No tickets available. All sold out. Not friendly or your kind of cruise anyway.
He frowned at that. So not friendly, as in Russian? Destination?
End result? Don’t know. Heading out by air to begin with.
“Good enough,” he muttered. “We have a location or a starting point at least.” Baylor sighed.
“We’ll take that,” Mason said. “Let’s get to the IT center here and see if we can get more intel.”
“I’ve got mine already locked into the satellite surveillance system,” Hudson said. “Looks like a lot of cruises going out.”
“I highly doubt it’ll be much of a cruise ship,” Baylor said.
“Meaning, not too many people,” Hudson replied.
“Too much of a chance to get caught,” Baylor muttered.
“Retired or private maybe?” Hudson asked.
“Maybe,” Mason said. “We’ll direct the satellites that way to see what we can come up with.”
They spent another four hours on the base, going over intel as it was gathered and shared and getting more pictures and details. By the time he snagged just enough, Baylor said, “I’m wondering about this one,” tapping the satellite imagery. It showed a vessel, watertight, but looking a little more like a cruise ship that had already had her day. But riverboat cruise ships were not the same thing as the big North American monstrosities that ran in the Caribbean. This was much smaller, much sleeker, and sat lower in the water, but it putted along the coast gently.
“Well, it looks possible,” Mason said, “but got to be a million like this out there.”
“Yeah,” Baylor said, as he tapped the screen to freeze it, widening the freeze-frame, and said, “but how many of them carry that?” As they watched, some men walked around the upper deck. It wasn’t easy to see until one of them suddenly pulled something off his shoulder and dropped it down, revealing a rifle.
“Well, that looks promising,” Hudson said, with a low whistle.
“It does, indeed.” Baylor quickly sent off the details to their IT people, and then he looked to Mason. “It’s too far to drive, so we’ll need to fly again.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “Everything here is at our disposal. I’m hoping we can come up behind them.”
“I’d rather hop up a little farther and see if we can get ahead of them.” And that’s what they did. With a helicopter at the ready to take them out, Baylor looked around the landing area, then smiled and lifted a hand, as their six-man team climbed into the chopper. He greeted Evan with a big smile. “Hey, I hear life is pretty decent in your corner.”
“It absolutely is,” he said. “I hear you’re still single, but that won’t last.”
“Sure it will,” Baylor joked. “I’ve been single for a long time.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t been in Mason’s crosshairs for that long,” he said. “Every one of the single guys who work for Mason end up going down the pipeline.”
“Hell no,” Baylor said. “I’m not into that.”
“Doesn’t matter if you’re into it or not,” Evan said, then looked over at Hudson. “You’re single too, aren’t you?”
Hudson, who only recently joined the team, nodded slowly and said, “But I have heard the rumors,” he said. “It’s just not my thing right now.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mason said. “It’s not something we do deliberately.”
“Except in my case,” Baylor said, with a roll of his eyes.
Mason grinned. “Hey, I owe you one.”
“No, you bet me on that one,” he said. “I’ll take my beer when we get back, and, man, are you ever gonna owe me a ton.”
“Maybe,” Mason said, “but I doubt it.”
“We’ll see,” Baylor said.
Mason started to whistle.
Baylor grinned. “You’re just too cheeky for your own good, Mason,” he said.
“Nope. I’ve just seen it happen time and time again.”
“Maybe there’s nobody on this mission to worry about.”
“Maybe, but there is that twenty-five-year-old woman, you know?”
“I wouldn’t wish this kidnapping mess on her or anybody else,” Baylor said, “but especially a woman. There’s too much time and way too many men involved in these long boat rides.”
Hudson nodded. “But it’s way worse, depending on the men holding her captive.” They all knew what that meant.
Baylor lost his smile as he thought about it. “We need to get there and fast,” he said. “Mercenaries are well-known for taking liberties.”
“Not if it’ll cost them money,” Mason said comfortably.
“I know,” he said, “but I’m not sure that she was ever meant to be there.” Everybody looked at him.
“What do you mean?” Mason asked.
“She changed her plans at the last minute,” he said, “so she was never expected to be on that ship.”
“Ah, hell,” Mason said. “In that case you’re right. An unexpected bonus.”
“And we know how some of those guys feel about bonuses. They don’t like to share.”
Chapter 3
Gizella wondered if anybody had found the notebook. She’d been sketching off and on for a couple decades. She had often wondered about making a career out of it but hadn’t really ever thought she was good enough. It hadn’t been hard to capture that first guy on paper though. Although she hadn’t seen him since, and that worried her. She didn’t know who these current assholes were at all, and she hadn’t been given access to any tools to do more sketching, so it would be hard to render their images. But she did her best to memorize who and what was here. Because it was just that bad. And she was afraid she wouldn’t get an opportunity later.
When she’d woken up that morning, it was to the sights and sounds of men barking orders. She and her parents had been given a trip to the bathroom, and they’d been given a little bit of food and water. She’d sat with her parents, as she helped them to eat and drink and to keep their spirits bolstered. Her father looked haggard. He tried to smile and encourage the rest of them, but she could
