So, great, another crappy day of being terrified and run ragged.
This job had been unlike any job General Grant had ever sent her on-and if she wanted another, so help her God, she needed to step up. Buck Grant wanted the Memphis Sphinx, and come hell, high water, and one crazed psycho bitch, she’d gotten it. She’d won. Hands down. The Memphis Sphinx was lying right there in front of her, cushioned on the backpack and a greasy rag laid inside a box of tools.
Most of it anyway.
But not enough of it. Not in her opinion. To lose her life over a ceremony whose odds of succeeding had just dropped from “highly unlikely, babe” to “no way in hell, bitch” was untenable.
She did have a plan. It was covered in blood, but it was there in the bottom of the boat, the dead Paraguayan’s pistol. All she needed to do was free herself from the handcuffs, move like a lightning bolt, wrestle the pistol out of the bloody holster belted onto the dead guy’s waist, and shoot the black-haired beauty as many times as she possibly could.
Piece of cake.
But she’d had that plan for the last half an hour or so and was still handcuffed to the boat, and then suddenly she ran out of time. Just like that. The river widened, the sky opened up on a grassy inlet, and the bitch slowed the gunboat down.
“This party is over,” Creed said into his radio. The woman in the gunboat had disappeared up the river, taking her.50-caliber gun with her before he’d gotten within range.
He’d lost sight of Dax in the fighting but had to consider that Suzi might still be here somewhere, and the quicker he and Zach found her, the better, and if he found Conroy Farrel, even better.
There’d been some casualties. He didn’t know whose fight this had actually been, or what everybody had been fighting over, except the Sphinx thing, but a lot of boys had died for it-the man in the boat, the captain, four guys here in the compound, and he was betting a few more over on the other side of the house, down by the dock. The house looked like it had been severely damaged-just about every window was shattered, and part of the deck had been blown off.
The sun was falling fast now, the light was low, but the fight was over. He and Zach ran across the compound without meeting any resistance.
“You take the main floor,” he said to Zach. “I’ll check the boathouse.” Or cave, such as it was. They’d all seen the big iron gate covering the opening onto the river.
It was dark going down the stairs, with only the faintest light coming up from below. He could hear the river running and smell the water.
He had his carbine safety off, his finger on the trigger, and step by silent step, he went down the stairs. He had a tac light on his weapon, but he would save it until he thought he had a target. He was good in the dark, the best, so there was no reason to give his position away.
He stopped on the last step, his hackles rising, a warning shooting straight up his spine. He wasn’t alone down here.
The man came from out of nowhere, from out of the darkness with a speed Creed couldn’t counter. The first hit had them both grappling on the dock, and Creed quickly realized that he wasn’t in a fight. He was in a death match, and it was his death. The guy on top of him who had him in his grip was unbelievably strong, and he meant unfuckingbelievably strong. Creed could bench three hundred pounds all day long, and he couldn’t budge this guy. Geezus. Dying in fucking Paraguay.
The guy had knocked his carbine off to the side, and it was tangling him up in its sling, making it hard to get to a knife, and then the guy just stopped, went completely mannequin on top of him, and the longer the guy held him down, pressing him into the dock, making it impossible for him to move, the better look he got at the guy’s face-and he knew the guy was looking at him, too. He could feel it in the slightest lightening of his hold, he heard it in the catch of the guy’s breath, and everything he felt, and saw, and heard, fueled an anger so deep, it gave him strength he hadn’t known he possessed.
In one mighty lunge, he upset the balance of the guy’s hold, and they were grappling again. He’d seen it, the sonuvabitch. He knew. A flash of the truth had been in the man’s eyes, and Creed was going to kill him. The betrayal was an abomination.
J.T.
My God, he’d died a thousand deaths in his heart, endured a thousand nights of shame for not being able to save his partner, his friend, and J.T. was here.
Creed was going to kill him.
His rage was boundless, like the opening of a floodgate.
And in an instant it didn’t matter. The guy landed one blow, and Creed’s lights went out in a burst of agony.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Something terrible was happening to the Asian woman, something besides her being consumed by an ever-growing madness. When she’d dragged the dead German out of the bottom of the boat and hauled him up onto the shore, and then kept going, Suzi had seized her chance, using her feet to pull the dead captain closer-but she couldn’t get him close enough to grab his gun, not while she was cuffed to a piece of metal bolted into the boat. Dammit.
She was going to die here.
The woman made another trip with the Sphinx before coming back for Suzi, and the minute she undid the cuff from the boat, Suzi lashed out, pushing hard against her chest and sweeping her leg out to kick the woman’s legs out from under her-and it worked, just the way it worked in training, when she was exhausted and Superman kept pushing her harder and harder, being mean, being tough, roughing her up.
When the woman went down, Suzi kicked her hard and made her escape, leaping over the side of the boat and letting herself sink under the dark water.
Freedom.
She stroked for the bottom, trying to become as invisible as possible, but didn’t get far before a hand buried itself in her hair and dragged her back up to the surface. For a second, Suzi thought she could fight the woman off, but in the next passing second she realized the Asian woman wasn’t just strong-she was very strong. Stronger even than Superman.
There was no hope, no chance. The woman had her under control, her hands cuffed back together, and was hauling her up onto the shore in less than half a minute, dragging her up through the grass like a half-drowned rat.
Suzi spluttered and choked, and for good measure, the woman hit her in the face before dropping her next to Erich Warner.
Damn. Suzi didn’t even care that he was dead. Dead people were not the ones beating the crap out of her. She was never going to be afraid of another dead person, not ever.
A cramp hit her, and she wrapped her arm tight around her middle and threw up on the ground, a whole stomachful of river water.
Geezus. She was probably going to die from that.
But then she thought no, not really. She was going to die bleeding out for Erich Warner and the Memphis Sphinx-unless she could figure out a way to kill this bitch with the knives.
She threw up again, and used the back of her hand to wipe her mouth, and then she launched herself at the Asian woman, right over the top of Erich Warner’s dead body, her hands going for the woman’s throat. If she could just get a grip-but the woman knocked her away, and the blow left her stunned.
For a moment, she lay there, trying to catch her breath, trying to clear her head so she could think, but all she could think was that she didn’t want to die-not now, not in this place, and not by this woman’s hands.
Dax gunned the twin Mercs on Farrel’s go-fast boat, going even faster, driving the thing in curving arcs up the winding Tambo River. He didn’t know where Suzi was. He only knew the worst place for her to be, and that was with Shoko, and Shoko had gone up the river, undoubtedly not very far-unless she’d already gotten what she needed. So the farther he went, the surer he was that the Blade Queen of Bangkok had gotten the Sphinx, and probably Suzi, too. Both those things had been promised to him by Conroy Farrel, and both of those things had been missing from the house.