Skeleton Coast (Oregon Files 4)

Juan, who’d never suffered seasickness in his life, found the odd lurching motion nauseating. Sloane, too, looked a little worse for wear.

Fifty feet from the yacht, he had them slither forward so the crest of the pipe hid them from the boat until they were just a dozen or so feet away. They could see the yacht clearly where it was tied to a dock that itself was secured to the side of a pipe segment. Heavy duty rubber fenders flexed and creaked to keep everything separated. Lights blazed from the yacht’s windows while up on the bridge a lookout was silhouetted against the green glow of a radar monitor. They could see a tripod-mounted rocket launcher secured to the long foredeck.

Had the Corporation been running this operation Juan would have fired the entire crew for poor light discipline. The yacht could be seen from a mile away and an observer in a small boat could easily hide from the radar in the back clutter of the storm.

Though he was forced to admit they had gotten a damned good bead on him and Sloane when they approached.

They clung to the side of the pipe for nearly an hour, their bodies able to withstand their wet clothes and the cold wind because of the warm metal. Juan determined there were four men aboard the yacht and that they took turns monitoring the radar display on the bridge. For a while they took to carrying weapons with them, still hyped up after blowing apart the Oregon’s lifeboat, but soon boredom dulled their vigilance and Juan could see they no longer had their machine pistols slung across their shoulders.

With nothing but the element of surprise to overcome the four-to-one odds, Juan knew his best approach was stealth and then overwhelming savagery.

“I’d better do this alone,” he told Sloane and slowly eased himself over the top of the pipe.

The hard-edged timbre in his voice made her shudder.

Cabrillo slid across the pipe and dropped nimbly to the floating dock, all the while never taking his eyes off the bridge watch stander who was distracting himself by peering into the storm through a pair of night vision goggles. He padded across the dock and lightly stepped over the gunwale and onto the yacht’s aft deck. A sliding glass door led into the cabin while a set of stairs integrated into the boat’s fiberglass shell rose up to the bridge.

The door was tightly sealed against the wind.

Juan crouched low as he took the steps, twisting his head horizontal when he reached the top so only a sliver of his face could be seen from the bridge. The watch stander was still looking out at the sea. Moving so slowly that he appeared to be standing still Juan inched up the rest of the way. A pistol was sitting on the dash, less than a foot from the man, who Juan noted had him by a good three inches and thirty pounds. The size difference meant strangling him silently was out of the question. He’d fight like a bull.

Cabrillo crossed the ten feet separating them when a strong gust hit the boat. The man was just reaching up to remove the goggles from around his head when Juan yanked his jaw with one hand and used the power of his shoulder to slam his forearm into the side of his skull. The paired forces torqued his spinal column past the breaking point and vertebrae separated with a discreet crack. He laid the corpse gently onto the deck.

“Three to one,” he mouthed silently, feeling nothing for the killing because two hours earlier they had blown his boat out of the water without warning.

He eased himself over the side of the bridge to a narrow catwalk that allowed access to the long forward deck from the aft section of the yacht. There were windows to his right and left. One was dark while the flicker of a television from the second cast an electric hue. He snuck a quick glance into the area where the TV was playing. One of the guards was sitting on a leather sofa watching a martial arts DVD while another stood in the dimly lit kitchenette tending a teapot on one of the gas burners. He had a pistol in a shoulder holster. Juan couldn’t tell if the other man was carrying.

He could tell from their placement in the room that he wouldn’t have a clear shot at either of them from the aft deck, and he had no idea where the fourth guard was. Presumably he was asleep, but Juan knew how easily presuming could get you killed.

Cabrillo leaned back over the polished aluminum railing to give himself a little room on the narrow walkway and opened fire. He put two rounds into the guy at the stove, the impact lifting his body up onto the lit burners. His shirt caught fire instantly.

The guard on the couch had reflexes like a cat. By the time Juan swiveled the barrel and triggered off two more rounds he was off the couch and rolling across the plush carpet. The bullets tore through the sofa and blew wads of ticking into the air.

Juan adjusted his aim, but the guard had found cover behind a wet bar set against the far wall. He didn’t have enough ammunition to blast away randomly and was already angry at himself for the two bullets he wasted on the couch. When the second guard emerged from behind the bar he had his machine pistol ready and triggered off half a magazine in an uncontrolled burst.

Cabrillo dove flat as glass shattered and bullets screamed above him. The spray of rounds ricocheted off the massive steel pipe behind him, zinging harmlessly into the night. He scrambled aft and fought the natural urge to roll off the boat and onto the dock. Instead he gripped a stanchion that supported a retractable awning and whipped his body around it so that he was on the stairs again. He climbed as quickly as he could and leaned over the railing above the shattered window.

The stubby barrel of the guard’s machine pistol appeared, tracking back and forth as he sought his prey. When he couldn’t see Cabrillo’s body lying dead on the catwalk, his head and upper back emerged. He looked fore and aft and when he still didn’t see Cabrillo he leaned out further so he could look down on the dock.

“Wrong direction, pal.”

The guard twisted his shoulders, trying to raise the Skorpion. Juan stopped him with one round through the temple. The machine pistol dropped into the gap between the boat and the dock.

The Glock’s sharp report gave his position away to the final guard. The bridge floor erupted with ragged holes as the gunman below sprayed the cabin ceiling.

Juan tried to throw himself onto the dash but staggered when a bullet blew his artificial foot in half. The kinetic force of the impact, plus his own momentum, vaulted him over the low windscreen and he rolled down the sloping wall of glass that fronted the lower cabin spaces.

His back slammed into the foredeck, forcing the air from his lungs in an explosive whoosh. He levered himself onto his knees, but when he tried to stand the mechanisms that controlled his foot refused to respond. His state-of-the-art prosthesis was now no more than a wooden peg leg.

Inside one of the yacht’s beautifully appointed cabins he could see the fourth gunman silhouetted against the raging f

ire burning in the main salon. The propane line that fed the stove had burned through and a roaring jet of liquid fire blasted upward, spreading flames across the ceiling from corner to corner. Molten plastic dripped onto the carpet, starting numerous smaller blazes.

The guard had heard Juan’s tumble over the roar of the inferno. He shifted his aim from his cabin’s ceiling to the main window and stitched the safety glass with bullets. A dozen crazed spiderwebs appeared in the wide pane and chips rained down on Cabrillo like fistfuls of diamonds.

Juan waited a beat and started to rise in order to fire back, and as he did the guard burst through the weakened glass, slamming into his chest and knocking him flat once again. He managed to wrap an arm around the man’s leg as they tumbled across the deck. The guard ended up on top of Cabrillo but couldn’t maneuver his machine pistol for a shot. He had Juan’s gun hand pinned. The guard tried to smash his forehead against Juan’s nose but Cabrillo ducked his chin at the last second and their skulls collided hard enough to make Juan’s eyelids flutter.

The guard then tried to ram his knee into Cabrillo’s groin. He deflected the blow by twisting his lower body and absorbing the impact on his thigh. When the guard tried it again, Juan wedged a knee between the two of them and thrust upward with every ounce of his strength. He managed to lift the man off of him momentarily, but the guard was just as strong and tried to crush Cabrillo as he came back down.