Kealey realized what was happening all at once. The yacht was clipping along over the water now, its captain pushing thirty knots at the helm, and it was obvious the pirate hadn’t ordered him to pour on the speed without good reason. He was not taking flight-there was no one in pursuit-and to Kealey that could only mean one thing.
He did not intend to remain on the Yemaja, but intended to meet up with another vessel somewhere out on the bay.
The pirates in the motor launch wore head scarves, military-style khakis with swim vests over them, and lightweight tactical combat boots. They were armed with fully automatic rifles and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, with several wearing daggers or machetes in scabbards at their waists. Like their leader, Nicolas Barre, they had scorpion tattoos on their necks as symbols of their brotherhood.
In the vessel’s otherwise blacked-out wheelhouse, the maritime GPS unit presently casting a muted glow over the pilot’s face had guided them to the exact coordinates Barre had set for their rendezvous. But having reached it well ahead of the scheduled meet time, they had anticipated there would be little for them to do for the next twenty minutes or so but await the yacht’s arrival.
Now, however, the man behind the wheel saw the unexpected brightness of a bow light pierce the darkness no more than 50 or 60 meters off to starboard. Listening, too, he could hear the throb of a powerful engine grow louder by the moment.
Turning quickly from the wheelhouse, he leaned forward against his craft’s low gunwale and peered in the direction of the oncoming vessel with his night vision binoculars.
“Asad…what is it?”
The pilot looked at the man who’d come up beside him, passed him the glasses, and took notice of the stunned, puzzled expression on his face.
“It must be the yacht,” the man said. “But for it to approach at that speed without Nicolas signaling ahead-”
“We’d better hurry up and prepare, Guleed,” the pilot said.
On his haunches behind the banquette, Kealey lined his gun sight on the pirate as the yacht raced over the black water of the bay. He did not want to get into a shoot-out here on the flybridge. He wanted the man for information, and that meant he did not want him dead. But he had no intention of letting him escape with the unknown contents of the rucksack-a bag he had not carried with him from the Hotel Bonny Bight, and that he therefore had picked up on the yacht. He wanted to know what was in it.
Kealey was fairly confident he could squeeze off an accurate volley even with the vibrating movement of the boat. Aim for the man’s legs, with a short three-round burst, and it would cut them out from under him. Miss his target, on the other hand, and all kinds of chaos would erupt. But the alternative was to remain at an impasse until they reached whatever was waiting for the pirate out in the night. If Kealey was going to do it, he couldn’t wait.
He inhaled deeply, then held his breath, preparing to pull the trigger on his exhale, the old sniper’s technique…
He never had the chance to get off his salvo. An instant before he would have fired, the pirate’s weapon abruptly produced a loud report, then a second and third, the bullets slamming into the banquette in front of him. Kealey barely had time to wonder what had prompted his shots before the yacht veered sharply to starboard, throwing him off balance. Then he angrily realized he’d waited too long-they had reached the meet point.
He tried to spring to his feet to return the fire, and the yacht careered again, this time turning even more sharply in the water, the violent motion flinging him onto his side and knocking the assault rifle from his grasp. As it skittered across the deck, he saw Abby clinging to the fixed stowage container, struggling to hang on to it so she wouldn’t tumble across the flybridge.
Kealey heard his own furious snarl as he again tried to right himself and saw the pirate holding tightly onto the rail, peering down over the side of the boat. God damn, God damn! They’d been taken for idiots, suckered…
The yacht kicked to a halt, its mainframe shuddering, throwing Kealey back onto the deck. Cursing under his breath, he grabbed hold of the banquette in front of him and launched to his feet, but by then the pirate had already leaped down from the pilot’s station and was on his way over the side.
Kealey ran forward, grabbing up his rifle as he hurtled toward the rail just in time to see the launch speeding away from the yacht ahead of a churning wake of foam, vanishing in the pitch darkness, taking the pirate and the rucksack with it.
Expelling a disgusted breath, he turned to the pilot’s station, grabbed the boat’s captain by his collar, and tossed him off his seat.
“Stay away from those controls, you stupid bastard,” he said, pushing the bore of his gun against the man’s temple with such force, it bent his head back. “You move this boat an inch-a fucking inch-and I swear I’ll blow your useless brains out.”
Rushing down the ladder from the flybridge now, past Brun to the hatchway and down again, and then through a passage on the lower deck, Kealey reached the master cabin amidships, where Saduq had holed up behind his locked door.
He stood outside the door, inhaled, and then kicked it below the handle so that it went flying inward with a loud bang, the frame buckling around it, partially torn away from the side of the passage.
Saduq stood staring at him from the middle of the cabin, his eyes wide in his face.
“Who are you?” he said. “What is it you want?”
Kealey stormed into the cabin and pushed him so hard that Saduq went flying backward over a chair into the wall, the breath woofing from his lips.
“Who I am doesn’t matter,” Kealey said. “All that does is that you’re going to talk.”
CHAPTER 16
GULF OF GUINEA, CAMEROON
“This isn’t complicated, Mr. al-Saduq,” Kealey said. “We know how you earn your living. We know you came to Limbe to broker an arms and equipment deal between Ishmael Mirghani and the man who jumped overboard with what is presumably a considerable sum of money. We have a good idea about the merchandise on the selling block-”
“If you already know so much, then what more do you hope to learn from me?” Saduq said.
Kealey looked down at him, the assault rifle in his hand pointed down at the floor. They were in the Yemaja ’s master cabin minutes after he had slammed in its door, Saduq on a cushioned teakwood armchair against the wall, Brun sitting on the bed with his own MP9 on his lap and a pressure bandage around his arm-the wrap having come from a first aid kit they had gotten the boat’s captain to provide. Abby, meanwhile, had brought the captain down off the flybridge to the interior pilot’s station, where she was presently standing guard over him.
Kealey’s dark gray eyes regarded Saduq with an almost casual detachment. “I hate to repeat myself,” he said. “But the key here for everyone really comes down to keeping things simple. What we want from you are answers to the questions we don’t know. There are only a handful that matter.”
“And they are…?”
“The identity of the person who made off with the rucksack. And what you think he’s going to do with the money now that he almost certainly realizes you’ve been captured.” Kealey paused. “Most of all, Mr. Saduq, we’re interested in Mirghani’s plans for the shipment, should he get his hands on it…meaning the name of its end user. That information would take us all a good way toward getting off this boat. In fact, I can almost guarantee it will eventually get you back to shore alive and in one piece.”
Saduq stared up at him from his chair. “Who are you?” he asked. “By what authority do you seize my vessel with impunity and try to intimidate-”
Kealey didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. He took a lunging step forward, clamped his hand under Saduq’s chin, and pushed his head back against the cabin wall. Saduq grunted out in surprise.