MoonRush (8 page)

Oh, permits? Regulations? Gil bared his teeth in anticipation of the victory to come. The only rea
l power lay in cold, hard cash.

* * *

Brandi watched as Jarod slammed the handset down, jamming his thumb in the process. He shook his hand
to relieve the pain
as he spoke.

“Stolen? What the hell—
?
”

The biologist stepped in, holding out a pair of binoculars without a word. Jarod accepted them, and then scanned the bridge of the
Caribbean Fire
. His jaw clenched and unclenched.

“Damn! It’s Gil. Buton, fax our permits.” He wheeled on his heel to Cleo. “Get the engines going…I’ll try to buy us some time.” How on earth was he planning on buying time? What? Was he going to take his shirt off again? Although, come to think of it…

Brandi interrupted her own thoughts before they became R rated. She also took this moment to check on her recording disk. Thankfully, it was still rolling. She turned to the teenager, who was busy attaching a pair of complicated instruments that she could only guess were “feet” to the ends of his prostheses.

“Can you tell us what’s going on?”

The boy spoke without taking his attention from his feet. “Gil runs ‘Undersea Specialists’.” Such a sneer for someone so young. “Think pirates. Overweight, combed-over pirates bent on plunder.”

This was great stuff. Brandi punched a button on her remote, nudging the disk so that it captured her best angle. She probed further. “With the Bahamian government’s help?”

“Hey, bribery, corruption. They’re not above—”

Cleo shouted a warning, “Jarod! We’ve got a problem!”

That problem was made crystal clear when a pair of explosions rocked everyone aboard. Brandi clutched at the counter for support. This story just got a whole lot more interesting.
Take that, Chad
.

Jarod staggered to the array of monitors. “What the hell?! Buton, evasive maneuvers!”

The Indian scientist stated with baffling calm. “Might I remind you that this is a scientific vessel, not a—”

The world tilted dangerously as an eardrum-bursting explosion opened the hull of the
Rogue
s
’
Gamble
.

“We’re hit!” the teen stated, rather redundantly.

Okay. There was good footage, and then there was
crazy
good footage.

“Lower decks are taking on water,” Cleo stated. “Bilge pumps are shorting out. We’ve got to prep the lifeboat.”

“Rob!” Jarod shouted, “Get our cargo—”

Another explosion rocked the boat, carving out a hole in the hull the size of a wrecking ball.

“Damn it! No time,” Jarod announced, gnashing his teeth. “Abandon ship!” He swung around to Brandi. “And turn that damn camera off!”

Brandi obliged. Why not? She’d already captured possibly the best segment of “Rags to Riches”
ever
.

* * *

The tiny lifeboat sloshed and rocked as Jarod repositioned himself, trying to get comfortable. Hey, when the world ends, there’s no use suffering needlessly, right? He tried not to pay attention to the fact that his lifeblood was slowly, almost gracefully, sinking below the surface of the bright blue waters.

Decades of work. Years upon years of blood, sweat, and tears. Countless hours of researching, tinkering, inventing, creating…dreaming. Everything left of the vision he had shared with his older brother was drifting to the bottom of the Caribbean.

This sucked.

He scanned the faces of the rest of the crew. Each one dealt with it in different ways. Cleo stared inward, arms folded, shut off from the rest of the world. Rob seemed completely shell-shocked, gazing out at the water, turned completely away from the rapidly disappearing ship. Only Buton appeared unfazed as he observed the gradual submersion.

“I wonder what we did in a previous life to deserve such humbling…”

Rob shook himself out of his stupor long enough to mutter, “This karma of yours is such a
bitch
.”

Jarod was inclined to agree.

The
Caribbean Fire
came about, creating a wave that threatened to completely capsize their tiny vessel. Cleo grabbed an old metal bucket and started bailing the water that had sloshed over the edge. Jarod peered up at the passing ship, glaring at the redheaded reporter, who was busy waving like some sort of beauty pageant queen in a parade. Gil draped his arm over her shoulders, his greasy comb-over gleaming a mix of orange and fuchsia in the light of the setting sun.

“Survival of the fittest, my man!” Gil called out over the water as the ship pulled away. “Too bad you’re always the lesser specimen.”

Jarod could feel his face burning, echoing the hot core of rage in his belly. “I swear, that bastard is going to—”

Cleo ended his rant before it began, slamming an oar into his hand. “Row. We’ll check into his lineage later.”

Jarod sent the paddle slicing through the water, anger fueling his actions. According to his calculations, it would only take them four more hours to get to shore. Four more hours until he could use th
e oar on Gil’s grub-white face.

