And the atmosphere was one of a last-ditch party.Because it got so cold so quickly, Decin harbor tended to empty out near the end of August.Those who remained were making plans to fly to their intended destinations, perhaps lingering a week for shopping or other pursuits.They were far enough north that boating—even in a luxury yacht—was dangerous.Boats could be iced in as early as October, and any destination from Prague was at risk for bad weather.
This meant that theSpelyy Persikwasn’t as difficult to spot as it might have been.
A mid-sized yacht, it was still a grand duchess in a thinning crowd of royalty, and maybe it was because Liam knew who was trapped inside, but it seemed darker, somehow, than the gaiety and ostentation of the pleasure boats in the area.
“Nobody on the decks,” Hunter said softly, although his eyes seemed to be scanning every boat on this particular strand.
“Heavy exhaust from the rear,” Liam said.This meant the ship wasn’t well maintained, which it wouldn’t be.
As they watched, a dockworker pushed a dolly full of boxes up the ramp, and a giant of a man, complete with watch cap, stubble, and a windbreaker unzipped to accommodate a belly, came out to sign for it.He pushed it in through one of the lower deck openings, and Liam engaged his tactical brain—but it was tough.
“The thing about boats,” he muttered, “is the limited number of entrances and exits.”
Hunter grunted.“And every one of them is through a guy who looks likethat.”
“And the engine rooms are full of sailors who are either working out of fear or are pirates themselves.Either way, assume they’re enemies, and remember we’re civilians and we don’t kill enemies.”
“Grace would say it’s a shame we couldn’t suck them up through the middle, like a straw.”Hunter chuckled a little, and Liam could see it, that flash of what made a man like Hunter so over the moon for a tornado like Grace.
Well, after the last year or so of getting to know the young man and his bond with Josh, Liam could see Hunter’s weakness was also his strength.
Sucking girls up through a straw in the center of the boat would be ridiculous, though the soldiers and sailors would see them and shoot them and that would be out.Now if they had a way through thebottomof the boat….
Liam sucked in a breath.
Well, he needed to sneak onto the yacht and find the girls’ passports anyway.The situation had to be stealthy at some point.It wasn’t like they could paint the walls with the blood of their enemies and then just stroll off the ship with a bunch of trafficked humans.
But still… a straw.
Behind the strand with the yachts and the cabin cruisers was a giant icebreaking ship, getting ready for its winter gig plowing through the dangerous waters of the North to make way for ships bearing supplies to ports living through snow nine months of the year.Ships that big were a maze of staircases and corridors inside, and to work on them, scaffolds and those portable nylon maintenance tubes were used to transport up or down in a timelier manner, hauling more equipment when needed or letting men slide down the tube when they needed to be on the dock quickly.
“A straw,” Liam muttered, cocking his head.
“A straw?”Hunter replied, following Liam’s gaze.“Really?”
“We’d need generators to pressurize the tube under the water,” Liam said slowly.“So we’d have to borrow—”
“Steal,” Hunter supplied frankly.
“Borrow,” Liam corrected, “a whole lot of heavy-duty nylon fabric, like what you find on the bottom of a raft, some epoxy, a shit-ton of pumps, and some of that clear fiberglass piping that’s stacked over by the ice cutter on the industrial dock, and—”
“A cofferdam,” Hunter said shortly.“You really think we could build a cofferdam?Like an airlock?And then what?Have the victims escape down a hatch we cut into the bottom of the ship?”
“Do we have anybody who can do that?”Liam asked, and Hunter snorted.
“ChuckandMichael can both weld underwater.Michael took a course this spring, and Chuck took the refresher with him.Do you know how much those two assholes could make on that skill alone?”
“More than me, mate,” Liam said, not even batting an eyelash.He’dseenthe requirements for that sort of work, and he lacked the self-control and the hand strength and the willingness to stay underwater for longer than five minutes if he wasn’t scuba diving in the Caribbean.
“We’d have to ask them,” Liam said.
“Hey, we could ask them,” Hunter mimicked.“It’s a big job—we’d need most of the crew here for three days, while maybe a skeleton crew preps for the museum job.”
Liam glanced at the boat again and thought about a hole opening up above the airlock a cofferdam would provide.Somebody would need to guide the victims to the hole and reassure them they weren’t jumping to their deaths—and somebody would need to comb the cabins for their passports, somebody licensed to defend him or herself with force.
“We’d need to slip Molly in through the front,” he murmured.“And she’d need to let me in through the service portal at the waterline.”
“I’m sure Molly will be thrilled to ditch the museum job to wander a yacht full of minions and help people jump through a hole in the bottom of a boat,” Hunter said, and Liam scowled at him.
