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.
“You are out of your mind,” he said.
“Maybe that’s true,” Kealey said. “It even might be one of the reasons I’m here. But there’s one thing you’ve got absolutely right-no maybes. I am in command of your ship. My people have boarded her, and from this point on we control where she goes. And decide what happens to you.”
Saduq regarded him, quickly summoning up his composure. “Are you CIA?”
“I’m asking the questions.”
“Maybe so, but I can tell you are an American,” Saduq said. “I have many long-standing and high-placed relationships within your country. If you are CIA, I can promise your brutish tactics will not be taken lightly by those who sent you.”
Kealey looked at him. “You seriously believe that’s true?”
Saduq nodded. “I am an international businessman, not someone to be treated like a cheap criminal.”
Kealey looked at him another moment, then grabbed him under the chin again and smashed him back with greater force than before, keeping his fingers locked around his throat.
“I want answers,” Kealey said. “We’re staying on this boat together until I get them, do you understand?”
Saduq said nothing. Staring at him, Kealey was struck with an odd sense of dissociation; it was as if he’d been watching the scene in the cabin unfold from some significant remove and taken cold recognition of two things. The first was that he once might have felt a mixture of anger and admiration for Saduq’s unfaltering composure. The second was the complete and utter absence of any feelings or compunctions within him at all. It was exactly as he had told Abby before. He just wanted to get the job done.
“I asked if you understood,” he said and slammed the arms merchant back into the wall a third time.
