Force of Nature (47 page)

Foley’s fishing boat. Had to be. It was still some distance away, but the gap was closing fast.

Annie had lit the fuse.

Okay—
that
was one scenario Robin hadn’t considered.

Jesus, she was badly hurt. She tried to push herself to her feet, but she didn’t get far.

“How long ago did you light it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Can we cut it? Or just…pull the fuse out?”

She reached for it, but he stopped her. “Don’t. I don’t know. I just…don’t know.” He’d never defused a bomb before—he didn’t know enough about it. He
did
know that dousing the fuse with water in an attempt to put it out wouldn’t work. It was called
underwater
time fuse for a reason.

Could
he just pull it out? And if he could, why, in the movies, did people defuse bombs carefully, with sweat dripping down their faces? Why didn’t they just grab and yank?

No, Robin knew of only one way to be absolutely certain they would survive this—and that was to get off this boat and swim like hell.

He swung Annie up and over his shoulder and ran for the deck.

Jules handed Junior’s cell phone to Ric and began tying up Junior.

“Call Foley,” he said. “Tell him I’m dead, but that you’ve got Junior. Tell him you’ll make a trade. Junior for Annie.”

Ric was already accessing Junior’s phone book. Foley was right there, in the
F
s. He pressed the talk button and…

“It’s ringing,” he reported to Jules, who was now collecting weapons and ammunition from the men he’d killed.

“No one else has a phone,” Jules complained. “As soon as you’re done, I need to call Yashi for backup.”

“I’m getting bumped to Foley’s voicemail.” Ric was trying not to freak. He turned to Junior and asked, “How many men did Foley have aboard?”

“Fuck you,” Junior said, but Ric couldn’t hear him. He saw Junior’s mouth move, but the sound of his words were obliterated by the roar of an explosion.

He turned to see Jules staring out over the deck railing, horror on his face.

Jules’s mouth moved, too.
No…

Ric spun to see what he was looking at, and realized that Foley’s fishing boat had exploded in a fireball.

Water shot up into the sky, and debris rained down into the Gulf.

The silence that fell was broken only by Junior. The son of a bitch was laughing.

Ric drew his sidearm.

“Don’t,” Jules said quietly.

“I don’t give a fuck”—Ric’s voice broke—“about finding al-Hasan.”

“Robin and Annie did,” Jules reminded him, and knocked Junior on the side of his head with the butt of his handgun. It looked almost gentle, the way that he did it, but Junior stopped laughing and immediately slumped unconscious.

Ric sat down on the deck.

Jules sat, too, holding out his hand for the phone.

“I thought we were going to do it,” Ric said as Jules dialed. “I thought…Robin was still alive, and…I thought…” He shook his head.

“I thought we had a chance, too,” Jules agreed. There were tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry. Yeah, Yash,” he said into the phone. “It’s me. I’m here with Ric. I’m somewhere off Sarasota on…” He paused. “You
what
?”

The change in his voice made Ric look up.

“He called
when
?” Jules pushed himself to his feet. “Backup’s already on its way,” he told Ric, repeating information he was getting from Yashi. “There are ten helicopters—six of them military—heading in our direction, ETA twenty minutes. They were called in about four minutes ago by
Robin.
You were right, he didn’t drown—holy shit. Yeah, yeah, Yash…” He held out a hand to help Ric up, then led the way to the bridge, speaking again to Ric. “He wants us to try to send out a radio signal—an SOS—from the bridge, so they can get an exact…Yash, listen. Tell the pilots there’s a big column of smoke. A fishing boat just exploded and…We’re right there. They can’t miss us.”

Ric followed him up the stairs to the yacht’s control room. There was a huge steering wheel, right in front of floor to ceiling windows. He went over to it.

“Steer toward the wreckage,” Jules ordered him.

It didn’t budge. “The wheel’s locked,” Ric reported.

“Yashi,” Jules said into Junior’s phone. “I need info on how to get this thing out of autopilot and how to slow it down. ASAP.” He looked at Ric, hope back in his eyes. “They were alive four minutes ago.”

“Four minutes ago,” Ric pointed out, “was before that blast.”

“Shit,” Robin said. “They’re heading toward us.”

Robin had told Annie that Junior’s yacht seemed to be on a course that would pass the wreckage. But now, apparently, they’d turned.

