Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(54)

She couldn’t believe her eyes. Or maybe she didn’t want to believe them. Leo was standing up in the middle of the dinghy, roaring like the lion from which he’d taken his nom de guerre and squeezing his trigger until the barrel of his M4 was a nothing but a black blur, orange fire blinking from the end of the muzzle.

The terrorists returned fire, and a hail of rounds bit into the ocean around Leo’s little boat. Then one found its mark in Leo. An ugly spray of red burst from his shoulder.

“No!” she screamed again, just as a wave… a goddamn, mothersucking wave obliterated her view for a few interminable seconds. When she floated to the crest, it was to find the terrorists’ dinghy dead in the water, its engine smoking ominously. From the corner of her eye, she saw Wayfarer-I’s rudder finally slip beneath the surface, the big ship slowly sinking, leaving nothing but a swirling eddy of water and floating debris to mark its passing. She spared it barely a thought, because Leo and his men… They were nowhere to be seen, their boat completely empty and bobbing gently, silently, eerily with the current.

She didn’t think. She just started swimming.

*

2:35 p.m.…

“You okay, LT?”

Leo glanced down at the rip in his T-shirt sleeve and the deep, bloody furrow cutting through the skin on his right shoulder above his tattoo of the Navy SEAL trident. “Just a scratch,” he told Bran. Though that didn’t mean the thing didn’t still bite like a bag full of alligators. Getting shot was never fun. Getting shot and then immediately dousing the wound in seawater was even less of a party.

“We still need to stop the f*ckin’ bleeding,” Mason muttered, reaching beneath the surface of the water to dig in the pocket of his cargo shorts. He came up with a sodden red bandana. Grabbing two corners, he twirled the fabric around on itself, then grunted and jerked his chin, which Leo knew to be the nonverbal equivalent of Lift your arm. He did as instructed and watched Mason give him a slapdash field dressing.

“Please tell me that thing’s clean,” Leo said, gritting his teeth when Mason tightened the bandana over his wound. “I think I’m due for a tetanus shot.”

“For the most part,” the big Bostonian said, one corner of his mouth curling. “But maybe you should have Doc dose you once we get home. Worst-case scenario and all.”

“Perfect,” Leo grumbled. Of course, right about now thoughts of home were so sweet he would have allowed Doc to make a pin cushion out of him if he could somehow transport them all there. Unfortunately, he wasn’t Captain Kirk and Scotty wasn’t going to beam them anywhere. Which meant they were stuck. Here. Using the only part of the skiff that was still afloat—the back section and the motor—as cover. But that wouldn’t last for long.

The dinghy had a one-way ticket to Davy Jones’s locker, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Luckily, he had managed to take the terrorists’ boat out of action before he and his men were forced to dive overboard. So even if those suckwads weren’t in the drink right now, they would be soon. And that was a good thing. In the water, Leo and his SEALs had all the advantages.

“So what’s the plan?” Bran asked, floating easily beside him.

“We wait until their boat goes under. Then we swim over and take ’em out.” He glanced at his men. “Unless you guys can think of a better idea?”

“Negative.”

“Mmph.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

“One tiny little caveat though,” Leo said, pulling the strap of his M4 over his head and twisting the weapon around until it lay flat against his back.

“You mean the fact that our rounds will only travel four feet underwater, and even then they won’t have enough kinetic energy left to do the tangos any real damage?” Wolf lifted a brow.

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“So we swim up from underneath them, drag them down, and slit their throats.”

“Uh…problem.” Bran lifted a finger out of the water.

“Wolf’s the only one with a f*ckin’ knife,” Mason grumbled.

“Bingo,” Leo said.

“We could try to surface close to them,” Bran mused. “Take aim and fire before they get a bead on us. But that’s taking one pisser of a risk. Considering the rat bastards will probably be waiting with fingers on triggers for us to do exactly that.”

“‘The cruel and evil are feared, especially by the wise,’” Wolf muttered.

“Buddha again?” Bran rolled his eyes. “I don’t think now is the time to spout your woo-woo religious mumbo-jumbo bullsh—”

“For the record,” Wolf said, “that was a Hindu proverb. But it doesn’t matter. Because translated into layman’s terms, it means we’d be smart to come up with a better plan.”

“So Wolf pulls his guy under and slits his f*ckin’ throat. The rest of us pull our guys under and do it the dirty way,” Mason said, shrugging one massive shoulder. “We snap their f*ckin’ necks.”

Leo glanced at Wolf and Bran. It meant getting close. Real close. Hand-to-hand combat without a useful weapon was always tricky. Still, it was their best option. “Anyone opposed to Mason’s plan?”

“Negative,” Bran said.

“I’m in.” Wolf nodded.