Troubled Waters

Destroyer 133: Troubled Waters

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

The woman was lost but tried to deny it, as if by withholding the information from herself she could somehow magically discover an exit from her private hell on Earth. She was a city girl and proud of it, dependent on street signs and landmarks to negotiate her way through daily life. The jungle that surrounded her seemed vast and alien.

She made a conscious effort to control the fear that stalked her like a silent predator. Panic would finish her, destroy whatever tiny, fragile hope she had of breaking free, saving herself. They might be after her by now, and if she didn't keep her wits about her, she was dead-or something infinitely worse.

Her body ached from the abuse she had endured since being taken prisoner. Was it three days? A week? A lifetime? She had no idea what day it was, but dawn was approaching to mark another morning of captivity, another day and night of torment.

Only this time, when her jailers came for her, they would be in for a surprise. She knew that her impression of the jungle's vastness was illusory. Her prison was an island-that much she was certain of-and not a huge one, from the way her captors spoke of it. An island meant the jungle was bounded by the sea on every side, and all she had to do was strike a course, stick to it, keep herself from wandering in circles to escape the brooding darkness of the trees.

And then what?

She had never been an athlete, even though she kept herself in decent shape, a trim size six, with just a bit more in the bust than most women her size. But on the best day that she ever had, it would have been impossible for her to swim an ocean. Going where? From where?

She didn't have a compass and couldn't have read it accurately if she had. Besides, direction was a useless concept when your world was ringed with fathomless green water, the depths teeming with predatory life.

Swimming was suicide, but she would risk it anyway before she let herself be dragged back to her cage and what was waiting for her.

A root or vine reached out to trip her, and she went down on all fours, unable to suppress a muffled yelp of pain. Her bruised, aching body protested the jolt, and now her palms were skinned, her knees raw, a small but nagging pain radiating from her ankle, where a splinter or a thorn had pierced her flesh.

It wasn't the first time she had fallen since she fled her captors, and she had a feeling that it wouldn't be the last. Each time she fell, she hesitated, braced on hands and knees or sprawled on the forest floor, listening for sounds of pursuit, anything that would tell her the men were behind her, drawing closer, perhaps homing in on the sound of her fall.

Perhaps there was a way that she could make them kill her, if they cornered her and she resisted to the point that taking her alive was too much effort. That was a hope she could cling to, as a last resort, but she preferred to think of the slim chance of escape that remained.

At the moment she was taken, she had logically assumed that ransom was the goal of her abductors. Why they had not spared her husband was a mystery that haunted her, the image of his violent ending branded on her soul, but she supposed men were more difficult to manage. And they offered less amusement to their captors while they waited for the final payoff.

Scrambling to her feet, the woman started moving once again, following what seemed to be the ghost of an old game trail, barely visible now, overgrown completely in spots.

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY when she first smelled the ocean. When she stopped, she could hear the first faint sound of breakers crashing onto sand.

Armed with a new, improved sense of direction, the woman veered left, leaving the vestigial trail as it wound away through the trees--curving, she now saw, away from the sound of the ocean. If she had not paused then and there, at that precise moment, she might well have missed her goal entirely and continued on through the jungle until she was cornered or simply collapsed from exhaustion.

She emerged from the jungle and turned right, then began to move along the beach as quickly as her legs would carry her. She stayed close to the tree line, walking on sand to give her lacerated feet a rest, still close enough to cover that she could vanish in a heartbeat if she saw trackers in front of her or heard them behind her.

In the sunlight, growing brighter by the moment, she possessed a stronger, clearer sense of time. Her watch was long gone, with the other jewelry and cash aboard their yacht, and while she had no fixed idea of what time she had fled the camp, she knew it had to be coming up on 6:00 a.m. by now. Each moment with the sun above her multiplied her odds of being spotted, run to ground, but it was still her only chance, as slim as it might be.

The woman guessed she had been following the island's coastline for an hour and a half, at least, before she struck the river. It was small, as rivers go-more of a creek, in fact-but it supplied fresh water, and she fell to hands and knees once more, burying her face in the sweet, cool current, splashing water over her hair and the back of her head with cut and bleeding hands. She drank deeply, unmindful of old movies she had seen, in which parched travelers were warned to sip a little at a time to ward off some calamity never specified. She filled her belly with the sweet, fresh water, taking it in place of food, to stop the growling in her stomach, feeling it revive her like a draft from the mythical Fountain of Youth.

And when she raised her dripping head, to shake it like a dog's, she spotted the canoe.

It wasn't native craftsmanship. If anything, in fact, it looked like something from an old Sears catalog that had been roughly used for years, perhaps for decades, and abandoned on the rough bank of this island creek. A paddle was lying in the old canoe, with scars around the blade, its handle satin smooth.

Stepping into the middle of the creek, surprised at the sudden chill of its water on her bare feet and legs, the woman dragged her only means of transportation into the gentle current. The creek was shallow, and she had to stoop painfully, pulling the old canoe along, but it was infinitely better than trying to carry the boat fifty yards to the sea.

Gentle breakers curled in toward the shore at the point where creek spilled into ocean, fresh and salt water mingling briefly before the former was lost. Without another backward glance to check for spotters, she plunged into the surf, dragging the canoe behind her until it was suddenly buoyant. The old canoe was thirty yards from shore when the woman finally succeeded in crawling over the gunwale and dropping inside, almost tipping the boat in the process. She shifted to prevent the paddle gouging her back, then reluctantly sat up and stared back at the island.

There was no one on the beach, no sign of movement in the shadows of the tree line. Could it be that she had managed to outwit her captors after all? It seemed impossible, but the woman was wasting no more precious time. Facing the sea, she lifted the paddle and began to dig in, remembering to shift her strokes from port to starboard to prevent the canoe from circling back toward the island.

Muscle cramps set in eventually, and she was forced to stop paddling, almost collapsing where she sat, pain-racked and sobbing. Even then, the ocean carried her beyond sight of the island, and no ships came after her to drag her back or sink her, let her drown.

By slow degrees her strength returned, and the agonizing cramps began to fade. Now thirst and hunger took their turn, but there was nothing she could do except force her mind to concentrate on escape, find a new rhythm with the paddle, hold exhaustion at bay by the sheer force of her will.

At some point in the endless afternoon, she slumped against the gunwale, briefly losing consciousness, revived when water slapped her in the face. She roused herself, tongue thick enough to nearly fill the dry cave of her mouth, and reaching for the paddle, found that it was gone. She had to have dropped it overboard when she passed out. With no means of propelling the canoe, she was completely at the ocean's mercy, as she had been in the hands of her abductors.

No, that wasn't right. The sea would kill her, certainly, and it would not be gentle in the process, but at least it wouldn't rape her, make her a slave to filthy strangers who could use her at their will because they had the knives, the guns, the power.

AS SHE DRIFTED ON THE ocean, the woman drifted in and out of consciousness, with frequent detours into stark delirium. The sun went down, replaced by an impressive moon, and she was still alive somehow, although not certain she was sane.

In time, the sun came up and started baking her again, leaching the final, precious moisture from her body, leaving her a blistered shell.

The sharks turned up that afternoon, following the canoe for miles, rubbing their flat snouts and rough hides against the drab metal hull, rocking the woman in her cradle, barely conscious of the changing rhythm. One great fish turned on its side and raked the canoe's flank with its teeth before giving up, deciding there was no food there. Reluctantly, the killers turned away and left her, moving on to more productive hunting grounds.

Too late, the woman rose from her delirium and found the sea around her flat, apparently devoid of life. She would have welcomed dorsal fins at that point, any promise of relief, but as it was, the sea would have to do.

She dragged herself across the gunwale, somehow managed to avoid capsizing the canoe. The water swallowed her, then spit her out again, the buoyancy of her slim body dragging her back to the surface. She was floating on her back, the sun bright in her eyes, and tried rolling over, the better to drown, but the sea had a mind of its own, rejecting her sacrifice, tossing her onto her back and forcing her to breathe again.

She started weeping, tearless, since her body had no moisture left to spare. She didn't see the cabin cruiser coming, barely registered the throbbing of its engine, the churning of its screws in the water. A part of her mind acknowledged the shadow that fell across her face, but she had found the secret weakness of her adversary now, and she was sinking, expelling the breath from her lungs to prevent herself from floating, ready to suck in the water she needed to carry her down.

A sudden pain almost revived her, lancing into the flesh and muscle of her armpit, and she struggled as some unknown force again brought her back to the surface. Her flailing arm met something like a strand of a spiderweb, the contact sending a fresh jolt of pain through her flesh.

Above her, miles away it seemed, she heard a gruff voice whooping. They had found her after all, but she took refuge in the thought that she would surely die before they had a chance to take her back, make her their slave again.

"Hot damn!" the voice above her crowed. "Come look at this, Joe Bob! I done caught me a mermaid!"

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, and he didn't play well with others. He especially didn't like mixing with amateurs-and to him, everybody was an amateur, except for this one old grumpy guy he knew.

That wasn't strictly fair, of course. The U.S. Navy SEALs were specialists, presumably the world's best at the job they had been trained to do. But they were a long way from the ocean, several hundred miles in fact. The New Mexico desert seemed a world away from the SEALs' normal operating environment.

The decrepit ghost town-once a thriving population center in the days when silver virtually streamed out of the nearby Sacramento Mountains into greedy, waiting hands-had been refurbished somewhat for its modern role, but no one would mistake it for a seaport. Situated in the northeast corner of the Fort Bliss Military Reservation, it was used for special training exercises when a desert setting was required. Away to the northwest, some eighty miles, stood Roswell, Mecca to the tired old UFO believers who were still convinced the truth was out there, hidden by a shifting veil of desert sand and the fluid denials of the Federal Department of Obfuscation.

The SEALs were not, in fact, restricted to naval operations, even though their roots lay in the old UDTs-underwater demolition teams-that had cleared invasion beaches for the Army and Marines in World War II. Today the Navy SEALs were scuba divers, paratroopers, all-around commandos who derived their name from their sea-air-land proficiency in combat.

Hence the desert, which had been selected as a likeness of the Middle East, North Africa-wherever Allah's warriors waged jihad against the West, assassinating diplomats and tourists, snatching hostages. The call could come at any time, and they had to be prepared for anything.

Which still didn't explain how Remo happened to be standing in the dusty foyer of the ghost town's three-story hotel.

Remo blamed it on Dr. Harold W. Smith, director of CURE, the supersecret government intelligence agency. Or maybe the fault actually lay with Mark Howard, CURE's assistant director. One of them had dropped a great big ball, and dropped it right on Remo's head.

While the SEALs were practicing war, Remo Williams, Reigning Master of the world's original mar tial art, Sinanju, and the greatest assassin currently living on the planet, was doing dog-catcher duty. The SEALs didn't know that. They thought he was an observer and behind his back had labeled him a spook. They didn't care as long as he didn't screw up their playtime.

The game was rigged, of course. Both prey and hunters were restricted to a given area, with no real practice in the art of tracking over open ground. The ghost town, for its part, bore no resemblance to a Middle Eastern village, other than the fact that both included man-made structures baked by desert sun and cloaked in gritty dust. It would have been more helpful if the Navy SEALs were training for a trip backward in time-perhaps to face the Clayton gang at the O.K. Corral.

The sun was setting, casting purple shadows in the dusty street, bringing premature twilight to the hotel lobby where Remo stood, waiting and watching. It would take some time for the 115-degree temperature to drop out there, and even in the ancient, shady building it was hot. But at least it was a dry heat. Remo didn't sweat. Partly because he wasn't weighed down by the equipment load the poor SEALs were waddling around with. He was in khaki Chinos and a white T-shirt. His shoes were handstitched leather-he didn't give two hoots about fashion or style, but he did like his shoes to last through the weekend. Remo had proved the quality of the Italians' workmanship by putting their products through field-testing beyond the shoemakers' wildest imaginings.

Remo was bored. He'd already scoured the ghost town and had found what he was looking for. Dog poop. Well, actually, wolf poop. Specifically, poop from a genetically mutated Canis lupus baileyi, or Mexican Gray Wolf.

The wolves themselves were nowhere to be found, and by all reports this pack was nocturnal. So he had to wait for darkness, when the pack might-just might-come sniffing around. Remo wanted to be there if it did.

He had a thing or two to discuss with this particular pack of mutant, nocturnal, man-eating canines. The war games couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time. Remo had asked Upstairs to cancel the games so that he could find his wolves, but Upstairs-which had the capability to wield such far-reaching powers in the military-said no.

Upstairs consisted of Dr. Smith the Really Old and Mark Howard the Young and Dopey. That was all there was to the CURE intelligence-gathering apparatus and bureaucracy. The mountains those two could move with a few keystrokes was impressive, but this time they weren't giving in.

"It would be most difficult to come up with a rationale for canceling routine war games," Dr. Smith had said. He had the sour voice of a man who had just chomped down on a lemon wedge.

"The pack's gonna stay out if there's a bunch of paramilitaries romping around," Remo argued.

"So wait until the games are over," Smith countered.

"No," Remo said. "First of all, the wolves may still be migrating for all we know. We know where they are right now and I'm gonna grab them right now, before they move on. Second, if the wolves do show themselves, the SEALs are gonna go get their real guns and start shooting. Third, I don't wanna."

"You have no choice, really," Smith said.

"Yeah. Put me inside."

"What?"

"You know. An observer or something."

"That's not plausible," Smith replied curtly. Remo sighed. He was at a phone booth at a convenience store in some small town in Arizona, already on his way to New Mexico. "Better to go in with an implausible cover than with no cover at all," he stated flatly.

"Remo-"

"Because-listen very closely to this, Smitty-I am going in, one way or another."

Smith relented, but by the time Remo called him back a hundred miles later, he had thrown a wrench into the works.

"I anticipated all manner of red flags showing up when the order was issued," Smith said. "I could not hope to quell them all without giving you better cover."

"Yeah. So what's my cover?"

"Department of Homeland Security Special Forces Special Scenario Evaluation Specialist," Smith said.

"Uh-huh."

"Your role is to offer Special Forces experience with out-of-the-ordinary field events and capabilities," Smith explained.

"You want me to try to trip up the SEALs while they're wargaming one another?"

"I want you to engage the SEALs. You'll be one of the teams."

"You're right. One guy taking on a freakin' army will be much more low-profile than if I was going in as an observer," Remo said.

"Specialists of this type exist, Remo, and they're being used in just this way to prepare our military for field scenarios they might not expect. Just don't let them see you do anything too, er, unusual."

"Whatever," Remo said. Of all the cockamamy situations he had found himself in courtesy of Harold W. Smith, this one ranked way up near the top.

So here he was, trying to hunt wolves while taking on the Navy SEALs. Single-handedly.

Those SEALs had better not distract him from the wolf hunt.

The SEALs were late. They had been air-dropped north of town, a HALO jump from a Lockheed C-130 Hercules. They came loaded for war-or, in this case, for Remo-packing the usual assortment of firearms, knives, garrotes, explosives, night surveillance gear, whatever. It was certain that each member of the team would have a watch and compass of his own, and since there were no other "enemies" participating in the exercise who could have slowed them, Remo was forced to think of reasons for their tardiness.

One possibility a casual observer might have raised was that the SEAL commandos were not late at all. They could have closed the gap between their LZ and the ghost town right on schedule, infiltrated silently, and were stalking Remo through the dusty shells of buildings even now. But a Master of Sinanju was difficult to sneak up on. He'd hear them coming. If they muffled their footsteps, he'd hear their breathing. If they held their breath all the way into town, he'd hear their heartbeats-two or three buildings away.

Unless they had crashed or gotten lost, both highly unlikely, Remo assumed the SEAL team was trying to outfox him with an indirect approach, perhaps circling wide, north of town, to approach from the west or east.

Oh, well, here they came now. It wasn't the noise of their approach that alerted him; he could smell them.

You load some poor sap down with enough hardware to have his own gun show and put him out in the hundred-degree-plus heat, and he's gonna sweat a little. And that's the kind of smell that carried for miles, notably when the hunter came in with the wind at his back.

The approaching perspirer made his way into town. Remo listened to the thumps of his boots as he took cover in the building at the west end of town. Remo had already been there and had swiped at the floorboards with his short but surgically sharp fingernails. They scored the wood in a thin, invisible line.

The SEALs, who had conducted exercises in this ghost town before, would have no reason to doubt that the floors at Sundberg's Mercantile weren't sound. However...

Remo heard the minute creak of the floorboards as the SEAL took a careless step. Then there was a crash-loud enough for everybody to hear-and while no startled cries or curses accompanied the noise, Remo was satisfied that he had bagged an "enemy." The Navy SEALs were too well trained to cry out in a combat situation if they suffered injury, but it was also possible that the commando, who had plunged twelve feet into the basement of the mercantile, was now unconscious from the fall. In either case, he would be in for more surprises if and when he tried the ancient wooden stairs.

One down.

Squads varied in their sizes, depending on the branch of service and the mission, but he had been told that he was up against a dozen Navy SEALs. Their guns were loaded with paint rounds, the seriousness of a "wound" determined by location of the splash, with any hit between the neck and groin considered a "kill." Before the game had started, Dr. Smith had cautioned Remo to remember that it was a game.

Remo didn't even really care about the game. He'd like to herd every last one of the SEALs into some dusty basement for the duration so he could concentrate on his real purpose here-find those wolves.

Remo left the old hotel through a side door, emerging in an alley where the pent-up heat of the afternoon still simmered wickedly. Long strides brought him to the main street-the ghost town's only street, in fact-and he stood waiting in the shadows, watching for his adversaries. He could hear them scampering around town like a bunch of parade marchers.

A man-sized shadow dodged between two buildings on the far side of the street, immediately followed by a second, then a third. It made sense that the team would be divided, sweeping both sides of the street and working house to house until they found their prey.

Or he found them.

Another group was coming in behind him, to his left, advancing from the west. Remo fell back to meet them, barely conscious of the dusty, almost stifling air in the narrow alleyway.

Using a hole in the wall as a stair, Remo ascended to the hotel roof quickly. The hotel was just one story. Remo felt the sagging roof with his feet and decided it was sound enough to support his weight, despite enduring the years of sun and wind and insects that had been working on all the town's predominantly wooden buildings. At the southwest corner of the roof he knelt and glanced below.

Three men in desert camouflage, with dusty faces, were advancing toward him, proceeding in spurts of motion followed by statuesque stillness, ready for incoming fire each time they changed position. Apparently, they thought the "specialist" they were hunting would be armed as they were, but in fact his hands were empty as he casually watched them making progress on the ground. They didn't pause to enter any of the buildings that they passed, and Remo wondered what their plan was. Were they moving toward a rendezvous with other SEALs, somewhere behind him? Three on one side of the street and two on the other left five guns unaccounted for, but he would deal with those in front of him before he went in search of others.

REMO WAITED UNTIL THEY were just below him, then stepped off into space. The drop was not a long one, no more than eleven feet, and he landed directly in their path.

"Evening, boys."

Just in front of him, the middle of the three SEALs gaped at him, but recovered from his surprise to swing his stubby CAR-15 toward Remo's chest. A burst of paint at point-blank range, and it was over, but he never even got the weapon aimed. Remo's hand flicked out and tapped him in the center of his forehead, just above the space between his eyes. It could have been a killing strike, but Remo imparted only force enough to slam the SEAL against the dusty clapboard wall, out cold before he slumped into a seated posture in the dirt.

His companions were reacting to the unexpected threat. On Remo's left, an automatic carbine was leveled at his abdomen. Remo waited until the finger was pulling the trigger, then deflected it with his left hand wrapped around the barrel, tugging even as he changed the gun's target. Half a dozen rounds spit from the muzzle, spattering the SEAL on Remo's right with yellow paint.