The salt water had finally stopped stinging Annie’s multitude of cuts and scrapes as she and Robin clung to a floating bench cushion he’d grabbed on his way off the boat. Well, Robin clung—both to the cushion and to Annie. Her ability to cling to anything was limited by her injured wrist.

“Leave me here,” Annie told Robin.

“What?” he said. “No way.”

“Please,” she said. “You’re a strong enough swimmer—you can make it to shore.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said. “You’re hurt.”

“You have to,” she said. “If Junior finds us, Ric and Jules will die. I don’t want them to die.”

“Help is coming,” Robin promised her. “We just have to hang on a little bit longer.”

Yashi was the man.

He’d helped Jules and Ric gain control of the yacht’s steering system, and shut down the engines.

Of course a ship didn’t have brakes, so they still moved forward. But they were slowing rapidly as they circled the wreckage.

Jules stood at the railing next to Ric. They were using binoculars to search the water for survivors. It was so damn choppy, and there were bits of things floating all over the surface of the water and…

Wait a sec…

“One o’clock,” Jules told Ric. “That’s definitely someone out there, isn’t it?”

Ric shook his head. “I can’t tell.”

Whatever it was, they were moving closer to it and…

“I’m going in,” Jules decided. He kicked off his sneakers and went over the rail with a splash. He swam underwater as far as he could, telling himself not to hope too hard.

But it was too late—hope had kicked in. Mere minutes ago, Robin had called for help. God couldn’t be so cruel to have let him survive these past few hellish hours only to kill him four ridiculous minutes before Jules and Ric kicked Junior’s ass.

But then Jules got close enough to see that the thing he’d spotted
was
a body—but it had been torn almost in half by the blast. It was floating facedown and…

God!

It was Foley. And not only had someone done some serious damage to his right eye, but he also had a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Jules treaded water for a moment, trying to catch his breath and calm his pounding heart.

Was finding Foley like this a good thing or a bad? He didn’t know. But God, he wanted Robin and Annie to be alive. Please God,
please…

Jules quickly swam back to the yacht, to the rope that Ric had tied to the railing for him.

He’d only climbed halfway up the side, when Ric said, “Whoa. Whoa, wait. I see something.”

“Where?” Jules asked, turning to look, sweeping his hair back from his face.

“See that red thing?” Ric asked, pointing to a big piece of something red bobbing on the waves. “Right behind that, like they’re trying to hide.”

Jules dove back into the water.

“Shit,” Robin said again. Annie had been right. Junior was sending his men into the water to look for them. The sun was too bright for him to see Junior at the railing. It created a glare off the white hull of the huge ship, blinding him. Still, he’d caught a double flash that could only have come from binoculars.

And then he saw a splash as someone went into the water.

“Go,” Annie said. “Please, Robin, they don’t know you’re alive.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said for, like, the four thousandth time. But he
did
pull Foley’s gun from where he’d tucked it in the back pocket of Annie’s jeans.

“What are you doing?” she said just as someone surfaced about three feet away from them.

Robin had no idea if this type of gun could fire after being immersed in water, but he held it as if it did. “Back off!” he shouted, about to pull the trigger to see what would happen when…

“Jules?” Annie said.

Jules.

“Oh my God,” Jules said as he treaded water. “
That
would’ve really sucked.”

Robin let his hand drop into the water with a splash. Holy, holy shit, he’d almost shot
Jules.

“I can’t believe you’re both all right.
Are
you all right?” Jules asked. The expression on his face as he looked into Robin’s eyes was one Robin would remember for the rest of his life. It was as if Jules had been granted a reprieve from an eternity in hell. Robin could relate, because he was feeling the exact same thing.

He nodded. He
was
all right. Because Jules was
alive…

Jules took immediate charge, gently prying the gun from Robin’s fingers even as he turned, his full attention on Annie, who looked as though she’d been hit by a truck.

“How badly are you hurt?” he asked her, holding on to their float as he stashed the weapon at the small of his back.

“Where’s Ric?” was her urgent response.

“Ric’s fine,” Jules told her.

“Then where is he?” she asked.

“Broken wrist seems to be the worst of it, although she may have some internal injuries,” Robin answered for her.

Jules met his eyes and nodded before turning back to Annie. “Ric’s fine,” he repeated, trying to reassure her.

