Apocalyptic pirates 6, p.1
Apocalyptic Pirates 6, page 1
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Chapter 1
A cool breeze ruffled my hair. The Costa Rican sunshine seeped into my skin like water into cloth. The azure ocean water sparkled like it was crowned with a net of fine diamonds. The yacht deck rose and fell under me as though I was being rocked to sleep in an expensive hammock.
And I still couldn’t relax.
“Drew,” Shannon complained as she propped herself up on one elbow. “Can you stop fidgeting for one second?”
The sun gleamed on the Indian woman’s bronzed skin, and as she pushed her long, silken black hair back over her shoulder, a tiny bead of sweat rolled down her collarbone and disappeared in the voluptuous mound of her cleavage straining against the black bikini top she wore.
“Yeah, Drew,” Dia sighed. “We’re meant to be relaxing.”
Dia shaded her dark eyes against the sun, and the movement exposed the very pretty curve of her soft stomach. Her wild, black curls were tied up on top of her head in a messy bun. She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath her little ribbed, white tank top, and I should have been in paradise with two gorgeous women sunbathing next to me on the deck of our luxury yacht as we sailed around the coast of Costa Rica in the perfect sunshine.
But I couldn’t relax.
It had only been two days since the Panamanian government’s transport vessel had dropped us off at Coiba Island after we’d completed our undercover mission to expose the United States Coast Guard’s operation harvesting dragon eggs. And dragon parts. And live, full-grown dragons.
Just having that thought was a surreal experience.
The Panamanian government? An undercover mission? Dragon harvesting?
Sometimes I couldn’t see how this wasn’t some crazy dream surfacing from some weird corner of my subconscious.
But it was all very real, and I couldn’t shake off the knowledge that as soon as we uploaded the video we’d made exposing the Coast Guard’s actions, we were going to be in some seriously hot water.
We hadn’t uploaded the video just yet. The Coast Guard had a fleet of ships in Panama Bay, and we’d decided to give it a few days until we were well away from Panama before we published our findings. It was a weird limbo to be sitting in, and I found myself swinging between a righteous need to expose this utter fuckery and suddenly being in an agony of tension.
The women might act as though they were perfectly chill and unbothered by the events of the previous days, but I knew them well enough by now that I could tell that they weren’t as relaxed as they might appear.
Shannon was sunbathing on the deck, but every few moments or so, she raised her head to scour the horizon for any approaching signs of trouble.
Dia might insist that she was relaxing, but she’d already checked the yacht’s engine three times this morning, and I would wager that she’d check it again before noon.
Letty was down below in the kitchen, and judging from the smells that were wafting up through the hatch, the Southern woman was stress-baking enough biscuits to feed an army.
The Panamanian government had filled our fuel tanks and reserves, and they’d also completely restocked the yacht’s pantry and food supplies, and Letty was clearly taking advantage of our full shelves to relieve some tension.
Normally Ally took any opportunity to sit in the sun once she’d slathered her fair skin in lotion, but it was a mark of how stressed she was that she’d been spending almost all of her time in the cockpit. She was there now with her red waves covering her face as she leaned over the controls and checked some point on the yacht’s navigational system.
I stood up and went over to the deck rail to gaze out over the ocean. The water glistened and sparkled in the sun, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that clung to me like a weird scarf I couldn’t seem to take off.
Years ago, my daughter Sam had needed to make a Christmas card for a school project. Sammy had wanted to use red and green glitter to decorate her card, and by the time the card was done, there was glitter absolutely everywhere in the house. I found glitter in my shoes, in my underwear drawer, in my pockets, in Sammy’s hair, behind her ears, in the fridge, in the bread bin, and in the bottom of the coffeemaker. I was still finding glitter in the house by Easter.
Just swap glitter for tension, and this was the same situation.
No matter how much we protested otherwise, unease seemed to hang over us and work its way into every last corner of the yacht, and despite all our best efforts, it just refused to leave.
“Drew?” Shannon’s voice was softer now.
I looked over my shoulder and saw that her lovely, dark eyes were fixed on me. She smiled gently, and I could see the concern radiating from her. Shannon was tough, but her heart was soft, and I loved her for it.
“I’m okay,” I reassured her with a smile. “I’m just tense.”
“We all are,” Dia said with a sigh as she sat up and stretched.
“I thought you were ‘so totally relaxed’,” Shannon said as she made air quotes with her fingers.
“I’m trying to be,” Dia said with another sigh. “I’m trying to manifest it by saying it.”
“And is it working?” I asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“Nope.” Dia shook her head. “I’m still stressed. It’s like I can feel the tension running through me. It’s like I’m a puppet and all my strings are tangled.”
Shannon raised her eyebrows and nodded.
“Huh.” I nodded, too. “That’s pretty much it exactly.”
Dia had a way of putting things that didn’t always make sense, but which sometimes really hit the nail on the head.
