85

Alexei
I stared at the cruise ship sailing in front of us. My eyes hadn’t left the damn thing in an hour. My fingers drummed a chaotic beat against the console. Besides me, Pavel stood in front of the ship’s wheel, keeping the course. If my tapping bothered him, he hadn’t said. Would he if it did?
The Bastard’s men would never speak up to him. His capricious nature saw to that. I’d learned enough about underlings he’d disposed of for the most minimal of slights. Pavel didn’t have to worry about catching my ire but he knew how annoyed I got when someone interrupted me. That went double when I was lost in thought. Always best to have a sensible captain at the helm of your ship.
Right now, I had a lot to think about. My mistakes and how to rectify them should have been first and foremost. If you didn’t dissect your losses, own up to your missteps, you’d only repeat them. Other tangents tugged me away from that. Only one, really but she’d become damn distracting.
We’d shared a perfect moment, one that replayed in my head over and over again. I couldn’t have planned the confrontation better. We’d stood side by side facing off against two of Franco’s men. She’d surprised me when her knees bent into a fighting stance. I’d underestimated her again, expected a damsel in distress, and got a partner in the fight instead. It worked either way but I preferred a true partner.
We’d taken down our first attackers. My mental replay edited my sloppy performance, that he’d taken me down with him. She’d distracted me. Franco had sent reinforcements. Gianna flashed me a look before we faced off against the next wave. Nothing brought people closer than a common enemy. I gave her my best offer, but it would never be enough unless she saw me in action, us in action together.
In my mind, after we’d won the day, returned to the ship and gotten to sea, I’d have shared all I knew about her mother. Then we’d have another common enemy to defeat in the Bastard. But she had one more surprise in her. Hell, that was an understatement too.
I watched her run from me down that narrow lane. A fist swung in front of my view of her escape. My head slammed to the side just in time to dodge it. A knee to the gut of the overextended man sent him to the ground.
Franco’s men wouldn’t have hurt her. She was family. Even so, the thought of him taking her turned my pounding steps frantic as I ran a search pattern through the Old City’s labyrinthine streets and crooked alleys. I should have realized it then, identified my weakness.
Gianna in Franco’s hands gave me the same win against the Bastard as taking her away from him myself. He’d lose her either way. My goals had evolved past revenge. I didn’t just want the Bastard to suffer. I wanted her.
She’d more than proven her worth. To get all the way back to the pier without Franco’s men or me finding her? That took skill. When she stood on the cruise ship’s deck wrapped in the colorful shawl she hadn’t worn that morning as we disembarked, I could only offer a salute. Worthy opponent indeed.
“Sir, I found the cruise ship’s itinerary.” Pavel interrupted my silent contemplation. “They are docking in Valletta the day after tomorrow. They are going to Malta.”
“Well, isn’t that fortuitous?” I smirked at the cruise ship ahead of us on the horizon.
With my connections in Malta, I’d have her back the moment she stepped off the ship. I couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when the customs official pulled her to a side room and I stepped in to perform the interrogation.
“I… I might have some bad news too, boss,” Pavel continued, and pointed to the radar display. “It looks like we aren’t the only boat following the cruise ship.”
A large yellow blip ahead of us on the black screen represented the cruise ship. A smaller blip followed our course, almost directly, a few hundred yards back. The blips of other ships were scattered around the rest of the display further out, but none were following directly.
“Take us off the cruise ship a few degrees, we’ll follow them in a parallel course,” I said, before turning to the door. “I’m going to go give them a look, see who they are and if they’re following us or her.”
Before stepping out, I grabbed a pair of binoculars hanging next to the door. The yacht shifted under my feet as Pavel changed course. A subtle difference, but I’d almost become as attuned to her movements as my captain.
Just as I suspected, Franco’s men manned the boat behind us. Three of his thugs stood behind the pilot at the wheel. He didn’t look like a made man, probably one of their smugglers, maybe a wheelman.
As we veered from the cruise ship’s course, their boat stayed true to it. They had their sights set on her, not me. Not for the first time, I worried about how far Franco was willing to take his vendetta. Would he instruct his men to take her dead or alive? Would he kill his niece to hurt his former brother-in-law?
Throughout the entire day, Franco’s men kept pace with their target, our target. Night fell. The cruise ship’s lights blared like a bonfire in the middle of an ever shifting black desert. The smaller boat’s lights twinkled, tiny lightning bugs in the night. My yacht had gone completely dark.
