Gina Takes Bangkok (The Femme Vendettas) (27 page)

“Have any of you seen a yacht?” she called to them. “A big one. Very rich. Not too far out to sea.”

Most of the fishermen ignored her, except for one, perhaps sixteen years old, who raised a calloused hand.

Victoria held up a small roll of bills. “What color was it?”

“Pink.”

Victoria grinned. “Where?”

The boy stretched his arm to the south. “We passed it about a half-hour ago.” His eyes were fixed on the money in her hand. “Looked like it was anchored.”

A bolt of victorious exultation shot through her, and she tossed him the money.

Quick as a monkey, he snatched it from the air. He had such a lean and newly muscled body, so wonderful and young, and so many things she could do with it. The dark hungers she’d inherited from her violent father coiled within her like some obscene dragon.

“You’ve been very helpful,” she said, her voice friendly. “You should come and work for me.”

His innocent eyes widened. “Doing what?”

“Keeping me entertained,” she replied. “I’m sure a strong kid like you could do that, hmm?”

The boy hesitated.

“Unless you’re happy working out at sea for the rest of your life.”

That got him moving. With a furtive glance over his shoulder, he scrambled over the rail and jumped into the water, Victoria gesturing to the rakshasa to pull the boat around and pick him up. Dripping with water but clearly excited, the young man with his unmarred skin climbed aboard with Victoria’s aid.

“Thank you.” He pressed his hands together and bowed deeply. “I promise I won’t let you down.”

Victoria laid a hand on his shoulder, her seasickness quickly lifting. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I’m going to just love you to pieces.”

Darae cursed as the bow of
The Pink Pussycat
lurched, almost throwing her off her feet as she hurried down the narrow hallway, klaxons blaring in her ear. The normally whisper-quiet engines were roaring at full throttle, bouncing the yacht off the waves with enough force to make the whole ship vibrate, spray coating the windows as it raced across the dark waters. Arriving on the bridge at a run, she burst in on the captain and first mate.

“What’s happening?” she demanded in Thai.

The captain was a Bangkok native who’d been working for Vincenzo ever since he’d purchased the ship ten years ago, a sailor with twenty years experience in the Thai navy. For all that, her face was grim. “Radar picked up a half-dozen small craft approaching from the north, making straight for us at high speed.”

Darae’s eyes widened at the six dots on the screen the first mate was monitoring. “Can we outrun them?”

“As soon as I noticed them, we weighed anchor and made for open ocean,” replied the first mate, the captain’s daughter. “We’ve got her up to forty-eight knots. They’re at roughly fifty-five. I estimate they’ll reach us in five minutes.”

“What are we looking at?”

The captain’s answer was staccato sharp. “The three of us, two engineers, the bosun, three deckhands and four stewardesses. Thirteen in total. I say we’re outnumbered two to one.”

Fuck. The boat lurched again, and this one Darae felt in her stomach. “Ready yourself for boarding,” Darae ordered, “and buy us as much time as you can. If they catch us, you know what to do.”

The captain and the first mate, mother and daughter, looked at each other and then at her. Together, they nodded.

She made for the ship’s armory. There was no time to tell Vinny what was happening. He probably knew already. Last thing he’d said as she tore from their bed was, “Keep Gina out of this.” A promise she could keep, because there was no time to get her into it.

The cabinet was being emptied of handguns and gas masks by all hands, and gripping two of the stewardesses by their shoulders, Darae nodded in the direction of the cabins. “One of you on Vincenzo. The other with Tasanee. Take gas masks for them and lock yourselves in the cabins. Don’t open for anyone but me, you got it?”

The two women grabbed what they needed and hurried off.

“The rest of you, I want the ship locked down and everyone at their assigned stations,” Darae said. “These bastards get on board and being killed will be the least of your worries. We got less than five minutes. Move!”

Darae took to the top deck, the wind whipping at her hair as she peered into the darkness. Through the goggles of her gas mask, she could detect the dark shapes of the speedboats closing in fast, cutting through the water like hunting sharks. All at once, the sharp chatter of automatic weapons filled the air, illuminating their pursuers in flashes of deadly gunfire.

The boats were bigger than she expected, each with a half-dozen men on board. Looked like the fight was going to be closer to three to one, with their enemies more heavily armed.

Steadying herself against the rail, Darae aimed her pistol at the nearest speed boat and emptied the clip at her enemies. She doubted a single bullet found its mark, but hoped it make the fuckers reconsider.

The boat fell back. Then, she realized their true intent. There was a bright flash from the lead speedboat, a brief shrill whine, and the back of
The Pink Pussycat
exploded into a blinding fireball. The engines shredded, the yacht decelerated hard, knocking Darae to the deck.

She ejected the magazine and slapped in a fresh one, then jumped to the railing. The powerboats had already surrounded them, the rakshasas tossing grappling hooks up onto the rails, their men boarding from every direction.

Vinny. Tasanee. She couldn’t keep them safe.