“Do you ever catch yourself thinking, ‘hmm, I really need a vacation?’” Shannon said with a dry chuckle. “And then you look around and realize you’re on a luxury yacht sailing around the Costa Rican coast, and you’re like ‘oh, wait’.”
“Yep.” I gave a bitter grin. “That’s also pretty much exactly what I’ve been thinking. Then again…”
“Dragons,” Shannon finished my thought for me.
“Dragons,” I agreed.
“Still…” Dia nodded toward the hatch. “From the smell of it, at least we’ll get to enjoy the results of Letty being stressed out.”
“True,” Shannon conceded. “I’m really looking forward to sinking my teeth into a fresh and buttery batch of biscuits.”
“Are you really?” Dia dropped her a slow wink and flashed me a saucy smile. “I’m looking forward to watching that.”
Shannon grinned, and my mind flashed back to the memory of the two of them together in the bed with me. My cheeks heated, my cock twitched, and for one blissful second, everything stressful in the world melted away under the memory of Shannon and Dia’s bodies writhing and sighing together in what had been one of the hottest fucking moments of my life.
Then the moment was abruptly shattered.
“Drew!” Ally’s voice came from the cockpit. “Drew!”
“What?” My head snapped up.
I saw Ally’s wide eyes and anxious face in the cockpit, and even as she opened her mouth to reply, I was scanning the horizon.
My heart sank, and every muscle in my body tensed as I saw the cause for the redhead’s alarm.
“There’s a boat!” she shouted.
Dia and Shannon came running to the edge of the boat, and they stared in shock at the small dot on the horizon that was getting bigger and bigger with every passing second.
“Go and tell Letty what’s happening,” I told Dia.
“Sure thing, jefe.” She ran across the deck and disappeared down the hatch.
In another moment she was back on deck, and Letty was with her. The Southern woman’s black skin was flushed dark red with her exertions in the kitchen, and she’d gathered her black ringlets back in a pretty pink scarf. Her full lips were parted in shock, and the whites of her eyes showed starkly as she stared at the boat on the horizon.
“Oh, Lord,” she gasped as she joined us at the rail. “It’s not the Coast Guard, is it?”
“I don’t think so,” I said with more confidence than I felt at that moment. “It looks like it’s just one boat, not a fleet. If it was the Coast Guard, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t send just one boat. It actually looks like a sailboat…”
“Thank the Lord,” Letty breathed.
“Then who is it?” Ally had momentarily left the cockpit to join the rest of us at the rail, and I could feel the tension radiating from her slender body. She turned to look at me, and her light-green eyes were alarmed but steady.
Ally was the most sheltered out of all of us, but she wasn’t the kind of person to fall apart at the first sign of trouble. There was no way she’d have survived on the yacht if that was the case. She might have come from privilege, but she had more grit and backbone than someone might assume from a first glance at her trim figure and dignified bearing.
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” I nudged her arm reassuringly. “We’re more than a match for one boat.”
Panama, man. They sure as hell knew how to hook a guy up.
“You’re in love with those things,” Ally told her in exasperation.
“And why shouldn’t I be?” Shannon retorted.
“Drew will get jealous,” the redhead teased.
“No he won’t.” Shannon grinned. “He’s a gun man. He knows what’s what.”
“I thought he was a tit man,” Dia said in a loud voice, and even though we were in the middle of the ocean, I still had the impulse to check that no one had heard her.
But I knew that Dia was at her bluntest when she was most afraid, and despite their bantering, the women were all on edge.
The boat was still at a distance from us, but that was going to change soon, and we had to be prepared.
“Everyone grab your guns,” I directed. “We’re going to be cautious and see what happens. But be prepared for fireworks.”
The women all leaped into action.
Every moment that Shannon hadn’t been pretending to relax, she’d been cleaning, stripping, and maintaining our arsenal of rifles, and within five minutes, everyone on board had a loaded rifle at the ready.
We’d collected a good number of knives and wooden spears in our travels as well, and I’d grown accustomed to the comforting weight of a Bowie knife strapped to my belt. I unfastened the sheath for easy access, gave my gun a perfunctory once-over, and took up a position at the front of the boat.
Ally was back in the cockpit, Dia and Shannon were on either side of the boat with the mainsail between them, and Letty was crouched by the hatch.
I licked my lips in anticipation and watched as the other boat came closer.
Early on in our travels, we’d given the yacht a makeover to make it look less ritzy. Half an hour with a can of red spray paint had transformed the yacht from a sleek, luxury vessel into a disreputable boat that looked deceptively run-down and low-key. But given our recent levels of internet notoriety, it had made sense to try and change up our appearance in order to stay as low-profile as we possibly could, so we’d asked the Panamanians for some more paint to give the yacht a fresh makeover.
