Page 18 of Murder Island

CHAPTER 19

The Arabian Sea

CAPTAIN CAL SAVAGE IV had been furious for days about the miss in Chicago. But now his anger had turned cold and hard. It was time to see justice done.

Savage sat on the bridge of his 220-foot Russian-built yacht, designed to military specs and painted in mottled gray camouflage.

“Let’s get this done,” he ordered. He perched impatiently in a leather chair in front of a large monitor. Crew members hovered around him, all dressed in identical black tactical uniforms. No stripes or insignia. On this ship, there were only two ranks—captain, and everybody else.

A technician tapped a keypad. The monitor lit up. Savage could see the relief on the tech’s face. The link worked. From eight thousand miles away, the image was crystal clear.

It was afternoon on the ship, but just after three that morning on Lake Michigan, which is where the feed was originating. The screen was split into four frames—a wide shot filling most of the space and three close-ups running across the bottom.

The master view showed the aft end of a powerboat idling in the center of the lake, twenty miles east of Sturgeon Bay—exactly at the coordinates that Savage had directed. Three figures sat on the stern, arms and legs bound. They were all connected by thick cables to a ten-foot length of naval anchor chain, thick and heavy. Two men stood over them.

The smaller images showed the faces of the prisoners in close-up. Two men, one woman, all in their midtwenties. Their faces were illuminated by LED lights from GoPro cameras mounted on their chests. All three captives were blinking in the glare. Their jaws were clenched tight. No emotion showing.

The technician looked at Savage, waiting for the order.

Savage leaned in to study the faces. He could sense the raw terror beneath the stoic expressions. Even with all their training, there was no real way to prepare for a moment like this. But they must have known it was coming. These three had been in charge of the mission to eliminate Doc Savage and Kira Sunlight—the only two people in the world that the captain considered a threat.

And the mission had failed.

As soon as the official news broke that no bodies were found in the wreckage, all three operatives would have realized that it was over for them, and that their bodies would never be found, either.

Savage gave a quick nod. The technician relayed the command through his throat mic. “Execute.”

One of the operatives on the tug released the anchor chain. It spilled out over the stern, dragging the two men and the woman over the edge and into the dark water. Savage leaned forward, almost coming out of his chair to follow the action.

The underwater cameras were working perfectly, streaming their images. The lights were bright on each of the faces as they spun down through the water. Twenty feet. Now forty. With the weight of the chain, Savage calculated that it would take less than a minute for all three to reach the bottom, the deepest point in the lake, 922 feet down.

He watched the transformation as they plummeted. Eyes wide now. Cheeks puffed out, heads thrashing from side to side. They had all been trained to hold their breath for long periods. That only made it more interesting.

But the pressure was too much. One by one, the mouths gaped open. Eyes rolled back. All three were now bleeding into their lungs, and their hearts were being crushed. They were inhaling water.

In less than four minutes, it was over. The woman had lasted the longest.

Savage sat back in his chair and smiled. A strange, unsettling smile. Since his school days, he had always enjoyed seeing underachievers punished.

And to him, drowning seemed like the worst possible way to go.

CHAPTER 20

I WAS DIVING with all six boys about a hundred yards offshore, and they were putting me to shame. After all my training with Kira, my lung capacity was probably twice what it used to be. So how could these froggy little kids be swimming rings around me?

They’d been coming back to our little speck of an island every day to fish. They only spoke a few words of English, and even Kira couldn’t decipher their native dialect. So we communicated with hand gestures and facial expressions. It worked fine. There wasn’t a lot to talk about.

The boys were always grinning and laughing—full of life. Not a care in the world. And they were expert fishermen. They hung nets from their outriggers, pulling up big hauls of grunts and snapper. Every afternoon, they grilled us a feast on the island, then took the rest of the catch home—somewhere over the horizon.

Today, the boys and I were spearfishing in deep water, about thirty feet down. Kira had stayed back to start the fire and crack open some coconuts.

All six kids were zipping around with netted sacks and long wooden sticks with spikes at the end. No snorkels or swim fins. Just natural ability. Occasionally, I’d see one of them shoot up to the surface to grab some air. But I’d swear a few of them had gills. Their sacks were starting to fill with speared catch. The boys all had dead aim. I never saw one of them miss a target.

This far out, the coral on the bottom was mixed with white sand and craggy rocks. I watched a fat moray eel squirm into a crevice as one of the boys swam past.

Lung-wise, I was just about at my limit. I pointed to the surface and got ready to push myself off the bottom. Just then, I saw one of the kids flinch. He started backpedaling with both feet, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He made a quick hand gesture to his buddies. They all swam toward me. A few of them dropped their sacks of speared fish on the way, trailing thin streams of red through the water.

I stared out into the shadows where the first boy had pointed.

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