The Gift of the Dragon (38 page)

Alice ducked under it, but Callan reversed direction and brought it down at her head. She blocked this again, no crack this time as she rolled back, her hands up. Callan followed up with yet another kick, and Alice blocked again, but the force of it drove her down and back into the metal rail around the deck, and he heard her head strike it with a hollow thud.
 

She snapped back upright, though, and charged him, this time getting one kick, then a second through his guard, slamming into his chest, knocking him backward and down. He wore a padded Kevlar vest with a ceramic shield that could stop an assault rifle’s bullet.
That hurt her much more than it did me!

Alice

Alice watched Grant fall to the deck. She didn’t follow him. She needed to catch her breath. Her foot hurt badly where she had kicked him.
He must have some freaking body armor on!
She would need to aim for his head, then. Callan got back up and came toward her again.
At least he stopped talking!
 

She saw Grant’s foot shoot toward her, and she blocked it with her own left foot, forcing him backward. Then before he could start another of his leg-powered blitzes, she started her own. She whirled her right foot up, and Callan blocked it with his left. She repeated with her left foot, and Callan blocked that with his right arm. Aiming to keep him off balance, she sent another kick at his centerline. He blocked that, but it moved him backward toward the mast. Thinking him shaken up by her rapid attack, Alice went into a spinning roundhouse kick that should flatten him. As she came around, the man she saw didn’t look shaken but fully aware, and he side-stepped inside her kick and then stopped her charge by slamming a hard right palm into her already sore solar plexus.

Silver fire seemed to flash in front of her eyes from the pain and Alice fell to the deck with the ship spinning around her. She got back up, but now Callan came at her like a whirlwind, with kick after kick and then punches coming at her as fast as she could duck or block. A knee got through, hitting her stomach, then another fist to her sore belly. She felt vomit in her mouth mixing with the blood and heard a roaring in her ears above the ragged sound of her breath. She thought about screaming for help, about running, about jumping over the side and taking her chances with the sharks in Miami harbor.
 

This is the man who killed Sara! And he is here in front of me!
She bit down on her cheeks then as his blows continued to land. She focused on the pain.
I survived the Columbia. I can beat this little man!
She fell to the deck and swept Grant’s legs out from under him, breaking his attack.
 

He sprang back up and grinned at her. “I just want the necklace, Alice.
You
can’t beat
me
.” She saw a cut on his lip but only a little blood. Above his grin, his eyes looked grim.
Like he feels sad about something.

The vomit would not stay down then, and Alice threw up on the deck.

She rolled away and got back up on her shaking legs. She put her arms up. “You will not get it, Grant. I will die first!”

“Your choice!” Grant yelled and began another series of attacks. Alice blocked two kicks, but then something broke inside her head. Her body suddenly went numb, and she fell down, her left side seizing up, her legs curling.

Callan whirled his kick through the air where she had been standing. The miss seemed to throw him off balance. As he landed, his feet went out from under him. Her body frozen, Alice watched him slip in the pool of her vomit and blood. He spun headfirst into the ship’s steel mast, and she heard a metallic bang followed by a crunching sound.

He lay still. She found she could move her right arm some more than before, and she could feel the pain in her fingers sharply again.
Short seizure!

She elbowed herself over to Callan’s body.
He won’t be out for long!
Some feeling was returning in her left side as well. She could get to her knees. Bracing herself on a numb left arm, she made her right hand into a blade and jabbed it with all her weight into his throat. He made choking sounds but still did not move.
That will keep him down longer!
She looked around. They were only a few feet from the mast of the
Endurance
. Ropes lay coiled at the base of the mast, for raising the now-lowered flag. She still could not walk on her left leg, so she crawled to the mast, undid the rope, and then crawled back to Callan’s body.
 

She rolled him over and tied his hands and feet with the rope.
Heavy bastard!
It took all her concentration to get her left hand to work well enough to tie the knots.

Alice stared at Callan’s limp body, bound to the mast. She could stand again, and by the feel of pins and needles in her left leg, she would soon be able to walk.
It always hurts the most when the feeling comes back.