* * *

The shoreline
’s
lights frosted the tips of the waves with winking splashes of color, creating a fairyland between the raft and their destination. It gave the water the appearance of something somehow solid, and yet ever
changing. Were the crew to step overboard, it was as if the surface of the water would support their steps.

Cleo snorted to herself as she pulled her paddle through the sea for the millionth time. Fairyland, indeed. A blade of pain cut down her spine, dividing her shoulders into two separate landscapes of agony. A popped blister on her right palm chafed with every single stroke. One bead of sweat pooled on her eyelid before building up enough substance to spill over into her eye, irritating her further.

She peered into the almost-darkness, seeing Jarod’s hunched figure dragging the
lifeboat
through the waters on the starboard side. His frustration radiated
from
his shoulders in wavy lines of silence. Cleo knew him well enough to know that his rage wouldn’t remain quiet for much longer.

The music of a beachside club floated over the water
.
T
he sound carr
ied
above the crashing surf, creating a strange counterpoint to the reggae beat. As they neared the shore, the gyrating dancers became more detailed, showing every curve, every muscle, and every drop of sweat
.
These
tourists
sought
to dance the night into oblivion.

As the
lifeboat
ran aground, Jarod and Rob jumped over the side, dragging the craft up onto the beach, well past where the waves could drag it back out to sea. Cleo and Buton staggered out and onto the sand, following the sand-weighted steps of the two in front.

How long had it been since they stepped on land? Her sea legs refused to function on anything that wasn’t a deck. Buton caught her as she tripped and nearly landed face- first in the white Caribbean sand. His “land legs” came in handy.

After a few steps, she shrugged off his help. His pace was far too meticulous. Jarod and Rob were pulling ahead. As they neared the nightclub, the music became omnipresent, beating almost in time with Cleo’s pulse—now throbbing in her parched throat. Cleo thought she saw a glimpse of red hair flash through the pulsing lights of the club. Red hair paired with a gleaming scalp. She must not have been the only one. Jarod let out a hoarse cry and managed to turn his lurching gait into a sprint as he raced up the remaining beach between them and the partying crowd.

Just before he could crash into that mass of bodies, two rather large men in uniform grabbed him under his arms, halting his forward progress. These were the officials
that
you wouldn’t want protecting you in a dark alleyway. A third, older policeman stepped in front of Jarod, eyeing him with some degree of sympathy.

“I wouldn’t do it, mon. It’s not worth it.”

Jarod fired back with a fair amount of heat. “I have business in town.”

The policeman’s eyes bored into Jarod. “Trust me, mon, you don’t.” He nodded at Gil, jerking around in an attempt to find the beat. “That one’s spread around enough money that nobody will care about your claim. Now head over to shantytown…
”
he paused with some significance, “…or spend the night in jail.”

Cleo knew that fire in Jarod’s eyes. Time to intervene. “Jarod, come on. It’s not worth it.
Really
.”

The other crew
mates
must have seen exactly what Cleo had, for they rushed to circle the wagons. Buton placed a hand on Jarod’s shoulder. “We will deal with this outrage after a good night’s sleep and the proper amount of research.”

“Besides, we know where the creep lives,” Rob chimed in. “Don’t worry,
Uncle
Jare. We’ll get him.”

As they guided Jarod toward the shadier part of town, Cleo peered over her shoulder at the greasy, spasmodic man behind them. Dancing like that deserved to be punished. Severely.

She only hoped that she would be there when it happened.

CHAPTER 4

San Andros,
The
Bahamas

March 18, 2049

2213 hours
, EST

The hotel didn’t deserve the name. The establishment’s sign swung, wooden and sun-bleached, from a rusted chain that seemed not long for this world. Under the full moon, rats scampered back and forth across the phone lines sagging between the squat building and the nearest pole. This was the kind of place that the Big Bad Wolf wouldn’t bother blowing down. He’d just wait it out.

And, if anything, the inside was worse.

Jarod paced back and forth in front of the only window in their room that wasn’t taped together. He felt something crunch underfoot and stilled the impulse to check what it was. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.

The crew had been bickering constantly for the last…Jarod glanced over to the table and counted bottles…five beers. Gil was off partying, and they were stuck drinking watered-down beer. Poor Rob had to be content with watered
-
down root beer to comfort him.

Worse, no one could agree on where to go from here. Not surprising, when all of their efforts were currently at the bottom of the deepest trench in the Atlantic.

Cleo lifted her voice above the group to say something Jarod could swear he’d heard her say at least three times already that night. “When the insurance pays up, we’ll head to the Cape Hope site, and—”