace of someone who’d spent her life around boats. As soon as she hit the deck, she dropped the overnight bag she was carrying, ran to me, threw her arms around my shoulders and kissed me with vigor. I felt a stab of pain as she jammed my ribs but managed not to wince too badly.

“God, Rail, we were so worried about you. And then Mallory told us not to come to the hospital. Are you okay?”

I held her away from me and said with a smile, “Getting there.”

Liz turned to Archer. “You must be Archer. Well, you’re just as pretty as Rail said you were.”

I rolled my eyes, but I saw Archer flush. I was afraid she was going to cry, but she got a grip on herself. Smart-ass tough but fragile, I thought. Need to pay attention.

For the first time, Archer took note of the leather-jacketed man. He’d also come aboard, and now he unzipped the jacket and slipped it off, revealing a shoulder holster over a black T-shirt that barely contained his massive upper arms. Archer took a step back and looked at me.

“Morning, Mr. Black,” he said in Cajun-accented English.

“Morning, Jimmy.”

“Archer, this is Jimmy Buffalo. He’ll be staying with you and Liz.”

“Good morning, Miss…”

“You can call me Archer.”

Jimmy smiled. “Fine. Morning, Miss Archer.”

Archer opened her mouth to say something, then decided not to. To me she said, “Is this really necessary?”

“No,” I said, “you can still go with me.”

She turned on her heel and said to Liz, “I hope you brought your swimsuit, the water’s fantastic.”

I said, “We’ll be back in time to take everyone to the trendiest restaurant on the island.”

“That better be a promise,” laughed Liz. “Usually, I can’t get anything but burgers and beans out of Mr. Stay-at-Home.”

I wasn’t nearly as graceful getting into Eddie’s boat as Liz had been getting out, but I managed to avoid going in the drink. I looked up at Jimmy standing over us and said, “Nobody comes aboard. No exceptions.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Black.”

As Eddie revved the engines, I called out to the two women, “There’s plenty of food and some DVDs in the cabinet next to the television.”

Liz laughed. “Are you kidding? We’re girls. We’re gonna talk. Then we’re gonna talk some more. I’ve gotta get her caught up on all your faults.”

I shook my head, and Eddie lumbered the GTX out of the cove, then opened it up before I was ready. “Goddamn it, Eddie,” I yelled as I banged into the seat.

Eddie laughed and gave it more gas.

Unlike my reluctance to buy a large boat, a big plane became a necessity. But this time, I didn’t get a deal. Full retail and the price of four Ferraris to finish it out.

I had tried fractional ownership, but after getting a couple of planes where the previous users had left behind an odor best left undescribed and a Lear that the pilot told me he’d rather not take up because of skipped maintenance, I realized that just because somebody has money doesn’t mean he’s any more conscionable than a slum lord.

So I bought Jake Praxis’s old Gulfstream when he upgraded. A first-rate plane with excellent technology, but I still got tired of ducking every time I stood up. Imagine walking with your head down for ten hours.

Eventually, I swallowed hard and bought a Boeing BBJ3, which is a 737-900ER configured for private use. There are fewer than a hundred in service, and I was lucky to get mine. Somebody on the waiting list died, and my check got to Boeing first.

After my first flight, I wondered why I’d ever flown anything else. With the main cabin outfitted like a plush living room and the stateroom expanded to accommodate
a mammoth bed and an extra-large walk-in shower, it was as comfortable as a New York penthouse. And since most commercial airports have at least a passable level of security for hire, if I put down someplace primitive or dangerous, I use it as my office and hotel as well.

Eddie Buffalo didn’t quite come with the plane, but I hired him the day I bought it and charged him with overseeing its fitting-out and shakedown. I’d known Eddie marginally, seen him fly at some air shows and knew he was considered one of the best pilots around. But also a handful. One of the guys he used to fly for told me he’d never felt safer with any other pilot, but he couldn’t stand dealing with Eddie, the person. He said that he was such a control freak that he used to tell everyone onboard where to sit, and that once he refused to take off unless a fat guy got off. Said that in case of an emergency, he wasn’t going to burn trying to pry the guy out of his seat.

Eddie’s real name is Bufreaux, but that got corrupted to Buffalo early on, and he went with it. He’s a New Orleans boy whose family runs a major portion of the waterfront. But Eddie didn’t give two hoots about long tons and long-shoremen. His dream was to fly, and he was in a cockpit at nine and had his license by fifteen. Then he got himself a scholarship to Embry-Riddle and graduated at the top of his class.