That should have been enough to take him out of play, according to the rules, but Remo wasn't taking any chances. Even as the paint rounds were still bursting on his adversary's camou shirt, he threw an open hand that struck behind the young commando's ear and took him down.

The last man standing fired another burst, apparently in hopes that barrel heat would break the stranger's grip, but Remo twisted and turned the rifle in his "enemy's" hands, put the man's finger on the trigger and helped him pull. The SEAL gave himself four paintball rounds in the belly. Remo pinched the very surprised looking commando behind the neck.

"Sweet dreams," he said as he lowered the unconscious man to the hot ground.

And that left eight.

Remo made his way to Sundberg's Mercantile and went in through the back. He found that his sabotaged wooden floor had collapsed under not one but two SEALs. A third was standing on the edge of the rough pit as Remo entered, lowering a rope to those below.

"Come on," the commando said, keeping his voice down. "Snap it up, you guys!"

Remo drifted up behind him, reaching for the CAR-15 slung across the young man's shoulder as he planted a foot on his backside and shoved. The SEAL plunged headfirst into Remo's trap, an old root cellar with the stairs long since collapsed, and landed with a squawk ten feet below.

Three faces craned to greet him as he stepped up to the edge. Before they could react and bring him under fire, he raised the captured CAR-15 and hosed them with a stream of paint rounds, watching them , recoil as they were spattered with bright baby-blue.

"You're dead," he told them, dropped the CAR-15 into the hole and turned away. "Stay put."

Six down, and that should leave him squared off with a pair of three-man teams. The CAR-15s were fitted with suppressors, part of any well-equipped commando's ensemble, and he had no reason to believe that the six remaining SEALs had picked up on the gunfire. They would still be searching for him, both teams more than likely on the north side of the street, and Remo needed to cross in the open.

Remo left the mercantile establishment, stepped through the front door with its squeaky hinges as if he were going for a quiet evening's stroll. No movement greeted him from windows on the north side of the street, but he couldn't rule out the possibility that one or more of his opponents had already spotted him.

He crossed the main street in a sprint that was so smooth and fast it would have looked unreal, had anyone seen it, and he barely left a dust trail in his wake. He drew no fire and reached the rotting wooden sidewalk on the north side of the street, ducking into the recessed doorway of what had once been a barbershop. Gilt lettering had long since faded from the windows, leaving ghostly outlines in its place, and the interior, as far as he could see, had been stripped bare, abandoned to rodents and insects. Remo listened, ears pricked, at the sounds of approaching SEALs on the wooden sidewalk. No matter how carefully you walked, you couldn't be too quiet walking on a wooden sidewalk.

The SEAL appeared in Remo's doorway, glancing into darkness, seemingly alert. But when the darkness seized him, dragged him off the sidewalk and enfolded him, the soldier gave a yelp of complete surprise. He lashed out with the buttstock of his rifle but only succeeded in handing his weapon to the enemy, who plastered him collar to crotch with paint balls.

"Oh, man, you're really dead," Remo said, then tapped him in the head, sending him into unconsciousness in the doorway.

A couple more had been tagging along with the commando and they started rushing to the barbershop, boots clomping on the wooden sidewalk. Remo left the snoozing SEAL where he had fallen, slipping into the darkened barbershop and leaving the door ajar behind him as a lure. Bait for the trap.

One of the SEALs checked out his fallen buddy, while the other kept them covered, edging toward the open doorway to the shop. "In here," he whispered, and the words reached Remo's ears as if the young man had been shouting down the silent street. "Jeff-"

"Is he breathing?"

"Yeah."

"So, leave him," said the point man. "He's all right, and we've got work to do."

It was a textbook entry, one SEAL close behind the other, breaking left and right, their weapons sweeping, covering the room. They didn't fire-wouldn't, without a target, or at least a noise to help them focus-but they were prepared for anything. Except what happened next.

Remo had climbed the warped and weathered clapboard wall to cling there like a giant spider, perched above the doorway. He was thus above the two SEALs and behind them as they entered, swooping down to join them.

Both young men heard Remo land behind them, knew the sound meant trouble even as they turned to face their "enemy," but they never even saw Remo's face. Their heads suddenly collided into each other as if they'd become magnetized, and they slumped to the ground. Remo extracted paint rounds from their weapons and shattered them on the floor, then quickly painted on blue clown faces.

He went to find the last three SEALs, conscious of the deepening of the night. He wanted the fun and games to be over. He had canines to converse with.

He found the trio of remaining SEALs in what used to be the mining town's saloon. No fancy pleasure palace this. Even before the furniture was stripped away and time began to gnaw around the building's edges, it had been a spartan place. He pictured sawdust on the floor to soak up booze and blood from gun and knife fights over cards or cut-rate women.

One of the SEALs was on his way upstairs to check the rooms where two-bit whores had once serviced their clients in something less than total privacy. The other two were waiting for him below, near what had been the bar until some human scavengers had stripped most of the paneling and left it skeletal. Both eyed the shadows warily and held their weapons ready, anxious for a chance to fire.

Remo circled the old saloon, finding a drain pipe fastened to the wall, descending from the roof's rain gutter, and he scrambled nimbly up it to the second floor. He chose a window with the glass long-ago broken out and made his entrance.

The small room smelled of dust, rat droppings and age. The age aside, Remo guessed that it had smelled little different in the old days, when its clientele consisted of unwashed miners and the occasional trail hand. Waiting in the darkness now, errant moonbeams lighting the way, he listened to his adversary on the landing outside, making his way toward the room's open door.

When the tall, young SEAL edged through the doorway, Remo snatched the automatic carbine from his grasp with ease, surprise doing half of the work.

His free hand flicked toward the SEAL's temple, barely light enough to register as a caress, but it was still enough to do the job, the young man going slack in Remo's arms.

Then Remo shot him with his own weapon. One dot for each eye, one for the nose and a few more for the mouth, and Remo had created a big sloppy paint-ball smiley face on the SEAL's chest.

The last two SEALS still waited below. Remo went down to join them.

He went down fast. So fast they could barely see the bounding black form that was suddenly in their midst. Before the last two SEALS knew what was happening, he was between them, striking left and right with his pinching fingers and putting them to sleep.

He couldn't leave them undead, so he shot them, too.

Now he had the place to himself and everything was quiet. It would stay that way until the exercise ended-when one of the teams called into the commander or 6:00 a.m., whichever came first.

Remo decided the saloon was his best lookout. He went back upstairs and climbed to the roof, finding it gave him the best view of the desolate reservation terrain in all directions.

He sat cross-legged, under the clear sky with more stars than he could count. But he didn't see the stars; he had other things to look at. The horizon. The land. And everything that prowled it.

"Come along, little doggies," he said to the night.

THE NIGHT WAS COOL, BY comparison to the day. The stillness was almost like a presence in the night desert. Sound carried far. Remo heard far. But he didn't hear the sounds he wanted to hear.

There was a small crash at about midnight from Sundberg's Mercantile. Remo had left the SEALS in the cellar conscious because they were trapped. Trying to get out was against the rules. "If those kids make one more noise, I'll go over and put 'em to sleep," he muttered to himself. But the SEALS in the cellar were silent after that.

At 2:15 a.m., by the clock in the sky, Remo heard a sound that stirred his blood. It was far off and coming closer. Four paws moving on the desert soil. Canine. And then there was another. And another. It was a pack.

But what he heard warned him to be disappointed. The paws sounded too light.

The pack appeared, and it was easy to make out the tail held low to the ground, not quite between the legs, and the small build.

Coyotes.

Six of them were approaching warily, sniffing everywhere, their bodies stiff with their awareness of danger. They marked their territory at every bush and rock, and gradually they relaxed and began yipping to one another. Remo cursed silently.

He knew exactly what he was seeing.

The coyote family had recently been frightened off this patch of territory by the arrival of the Mexican Grays. They were cautiously returning, sniffing out the terrain-and deciding that the interlopers had moved on.

The coyotes were telling Remo that his wolves were gone.

He felt angry. But mostly he felt defeated. He had picked up the trail of the wolf pack twice in the past three months as they made their bold, bloody migration across Texas and New Mexico. But these weren't ordinary wolves. They were intelligent. They were cunning. They knew they would be tracked. Time and again they had foiled the trail, mostly by stowing away on vehicles at gas stations and rest stops.

It looked like Remo would be going after them again. On foot, if necessary. The people who ran this summer camp might have a problem with that, but he'd let Smitty pave the way.

But now it was time to end the little game. He powered up a walkie-talkie appropriated from the SEALs and phoned their CO.

"All finished. Come and get 'em."

The coyotes fled when the sound of whining aircraft interrupted the night's natural noises. The officer in charge was red-faced, glaring hard at Remo as he walked through swirling dust, ducking below the helicopter's swirling rotor blades.

"Where are they, dammit?" he demanded. "Here ya go," said Remo. He had gathered the unconscious SEALs and sat them in a long row on the wooden sidewalk. Each had a hand on his neighbor's right shoulder, just to make them look less menacing. "Here come the others."

Two SEALs, paint splashed, had extricated themselves from Remo's pitfall in the old mercantile store with the ladder he tore off the side of a building and lowered to them. Their third companion was being dragged between them.

"Jesus Christ, I wouldn't have believed it," the commander muttered.

"Wonders never cease," said Remo.

"Bullshit!" the older man snarled. "These children will be going back to school."

"They're not all that bad, really," Remo said.

"Not that bad? How do you explain this mess?" he demanded.

"Oh, well, it's because I'm so damn good, ya see."

"You're not that good!"

"Am too!"

"By the way," the officer informed him, glaring balefully at him, "you've got a message waiting for you back at my HQ. Eyes-only, urgent. Better check it out."

"Aw, crap." Remo sighed. "I'll need the chopper, I guess."

"No sweat." There was a softening, however marginal, about the Navy officer's attitude. "I've got a full night's work ahead of me right here, just cleaning up your mess."

Remo strolled toward the chopper and called from just below the whirling rotor blades and flicked the object in his hand with one finger. It rocketed at the Navy officer.

"Hey!" Remo shouted.

The officer practically bounced off the ground and spun in place, almost losing his balance and desperately trying to crane his head to see what had just happened to his rear quarters. He discovered the seat of his trousers was wet with fresh blue paint.

The officer shot Remo a look that was disbelief and fury. He didn't know what to do first: ball him out or demand to know how he'd fired a paint ball without actually having a gun.

"Am too!" Remo shouted over the rotor noise.

Chapter 3

The red-eye into White Plains managed to arrive six minutes earlier than its absurdly precise ETA of 6:13 a.m. The plane was nearly empty, leaving Remo thankful for small favors, even though a fat man in a rumpled polyester suit had snorted, wheezed and rumbled in his sleep throughout the flight, directly opposite the seat in coach that Remo occupied.

A rental car was waiting for him at the airport, subcompact, no doubt the cheapest one available. Economy was critical to Dr. Harold Smith and CURE, the supersecret crime-fighting agency that Remo served, although its budget was so well disguised that only Dr. Smith himself had any real idea of the resources at his fingertips.

Remo had an odd relationship with money by the standards of most people, in that he didn't care about it. He had a lot of it, certainly. Being Reigning Master of Sinanju made him, technically, the custodian of Sinanju's wealth. He had no idea how vast his resources actually were. Chiun, Reigning Master Emeritus, smacked his hand if he tried to get anywhere near the money.

To Remo, you bought things with various plastic cards that were issued to him by CURE. The cards had lots of names on them. Most of them had the first name Remo, and they never ever had the last name Williams.

He didn't mind flying coach most of the time. He would have upgraded himself if he wanted to and nobody, but nobody, would have stopped him. He didn't mind driving an inexpensive set of wheels if it got him where he needed to go. But when he saw the three-year-old Beetle with a partially detached fender he went back to the Rent Cars Cheap! desk and said no thanks. "Got something a little bigger?"

The pretty young Rent Cars Cheap! clerk looked doubtful.

"Newer?" Remo asked. The clerk looked sad.

"Do you have a car without metal parts hanging down far enough to drag on the pavement?"

The clerk looked despondent.

Remo moved on to the next car-rental booth in the airport concourse and asked for something nice. "Yes, sir!" said the middle-aged man in a buttoned double-breasted jacket and neat tie, with gold tie clip. He looked more like a bank president than a car-rental clerk. "What are you looking for? Sporty? Luxury? An SUV?"

"Sporty?" Remo asked. "Define sporty."

The bank-president-type got a gleam in his eye. "Define sporty? I'll define sporty. V-12 engine, 6-speed stick, 580 horsepower and a top speed of 205 miles per hour."

Remo looked at the clerk, then took a step back and looked at the sign on the desk. The name of the car-rental agency didn't have the word "budget" or "cheap," and there wasn't an "econo-something" to be found. The name was something like Alucci-Fine Motorcars for the Discriminating Driver."

"You Al?"

"Pardon me, sir?"

"I guess that sounds kind of sporty, if it's red," Remo said.

"It's bright red," Al said. "Cherry strawberry bloodred. It is-" he inhaled before he spoke the words "-a Lamborghini Murcielago."

"Smitty'll have steam coming out of his ears," Remo said.

"Pardon me, sir?"

"Nothing. I'll take it if you don't ask me to pronounce it," Remo said.

Al couldn't have been happier. "An excellent choice, Mr.... ?"

Remo glanced surreptitiously at the credit card as he slid it over. "Quartermaster. Remo Quartermaster."

"I just need to check and be sure your card will take the security deposit."

"Okay."

"The deposit required is-"

"Whatever."

Al was visibly surprised and greatly pleased when the card was authorized.

"Sign here, please," he said, slipping over the company's standard contract. "And here. And here, here and here."

Al noticed that the man slapped his hand over the rental fee and the security amount before signing the document. Al couldn't care less. He had his credit-card approval.

BEFORE HE GOT INSIDE the sleek, stubby, scarlet Lamborghini Murcielago, Remo walked around it. He couldn't help but notice that none of its fenders was dragging on the pavement.

He pulled out onto the road, and the Lamborghini did something unusual when he hit the gas. It didn't go faster; it sort of burst ahead. He wondered if there was an exhaust pipe with flames shooting out like on the Batmobile.

It had been a while since he had driven anything like this, and he found himself liking it. The speedometer needle nudged up to the hundred-miles-per-hour mark and still had lots of little numbers to the right of it. Remo wondered if he could make the little needle move all the way over to the right-hand side of the speed indicator. He maneuvered around the traffic on the highway as if it were standing still. When he got ahead of the traffic, he really let the car show itself off.

A state trooper was impressed by his efforts and tried to catch up. Remo left the guy behind and exited quick when the trooper was out of sight, then took side streets for a while. The rest of the drive was on smaller roads where he never had the chance to get the car over 120.

A CASUAL OBSERVER WOULD have guessed-and rightly so-that Folcroft Sanitarium was a retreat for the elite who needed someplace to dry out, unwind or simply get their act together in an age when wealth and social standing were no guarantee against the standard nervous breakdown. It was also home to many patients with more serious psychological or psychophysical problems.

Dr. Harold Smith had earned his reputation as an extremely efficient administrator, but none of the Folcroft clientele-not even the most savvy, well connected of them-would have guessed his secret.

Smith was the director of CURE, probably the most secret intelligence agency in the world. The President of the United States knew about CURE. Dr. Smith and his assistant, a young ex-CIA analyst named Mark Howard, knew of it, of course. And then there was Remo-and Chiun.

And that was all. Even the former presidents who had overseen CURE activities no longer knew that they had done so, their memories purged of the information.

The problem was this: CURE was fundamentally illegal. The methods it employed were almost always in violation of the United States Constitution-the very document that CURE was intended to protect.

The gates at Folcroft Sanitarium were open, and Remo parked out front in the visitors' lot, then jogged around to the side entrance he typically used to avoid attention.

A CIA PSYCHOLOGIST HAD once stated, officially and on the record, that Dr. Smith had "no imagination whatsoever." That was not strictly true, of course, but he was perhaps the most bland, gray individual one was likely to meet, ever. He was gazing at his blank glass desktop when Remo walked in. Mark Howard, his assistant, was in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

"Hey, Smitty. Hey, Junior."

Howard gave Remo a meaningful look and said nothing. Smitty seemed not to notice Remo's arrival, staring dumbly at his desktop like one of the patients in Folcroft's Veggie Ward.

"Fine, thanks," Remo said. "Spent some time with the kids and the biological dad, you know. Had a few laughs out on the big res. Got some sun. Got some SEALs in New Mexico. Didn't get any wolves, though."

Mark Howard glared.

"Thanks, I'd love to sit down," Remo said as he sat. After a moment he nodded at Smith and said in a stage whisper to Mark Howard, "Better run for a drool bucket, Junior."

Howard responded by lifting up several sheets of Folcroft Sanitarium paperwork to reveal a printout of a Visa bill. It was dated that day. The charge amount had a bunch of numbers, a comma, and a bunch more numbers. Remo saw the words "Alucci-Fine Motorcars for the Discriminating Driver."

"What do you know about the Devil's Triangle?" Smith asked abruptly, looking up from his desktop.

"Some porn movie?" Remo asked.

"As in Bermuda Triangle," Howard clarified.

"Oh," Remo said. "I know it was a popular unexplained mystery in the sixties and seventies, but I thought the gullible masses were off that kick."

"I will assume you know the basic legend," Dr. Smith went on. "Ships and planes that disappear without a trace, or sometimes turn up drifting without passengers or crew. Speculation has fingered every conceivable explanation from flying saucers to magnetic vortices and time warps."

Remo snapped his fingers. "There was an old TV movie with MacMurray called Devil's Triangle. Pee-yew."

"Of course, official explanations have been more mundane," Smith continued. "The Caribbean-indeed, the whole Atlantic-can have sudden storms. Some pilots and sailors are clearly less than competent. Without beacons or other homing equipment, there's no reason to assume that searchers would locate wreckage or survivors in time to effect a recovery."

"Makes sense," said Remo.

"More recently," Dr. Smith continued, as if on cue, "the Coast Guard, DEA and CIA have suggested another cause for some of the regional disappearances, at least where surface ships are concerned. Piracy."

"Piracy?"

"Indeed."

"Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum?"

"Nothing so quaint, I'm afraid. It's believed that certain well-organized rings may be involved in the theft of private pleasure craft and murder of their crews, with an eye toward resale of the vessels or conversion into smugglers."

"That should be right up the Coast Guard's alley," Remo said. "Glad we got the whole jurisdictional thing figured out. Can I go home now?"

"In theory, yes, the Coast Guard and DEA would handle this." Smith said. "Unfortunately, for all their discussions of the problem, none of the agencies involved have managed to prove their case. To date, they have no pirates, no hard evidence of their existence. That is, until last week."

Remo was pretty sure he wasn't going to get to go home.

"Are you familiar with Senator Chester Armitage?" Smith asked.

"Is he the guy who said he wished Strom Thurman had won his presidential bid in the 1940s and resegregated the U.S., then tried to claim he wasn't a racist?"

"That was another senator. Armitage is vicechairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, heavily involved with half a dozen other major Senate groups. As if that weren't enough, he's an intimate friend of the sitting President, dating from their college days. Altogether, a man of great influence." As Dr. Smith spoke those final words, the corners of his mouth turned downward in a clear expression of distaste.

"So what? I hear the President dated a lot of people in his college days."

"Two weeks ago, Senator Armitage lost his son and daughter-in-law in the Devil's Triangle," Smith said morosely. "That is, both were presumed lost until Saturday, when Kelly Bauer Armitage was pulled from the water west of Fort-de-France by a pair of sport fishermen from South Carolina. She was half-dead from exposure, nearly drowned and she had suffered ...um...extensive physical abuse. It's no immense surprise to learn that she was-and remains-nearly incoherent."

"Nearly?" Remo prodded, sensing that he was about to hear the crux of Dr. Smith's unusual problem.

