AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In English, he said, “My boat.” He nodded to the one on Court and Zoya’s right.
Court answered him in Spanish. “We need to go to San Juan.”
The young man said, “En serio?” Seriously?
“En serio,” Court responded. In Spanish he said, “One thousand quetzales.” This was over 120 U.S. dollars, and easily four or five times what the young man would normally make taking passengers a couple miles away to another village.
The Guatemalan’s eyebrows rose. “Muestra me.” Show me.
Court pulled a wallet out of his front pants pocket, then from it retrieved a fold of bills. “We leave now,” he said.
The man looked up at the sky, then shrugged. “Hay viento.” It’s windy, he said, but then he climbed off his bike, hefted it onto his shoulder, and boarded the little boat. He put the bike down on the small deck.
Zoya leaned closer to Court and spoke softly. “This kid looks sixteen.”
“He’s been boating on this lake longer than I have.”
“Five minutes boating on this lake is longer than you have.”
“Exactly my point.”
Zoya climbed aboard, and Court prepared to do the same, but a vehicle’s lights appeared on the road, and then they shut off before the car stopped some fifty yards away.
Court immediately recognized the vehicle as the black Tahoe he and Zoya had passed several minutes earlier.
The four doors on the vehicle opened in unison, four men climbed out, and Court saw a black short-barreled weapon in the hands of the driver.
None of the men seemed to notice him yet, but they all scanned the area.
“Fuck.”
Zoya stood there on the deck, just now pulling off her packs to put them on the little gunwale bench. Court leapt into the air, landed next to her and the bicycle, and pushed her down to the deck. An instant later he rose back up, grabbed the confused Guatemalan launch captain by the arm, and swung him up and over the gunwale and out into the water, where he crashed below the surface between his boat and the one bobbing five feet away from it. This put the noncombatant out of any line of fire, but it also drew more attention to this boat and this pier.
Court drew his pistol and turned to find Zoya staring at him just as the first gunshot snapped in the dark night. The wooden launch they stood on splintered up at the bow.
More gunfire kicked up, boards on the dock next to them cracked, and it was clear the enemy had fixed their position.
Court rose to look over the helm, then squatted back down. To Zoya he said, “Four hostiles. Subguns. They’ve split up and are in cover behind the rock wall.”
Zoya knelt there on the deck, unmoving, her eyes wide in disbelief. She hadn’t even drawn her gun.
“Hey!” Court shouted. “Snap the fuck out of it!”
“Whoever this is…this isn’t Uncle—”
“I don’t give a shit who it is! We’ve gotta move.”
To her credit, Zoya Zakharova did, in fact, snap the fuck out of it. She reached into her chest pack and pulled her pistol, then lowered herself behind her main pack, now on the deck.
The engine had already fired on the launch, but it remained tied to the pier by the bowline, and Court didn’t want to crawl up to where he’d be in direct line of sight of the men behind the wall. Even trying to shoot the line meant exposing his body to withering fire around the side of the helm. He holstered quickly, pulled his own pack off, then hefted it up on his shoulder.
To Zoya he said, “Next boat.”
“Got it.”
A thirty-foot launch with a covered helm and a pair of outboards was tied down just five feet away on the adjacent pier. Court heaved his pack over to it and slammed it down onto the deck, and then Zoya called to him over the sound of incoming gunfire.
“Suppressing! Get to the next one and find cover!”
