Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

“Freakin’ fabulous,” she said.

She handed him the bottle of water the gunman had given her. Brady twisted off the cap. He returned the bottle to Yuki, who took a few gulps and then passed it back to Brady.

Twenty yards away, on the other side of the pool, three guards leaned against railings. One smoked, one paced, and one talked on his radio, speaking to someone in their militia, checking in as they did every half hour.

Another goon was on the track above them. He swept the mass of prisoners with his torchlight, three or four times before shutting the light off.

Brady put his hand to the back of Yuki’s head and, drawing her close, kissed her temple. She hugged her knees in the chilly dark, glad for the comforting weight of Brady’s arm around her shoulders.

The guard who had been pacing went to the rail on their side of the pool. He flicked his cigarette into the water, then, still with his back to them, lit a match and bent his head. Brady was on his feet fast, like a panther.

The match was still burning when Brady reached his left hand around the man’s face and hooked his mouth with his fingers, getting a grip on his skull with his right.

It took less than the count of three.

Before the gunman even got his hands up, Brady had twisted his head with a powerful jerk.

The gunman went slack and Brady lowered him soundlessly to the deck.

Yuki put her hand over her mouth to muffle a scream as Lazaroff got up to help Brady. The two worked as one in the dark, wordlessly stripping off the dead pirate’s clothes and mask, then sliding his body under one of the lounge chairs piled nearby.

As soon as that was done, Lazaroff melted into the amorphous blackness of the crowd and Brady sat down beside her.

He lifted his shirt, took her hand, and placed it on the terrorist’s fatigues and mask. Then he put her hand to the waistband of his jeans, before wrapping his arm around her again.

My God. My God.

Brady had on pirate gear, and more than that, he had a gun.

CHAPTER 88

ONE OF THE masked thugs had put a seventies rock track on the bar’s sound system. As “You Make Loving Fun” blasted overhead, Brady and Lazaroff lay next to each other on the deck, talking mouth to ear in the dark.

When Brady worked narcotics for the Miami PD, he’d worked with undercover cops, run stings with them, and led raids against drug traffickers. Cops got almost no training in hand-to-hand combat, but Brady had taken some training in mixed martial arts on his own. As for guns, he knew and could operate almost any weapon in current use.

His new friend aboard the FinStar, Brett Lazaroff, had been a Navy corpsman in the early days of Vietnam. He had been involved in search-and-destroy missions and worked with the Marines as well as local irregulars, going into villages and finding and killing guerrillas.

Lazaroff was in his midsixties and had arthritis all through his joints, but the two of them would make a good team.

And then there was Lyle.

Lyle was a nice kid, but that was all he had in his kit. He’d told Brady that he had held a variety of odd jobs over the past three years: washing cars and mowing lawns before moving to Alaska and getting a dishwashing job in a one-star hotel. He gave that up when he heard of an opening as a cabin steward on the FinStar.

Lyle’s no-forethought series of pickup dead-end jobs had accidentally positioned him to be a part of a life-and-death operation he could never have imagined.

After Brady and Lazaroff blocked it all out, Brady filled Lyle in.

“Lyle, you have to take us to the crew quarters. Lazaroff and I are going to keep you out of the way when the shooting starts.”

“My mom’s name is Leora Findlay. Hoboken, New Jersey. If I don’t make it, Mr. Brady.”

Lazaroff said in a husky whisper, “Lyle? It’s okay to be afraid. In fact, we’re counting on it. You won’t have to act scared and that’s good.”

Brady knew that there were three gunmen on the Sun Deck above them, a half dozen patrolling the Pool Deck, and others inside the body of the ship.

Their “pattern of life” was to make radio contact every half hour. Each gunman identified himself by position, not by name: Pool deck 4 to base. Veranda 2 to base. Roving patrol 1 to Sun Deck.

Brady watched for the pale-green light of the radio on the track to go out. Then he glanced at his watch. It had been five minutes since the start of the pirates’ last check-in. A pale gray line on the horizon in the east signaled morning getting ready to bust through some cloud cover.