Pavel steered on instruments and with a view of the monochrome world he saw through the night vision goggles he wore. I watched a similarly bleak view of the small boat tailing Gianna.
The passengers had stripped off their light summer suits and donned dark clothes, drawn balaclavas over their heads and faces. As two of them readied weapons and gear, the third hooked an inflatable boat into a pump, filling it. They weren’t planning on waiting until the ship reached Malta. And now, I couldn’t either.
“Oleg, ready the dinghy!” I yelled before rushing to my cabin.
Ten minutes later I jogged to the back of the boat, bare feet slapping on the deck. I’d donned my wetsuit and raided the tool chest. Before hopping into the dinghy with Oleg, I snapped the pack into place over my shoulder.
“This is going to be a bumpy ride at the start, sir,” Oleg said. “We really should be stationary before launching.”
“We don’t have the time to make up the distance we’d lose,” I replied and held onto the side of the boat with all I had.
“On three,” my bodyguard barked, “one, two, three!”
The deck under us lowered. For a moment, the motion remained smooth. As we neared the water, foamy in the yacht’s wake, the dingy rocked to its side. My shoulder almost smashed into the deck beside the lift. The dinghy floated on its own and shot back the other way. My fingers burned with the grip I held, but I stayed inside the boat.
We only became stable once Oleg blasted the engine. Through my goggles, Franco’s boat grew closer. The three men in tactical gear readied to leave on their inflatable. They’d attached a small engine and boarded it by now.
I frowned as they pushed off and started toward the cruise ship. In only a few minutes, I’d follow myself. That was the plan. Finding a single person on a cruise ship was a needle in a haystack proposition. They wouldn’t find her, but I’d get to their little inflatable and find them. Then I’d slip off the boat and it was on to Malta.
Still, that they’d even consider this course of action told me Gianna might not be as safe with Franco as I’d expected. I almost tossed my plan entirely as they grew closer to the cruise ship, damn the consequences.
In the end, I signaled to Oleg and he cut the engine. We drifted closer to the mafioso’s main boat with its single occupant. I stood and grabbed the underwater scooter from the bow. Compact, quiet and one of the fastest on the market, thank you German engineering. It would take me the rest of the way.
Snorkel in place, I dropped over the side of the boat. The water stung my exposed cheeks. The boat ahead of us got even closer. I let go and the scooter buzzed in my hands. The night vision goggles only showed me the other boat; everything else was blacker than black, a true void around and below me.
I glided through the water, dipped under as the target boat grew large. The propeller at the back threw up a blur of motion. I pulled beside and matched its speed before slowly rising. At the surface, I twisted to my side and deployed the suction system. The scooter attached to the hull. That was why you stole military equipment. They didn’t offer that option to just anyone off the street.
My fingers found purchase on the edge of the boat and I pulled myself up to look over. The pilot stared at the lights of the cruise ship up ahead. He hadn’t heard me over the whine of the engine or the water splashing against the hull.
Now fully out of the water, I swung my leg over the side and silently padded to the deck. With the engine hiding my steps, I crept closer, device already in hand, gun in the other.
“Don’t move,” I said in Italian, the moment I pressed the barrel into his neck. “Stay on course, dammit.”
He had jerked his hands from the wheel when I spooked him, but snatched it up again. I’d been right. He wasn’t a Mafioso, just one of their drivers, a smuggler or a wheelman. I made it a rule to not kill people who weren’t in the game and I’d planned for this.
The cuff snapped around his left wrist. He jerked it away from me and stared at the heavy restraint. A black box the size a glasses case sat on top of his arm. A red light embedded within the metal box blinked.
“That’s a proximity alarm,” I said calmly, holding out my arm. The watch on my wrist blinked with the same rhythm. “It’s set to my watch. I’m going to be on that cruise ship in a few minutes. You have about ten to get 500 meters away from me or the bomb in that cuff will blow up.”
I pulled away from him and holstered my weapon. He stared back, mouth shaking but without words. I hung over the side and grabbed my scooter.
“If I were you, I’d head back to Syracuse,” I yelled before affixing my snorkel.
He would probably make it all the way back there before discovering there was no bomb in the box. I didn’t want to kill someone not in the game never said I wouldn’t scare them though.
Even before I disengaged the suction cup, he’d turned the wheel. I spun away, starting the engines and twisted the throttle all the way, the cruise ship in my sights. By the time I reached it, their inflatable floated beside the sheer white wall, dragging from a line hung down from one of the balconies high above.