She saw Callan drooling and starting to blink his eyes as she left him and stumbled for the upper deck. “Jacob!” she shouted. “It’s over! Callan is down!”

“Alice?” she heard, faintly.
 

She found him in the office behind the bridge, bruised, bleeding, with chewed-looking tape hanging from his mouth, but smiling to see her. She threw herself into his lap, hugging him, and then realized he sat still bound to the chair with a bloody body next to him.

She jumped up and stumbled back. “Northwin?”
 

Jacob nodded. “Yeah. He didn’t make it.” He looked down at his bound arms, raising his eyebrows.

“Shoot, let me get you out of there.” A knife lay among the photos, papers, and bloody pliers, on the desk. She saw a small tablet computer there also. She cut Jacob free. “What happened to him?”

“He made Grant mad. What happened to Grant?”

“He made
me
mad. Now he’s tied to the mast downstairs.”

“Tied? We don’t have good luck with tying people, Alice.”

“What do you want to do?”

“He used this heavy duct tape on me. And him.” Jacob nodded at Northwin. “Very effective.”

Alice saw the roll on the floor and nodded. “This tablet important?”

“He seemed quite interested in it.”

“Nanette said this,” Alice clutched the dragon necklace, “could be a… hardware key.”

“For a computer… or a tablet.” Jacob stretched his hands out. “We should take better care of Callan.” He picked up the roll of duct tape from the floor.

“Yeah, and then see whether this is the lock for our key.” Alice picked up the tablet and shoved it in the thigh pocket of her combat pants.

As they went back out on deck, she shuddered, remembering the bodies. “This is a ship of death.”

“We’ll make sure Grant is secure. Then I’ll call 911 and get the authorities here.”

“We should probably leave before they arrive.”

“Great minds think alike.”

They went down to where Callan Grant sat tied to the mast. Alice was glad he was still there. She saw his gun on the deck where she had knocked it from his hands. She picked it up and stood back while Jacob wrapped him up like a Christmas present for an ogre.

Grant coughed.
 

“Well, Grant, looks like she did come when I called. And now you’re the one duct-taped in place,” Jacob said.

Grant spat. “Why, Jacob, my friend, are you still here?”

“I am. And here you are. We’re going to leave and call the police to come see the mess you made.”

“Ha! I’ll be out in a week, Jacob. And then I will be the one coming for you and your sweet little girlfriend. Untie me, give me the key, and you can go live your small lives in peace.”

Jacob snorted. “Right, Miami PD will find you here with one of the world’s richest men and on a ship littered with headless bodies. This is Florida. You’ll have a quick trial followed by a quick lethal injection. Nancy Grace will make sure you get the needle. Welcome to the Sunshine State!” Jacob held out his hand to Alice. “Could you watch him while I call the cops?”

Her eyes fixed on Callan, Alice absently handed Jacob her cell phone. He walked a few paces away.

 
Callan looked at Alice. “Sweet Alice, this man you keep having to rescue, is he not so good? Is that why you are keeping me alive?”

Alice strode forward and whacked him across the face with her gun. “I will kill you, put your head in a box, and let it float to the other side of the sea!”

“Let me help you, then. Hit me again, in the temple. Between my eye and ear. Hit me a few times there. That is the thinnest part of my skull. You are stronger than you look. It won’t take long.”

“That’s what you want us to believe, that you’re not afraid of death.”

Callan looked her in the eye then. “I’m not, pretty Alice. I’m like you.” His eyes stared at a point above her eyes.
At my scar?
“I’ve been kissed by the dragon.”

That made no sense to Alice. His brain must be addled from the fight, or he wanted to confuse her. “That’s bull, Callan. You’ll die, and then you’ll go to that special part of hell reserved for people who kill children!”

“You have me confused with Thorn. I saw you met him. Michel Thorn, Ian McAlister, they kill children. Not Callan Grant.”

“Sara was—”

“Sara was an adult woman! Believe me, I know.”

“And you killed her. Tried to kill me. Tried to kill Jacob. And what you did to the men on this boat. There is something seriously
wrong
with you!”
 

