When she cleared the edge, she saw that the man holding a knife at her father’s throat was not alone. A second man stood behind them, a few paces away, machete held loosely in his right fist. Miranda was careful not to make eye contact with either man, or do anything else that might be interpreted as threatening behavior. That was the only way she and her father were going to survive this.
She raised her left foot to the next rung, settled all her weight onto that limb, and then stood up with an explosion of energy. As she straightened, she hurled the dive fins at the man with the machete.
The flippers looked like bat wings as they flew through the air. The man reacted, predictably, by slashing at the fins, knocking them out of the air with his blade. Even before he made contact though, Miranda landed in a crouch a few inches from the edge of the cenote, right beside her father.
The man holding Charles Bell also reacted predictably. Instead of threatening Bell, he focused on the immediate threat. He shoved his hostage away, and swiped his knife at Miranda.
But Miranda was already gone, twisting out of the way. As she came back up, she slipped out of her dive harness, gripped it with both hands, and then spun around like an Olympic hammer-thrower, gathering momentum. The empty 80-liter bottle whooshed through the air and slammed into the man’s arm, knocking the knife away.
She struck again. The SCUBA tank arced around and slammed into the man’s shoulder with enough force to topple him over the edge, into the cenote.
Miranda planted her foot and hurled the tank at the man with the machete. The projectile struck the raised blade, and although the man did not drop the weapon, the impact staggered him back.
He recovered and got the long knife back up again, but Miranda had her dive knife out and was stalking forward like a panther about to strike. Her fearless aggression must have been too much for the man. He turned and bolted toward the trees.
Miranda started after him, but halted after a few steps. She was barefoot, and if the man changed his mind and decided to take his chances in a knife fight, the reach of his machete would give him the advantage. Besides, she wasn’t about to leave her father.
She turned back just as the other man hauled himself out of the cenote. He looked at Miranda and the blade in her hand, then past her at the retreating back of his accomplice, and then he too was running, fleeing the area down the same trail Miranda and Bell had used to reach the cenote.
Miranda sprang forward, trying to block his escape, but she was a half-second too slow. Yet, as he slipped past her, he stopped suddenly, rebounding as if he had just collided with a tree.
No, not a tree, Miranda saw, but something… someone rather, almost as unyielding. It was a man — a local she guessed, judging by his complexion, but he was just about the biggest Mexican she had ever seen. He stood well over six feet tall, with his long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore dark gray cargo shorts and an open Hawaiian floral-print shirt over a black T-shirt, emblazoned with the message “I’m not saying it was aliens… ” The tight fitting T-shirt accentuated a broad, muscled chest, and his powerful arms, clutching dive tanks, were as thick as Miranda’s legs.
“Whoa, amigo,” the big man quipped in a voice that was deep and sonorous. “Donde esta el fuego?”
His accent, not to mention his choice of words, told Miranda he wasn’t a local after all, but an American. A second glance told her he was, in fact Native American.
The soaking wet would-be assailant popped back up and tried to slip around the big man, only to come face to face with another man. There was no mistaking the second fellow for a local. He had blond hair and eyes the color of a stormy sea. He stood about half a head shorter than the first man, but was built just as broadly.
The fleeing man turned and bolted away, crashing frantically through the vegetation beneath the trees.
Miranda advanced on the newcomers. “Why the hell didn’t you grab him?”
The big man raised an eyebrow then turned to the shorter man. “Yeah, why the hell didn’t you grab him?”
The fair-haired man ignored his companion’s clearly disingenuous question and stepped forward. “Sorry about that. I guess our timing could have been a little better.”
“I’ll say.” She put her hands on her hips, placing herself directly in their path. “You must be the so-called dive experts my father hired.”
The big man’s lips twitched into a smile. He cast a mock-accusatory stare at his friend. “Hired? You mean we’re getting paid for this gig? You holding out on me, Maddock?”
The other man maintained his patient expression. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Dane Maddock. This buffoon is Bones.” He gestured to a third person behind them on the trail. “And this is Angel.”
Miranda’s retort died on her lips. Angel, the third member of the party, was a strikingly beautiful Native American woman, tall and lean. She wore a white halter top that laid bare the chiseled shoulders and taut biceps of an athlete.
Miranda shook her head, trying to regain her composure. “That’s great, Mr. Maddock—”
“Just ‘Maddock’ is fine.”
“Mr. Maddock,” she said again, emphatically. “Thanks for coming out, but as it happens, we don’t need your help after all, so you might as well turn around and head back to the resort or whatever.”
“Miranda!”
She flinched. Even though she was a grown woman in her early-thirties, her father’s stern voice was as powerful now as it had been when she was just a little girl.
Bell stepped forward. “You’ll have to forgive my daughter, Mr. Maddock. She’s very independent. Maybe a little too independent for her own good.”
Miranda turned to her father. “Dad, we really don’t need them. I’ve got this.”
“I’m sure you do,” Bell said. “But I asked these men to come here. It’s not your decision.”
She frowned and leaned in close, whispering. “Dad, I found something down there. Something… ” She flicked her eyes meaningfully. “That we probably shouldn’t talk about in front of strangers.”
“They’re not strangers,” Bell replied with a paternal smile. “And they aren’t just a couple guys I hired off the boat. They’re Navy SEALs.”
Miranda raised an eyebrow, then turned and cast a dubious eye at the two men. “Navy SEALs, huh? Sure you are.”
CHAPTER 4
“We used to be SEALs,” Maddock said quickly. Like most special operations veterans, he didn’t talk much about his military service. It was a rule of thumb that if someone bragged about being a SEAL or Green Beret or something like that, they were probably lying. He was a little surprised that Charles Bell had been made aware of that detail about Bones and himself. It hadn’t come up during their earlier conversation, which could only mean that Tam Broderick had told him.
“That was a long time ago,” he continued. “We don’t work for Uncle Sam anymore.”
“They did teach us how to swim. Sometimes clothed,” Bones said with a wink.
“You know I get funding from the U.S. government,” Bell said, addressing the blonde woman whom Maddock assumed had to be his daughter, Miranda. “Well, they asked me to let Mr. Maddock and his team check in on us.”
Bell looked to be in his late fifties, silver-gray hair trimmed in a crew cut. Miranda lean and athletic, had long blond hair, pulled back in a tight bun which was mostly hidden by the diving mask perched atop her head. The family resemblance was there in their faces, and both had the same startlingly blue eyes. Tam Broderick, who had put him in touch with Bell, had given Maddock their names, but not a whole lot more.