"She was able to report her husband's death-a homicide-and to describe her own abduction by... well, that is ...by a group of pirates."

"Hijackers, you mean," said Remo.

"Not exactly," Dr. Smith replied. "From her description, sketchy and disjointed as it was, it would appear that her assailants were, in fact, for all intents and purposes identical to pirates of the seventeenth or eighteenth century."

"Identical?"

"I'm filling in some gaps, of course, but from the woman's somewhat fanciful description of their primitive lifestyle-boats and weapons aside, I believe we may safely assume-they appear to emulate the tactics of such men as Blackbeard and Captain Kidd."

"So we are talking yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum," Remo said. "So what's CURE got to do with it? Why can't the FBI and Coast Guard handle this?"

"Normally, I would assume they would," Dr. Smith allowed. "They've tried and gotten nowhere. They have no leads, Remo. The woman can't provide them with directions or locations, names or any meaningful descriptions-anything at all, in other words. She doesn't know or can't remember where her husband's yacht was captured by the men who killed him and abducted her. There's a suggestion that a newly added member of the crew was possibly involved, but the only name she can offer is Enrique. After the murder and abduction, of course, she has no clue where she was taken or exactly how long she was held or by whom. In short, she's virtually useless."

"So the Feds are giving up," Remo said.

"But not the senator," Mark Howard chimed in. Remo could guess the rest: an urgent phone call to his college chum on Pennsylvania Avenue, demanding justice. If he played the angles properly, there was a decent chance the senator could parley private tragedy into a winning hook for his next election campaign, combining the tried-and-true sympathy vote for a grieving father with support for a tough, no-nonsense law-and-order candidate. A die-hard cynic might suggest that a dead or missing son was a reasonable down payment on six more years in Washington, sitting at the right hand of power.

Or maybe not.

The man could just be grieving, like any other outraged father, pulling any strings within his reach to gain justice, revenge, satisfaction-call it what you like. Who would deny him that, except for certain bleeding hearts who still regarded vicious criminals as the moral superiors of their victims?

Still. "Smitty," Remo said testily, "don't tell me we're doing a freaking favor for somebody."

The expression of distaste was back on Dr. Smith's face, as if a reek of flatulence had crept into his office. "We're not in the business of doing favors," he said tartly. "That's not what CURE is for."

"Oh, sure, I know that. And you know that. But every good old boy who gets into the White House has a hard time figuring out this is the one and only thing in their lives that can't be treated as a political tool."

Smith looked sharply at Remo. "We're not being used as a political tool, but you've raised a good point."

"Huh?"

"I was called by the President and he suggested CURE look into this," Smith said.

"So it is a favor," Remo said.

"Once we started looking into it, we began seeing the possible true extent of the damage being done in the Caribbean to U.S. interests," Mark Howard explained. "Since we don't know who or what is behind this, we can only make assumptions about their implication in various losses throughout the region going back over the past few years. But the scale is staggering."

"That qualifies it as a threat to U.S. security?" Remo probed. "Convenient justification."

"We don't do justification, Remo," Smith retorted seriously.

"Sure. I believe you."

"We're going to have to make sure the President believes that, too," Smith said to Howard. "But that doesn't mean we're not going to check into it."

"Check into what?" Remo said. "I mean, if you're expecting me to search the whole Caribbean, it just might take a while."

"Richard Armitage and his wife departed from Miami aboard their private yacht, Solon II, on the morning of March seventeenth. They stopped at Nassau and at Caicos on their way to the Dominican Republic, where they apparently hired an extra crewman, an elusive figure named Enrique, at Puerta Plata, on the twentieth. We've no idea why he was needed, how they met him-anything at all, in fact. You may be able to learn more from the woman herself."

"Say again?"

"You have a scheduled interview this afternoon," said Dr. Smith.

"You told me she was incoherent," Remo said.

"It's relative. You may get lucky," Smith replied. "I'm hoping that you can draw her out in ways the authorities could not."

"Uh-huh." Remo was clearly skeptical. "You said they found her west of Fort-de-France. No sign of the yacht or her husband?"

"None so far," Dr. Smith replied. "Of course, if the DEA and Coast Guard suppositions are correct, the Solon II will have a new paint job by now, perhaps new ID numbers. Nothing that an expert couldn't spot, but ample change to get it through a cursory inspection. With any luck, it could make two or three smuggling runs into the Keys before it has to be replaced."

Remo didn't have to ask about Richard Armitage. The Caribbean was wide and deep enough to hide countless bodies, its shark and barracuda hungry enough to make short work of human remains. Pirate victims in the old days had traditionally gone over the side. It would be simple for a modern-day practitioner to emulate their lethal methods.

"Who was Richard Armitage," Remo asked, "besides an influential politician's son?"

"CEO of a smallish but expanding software company in his own right, Harvard educated, with a trust fund and family stock portfolio to see him over the rough spots."

"It's a tough life," Remo said.

"From all appearances, his life is over," Dr. Smith replied.

"Well," said Remo, "what kind of an investigation did you have in mind? Am I supposed to drift around the islands until Long John Silver tries to take me off, or what?"

"Essentially," said Dr. Smith, "you'll be provided with a boat, of course, and cash enough to make your cover stick."

"Which is?"

"You'll be executive material, well-bred and groomed. I hope that won't be too much of a stretch."

"I'll try to manage," Remo said. "There must be more to it than looking rich, though, or the Coast Guard would be losing half the tourists in the islands."

"You'll attempt to duplicate the Armitage itinerary, inasmuch as possible from information we possess. Leave from Miami, make the stops at Nassau and Caicos. See about hiring a crewman or two at Puerta Plata, if the opportunity presents itself."

"Not too obvious," said Remo.

"Let's assume our targets may be something less than brilliant," Dr. Smith replied. "If nothing else, it may be safe to say they stick with a technique that works."

"Except the woman got away," said Remo.

"Yes, which brings me to your next stop." Dr. Smith paused for a moment, his blunt fingertips shuffling invisible papers around the vacant, polished desktop before he spoke again. "They've got her in a private room at Walter Reed."

"Not here?" The surprise in Remo's tone was strictly shammed.

"Unfortunately, no," said Dr. Smith. "It would have made things more convenient, I admit."

"The senator's a Navy man?"

"The next best thing. Remember that appropriations seat."

"I see."

"If you leave now, you should have ample time to catch your flight from White Plains to Bethesda."

"Marvelous."

"I trust you'll show the proper respect at Bethesda," Dr. Smith cautioned, the expression on his lemon face revealing very little trust, in fact.

"I always try to show respect for innocent victims," Remo replied. "On the other hand, if we're discussing those who abuse them for profit, financial or otherwise, well, I'd say all bets were off."

Dr. Smith seemed to take his meaning at once. He said, "Perhaps you should give Senator Armitage the benefit of the doubt."

"I already have," Remo said as he rose from his chair. Mark Howard handed him an itinerary with his flight number, which Remo wadded into his pocket.

"Please hurry," Smith said to Remo. "Miss that flight and you just might miss your opportunity to visit with the patient today."

Remo grinned at Mark Howard, who gave him a dark scowl. "I'll hurry like a bunny."

Chapter 4

Best known as a bedroom community of the nation's capital, Bethesda, Maryland-or, more properly, its Woodmont suburb-is also home to the sprawling U.S. Naval Medical Center and its equally vast alter ego, the National Institutes of Health, situated on the west side of the Rockville Pike. Between them, the two research-and-treatment facilities cover an area of several square miles, teeming with doctors, nurses, technicians, orderlies and patients.

Teeming with security, as well, from what Remo could see as he made his approach in a year-old rented Nissan. It was a nice enough car, but it was no Lamborghini Murcielago. But Remo had barely dropped off the keys and fled the car-rental desk before the small army of state troopers, traffic cops from various jurisdictions and airport security descended on the place.

"Hey you!"

"Freeze!"

"Stop right there!"

They came from all directions. They had him trapped. This guy had been witnessed flagrantly committing more traffic violations in the past forty-five minutes than most of the law-enforcement personnel on the scene could recall seeing on the worst day of their lives.

And he was going to pay. He was surrounded. There was no escape.

And yet, he had escaped. The army of badges converged on the desk and the startled car rental clerk, and found the perpetrator had vanished.

An all-points bulletin had instantly gone out up and down the East Coast for a traffic criminal whose name, according to his car rental documents, was Remo Quartermaster.

The airport search came up empty.

Arriving at the other end, Remo had decided a Nissan would be just fine and less trouble. It didn't even occur to him that the per-day rental was just a fraction of the bill for the Lambo-Genie Whatever-it-was.

The young SPs on duty at the front gate were also the type to notice a car like that. One of them examined his driver's license.

"Remo Rubble?" The guard looked at Remo as if he knew the name was a lie, just by his appearance. But he checked Remo off a list of names he carried on a shiny metal clipboard, then provided Remo with a photocopied map of the facility and traced his line of travel with a yellow highlighter pen.

The installation was laid out with the military's usual concern for detail, meaning that each intersection featured signs, and most of them directed visitors to destinations labeled with a bizarre alphabet soup of Navy acronyms. Remo imagined a group of officers penned up in a basement somewhere, being paid by the hour to concoct labels like MACVSOG and COMSINTEC. He finally decided to ignore the signs and concentrate on counting intersections, following the yellow-pen road on his map.

Somehow, he reached the hospital facility he sought. Another SP, this one young and female, waited for him in the lobby with another clipboard.

"Boy, I really feel expected," he told her as she officiously checked him off her list.

"It's our job to welcome visitors," she retorted with perfect seriousness.

"Hey, I never said welcome."

The blond SP directed Remo to a bank of elevators on the far side of the crowded lobby and instructed him to choose the seventh floor.

The Reigning Master of Sinanju and the world's most accomplished assassin did as he was told. On seven, Remo found the nurses' station located conveniently near the elevators. His clearance to visit was confirmed for the third time in fifteen minutes, another SP peering over the head nurse's shoulder as she checked her own clipboard, and a skinhead power lifter disguised as an orderly escorted Remo to a beige door labeled 725. The metal slot designed to hold a name tag was conspicuously empty. "Take it easy, 'kay?" the skinhead cautioned him. "She's been through hell."

"Sure," Remo said.

The private room contained a single bed, hospital style, with shiny rails on either side and enough peripheral attachments that it resembled the captain's chair aboard some movie space-fighter ship. A television mounted near the ceiling, in the northwest corner of the room, displayed a frantic game show with the sound turned off. The idiots on the show were bitterly banishing one of their teammates. Once upon a time, Remo recalled, game shows had been full of happier idiots who jumped up and down with hysterical joy when they correctly guessed the suggested retail price on a five-pound canister of Folgers coffee. The world, he thought, was a meaner place without Bob Barker's conspicuous presence on the boob tube.

The woman in the bed could have used some ecstatic idiocy. She could have used any sort of a pick-me-up.

He guessed that Kelly Bauer Armitage had once been beautiful, and might well be again someday. At present, though, she could have been a refugee from Iraq, the sole survivor of a tragic airline crash, perhaps a poster girl for AIDS. Her sunken cheeks revealed a model's bone structure, but she was thin and blistered from exposure to relentless tropic sunshine.

Long blond hair that had to have drawn admiring stares in better days now spread across her pillow like drab seaweed clinging to the body of a woman who has drowned. Her body, underneath the sheet, would doubtless be alluring, if and when she got herself in shape again, but at the moment she looked wasted, drained of all vitality.

"Ms. Arnutage?"

Although he tried to keep his voice down, Remo thought it came out sounding harsh, unnaturally loud inside the nearly silent room. Despite his own perception, though, the woman in the bed didn't appear to notice him or recognize her spoken name. Her green eyes-once vibrant, he imagined, but sadly faded now-were fixed on a point to the right of the silent television, seeing God knew what on the pink pastel wall.

Remo moved closer to the bed, not rushing it, making sure that he was well within the woman's range of peripheral vision. The last damn thing she needed was a strange man popping up from nowhere, at her bedside, peering down at her as if she were some kind of specimen prepared for mounting. "Kelly?"

Jumping to the point of first-name intimacy was a risk, he knew, but it appeared to break the ice. The woman turned her head to face him, frowning slightly, but at least she didn't flinch or scream. In fact, her eyes appeared to focus clearly for the first time since Remo had entered the room.

"I've told you everything I can remember," she declared.

There seemed to be no point in telling her that they had never met. As an alternative, he said, "I hoped that if we went through it again, just one more time, you might remember something else."

"Is that the way it works?" she asked. Her voice was small and faraway.

"Sometimes," said Remo.

"Oh." She thought about it for a moment, vision fading in and out of focus on his face, before she said, "All right. Where should I start?"

"At the beginning," Remo told her, "if you wouldn't mind."

"Okay."

She hesitated, whether marshaling her thoughts or simply losing track of them, he couldn't tell. At least a minute passed before she spoke again, but when she did, her voice was firm and clear.

"We started from Miami on a Friday," she began, and Remo wondered what the problem was, how anyone could call her incoherent. "First vacation in a year. My Richard works so hard. Not anymore, of course. He's resting now."

Tears shimmered in her eyes, prepared to spill across her blistered cheeks.

"You stopped in Nassau and at Caicos," he reminded her.

"I'm getting there," she said. "Who's telling this?"

"I'm sorry." Remo was encouraged by the flash of anger, the display of spirit.

"So, we stopped in Nassau, and at Caicos. Richard likes to gamble. He knows how to play. He's lucky. Used to be."

The first tear left a shining path across her face. If Kelly noticed it, she gave no sign. Her eyes were focused somewhere in the distance now, beyond the pale acoustic ceiling tiles.

"We had a great time, really. Nassau ...Caicos... Richard needed to relax. All by ourselves..."

"You went to Puerta Plata," Remo said.

The woman grimaced, flicking her eyes toward Remo with a reproachful glare, as if the very name left a foul taste in her mouth, but she didn't reproach him verbally.

"We went to Puerta Plata," she agreed. "And met Enrique."

"Filthy bastard!" Kelly startled Remo with her sudden vehemence. "He was a part of it, you know. Oh, yes. I didn't trust him from the first, but Richard told me everything would be all right. It wasn't. was it?"

"No," Remo agreed, "it wasn't. How'd you meet him?"

"Richard?"

"Enrique."

"Bastard!" This time, Remo wasn't sure if Kelly was addressing him directly, or referring to the missing crewman. "Richard found him. Tried to warn him, really. Didn't like the way he looked at me. He always smirked, the little shit! We never should have hired him."

"Where did you go from Puerta Plata?" Remo asked.

"East," she replied, "and south. Down through the passage."

That would be Mong Passage, Remo thought, the stretch of water separating Puerto Rico from the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic. He had learned that much from checking out a map in the in-flight magazine while airborne between White Plains and Bethesda.

"After that?" he prodded as gently as possible.

"It was supposed to be a real vacation," Kelly Bauer Armitage replied, slipping gears. "No plans, no reservations. Living on the water. It was just supposed to be the two of us, but Richard took him on, in case we hit bad weather. There was nothing in the forecast, but he worries. Used to."

Both of Kelly's sunburned cheeks were wet with tears now, but her voice was steady. One hand had worked its way out from under the crisp sheet that covered her, fingers curling around the side rail of her bed and tightening until the knuckles blanched. Remo noted that her nails were bitten or broken off down to the quick. Long scratches on the back of her hand had scabbed over, already healing, while the skin between her fingers was chapped from exposure to sun- and salt water.

Remo took a gamble, asking, "Where did the attack take place?"

"I don't know, dammit!" Fury and frustration mingled in her voice. "A day beyond the passage, was it? Maybe two. What day is this?"

He had to think about it for a moment. "Wednesday," Remo told her.

"Wednesday. No, that isn't right. It wasn't Wednesday. You're mistaken."

"When the men came-"

"Men? You call them men? Those filthy animals? You still have no idea." Her eyes were wild now; she was trembling on the edge of panic. "They killed Richard, did you know that? And they ...they..."

Her tears were flowing freely now, her shoulders jerking as she wept. Remo moved quickly, touching her gently on the neck before she could notice what he was doing. The woman relaxed into the bed like a deflating hot-air balloon. The hysteria drained out of her, but the horror still lived in her eyes.

"You said they dressed like pirates," Remo reminded her.

"They were pirates," she said, her voice like someone whose mind was far away now. "You didn't see them. You don't know."

"I'm trying to find out," he said.

"The island where they live ...it's like another world. Like nothing from this century. No lights except for fire at night. No roads. Those bastards... what they did ...you couldn't know."

"And no one mentioned a location, anything like map coordinates?"

"No, no, no, I told you no."

Remo felt grim. He couldn't help her. She was traumatized in some permanent, or at least semipermanent way. Maybe with time she would heal that part of her mind that had been locked up, but he couldn't do it for her.

All she had to tell him now was one word. "No, no, no, no," she said, her head shaking somberly back and forth. "No, no, no, no..."

Remo touched her neck again and gave her the gift of unconsciousness.

The shouting had attracted attention. The orderly was almost to the door of number 725 when Remo exited the private room. "What's going on in there?" he growled.

"She fell asleep," said Remo. "I suppose it was a waste of time."

The hulk glanced inside Kelly's room and gave Remo a glare. "I could have told you that."

"Next time I'll ask," Remo said as he strolled to the elevator, feeling a pair of eyes on his back. They weren't the eyes of the orderly. They belonged to a slim, attractive redhead he had noticed standing at the nurses' station, a prim frown on her face. He wasn't surprised when he heard her fall into step behind him and increase her pace when he hit the elevator call button. A moment later, when the door hissed open and he stepped in she was right beside him, stepping back against the other wall as he chose the button labeled L for lobby.

"Who the hell are you?" she challenged as the doors closed.

"Who's asking?"

"I'm Stacy Armitage. You were with my brother's wife, and I heard her crying, then it goes dead quiet and you make a beeline for the exit. Now, I want to know exactly who you are and what the hell is going on, or you can bet your ass you won't be getting past hospital security."

"I'm Remo, and I've been assigned to look into your brother's case."

"Remo? What kind of name is Remo?" Stacy Armitage demanded.

"Mine," he told her.

"Remo what?" the angry redhead challenged.

He thought about that for a moment. Who was he today? Oh, yeah. "Rubble."

"Remo Rubble of which agency?"

"CIS," he told her, picking the letters out of thin air.

''I never heard of it."

"That's good. You weren't supposed to."

"Cut the crap, okay? We've had the FBI in here, the Coast Guard, DEA, you name it. What are you supposed to have that they all lack?"

"A winning personality," he said.

"I must have missed it," Stacy said, sneering.

"You caught me on my coffee break."

They reached the ground floor and the elevator door slid open. Remo started for the exit, leaving Stacy Armitage behind, but she caught up to him at once, heels clicking on the shiny marble floor.

"You don't get off that easy, pal," she said.

"Oh, really? Maybe you should try a citizen's arrest," he said. "It's worth a shot, you want to make a total ass out of yourself."

"I don't like strangers badgering my sister!"

"Sister-in-law," he corrected.

Stacy grabbed his arm, and Remo let himself be turned to face her. "Listen, damn you! We were friends before she ever met my brother. Christ, I introduced them! Now, the cops and Feds are acting like there's nothing they can do about my brother's murder or the things those bastards did to Kelly, but I don't believe it. It's not good enough, you hear me? Someone has to pay!"

He stared into her blue eyes for a moment, seeing love and hate mixed up there. He didn't take the animosity personally. She just needed somebody to vent on. "Okay," he said, "let's take a walk."

Outside, she kept pace easily with long, athletic legs. In other circumstances, Remo might have complimented Stacy Armitage on her appearance, but today, it would have felt like hitting on a widow at her husband's funeral.

"We're walking," she said at last. "Now what?"

"I want you to relax and trust me when I say that someone's working on the case. We haven't broken it, but I don't give up until I get results. You have my word."