“What’s wrong with me is wrong with you too. Hit me, Alice. Hit me a dozen times until my brain leaks out. I will lose my memories, as you did. But I will heal. Like you did. I will recover. We have the same disease, Alice, you and I.”

“I’m not like you!”

“Alice, we have to go!” Jacob came running up the deck.

“Yes, go with him, Alice. Don’t worry about me. I promise you, we will meet again!”

She looked at him over her shoulder as she went down the stairs to the lower deck. Alice felt sure that Callan was wrong about that.

Nate

Nate Achille put down the phone. “That’s the word, boys. It’s time to party!” After dropping off the shore teams around the corner from the yacht wharf in the Miami River, the Response Boat had loitered behind Claughton Island, out of sight of the
Endurance
.
 

Now, the chief put the twin diesels in gear and lighted up the flashing lights on the boat’s radar arch as they dashed toward the ship.
 

The men of the HRT checked their weapons, getting ready for action. In less than a minute the Response Boat rounded the island and surged toward the silhouette of the
Endurance
, dark against the glow of the Epoch Hotel, except for a few cabin lights. Achille thought he heard a low-flying plane before the Response Boat’s diesels spun up, but once the boat got moving, all he could hear were her engines, the waves being crushed beneath the boat’s broad prow, and the wind howling past his ears.

Ian

“We just got that message you were waiting for, boss.” José said over the plane’s internal comm system. “The guests are at the cottage.”

“Roger, José, thanks. Are you ready to try our hittles?”

“Hittles, boss?”

“The opposite of missiles. Isn’t that right, Top Gun?”

Awake now and securely bound and gagged in the copilot seat, Current could do nothing but glare angrily at Ian. Ian grinned back.

“Gotcha, boss. Yep, we are all green to go back here. You designate the target and then let them babies fly!”

“I promise you some fireworks, José. Like I told you, this will be a night worth seeing,” Ian flew low over the water up the Dinner Key Channel. Stepanof must still be doing his job with the Coast Guard and Miami Air Traffic Control radar, as no one challenged his unusual low-level flight. However, Ian thought it likely that noise complaints were being phoned into the Miami PD about some crazy pilot rattling the very expensive windows of the oceanside mansions and condos along the shore of Gables Estates and Coconut Grove.
 

The Hellfire itself could be fired from up to five miles from its target, but the Iraq-bound Cessna didn’t have the top-of-the-line guidance system installed. The range needed to be under three miles to hit anything at night.
We don’t want the Iraqi Air Force to be a threat to US Apache helicopters!
Ian would need to “see” the
Endurance
with a forward-looking infrared targeting system before he could fire. Then he had to keep a laser designator on the target until the missiles hit.
At least it’s better than hunting with a spear!

Even if he had brought more advanced missiles, he would not be turning away tonight, as he wanted to get good images of the
Endurance
blowing up with the cameras mounted in the plane’s sensor pod.
There will be no escape for the targets of this mission.
 

Ian relished the thought of flying low over downtown Miami with the burning wreck of the ship below him, like Belushi’s scene out of that movie. Of course, someone would probably take a shot of that with a cell phone, and tracking those pictures down and erasing them remotely would give Stepanof an even greater challenge.
 

While these thoughts raced through Ian’s mind, his well-trained hands guided the plane into firing range. Ian panned the FLIR thermal camera over the waterfront and clicked the targeting button when he saw the distinctive superstructure of Northwin’s ship lit up in black and white. This simplified touch-screen targeting system had been designed for use by lightly-trained pilots, and so he just needed to touch the target on the screen to lock the weapons on. He then dragged the cursor down so that the missiles would hit just above the waterline of the
Endurance
.
 

Next to him, Current thrashed around as much as his tight bonds would allow. Ian grinned at him again and then made a show of mashing the red button. “Tally-ho,” he shouted as two of his four missiles shot on streaks of fire toward the target. Flying at Mach 1.3, the Hellfires would take nine seconds to cover the two-and-a-half miles.