Read The Somali Deception Episode I (A Cameron Kincaid Serial) Online
Authors: Daniel Arthur Smith
The Somali Deception Episode I (A Cameron Kincaid Serial)
THE SOMALI
DECEPTION
EPISODE I
By
Daniel Arthur Smith
This ebook is licensed for your
personal enjoyment only.
Your support and respect for the property of this author is
appreciated.
This book
is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.
The characters are
productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
The Somali Deception
EPISODE I
Original Copyright © 2010 by
Daniel Arthur Smith
Copyright © 2013 by Daniel
Arthur Smith
All rights reserved Holt Smith
ltd
Also for Kindle by Daniel Arthur
Smith
The Cameron Kincaid Adventures
The Cathari Treasure
The Somali Deception EPISODE I
The Somali Deception EPISODE II
The Somali Deception EPISODE III
The Somali Deception EPISODE IV
The Somali Deception THE
COMPLETE EDITION
The Literary Series
The Potter’s Daughter
Opening Day: A Short Story
* * * * *
For Susan, Tristan, &
Oliver, as all things are.
&
To all of the others that choose
to use crayons to color their rainbows.
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * *
* *
1
Seychelles Tuesday 02:35 hours
SCT
Christine woke to yells from the
decks above.
She slid her hand to
the still warm spot where Nikos had been sleeping and then began to raise
herself.
Wine and darkness pulled
Christine back toward her pillow.
She pressed her hand down hard on the mattress to steady the spinning
bed and then pushed herself up further.
Softly Christine spoke to the
darkness, “Nikos.”
No one answered.
Christine again said his name,
this time louder, “Nikos.”
The yacht was still.
Christine shifted to the side of
the bed, dizzy from the subtle movement.
The shouts above were scattered, unclear, and the voices strange.
The yelling stopped.
The darkness, stillness, and silence
enveloped Christine.
The cabin air
became thick and the remnants of the wine again pulled at her forehead, down
her neck, into her stomach.
The
blood rushing through her core gagged her.
The handle of the cabin hatch
came to sudden life.
The stillness broken,
Christine’s chest went tight.
Breathing ceased.
Her lungs
held hostage by muscles squeezing deep into her neck, chin, jaw, the sensation
of falling back and away, the urge to vomit, to escape, and then, a rapid
eruption of adrenalin.
Christine’s
body was overcome in a wave of forced compensation as all of her muscles
released.
Her breathing returned,
faster than measure.
Clenching the
edge of the blanket, she pulled the velour in tight to her lips to stifle the
sound of her low feeble sobs.
Hard
forced clicks from the latch filled the stateroom.
Though the cabin was a shroud of black,
Christine set her eyes wide in the direction of the imminent intrusion.
Futilely she began to back pedal against
the slick silk sheets, sinking deep into the cushioned headboard.
Across the
room
metal slapped against metal, then repeated, two, three times, and then,
abruptly stopped.
Though the hatch was locked the
chemicals pounding through Christine offered no quarter, the flood had begun,
the invasion merely delayed.
Christine was alone on the master bed, in the darkness, stillness, immersed
in near silence.
Muffled whimpers
continued to betray Christine despite her efforts to shield her mouth and the
hot rapid
breaths
that coursed through her nose were
thunderous.
Through out her chest
and throat, her mouth and nose, the sensation of more
breath
out than in.
A volley of gunshots followed by
a barking shout interrupted the silence.
Christine broke down what was
happening on the yacht into a series of actions spaced eternally apart.
Each silent divide an escalating stretch
of anxiety towering the last.
Nikos had assured Christine that
to anchor on the far side of Curieuse was safe.
The beach was in view from the deck, a
far swim at most in the bath water warm azure sea, and they were so close to
Mahé, a mere forty kilometers to Victoria.
From the edge of the room,
Christine heard the smooth metallic rub of a key being slid into the hatch and
then tumblers falling into place.
Christine wanted Nikos to be the
one turning the key.
With a final click of the lock,
the hatch smoothly fell ajar.
A seam
of light sliced through the cabin.
Christine winced.
Her eyes
tightened, opened, then tightened again.
The hatch opened smoothly.
Christine was initially blinded
by the glare of the hall, then her eyes adjusted to the form before her.
The open hatch was cut with the
backlit silhouette of a towering man, his arms contoured, his head a smooth
sphere.