"Your word? Trust you? For all I know, you could be someone from the tabloids. They've been sniffing after Kelly since those fishermen-"

"I'm not a newsman," Remo said.

"So, you're some kind of cloak-and-dagger character, is that the deal?"

"No cloak, no dagger," Remo told her. "But I get-"

"Results, I know. You said that. But these bastards aren't American. Suppose you find them in some pissant country where we don't have extradition treaties?"

"I'll come up with something," Remo said.

She stared at Remo for a moment, then she said, "I'll help you."

"Not a chance."

"Why not?"

"Because you're a civilian. Does that ring a bell?"

"My brother's dead! My best friend kidnapped, raped and God knows what else! So far, no one from the mighty FBI or any other federal agency has got a freaking clue about who did it, and you're telling me you don't need help?"

"Help, I can use," said Remo. "But an angry relative with no authority or diplomatic standing who starts raising hell with foreigners on their own soil doesn't qualify as help. You'd be a problem, and I've got enough of those already."

"And how do you propose to stop me, Mr. Remo Rubble?"

"Well, for openers, I think I'd call your father on the Hill and tell him that you're interfering with official business, jeopardizing any chance we have of tracking down the men who killed your brother. I don't think he'd take that very well, do you?"

Stacy went pale, and then her cheeks flushed brilliant crimson, anger leaping from a simmer to an instant, rolling boil. "You wouldn't dare!"

"There was a pay phone in the hospital lobby," Remo said. "I'll have it done in the next three minutes."

The angry color faded back a shade or two, her shoulders slumped, and for the second time in twenty minutes Remo found himself about to watch a woman cry.

"I have to do something," she said between clenched teeth. "I can't take any more of this infernal waiting, sitting on my hands while someone else goes out and sniffs around, then comes back saying that he can't do anything."

"You haven't heard me say that," Remo told her.

"Not yet."

"And you won't, I promise you," he said, all the while wondering why he was being sympathetic instead of trying to shake the woman loose. "I'm on this job until it's done. I can't think of a single reason why you should trust me, after what you've been through, but you can."

"I don't want them in jail, you understand? I want them dead."

His shrug was casual, but at that moment Stacy Armitage caught a glint of something in the face of the man who called himself Remo Rubble. It was the slightest muscular change along the corners of his mouth, like the start of an ironic smile that never came into being. She noticed his eyes then.

She had heard men described as having cruel eyes and harsh eyes, and that was always considered romantic. Rugged. The eyes of the man who called himself Remo were at once sardonic, and maybe a little friendly, and very, very dead.

Stacy Armitage was afraid for a fraction of a second when she knew that her remark had hit home with this man. She had said she wanted the perpetrators dead. This man had committed himself, before he even knew her, to accomplishing just that deed. This man was a killer. And if he was on the case, if he was working for the U.S. government, that meant he was a hired assassin.

Stacy Armitage was pretty sure that was against the rules. But at that moment she couldn't have been more pleased.

The man with the ridiculously false name of Remo asked, "Can I drop you somewhere?"

"No," she said. "I'm going back inside to spend time with Kelly."

"She's asleep."

"Maybe I'll wait," said Stacy Armitage, and Remo knew she was not referring to her visit at the hospital.

"That would be best," he agreed.

"But only for a little while."

"Let's hope," he said, "that's all it takes."

He left her standing on the sidewalk, and was pleased to find that his boring little Nissan rental car had attracted no hordes of angry civilian or military law-enforcement personnel. The shiny red Italian sports car he had rented in New York, he decided, was a lot like the handmade Italian shoes he wore-they were good for about a day's use before you got rid of them.

When he glanced in the Nissan's rearview mirror, Stacy Armitage had disappeared inside the hospital once more. Grimly he hoped that she was a problem solved.

All he needed was an emotionally involved relative-slash-friend mucking things up while he went hunting pirates.

Chapter 5

"You wanna check the damn chart again?"

"I checked the damn chart a dozen times already," Jon Fitzgivens answered. "It doesn't tell me anything. You want to check the damn compass?"

"Smart-ass."

Tommy Gilpin wasn't absolutely frantic yet, but Fitzgivens could tell that he was getting there. Beneath the deep suntan his cheeks were flushed an angry pink, verging on salmon, and he gripped the Salome's wheel with one big hand-the same one that had served him so well hurling footballs downfield for the Princeton Tigers before he had moved on to Harvard Law School. He had a kind of "sue the bastards" look about him now, but even after three years of the paper chase, he couldn't think of anyone to blame for getting lost at sea through his own negligence. Not yet, at least.

"Still lost there, Tom-Tom?" Barry Ward was annoyingly cheerful as he emerged from the Salome's companionway, leading to the staterooms belowdecks. The reason for good humor was close behind him, still adjusting her bikini top and patting at her cheeks to help disguise the flush of sex. As if they all wouldn't know she and Ward had just been doing the nasty belowdecks-if for no other reason than she never wore her bikini top except for an hour or so after getting laid.

"Looking good, Meg," Jon Fitzgivens told her with a rakish smile.

"We are not lost," Tommy said, glaring out to sea as if he were expecting helpful signposts to appear above the waves. "I know exactly where we are."

"Then share, by all means." Barry was goading him and enjoying the game, but took the precaution of remaining outside their self-appointed captain's reach.

"We're west of Saint Lucia, roughly southbound."

"Roughly?" Barry said. "Is that one of those nautical terms they taught you at yachting school, little buddy?"

"Listen, Bare, old chum, if you think you can handle this, by all means, step right up. I'm sure we'd all enjoy the show."

"I wouldn't dream of it, Tom-Tom," said Barry. "Not when we've all come to trust your navigating skills so much."

"Leave him alone for Christ's sake, Bare." Felicia Docherty was glaring back at Barry from her place on the forward deck, where her long brown body lay almost fully exposed to the Caribbean sun, her small bikini top untied, the thong between her buttocks looking more like a sensuous bookmark than swimwear.

Barry was considering a comeback when his own squeeze, Megan Richards, caught him with a graceful elbow to the ribs and shook her head in warning. Barry grinned at her and shrugged, leaned in to kiss her lightly on the lips, apparently deciding that he could afford to let it go-at least until they sighted land again. If Tommy lost his head and pitched somebody overboard out here, God knew how many miles from anywhere, there could be hell to pay before the others tossed down a life preserver. And how would they explain a missing person to their parents, much less to the staid authorities in West Palm Beach?

It should be easy, Jon considered, though he kept the observation to himself. If they were really west of Saint Lucia, all they had to do was turn the Salome due east, or thereabouts, and hold a steady course until they struck landfall. Even if Tommy's calculations fell short of precision-which was more or less a given, when you thought about it-they could still raise someone on the radio.

But the radio wasn't working too often. They'd get it going for a while, then nothing. That was a minor inconvenience, Fitzgivens thought, compared to the navigation computer, which was totally fried. It had started acting up their first day out of port, but Tommy wasn't having any of that crap about returning to the source for a replacement, wasting time on the vacation all of them had planned and waited for throughout a grim semester in the halls of academia. No way. So what if it was telling them they were in the Arctic Circle? Tommy could navigate them the old-fashioned way. Or so he'd claimed.

Christ, Fitzgivens thought, he didn't even have his mobile phone. He had accidentally on purpose left it behind. He didn't need his damn mother checking up on him every damn night. But it had a GPS in it and at least he would have known where they were.

So they were lost at sea, and everybody knew it, although Tommy Gilpin had yet to admit that anything was wrong. He seemed to think determination was enough to see them through, and Jon Fitzgivens prayed to nameless gods that he was right. Because if they were lost, and they had to be rescued, and his mother found out about it-death would be better than the years of harassment that would result.

"The sun's great, isn't it?"

Reclining near Felicia on the foredeck, Robin Chatsworth flashed a dazzling smile at Jon, then puckered up and offered him a cute long-distance kiss. It warmed him in a way entirely different from the tropic sunshine, thinking what those lips could do when they were given half a chance, and he was glad that Robin had agreed to come along on this vacation cruise. If they were going to be lost at sea, perhaps cast up on some deserted isle like Gilligan and the rest, at least Jon knew that he wouldn't be bored. If they were stranded long enough, in fact, that they ran out of pills and condoms, Robin could console him with that special talent he had taught her in the front seat of his BMW, directing her and coaching her with tender loving care until she got it just exactly right.

God bless slow learners, Jon Fitzgivens thought. He had begun to stiffen, threatening to make an exhibition in his own tight swimming trunks, and started looking for another topic to distract him. Something grim, like being lost at sea. Oh, yeah. That did the trick just fine.

It was the fourth day of a cruise that was supposed to last two weeks, courtesy of their respective wealthy parents, but now Jon caught himself wondering if they would all be around when the sea voyage came to an end. He pictured the Salome adrift, crewless, like one of the ghost ships you heard so much about in these waters.

Goddamn Bermuda Triangle, for Christ's sake! It had titillated Jon when he was ten or twelve years old, reading sensational paperbacks and watching old reruns of Leonard Nimoy In Search Of the answer, but age, experience and advancing cynicism had taught him that most disasters-the "mysterious" included-could be traced to human frailty: negligence, malfeasance, some deliberate act or oversight. Why else was he investing all this time and sweat at Harvard Law, if no one was responsible for anything? Whom would he sue, on behalf of wealthy clients, if the world was run by Fate or some such drivel, guiding fingers from beyond the stars?

No, thank you very much. If there was any order in the world, if he had any kind of choice at all, Jon would prefer to sue the bastards. Litigation made the world go around.

"Is that another boat?"

The question came from Megan, standing to the port side of the wheelhouse, one knee raised invitingly to brace her foot against the railing, buttocks taut and round beneath the pastel fabric of her swimsuit bottom. Jon was wishing she had worn a thong to match Felicia's, feeling his tumescence coming back, when he glanced forward, following her index finger, and picked out a speck on the horizon. "Where?" asked Tommy, still not seeing it.

"At one o'clock," Jon told him, also pointing now.

"I don't-oh, right. Looks like a boat."

"I'd say it was a safe bet," Barry added from the sidelines.

"Or perhaps we've found a sea serpent." Megan glanced back at him and winked, suggesting that he had the only serpent that intrigued her for the moment, anyway. They had been dating, off and on, for something like a year, but in the "off" times, she was not adverse to sampling other men-including Tommy Gilpin, if the campus scuttlebutt was accurate.

"It is a boat!" said Robin. "Maybe they can tell us where we are."

Their captain glared at her for that, but Robin missed it, and Felicia cast a look at Tommy that reminded him he shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth-at least not if he expected to come within hailing distance of any bodily orifice not his own for the remainder of the cruise.

"We'll check it out," he muttered, barely audible, and cranked the wheel enough to turn the Salome head-on toward that alluring speck.

"I HAVE A VESSEL EAST, sou'east," the lookout called back from the bow pulpit of the sailboat Ravager. The vessel's name had once been something else, but that was long ago, and cunning hands had helped her true name to emerge across the stern, in crimson letters.

Billy Teach left his first mate to man the cockpit, moving forward to the lookout's side. "Show me," he said.

The lookout pointed, handing him the glass and guiding it until a sleek yacht filled the eyepiece. There were two half-naked women lying on the foredeck-lookers, both of them-and three or four more bodies clustered aft. Teach wasn't sure exactly, and he knew there might be more below, but he wasn't concerned about the numbers. Cunning, skill, determination, firepower. He had it all.

"Looks sweet," the lookout said, his unsolicited opinion grating briefly on the captain's nerves, but Billy let it go. The man was right, in any case.

"Good work," he said. And then, to no one in particular, "Let's take 'em!"

With a ragged cheer, his men scrambled nimbly to their assigned positions, trimming the sails and tacking the Ravager toward their new target, still barely a flyspeck in the distance for those without spyglasses.

"Remember how we do it, lads!" Teach bellowed at them from the rail, no fear his voice would carry to the target vessel yet. "We can't lose this plum, when she's so rich and ripe for plucking!"

Several of his men were grinning broadly, laughing as they grappled with the lines, but none would miss the dark side of his warning. Any man who botched the mission, now that they had juicy prey in view, would damn well wish that he was dead before his time arrived. Most of the crew had witnessed punishment before, and those who hadn't seen it for themselves had at least heard the stories, grim enough to keep them on their toes and minding their respective tasks.

The Ravager had diesel engines down below, but Billy Teach preferred to travel with the wind whenever possible. It was the way things ought to be, out on the open water, with no throbbing racket down below, no stench from the exhaust pipes. He could lose himself at sea-or find himself, to be more accurate. He could step out of time and live according to his own desires, the way some men had always done, without regard for man-made rules and regulations.

If their prey attempted to outrun them, Billy was prepared to use the diesels in a heartbeat, rather than allow the sweet prize to escape. But it would be a disappointment, all the same-less pure, somehow, than if the wind alone conveyed them to their destination, saw them through their conquest of the unsuspecting pleasure craft and took them safely home again.

As for the weapons, now, that was a different thing entirely. Billy Teach would have enjoyed the use of cutlasses and dirks, subduing rowdy prisoners with a belaying pin, but times had changed, and you could never tell what kind of hardware tourists would be packing in this day and age. Between shark fishermen, drug runners, oil prospectors and the nervous Nellies who imagined they were still back in Miami or New York, there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that any given pleasure craft was armed.

"Bring up the sixty and my twelve," Teach told his second mate.

"Aye, sir."

The whip-thin redhead scrambled to obey. Brief moments later, he was back, handing Teach the black Benelli M-1 Super 90 semiautomatic shotgun they had looted from a Haitian fishing boat some two years back. As for himself, the mate cradled a modified M-60 machine gun, its barrel shortened and fitted with a forward pistol grip, the ammo belt neatly folded into a side-mounted box on the left. Cosmetic modifications aside, it would still spew 7.62 mm rounds at a cyclic rate of some 600 rounds per minute, fast and deadly enough to sweep the deck of any target vessel Billy Teach was likely to select.

The other members of his crew were armed, as well, with knives and handguns of their choice, but they were under standing orders not to fire unless their captain gave the word. Teach didn't mind a bit of bloodshed on his raids-it was traditional, in fact-but in the ideal situation, he decided who should live and who should die. Unless they were embroiled in mortal combat with a well-armed foe, he would not leave that choice to lowly deckhands and the like.

"Remember to stay out of sight with that until I give the word," Teach told his mate. It was unnecessary-might even have been insulting to a man with sharper wits-but he was answered with a brisk "Aye, Captain" and a nod for emphasis.

The Ravager was running with the wind now, and Billy Teach lingered at the toe rail, enjoying the breeze and salt spray in his face. He held the shotgun down against his leg. There was no need for a bracing hand against the toe rail. Billy Teach had grown up on the ocean, or in such proximity that he could hear and smell it in his sleep. He had developed sea legs long before most boys his age had learned to run a football down the field for no damn reason he could ever understand. What kind of sport was that, when you could spend your best days on the water, hunting other men?

And women, aye. Best not forget the women he had glimpsed aboard their target. From what Billy Teach had seen, this lot would more than make up for the one who got away.

There had been some concern about the female prisoner's escape, initially, but Teach had managed to convince himself that she was dead. A city girl and landlubber like that, what chance did she have on the open water, miles and miles from anywhere, without provisions or a hint of how to navigate?

No chance at all.

The sharks and 'cuda would have done for her by now, if she had not been caught up in a squall and simply drowned, or died from thirst and hunger in the open boat she stole. There had been talk of going after her, but it had seemed too risky in the long run. Better to let nature take its course, and if by some bizarre fluke she was found alive-what of it? How could she direct the law to a location she had only seen but briefly, in the early-morning light, as she was fleeing for her life, without a chart or any instruments to guide her?

The wind was brisk behind them, and they had already closed the distance to their target by half. When Teach raised the spyglass again, he saw that their intended prey had sighted them, as well. The two young women on the foredeck had their tops on now, both sitting up and staring back at him, an eerie sense that they could somehow see him, read his mind.

Well, let them. Even witchy magic wouldn't save them now.

There was a third young woman, equally attractive, standing near the wheelhouse, where three men were clustered, one piloting the yacht, his two companions arguing. Not with each other, it appeared, but with the tall man at the wheel. Teach had no skill at reading lips and couldn't tell what they were saying, but he wondered if they were alarmed at the appearance of another vessel here and now. He hoped they wouldn't run for it, but if they did...

When they were still two hundred yards distant from the yacht, Teach faced the stern and called out to a couple of his crewmen standing in the push pit, "Hoist the flag! Let's show these lubbers who we are! "

"SO WHAT THE HELL IS THIS shit?" Tommy Gilpin muttered.

"What?" Jon asked, peering at the console first, as if expecting trouble with the gauges, finally lifting his eyes to scope the sailboat that was closing on their port side, forward, running with the wind.

Jon saw what Tommy had and echoed him. "What is that?"

Barry pointed with the neck of his Corona bottle and remarked, "Looks like a flag to me."

Now, that pissed off Tommy. He knew it was a flag, for Christ's sake. The thing that bugged him was what kind of flag.

"It's black," said Jon. "What kind of flag is that? Does anybody know? Is that some kind of quarantine alert?"

"It's not all black," said Tommy, glaring at the sailboat as it drew inexorably closer. He could see some kind of white insignia, dead center on the flapping midnight field, but it was still too far away for him to make it out. "Get the binoculars."

Barry retrieved them, but he didn't offer them to Tommy. Leaning forward as he scanned the sailboat, shoulders hunched, he momentarily reminded Tommy Gilpin of a character in some effete yacht-racing movie, take your pick, dressed to the nines but casual enough to make a stranger think he didn't really care about the way he looked.

As for himself, now, he felt nothing but the most appropriate, well-reasoned confidence in his ability to cope with any situation that arose. Star quarterback in high school and at Princeton, now the second in his class at Harvard Law, with only a pathetic egghead nerd in front of him, he-

"Jesus, it's a skull and watcha-callit!" Barry said. "Those bones, you know?"

"A skull and crossbones?" Jon suggested.

"Right. Now, what the hell-"

"A pirate flag," said Tommy. "Shit! We need to make a run for it."

"You kidding me?" The grin was vintage Barry. "Hell, it has to be some kind of joke!"

"I don't think so," said Megan, sidling close to Barry, waiting for his arm to loop across her naked shoulders.

"Hey, now, babe-"

"You don't think what?" Felicia asked, coming to join them in the wheelhouse, Robin close behind her.

"Someone on that boat just raised a goddamn Jolly Roger," Tommy told them both.

"A what?"

"A pirate flag, okay? You never saw one on TV? I don't have time to lead a seminar in history right now, if that's all right. We need to get the hell away from here, as fast as possible."

"Listen to yourself, would you? A damn Jolly Roger? And you're gonna take it seriously?"

"Yeah, I am," Tommy snapped at Barry, hating him in a heartbeat with an intensity he never would have believed possible. Sure, old Bare was a pain in the ass sometimes-most of the time, in fact-but he was also the life of most parties. This time, however, Tommy Gilpin had a sneaking hunch that his secondbest friend's laid-back attitude just might get them killed.

He brought the wheel around and opened up the throttle, feeling the Salome's big screws biting water, accelerating off the mark. She was supposed to have a cruising speed in the vicinity of twenty knots-around twenty-three miles per hour in plain English-but he hadn't tested her for speed and had no way of knowing if the maximum, assuming she delivered, would be good enough.

Some precious time was wasted as he veered off course, doubly lost now that he was running for his life, abandoning a heading that had been uncertain in the first place. Where the hell was land? How far away? The compass on his console told him they were running eastward now, which should have put the Windward Islands somewhere dead ahead, but would he miss them? Would they even get that far, before the Salome was overtaken?

He looked back, and what he saw told him the Jolly Roger was no joke.

