Crystal Blue (Buck Reilly Adventure Series Book 3) by John Cunningham (novels for beginners txt) 📕

BOOM-BOOM AND DIEGO TIED the dinghy off and scrambled aboard. A shot sounded from below. Diego raised the Kimber and fired a round inside the boat.

Shit!

More alarms sounded.

Boom-Boom looked up at me— the crazy son-of-a-bitch was smiling!

“Find the dude!” he said.

He then lit his lighter and tossed it back into the dinghy.

WHOOSH!

A fireball blew me back on my ass.

I got to my feet and ran toward the salon door, which was tinted so dark I couldn’t see who or what was on the other side. I glanced at the gun still in my hand. Last thing I wanted to do was shoot someone.

The salon door opened automatically when I approached it. There was nothing inside but a few muted lights which reflected off of chrome-framed contemporary furniture, glass tables, chandeliers—

A door opened ahead at the top of a stair, and four men dressed in black and carrying guns ran out. They hustled down the steps without even looking my way. I swallowed to force my heart down out of my throat. There was shouting below but no more shots.

I entered the hallway and peeked around the corner where the men had come from—and found yet another hallway. Damn this boat was big!

There were only kitchen and food storage facilities in this corridor, so I continued down and turned toward the outside of the ship. In that hall were six doors, one after the other. I tried the first one—unlocked, so I pushed it open and pointed the gun inside. It was a cabin with four bunks, all empty. I repeated the same maneuver in the next three rooms with the same result. The fact that I’d found four rooms with twenty empty bunks told me what we were up against.

Two doors left. I opened the next one—a crewman inside was reaching for the handle. In the second it took him to grab at his shoulder holster I dove into him and rammed his body hard against the wall.

“Ooph!”

He kneed me in my quadriceps—just missed my balls.

His elbow swung up. Stars erupted when he connected to my nose. The pain squeezed a few tears out of me. He squirmed and I crunched him into the wall again, then pounded him with uppercuts. He deflected them. I caught his chin—his legs buckled.

A left cross finished him. I caught him so his body didn’t make a thud on the teak floor.

My breath was ragged, but with alarms and gunfire sounding I didn’t bother to tie him up. I glanced both ways down the hall, then hurried to the last door.

Please be the one!

I jiggled the handle—locked. A muffled noise came from inside. I held my ear to the door, hoping I might be able to hear something above the sirens—

“What the hell’s going on?” a voice said.

“Are you John Thedford?”

I pressed my ear up against the door again.

“Yes, it’s me!”

I stepped back, kicked the door hard, and it flew open. I fell inside.

Thedford—I recognized him from the photos—was handcuffed to a railing with his hand wrapped in gauze.

“I’m Buck Reilly, I’ve come to get you out of here.”

“Buck who?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I took hold of the metal railing the handcuffs were attached to and pulled. “I’m a charter pilot hired by your wife.”

He was pale and his leading man features were a bit worn, but his eyes were alert.

“Some charter pilot.”

I jumped to the other side of the railing and tried to leverage it at another angle—nothing!

“I’ve tried everything to pry that—”

“Cover your face!” I said.

He leaned back as I pointed the machine pistol toward the bolts where the rail was attached to the wall. I squeezed the trigger and the gun jumped in my hand to the sound of an ear-shattering crack.

Wood and metal flew in all directions as the burst of lead splintered the wall and fitting that secured the railing. It came free and John Thedford wasted no time jumping up and sliding the handcuff over the now loose end.

“Son of a bitch!” he said. “I thought I was a goner.”

“Let’s go!”

I looked down the hall in both directions and saw nothing. The alarm was deafening. I imagined twenty-plus men surrounding Boom-Boom and Diego—

“How many police are here? You have a helicopter or boat?”

I paused. What was I going to tell him? My mind processed options like a high-speed slot machine, but every thought came up lemons and bananas.

“Stop right there!”

We spun around to find Viktor Galey behind us. He held a large automatic pistol pointed our way. I lifted the machinegun toward him.

“Viktor?” John Thedford said.

“Buck Reilly,” he said. “You’ve officially become a pain in my ass.”

“Viktor—what the fuck’s going on?” Thedford’s face bunched first in confusion, then anger.

“Galey’s a Russian mobster,” I said. “Your vision for an adoption revolution threatens his plans to manipulate the supply and demand of infants—”

“You had them cut my finger off?”

“Better let us go,” I said. “We’re not alone and the authorities are on their way.”

He turned the gun toward Thedford’s chest.

“I heard you were prone to exaggeration, Reilly. Drop the gun and go into the next room there,” Galey said.

I lowered my weapon. “Are you familiar with Diego Francis?”

He paused. “Local arms conduit into Mexico and South America. Now out of business and on the run for his pathetic life. What about him?”

“He happens to be below deck.”

Galey eyes widened, if only for a moment.

“He’s got enough explosives to sink this tub.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“How many kids would you have to peddle to cover the cost of this yacht?” I said. “Worthwhile trade?”

He stared at me. His radio crackled. Indecipherable words were spoken. I hoped it wasn’t a report that the two men had been captured, or worse, killed.

His lips pursed and he let loose a torrent of verbal ass-kicking into the radio.

Russian, another language I didn’t speak. But I was fluent in body language, and when a bead of sweat ran down his temple, I felt a surge of adrenalin.

Then I realized he must have demanded backup.

A gunshot sounded. Galey whipped the