Mia looked at Verena. She hadn’t flinched.
Good.
She didn’t look overly concerned either. Maybe she, too, had realized that Burton was a useless tool. Mia stepped over the body and entered the interior of the Azimut S8. The ambient lighting coming from the ceiling gave just enough glow for her to navigate the space without bumping into furniture, allowing her to see that the interior was minimalist and modern, with lots of high-gloss surfaces. She cleared the main salon in seconds.
Pistol raised in front of her, Mia took the companionway down to the galley. The space tightened, and all her senses were on high alert. She paused at the bottom step. She’d heard something coming from the master stateroom.
Mia scanned the hallway. Several closed doors stood between her and the master cabin.Not great.
Tactically, it wouldn’t be optimal for her to walk past these doors without clearing the rooms first.
Gunfire erupted close by. She flinched, the sound jolting her. She hadn’t anticipated it, especially not coming from behind her. Then, an officer—a man of medium height with a thick black mustache—dashed out from the master stateroom just as a man wearing pink pajamas stepped out from another stateroom.
The chef.
Mia locked eyes with the cop for a fraction of a second. It was clear that the man was as surprised as she was. He had a submachine gun—an MP5—in his hands. Mia’s pistol was already up, but the chef was in her line of fire.
She fired, squeezing the trigger four times.
The first round hit the chef in the forehead. The second struck the officer in the abdomen just below his bulletproof vest. The third and fourth rounds slammed into his body armor as he ran toward her but weren’t enough to fully stop his momentum. He crashed into her before she could fire again, driving her hard against the bulkhead. Even though she had wounded the man, he was still much stronger than she was.
Mia heard one more gunshot, but she had to finish off the threat in front of her before dealing with anything else. She grappled with the man, but somehow the blood oozing from his abdomen had slicked her hands, allowing him to wrestle her pistol away. He tried to drive her to the floor, but Mia twisted out of his clinch. She brought her knee up, connecting with his groin. He grunted, but didn’t go down. He swung wildly, got lucky, his fist catching her on the chin. Her vision momentarily spotted, but she managed to keep her footing. Another punch came, but slower this time. She ducked, drove her shoulder into his gut, and heard him gasp in pain as she pushed him against the opposite wall. Her hand found the hilt of her knife, and she drew the blade. She brought the knife up and stabbed her opponent several times under his rib cage, right below his body armor.
The officer let go of her, and stumbled back, dumbfounded. He fell on his ass, his hands clutching his wounds.
Breathing hard, Mia picked up her pistol and fired twice into the man’s face.
“Twenty-two,” she murmured to herself, making the conscious decision not to count the chef.
She turned around and climbed the stairs back to the main deck. As soon as she reached the main salon, she saw Verena with a pistol in her hands. As Mia got closer, she spotted the last Guardia Civil officer. He lay on his back, blood pooling beneath him on the teak deck. Standinga few feet behind the dead officer was Paul Hobb, his eyes wide and fixed on Verena’s gun, which was now pointed at Mia.
“He had a pistol on him,” Verena said, nodding toward Burton’s corpse.
Mia shrugged. “Then he was an even bigger coward than I thought.”
“Are you here for me, or for the journalist?” Verena asked.
“I’m here to clean up your mess, Verena. That’s all.”
“My mess?”
Mia nodded. “It is what it is.”
Verena studied her, then said. “Today could have been better ... so what now?”
“It’s really up to you,” Mia replied truthfully. “I won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re asking. Not after what I saw tonight. But then, how can you be sure I’m telling the truth?”
“It’s as if you want me to shoot you.”
Mia smiled, then shook her head. “I don’t. I believe in what I’m doing. And there’s still so, so much to do. Besides, I need to be in Budapest in three days. I’m playing at a big-venue concert.”
Verena gave her a quizzical look. “What?”
“I’m a professional piano player, Verena. Name’s Mia Hernandez.”
Her explanation didn’t remove the puzzled expression from Verena’s face. On the contrary, the woman was now looking at her as if she was batshit crazy.
Mia shrugged, then said, “What I can tell you is that if you kill me, you’ll be dead before the end of the week.”