Felicia came to the same realization. "Tommy, God, they're chasing us!" The edge of panic in her voice had the effect of fingernails on slate.

"We're maxed out on the speed," he told his five companions. What should they do? What could they do?

Even Barry finally had a clue. He had stopped smiling. "We'd better find some weapons."

"Right!" Jon's voice was dripping scorn. "Did you pack the grenades, or was that my job?"

"Anything, all right?" snapped Tommy. "Knives, the flare gun, anything at all."

"It could still just be a stupid joke," Robin insisted. "They're just trying to scare us." From the tremor in her voice, she didn't half believe it.

"Then we'll laugh, before we kick somebody's ass," said Tommy at the wheel. "Meanwhile, it stands to reason if they raid a boat out here, they won't want any witnesses, so do like Barry said and find some weapons! Now!"

They scattered to obey, but even Tommy didn't believe they'd have much luck. He had a jackknife with a four-inch blade, and they could use the flare gun, maybe try to set the pirate's sails on fire, some shit like that, but what else did they have? Some kitchen knives, of course. A hammer and some wrenches they could use as makeshift bludgeons, a couple of screwdrivers for stabbing, if they ran out of steak knives. There were no guns aboard: the leasing agent had been adamant on that score, and none of them owned firearms anyway. What were you supposed to shoot at sea, for Christ's sake, on a summer holiday?

He hoped they could outrun the sailboat, prayed the wind would fail, but damn near every craft that he had ever seen or heard of had an engine in reserve these days. It might not be a powerhouse, but just enough to help the wind along and give their pursuer the kick in the ass he required to overtake them, bring himself within hailing range.

Or within shooting range.

Tommy Gilpin reasoned that if these guys had unfriendly intentions, they'd have no shortage of guns. While he hated giving up without a fight, he didn't relish the thought of going down with the ship that much, either.

At the moment, he was only worried that he might not have a choice.

THE SAILBOAT WAS LOSING headway as her prey-the name of Salome was painted on the transom in electric blue-poured on the diesel, churning up a wake that smelled in equal parts of salt and burning fuel. At this pace there was a chance they could lose her still, and Billy Teach wasn't about to let that happen.

"Crank up the engine," he commanded, and his first mate nodded, then turned a key protruding from the console. For a moment, Teach imagined that the engine down below would fail him, that it would be out of fuel or suffering from shoddy maintenance, but then it rumbled to life, the sailboat shuddering before it caught a swift kick in the ass and started surging forward, gaining speed beyond the simple power of the wind.

A couple of the crewmen whooped and cheered, but they didn't allow the moment to distract them from their duties. While the Ravager was under sail, they still had work to do, lines to attend, and a mistake could slow them, cost them the race, although it would not stop them altogether once the engine was engaged. Teach didn't have to warn them of the consequences for the man who made that happen, not while he was pacing up and down the foredeck with a shotgun at his side.

"We're closing!" bawled the lookout, but Teach didn't need a blow-by-blow report to tell him that. The gap between the Ravager and the Salome had already been cut by half, and it was shrinking by the moment. In another ten or fifteen minutes, if the wind held, they would close the distance to effective hailing range.

His worry, at the moment, was the radio on the Salome. Unless the yachters were a bunch of total idiots, they had to have a Mayday signal on the air by now, reporting their location and the nature of their jeopardy. His first concern was that some other passing vessel might respond to the alarm-perhaps a government patrol boat, or a tough commercial fisherman with able hands and guns on board. In either case, it could mean trying to outrun the hounds, at best, and giving up their prize ...or fighting to the death, at worst.

Whatever happened, Teach wouldn't surrender the Ravager. His crew would never dip their colors to the enemy, as long as he was still alive and in command. Far better to go down with all guns blazing, on the open sea, than to be hanged or wind up in a cage for life.

But, then again, perhaps no one would hear the Mayday call. Or when they heard the call the authorities might laugh it off. Pirates were a real danger on the seas, to this very day, but a sailing vessel? Flying the skull and crossbones? It was difficult to take seriously-although Teach took himself very seriously indeed.

Even if rescuers did come, it was unlikely they would arrive in time at the Salome's coordinates. For what Teach had in mind, he wouldn't need all afternoon.

They were no more than thirty fathoms distant from the stern of the Salome when Teach called for the bullhorn they had taken from a shrimper off Grenada. It was red and white, but someone from his crew had scratched a clumsy skull and crossbones on the side. He pointed it toward the Salome and squeezed the trigger, spoke into the mouthpiece and heard nothing but his own voice, speaking in a normal tone.

Teach double-checked the on-off switch and tried again, without result. The batteries were dead. Disgusted with another failure of technology, he turned and flung the bullhorn toward the sailboat's stern, no longer watching as it skipped across the deck and fetched up short against the taffrail.

"Close it up!" he shouted at the first mate behind the wheel. "We've got no bloody time to waste!" He knew the engine had to be laboring, and yet it found another ounce of speed at his command-or maybe he was favored by the wind, old Neptune pitching in to bless their hunt. Five minutes more, and the Ravager had pulled abreast of the Salome, matching her speed, the frightened-looking passengers aboard the yacht regarding Billy Teach's crew with something close to abject terror.

Maybe, he decided, they weren't as stupid as he thought.

Teach leaned against the starboard rail, with the Benelli muzzle-down against his leg, his second mate and the machine gun well behind him, hidden from the anxious eyes on the Salome. He raised one hand, not fool enough to let the shotgun go, and strained to make the tourists hear him over throbbing engine sounds, the rush of sea and wind.

"Switch off your engines," he instructed them. "We need to come aboard."

The nearly naked women huddled close together at the stern, while their companions muttered back and forth, debating strategy. A moment later, Billy Teach was startled when the tall man at the wheel of the Salome stuck out one arm, his fingers wrapped around the dark grips of the largest pistol Teach had ever seen. It took a heartbeat for the pirate to decide it was a Very pistol, and by then the flare was airborne, sizzling toward the Ravager, trailing green smoke.

It struck the mainsail more or less dead center, flashed and burned right through the canvas, barely slowing as it disappeared to port and dropped into the sea. It left a smoking hole, with bright flames nibbling around the edges, threatening to spread. In the Salome's cockpit, the pilot had his pistol broken open and was fumbling with a second flare.

"Secure that sail and douse the fire!" Teach barked at anyone in a position to obey. Before he even finished speaking, he had stepped back from the starboard rail a pace and raised the shotgun to his shoulder, bracing for the recoil as he found and framed the yacht's bold captain in his sights.

The 12-gauge kicked against his shoulder once, twice, bright red cartridges skittering over the deck. He saw the buckshot pellets strike, some peppering the Salome's console, others chipping paint, enough striking the pilot to slam him over backward like a rag doll, dropping where he stood.

And still, no one aboard the yacht made any move to switch off the engines. Teach glanced back at his second mate and nodded toward their prize. The mate stepped forward, leveled his M-60 from the waist and hosed the sleek yacht's cabin with a burst of twenty-five or thirty rounds. The racket was hellacious, but he didn't envy those on the receiving end, where bullets shattered glass from portholes, chewed through wooden bulkheads, sent the Salome's survivors scrambling for a safe place on the deck.

"Enough!"

The mate stepped back, smoke wafting from his weapon's muzzle, and Teach resumed his place at the rail. "Again, I tell you, switch off the engines! We're boarding, one way or another! You decide how it will be, and do it now!"

One of the two men still unwounded crept into the yacht's wheelhouse, reached up for the ignition key and turned it off. The diesels grumbled and went silent, while the Salome began to drift. The Ravager would have continued on her way and left the yacht behind, except that Teach was barking orders to his men.

"Strike sails and give me half speed on that engine, damn your eyes! Close up to starboard, now! I need a boarding party." He jabbed an index finger at the mate with the machine gun. "You, Tom. Jess and Verlan. Patch makes five. That should be all we need. The rest of you, sit tight and keep an eye skinned for patrol craft. Deacon, don't neglect that radio!"

The Ravager swung close to the Salome, a deft hand on the tiller keeping them from a collision, while Billy Teach and his second mate covered the cringing survivors. Another moment, and the lines were fast, the two vessels secured.

"With me!" Teach shouted to his men, then threw himself across the starboard rail.

MEGAN RICHARDs TOLD herself it had to be some kind of nightmare-that she had to still be belowdecks, dozing after she and Barry finished making love-but still she could wake. She had already pinched her plump thigh hard enough to leave a bruise, and all she had to show for it was niggling pain, forgotten as she stood and stared at Tommy Gilpin, gasping in a pool of blood that spilled across the deck.

At least he wasn't dead, not yet, but Megan didn't need a medical degree to know that he was fading fast. The whole front of his muscle shirt was soaked with blood, torn where the bullets had ripped through his chest and stomach, with another bloody wound in his left thigh. He seemed to be unconscious, more or less, but he kept moaning as if he were struggling to regain awareness.

Barry was trembling when she took his hand, and while he almost flinched from her before he caught himself, she hung on for dear life. A part of Megan instantly despised him for the show of weakness, even though she couldn't really blame him, not with Tommy stretched out at their feet and men with guns lined up in front of them. Still, there was a part of Megan that was glad she had decided to break up with Barry after this vacation, once the all-expense-paid cruise was over.

Now, she had to wonder whether she would ever get the chance.

Five men with guns, and more back on the sailboat that had overtaken them. She didn't know much about weapons, but she recognized the big machine gun one of them was carrying, the shotgun that their leader held. The rest had pistols, one kind or another, most of them with sheathed knives on their belts.

It was their clothes that Megan found peculiar, mostly so far out of style that she remembered nothing like them from her twenty fashion-conscious years. No, that was wrong: a couple of the men were wearing faded Levi's jeans, patched and tattered, but the rest wore pants that looked like something they had sewn at home, so baggy they were almost shapeless, one or two of them without apparent pockets. A couple of the hijackers were bare chested; the other three wore faded shirts that didn't seem to fit them properly, as if they had been picked at random from Salvation Army bins, without regard to size or style. Three of the five wore bright bandannas tied around their heads, and one wore a black eye patch. My God, Megan thought, they think they're pirates! It would be ludicrous if it hadn't been so terrifying. The men were advancing on the wheelhouse where she stood, together with her friends. The leader stared at Tommy for a moment, finally nodded to a couple of his men-Eye Patch included-as he said, "Get rid of him."

The pirates didn't argue. They stepped forward, hoisted Tommy by his arms, paid no attention to his moaning as they dragged him toward the nearest railing. Jon Fitzgivens made a move, as if to stop them, but he froze as the machine gun's muzzle poked against his chest.

"You'll get your turn," the raiding party's leader said. "Don't rush it, boy."

She didn't watch as Tommy went over the side, but there was no way to escape his strangled cry, the splash he made on impact with the water. Megan knew that sharks would smell the blood-or did they taste it?-and she prayed that he would drown, or anyway lose consciousness, before that happened.

"Tasty wenches," said the man with the machine gun, eyeing each of them in turn. Megan felt naked in her swimsuit, even though it didn't show as much of her as Robin's or Felicia's, with the bottoms that were barely there. Her fear of being murdered by these strangers instantly gave way to a sensation even more oppressive, dreading the fate worse than death. "Right tasty," said the leader of the boarding party. "I believe we've got three winners here, and no mistake. But first, we need to get rid of the losers."

"Lemme do it," said Eye Patch.

"Not so fast," their leader said. "We have rules, after all."

The comment struck her as absurd, and Megan swallowed laughter that could only be a symptom of hysteria. What kind of rules could anybody have for kidnapping and killing perfect strangers?

Hell, nobody's perfect, Megan thought, and choked on laughter that time, tried to make it sound as if she were simply coughing up some phlegm.

The leader of the pirates spent a moment scowling at her, then turned back to Jon and Barry. "Either one of you a swimmer?" he inquired.

The two law students glanced at each other, wide-eyed, certain they were in the presence of a madman. Barry raised his hand, like a third-grader yearning for the washroom, and replied, "I swim."

"Me, too," Jon echoed.

"Excellent!" The leader of the pirates beamed. "We'll have a race, then. You'll both dive off the gunwale-" he pointed to the stern "-and swim your damnedest for, oh, let's say half a minute, shall we? If you're out of range by then, we let you go. Sound fair enough?"

"You're crazy!" Barry blurted out, unthinking.

"Please yourself."

The shotgun was already leveled at his face as Barry raised both hands and cried, "No, wait! We'll swim!"

"They'll swim," the leader said, and one of his companions giggled. "That's the spirit, lads. You may get lucky, though I'm damned if I'll bet on you. Did I mention that we need your vessel? And these sweet young things, of course, to cheer us on our lonesome journey home."

"You'll never get away with this," Jon said, but he was moving toward the taffrail, Barry trudging at his side.

"Who really gets away with anything?" the pirate leader said. "Come Judgment Day, I reckon every man jack on the bloody planet will have much to answer for. This afternoon, though, you two are the ones who've got a long swim home ahead of you."

Megan was weeping softly, couldn't watch as Jon and Barry went over the side. She heard the splashes, started counting seconds in her mind-one Mississippi, two-and guessed that it was only ten or fifteen seconds after they had jumped, before the firing squad cut loose.

She may have screamed but wasn't sure. Felicia's knees gave way, and she was cringing on the deck, hands covering her ears, Robin kneeling beside her, when the shooting stopped. Megan refused to face the gunmen, kept her eyes closed, but she heard them coming for her, felt a rough arm slide around her naked shoulders, foul breath in her face.

"Now, then," the pirate leader said, "why don't the three of you get down below and have a little rest while we get under way? You'll need your strength tonight, and no mistake."

Chapter 6

The Melody was thirty-five feet long and she should have been called a cabin cruiser, but the term was too crude for a thing of beauty such as she.

Someone with unlimited funds had commissioned her. Whoever that someone was had grown up with money. You had to be very accustomed to large amounts of money to use it in such an understated fashion.

She was an odd combination. Extremely lightweight, high-tensile-strength aeronautic-grade composite alloys were inside. On the outside were handforged decorative rails and hand-laid teak planking. Her bridge had enough computer processing power to run a small nation, but the steering could also be performed on the two-hundred-year-old wheel from a British ship that had run the Indian trade routes. Inside, the carpets were handwoven rugs from Turkey, Iran, China and Peru. Entire walls featured original painted murals and contemporary tapestries.

The DEA had removed whatever could be removed after they confiscated her from her third or fourth owner. It was the Lucky Lady then, and her owner was a yuppie smuggler based at Cocoa Beach who made his last run up from Cartagena in the spring of 1995. His load was worth an estimated fifteen million dollars on the street, but someone near and dear had ratted on him for a payoff in the low five figures. Agents of the DEA were waiting to collect the Lucky Lady, with her owner and his cargo, when he docked at Lauderdale. The boat was confiscated, the cocaine incinerated, and the skipper wound up doing seventeen to thirty-five at Leavenworth, when he refused to "help" himself by rolling over on his source.

That way, at least, he stayed alive, while the Melody received a new name, several coats of paint and went to work for Uncle Sam. The DEA imagined she was theirs, but the Melody was moonlighting this weekend on behalf of CURE.

"I've never been much good with boats," said Remo when he saw the cabin cruiser for the first time, docked at Charleston.

"Skills are learned. You do not fear the water." It was not a question; Remo did not bother answering the old man.

The man was indeed ancient. Chiun, Reigning Master Emeritus of Sinanju, was more than a century old, although Remo would have generously allowed that he didn't appear a day over ninety-seven. He was short and slight, a collection of thin bones under pale parchment skin that seemed so thinned by the ages you could see the blood vessels beneath. The ancient little man was Korean, with a head that was nearly devoid of hair except for yellowing wisps over his ears and on his chin. The skin around his eyes was lined and wrinkled, but the eyes themselves were like glimmering emeralds. They might have been the eyes of a child.

Though Remo Williams himself had the title of Reigning Master of Sinanju, the truth was that Chiun still did quite a bit of reigning.

Chiun was right. Remo didn't fear the water, salt or fresh. Nor did he fear the sea wolves they were hunting-if in fact they actually existed. Still, Remo would have preferred to do his manhunting on land, where he wasn't confined to the cabin cruiser's decks. And he wasn't looking forward to spending several days confined in the boat with an occasionally disagreeable Chiun.

"Be careful!" Chiun barked as Remo set the last of eight trunks on the floor in the vast stateroom Chiun had selected for himself.

"I'm always careful. Besides, I think you forgot to pack anything in this one. It feels empty."

"Leave it alone!" Chiun snapped. "Get out! Go on!"

"Chill, Chiun." Remo left, but not before adding, "Why in the hell do you need eight trunkfuls of stuff?"

By sundown they were ready to depart. Remo could probably have stalled until after the next morning's breakfast of rice, but he saw no point. If they were going, they had best be on their way. He could see his way around Charleston harbor just about as well at night as he could during the day, so it was no more of a challenge in the semidarkness, even for a navigator of his minimal accomplishments. Chiun was standing several feet away on the aft end of the craft, but Remo still heard the old Korean rolling his eyes in disdain.

When they were on the open water and the sun was gone, Chiun turned away from the black water. "I am amazed at your seamanship," he said simply.

Remo didn't reply. For a long time Chiun stood there.

Finally Remo sighed. "Okay, why are you amazed at my seamanship?"

"There are two large rocks in Charleston harbor. It took skillful sailing to bang us against both of them," Chiun explained.

"Stuff it, Little Father."

When they were well at sea, Remo picked out a southward course and kept the lighted coastline on his right, referring to the compass mounted on his console when he felt the need. The cockpit was above decks, situated on the cabin roof beneath an open canopy. Chiun was in the cabin, testing the reception on the Melody's twelve-inch RCA television.

From the sound of his muttering, it was none too promising. Remo would have thought he'd be able to find some sort of programming to suit his tastes, which of late had run to Spanish-language soap operas.

It was four hundred miles from Charleston to Miami, as the seagull flew. Remo topped off the fuel tanks at Easy Eddie's, on Miami Beach. Two hundred more to Nassau, and they put in for the night, Remo intent on following his orders to present a fair facsimile of wealthy tourists on vacation. Shiftless travelers wouldn't be rushing on from one point to the next without a fair amount of shopping, lazing in the sun and soaking up the "local color."

That was pushing it with Chiun along. The Reigning Master Emeritus of Sinanju bore no more resemblance to an average upscale tourist than he did to Li'l Abner, and his patience for such joys as sightseeing or window-shopping was minute. Chiun could draw almost as much attention simply by walking through a basic gift shop as he would by demolishing the place by hand. On the other hand, if he wanted to, he could walk unnoticed into the office of Nassau's prime minister.

Chiun's unique appearance might, in fact, serve their cause. Remo wanted to look helpless without putting on a Rob Me sign, and traveling with Chiun could be the next-best thing. A city boy alone, unarmed, was no real threat to anyone, but team him with an elderly Korean in expensive silk garb, who appeared to have one bony foot across the threshold of Death's door, and the potential odds for easy pickings blasted through the roof.

These so-called pirates didn't operate from Nassau, but they might have spotters in the city, and Remo used the time to role-play as long as his patience allowed. He managed to pack a lot of ugly-American-type behavior into that twenty-minute stint. He bought and wore a loud shirt over his white T-shirt and made a point of spending too much cash on a few trinkets when he could have talked the vendors down to half the asking price. He bought a bottle of Corona and wobbled around with it for a while, pretending to chug some occasionally. He got noticed by the regular street trash, but as far as he could tell nobody showed special interest, and he made his trip back to the Melody without so much as a mugging.

"Like the shirt?" he asked Chiun, who regarded him suspiciously from the deck.

"It is better than the undergarment that is your typical attire," the old Korean said. "If you must wear something brightly colored, why not wear a proper kimono instead of that garish thing? And why do you smell like a brewery?"

"Relax," Remo said. "I haven't gone on a bender or anything. I just carried around a bottle for a while. I didn't even spill any on my hands."

