Chapter 1
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The team met up with their local contact person, who led them to their equipment.
Geared up in wetsuits, diving tanks on, Trent Swanson waited for the signal that the rest of his team was ready to go.
Four of them were going underwater, while two other newcomers to the team—Dayton and Stephan—took a small boat to where the captives were still being held.
The boat would also work as a diversion to keep the divers’ approach secret, until the foursome were all on board.
The divers were almost to the rendezvous point, which had been confirmed by Rubin. They were currently inside a submarine and were about to go out a torpedo chute inside special submersibles, hopefully undetected by anybody up top on the small yacht.
However, given the fragility of the situation, nobody was willing to take too much of a risk. Trent had already asked the submarine captain to get close—but not too close—because the sub had to surface enough for them to not have to depressurize.
Moments later, Trent listened to the countdown through his headset.
They were very quickly shot out into the water.
With the three men at his side, Trent pointed his submersible directly for the yacht holding the two captives.
The sub would stay in the area just in case the divers got to the location and found nobody there.
Ultimately the plan was to return with the two captives.
Checking his watch for navigation, Trent made the signal to the others.
Oakley returned a signal off to the side, heading in Trent’s direction.
The ocean was so clear in this spot that Trent could see the shadow of the target yacht up above him. However, that also meant, if the kidnappers were looking, they could see the shadow of the divers in their submersibles as well.
They headed deeper and then came up directly underneath the small yacht. Trent headed around the back of the yacht, slowly surfacing, tying up his submersible underneath. With that done, Oakley came up beside him and did the same.
With the two of them prepped and ready to go up and over the side at the right time, he waited for the other two divers.
All in place now, with Stephan and Dayton in sight at the front of the yacht, they quickly surfaced and clambered onto the small vessel.
First came a shout, and then they were met by several men holding handguns and one with a long-range rifle.
Trent surveyed the situation around him, his men taking defensive positions. The gunmen yelled in a language Trent didn’t understand, but the questions were unmistakable.
He walked closer and then turned, as if to join Oakley.
In one swift move, Trent backhanded the closest armed man, grabbed his gun, turning as he fired.
Two of the kidnappers went down, just as Oakley repeated the same maneuver on the two gunmen closest to him.
Within seconds, Trent had one man pinned while Oakley disarmed the other three.
Out of those three, two were most likely dead. Trent stared at his prisoner, whose face was distorted with pain and rage as he rambled and raved, raging like an absolute maniac.
“English?” Trent yelled.
“Yes, English,” the man replied. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”
“That depends,” Trent noted. “Do you have two prisoners?”
The man stared up at him and froze, almost as if he saw death in Trent’s gaze, and he started to yell and struggle. “We didn’t have anything to do with it, honest. It wasn’t us.”
“Yeah, sure,” Trent muttered, as he dropped the man with a fist to his head.
Trent turned to Oakley, who knocked out the man in his grip as well.
Quickly tying them up, they double-checked the other two gunmen and confirmed that they were, indeed, deceased.
Pulling them off to the side, Trent then motioned for two of his team to go below deck.
Immediately Julius and Kane went down below, while Trent and Oakley headed to the front. One more man came upon them in shock, only to meet with Trent’s fist, knocking him out cold.
Oakley muttered, “I’ll go restrain the captain.”
Trent nodded and continued to the front of the boat where the woman and child were reported to be.
Sure enough, tied up to the mast and one of the side railings he found a woman and a little boy.
The boy appeared unconscious, his body slumped into a half-folded, half-sitting position.
The woman didn’t look much better. They were both soaked and looked at the end of their rope.
Speaking of rope, Trent’s gaze followed the lines securing them in place along the railing and realized they had some serious steel cables holding them in place.
That would be a problem.
The nanny revived enough to stare at him, fear in her gaze. He raised a hand and whispered, “Hi, my name is Trent, and I’m here to rescue you and the child.”
She blinked several times, glancing around. “Pardon?”
He repeated, “We’re here to rescue you.”
“Who are you?” she asked, fear still evident in her tone and in her gaze.
“We are from the US Special Operations Division.”
