As he sat down on the leather sofa, he noticed that his Italian friends looked at one another with concern as they stood in the middle of the room. When they exchanged animated words — even more animated than normal for these guys — Kulap sensed a real problem. “What is it?”
Piero, the fatter of the two, turned to the young Thai crime lord. “I don’t know where my boys went.”
Kulap realized that the two bodyguards who’d remained here in the bar all evening were gone now. Their job had been to keep an eye out to protect the wing of staterooms beyond the wine bar… the Chamroon Syndicate’s rooms while on the yacht.
Quickly Kulap stood, passed the ’Ndrangheta men, and opened the door to the hall, expecting to see a guard he called Ice standing at his post, just outside the door where the Chinese prisoner was being held.
But the hallway was empty. All the doors seemed to be closed, but Ice was gone, just like the two Italians. Kulap thought for an instant they might have all left their posts to go out to the deck to smoke, but just then one of the Italians shouted out behind him.
Kulap looked back and saw the problem. Two Italians in polo shirts were tied and taped, lying prostrate on the deck behind the little bar he’d just passed on the left.
The rules on the ’Ndrangheta yacht were straightforward. Only ’Ndrangheta men were allowed to carry weapons. His man in the hallway had been armed only with a radio. But he’d never called the other Thais, nor had he called the Italian bodyguards, of which there were easily a dozen on this big yacht.
Kulap closed the door to the hall, turned around, and followed the big Italians back out into the second-deck salon. The overbosses yelled at the four armed guards there, and all the men ran back into the wine bar as they pulled their pistols and submachine guns.
Zoya said, “Might have been a false alarm. The door opened, but now it’s closed.”
Court said, “No way we’re getting Fan out that way. We’ll have to get through the window here.” He checked to see how it was affixed to the wall. “This will take ten minutes with the tools we have.”
Now Zoya turned away from the door.
“Shotgun! Shoot it out!”
Court could hear it in her voice. They didn’t have twenty minutes. They didn’t have ten seconds.
Just then Zoya raised the Heckler & Koch machine pistol up the hall and shouted in Italian, “Buttalo! Buttalo!”
Court assumed from the tone that she was telling someone in the hall to drop their weapon. And he could tell by the gunfire that Zoya’s demand had been ignored. Rounds crashed through the partially open door, and Zoya fired several short bursts up the hall in the direction of the gunfire there. Two men fell into the hallway from the wine bar. One was dead; the other writhed in the narrow space, clutching his stomach. She dropped down to her knees, then onto her chest, scanning for more guards, and while she did so she shouted back to the American, “We need an exit, now!”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-SEVEN
Court raised the shotgun at the sixteen-inch window and fired a blast, blowing out the center. While Fan ran to the bathroom holding his ears to get away from all the gunfire, Court kicked out the rest of the window glass.
Behind him Zoya fired more bursts from her weapon, and between them she shouted again. “Cover!”
Court raced over to the door to the hall and leaned out and over Zoya, just as her weapon went dry. A Thai man had come out of one of the staterooms off to the side, and he reached out for the machine pistol dropped by the injured man. At the same time, another Italian guard with a twelve-gauge shotgun reached around the corner, ready to fire blindly up the hall.
Court fired two shells in quick succession, blasting the man with the shotgun in his hands, severing them instantly, and taking the man leaning out to grab the machine pistol in the chest with his second shot.
Court now yelled into the room behind him, “Take Fan and get all the way down to the subdeck! We’re going for the tender!”
Zoya already had Fan by the arm, and then she leaned out the window with her pistol, scanning the foredeck below her. She let go of Fan, brushed away the rest of the window glass, and pulled herself through. Straddling the window, she put her pistol in the small of her back, kicked her other leg out, then slid down to the deck, dropping the last couple of feet.
Back in the stateroom, Fan pushed his head out the window at the same time that Court fired the last two shells in his shotgun, narrowly missing the Italians in the wine bar, all of whom were staying out of the line of fire but reaching around with weapons and firing blindly.
Court stepped to the side, dropped the twelve-gauge, and pulled the SIG pistol out of his coveralls. He looked back to see Fan sliding out of the window, then reached around and fired several rounds back down the hall. At his feet the Thai guard Zoya had knocked out was coming to and crawling up to his feet, but Court kicked the man in the face, spinning him back to the carpet.
Down to a dozen rounds in the pistol, Court took a quick look back up the hall and realized none of the attackers were willing to chance a run his way. He decided this was his chance to go out the portal himself, so he pocketed the weapon again, ran across the stateroom, and grabbed on to the handrail on the wall. Using it for balance he stepped on the ledge, pushed both feet out the window, and slid out.
As soon as he landed on the deck he heard gunfire closer to the bow, just fifty feet away. Looking in that direction, he saw Zoya targeting someone above on the upper deck, forward of the stateroom Court had just slid out from. Court pulled his pistol and was backing up to engage Zoya’s target, but a new source of gunfire startled him. It came from the main deck, back at the port quarter near the swimming pool at the stern. He dropped down as automatic fire chattered, and flashes there told him a single shooter was dumping an automatic weapon in his direction.
The safest solution was for Court to dive off the side of the yacht, but he remained flat on the teak deck, firing the SIG pistol over and over at the threat.
After half a dozen rounds, the submachine-gun fire ceased; Court pushed up to his knees, then turned and sprinted for the bow.
As he made it to the forehatch, the same hatch he’d climbed through upon arriving on the yacht a half hour earlier, he saw that Zoya and Fan had already descended. Court kept his weapon trained on the bridge deck, which was where Zoya had been shooting seconds earlier. Just as he slid into the hatch, shots flashed from right outside the control room, and Court fired a single round in answer before he stumbled down below.
He was back down in the hallway between the crew berths, Zoya and Fan were ahead of him in the hall, and he was glad to see that neither of them appeared to be injured. Court closed the latch above him, but as he’d previously removed the hinges, it wouldn’t take much to get it open.
Zoya and Fan took a ladderway down to the subdeck, and just behind them several members of the crew stood in their doorways watching. None of them were armed; they were mostly young women from the kitchen or older male engineers, and they stared in rapt fascination at the progression of wild-eyed, armed, sweat-covered strangers down here belowdecks.
Court, Zoya, and Fan made it down to the tender garage at the lowest level of the ship, and here Court ran straight to a control desk built into the wall. While Zoya covered the ladderway, Court read the various markings on the panel that controlled the door and winches, and he started pushing buttons and flipping levers before he’d completely figured it out.
Court yelled to Fan, “Get in the tender!”
“The what?”
“The boat!”