"You still reek of it," Chiun pronounced, adding extra wrinkles to his nose to demonstrate how disagreeable the odor was.

THE RUN TO CAICOS TOOK another day, twelve hours on the water, putting them in port by dusk. Along the way, Remo had kept a lookout for suspicious boats on the horizon, while Chiun remained below, inviting painful and humiliating death to visit all of those involved in manufacturing the yacht's televisions and satellite receiver that vexed him endlessly. They weren't attacked by pirates.

On Caicos, Remo slipped into his tourist role again and played it to the hilt. He hoped. They would be closer to the pirates now, if there were any pirates to be found, and he hoped they had scouts in port looking for easy marks for future looting. If they had him marked, however, the sea raiders gave no sign.

In the morning Remo dawdled on departure, wasting time to make it seem as if he had a hangover. Chiun came on deck briefly, eyeing his performance like an off-off-Broadway director.

"Why have you not been attacked by the pirates yet?" Chiun demanded.

"Hey, I'm trying," Remo protested. "What do you want me to do? Rent a megaphone and start yelling for them to come and get me?"

"This voyage is tiring."

"Huh. Tiring," Remo said. "Seems to me that I'm the one doing all the work."

"I mean it is monotonous," Chiun clarified condescendingly.

"Yeah. I bet." Remo didn't buy that, either. In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that Chiun was enjoying this little trip. He was a little too enthusiastic about the Melody. He hoped the little Korean didn't get any ideas about moving out of their Connecticut duplex. He didn't want to live on something that floated.

Late morning found them heading south-southeast, for Puerta Plata. They were getting closer to their target zone. The pirate's nest. Remo hoped the pirates came and got them quick before Chiun started thinking about yachting catalogs.

"YOU LIKE 'EM, EH?" Billy Teach asked.

"I would have liked them better if I'd had first pick," said Thomas Kidd, making no effort to disguise the irritation in his tone.

"Um, well, that is..."

Kidd pinned his first lieutenant with a glare that had been known to make men soil themselves. It wasn't that he snarled or threatened; rather, Kidd had learned through years of practice to project pure venom through his eyes, the grim set of his mouth, so that the object of his anger knew exactly what the stone-faced buccaneer was thinking. You could see death in those slate-gray eyes, and it wasn't a quick death, never clean.

When he had made his point, Kidd turned to face the three young wenches once again. His cold expression altered slightly, not quite softening. It was a matter of degree, and those unused to dealing with him may have missed the change entirely. That was quite all right with Kidd, since he wasn't concerned about the nature of his first impression on three female hostages.

The wenches had been naked when Teach brought them from the Ravager to Kidd's land quarters-corrugated metal and a sheet of rotting plywood for the walls, a thatched roof overhead and dirt beneath his feet. Kidd had immediately ordered clothing for the three, and one of Teach's raiding party had gone off to fetch the mismatched remnants they were wearing now: two pairs of cutoff jeans, one pair of gaudy boxer shorts, a paisley halter top and two men's shirts. None of the garments fit, and none of them was clean, but dressing had allowed the three young prisoners to face him squarely, rather than with downcast eyes.

There would be time enough to strip them once again, pass them around, when they had learned the rules. Kidd was a firm believer in the notion that you followed certain steps to see a job done properly the first time, deviating only at your peril.

He wasn't afraid of the three wenches. That would have been ridiculous. What troubled Thomas Kidd was that his second in command had not been able to restrain his crew from having at them on the journey back to Ile de Mort. That lack of discipline was dangerous to all concerned. Suppose they had been short of lookouts on the trip back, for example, and patrol boats took them by surprise while three or four of them were busy with the women down below? More to the point, suppose the notion got around that Kidd's strict orders could be flaunted with impunity? What then?

Still looking at the women, Kidd addressed himself to Billy Teach. "Who gave the order for the sharing out?" he asked.

Teach swallowed the obstruction that had suddenly appeared in his throat, half-choking him. "Th-there was no order, Captain," he replied.

"I see." Worse yet. Teach had allowed his crew to run amok, when there was sailing and potential fighting to be done. "In that case, who was first to touch the wenches, in defiance of my rule?"

A sidelong glance at Billy Teach showed Kidd that his lieutenant had begun to sweat. It was uncomfortably warm inside Kidd's hut, but Teach had long since grown accustomed to the temperature on Ile de Mort. This sweat sprang from his nerves, the knowledge that his captain was preparing an example, Billy praying to forgotten gods that he would not be chosen as a lesson to the brotherhood.

"Answer!" Kidd snapped, and Billy jumped as if someone had poked a hot dirk in his arse.

"It's hard to say, Captain." The words came out as if Teach had to squeeze them from between clenched teeth. Both hands were fisted at his sides, not reaching for the pistol in his belt. If it came down to that, Teach knew he wasn't fast enough to win the draw.

"In other words," Kidd said, "you weren't paying attention to your crew."

"It isn't that," Teach said defensively. "We had a second vessel to be manned, and we were heading back."

"Which means you needed every man jack of your company at work or watching out for trouble, yes?" the captain said.

"Aye, sir." Reluctantly, but there was no escaping it. Kidd saw his first lieutenant's shoulders sag, the grim weight of responsibility descending on him. It would take only a little extra pressure to crush him flat.

"There's an example to be made," Kidd said.

"Aye, sir." From the expression on his face, his tone of voice, Teach had almost resigned himself to death.

"I want the first man who made sport with one of these," Kidd said. "If it's a tie, pick one at random. I don't care how he's selected. You've got fifteen minutes to produce a man for punishment, or you stand in his place."

Teach didn't dare to smile, but he was visibly relieved. "Aye, sir!" he snapped and waved one hand in what would pass for a salute if he were drunk and suffering from palsy. Then he rushed from the hut to choose a crewman who would be his scapegoat for the latest breach of discipline.

"I won't apologize for what has happened to you," Thomas Kidd informed his three nubile prisoners. "It would have happened anyway and will again before you're done. I wager one or two of you may even find you have a taste for it, if you can just relax. Most wenches do, I've found."

The three were staring at him now, as if he had emerged from underneath a mossy rock, some kind of slimy grub that had no place in daylight. Kidd wasn't offended by their attitude, since they were new to hostage life. They would be broken in due time and learn their proper place.

"I'm choosing an example for the men because they violated discipline, you understand?" The wenches stared at him with blank, uncomprehending eyes, arms wrapped around themselves as if they felt a chilly draft inside the hut. "Orders must be obeyed at any cost. If I allow my crewmen to defy me, we'd have anarchy in no time."

Billy Teach was back within five minutes, standing in the doorway to Kidd's quarters. "Found him, sir!" Kidd's second in command announced.

That hadn't taken long. For Billy's sake, Kidd hoped the sacrificial goat had been selected fairly, and that he wasn't a man with many friends among the brotherhood. Otherwise, Teach still might find a dirk between his ribs one night, when he was least expecting it, and Kidd would have to find himself a new lieutenant to command his troops.

"Outside," Kidd told the women, shooing them ahead of him as he rose from his makeshift throne-the fighting chair removed from a sport-fishing boat and mounted on a stump, dead center in his hut. Teach led the way, Kidd trailing as his rank dictated, to the center of the camp, where every member of the scurvy brotherhood except for posted sentries had turned out to witness the punishment.

Two pirates flanked the chosen one, each gripping one of his tanned, tattooed arms. The watchdog on his left had drawn a bowie knife and held it ready at his side; the other had a long-barreled revolver pressed against the doomed man's ribs.

No mutiny so far, at least. Kidd let himself relax a bit and get into the spirit of the thing.

He recognized the chosen man, of course. The brotherhood wasn't so large that any of his subjects were unknown to him by sight. The long scar down the man's left cheek was a result of brawling in the camp itself-a quarrel over looted whiskey, if memory served. Kidd knew the man as Fetch, but he could not have conjured up a Christian name to go with that if his own life depended on it.

"You are summoned to observe the punishment for violation of our laws," Kidd told the crowd. As he began to speak, the muttering among them ceased entirely, and you could have heard a palm frond whisper to the ground. "What is the rule on sharing up of booty?"

"Fair and square on the return to port!" one of his pirates answered, echoed by another handful in the ranks before the noise died down.

"That's right!" Kidd said. "But this one chose to take his piece before you others even had a fair look at the goods. By his example, others were encouraged to do likewise. Some here would have had first crack at these-" he turned and waved a hand toward the three wenches, huddled to his left -but now you've lost that chance."

An angry murmuring arose and made its way around the clutch of pirates, back to where Kidd stood. He waited, letting those who had remained ashore that day check out the women in their baggy, borrowed clothes, imagining the sight of them undressed, the feel of them before another's grimy hands had blazed the trail.

"What punishment is fit for one who breaks our law?" Kidd asked his men.

"Castration!" one of them called back, the captive crewman losing several shades of tan at that.

"Let him be drawn and quartered!" cried another.

"Keelhauled!"

"Death!"

The latter vote caught on, became a chant, the pirates warming to it, seeming generally happy to condemn their fellow sea wolf without specifying how he ought to die.

"So say you all?" Kidd asked them, shouting to be heard above the din.

A rousing cheer came back at him, and now the prisoner began to struggle, trying to escape his guards, to no avail. The pirate on his right swung the revolver hard against his skull and dropped the doomed man to his knees, blood trickling from a small wound on his scalp.

"Then death it is!" Kidd told the cheering crowd, their racket multiplied by his assurance that they would have blood for supper.

Stepping forward, Kidd removed the big Colt semiautomatic pistol from its holster on his hip. He had relieved a red-faced Yankee yachtsman of the pistol three years earlier, before he cut the bastard's throat and fed him to the sharks off Martinique. Since then, the Colt had served him well on raids at sea, and twice before in matters relative to discipline.

There was no need to aim at point-blank range, but Kidd still took his time. There was a certain ritual to be fulfilled, including one last look into the dead man's eyes before he pulled the Colt's trigger, opening a keyhole in the pirate's forehead, scattering raw brains behind him in the dust.

"I swear-"

The echo of a gunshot snuffed out the dead man's protest, and a cheer went up from those assembled on the sidelines. Kidd stepped back and holstered his pistol, making sure he had the safety on.

"Fish food," he said. "So finish all who break our laws."

His men were cheering as the captain turned and walked back to his hut, Teach and the women falling in behind.

PUERTA PLATA TRANSLATED into Silver Port. Remo had no idea who gave the northern coastal town its name, or why, but he was guessing that the only silver seen in Puerta Plata during recent years had come from tourists.

Some tourist dollars came to the Dominican Republic, thanks to several big beach resorts. Still, most of the tourist dollars went to the Bahamas, St. Kitts, Jamaica and the upstart Union Island, which was suddenly the Caribbean tourist destination of choice, stealing business from all the others. Hispaniola sweltered in the sun and took leftovers.

Santo Domingo was the capital and main seaport of the Dominican Republic, which was notably more prosperous than Haiti, its impoverished neighbor on the west side of the island. That wasn't saying much. Hispaniola had been Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the New World, and Santo Domingo, founded four years later, was the oldest European city in the Western Hemisphere. France, Spain and the United States had jockeyed for control of the island over some 250 years, until Haiti and the Dominican Republic won their respective independence in the 1930s. Three decades of brutal dictatorship under Rafael Trujillo ended with the strongman's assassination in 1961, and the subsequent popular election of a president led to years of turmoil, finally suppressed, for good or ill, by a return of the United States Marines. "Stability" had reigned since 1966, but there were still complaints of fraudulent elections, and most of the republic's eight million citizens still scraped by on a yearly income that averaged three thousand U.S. dollars.

"Not exactly where you'd go to find wealthy tourists," Remo said, trying to ignore the seaport smell.

"So why are we here?" Chiun asked.

"This is where Richard and Kelly Armitage made their last known stop, and Smith thinks this is where they picked up the strange and mysterious Enrique," Remo said. "It's all we've got to go on."

"White man corrupts the black man, then complains of his corruption," Chiun declared. The Melody was entering Puerta Plata's crowded anchorage.

"Black man accepts corruption from the white and then bemoans his fate as persecution. It is all so... Western."

"I know for a fact that Koreans breed with Chinese and Japanese-hell, even Native Americans," Remo answered, watching Chiun and preparing to duck behind the console even as he spoke. "Look how good that turns out."

The Master Emeritus of Sinanju heaved a mighty sigh, frail-looking shoulders lifting with the effort. Never mind that those same shoulders had the power to clean and jerk a hippopotamus or a stretch limousine; there was a kind of resignation-even sadness-in the simple gesture.

"Even the most perfect race has deviants and traitors," Chiun replied. "There are always those who seek accommodation with an enemy, in place of offering resistance as they should. Your Arnold Benedict is an example."

"Not my Arnold Benedict," said Remo. "Anyway, you've got the names reversed. His name was Benedict Arnold, at least according to a Brady Bunch episode I saw once." That wasn't quite true. Remo remembered learning about Benedict Arnold in history class. In fact, he remembered a lot more than he gave himself credit for.

"Ah, yes," Chiun said. "The Western custom of reversing names, instead of stating them in proper order. I forget sometimes."

Now that was a bald-faced lie. Chiun forgot nothing, not in all their years together. Chiun was old, and he had already been old when Remo first began to study with him. Forgetfulness, like physical infirmity, was one of several dodges that Chiun employed to mask his physical and mental powers from the world at large. But he wasn't hiding anything from Remo. Remo hoped.

A minimob of street urchins was waiting for them as Remo nosed the Melody into a berth. Deft, dark hands caught the stout line he pitched, and it was made fast to the dock. Another handful of coins scattered the ragged, half-dressed children. Remo turned to find the Master Emeritus of Sinanju watching him, a little frown wrinkle between his eyes.

"You're going into town," Chiun said. From his tone, he wasn't asking.

"It's the reason we came down here," Remo said. "You're staying on the boat?"

It was a pointless question, and instead of answering, Chiun spent a moment studying Remo's baggy "tourist" shirt, cut from a fabric printed in outrageous floral patterns. It was the twin of the shirt he had worn in Nassau, then trashed rather than wash. Remo didn't think he looked all that touristy, actually, but he wasn't all that interested in undercover work anyway. Putting on the shirt over his everywhere, all-season Chinos and T-shirt was as much effort as he was willing to put into his disguise.

Chiun made a muffled clucking sound and shook his head in evident disgust. "You are a white man, after all," he said. "Your transformation into a long gizzard is too easy, too natural."

It was Remo's turn to frown. "You mean lounge lizard?" he replied.

"It's all the same," Chiun said. "A worthless leech by any other name-"

"Would smell as sweet, I know," interrupted Remo in the interest of a swift departure. "Anyway, I'm taking off. Want anything from town?"

"I want to be away from town," said Chiun.

"So, keep your fingers crossed. I get a bite the first time out, we could be on our way tomorrow."

"I hope TV reception is improved in this forsaken place," Chiun said, then took himself below.

Chapter 7

All harbors smell essentially the same, even if some are worse than others. There is the bracing aroma of the sea, with undertones of rotting seaweed, fish left too long in the sun, the pungent tang of gasoline and motor oil, exhaust and diesel fumes. If there are seafood restaurants close by, their grills and garbage bins add unique smells to assault the senses, luring and repelling new arrivals all at once.

A visitor who wanted to see and smell the city proper had to proceed beyond the waterfront, search out the avenues and byways where the natives spent their daily lives. In Puerta Plata, torn between the tourist trade and simply getting by, that meant a mixture of boutiques, dive shops, trendy cafes and travel agencies with simple restaurants and markets, general stores that catered to the working fishermen and captains who maintained their boats as much through sweat and sheer determination as by any great influx of cash. There were small banks, a neglected library and a maritime museum that had apparently been closed for renovation several years before, with little or no progress logged since then.

Remo was looking for a group of ruthless sea wolves, men who wouldn't shrink from murder, rape or God knew what in the pursuit of pleasure, profit, self-advancement. It wasn't an attitude that anyone in modern-day society would call unique. It was evident every night on television, every morning in the headlines. Only some of the peculiar trappings, as described by Kelly Bauer Armitage, made this group of destructive human animals stand out.

Assuming she was rational, Remo amended. If her pirate story was a product of delusion, post-traumatic stress, whatever, he could well be wasting his precious time.

Still, Smitty and Mark Howard seemed to think there was something to this. Remo was their contracted Reigning Master of Sinanju, and he did what he was told, without ever a word of complaint.

He worked his way inland from the waterfront, paying only cursory attention to the dives that lured rough-and-tumble fishermen or seamen. Such establishments might harbor pirates, it was true, but they wouldn't have drawn the likes of Richard Armitage or his wife, Kelly. Wherever the naive Americans had met their enemies, Remo would bet it hadn't been on the docks.

Where, then?

He made his way through narrow, crowded streets, feeling the eyes of the locals watching him. They would mark him as a gringo with more cash than common sense, he hoped. It was possible that someone would attempt to mug him, but Remo wasn't concerned about a confrontation on the street. He could dispose of any such straightforward opposition swiftly.

Just now, his mind was fixed on other predators, the kind with sense enough to plan ahead, check out a stranger and discover that he had an extremely high-priced boat tied up at the marina. Someone who might try to win his confidence, suggest that his vacation would proceed more smoothly with a native guide, for instance, or some local boys to serve as crew aboard the luxurious Melody.

Of course, such offers might be perfectly legitimate, no more than an attempt to make ends meet by picking up a little extra cash. Remo would have to trust his intuition. Maybe he'd get lucky and a guy would have a peg leg or an eye patch or a parrot on his shoulder.

The first nightclub he tried was the Flamingo, three blocks inland from the waterfront. It was a stylish place, as such things were appraised in struggling Third World ports of call. A twenty-something hostess met him just inside the door, established that he was alone and led him to a booth against one wall, then left him with a thousand-candlepower smile that could have suntanned an albino. Moments later, he was talking to a cocktail waitress in a low-cut peasant blouse and ruffled skirt. She made a point of bending over Remo's table as she took his order for a fruity rum concoction he had never heard off, offering her cleavage almost as a side dish-or an appetizer for delights to come, if he was only man enough to ask.

Instead, he grimaced and let it pass. His drink arrived, and Remo pretended to sip. He listened to the music, made a show of working on his drink until he felt that he had adequately scoped the clientele, deciding there were no apparent buccaneers in sight.

The first club was a warm-up. At his second stop, a flashy place called La Deliciosa, Remo waved off the hostess and found an empty bar stool, ordering another cocktail that was basically chopped fruit deluged in rum. Once more, he pretended to drink it through a stingy straw and, when he was sure no one was looking, reached over the bar and dumped most of the contents in the bartender's sink. The bartender returned a moment later, and Remo tried to engage him in casual conversation.

A purple plastic name tag on the barkeep's shirt declared that he was Pedro, and although he seemed willing enough to talk, a combination of poor English and deficient knowledge kept him from imparting any useful information. Pedro didn't know where local guides or temporary crewmen could be hired, he had only the vaguest knowledge of sport fishing in the area and Remo's passing reference to pirate treasure left the young man with a blank expression on his face, as if he had been asked to give a speech on quantum physics.

Remo had already had enough undercover baloney for one day. He wondered if it was too early to phone Smitty and tell him the trip was a washout.

Then he sensed someone approaching him from behind.

"Excuse me? Sir?"

The voice was native-born American, with traces of New England clinging stubbornly to life beneath a Southern accent picked up in adulthood. Remo swiveled on his stool and faced a trim man in his middle sixties, iron-gray hair receding from a high, aristocratic forehead that was deeply tanned, like the remainder of his face, from years of regular exposure to the tropic sun. The stranger's blue eyes had a sparkle to them as they peered through steel-rimmed spectacles, and his lips curled in a smile that was both tentative and self-assured.

