Leila crossed thirty feet of sand and rock, leapt up at the waterline, and sailed into him with the speed of a flying tackle. The pistol went off with a report that echoed through the cavern. Startled bats fluttered and flew out with a leathery flap of wings.
“Hate to do this to a fellow lefty,” Leila muttered, “but.” She hammered the side of his head with a double fist, stunning him. Swiftly, she seized the pistol and tossed it to Johnny, who leveled it at the man and took aim with deadly intent.
“Don’t,” she said upon hearing the distinctive click of the semi-auto pistol’s hammer pulling back.
“Why not?” Johnny demanded. “They work for Dandridge.”
Disarming the other guard, she said, “They treated us quite civilly under the circumstances. They deserve a rap on the head for being rough guards, not death.” She nodded toward the boat. “Let’s get out of here.”
They hit the aluminum deck of the boat with resonant thumps, rolling and sliding into position. Leila gunned the engine into life and roared out of the cavern in a spray of sea foam.
“But we don’t know how many people they might have killed!”
“Exactly,” Weir said. “And we don’t know if they’ve ever killed anyone. We’re out to stop Dandridge, not judge everyone who works for him.”
Johnny frowned, puzzled and even a little annoyed. “Well, that’s a hell of a way to fight evil.”
Leila laughed mirthfully. “It works for us.”
The boat smacked over the waves. “All right,” she shouted over the roar of the engine, “Where’d they hide the plane?”
Johnny scanned the flat, blue horizon and saw nothing but the islands behind them and the sea everywhere else. Salt spray stung his face as the sun—low on the horizon—scintillated on the ocean’s surface.
“Flash!” she called out, confident that she had her earcomm signal back. “I’m going around to the other island. Fill me in!”
“I lost everyone’s signals two hours ago. They towed the Seamaster halfway between the two islands. Cap and the rest must still be somewhere inside the southern island. Be on your guard.”
Her long black hair whipped in the wind as she steered around the northern island. To Johnny, she looked like a golden statue of some Grecian goddess come to life. She gazed intently at the waters ahead, guiding the boat with sure strength. The slap of the metal hull against the swells punctuated the growl of the engine like the sound of a giant animal charging its prey.
He watched in wonder as the southern island came into view. It looked like something out of a mad scientist’s maddest nightmare. In the golden light of the late-day sun, it looked at first like the outline of an ordinary island, then like a tortured city skyline. As they grew closer, the shapes resolved into an intricate array of many- sided pillars that thrust out of the ocean at angles that, combined, lanced upward like a hideous sea creature breaking through the surf.
Off to one side floated the Seamaster. Leila steered toward it, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping the stolen pistol. Her index finger lay alongside the trigger guard, safe from accidental firing but ready to react to the slightest sign of danger.
She shouted over her shoulder to Madsen. “I suppose telling you to lie down and stay hidden would be pointless, so just be careful and work on not getting killed!”
“I can shoot, you know!” he hollered back.
“I don’t think you’ll have to!” She cut back on the throttle a thousand yards away from the aircraft. The boat settled down and drifted. “Flash—how many boats are out there?”
“I saw three on the last satellite image I nabbed. That was fifteen minutes ago. Now that you’re here, I’ll see what the plane’s cameras can pick up.”
After a moment, his voice buzzed in her ear. “I still see three. One by the nose, two coming straight toward you.”
Leila saw the rooster-tail spray from the two speedboats closing in on
their inflatable. “Can you splash them with the portside missiles?”
“Just wanted your say-so. Already locked in.”
She nodded and said, “Fire away.”
Instantly, two white streaks tipped with fire screamed away from a rotating weapons pod under the Seamaster’s left wing. In less than a second, two explosions flung tons of water into the sky, taking the patrol boats with them. Tiny figures scrambled at air as the force of the blast threw them outward in every direction. One boat whirled in space and landed in one piece while the other disintegrated into shattered planks and engines, falling in pieces to the churning sea below.
Leila winked at Johnny as she gunned the engine into life. “We’ll toss out a life raft for them once we’re in the air.”
Her passenger frowned. “Why not let the sharks have ‘em?”
She grinned. “Cap says it totally annoys your enemies to owe you their lives. Besides”—her voice turned somber—“killing for convenience is a trait of the other side.”
She steered around the aft of the Seamaster, past its high T-tail empennage that towered like a diving whale’s powerful flukes, and said, “Open the gate to the castle, Flash.”
Hundreds of miles away in his electronic cocoon at the Anger Institute, Flash tapped into his keyboard the command to unseal the Seamaster. Encrypted with a 512-character prime number, the message darted upward to a commercial satellite and down again to the Seamaster’s computer, which decrypted the message and activated the gun bay door.
The boat bobbing at the prow of the seaplane released its tow line and roared into action, pulling around at the sight of the missile attack. Three men leveled their weapons toward Leila.
She took aim and squeezed off three rapid shots. Two rounds hit home, dropping the men to the deck. The third kept his cool and fired at the deadly woman.
The bullet punched through the boat’s windshield with a nerve-rattling crack. Leila sucked in a gasp of air and fired again. The pistol barked out a bullet that found its mark in her attacker’s chest. Dropping his rifle, he clutched his heart with one hand, gripped his skipper’s shoulder with the other, and sank out of sight to join his fallen comrades in the bottom of the boat.
“You’re shot!” Johnny cried, staring at the dark crimson stain glistening
against the black fabric of her jumpsuit.
She nodded and tucked the pistol in the belt around her waist. “Swim for it!”
With that, she dove into the warm Pacific waters, followed an instant later by her companion. They splashed across the ten yards separating them from the gun bay and climbed aboard, but not before Johnny noticed a pair of threatening dorsal fins.
“Sharks!” he hollered, winding up with a mouthful of saltwater for his trouble. Scrambling for the rising and falling edge of the aircraft hatch, he twisted his head around to see the sharks race toward him with singular intent.
Leila, her blood’s scent luring the creatures, pulled herself into the weapons bay with her left arm, then drew her pistol and aimed behind Johnny.
He extended his hand, scrambling and splashing in his race for safety. Behind him, he felt an impact reverberate through the water, followed by another, then the swirl of churning turbulence. He took Leila’s hand and clambered out of the water, the oily, metallic smell of the Seamaster as welcoming to him as the scent of apple pie and firewood to a weary traveler. Turning about, he glanced at the water outside in time to see a pod of dolphins ramming the sharks with their hard, round noses. The sharks swam away with a few powerful kicks of their tails.
Leila Weir smiled wryly. “See that, Johnny? Captain Anger has friends in the strangest places.”
“You’re still bleeding,” he observed, stepping toward her.
“It’s a clean in-and-out. We’ve got to get in position.” She flipped the switch to seal up the outer hatch and headed for the cockpit. “Flash! What’s Cap up to?”
“Search me,” came the radioed reply.
“Tell me where they landed on the island and I’ll position the plane nearby if they have to make a getaway.”
“All right—head toward the south shore. But stay out of blast range. I don’t think Cap will want to let
