“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.
