KYLE! LET’S GO, LAD. Time to do some shooting.” Sir Geoffrey Corn well pushed gently on Swanson’s shoulder, awakening him with a start. As a former colonel in the British Special Air Services, Jeff understood that warriors sometimes have dreams, and his keen gray eyes beneath bushy brows studied the sniper, who had been twitching in his sleep.
Swanson blinked in the bright sunshine that made the Aegean Sea glow like burnished copper. The boat was rocking gently, but this was not a death cruise. The fucking Boatman didn’t get him this time. Instead, he was safe aboard the Vagabond, one of Jeff’s favorite toys. One hundred and eighty feet long and twenty-nine feet wide, the yacht was as sleek as a needle and carried five luxurious cabins and a crew of eleven, plus a full-time captain. A pair of 3,240-horsepower engines thrummed quietly somewhere below the polished teak decks.
Swanson yawned. “Okay,” he said. “Let me wash up and grab something wet to drink and I’ll be ready.” His mouth was dry. “Go tend your flock. Five minutes.” Jeff smiled and slapped him on the back and returned into the air-conditioned main cabin where three venture capital money men, two Americans and one Brit, were having drinks, and resumed promising them an opportunity to buy into a river of gold. When Jeff retired from the SAS, he had made a quick fortune as a consultant to defense industries, then raked together an even bigger pile of money by designing, producing, and selling high-tech weapons on his own. At the age of sixty, he had a knighthood for his outstanding, although undisclosed, services to the Empire, a Bill Gates-size checkbook, and better hair than Donald Trump.
Kyle Swanson got up, stretched, adjusted his bathing suit, and walked to the hot tub area.
Jeff’s wife, Lady Patricia, was in a lounge chair. She wore a big white straw hat that provided a circle of shade that protected her face. She was drinking neat whiskey and smoking a thin cigar as she read a Danielle Steel novel. Her shimmering blue one-piece bathing suit was covered by a gauzy wrap. Lady Pat had put up with being a military wife for years and now openly enjoyed the good life. In Kyle’s opinion, she had earned it.
The venture capitalists had brought along the eye candy for the week of cruising among the Greek islands, their stunningly beautiful young trophy wives, who had been topless almost since the yacht left Naples two days ago. Now they lay bronzing on large towels beside the pool, toasting magnificent plastic breasts that gleamed with oil. Kyle wondered if there was a factory somewhere with an assembly line that stamped out these kids for rich old farts.
He sat on the edge of the hot tub, stuck his feet in the warm water, and nodded in their direction. “You ought to do that,” he told his girlfriend, Lieutenant Commander Shari Towne. “You know, take off your top for a while. Looks comfortable.”
“No,” she said, protectively adjusting the top of her red bikini.
“You’re already way out of uniform, ma’am.” Her long black hair lay wet against her dark shoulders, and just looking into her black eyes made his stomach do flips, because he considered Shari to be the most delectable intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy. She had been born in Jordan to an American father and a Jordanian mother, both of whom worked for their respective governments. Shari was only six years old when her father, a young diplomat based in Amman with the State Department, was killed in a plane crash. Her mother was a public relations and tourism specialist and worked at embassy postings in Cairo, Paris, and Tokyo before her current assignment as head of the public relations department for the Jordanian Embassy in Washington.
Shari was fluent in several languages by the time she entered George Washington University and accepted a U.S. Navy commission upon graduation. It did not take long for her to land in Naval Intelligence, where, after compiling a sterling record, she was snapped up to be an analyst for the National Security Council. Her office was only a desk in a basement cubicle, but the address was still the best in town, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: the White House.
“Go away,” Shari told Kyle, closing her eyes and leaning against the high-pressure jets that churned the water into frothy bubbles around her. She lifted her face to the sun.
“Hey,” Swanson argued. “Your boobs are real! We ought to show them off.”
“We? You don’t get a vote on that. You want tits, go over there and ogle the Desperate Housewives.” Her breathing rate had not increased and her eyes remained closed as she insulted him. She added, in Arabic, “Screw you.”
“Screw me? Now there’s a thought,” Kyle replied in the same language. His smooth line wasn’t working, but the evening held promise. Swanson splashed water on his face, wiped it with a soft towel, and stole a few sips from the glass of iced tea at Shari’s side.
On the deck above, Jeff herded the potential investors to the railing and explained what was going to happen.
Kyle glanced at them. Soft men in shorts and bright shirts. “I gotta go to work now,” he said. “Blow up some shit for Jeff’s pals.”
“So go,” Shari ordered. She opened her eyes and gave him a smile.
Lady Pat lowered her steamy novel, peered at him above her sunglasses for a moment, and also got in a barb. “And Kyle, dear, please remember that these ladies and gentlemen are Sir Geoffrey’s dear friends, important guests and investors. So do be a good boy and try not to kill anyone, at least until after dinner, would you please?”
“Does that include smartass broads, m’lady?”