Chapter Twenty
One Mile South of Cabrera Island
Mallorca, Spain
“Seas aren’t glass tonight, but nothing over two or three feet,” one had said. “We won’t run wide open, but we’ll still be on target in under thirty-five minutes.”
Two or three feet. Right.
To Mia, folded up in the cramped, fiberglass-lined storage cavity beneath the starboard berth, it felt like being trapped inside a steel drum rolling down a cliff.
Her body had been slammed into the hard corners with every rise and crash of the patrol boat’s hull.
Now her elbows throbbed, and her shoulders felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to them.
Her head had knocked against the ceiling of the storage cavity more than once.
She was dehydrated, soaked with sweat, and nauseated from the motion and the stifling heat inside the wet suit.
The neoprene clung to her skin like freaking shrink-wrap.
She’d drained her water bottle fifteen minutes into the ride, or at least tried to.
A third of it had ended up splashed on her face, her chest, and onto the floor.
The rest had barely made it into her mouth.
The patrol boat’s lurching turns and sudden drops had made drinking a test of precision, a test she’d miserably failed.
The entire trip was about control. Control over her discomfort. Control over the creeping claustrophobia. Control over her anxiety of passing out in her hiding place only to be found and shot by a crew member. Control over the fear of failing her mission.
A sudden wave lifted the hull and dropped it hard, the motion sending her head against the bottom of her hiding space. She cursed out loud, then froze, realizing her mistake. After a few seconds, she relaxed, confident the whine of the powerful engines had covered her shout.
Mia closed her eyes, breathing the stale, musky air through her mouth, forcing herself to focus and to forget how uncomfortable she was. She let her mind take her back to Egypt, to the brutal fourteen months she’d spent training under a cadre of former Unit 777 operators.
Unit 777, which was part of the El-Sa’ka Force of the Egyptian army, specialized in irregular warfare, manhunts, and hostage rescue.
The curriculum of Mia’s all-women class, supposedly tailored to the specific needs of the people paying for their training, had nothing delicate about it.
Sixteen women had started, but only nine had finished.
Mia had never seen the others again, and she rarely thought about them, to be honest. What had stayed with her wasn’t the camaraderie; it was the hardness that the training had instilled in her.
That fourteen months of hell had rewired her thinking.
She’d learned that pain was information, and that exhaustion was a test. The instructors had shown her no mercy, and they’d taught her to never expect it from anyone.
She’d learned to strike without hesitation and to suffer without complaint.
But even more valuable, she had come to understand and to believe that she could endure almost anything.
And that belief, more than any weapon or tactic, was her most reliable asset.
A drop in pitch coming from the engines brought Mia back to the here and now. She felt the hull level, and a moment later, the forward motion became a crawl rather than a sprint.
Finally.
The crew on the deck was moving with purpose now, and Mia heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being racked.
In her mind’s eye, Mia pictured the scene above her: the patrol boat drifting into position alongside the Veloce.
One crew member would stay behind the helm, hand on the throttle, just in case.
The others would board the Veloce. She wasn’t sure how many they were.
Four? Five? It didn’t really matter. Timing would be everything. She had to time herself perfectly.
Mia felt the jolt of hull meeting hull despite the fenders absorbing some of the impact. There were more voices now, louder too. She closed her eyes again.
Operations counts on you. Do your job.
While it was true Operations handled her, it wasn’t for him that Mia killed. No, she was doing it for the Fisherman, Everett Westcott. She wanted to make him proud. She didn’t give two shits about Operations.
Her hand tightened around the grip of her pistol. It was time.