“Because they stole something from us and were making a run for it.”
And it didn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that Olivia wasn’t going to elaborate on exactly what had been stolen. “And by ‘us’ you mean…?”
“Let’s just say we’re working for the government. And that’s all you need to know.”
Maddy tilted her head toward Lead A-hole’s body. “He thought you were CIA.” She jerked her chin at Swoon-Worthy. “But he says you’re not.”
Olivia shrugged, but there was a definite gleam in her eye.
“Okay.” Maddy puffed out a breath. “So, let’s say I’m buyin’ what you’re sellin’ and willin’ to go along with it because, hey, what choice do I have? Y’all have the weapons, right? I only have one question left.”
“What’s that?” Swoon-Worthy asked.
“Did you come out here to kill those men? Or did you come out here lookin’ to recover what they stole?”
“The latter,” Olivia admitted. “We didn’t even know for sure if they’d survived the sinking of their boat.” Which would make sense, seeing as how Olivia and the boys obviously hadn’t been prepared to face those dadgummed rocket launchers. “And, quite frankly, their deaths cause us more problems than they provide solutions. There are questions they could have answered. Very important questions.”
Verysecretquestions, apparently. But that was fine by Maddy. She figured the less she knew about the nitty-gritty of it all, the better. Government agents were known to fit pesky, inquisitive civilians with cement galoshes, right? Or, again, was that just in the movies?
Something caught Olivia’s attention. It was the satellite phone that Lead A-hole had smashed in a fit of rage when he realized his men weren’t going to emerge from beneath the undulating surface of the sea. She bent down to grab it, and the golden god…er…Leobasically smacked her ass with his eyes. Maddy thought just maybe she could hear a tiny thwacking sound echo through the bridge.
“What’s this?” Olivia asked, holding up the decimated clump of plastic and wires.
“Lead A-hole’s…er…that’s what I was callin’ the guy…satellite phone,” Maddy said. “Or what’s left of it anyway.”
“Did he make any calls?” That gleam was back in Olivia’s eyes.
“Yeah. He made one right after y’all hailed us on the radio. But I couldn’t tell you what he said other than he wanted to sink your boat with his rocket launchers. He was speakin’ in another language most of the time. I think maybe it was Arabic.” Of course, it could have been Farsi or Tajiki. An expert in Middle Eastern dialects she was not.
“He didn’t make another call after firing the rocket launchers? After the guys here killed his men?”
“No.”
Olivia’s eyes swung back and forth, the way a chess player’s did when contemplating the next series of moves. Finally, she glanced up, pinning Maddy in place with a hard, searching stare.Ifthisgalisn’t a spy, she missed her calling.That look reminded Maddy of Angelina Jolie when she played Salt. “And there was nothing he said that you understood? No phrase or word that he repeated?”
“There was something,” Captain Harry piped up. When she glanced over, Maddy saw he had some color back in his face. That was good. For a while there, after Lead A-Hole demanded they weigh anchor—and after he forced her to her knees execution-style—she was worried Harry might suffer a coronary. “But now I can’t remember what it sounded like.”
“Oh, yeah.” She nodded, frowning. “He kept sayin’ ‘Banoo, banoo, banoo.’”
“Mean anything to you?” Leo asked Olivia.
She shook her head. “Not a thing. Could be a person’s name.”
Feet pounded up the stairs outside and Leo, Olivia, and Swoon-Worthy—Iwonderwhathisnameis?—all armed themselves, their big, black machine guns up in firing position in a split second. The destroyed satellite phone fell out of Olivia’s hand and slid toward the bulkhead, butting up against Lead A-hole’s weapon. Maddy prepared herself for another blast of gunfire, lifting her hands to her ears and grimacing. But it was just the hugely muscle-bound guy who threw open the door.
“Find anything, Mason?” Leo asked. Mason, Mason, Mason… Maddy committed the name to memory as she lowered her hands. She certainly couldn’t call him Sir Lifts-Weights-a-Lot to his face.
“Nothing. Yacht’s clean.”
“And Wolf?” Leo asked. “Where’s he?” Maddy blinked. What were the odds she’d been calling him “Dances with Wolves” when his real name was Wolf?
“Down uncuffing the rest of the crew and getting them some water. What’s the plan now?”
A strange silence descended over the room, and then Leo glanced at Olivia. “With theWayfarerand all our gear gone, there’s no way we can dive down and retrieve…” He let his sentence dangle, flicking Maddy and the captain a look. “The jig is up. We have to mark this one in theLcolumn.”
“Uh…we have dive equipment,” Maddy offered, ignoring the little voice in her head that was screaming, Whatthehellareyoudoin’? Just stay calm, stay quiet, and get yourself out of this as quickly as you can!Calm she figured she could handle. Thequietpart was never something she’d been good at. “Wet suits and tanks, buoyancy compensators and—”
“We need special deep-dive gear,” Leo cut in. “The bottom is two hundred feet down.”
