Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(100)
“No, no, no,” the little pirate wearing the eye patch answered in heavily accented English. “We only authority on water. We Somali pirate.”
“Oh boy,” Eve wheezed, putting a trembling hand to her throat as her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Don’t you dare pass out on me, Evelyn Edens!” Becky commanded, her brain threatening to explode at the mere thought of what might happen to a beautiful, unconscious woman in the hands of Somali pirates out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Eve swayed but managed to remain standing, her legs firmly planted on the softly rolling deck.
Okay, good.
“We have no money. Our families have no money,” she declared. Which was true for the most part as far as she was concerned. Eve, however, was as rich as Croesus. Thankfully, there was no way for the pirates to know that. “You’ll get no ransom from us. It’ll cost you more to feed and shelter us than you’ll ever receive from our families. And this boat is twenty years old. She’s not worth the fuel it’ll cost you to sail her back to Somalia. Just let us go, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
“No, no, no,” the young pirate shook his head—it appeared the negatives in his vocabulary only came in threes. His one black eye was bright with excitement, and she noticed his eye patch had a tacky little rhinestone glued to the center, shades of One-Eyed Willie from The Goonies.
Geez, this just keeps getting better and better.
“You American.” He grinned happily, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. Wowza, she would bet her best TIG welder those chompers had never seen a toothbrush or a tube of Colgate. “America pay big money.”
She snorted; she couldn’t help it. The little man was delusional. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but it’s the policy of the U.S. government not to negotiate with terrorists.”
One-Eyed Willie threw back his head and laughed, his ribs poking painfully through the dark skin of his torso. “We no terrorists. We Somali pirates.”
Whatever.
“Same thing,” she murmured, glancing around at the other men who wore the alert, but slightly vacant, look of those who don’t comprehend a word of what was being said.
Okay, so Willie was the only one who spoke English. She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
“Not terrorists!” he yelled, spittle flying out of his mouth. “Pirates!”
“Okay, okay,” she placated, softening her tone and biting on her sarcastic tongue. “You’re pirates, not terrorists. I get it. That doesn’t change the simple fact that our government will give you nothing but a severe case of lead poisoning. And our families don’t have a cent to pay you.”
“Oh, they pay,” he smiled, once again exposing those urine-colored teeth. “They always pay.”
Which, sadly, was probably true. Someone always came up with the coin—bargaining everything they had and usually a lot more they didn’t—when the life of a loved one was on the line.
“So,” he said as he came to stand beside her, eyeing her up and down until a shiver of revulsion raced down her spine, “we go Somalia now.”
And she swore she’d swallow her own tongue before she ever even thought these next words—because for three and a half very long years the big dill-hole had refused to give her the time of day despite the fact that she was just a little in love with him, okay a lot in love with him—but it all came down to this…she needed Frank.
Because, just like he always swore would happen, she’d managed to step in a big, stinking pile of trouble from which there was no hope of escape.
She absolutely hated proving that man right.
***
Briefing room onboard the navy destroyer, USS Patton
Six days later…
Sometimes Frank hated being proved right.
“Well Bill,” he said as he skimmed through the plans detailing Becky and Eve’s rescue for what seemed like the umpteenth time. No way was he letting this op go off with even the slightest hiccup, not with Becky’s neck on the chopping block. “It appears your little sister has finally landed herself in a big, stinking pile of trouble. I always knew it’d happen.”
Bill sat at the conference table with his desert-tan combat boots propped up, placidly reading a dog-eared copy of The Grapes of Wrath as if his kid sister wasn’t currently in the hands of gun-toting Somali pirates.
Un-f*cking-believable.
But that was Bill for you. The sonofabitch was the epitome of serenity, always, even when balls-deep in the wiry guts of an IED. Which was why two hours after Frank made the decision to open his own private shop, he’d recruited Bill from Alpha Platoon. The commanding officer of Alpha still hadn’t forgiven him for that little maneuver, but Frank didn’t much care, considering it was a known fact within the spec-ops community that no one knew his way around things that went kaboom like Wild Bill Reichert. And Frank accepted nothing but the absolute best personnel—the elite of the elite—for Black Knights Inc.
“It’s not like she intentionally put herself in the path of Somali pirates, Boss,” Bill murmured as he licked his finger and turned a page.
“I don’t care if she intentionally put herself in the path of Somali pirates or not.” He nearly popped an aneurism when the words evoked a starburst image of Becky in the merciless hands of those ruthless cutthroats. “The fact remains, she should’ve known better than to travel to this part of the world.”