C remained on the dock, looking back at the overgrown village, his hand on the butt of his pistol. Ambrose could easily imagine what he was thinking. Admiral Sir David Trulove, ex-Royal Navy, was not one known for slipping away from a fight. The idea of a shoot-out with these druggy bastards was not without a certain appeal. Still, he knew himself to be seriously outmanned and undergunned.
“Come on, Sir David, get below!” Ambrose whispered loudly. “And for God’s sake, don’t dive. It’s quite shallow!”
Trulove well knew they’d learn more from waiting and watching than from blasting away, so he sat down on the edge of the dock and withdrew his pistol from his waistband. Then, hoisting himself over the edge, he slipped easily into the water. Holding his gun aloft, he joined Ambrose under the dock.
“Shh!” he whispered. “They appear to be coming this way.”
The two men crouched under the sagging wooden trestles, the water lapping at their chins. Even at high tide, there was about a foot of air remaining under the dock, enough for them to stand on the bottom with their heads barely above water, breathing easily.
“Quiet,” C whispered. “Definitely coming this way.”
Ambrose was glad Sir David had his trusty Colt. He’d just glimpsed a man covered in blood emerge from the brush, staggering right toward the dock. The poor fellow had one hand clutched at his midsection, as if he were trying to hold his guts in place.
The man stumbled once, then lurched out onto the dock. The boards sagged and creaked under his weight. He was close enough now that the two men hiding beneath the dock could hear his low groans of pain.
Then, when he was directly overhead, he moaned loudly and collapsed to the dock, facedown.
Ambrose, looking up through the cracks at the dark form above, felt a warm spatter in his eye. He wiped it and saw his fingers come away dark and sticky in the dim light.
Blood. The man was hemorrhaging badly from the head and groaning with the pain of his wounds. The blood, a lot of it, was darkening the water around Congreve. Blood in the water was not a good thing.
Was that a fin? Yes! It was definitely a fin he saw slicing through the water near shore. Yes, not one but two! Three!
“What’s your name, old fellow?” C said, speaking as loudly as he dared. Between the cracks, they could see something of him. He had snow-white hair, matted with dark, gluey blood.
He murmured something unintelligible.
“Who shot you, old fellow?” C whispered.
“De guns, dat’s de ting,” the man croaked. “I tole dem de truth, but dey…”
Ambrose put a hand on Trulove’s shoulder. “No time for this, Sir David. We’ve got to get out of here now!” Ambrose whispered, the fear in his voice palpable.
“We can’t,” C hissed. “The bastards who shot this one are coming through the trees. Hear them? They’re likely armed to the teeth.”
“But the blood! You know what blood in the water does to sharks! We have to get away from-”
Congreve froze. Something had just bumped into his thigh, hard. He looked down and saw one long, dark, hideous shape gliding way. And many more circling in the shallows just beyond the sagging dock beneath which he and Trulove crouched.
“Sharks,” C said. “Good God, look at them all.”
“Sir David,” Ambrose said, his trembling voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t tell many people this. You need to know, under the present circumstances, that I am ablutophobic. Severe case. I’m afraid this won’t do at all.”
“Abluto what?”
“From the Latin ablutio, ‘washing,’ and the Greek phobos, ‘fear.’
Pathologically afraid of bathing. In the sea, of course. Swimming. I do bathe at home. Frequently.”
Trulove smiled and pried Congreve’s fingers off his forearm.
“As long as we remain still, they shouldn’t bother us,” he reassured the inspector.
“Of course, they shouldn’t! Will they, is the bloody question.”
The deadly creatures had arrived en masse, just as Congreve had feared they would do. He stared at the menacing black shapes moving silently and swiftly just below the surface, tips of their dorsal fins slicing the water. They weren’t ten feet away. The two men stared at each other; the dying man’s blood was spattering the tops of their heads and splattering the water all around them. Ambrose eyed the Colt Python that C was holding just above the water. Better to die by his own hand than be torn to bits by frenzied sharks? Perhaps, yes.
There were excited shouts of Jamaican patois from ashore now, as gunmen emerged from the deserted village and raced toward the dock and their victim.
Ambrose looked at C, both of them realizing that there really was nothing for it. Thoroughly trapped beneath the dock, they watched in horror as at least a half-dozen sharks began closing in, swiftly moving in ever-narrowing circles.
“Bugger all. I’d rather get shot by those bastards up there than eaten alive,” Ambrose hissed. He’d been absolutely terrified of sharks all his life. And now he was bloody swimming with them. He started to paddle away, but Trulove grabbed him and whispered fiercely in his ear.
“You know the bullets will kill you. With the sharks, we may have some ghost of a chance. Now, just remain perfectly still. I’ve got an idea.”
“What? Bang them on the nose? That’s a comfort.”
“Hush up, will you, the crazy buggers are coming out onto the dock!”
26
“Who does this X-Men flying machine belong to, Stokely?” Fancha asked him nervously as they rode the moving stairs up toward the hovering airship. There was a gleaming stainless-steel escalator extending out of the stern to the roof of the Miami Herald building. Apparently, they were the last guests to arrive, since everybody else seemed to be already aboard.
“That’s what I’m planning to find out on this trip,” Stoke said. “TSAR is a major Russian technology and energy conglomerate that owns the world’s third-largest oil company and this Miramar movie studio out in Hollywood, but who owns TSAR? Nobody seems to know.”
Girl looked a little peaked. She hated flying in general, and she sure as hell wasn’t thrilled about leaving the ground in something out of a damn comic book. But she was determined to go. A week had passed since their meeting at Elmo’s with Putov and Nikita, the two movie producers. Fancha’s phone had been ringing off the hook with calls from the studio about a possible movie deal, an action picture called Storm Front.
She’d agreed to a meeting with Miramar, and Nikita, a.k.a. Nick, had insisted they have it aboard the Russian spaceship. Some kind of flying press junket down to the Keys. They were going to love it, Nick said.
“C’mon, baby,” Stoke said as they stepped inside the ship. “Let’s go find Mr. Hollywood. See what he has to say for his bad self.”
“I guess,” she said, looking back as the stairs were retracted inside the fuselage.
“You do want this, don’t you, honey? Be a star, all that.”
“Baby, I want it so bad it hurts my heart.”
“Well, let’s go make it happen, girl. I wouldn’t take you up in this thing if I didn’t think it could fly.”
The main solarium of the ship was officially called the Icarus Lounge. It was big and luxurious and could easily accommodate the hundred or so guests who’d been invited on the short cruise down to the Keys. The arched ceiling at the nose was mostly glass and steel, and the room was filled with sunny morning light. Normally, it would be a great place to read or relax, have a cocktail in one of the red-velvet upholstered armchairs or chaises. Today, it had been set up for a press conference they’d obviously missed.