Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,125
“Gonna be heavy. Got eleven cans in the two bags.”
On the first two nights, the recoveries had sparked minor celebrations. This time, Lange said nothing except “Hand me the lines.”
Virgil: “Everything okay?”
Rae shouted: “Fuck no. These motherfuckers were gonna shoot us. Marc, he’s dead. I’m pointing a gun at Jack. If Matt gives you any trouble at all, you yell and I shoot Jack in the fuckin’ eyeball. Then I shoot Matt.”
“Fuck me,” Virgil said. He passed up the lines for the lift bags and Lange struggled to get them on board, and Cattaneo came hurrying to help, Rae shouting warnings at him. When the second bag went over the side, Virgil unbuckled the backplate harness and the tanks went on board, followed by his fins. He got his feet on the ladder, and Rae shouted, “Matt, you go way up on the end of the bow, away from Willy. Get up there.”
Lange moved to the bow and Virgil climbed the ladder. Rae was calling him “Willy.” That meant that she’d kept her fake identity, and for whatever reason, he should as well.
When Virgil was on board, Rae said to Cattaneo, “Willy gonna come over by you. Willy, get down in the cockpit, reach under that asshole’s body and you find a gun. Jack, you make one fucking move toward him and I kill your sorry ass. I got my eye on you too, Matt.”
Virgil carefully stepped into the cockpit and halfway down the ladder to the salon. The floor of the cockpit was awash with purple blood. He tugged Regio’s legs around, picked up a bloody black Beretta 92. “Got it,” he said. He leaned over the side of the boat, rinsed the blood off in the ocean, then shook the water off.
“Get up on deck,” Rae said to Virgil. “Matt, you get down in the cockpit with Jack. I know you probably got a gun, but don’t even think about it. Willy’s not a good shot, but we can’t miss and we’re really worried about all this and you twitch wrong and we kill your sorry asses.”
Lange said, “I don’t have a gun.”
Cattaneo said nothing for a moment, then, “We probably ought to get rid of Marc’s body.”
“Fuck that,” Rae said. “We get back to the dock, me’n Willy gonna put a couple-three cans under our arms and all the cash you got and run for it. What you do then, with the rest of the shit and Marc, that’s your problem. We be gone.”
Cattaneo nodded once.
“I can’t fuckin’ believe this,” Lange said. Then, to Rae, “I tried to talk them out of it.”
“Don’t give a wide shit,” Rae said. “You still an asshole. You didn’t want to shoot me, but you weren’t gonna stop them.”
The ride back was tense: Cattaneo kept trying to come up with alternatives to returning to the marina—he suggested a hard left turn and a trip to the Bahamas, dropping Regio over the side before they got there—but Virgil was silent and Rae wouldn’t take anything but a ride back to their car.
On the way, Virgil watchfully stripped off the wet suit, the Beretta close at hand, and changed into his street clothes, and checked the cut on his calf. It was deep, and bleeding, but Cattaneo had a good first-aid kit and he smeared the cut with disinfectant and covered it with a gauze bandage, wrapped it with a couple yards of medical tape.
At the marina, with Rae’s gun still pointing at Cattaneo’s eye, Cattaneo made the sharp turn into the slip, and as they pulled in, a half dozen men dressed in dark clothing materialized from the moored boats around them.
Cattaneo saw them, looked to Rae. “What the fuck is this?”
Rae: “Oh, shit. Did I forget to mention that me’n Willy are U.S. Marshals? You’re under arrest for God only knows how many drug violations, and now, with Marc dead, I believe you’re up for felony murder.”
Cattaneo goggled at them, finally managed, “What?”
Lange, depressed, in a defeated voice: “I warned you. Way back when. I warned you something wasn’t right.”
Cattaneo lifted a hand at Virgil: “This moron is a marshal?”
Rae said, “We don’t brag about it, but he sorta is, yeah.”
Virgil said to Lange: “You want to help tie up, or you gonna stand there with your dick in your hand?” And he yelled to the agents on the dock, “This guy might have a handgun on his belt.”
Four feds, three FBI and one marshal, took Cattaneo and Lange off the