White Hot (19 page)

Taking a breath, she glanced around the stateroom for anything else that might come in handy in the coming battle to get her crew back. Save her own gym bag by the door, it was all but bare.

She glanced at the tiny bathroom and saw the shower cubicle. For a second her heart stopped beating, then started up with a squeeze. Memories flooded through her…of both last night’s heated fantasies and this afternoon’s sensual reality.

Oh, Clint.

He must have washed his clothes in the sink, because his T-shirt and jeans hung over the top of the shower stall. They drew her in like a magnet. Without conscious thought, some primal instinct made her reach for the T-shirt and bring it to her nose. She closed her eyes.

It felt damp and cold against her skin.

But, oh, it still smelled of Clint.

Yes, and Ivory soap and the lingering hint of fish and saltwater…but mostly of Clint. His familiar earthy masculine scent filled her senses. And brought a fresh ache to her middle.

She fought it back. She couldn’t do this. As much as she longed to lie down on his bunk, wrap herself in his sheets, and have a good cry, she didn’t have time to grieve.

Later she would allow herself to mourn him. Right now she had to think of the living.

But her fingers refused to relinquish his shirt. She swallowed. Okay. She’d give herself that much. She grabbed her gym bag, stuffed the damp T-shirt into it, and went to the door.

If she was going to rescue her crew, the first order of business was to find out exactly where the filthy scum were holding them prisoner.

Then she had to come up with a plan of action. Something smart. Something bold. Something brave.

Something Bruce Willis would do.

Or someone like Clint.

Clint melted into the shadows of the trawler’s lower deck, behind the bulkhead separating the galley from the ghostly dark main salon. He flexed and coiled his muscles, readying them for action, his stance absorbing the motion of the boat with practiced ease. Tango Two’s confiscated pistol was a reassuring weight in his hand, dull, black, and reassuringly deadly.
An assassin’s gun.
Been there, done that. Yeah, he could do assassin.

In the pilothouse just above his head, clipped footsteps made tight turns back and forth. They sounded agitated. So did the staccato starts and stops of Chinese conversation that drifted down the companionway.

Good. Let them fight each other.
Maybe they’d forget about him for a while. Long enough to get the hell off this banana boat and back to
Île de Cœur
.

But first he wanted to do a quick look-see, hopefully scavenge a few supplies. He’d brought along a small dry-bag just for that purpose.

He didn’t have a flashlight, and the only hint of the midnight sun that penetrated the lower deck was a dim glow on
the curtains blocking the portholes. But he had excellent night vision, and his eyes were already adjusting. Silhouettes of furnishings and features began to emerge from the black void of the salon.

The galley came into focus, tidy and spotless, evidence of a fastidious cook on the former crew. The larger salon area, not so much. Every horizontal surface was littered with the everyday detritus of a rough-and-ready crew of fishermen. Men who worked hard and relaxed harder, who after a twenty-hour day hauling nets and sorting fish, didn’t give a damn about how a room looked as long as it was comfortable and the contents entertaining. It almost made him nostalgic for last week.

Not.

Thankfully, he saw no black stains of blood. He hoped to God the others had survived.

Deserting his cover of shadows, he stole down the aft passageway to the crew quarters, moving swiftly but cautiously. He’d only spotted two tangos on the trawler earlier, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more. Though he didn’t think so. It was quiet as a tomb down here, the only sound the lapping and sucking of the waves against the hull. He sensed no other movement than the deck beneath his feet.

Four staterooms and a head opened off the stygian passageway. Four of the five doors yawned open. He approached the first, paused, and whipped in using a standard close quarters entrance. No one home. He searched the space, found nothing of interest, then did the same to the head and the two other open staterooms.

Damn.
He’d hoped to find a few more weapons. Automatics, or better yet, machine guns. No such luck. Only the sparse, disorderly belongings of the original crew remained. If Xing Guan and his goons had ever been in the staterooms, they’d left no trace.

He did, however, stumble across a couple of chocolate bars hidden in one of the stateroom lockers. He suddenly realized he was starving.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he murmured under his breath, and
grabbed them. Thinking of Samantha, he pulled the dry-bag from inside his jacket and stuck one of the bars into it. As he approached the last door, he scarfed down the other.

Wiping melted chocolate from his fingers, he cocked an ear back toward the companionway. Up on the bridge, the walkie-talkie conversation was getting louder. He figured he was safe for now.

Turning to the fifth and last door, he raised his gun, eased the handle down, and finessed it open a crack. All remained quiet. He peered in.

Three olive green mobile military cases took up most of the floor space.
Bingo.

He cracked the door wider. And froze.

Someone was lying on the bunk.

Or…no, some
thing
. Tall and dark, it was the same height as a man…but skinnier. With no arms or legs.

Quickly he slipped inside and approached the object on the bunk. “What have we here?” he muttered warily.

He couldn’t see shit in this light. He spotted a reading light at the head of the bunk and snapped it on.

A breath hissed between his teeth. He was staring down at the business end of a PF98 120mm antitank rocket launcher.

Make that
two
PF98s.