"Forgive me for intruding, please," the stranger said, "but I could not help overhearing that you're interested in pirates."

"Well..."

"I suppose you'd say the subject is a kind of personal obsession. May I join you, Mr....?"

"Rubble. Remo Rubble. Sure. Have a seat."

"Ethan Humphrey," said the older man, immediately shifting to the empty stool on Remo's left. His handshake was not limp, exactly, but there was no hidden strength behind it. Remo pegged him as a bookworm, maybe retired from teaching or some other sedentary occupation, probably a bachelor, spending his retirement on what passed for an adventure in his relatively cloistered life. He reminded Remo of Harold W. Smith.

"I can't decide if you're from Maine or Massachusetts," Remo said.

His new acquaintance blinked, taken off guard, then cracked a smile. "Oh, yes, I see. The accent, yes? It's Massachusetts, actually, although I thought I'd lost it during fifteen years of teaching at the University of Florida, in Gainesville."

"Teaching what?" asked Remo.

"History, of course-whence springs my interest in the buccaneers of the Caribbean. You're interested in treasure, I believe you said?"

"Well, not commercially," said Remo, "but I'm down here on vacation, checking out the islands, mostly killing time. I thought it might be interesting to spice the trip up with a look around the seamy side of history, you know?"

"Indeed I do," said Humphrey, with a smile that put expensive dentures on display. "And you've come to the right place, I assure you. Not Puerta Plata specifically, but Hispaniola and environs. Do you know much about pirates, Mr. Rubble?"

Remo flashed a sheepish smile and shook his head. "A little Treasure Island and some Errol Flynn wraps it up," he said, feigning embarrassment.

"In that case," Humphrey told him, "you're in for a treat. The West Indies were notorious as a haven for pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, you know. John Avery had the protection of the British governor in the Bahamas, raiding French and Spanish shipping from Martinique all the way to Madagascar and the Red Sea, circa 1695, before he disappeared out east. His crew was ultimately hanged in England, when they tried to do without official blessings, but the captain simply vanished. Howell Davis was another buccaneer who sailed from Martinique, but came to grief when he abandoned piracy to join the slave trade. There were even female pirates, though you seldom read about them in the common histories. Anne Bonney and Mary Read both sailed with Calico Jack Rackham, fighting tooth and nail beside male members of the crew when there were galleons to be looted, but women's lib only went so far. When they were tried for piracy in 1720, both women claimed that they were pregnant, which officially precluded them from being hanged."

"Fascinating," Remo said, although it was only interesting. Barely.

"Of course, no buccaneer who ever plied these waters could compare with Morgan," Humphrey said, continuing his impromptu lecture. "In 1670, Sir Henry led an outlaw fleet consisting of thirty-six ships and some two thousand men, raiding from Jamaica all the way to Central America, where he sacked the Spanish garrison at Panama and installed himself as the warlord in residence. That bit of banditry got him knighted in England and earned him a posting as lieutenant governor of Jamaica."

"So crime does pay," said Remo.

"Oh, indeed it does, my friend, in certain circumstances." Humphrey flashed the dentures again, then flagged down Pedro to order a refill on his vodka Collins.

"What about today?" Remo asked. "Are there any pirates still around the neighborhood?"

"Today?" The ex-professor seemed amused. "I shouldn't think so, Mr. Rubble. We're discussing history, you understand, and none too recent history, at that. There are such activities in the present day, of course... ."

"That's what I mean," said Remo, stopping short of slurring words that would have made him incoherent. "Anythin' can happen, and it usually does."

"That's from Walt Disney, I believe," said Ethan Humphrey.

"What's the difference?" Remo challenged. "Just as long as you know what I'm talkin' 'bout."

"I seem to follow you so far," said Humphrey, leaning closer, hanging on his every word.

"An' all I'm sayin' is, that if the pirates used to make a killing in the old days, wha's to stop 'em doing the same thing right now?"

"Well." Humphrey frowned and cleared his throat, as if preparing to impart a lecture. "There are more laws, of course, where few or none existed in the past. Technology has changed, allowing naval units and the Coast Guard to pursue potential miscreants from distances that would have made a roundup hopeless in the old days. As for the killing side of modern-day technology, you have a range of craft and weapons that would slaughter any old-style pirates in the area today."

"That's just supposing that they hung on to the old ways, am I right?" asked Remo.

"It would be scandalous!" Humphrey proclaimed, as if Remo had dared suggest his favorite daughter might turn out to be a mindless slut. In fact, he didn't seem embarrassed by the notion of surviving pirate bands, but rather by the notion that they might adopt newfangled methods for themselves, in place of raiding as their great-great-great-grandfathers had conducted their attacks two centuries before.

"So say these free spirits did exist," said Remo. "How would, say, a freelance journalist with cash to spend get hold of them and make arrangements for an article, perhaps a full-length book?"

"You're taking much for granted," Ethan Humphrey answered, showing off the store-bought pearly whites. "Naturally, I'll see what I can do, but don't expect too much in way of miracles."

"I never do," said Remo, sounding far more sober than when he had spoken just a moment earlier. "I also need a travel agency, trustworthy and reliable, to recommend a native crewman for the next leg of our journey."

"Native crewman?" Humphrey struck a pose right on the stool, pretending that he had to scan his brain for an idea.

In fact, if Remo's instinct was on target, Humphrey was about to set him up with a potential nest of con men, maybe worse.

"There is a certain travel agency," the transplanted New Englander went on. "Trade Winds, the owner calls it. Nothing terribly original, but they arrange for guided tours, pilots, crewmen, anything you need to make your island getaway a memorable experience."

"Sounds perfect," Remo said. "Where do I find them?"

"Bay Street," Ethan Humphrey said. "Are you familiar with the town at all?"

"Just what I've seen since we got in, about an hour ago."

"When you say we...?"

"I have a traveling companion," Remo said. "He's been with my family for years."

"Faithful retainer, eh?"

"Yes," Remo smiled. "Faithful retainer. Exactly."

"I understand, of course." The pearly dentures flashed again. "It does you credit, bringing the old boy along to see the sights on your vacation. There's no Mrs. Rubble, then, if I may be so bold?"

"Not currently," said Remo.

"Ah. Two men out on their own, then, challenging the sea."

"Well..."

"It's the finest way there is to travel." Humphrey leaned in on his elbows, dropping his voice to an almost conspiratorial tone. "Women simply muck up these adventures, don't you find?"

Remo was waiting for the older man's hand to find his thigh and was relieved when Humphrey kept his paws to himself. Apparently, his rapt enthusiasm was restricted to the bounding main.

"I really couldn't tell you," Remo replied. "This is my first time out at sea, I guess you'd say. I mean, I used to take the family sailboat out from Montauk sometimes, in the summers, but it's been a long, long time."

"You never lose the feel, though, do you?" Humphrey didn't wait for a response to his own question. "Being on the water is like dreaming, flying, giving yourself up to magic that's been drawing men away from land since time began."

"You're some enthusiast," said Remo.

Humphrey may have blushed behind the tan, but it was difficult to tell. "Forgive me, please, if I sound maudlin. I'm afraid the sea has always been my one great love. It's difficult for landlubbers to understand, I know. As for myself, I heard the calling early on, but it has only been the past few years, since my retirement from the halls of academia, that I've been able to indulge myself."

"You live here?" asked Remo.

"What, in Puerta Plata?" Humphrey had to think about it for a moment, as if he could not remember his address. "I've been here for a year-or is it eighteen months? No matter. I go where the sea winds blow me, as the spirit moves."

"Some life," said Remo, wondering how much of it was total bullshit.

"Yes," the older man said, beaming back at him, "it is. I'm working on a book about those days. My magnum opus, you might say. There's never been a definitive study of the Caribbean pirates before, the way they lived and died, the reasons why they chose an outlaw life."

"About that travel agent," Remo said, "if you could let me have the address..."

"Of course," said Humphrey, coming back as if Remo had summoned him from dreamland. "It's at number 20 Bay Street." He rattled off the directions and was disappointed when Remo called it a night, claiming he needed to be up early.

"Of course, I understand," Humphrey said, giving Remo a final glimpse of false teeth. "Good sailing, then."

Outside, the night was cooling down. Streetlights were few and far between, but Remo did not mind darkness. Even if he hadn't been able to expand his pupils to make catlike use of the ambient light, a handy Sinanju skill, he still would have been able to find his way back to the harbor by following his nose and keeping to the streets that ran downhill. The handful of pedestrians ignored him as he made his way toward the waterfront.

As Remo walked, he thought about his conversation with Ethan Humphrey, the old man's fascination with pirates and their lawless lifestyle. It was a little odd, but not freaky-odd, Remo decided. A professor of history who kept up with his hobby in retirement, finding a way to blend study with relaxation in a pleasant tropical climate-it didn't seem so peculiar. Still...

The muffled scream distracted him. Remo went in search of it. He might save a damsel in distress and that would be his good deed for the year, or it might be a trap, some kind of setup. He hadn't been subtle in his questions, here or in the other ports of call where they had briefly stopped along the way. There was at least an outside possibility that someone, possibly the very men he sought, would try to take him out and end this unpleasant undercover work.

Please be a trap, please be a trap, he thought as he stepped into the brooding shadows of an alley, the source of the scream.

Chapter 8

The alley looked and smelled like any of a thousand others Remo had explored as a teenager, as a Newark cop, or during his years with CURE. Bare dirt and gravel under foot. A reek of garbage that had nearly liquefied when no one bothered to collect it. Scuttling, feral sounds of rats or scrawny kittens as they foraged in the trash for something edible. This night, though, this alley held the muffled sobbing of a terrified woman and the gruff, excited voices of her tormentors.

Remo made no conscious attempt to camouflage his approach, but some of his earliest training with Chiun had taught him to move with effortless silence. His soon-to-be adversaries huddled in the blackness at the far end of the alley. Remo counted four of them by their voices. It was a lengthy dead-end alley, Remo saw, with no escape for their intended victim-or for them, now that he stood behind them, cutting off their only access to the street. The alley made as good a killing pen as he had ever seen. Three of the men were Remo's height or shorter, average for the Caribbean mixed breed they represented, while the fourth and nearest to his left stood six foot five or better. Remo guessed the hulking mugger's altitude had marked him as a freak from adolescence, opening him up to taunts and ridicule that would have led him into fights and taught him to rely upon his strength and size for settling arguments.

All four were dressed in peasant shirts and baggy trousers. Mr. Big displayed patches on his rump. One of the men, on Remo's right, had picked up a Malcolm X cap somewhere; he wore it backward, at an angle, the curled bill half covering his neck, the faded X resembling a target on the back of his skull.

Remo caught a glimpse of their victim, and that's when he wanted to start shouting profanities. The woman cornered in the stinking alleyway was Stacy Armitage.

In fact, Remo wasn't tremendously surprised, just ticked off. Their conversation back in Maryland had left him thinking that she was the ambitious type, likely to make an attempt to solve the mystery herself, and now here she was, ass deep in alligators, waiting for a sympathetic knight to come along and rescue her.

Of course, that wasn't fair. From what Remo saw-the blouse torn open to expose one breast, the dark smudge of a bruise on Stacy's cheek-she hadn't counted on the rough reception she was getting in Puerta Plata. She probably hadn't set him up for this, he decided. Even so, there was a moment when he thought of leaving her to sort things out herself-enjoy the benefits of amateur sleuthing with limited resources and no one to back her up in the event that she encountered trouble.

A couple of the thugs were talking back and forth in Spanish, chuckling at some not-so-private joke, and all were keeping their eyes on the woman.

Remo didn't bother to dredge up his bare minimum of Spanish, all of it learned from constant repetition from Chiun's Mexican soaps. He didn't even know what it meant. Probably, "and now, a word from our sponsors." So instead he said, in English, "Is this a private game, or can anybody play?"

The four thugs spun in unison, as if they choreographed it.

"Nice footwork," Remo said. "But it's so sad to see how far the Four Tops have fallen since their years as pop music superstars."

The Four Tops stopped being surprised almost immediately and started being angry. Stacy Armitage showed a mixture of relief, desperation and stark surprise in her features. Remo became grudgingly convinced she hadn't been expecting him-or anyone-to come along and save her from the evil-smelling gang.

The tallest attacker was first to find his voice. Whatever he said was unintelligible, but Remo had no difficulty with the tone. It was a warning, a threat, telling Remo that the girl belonged to him and his buddies and possibly suggesting Remo should get wise and run away.

"Don't speak the lingo, sorry," Remo told them. "All sounds the same to me, you want to know the truth."

"Joo got big prublem, gringo," said the weasel in the backward cap.

Remo addressed the English-speaker. "Are you being anti-Semitic? Can't we stop the hate? You know I was going to cut you guys some slack and let you walk, but now you've gone and pissed me off."

The muggers glanced at one another, three of them apparently confused, their faces registering anger as the fourth translated Remo's words. Stacy Armitage clutched her open blouse and watched Remo with a dazed expression, convinced that he would soon be dead.

"Lass chince, gringo," said the interpreter. He drew a switchblade from the right-rear pocket of his baggy pants and snapped it open, long blade gleaming even in the darkness of the alleyway. As Remo stood and watched, the other three pulled weapons of their own: another knife, a razor and a length of rusty chain for Mr. Big.

"You losers shouldn't play with toys like that," said Remo, smiling as the muggers started to encircle him.

Considering the crude enveloping maneuver, Remo half expected them to rush him all at once, but it was Mr. Big who made the first move on his own. He swung the chain at Remo's head, as if delivering a roundhouse punch, the steel links hissing in the night air.

Instead of shattering the skull he aimed for, though, the big man's flail sliced empty air. Remo simply stepped aside and let the chain swing by harmlessly. He waited just long enough for Mr. Big to realize he had missed entirely, then retaliated with a swift kick to the big man's knee.

There was an ugly cracking sound, immediately followed by a scream as Mr. Big lurched backward, hopping on his one good leg. The chain was totally forgotten as he lost his balance, long arms flailing, and collapsed into a pile of garbage spilling from a capsized trash can. As he fell, the giant's own chain whipped around and struck him in the face, adding insult to injury.

Remo's trio of lice-ridden adversaries hesitated, each man glancing briefly at his companions as their hulking comrade fell. Mr. Big's rapid defeat might have prompted them to run, except that Remo barred their only exit to the street.

"C' mon, c'mon, c'mon!" Remo complained. "Let's just get this over with, huh?"

Remo Williams, Reigning Master of Sinanju, was far less distracted and impatient than he seemed. His senses provided him information from all directions and his awareness was high, like the awareness of a hunting big cat. He knew that Stacy Armitage was moving, for example, seeking out a corner of the dead-end alleyway and searching for a weapon, anything that she could use in self-defense if Remo failed to drop his three opponents. At the same time, he was also conscious of the wounded mugger to his left, moaning in pain as one hand clutched his thigh, the other still wrapped up in chain.

Mr. X advanced with his switchblade held in front of him, lips drawn back from his teeth as he cursed Remo in a steady stream of gutter Spanish.

Remo didn't even try to translate, gliding forward to surprise the blade man. The blade man was very surprised indeed. One second he was facing an unarmed skinny white tourist. The next second his knife was gone, his wrist was broken and the wall on one side of the alley was rushing at him at a hundred miles per hour. He bounced off it, more bones breaking inside his body, and before he could fall he found himself facing the skinny white guy again. The pain of the broken wrist was just screaming into his brain as he felt the white guy take his head in his hands. There was a brief flash of rapid movement, then there was blackness.

When Mr. X collapsed, the faded cap was facing forward and it was the blade man's head that was reversed, facing directly backward on a broken neck. That was enough for the two men still on their feet. They wanted out of there, but Remo didn't plan to let them go so easily. He stood his ground and waited, knowing they would either have to rush him or-

The dark man with the knife turned and made a rush at Stacy Armitage, but the rush didn't get too far. Remo had lost patience with this gang of dull blades and stepped in fast, giving the would-be hostage taker a quick nudge in the back. The knife man flew into the brick wall near Stacy Armitage with a liquid thump. Not hard enough to kill him, but the knife man's good looks got squashed into pulp, which he would discover when the pain would bring him screaming back to consciousness hours later.

Mr. Big chose that moment to drag himself erect, one hand clutching the filthy wall behind him, his good leg taking his weight. It had to have hurt like hell, but he was grimly silent as he made his move. Remo faced off the razor man long enough for Mr. Big to get himself up, then moved in fast on the razor man. Too fast for the razor man to even see, and then the razor man was flying-for a fraction of a second he was actually airborne.

The two muggers came together with stunning force, damaged each other irreparably, then fell away from each other like two sides of a lightning-split tree trunk.

Stacy Armitage couldn't quite believe all she had witnessed in the past few seconds. Suddenly her attackers were neutralized. No longer crying, she stared at Remo as if she couldn't believe her eyes.

"Are they all dead?" she asked finally.

"Not that guy," said Remo, pointing at the wall kisser. "These two I don't know."

Stacy raised one shaking hand at the man in the Malcolm X cap.

"You broke his neck."

"Oh, yeah, that guy is dead, definitely. Let's go." She almost flinched when Remo reached to take her hand, but at the final moment she gave in and let herself be led away. The alley was two blocks behind them, and they were proceeding toward the waterfront, before she found her voice again.

"I can't believe you killed them, just like that," she said.

"They made the rules," said Remo. "You were in some trouble with those four, as I recall."

"I never said that I was sorry," Stacy told him. "I just can't believe it was so easy. Who are you?"

"We've been through that already," Remo said.

"You're not like any federal agent that I ever heard of," Stacy said.

"Why, thank you! That was a compliment, right?"

"An observation," she replied. "Don't let it swell your head or anything."

"I'll do my best," he said. "Stop here."

Stacy Armitage found the fingers on her arm were an irresistible force. She stopped because she didn't have any choice. They were standing in a dark place between what few lights there were on the streets.

She felt Remo's hands on her body, but she didn't have time to consider the possibility that he had taken her from the would-be rapists so he could ravage her himself. The man touched her in various places, quickly and methodically.

"Anything hurt, aside from the bruise?"

"No," she responded. "I don't think so."

"You'll live," Remo pronounced, and they started walking again. "What are you doing here?"

"As if you didn't know." Her tone was bitter. Remo knew there was a lot more to come. He gave her a look in the darkness, which was all he needed to do.

"I know you and a bunch of other Feds said my brother's case was being taken care of," Stacy blurted. "I know. Except that wasn't good enough, okay? I couldn't just sit back and wait to read about it in the papers, or to have some stuffed shirt come around six months from now and say it's over, but the details have been classified. I need to see it through. Is that so hard to understand?"

"You almost saw it through tonight," said Remo. "How'd you meet those four gorillas, anyway?"

"I've been in town two days," she said. "Flew down from Jacksonville on Thursday afternoon. The Coast Guard wouldn't give me any information, and the local cops are worse than useless. I've been asking questions, checking out the kind of places where your basic pirates might hang out, if they had time to kill."

No pun intended, Remo thought, but kept it to himself. "So, let me guess," he said. "One of those characters suggested that he might have useful information he'd be willing to let go of, for a price?"

"The Spike Lee fan," she said. "I know he suckered me, okay? Don't say it."

"And he took you to the alley, where his friends were waiting?"

"Pretty much," she said. "I still thought I could talk my way out, maybe buy them off, but they had something else in mind. They would have...I mean, if you hadn't shown up when you did... well, thanks."

"No problem," Remo said. "Unless, of course, somebody in the dives where you were hanging out remembers seeing you with Mr. X. The locals may not care who dropped those four, but if they do, and tongues start wagging, you could have a whole new set of problems on your hands."

"The cops would never think I killed those four back there," she said.

"Which makes it my problem," said Remo, "if you spill your guts."

"I wouldn't tell them anything," she said defiantly.

