of Cold War-era naval commando camouflage coveralls; their transport a five-foot rubber dinghy complete with a battery-powered electric trolling motor.
Suited up, their faces streaked with black face paint, they inflated the raft, affixed the motor to the transom, then lowered the raft over the side of the fishing boat, donned their backpacks, and climbed in. Remi pushed the trawler’s gunwale and within seconds it disappeared in the fog. Sam turned the motor’s ignition and it hummed to life. Sitting on the bow, Remi aimed her compass at the lighthouse, then lifted her hand and pointed into the fog.
“Damn the torpedoes,” Sam said, and throttled up.
The trolling motor was quiet, but slow, pushing them along at three knots, barely a walking pace, so it was an hour before Remi, who had kept a steady fix on the lighthouse’s pulsing beacon, raised her hand, calling a halt. Sam throttled down.
All was quiet save the waves lapping at the raft’s sides. Fog swirled around them, obscuring all but a few feet of black water around them. Sam was about to speak when he heard it: in the distance, the muffled crash of waves. Remi looked at him, nodded, and pointed again.
Ahead lay their first hurdle. Given the nature of the Black Sea’s currents they’d decided to approach from the south; while they wouldn’t be fighting the tide, they would have to pick their way through the spires of rock that jutted from the bay beneath Bondaruk’s estate, a dicey proposition in the dead of night, let alone in the fog. Worse still, assuming Bondaruk had guards posted on the cliffs, they’d decided against flashlights. On their side they had Remi’s keen hearing and Sam’s quick reflexes.
Moving at half throttle he aimed the raft’s nose in the direction Remi had indicated for thirty seconds then throttled down. They listened. To their left and right, distantly, came the hiss of waves. Eyes closed, Remi turned her head this way and that, then pointed a few degrees left off the bow. Sam throttled up and kept going.
After twenty seconds, Remi’s hand shot up. Sam let up on the throttle, keeping on just enough power to hold position. In the sudden quiet they heard the crash of waves, very close, to the right. Then more on the left. And behind. They were surrounded.
Suddenly dead on the bow, a towering rock wall veined with rivulets of whitewater appeared in the fog. The waves, stacking atop one another in the shoals beneath them, lifted the raft and shoved them forward.
“Sam!” Remi rasped quietly.
“Hold on! Drop flat!”
The spire loomed before the bow. Sam waited until the raft dropped into a trough, then twisted the throttle to its stops and pushed it hard right. The propeller bit down, shooting them toward the spire before veering away. The rock swept past on the left and disappeared in the gloom. Sam drove on for a ten count, then throttled down again. They listened.
“Closer on the right, I think,” Remi whispered.
“Sounds closer on the left to me,” Sam replied.
“Toss a coin?”
“No chance. Your ears are better than mine,” he said, and steered left.
“Stop,” Remi called ten seconds later. “Do you feel that?”
“Yeah,” he replied, looking around.
The raft was moving sideways, and gaining speed. They felt their stomachs rise into their throats as the raft was lifted on another crest. Ten feet to the right they caught a glimpse of jagged rock and then it was gone, lost in the fog.
“Paddles,” Sam called, and grabbed his from the floor of the raft. In the bow, Remi did the same. “Sharp eyes . . . ” Sam muttered.
“Behind you!” Remi called.
Sam turned, paddle coming up in his hands like a spear.
The spire was right there, within arm’s reach.
He slammed the tip of the paddle into the rocks, then leaned all his weight into it and pushed, but the wave was too powerful and the raft simply rotated around the pivot point the paddle created.
“Coming around,” he called between clenched teeth.
“Got it!”
Remi was already moving, turning on her knees to face the other side, her paddle raised and ready. With a splintering
Sam leaned back, dropping his center of gravity back into the raft, and reached for the throttle. His hand was halfway there when he felt his stomach rising again and heard the suddenly unmuffled whirring of the motor as the raft’s tail end came out of the water.
He had only a fraction of a second to call “Remi” before he felt himself tossed into the air. Knowing the rock was close, but not how close, he turned his head, looking for it. Then out of the fog he saw it rushing toward his face.
CHAPTER 36
Seconds or minutes or hours later Sam felt his mind groping back toward consciousness. One by one his senses started to return, beginning with a feathery sensation on his cheek, followed by the distinct and familiar smell of green apples.
Remi’s shampoo.
He forced open his eyes and found himself staring into her upside-down face. He looked around. He was lying in the bottom of the raft, his head resting on her lap.
He cleared his throat. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Am I okay?” Remi whispered. “I’m fine, you dummy. You’re the one that almost drowned.”
“What happened?”
“You slammed headfirst into the spire, that’s what happened. I looked over just as you started to slip into the water. I threw you the line. You hadn’t blacked out yet. I shouted at you to grab the line and you did. I reeled you in.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “My head hurts.”
“You’ve got a gash in your hairline; it’s pretty long, but not very deep.”
Sam reached and probed with his fingertips, finding a stretchable bandage wrapped around the upper part of his forehead.
“How’s your vision?” Remi asked.
“Everything’s dark.”
“That’s a good sign; it’s night. Okay, how many fingers am I holding up?”
Sam groaned. “Come on, Remi, I’m fine—”
“Humor me.”
“Sixteen.”
“Sam.”
“Four fingers. My name is Sam and you’re Remi and we’re floating in a raft in the Black Sea trying to steal a bottle of wine from Napoleon’s Lost Cellar from a mafia kingpin. Satisfied?”
She gave him a quick peck on the lips. “You’re right on all counts except the raft part.”
“What?”
“After I pulled you in, I beached us. I’m not sure where we are.”
“You navigated through the rest of the spires? Heck, you should have been driving the whole time.”
