all, Colonel Cat sat on the stern, taking tokes from his crack pipe.
The ransacking over, the gunmen prepared to leave. Two carried their booty onto the airplane; Colonel Cat returned to the cockpit and started the engine. The banker and the girl were pulled to their feet. Both were praying the pirates would just leave. But that wasn’t the plan.
At the point of two machetes, the banker and the girl were marched into the floatplane, and soon, the strange aircraft was airborne again.
* * *
CAT STEERED THE Arado northeast, heading toward the open ocean.
The pirate named Crabbie was sitting beside him, counting the wad of cash they’d taken from the yacht. Crabbie was the senior man of the group. The rest of the gang was in the passenger compartment holding down the banker and the girl.
“How far out do you want to go?” Cat asked the pirate.
Crabbie looked out the cockpit window; the half moon was glowing off the calm sea below.
“You have two more pigeons to visit tonight?” he asked Cat in heavily accented English.
“Yes—I think good ones, or at least as good as these two,” Cat replied.
“Not too far out then,” Crabbie said.
They flew for another five minutes; by this time they were more than a hundred-fifty miles north of Bimini, over the Atlantic Ocean, with no land in sight.
Finally, Crabbie looked back at the other pirates and nodded.
One opened the plane’s rear door. It was only then that the banker and the girl realized what was about to happen.
The banker started fighting madly, but it was useless. The pirates were strong and it was obvious that they’d done this sort of thing before.
The banker gave it one last struggle, punching two of the pirates, but he was quickly overwhelmed. The pirates threw him out the open door. As he fell they could hear his screams, finally drowned out by the sound of the wind racing by.
The girl was next. She became hysterical, crying, promising the pirates anything, including sex, if they would only spare her life. But they weren’t interested. They were in a hurry.
She began fighting, too, and they had to hit her a few times to subdue her. It took longer than it should have, but finally they shoved her out the door as well. As with the banker, they watched her fall, screaming, to her death.
Two victims, no witnesses. And no bodies to be discovered. The sharks and the deep water would see to that.
Crabbie patted Cat on the shoulder twice.
“OK, let’s turn back,” he told the pilot. “More treasure awaits.”
6
COLONEL CAT WOKE up the next day, worn out and hung over.
He’d bought a large bag of crack after the third flight with the Muy Capaz, joining the pirates in a seedy Bimini bar once their work was done and smoking it all. He’d returned to Florida just before sunrise, flying the sixty miles from Bimini to Fort Lauderdale in a narcotic haze. Landing, putting the plane away, driving to his condo in Cooper City: it was all a blur.
He didn’t mind helping the Muy Capaz—he had no conscience, no qualms when money was involved. But he couldn’t keep falling into the same pattern of behavior that the pirates always did: get a bunch of money and blow it on drugs and booze before the night was through. That’s exactly what happened last night.
His bedroom TV was on. Through bleary eyes, he saw nothing on the news crawl that mentioned any missing persons in the Bahamas. This was usually the way it went. It would take the owners at least a week to locate their chartered yachts; only then would they suspect something was really wrong. And by the time the Bahamian cops realized the Muy Capaz had struck again—well, it was a pretty good bet they wouldn’t be calling a news conference to blab to the world about it. And because Cat never left a paper trail, when it came to who he flew and where, there was little chance anyone would connect him to the disappearances.
So, it had been clean and quick. If he just hadn’t spent all his share …
He finally rolled out of bed only because his phone started ringing and would not stop. A pair of wealthy bachelors was answering his ad. They needed a discreet ride over to an isolated cay used by couples craving privacy.
Cat took the gig for only one reason.
He needed more dope.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER he arrived at Fort Lauderdale to find the