"You say that now," said Remo, "but this isn't Washington or New York City. The police have different rules down here, and Daddy wouldn't be much help."

"He doesn't even know I'm here," said Stacy. "But you wouldn't hesitate to call him, would you, if you wound up in a jam?"

She glared at Remo and refused to answer him, changing the subject. "Have you found out anything so far?"

"It's too soon," Remo said. "I keep getting distracted."

"Right. And I suppose that's my fault?" Even as she asked the question, though, Stacy sounded remorseful.

They had reached the waterfront, and Remo led her toward the pier where the Melody was berthed. Stacy took one look at the gleaming cabin cruiser, frowned and said, "So this is how you're doing it? You plan to use yourself for bait?"

"Unless somebody else keeps luring the sharks away," said Remo. "Come aboard."

Chiun was in the main saloon, belowdecks, watching television. The selection had to have been abysmal, as they found him staring at an infomercial for an exercise device designed for toning stomach muscles, called the Ab Solution. Remo grimaced at a blond hard body with a thousand-candlepower smile and eyes that looked as if she was coming down from six or seven weeks on speed. The old Korean sat motionless in front of the plasma screen, surrounded by darkness, so motionless he might have been stuffed.

"Is that the best we have to offer, Little Father?" Remo asked Chiun.

"A moment ago this channel was showing a fine Argentinean drama," the old Korean said. "The moment you and the harlot stepped aboard, the signal went haywire and my lovely story of intrigue and romance was replaced with this!"

"You don't need an Ab Solution, Little Father," Remo chided. "Chiun, this is Stacy Armitage. Her father is the senator who turned the screws on you-know-who, who turned the screws on Upstairs."

Chiun never moved a muscle, but the TV abruptly went black. Stacy seemed to see the faintest reflection of a very lined face in the surface of the plasma screen, then the screen blazed back to life. The wizened Korean face was wiped out by a gleaming, muscular woman doing exercises. Even she looked uncomfortable using the Ab Solution, but every rep brought her large breasts, bulging out of their bikini top, looming into the camera lens. Her boobs filled the huge screen, forty-times life-sized.

"Shall I record it for you?" Chiun asked.

"No, thanks."

"The senator's trolloping offspring doesn't quite measure up, does she?" Chiun asked in Korean.

"That's enough." Remo steered Stacy out of the media room.

"He's a friendly old fart," Stacy said in a whisper. "You caught him at a bad time," Remo said. "He wants his MTV. M as in Mexican."

"Listen, do you think those guys tonight were ...well, you know?"

"Good citizens? The welcoming committee? Talent scouts? I'd vote for none of the above," said Remo.

"Dammit, this is serious. I need to know if they were in on what happened to Richard."

"It's a little late to ask them now," said Remo, "but I doubt it."

"Why?" she asked.

"It's just a hunch," he answered, "but they didn't have that pirate feel about them. Not a peg leg in the bunch, for openers. No parrots on their shoulders that I noticed."

"Very funny, Mr. Rubble."

"Call me Remo. If I had to guess, I'd say those four were city boys who didn't spend a lot of time at sea. In fact, I don't think they cared much for drinking water, much less sailing on it. What you did is set yourself up to be robbed and raped by some gorillas who had time to kill. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to hear they'd pulled that kind of thing before. But hijacking a ship at sea?" He shook his head. "It doesn't wash."

"Unfortunately, I believe you're right," she said.

"So, now that you've experienced the wild life, may I take it you'll be going home?"

"Did I say that?"

"Not yet," said Remo, "but I keep hoping for some evidence of common sense."

Her cheeks flushed pink at that, but Stacy swallowed the sarcastic answer that immediately came to mind. "My brother's dead," she told him, "and I want to find the men responsible. What's wrong with that?"

"In theory, nothing," Remo answered, "but in practice ...well, you've seen how it plays out. You need some basic skills to go along with the enthusiasm, or you're just a sitting target."

"You could teach me," Stacy said, "and I can help you, too. You'll make a more inviting target with a woman on board ship."

"I'm guessing that you never had much problem with false modesty," said Remo.

"None at all," she answered, smiling for the first time in their brief acquaintance. "And you know I'm right. Admit it."

"Either way, it makes no difference," Remo said. "Do you have any other siblings, Stacy?"

"What?" She was confused by Remo's change of tack. "No, there was just my brother. What's that got to do with anything?"

"In case you didn't know, your father is the man behind this operation," Remo said. "He called in some markers with the big cheese and got things rolling. I don't imagine he'd approve my using you for bait. What do you think?"

"So you're afraid of him? That's it?"

"I have a job to do. Right now, you're in the way."

"I won't go back," she said. "You can't make me."

"Oh, really?" Remo let her see a twisted, mirthless smile.

The silence stretched between them long enough for Stacy to replay the alley scene in her mind and watch him kill four would-be rapists. Her voice was softer, carrying a tad less self-assurance when she said, "You wouldn't."

"Damage you?" He shook his head. "But I'll be glad to put you on the next flight to Miami, maybe call and have your father send down an escort. That should embarrass him enough to get him off his ass and make him take care of the problem. In the meantime, though, the men who killed your brother will have that much extra time for covering their tracks."

"You send me back, and I won't stay," she said. "I swear to God, I'll be right back here in another day or two. I don't care what my father says or does. I won't give up until I find the men who murdered Richard."

"And then what?" asked Remo.

Stacy held his eyes with hers. "I want to see them die. That's your department, I believe."

"If I decide to let you stay," said Remo, trying to ignore the little clucking sound Chiun was making in the media room, now two rooms away, "we have some ground rules going in. The first time you break one of them, I bounce your preppie ass back to D.C. Agreed?"

"Let's hear the rules," she said, then smiled.

Chapter 9

Remo and Stacy Armitage were window-shopping on Bay Street when Trade Winds Travel opened for business at 9:30 a.m. Remo felt rested and relaxed, despite Chiun's displeasure with Remo's decision to allow Stacy to travel with them.

"He doesn't like me, does he?" Stacy had asked over a breakfast of steamed rice.

"Chiun takes some getting used to," Remo said.

"That's okay. So do I."

Remo hadn't replied to that. Whatever happened, one way or another, he knew Stacy wouldn't be around that long.

The sole proprietor of Trade Winds Travel was a forty-something Englishman whose baked-in tan made him resemble a Hawaiian islander, until he opened his mouth. Long years of living in the tropics had done nothing to disguise the Cockney accent that betrayed his origins. His sun-bleached hair was showing threads of silver at the temples and receding slightly from a pointed widow's peak. The body underneath his lightweight cotton suit seemed fit enough, though he would never be mistaken for an athlete.

"Here, come in, come in!" he said as Remo followed Stacy through the office door, a cowbell clanking overhead. "What can I do for you this morning, aye?"

"Your poster advertises guided tours," Stacy said.

"That it does. You've got a sharp eye there, if I may say so. Howard Morgan, at your service."

"Remo Rubble, my wife, Stacy," Remo told him.

"Charmed," Morgan said. "Actually, we have several different packages available. If you require a boat-"

"We have our own," Stacy informed him, sounding just snotty enough for a well-bred child of privilege.

The travel agent fairly beamed. "That's all the better, then," he said. "Reduces overhead, you understand. In that case, I can fix you up with special maps, brochures and booklets for an independent cruise, if you want privacy. Guides are available on almost any island you may care to visit, and I can retain their services on your behalf, as well. We have them ready, that way, when you reach your port of call."

"No private guides?" asked Remo, sounding disappointed.

"Well, of course we-"

"And the extra crewman, darling," Stacy added. "Don't forget, you're on vacation."

"Right you are," said Remo, thinking that it would have sounded better on a polo field or at a posh New England country club.

"We rather wanted to relax," he told the travel agent. "It's our second honeymoon, you understand."

"Of course," said Morgan. "Say no more. If all you're wanting is a man to navigate and help with basic sailing chores, and not a chef or anything like that..."

"Sounds perfect," Remo said, giving Stacy a squeeze for emphasis.

"Sounds marvy," she concurred. "In fact, we have a friend back home who hired a guide in Puerta Plata, several weeks ago. A young man named... Enrique something, I believe it was. He simply can't stop jabbering about their trip and all the things they saw. Our friend, I mean. I don't suppose...?"

The travel agent's face was blank. "Well, I can try, of course, um. But I have to tell you that Enrique is a fairly common name in these parts, much like Henry in the States."

In fact, it was Henry, in Spanish, but Remo saw no point in showing off his meager knowledge of the language. "It's not important," he told Morgan.

"I'm sure anyone you have on staff would be quite satisfactory."

"We aim to please, sir. Tha's a fact. When did you wish to start?"

"As soon as possible," Stacy said. "Hopefully today. Tomorrow at the latest."

"I'd best get started calling, then. On live-aboards, your average local costs twenty-five to thirty U.S. dollars for a day, with the arrangements worked out in advance. Have you considered how long you'll be visiting the islands?"

"Oh," Stacy said, "a week or two. No one's expecting us at home until the Dickens party on the twenty-ninth."

"Well, then, I'll see what I can do. I'm sure that we can find you someone suitable, perhaps by early afternoon."

"Outstanding," Remo said.

"Terrific," Stacy echoed.

"It's traditional to barter prices with these islanders, but I can do that for you, if you like."

"Sounds good to me," Remo added.

"Me, too," said Stacy Armitage.

"In that case," Morgan said, beaming, "I'll get to work right now and hope to be in touch with you, say, noonish?"

"Noonish would be lovely," said Remo. He knew the moment it came out that it didn't sound quite natural. Note to self, he thought. Don't use the word lovely when undercover. Or ever again, for that matter.

The travel agent blinked, but kept his own broad grin, and waved in parting as they left his office. "Smart-ass!" Stacy muttered, as they crossed the busy street.

"You mean I wasn't marvy?" Remo pulled a sad expression.

"He's dirt, Remo," Stacy said. "Couldn't you smell it on him?"

"That's your basic island hygiene, I'm afraid. Manana for the shower, if you get my drift."

"Terrific. Now I'm working with a stand-up comic."

"You're not working, Stacy," he reminded her. "You're just along for the ride."

"Oh, really? Do you think you could have hooked old Howard, if you didn't have your 'wife' along to keep you company?"

"We'll never know," said Remo. "But the little woman needs to mind her manners, or we may be headed for a quick divorce."

THE HARDEST PART FOR Howard Morgan still came down to setting up the raids. He loved the money; that went without saying, or he never would have started in the first place. He had even managed to develop a facility for blocking out its source, once the deed was done and he had banked the cash. By that time, with a few stiff rum-and-colas underneath his belt, Morgan could tell himself that it was simply business, nothing that should prey upon his mind.

It was a different story when he actually met the victims, though. He had to deal with them as human beings when they stood before him, face-to-face, conversing in the queen's own English. There was nothing to be done about it, then, but to put on a stalwart face and do the job that he was being paid-and very handsomely, at that-to carry off without complaints or needless questions.

Even so, the faces haunted him sometimes.

It helped that they were always rich beyond his wildest dreams, a trait that helped set them apart from normal human beings in the travel agent's mind. And it was better yet when they came off as bloody snobs who didn't give a damn about the common man, as long as they were able to enjoy their luxuries without restraint. Rich Yanks, at that, most of them. The Americans were worst of all when they had extra money in their hands, unable to resist the urge to lord it over those less fortunate. Loud shirts and too much jewelry, cleavage that owed more to surgery and silicone than Mother Nature. Bloody idiots, the lot of them.

Good riddance, Morgan told himself.

And still, he hesitated when it came to picking up the telephone.

It got a little easier each time, of course, and that was somewhat troubling in itself. The sense of guilt was almost welcome, when he started working with Kidd and Teach. The pangs of conscience had let Morgan tell himself that he was just as much a victim as the rotters who were vanishing at sea. He suffered just as much as they did-more, in fact, because it was his fate to live with guilt and spend his blood money on women, cigarettes and liquor that would surely do him in one day.

But nowadays, the guilt was fading fast, depriving Morgan of his rationale, the taste of martyrdom that made it possible for him to face his mirror in the morning. Lately, it disturbed him that he didn't think about the dead as much as he once had; they didn't haunt his dreams compulsively, but only dropped in on the odd occasion, like a bout of indigestion after he had eaten too much curry down at Singh's cafe.

He sat with one hand on the telephone and thought back to the very start of it. He had been gambling heavily in those days-one bad habit he had managed to get rid of, more or less-and had run up a monstrous debt with certain gentlemen of leisure who were known to settle their accounts with violence when the money they were owed was not available. The night they came for him, Morgan expected them to break his fingers, possibly his legs, as well. He doubted they would kill him, though he couldn't rule it out entirely. Even so, he had been stunned when one of them-the slugger, Berto something- had informed him that his debt was paid, and that he would be hearing from his nameless benefactor soon. Relief had metamorphosed into panic three days later, when a man who introduced himself as Thomas Kidd walked into the Trade Winds office, introduced himself as Morgan's brand-new business partner and proceeded to describe the scheme that would enrich them both. Kidd was essentially a pirate-hence the name, which Morgan took, and still believed, to be a "clever" alias-who had grown tired of cruising aimlessly among the Windward Islands and decided he would benefit from working with an agent who could tell him when fat targets were abroad, and where they could be found. Morgan assumed that he wasn't alone in serving Kidd, that there were others like himself in different ports of call, arranging "guided tours" and sending wealthy yachtsmen to their fate.

It helped, as well, to think that there were others doing what he did, sharing his guilt. Somehow, Morgan believed it would be worse by far if he alone served Captain Kidd. How could he ever hope for absolution if he was the only one involved?

No matter. He was in too deep to back out now. It would have meant abandoning his home and business, the bizarre but comfortable life he had constructed for himself since he had moved from Kingston, six years earlier, and settled in at Puerta Plata. Unlike Berto and his fellow sportsmen, Kidd and company would not be satisfied to rough him up, if Morgan tried to go back on his bargain. They would kill him instantly, without remorse; of that fact, Morgan had not the slightest doubt.

He had considered fleeing, simply cleaning out his bank account and running for his life, but there was still the niggling question of exactly where to go. Morgan was pushing fifty, and his best years were decidedly behind him. In his heart, he knew it was too late for him to start again, rebuild himself from the ground up, as he had done so many times before. This time was all or nothing, simple logic telling him that it could come to no good end.

The good news was that Kidd had always paid him promptly, and in full. Sometimes, he even got a bonus, when the targets he set up were fat enough. Whatever else Kidd and his buccaneers might be, Morgan could never fault them on their generosity.

It was bizarre, in fact, the way Kidd and the handful of his men whom Morgan had been "privileged" to meet behaved themselves. He knew that they were thieves and killers-more than likely rapists, too, if not a great deal worse-but there was still a kind of Old World pride and honesty about them. On the rare occasions when he spoke to Kidd these days, Morgan couldn't help feeling that he had to have stumbled through a time warp and been dropped into the middle of another century. The way Kidd talked, the way his mind worked, it was like a glimpse back into history, when sea wolves plied the blue Caribbean at will, and free men rarely worried much about the long arm of the law.

Morgan dialed the contact number he had memorized. He wasn't meant to know who picked up on the other end, but he had done a little homework on his own and come up with the name, regardless. It was always the same voice that answered, with its Yankee twang.

"Hello?" Somehow it always came out sounding like a question, as if Morgan's contact never quite believed the telephone had summoned him away from whatever he did to pass the time.

"It's me," the travel agent said. No names were ever given on the phone. It was a simple matter of security. "I've got another customer, if you have anyone available."

"How soon?" his contact asked. "This afternoon, if possible."

"I'll see what I can do."

The line went dead, and Morgan cradled the receiver, letting out a sigh. Already he could feel himself beginning to unwind. He told himself that it was out of his hands now; there was nothing he could do to change the fate of Mr. Remo Rubble and his pretty little wife.

And for a moment, Howard Morgan almost managed to believe it.

THE WORST PART, MEGAN Richards told herself, was that you really could get used to anything. It made her vaguely ill to think that way, but there was simply no denying it.

A mere four days had passed-or was it five?-since she had been aboard the Salome with Barry and the others, lost at sea, and they had seen another boat on the horizon. Four days, maybe five, since Tommy Gilpin told them that the captain of the "rescue boat" had raised a Jolly Roger flag, and men with guns had stormed aboard the yacht, to send her whole life spinning on a crazy detour into Hell.

When she thought about it, even sitting in the filthy hut, with nothing but an oversize man's shirt to cover her, it still seemed like some kind of crazy dream. A bad trip, maybe, from the crummy acid you could pick up on the streets of Cambridge, guaranteed to turn your head around, but all bets off when it came down to quality.

I wish I had a couple tabs of that right now, she thought, but even as the whim took shape in Megan's mind, she knew that she would need her wits about her in the hours and days ahead, if she intended to survive.

Survive. The word itself was a joke to her now. She didn't have a clue where they were being held, except that they were obviously on an island where their captors had no fear of being taken by surprise or running into the police. It was the kind of place where anything could happen-had happened-and no one in the outside world would ever know.

At first, Meg had supposed her kidnappers-she still had trouble thinking of the men as pirates-had some plan to hold her and the other girls for ransom, but the days kept passing, and no one had yet seen fit to ask their names. That was her first clue that the nightmare could go on indefinitely, while the three of them survived.

And that had been her short life's first true moment of despair.

Meg's knowledge-that she had been snatched from privileged youth into a life of slavery, pain, humiliation-might have driven her insane, but she surprised herself by calling on a deep reserve of inner strength she had not known she possessed. The others were reacting in their own strange ways, Felicia slipping into something like a catatonic state, while Robin wept and muttered to herself. Four days, five at the most, and Meg could not have sworn that either one of them was still completely sane.

Whatever they were feeling, though, she guessed that precious little of it had to do with grieving for their dead boyfriends. Megan hadn't seen Barry die, but knew that he was gone. She had been shocked and hurt, of course, made no attempt to hold back bitter tears, but that part of her grieving had been relatively brief. Before the Salome had left his riddled corpse a hundred yards behind, Meg was already looking out for number one.

So much for love. She had suspected that the way she felt for Barry Ward was mostly about sex, mixed up with some kind of infatuation, and the past few days had proved her right. If Meg had truly loved him, surely she would think about him more than once or twice a day, in passing. Even then, she found the image of his smiling face had started to recede, grow vague and hazy in her mind. He was a fading memory, their summer fling no more important now than Meg's first day at school, her senior prom, the first time she went "all the way."

For ten or fifteen seconds, she was moved to wonder what that said about her as a person. How could she have shared her bed with Barry, done so many things with him and let him do so many things to her, and still dismiss him from her mind so quickly when his life was snuffed out by a gang of thugs? The answer was self-evident, so simple that it nearly made her laugh out loud. Disaster had a way of making you grow up. It took you to the deep end of the pool and tossed you in, sometimes with cinder blocks chained to your feet, and you could either fight your way back to the surface or relax and drown.

Meg had discovered that she was a fighter, and the knowledge startled her as much as anything that she had ever learned.

Of course, she had to choose her battles carefully if she was going to survive. The first two times that men had come for her, she lashed out at them furiously-kicking, scratching, spitting, cursing them with words she had not even realized she knew but it was all in vain. They beat her down and took her anyway. It was a futile effort, and she quickly learned to stand apart from what was happening, detach herself and get it over with. Immediate survival took priority, ahead of anger, self-respect, fear of disease. Her mind was focused on the next few hours, the next few days. Whatever happened after that was so far in the future that it felt like science fiction.

"What time is it?" Felicia asked. It was the first time she had spoken in a day or more, and Megan took it as a hopeful sign.

"They took our watches, stupid!" Robin hissed. "You know that. They took everything!"

"It's morning," Megan said, resisting an impulse to snap at Robin, tell her to shut up if she couldn't control herself. If they couldn't help one another in the present crisis, there was truly no hope left.