He realized his foe wasn’t actually trying to fight him. The man was simply frantic to return to the surface, struggling upward with everything he had, his limbs jerking wildly this way and that. Andthatwas his first mistake.
With deadly resolve, Leo locked his legs around his opponent’s thighs, effectively thwarting the man’s bid for the surface.Nowthe terrorist clued in to the real danger. He landed blows on Leo’s face and head. But the water leached all the power from his punches.
This close, the man’s face was clear, the absolute horror in his dark eyes visible even beneath the sea. Leo hardened his heart just as he’d done many times during his career and grabbed the back of the tango’s head with one hand, his bearded chin with the other. It was the work of an instant to twist. And in the silence of the ocean, the snapping of his enemy’s vertebrae was as sharp as a cracking whip.
The man was dead before he knew what hit him—a merciful death, really—going slack in Leo’s grip. Leo allowed the body to slip from his hold, barely sparing the sinking corpse a glance.
He’d heard it said somewhere that guys often entered the services because they had high ideals. But when push came to shove and the bullets started to fly, they didn’t end up fighting for a cause; they didn’t end up fighting for their country. They ended up fighting for the guys in the trenches beside them. And, in his experience, he’d found that to be true. Which was why he was immediately searching the sea around him, looking for his friends.
Above him, a red cloud blossomed in the water like a macabre flower and the body of a terrorist sank past him, drifting down into the deep, leaving a lingering trail of blood in its wake. Wolf had obviously made quick work of his opponent. Leo glanced to his left, but Bran was nowhere in sight. To his right, he could just make out a mass of writhing shadows, one so big it could only be Mason.
Without hesitation, and ignoring the whirring between his ears that told him it was time to surface, he kicked with all his might in that direction. He was barely four feet away when a familiar snapping sound echoed dully through the water and Mason pushed away from the dead tango to kick and claw at the water like all get-out. It was obvious the fight had taken too long. Mason was desperately low on air.
Heain’t the only one, Leo thought as he pulled up beside him, abbreviating his strokes to match the shorter man’s just as black began to edge into his vision. The buzz in his ears was now a roar. His muscles burned as they struggled to work without the benefit of oxygen. It occurred to him things might get pretty dicey when suddenly Wolf and Bran were beside them. They must have surfaced to refill their lungs because their strokes looked damn near spritely.
Wolf hooked a hand beneath Leo’s armpit, and Bran grabbed on to Mason’s gun strap. Then it was a matter of teamwork. The sun glinting on the waves gave them a bright, golden goal to shoot for. But it was going to be a very close thing.Tooclose.The need to breathe was overwhelming, speaking to the lizard part of Leo’s brain, trying to overrule all his reasoning and higher functions. Up, up. Higher, higher.Comeon, come on!They kicked like mad, but…
Aw, hell. I think I—
Just as he felt his lungs begin to spasm against the desire to rake in the air that wasn’t there, Bran gave him a mighty push toward the surface and, “Uhhhh!” bright, delicious oxygen rushed into his lungs. Beside him, Mason’s loud indrawn breath was followed by the harsh sound of a deep, wet cough. The latter told Leo that Mason had choked down a mouthful of ocean water. Somehow, though, Mason had managed to keep from sucking the stuff into his lungs. And that was a damn good thing. Trying to perform CPR in the middle of the drink was a bitch and a half.
“What the hell was that, Mason?” Bran demanded, breathing heavily. Leo opened his eyes to see stars dancing in front of them. His head felt like it might blow off his neck at any moment. It was a strange phenomenon, how the body could become drunk on oxygen after it’d been deprived of the stuff for too long. “You nearly got yourself killed! You shoulda surfaced when he pulled that knife on you. Youknewit was gonna take too long to disarm him a second time and do the deed. You bigasshole!”
“What?” Leo managed, the waves bobbing him up and down, the warm wind caressing his face and trying its best to sober him up. It was working. Sort of. His head was no longer threatening to float up into the clear, robin’s-egg-blue of the sky. “What knife?”
“A monster goddamned knife, that’s what knife,” Bran said. “After Mason wrestled his target’s AK away, andbeforehe could get the guy in the right hold to snap his neck, I saw the tango pull a hunting knife the size of my dick from the back of his pants.”
Leo ignored Bran’s ridiculous allusion to his johnson and wondered how Mason managed that laconic shrug while treading water and still trying to clear the moisture from his windpipe. “Not a lot of”—cough, cough—“options. If I let go, there was a chance the fucker could’ve stuck you in the kidney on his way up. Your hands were full at the time.”
“So thenafteryou wrestled the blade away?” Bran asked, eyes wide despite the seawater dripping off his eyelashes. “Why the hell didn’t you surface then?”
“Just seemed easier to”—cough—“finish it.”
“And nearly drown yourself in the process, you stubborn sonofabitch.”
One corner of Mason’s mouth curled. “Stubbornandwell-endowed.”
Apparently Bran only enjoyed big dick references when he was the one making them. “Seriously, Mason”—he squinted and lifted a hand to shade his eyes—“your stupidity and misplaced self-sacrificing heroics are blinding me. Would you mind turning them off?”
“Is this your way of saying you fuckin’loveme and you were worried I’d—”
“Uh, guys,” Leo interrupted when the engines on theBlackGoldthrummed to life with a deep purr. The sleek yacht was still anchored forty yards away. But by the sound of those engines, it wouldn’t be there for long.Shit.And just like that, he was stone-cold sober. “You mind if we file this argument under To Be Continued? Because if we don’t catch that yacht before it takes off—”
“We’re fucked,” Mason finished unnecessarily.
“In a word.”
“You go get Olivia,” Wolf suggested. Olivia…HolyChrist. Where the hell is she?Leo glanced over his shoulder but couldn’t see her anywhere. “Me, Tweedle Dumb, and Tweedle Dumber will go appropriate ourselves a yacht.”
“Be careful,” Leo advised. Suddenly, the thought of catching the yacht seemed inconsequential when compared to making sure Olivia was okay. Which, all right, was completely asinine. But there you have it. When it came to her, he had a tendency toward myopia. Complete and total tunnel vision. “There could still be two tangos aboard, not to mention the crew or whoever else was in on this little scheme.”
“I don’t know about you three,” Bran said as he took off toward the gently bobbing vessel, “but I like those odds. Race you!”Flip!And, just like that, the guy was back to his jovial self.
Watching his friends cut across the waves, Leo treaded water and kept a close eye on the deck of the yacht through the scope of his rifle to make sure no one came out of the bridge or popped up from below to start taking potshots at his friends. But as the seconds passed…nothing. No one. Hopefully that meant there weren’t many people left on board, making it easy for the guys to mop things up.
And that wasn’t ego talking. It was the plain ol’ truth. When it came to threearmedNavy SEALs who collectively had nearly forty-five years of experience and training under their belts, pretty much nothing short of an exploding volcano or hurricane—i.e., a force of motherfrickin’ nature—could stand in their way.Hooyah!
When Leo saw they were approaching the back of the vessel and the swim deck, he allowed himself to finally,finally—it had felt like an eternity—turn away. Swinging the strap of his M4 over his shoulder, he yelled, “Olivia!” His eyes searched the vastness of the ocean, looking for that spot of orange that was her life jacket. It was difficult to see. The sea was speckled with debris from theWayfarer’s sinking. A bright-white life ring here. A dark blue corner of plastic he thought belonged to the cooler he and the guys had kept on deck there. There were buoys and a few chunks of Styrofoam. A whole sleeve of red Solo cups and a couple of cushions from the deck chairs.
