Page 15 of Raven's Nest
“I’d feel better about this entire ordeal if your boat wasn’t basically a balloon on steroids.”
She gave him a swat. “It’s got fiberglass in the hull. Trust me, she’ll hold. Had one just like this save my life, once, so…”
Another round of gunfire cut through the air, punching a bullet through the seat between her and Zain. He cursed, then fired, hitting the side of the boat when the Zodiac reared up and over an incoming swell before dipping down the other side.
Saylor grimaced, doing her best to avoid the next series of cresting breakers. “This frontal system is really churning up the water and cutting down the wavelength. I won’t be able to hold it steady.”
Zain aimed, then fired, hitting the guy in the chest.The creep reeled backwards, tumbled off the stern, then sank beneath the surface.
He chambered another round, glancing over at her. “You just worry about not sinking us, and I’ll worry about the idiots with guns.”
Saylor shook her head. Zain was crazy good. After five tours of chasing cartels and mafia runners, she’d witnessed her share of crack shots. The best the Navy and Coast Guard had to offer, and Zain beat them all, hands down. All without breaking a sweat. His hands steady, muscles primed but not overly tense — more tightly wound strength than nervous energy.
She was nervous. More because he’d shifted over —his body brushing hers — than the situation. Being this close to him messed with her head. Had her thinking about all the ways she wanted to touch him, instead of worrying about the assholes shooting at them. Thoughts she needed to bury until they’d made it back to her dock alive.
The swells increased as the sun dipped below the horizon, the last of the light fading behind the bank of clouds storming across the sky, covering the ocean in a dense layer of fog. Rain splattered on the windshield, quickly gathering strength until the steady beat drowned out the hum of the engines. Huge breakers covered the surface, that storm moving over them at an alarming rate.
She raced ahead, weaving the boat across the ocean, using every trick to keep them a step ahead of the armed men without compromising Foster’s safety. Thankfully, the pirates seemed more interested in getting paybackthan catching Foster, now. Which was either a shining success or another epic failure in the making.
She turned toward Zain when more gunfire pelted the stern. “Unless you shoot every single one of them, we won’t get the upper hand just barreling across the water.”
Zain sighed. “I need to be selective. I only have the one mag, and I doubt it’ll be enough to take them all out. Not in these conditions.”
“Then, I need to get more creative.”
She altered direction, using the larger waves as cover as she dropped into a trough, then shot out the other side, water spraying across the deck. The other boat followed suit, bobbing in and out of view amidst the swells. They turned on a large spotlight, illuminating Saylor’s Zodiac like a damn beacon. Making it virtually impossible for Zain to get off a shot with the light blinding him.
Zain fired, regardless, cracked the spotlight, and the boat veered off. Not that it vanishing into the rain and fog eased the tension straining Saylor’s shoulders. Especially when she knew it’d pop back up already zeroed in for an assault.
She scanned the instruments, calculating the other boat’s best line of attack, then turned until they were paralleling the route. What she hoped would give Zain a chance at disabling some of the engines. “If I’ve anticipated their move, they should be reappearing on our port side any…”
There.
Shooting out of the next crest. Barreling towardthem at some insane speed, half the men leaning over the wrong side, rifles notched in their shoulders. Saylor grinned, holding the line as long as possible as Zain fired off three rounds as they whizzed past.
Smoke poured from a couple of the outboards, the boat noticeably slowing before the captain made a hard one-eighty — disappeared back into the fog.
She eased up on the throttle, circling twice, but nothing sounded above the steady patter of rain — the hum of her engines. She angled back toward her dock, still weaving across the waves in case the assholes managed to fix the damage — launch another assault.
Zain shouldered up beside her, gaze scanning the surface, his rifle across his chest. There, but not notched into his shoulder. “That was a hell of a guess.”
She gave him another light swat. “It wasn’t a guess. It was a deduction wrought from years of experience.”
“Which is just a sophisticated way of saying, you guessed.”
“Talk like that isn’t going to get you a do-over of last night.”
The left corner of his mouth twitched, and he performed one more scan before leaning in close. “What will?”
“You could start by… Get down!”
Saylor shoved him aside as she hit the throttle, surging the Zodiac ahead when a second boat roared out of the fog — smaller than the other, faster — four men dressed in similar body armor manning the vessel. The guy at the bow fired, grazing a narrow line across thetop of her shoulder before Zain caught him in the head, dropping him a second later.
She veered hard to port, gunning the engines — nearly capsizing them as they flew over the next wave, landing hard on the other side before the propellers pushed them ahead. Water rushed over the sides, covering the floor before slowly draining.
A stream of gunfire cut through the air behind them, punching a few holes in the outer tube as she banked over, using another massive swell to put a bit of distance between them. Zain returned fire, hitting the guy in chest. The bastard staggered back but recovered as the boat peeled off, vanishing into the fog.
He reached for the first aid kit. “Shit, you’re hit.”
