Mark Greaney: On target

Next to their bodies were wire-stocked Kalashnikovs. Court wanted to pick one up but was worried about making noise while doing so.

Blood smeared the mahogany of the companionway steps. Court followed it down, his pistol at the ready.

He entered the lower saloon and saw the carnage in the soft green light of a fish tank's glow against the wall. Two more black men, dead, and one white man, flat on his back in the middle of the floor, with his feet towards Gentry and the staircase.

He was unarmed; his chest was bloody.

But he was not dead.

Court flipped on the overhead light of the lower saloon, keeping his weapon trained on the wounded man. He called out to him from across the room. "Zack?"

"Know why they call it a sucking chest wound?" Hightower asked without looking towards Gentry's direction. His voice was weak.

Court nodded slowly and answered, " 'Cause it sucks."

Zack nodded sleepily. His right arm was heavily bandaged both above and below the elbow from where he'd been shot two days earlier.

"What happened?" asked Gentry.

"Fucking backup gun. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson after you popped me with that Derringer back in '06."

Court looked again at the two men at the foot of the stairs. Both had shotguns by their bodies, but a small automatic handgun also lay next to one of the men's hands.

The man appeared clearly dead now, but Court shot him in the back of the neck anyway, and then slipped his Glock back into his hip bag. "Whose boat is this?"

"Dunno. The GOS has boarded everything they can up and down the coast, pulled a lot of people into Port Sudan, trying to find someone with knowledge of the president's kidnapping. I figured if I got on board one of the empty yachts, the GOS goons wouldn't come back and check them again. There was no reason for these dudes to be here. I figure they came back to loot it, and we just all got unlucky to bump into each other."

"What about the mini sub?"

Hightower looked Gentry over through thin eye slits for several seconds. "I scuttled it. Denny's orders. I was going to use this boat to get down to Eritrea."

Court regarded his former team leader for several seconds. He said, "I can stop the bleeding. Stabilize you. Get us out of here."

"No, thanks."

"Suit yourself. You're going to die if you don't get some help."

"There will be a GOS naval gunboat on top of us in a few minutes. The pilot of the skiff that brought these guys is probably on the horn to the navy already."

"Then I'd better get busy. I'll patch you up, but before I do anything, I want some answers from you."

"Give it a rest, Court."

"Why was I burned? Who put out the shoot on sight? What the hell did I do wrong?"

"When the gunboat gets here, they aren't going to board us, they are going to blow the living hell out of this prissy yacht. All that sexy Court Gentry, Gray Man, faggot ninja shit isn't gonna help you when their deck gun opens up."

"I thought you wanted me dead."

"Hey, it's not what I want; it's my job. If you put a pistol in my hand right now, I'll shoot you, but I don't guess that's gonna happen, so maybe you'll take a little professional advice and go for a swim. This yacht might be able to do twenty-five knots; a Sudanese coastal patrol boat can run thirty-five, chase us down in no time."

Court wasn't listening. He wanted answers. "Who burned me? Was it Matt Hanley?"

Zack's eyes were glassy, but they rolled in frustration nonetheless. "I don't know."

"Was it Lloyd?"

Zack's brows furrowed now. He looked up. "Who the fuck is Lloyd?"

Court's shoulders slumped. Then shrugged. "That's what I said."

"Zack! Listen. You aren't too far gone. I can treat you. You can walk away from this. Just tell me who put the hit out on me and why."

"Fuck it, Six. I ain't walking, and I ain't talking."

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I'm a good soldier, Court. My orders are to make you dead. Not to make you dead, unless you can save me, at which point my mission is no longer valid. Look, man, you are a good guy. I'm rooting for you here, I really am. But I'm not lifting a finger to help you out. Can't do it. It would go against my op orders."

"You are fucking crazy."

Zack smiled. Gentry could see the pain on his face. "I just do my job. More sons of bitches should do their jobs. No offense, Violator."

"Dammit, Zack!" Court shouted it in frustration. He stood there over his former boss, thought for a long moment, and then he left the saloon and ran up two levels to the cockpit of the ship. Here he found a first aid kit. In seconds he was back, and he knelt down next to Sierra Six.

Zack turned his head slowly to face him. "What the hell are you doing?"

"You know what I'm doing. You are an asshole, but I can't just stand here and just let you die." Gentry ripped open Zack's shirt, exposed the wound. It was small, two inches below his right nipple, Court knew the bullet would have gone through the lung. He reached under Zack to feel for an exit wound.

"You patch me up, and I'll kill you!"

"No, you won't."

Hightower looked up at the ceiling with his half-mast eyes and shook his head slowly in disbelief. "You are a terrible judge of character, Court."

"Tell me about it."

Five minutes later, Gentry had Hightower stabilized, at least for the time being. There was no exit wound, which meant there was a bullet or fragments of a bullet somewhere in his damaged chest cavity. Court used a folded cover from a magazine from the bookcase and duct tape from the aid kit to create a valve over the chest wound that would allow air to escape from Hightower's lungs when he breathed out, but not allow air into the chest cavity when he breathed in.

It was all he could do at the moment.

Then Court left Zack and returned up two flights to the helm of the ship. Within minutes he'd turned all the systems on, ignored most everything except the engines and the compass and the wheel and the autopilot. He ran down to the deck and checked to make sure the anchor had not been lowered. He was sure there was some way to check from the helm, but he figured eyeballing it would be faster than trying to figure out which computer monitor displayed that nugget of information. He refrained from turning on any lights; he wanted to move as stealthily towards international waters as an eighty-foot luxury yacht possibly could. He knew he would not hit a shipping lane for some time, but he hoped that any civilian sea traffic out there in the dark had radar on board, because Court did not know how to operate that particular function of the big multifunction display at the center of the mahogany and brass helm, and he did not want a collision with some other boat.

Court pushed the throttle gently, and the big boat surged forward. When the craft reached twenty knots, he set the autopilot to hold the present course and then he ran back downstairs.

Court entered the lower saloon to find Hightower crawling on his side, halfway under a table that folded out from the wall. Court followed the wounded man's eyes to a titanium snub-nose revolver on the floor against the wall, just within Hightower's grasp. It was the same gun Zack had pressed to Gentry's forehead in Saint Petersburg. Slowly, Hightower's left arm crept out on the floor, reaching for the gun.

Court did not have to hurry; he just stepped across the floor and kicked the pistol away.

Gentry said, "I don't think your heart was in that attempt."

Zack nodded; his eyes closed again. "My heart has other pressing matters to attend to at the moment." He winced with pain. "Pulmonary pneumothorax. Air pressure in the chest cavity is stopping my heart."

"If you promise to stop trying to kill me for a minute, I can help you."