He narrowed his eyes in grim recognition. Oh, yeah, he’d seen these two ATs before, a week ago, on the other end of a periscope sight. Just before they’d blown holes in
Ostrov
, the Russian submarine where he’d started off this unlucky mission.

Gooseflesh crawled across his scalp.
Jesus.
Île de Cœur
’s hijackers must be the same black-ops team that took down the sub. In which case, unlucky was about to morph into a clusterfuck.

Last week, in a showpiece of classic Sun Tzu strategy, a Chinese Shang-class submarine using its three UUVs as carrots had double-teamed with a spec ops unit on the surface using the AT rocket launchers as a big stick; together they’d set a deadly trap for
Ostrov
. It had been devastatingly
successful. The Russian sub now lay at the bottom of the Bering Sea. It was a miracle Clint had been able to escape with his life—and the SD card.

He let out a long, tense breath.
Fucking hell.

Was that why the hijackers hadn’t moved the ship? They were waiting to rendezvous with their pals on the Chinese boomer?

Surely, the navy had long since chased the Shang-class submarine out of the Bering Sea, back to the Atlantic where it belonged…? Or at least were keeping a close eye on it so it didn’t cross into U.S. waters…

Of course, there was no law the hijackers had to be teamed with the same enemy sub as before. There were plenty more vessels where that one came from. Smaller ones. And quieter.

Or even UUVs being controlled from outside U.S. territorial limits—using the gen-1 version of the cutting-edge long-range UUV guidance system contained on the stolen data card.

Shit.

How do you fight that kind of threat with fireworks, cookies, and earthmovers? His gaze whipped to the military cases.
Please, God, let there be weapons
. One of them must contain the antitank rockets, at least. He dropped down in front of the nearest case and started flipping locks.

Abruptly, he stilled, his ears prickling. Something on the trawler had changed.

The walkie-talkie conversation in the wheelhouse had ceased.

He sprang to his feet, snapped off the reading light, and shot to the door to listen.

Tango One yelled something short and irritated down through the companionway hatch. Calling to wake up the dead guy? Good luck with that.

Damn
. Time was up.

Clint darted a glance back at the rocket launchers. He ground his jaw. As much as he’d like to, no way was he getting them off the trawler to
Île de Cœur
.

Somehow, he had to disable them.

He started back to the bunk but instantly halted as another shout bellowed down from the upper deck, even louder this time. It sounded angry and impatient.

Clint’s pulse kicked up, and he felt a surge of frustration. Any second, Tango One would come barreling down the steps, mad as a hornet that the dead guy was ignoring his summons.

And find Clint instead.

He wavered in indecision. He could just shoot the fucker and dump the whole damn mess into the sea—cases, ATs, dead guy number two, and all. But then they’d be back to the problematic scenario of the rest of the Chinese operators knowing a saboteur was on board. They’d hunt Clint down and eliminate him, and with all likelihood Samantha, too. Or they’d start killing the hostages one by one until he surrendered—which he would—and then eliminate him
and
them.

Neither option was acceptable.

If he were on his own he could deal with dying; that was part of the job description. But without his help, Samantha and her crew were also as good as dead—
not
something he could live with…or die knowing.

Fight or flee.
His pride chafed at having to make the coward’s choice.

Again, he didn’t get the chance. The sudden sound of boots clomping down the companionway made the decision for him.

Getting caught with the weapons would mean instant death, so he flew across the passageway, dove through the door to the head, and shut it. Just in time.

The guard had not returned to his post on the crew deck when Sam peeked out of Clint’s stateroom door to check. When she’d sprinted down to the orlop, the engine room guard had also vanished, making her quick trip back to the hideaway to stow her gear blessedly unharrowing.

She wondered about the lack of guards. The hijackers were either being extremely careless, or they’d decided that Clint and the phantom captain were not lurking belowdecks after all, and no longer felt armed guards were needed. Her money was on the latter. These creeps didn’t strike her as the careless type.

But they were definitely not being as vigilant. She’d heard their loud voices all the way down the passageway as she’d scooted out from the stateroom. The smell of lasagna and fresh bread still lingered in the air. They were obviously still in the mess hall eating—or rather, arguing. And if the hijackers were there, the hostages were surely close by. Her best guess? Locked in one of the lounges.

She wanted to see them. Make sure they were okay.

Since there were no guards posted inside the ship, she
slipped cautiously up to the weather deck. No guards out here, either. She darted noiselessly up the outside ladder past the crew deck and quarterdeck above.

She sneaked her way aft along the gangway—the narrow strip of deck between the bulkhead and the rail that went the length of the ship and led to the small poop deck in back.

As she ran, a light wind bit into her cheeks. She tugged her cap low and pulled her sweatshirt tight around her midriff to keep the worst chill off. The night air was cold and crisp, the sky above a blueberry vanilla swirl. All around, the muted light of the midnight sun shone down upon the rolling sea, shattering into shards of deep indigo and silver. It was a night that would usually inspire awe, but tonight she couldn’t begin to appreciate the beauty.

She checked her watch. Just after 1:00 a.m.

No wonder she was exhausted. She’d been up since five this morning, over twenty hours—if you didn’t count the catnap this afternoon in the hammock with Clint, which wasn’t as much rest as recovery.