Two other men of smaller
stature stood behind the first.
Christine’s green eyes tuned to the indirect lamps of the hall.
The two men behind the silhouette were
both dark Africans, one in a light soiled t-shirt, the other shirtless, each
with a Kalashnikov strapped over a thin shoulder.
The tall bald man hunched down
into the stateroom.
Christine
watched the outline of the fingers of one hand spread wide then slip away into
the dark inside edge of the doorway.
The man’s arm snaked up until he found the switch he was seeking.
With a click, the wall sconces fastened
above each side of the master bed illuminated the cabin with an amber
glow.
The man, an African darker
than the others, surveyed the room.
His eyes scanned the dressers snug under the side berth and cabin
windows.
He inspected the closet
doors, and the opened entrance to the head.
Not once did the bald giant’s eyes focus
on the near naked woman, a model by trade, peering at him from the master bed.
With a wave of his hand, the
tall man gestured the two gaunt Kalashnikov bearers into the stateroom.
The men reached down between them and
from the floor lifted a shirtless
caucasian
.
Limp in their grasp, the two men
effortlessly dragged the unconscious man toward Christine.
As the men moved closer,
Christine’s feeble whimpers rose to convulsive sobs.
Frozen against the cushioned headboard,
her eyes began to flood.
The bright green of her eyes glazed
over with the well of tears, and her head and neck pressed back so tightly
against the headboard, that with each thudding pulse, the thundering rush of
blood pained the base of her skull.
The two men carried the ragdoll
of a man over to the bed and then with a dip and a lift they heaved the
lifeless figure next to Christine.
Her eyes shot to the bloody face.
The beaten man was Nikos.
Her heart swelled, throbbing against her lungs, preventing air from
getting in.
Nikos looked dead.
Christine dropped her hand to
Nikos’ forehead to move his blood-matted hair away from his face.
She ran her thumb over his brow, first
smearing, and then clearing blood away from the small cut near his eye.
Nikos coughed weakly.
He was alive.
Christine was able to take in a deep
breath.
Christine caressed Nikos’ cheek,
“It’s going to be ok, Nikos.”
She
was unsure if more than a soft wisp had escaped her dry throat.
Nikos’ eyes were already
swelling shut and he was having trouble opening them.
His jaw opened and then closed, only a
faint breath escaped.
Christine exerted more effort
into her voice, “Shhh, don’t try to talk.”
The hatch slapped shut followed
by the metal clack of the bolt.
Christine raised her head, her eyes frantically darting to the hatch and
then to the rest of the still lit room.
Christine and Nikos were alone.
* * *
* *
2
Upper West Side, New
York
Cameron reached deep into the
loose right pocket of his slacks for the key to Le Dragon Vert.
He usually threw jeans on after taping down
in Chelsea.
Tonight he did not
bother.
He walked alone along west
Eighty-first Street.
This time of
night, the sidewalks of the Upper West Side were near empty.
To his side the massive Hayden Sphere
glowed soft indigo in the six-story glass cube Rose Center, a nightlight for
the wealthy residents of Central Park West.
Cameron sucked in the fragrance of the
daffodils carpeting the small Roosevelt Park bordering the museum.
Two taxis drove under the traffic light
from the Central Park crosstown entrance.
Cameron waited for the yellow cabs to pass and then jay walked across
Eighty-first Street to his restaurant.
Cameron slipped his key into the
front door of Le Dragon Vert, closed for the evening an hour before.
He stepped down the three-steps from the
vestibule into the amber lit lounge, his attention immediately drawn to the
bar.
The dark oak bar jutted into
the edge of the lounge then ran the length of the tunneled hallway that led to
the dining room.
On leather seats
midway down the dimly lit tunnel two men, one thin, one stout, were conversing
softly.
The wide man, his back to
Cameron, revealed only the shoulder of the second.
Without seeing their faces, Cameron
recognized them both.
His mentor
and partner in the restaurant, Claude Rambeaux, owned the thin shoulder, and
the girth and thick black hair of the other belonged to his friend Pepe
Laroque, visiting New York from Montreal.
Cameron approached his two
friends, both former members of the same super elite Legionnaire regiment that
he himself belonged to years before.
He placed a hand on each of their shoulders.
“I see you found the Ardbeg single
malt,” he said.