She fired at them, one of her bullets finding the throat of the first boarder, but was forced to scramble backwards by a hail of gunfire. Chaos broke around her as the crew were driven off the deck, gun smoke clouding the air as the whizz of bullets ended in ricochets, shattering glass and screams of pain.

In moments, the rakshasas would swarm the deck. Darae and her crew had one last chance.

There was a sudden metallic ping as dozens of small nozzles extended from the ship’s walls, hissing their contents into the air. Within seconds the closest of the rakshasas were feeling the invisible gas. Howls of agony echoed from all sides, and risking a peek at the deck below, Darae watched as several of her enemies clutched at their eyes, wheezing and cursing as they staggered back.

The men behind them hesitated as one fell to his knees, letting out a retching gurgle as bloody froth appeared at the corners of his mouth. Dropping his gun he grasped at his chest, his face turning dark blue.

They didn’t know it yet, but they were already dead. The cyanogen chloride they’d inhaled was already plummeting their blood pressure, even as it filled their lungs with fluid. Within a couple of minutes their hearts would either stop pumping, or they’d drown in their own bile.

The reprieve was temporary. The poison would only kill those who got a good breath of it, and the gas would stop spraying in a couple more minutes. Once stopped, the wind would quickly dissipate it, leaving
The Pink Pussycat
all but defenseless. This was their one and only chance to turn the tables on their enemies, and standing, Darae and her crew fired into the rakshasas, as if they had everything—and nothing—to lose.

Kannon was used to tense situations, where life and death were a split second apart. Still, he had never experienced what existed in the back of the van as it approached the Maharaja Xecutive.

Delta and Brian sat on one side, he and Ryota on the other. Gina was at the wheel. Except for Brian they were all dressed in black. Delta was in a cat suit, her hands sheathed in custom gloves of rough, waterproof stingray skin, her feet in boots with divided toes for better grip. Black paint coated her normally pale face. She even had oversized black contact lenses that changed the entirety of her eyes into eerie pits. She wore a headset to communicate with them, and a backpack containing a large spool of braided fishing line and a few other useful odds and ends. She sat among them like a watchful alien.

She wasn’t the source of the stress, and neither was the danger-fraught mission. It was Brian. His worry was a throbbing presence, worsened by his attempt to contain it. It had leapt out once when Delta had earlier suggested that he wait at the hotel room. That, everyone soon learned, was not going to happen.

He never thought he would, but Kannon sympathized with Brian. Ever since she refused to shoot him when she could’ve, he’d secretly admired the little thief with her quiet pluck. More to the point, he knew how he would feel if it were Gina geared up across from him. He’d be wired, too, every fiber of his being strung as tight as Brian’s was right now.

The van slowed. “One minute to drop off,” Gina said from the front. Her voice betrayed her anxiety, too. Selfishly, he wondered if any of it was for him.

Delta turned his way. “Thirty minutes for me to get to the top and drop the line.”

Kannon checked his watch. 2:02 a.m. “Got it.”

Delta slid a look at Brian, who was bent forward elbow on his knees, one hand gripping a radio.

“I won’t use the channel unless I have to,” she said.

He didn’t move, except for a short, quick nod. The van crawled to a near stop, and Delta hesitated, her eyes on Brian. Finally, she shifted toward the back doors. Brian caught her up, snagged her around the waist and suctioned her to him, her back to his front. “Hey. You two come back. Hear?”

In the dark, Kannon could see Delta relax. “We will. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

One last squeeze and he let her go. She slid to the back door as Gina brought the van to a full stop and, in an instant, Delta was gone.

Kannon started the timer, then picked up a sturdy climbing harness from the floor of the van, pulled it over his broad shoulders and locked it closed. He next slung a heavy coil of black nylon rope over his shoulder. Brian returned to his elbows on his knees, his eyes bent to the radio as if it could relay messages from God. Four minutes in, Kannon saw Ryota sneak his hand into his pocket and pull out his phone.

“Make sure that thing’s off before we go.”

“Yes, boss. I was just checking messages.”

Kannon studied his junior’s face. “What’s the problem?”

Ryota shrugged it off. “Tasanee usually texts me before she goes to sleep.”

Kannon thought back to the plane ride over when Tasanee slept through Gina and him. “She fell asleep is all. If there was a problem, Darae would call Gina. She hasn’t, so there isn’t. Now, turn it off. Time to move.”

At the front, Gina was nearly hidden from view. From the light on the street coming through the front of the van, he could see the edge of her shoulder, arm and head facing away. Any other time he would’ve been relieved that her mind was on the job, but a part of him wanted a part of her.

Her eyes met his in the rearview mirror. One of her light brown eyes closed in a wink. It felt like a kiss. It made slipping out the back door with Ryota almost easy.

Delta had jumped from the van and hit the ground, running. She sprinted ahead a ways, then leapt upwards, catching the top of the wall, swinging herself over it in one graceful movement, and landing on the other side in a catlike crouch.