Now the yacht sported a very amateur-looking coat of dull gray paint that we’d slapped on without an ounce of finesse. We looked boring and shoddy as hell, and in situations where we could easily be heading into a showdown, I was glad for our new, shabby appearance.
In confrontations like this, it wasn’t just a matter of firepower. It was about appearances as well.
If we diverted our course to avoid another vessel, it could make us look weak, and the other boat might take this as a sign that we weren’t able to defend ourselves. If they decided to pursue us, it would descend into a bloodbath, and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. But if we postured too much, we could end up appearing as a threat that an evenly-matched vessel might decide to eliminate.
There was no easy way to win at the politics of the sea during an apocalypse.
But we’d faced down gangs, the cartel, random thugs, and the Coast Guard.
We were the Good Pirates. We’ve got this.
As it got closer, I could make out more details of the boat and its crew. It was indeed a sailing boat, and it was only a little bit smaller than the yacht. Its sail was patched, and although the cockpit looked old and the boat moved slowly through the water, it had recently been repainted a snowy white, and it was clear that it was looked after and well maintained.
The crew was made up of two women, and they were eyeballing us in the same way that we were watching them. They both had guns, and as soon as they were close enough to see that we were armed, they raised their rifles to their shoulders and took aim.
In a flash, we had our guns raised and ready to fire.
One of the women shouted something, but the wind took her words and carried them away before we could hear.
“We don’t want to shoot you!” I shouted. “We’re just passing through!”
The woman shouted again, and this time I heard her well enough to realize that she was speaking Spanish.
“Dia?” I called. “Did you get any of that?”
“Just something about guns.” Dia grunted in frustration. “I can’t hear her properly over the wind.”
She took a step forward away from her position by the sail and started toward the front of the boat.
“Hey,” Shannon exclaimed in a warning tone. “Is that wise?”
“Oh, shit, sorry.” Dia halted and looked at me. “What should we do, Drew?”
I still had the women on the boat in my sights.
The boat was getting closer. We were only around fifty feet away from each other. I could see the strained look on both of the women’s faces, and the nervous way that the younger of the two flexed her fingers on the rifle.
“Are you happy to translate, Dia?” I asked without taking my eyes off the women. “I’ll cover you.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dia lowered her rifle and stepped to the edge of the rail.
“Not that close,” I hissed, but Dia was oblivious to her own safety.
The women flinched at the movement, and I kept my eyes locked on their faces for any hint that they might fire.
But then Dia started speaking, and almost immediately some of the tension left their faces.
The younger one lowered her rifle and stepped forward eagerly to the edge of their boat. The older one muttered something reprovingly, but the younger woman shook her head in impatience and called out to Dia.
“They say they’re passing through,” Dia translated. “They’re on their way to Isla Parida. They have family there.”
“Can you tell them to put their guns down?” I asked.
“I can…” Dia paused. “I think they’d appreciate it if we did the same, though.”
“Okay, I guess that’s fair enough.” I nodded to the women in the boat and slowly lowered my rifle.
They did the same, and so did the rest of my crew.
“Cool,” Dia chirped. “I guess we’re all good now, then.”
But suddenly the younger woman on the boat waved to Dia and called up something to her. Dia listened with her dark brows drawn together in a frown.
“Dia?” I pushed. “What is it?”
“She says that they’ve seen a lot of boats in the bit of the ocean that they’ve just passed through,” Dia said. “They’ve come from Mexico and passed by Guatemala. She says they saw big ships there.”
The woman added something more.
“Army ships,” Dia translated.
We all looked at each other with a rising feeling of dread.
“The Coast Guard,” Letty muttered.
“Shit,” Shannon hissed. “They’re on both sides of us.”
“It might not be the Coast Guard,” I insisted. “It could be Naval vessels.”
“Is that any better?” Letty demanded.
The older woman on the other boat tugged on the younger girl’s arm and shouted something to Dia.
Dia replied with a nod and a wave. The younger woman ran to their sail and hauled on a line. The sail caught the breeze, and their boat sailed past us as the older woman gave me a curt nod of farewell.
“Dia, did she say if they were Naval or Coast Guard ships?” I demanded.
“She didn’t know,” Dia said with a grimace. “Just that she thought they were army ships.”
“What color?” I asked in the hopes that might clear things up.
But a brief back and forth between the women came up with nothing. She simply couldn’t remember, she said she’d been too flustered to focus on that.
“Oh, Lord,” Letty sighed. “What now? Are we going to be sailing straight into another pocket of the Coast Guard fleet?”
“We haven’t even uploaded the damn video yet,” Shannon grumbled. “And we’re already in trouble.”
“Okay, everyone, let’s think about this,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster.
I went to the cockpit and grabbed the map from the control panel.
“We’re having a discussion about what to do next,” I told Ally.
“Okay,” she said, and she joined me as I went back to where the others were standing.
I knelt on the deck, spread out the map, and glanced up at Ally for confirmation.