“Are you…Did you…escape…?” Robin asked.

“We have control of the yacht,” Jules told him as he moved closer to Robin now, looking at the welt he knew he had on his forehead. “Ric and me. Junior’s in custody. Are you sure you’re not hurt?” He touched Robin, just a hand on the side of his head, as if he needed solid proof that he was really there, and really in one piece.

Robin was holding on to Annie, but if he could have, he would’ve put both arms around Jules. And never let go, ever again.

Instead, he just grabbed Jules’s arm and squeezed. “I’m fine. Now,” he added. “Now that you’re here, I’m…” There were no words. Fine didn’t even begin to cut it.

“Me, too.” Jules’s response was heartfelt. “When we saw the fishing boat blow…”

“That was my fault,” Annie admitted.

“Yeah,” Robin said. He mimicked that old TV commercial, saying in a heavy Southern accent, “But ah helped.”

It made Jules laugh. But he was in FBI mode, so he didn’t hold Robin’s gaze for more than a few short seconds. “Help me get Annie to the yacht.”

But Annie had another agenda. “Jules, I’m sorry to be such a pain in the ass, but will you please define
fine
? I mean, if Ric’s so fine, where is he?”

Jules chose his words carefully as together he and Robin kicked to move the float—this time toward the yacht instead of away from it. “Someone had to stay with the ship, and, well…We just thought…Okay, this is going to sound bad, or at least worse than it is, but we both thought he should stay out of the water out of…well, fear that he might, um, attract…sharks?”

Sharks. Robin hadn’t even thought about sharks. They didn’t need Ric in the water to attract them—old dead Foley could do that well enough on his own. He kicked harder, moving them faster.

Meanwhile, Annie’s eyes had narrowed. “So he’s fine, but he’s…bleeding?”

“Um, a little?” Jules normally wasn’t such a terrible liar, but wow, that was pathetic, and he knew it, too. “He was shot,” he finally admitted.

“Shot,” Annie repeated.

But Jules was saved from having to give details because they’d reached the side of the ship. Ric had dangled a number of ropes over the side, but it was still going to be tricky getting Annie all the way up there, to that deck.

“Ric?” she shouted, looking up at the hulking side of the vessel.

“Annie!” he shouted back.

“Stay up there, Alvarado.” Jules joined the shouting. “We’ll bring her to you.”

“She’s hurt worse than she’s letting on,” Robin told Jules quietly as Annie shouted, “Are you all right?” to Ric.

“I know,” Jules said. “Junior played it over the ship’s intercom. They were trying to give us proof of life, and she wouldn’t do it. She finally screamed and…”

“I’m fine,” Ric shouted back to Annie. “Are
you
all right?”

“See?” Jules told her as they looped the rope under her arms. “Told you he’s fine.”

“I am now,” she called to Ric, echoing Robin’s words. Just moving her arm had to hurt like a bitch on fire, but she didn’t complain. She did look at Jules, though. “I thought Robin was dead,” she said. “Did you hear me say that, too?”

“Oh yes,” Jules said.

Jesus. Robin looked at him. “So you thought…”

“Yeah.” Jules touched him again, his hand warm and solid on the back of Robin’s neck. “I was having a really bad day for a while there.” He turned to Annie. “Sweetie, try to hold your wrist securely against yourself,” he told her, “to keep from jarring it as we pull you up.”

“It’s going to hurt,” Annie said. “I know. That’s okay, let’s just do it. I’m ready.”

She was. And Robin knew she would’ve endured anything. She would have walked through fire to get up onto that deck where Ric was waiting—Ric, who’d been shot. He could still see Annie’s worry for Ric in her eyes, despite all of Jules’s reassurances.

Yeah, she was ready for anything.

Jules was giving her a nod and his best
you’re in good hands
smile. “Okay.” He looked at Robin. “Get upon deck and help Ric with the ropes. I’ll help Annie.”

“For the record,” Robin told him, “I’m ready, too.”

Jules didn’t know what he was talking about. Or maybe he did, and he just didn’t believe it. “Just…go help Ric,” he said.

So Robin climbed the rope.

“Choppers ETA five minutes,” Ric reported as he tried to untie the rope that was beneath Annie’s arms. He had to delegate the task to Jules, because Annie was far too interested in checking out Ric’s injuries. “We’ve got paramedics coming.”