Gambit by David Hagberg (manga ereader .txt) 📗

going to lure them back to their house, and they would have to pass him.

The boat was made of a lot of laminations of strong fiberglass that was designed to stand up to big waves out on the ocean, but not metal-jacketed bullets.

He got on his cell phone and called Li, who answered after three rings. “Shi de.”

“I just passed the McGarveys headed south in their sailboat.”

“Is there a lot of traffic?”

“Yes, but I have a change of plans.”

“Wait, do you think that they paid you any special attention?”

“They watched me pass them, and the woman looked at me through binoculars.”

Li took only a moment to respond. “They probably got our registration numbers.”

“Almost certainly, but even if they checked at the marina, all they would get is our Schiller IDs.”

“That’s not the point, husband. They would have found out that Mr. and Mrs. Schiller rented separate machines. You passed them, but what about me?”

“But that’s going to work to our advantage.”

“How?”

“Get up to their house, pull up onto the beach, cross the road, and get inside as quickly as you can.”

“They’ll have an active surveillance system,” Li said. “They’ll know I’m there.”

“Exactly what I want to happen. They’ll have to turn around, and when they pass me again, I’ll be ready.”

“I’m not armed.”

“You’ll find something inside the house. A man like McGarvey would keep weapons in easily accessible places, especially if he believes someone is trying for him again.”

“What about afterward?”

“I’ll pick you up, and we’ll get rid of the machines up north somewhere and find a car.”

“Too much room for mistakes,” Li said. “I’m sure the McGarveys’ car is in their garage. We’ll abandon it somewhere between here and the hotel, and from there, we’ll get our things and take a cab to the airport and get the car we drove down from Atlanta.”

“I’ll move closer to the house to minimize the lag time before I can pick you up,” Taio said. “What’s your ETA?”

“I’m about ten minutes out, plus however long it takes for me to find a way in.”

“With care.”

“You, too. I want out of this as quickly as possible.”

“Shi de,” Taio said, and he meant it.

Nothing about this op was setting well with him. Their special ops brigade had adopted a number of Murphy’s laws that the American SEAL Team 6 guys used. The one that came to mind now was: If everything seems to be going well, it probably means that you’re running into an ambush.

Susan shared dinner with Hammond, and afterward, drinking the last of the pinot, she put a bare foot up on his knee. “When should we hear something?”

“They didn’t say,” Hammond said. Despite himself, his mood had brightened when Susan had arrived, and he was beginning to feel that he might almost be in love with her. She was a prima donna, but they had a history together, and she was his prima donna.

“Assuming they succeed, then what?”

Hammond had thought about that as well. “I pay them, and we move on.”

“Move on as in what?”

“I’ll have Glory loaded aboard a transport ship, taken through the Panama Canal and dropped off in Gibraltar, and we can fly over and do Cannes and Monaco. Have some fun for a change.”

Susan was silent for a moment or two, staring out at the lake. “What aren’t you telling me, Thomas?”

Hammond was a very good liar, but he’d never been good at it with her. “There may have been a couple of complications in Washington.”

FORTY-EIGHT

Still a quarter mile offshore, Li recognized the McGarveys’ house because of the wide overhangs on the second story and the gently sloping brown and light brown slate roof. She debated calling Taio, but he’d given her the last-minute plan, and she would stick with it, but with a slight variation.

Making absolutely sure that no one was on the beach and that no vehicles were on the road, she turned sharply toward the shore as she gunned the Kawasaki’s powerful engine, and the machine shot forward. Moments later, she jogged hard to the right, and then again to the right at high speed, but erratically as if she had lost control, all the while closing in on the beach.

A hundred yards out, she took the wristband off, made an extreme turn, and fell off the machine, which veered off to the left.

For several seconds, she floundered in the water but then straightened out and swam like an amateur afraid of drowning, her arms flailing. It took a full five minutes for her to reach water shallow enough for her to stand, and she staggered ashore.

Still no one was on the road as she made it up the path, then crossed over to the McGarveys’ place, then down the wide driveway to the front door, which was locked.

She was 100 percent sure that she was showing up on the house’s surveillance system, so she lurched as if she were on her last legs, or was drunk, around back to the pool area.

The sliding doors into the kitchen were locked, so she turned and went down to the gazebo, where she sat down, her elbows on her knees, her head lowered.

“I’m here,” she said to herself when she spotted the handle of a pistol taped to the underside of the bench seat across from her. “Herd them to me, husband. I can help.”

Taio found an ideal spot on the island side of the waterway. A house with a fairly short marked channel looked as if no one was at home. The pool furniture had been covered, as had the big barbecue grill on the patio. A small powerboat up on a lift and a pontoon boat tied to the dock had also been covered with bright blue canvas.

He powered slowly up the channel and tucked in behind the pontoon boat out of sight from anyone passing in the ICW.

Laying the umbrella bag on the dock, he untied one of the lines holding the pontoon boat in place and tied it