Court looked back in the dark. There was zero chance he’d be able to find the skiff he’d left behind him ten minutes earlier on the open water.
He’d have to press on.
He lowered his mask back over his eyes and began to submerge again but stopped himself. He thought he’d heard a noise. He shook water from his ears and cocked his head.
A man shouting.
Boom! A gunshot, immediate and unmistakable across the quiet night sea, Court dove under the water’s surface in fear he’d been spotted.
But no. Underwater it continued. More gunfire. One gun responding to another, and then another. There was a shotgun in the mix, Court’s practiced ear could discern, but a handgun was firing as well. Quick and controlled.
Another scream. Court surfaced again to try to make sense of what he was hearing.
He felt his body lift in the warm water, he surged upwards towards the stars, and Gentry saw the flashes of light in the sky above the yacht before the vessel even came into his line of sight.
And then there it was. Court saw the yacht, but no one was visible on deck.
There was another volley of gunfire and the flashes in the portholes. The fight appeared to Gentry to be down in the lower decks of the eighty-foot-long vessel.
All was quiet for a moment, but this still was broken by the sound of a small outboard motor coming to life. Seconds later a wooden skiff appeared from behind the stern of the Fatima, one man on board controlling the motor, and he pushed the little engine’s throttle to the limit as he streaked off into the darkness.
What the hell was all that? Court wondered if Zack was on board the boat and had been surprised by a group of soldiers.
He swam above water the rest of the way, keeping a wary eye on the deck and upper levels of the yacht. He strained to hear any noise at all other than the gentle lapping of waves from the departed skiff against the side of the big fiberglass hull, but there was nothing.
Until he arrived at the boarding ladder at the stern of the yacht. Just then, a single small-caliber pistol shot cracked from belowdecks. It was answered almost immediately by a larger handgun.
Silence again, save for the lapping waves.
Court pulled off his fins, unfastened his scuba gear, and let it drift away. He grabbed hold of the ladder and climbed up as slowly and as carefully and as quietly as he could. He rolled over the guardrail and onto the teak deck in his bare feet, winced along with the fresh burst of pain in his shoulder, and held his waterlogged but dependable Glock out in front of him. Carefully he moved to the companionway to descend to the lower decks of the darkened yacht.
The first two bodies were at the top of the stairs. Two black men in combat uniforms, bullet wounds in the chest. The men didn’t look like they were Sudanese Navy, but that was no surprise. The Sudanese Navy was so small, and the mission of the day, checking and rechecking every floating object off its coast, so large, that it was very possible the GOS Army just co-opted boats and boaters to ferry soldiers out to all the yachts and freighters and fishing boats to board and search.
Next to their bodies were wire-stocked Kalashnikovs. Court wanted to pick one up but was worried about making noise while doing so.
Blood smeared the mahogany of the companionway steps. Court followed it down, his pistol at the ready.
He entered the lower saloon and saw the carnage in the soft green light of a fish tank’s glow against the wall. Two more black men, dead, and one white man, flat on his back in the middle of the floor, with his feet towards Gentry and the staircase.
He was unarmed; his chest was bloody.
But he was not dead.
Court flipped on the overhead light of the lower saloon, keeping his weapon trained on the wounded man. He called out to him from across the room. “Zack?”
“Know why they call it a sucking chest wound?” Hightower asked without looking towards Gentry’s direction. His voice was weak.
Court nodded slowly and answered, “ ’Cause it sucks.”
Zack nodded sleepily. His right arm was heavily bandaged both above and below the elbow from where he’d been shot two days earlier.