“Whatever.” GQ looked over his shoulder at his partner. He stuck the Scorn back in its sheath and rubbed his hands together as if he was eager to start some new game. “You bring ’em?”
For the first time since they’d come through the hatch, Ronnie realized the fat one had kept his hands behind his back, out of her sight.
“You mean these?” The other man grinned. He was fat enough that he couldn’t manage a smile without squinting his eyes. He produced two cattle prods, each comprised of a battery box and a set of metal forks at the end of a two-foot fiberglass rod. He held up both devices and nodded at GQ. “Choose your weapon.”
Ronnie felt as if she might vomit. Months of training, hours of lectures, nothing prepared a person for this. She pressed herself against the cage, drawing her arms and legs inward, as far away from the two men as she could get.
“We have a job to do,” GQ said, taking one of the cattle prods and whooshing it back and forth through the air like a sword. He looked at Garcia and shrugged. “Just following orders.”
“Orders?” Ronnie heard herself whispering.
“Yep,” GQ said. He moved to the other side of the cage, opposite the end where the pudgy agent had taken up a position with his prod. “Our orders are to… soften you up before Mr. Walter gets here. So, we’re gonna play us a little game of bitch hockey, and you get to be the puck.”
Garcia wanted to scream, to cry out for her father, for Jericho. She’d read the manuals. She’d watched the videos. There would be a time when her mind would come unwound, when she’d be able to do little but whimper, but that time was not yet. So, she clenched her teeth and waited for them to begin.
Chapter 32
Anton Scuric gave the shorter of the two Bosnian harlots a healthy smack to the back of her skinny neck to keep her in line. He never should have cut the stupid women loose, but he couldn’t afford for merchandise to drown if they fell out of the boat. And his reward for being nice was that one of the bitches kept trying to run away — that after he’d bought their passage from their pitiful peasant lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On top of that, he’d spent the money to feed and house them while they were on their way to new jobs with nice men in Rome. No good deed goes unpunished, he thought to himself as he shoved the boohooing girls down the wooden planking and into the bobbing inflatable. They cursed and cried as if he’d thrown them off a cliff — which is what he felt like doing. Neither could likely swim, so they cowered in the bow of the dinghy instead of trying to escape. It would be easy from here.
Still standing on the weathered dock, Scuric lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. He was used to the thrill of a good operation — smuggling was his life and the excitement of it was a draw equal to the money. But his recent business with the Chinese had set him on edge. Watching them go, he couldn’t help but feel as if he’d been exposed to some deadly plague. He didn’t mind that they’d killed their girls. He’d been well paid, more than he’d have gotten for the little whores anyway — but the smaller man, the one called Ehmet, had looked at Scuric as if he would have been happy to kill him as well, just for the fun of it.
Shuddering, the Croatian stepped into the boat and cursed at the girls, ordering them to cast off the bow line. The tall one just glared at him. He threatened to cut their heads off and the little one yanked the rope free, nearly falling out of the boat in the process. Both women began to sob, clutching each other and glancing up at Scuric as if he might actually follow through on his threat. He was beginning to wish he’d let the Chinese monsters have these girls as well. It would have been a monetary loss, but at least he could be home having a beer and watching soccer instead of taking another trip up the coast to Sibenik to drop off the goods.
Scuric did his best to ignore the wailing women, turning on his seat to give the motor a yank. It roared to life on the second pull. He settled back on the ice chest and gave the throttle a little twist to nose the boat out toward his gullet. Maybe he’d even treat himself to a round or two with the merchandise to calm his nerves. The tall one had a face like a squirrel, but the little one had potential.
A moment later, the motor coughed, then went silent, leaving the dinghy bobbing in the water just feet from the dock.
Cursing to himself, Scuric turned to give the motor another pull. Nothing. He checked the choke lever, then glanced at the fuel line. It looked okay, but he tugged anyway and was relieved to see the connector had slipped loose. An easy fix—
A frantic yell from the shore jerked his attention back toward the van. A woman with dark hair stood beside the driver’s door, waving her arms. Pavol was nowhere to be seen. A chill ran up his spine when he saw that she looked Asian, bringing back the horrible recollection of the Chinese monsters.
A burble in the water, like a fish feeding off the surface, drew his attention back to the boat. The inflatable gave a little rock, as if it had been hit by the wake of a passing ship. Scuric grabbed the running line along the pontoon to steady himself. A fleeting notion that something wasn’t right hit him at the same moment something pierced the rubber floor at his feet. There was a loud zipping sound as the floor yawned open like a gaping black mouth. He saw only a shadow in the water, then a hand shot up from the depths followed by the cruelest face Scuric had ever seen.
Screaming in abject terror, the Croatian pedaled backwards, hands flung forward to fend off this smiling demon from the deep. The wet hand snatched him by the ankle and yanked him downward, pulling him beneath the surface in mid scream.
Above, two terrified women huddled at the bow of the boat, staring into the black water where the floor used to be. Absent Scuric’s cursing, there was no sound but the wind and lapping waves.
Quinn had come up for air alongside the dinghy as soon as he felt Scuric take his seat on the ice chest. When the Croatian put the boat in gear and headed away from the dock, Quinn had simply let his body trail, hanging on for the short ride with little more than his nose above water. Turning away from the dock, the extra drag was hardly noticeable in a small inflatable loaded down with three people. Quinn had ducked under the surface the moment the engine died and hovered under the rear of the little boat, just forward of the transom, giving Song time to do her job.
There was plenty of light in the clear water and Quinn could easily make out the indentations of Scuric’s feet on the inflatable floor when he braced himself to give the motor another pull. Quinn counted to five before driving the Riot’s thick tonto blade up through the rubber floor and drawing it around in a quick, sweeping arc just forward of where Scuric sat. The Croatian’s weight did most of the work opening up the hole as Quinn swam up and grabbed him around both ankles. Filling his lungs with air while Scuric shrieked out his last bit of oxygen, Quinn dragged the surprised smuggler beneath the surface, trapping the man’s arms against his sides as he swam toward the sandy ocean floor, ten feet below.
Scuric’s scream trailed upward in a silver cloud of bubbles with the last of his breath. Quinn couldn’t help but smile to himself. The idiot probably still hadn’t realized that it was a human being that had him and not some mermaid seeking revenge for all the women he’d sold into slavery.
Driving downward with slow, steady kicks, Quinn held Scuric’s face against the rocky bottom until he ceased to struggle, then another half minute for good measure. When he felt sure the Croatian was still revivable but beyond fighting, Quinn swam behind him and grabbed him around the neck in a less friendly version of a rescue tow. Snatching the pistol from Scuric’s belt, he kicked his way upward.