Tears quickly welled up in her eyes, and she whispered, “Thank God.” She looked down at the child. “Hey, Ricky, wake up. It’s okay now, Ricky. You can wake up.” She turned to Trent and shook her head. “I haven’t been able to wake him for hours.”
Trent moved closer and frowned at the cable securing them. He asked the nanny, “How did your kidnapper put this on you?”
“He used a clamp,” she replied, “and I haven’t been able to move since. One of them said it was so no one could free us.”
“Why did they put you up here?”
She looked at him, embarrassed, and then shared, “So that, when we had to go to the bathroom, it would seep through our clothing.”
He just stared at her and shook his head. “If he intended to use you for leverage or as ransom, you need to be in decent shape.”
“I doubt they were thinking that far ahead,” she muttered. “They’ve been drinking so much that I’m not even sure what they wanted from us.”
“Did you hear or see anything?”
“I don’t know what language they’re speaking, but I don’t think whatever they had been doing would involve us,” she shared.
Just then the little boy shivered up against her.
She wrapped what she could of her arm around him, trying to protect him from the cold wet wind.
“Can you get us off of here?” She spoke rather urgently.
“I don’t know if Ricky’s okay. They hit him at one point because he wouldn’t stop crying, and, since then, he’s been way too sleepy for my comfort. ”
Trent immediately knelt before the little boy. “How old is he?”
“He’s six.”
“Just to confirm, who is he to you?”
“I’m his nanny, more or less,” she explained, “and you are the best thing I’ve seen in a very long time.” She gasped, shivering uncontrollably. “Are you alone, or did you come with a team?”
He ignored her question because he didn’t want to give away their number, then asked, “How many men are here?”
She frowned. “We’ve seen six, I think.”
He thought about it and nodded. “I think we got them all then.”
She closed her eyes, tears running silently down her face.
“Now, if only we could get out of this. I need to check on Ricky. I hope he’ll be okay.
” A sob escaped her. “I’ll never forgive myself if he doesn’t survive.
He was so brave, and one of the men took a dislike to him and started hitting him.
When Ricky wouldn’t stop crying, they called him a crybaby and all kinds of horrible things.
Every time I tried to get them to stop picking on him, they would start on me,” she added.
Trent took a closer look at the nanny, his jaw working as he noted her face had been repeatedly punched. Bruises decorated her arms and bare legs. He had thought the sun and saltwater spray had made her face puffy like that, but, no, she was bruised all over. “Anything feel broken?”
“With my hands bound, it’s hard to tell. My cheekbone took some hard shots,” she whispered. The tears welled up once again. “Dear God, please tell me this is over.”
“It will be, as soon as we can get you out of here,” he stated, “get you back to a safe place, and get the little man here some medical treatment.” He glanced at her and added, “And you.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I don’t care about me. Just get Ricky out of here. He’s freezing too. He’s always been a little on the sickly side,” she shared. “So something like this could—”
“Could what?”
“Could turn serious,” she told him. “He’s prone to infections, and his immune system isn’t what it should be.”
“Let’s not worry about that now.” Trent immediately took off his dry suit and tugged his t-shirt over his head before dropping it down over the chilled boy.
Oakley arrived not long afterward, carrying something with him. He held it up and shared, “They used this to tighten the cables, but I’m hoping we can use it to loosen them,” he suggested. “How the hell did they expect to get these two off the yacht?”
She interjected, “I’m not sure we were ever to be released.” She sighed and added, “I’m Naomi, by the way. From the little bit I understood from them, they were trying to figure out what to do with us. In the end, they would just leave us on board and let us … drift.” She winced.
“Why is that? Do you think they wanted you guys dead?”
“I am not sure, maybe, because they didn’t—They really didn’t want to kill us, but they also didn’t quite know how to get rid of us.”
“Good God,” Trent muttered. He pointed at the vessel. “Do you know whose yacht this is?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem to be theirs though.”
Oakley was checking out the tool he found, hoping to make it work for them.
Trent left the three of them and headed downstairs. Julius and Kane were searching the small cabin. He asked them, “Do we have any medical supplies here?”
Julius turned to Trent. “Are they hurt?”