He looked up and saw a ship security man with a drawn pistol running in his direction, and he flattened himself against the wall, playing the frightened tourist. The man didn’t seem interested in him, but kept running.
As he passed, Michaels stuck his foot out. The guy tripped, sailed a good eight or ten feet, and came down on his face, screaming as he fell.
Michaels ran up behind the downed man and as he tried to stand, he kicked him in the head. The guy collapsed.
Score one for the good guys.
Santos was about to open the door of the room where the Cuban maid had seen a woman come in when his com buzzed stridently, the emergency pulse, long and loud rings.
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“What?”
“Sir, we have some kind of trouble belowdecks! There’s a-aaahhh!”
“What?! What?!”
Santos heard the sound of somebody vomiting noisily.
He snapped the com shut. The woman? Or her friends? Whatever, it was serious. He headed toward the stairs. He’d better see what was going on.
He rounded a corner in the corridor, and saw two men in Hawaiian shirts heading away from him. They were dressed as tourists, but they wore com headsets and carried submachine guns. He could see what looked like body armor under their wet shirts.
Not his people.
He pulled back out of sight. Grabbed his com, triggered the emergency caller.
This time, there was no answer. A minute ago, it was working fine.
Either his people were too busy to answer, which was not likely, or the ship’s communication system had been shut down. Neither was good for him.
He knew what had happened. The spy had arranged to get her people on board. Maybe they had been here for hours, days. The place was done. If he hung around, he was going to be done, too.
It was time to leave this party.
If he could get to the launch, he could escape. The cigarette boat had a couple hundred miles of range, easy. In the storm, nobody would see him, and even if they had a ship with radar, they’d never catch him in it. It would beat him half to death in this kind of weather, but the cigarette could outrun anything afloat in these waters. Florida had a long and unprotected-east coast. He would find a secluded spot. Once he was ashore, he would be safe.
Yes. He needed to go. Now.
But as he cut up and through the gym, he came across
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I another tourist with a headset. Fortunately, this one wasn’t pudding a gun.
“You’re Santos,” the man said.
-“That’s right. And who are you?”
“I’m a federal agent. You’re under arrest. Sit down and put your hands on top of your head.”
Santos laughed.
Chance realized when the com system shut down that something grave had happened. She saw a stranger run I past, men with guns, and she knew instantly that the ship was under assault.
Her people weren’t prepared for that, not a full-out military attack. They could dump the computer drives, but the security had not been designed to hold out against SEAL or Special Forces teams once they actually got onto the ship-mat had never been in the cards.
Now, it would come down to lawyers and money. CyberNation would take care of her. She had seen to that. But her insurance to that end might be a liability if it fell into the wrong hands. Best she attend to that;, right now-
38
Michaels stared at the man. The ship’s gym was a fair- sized room with wall-to-wall mirrors and a thick carpet, exercise machines around the perimeter and mostly open in the center. Santos circled around a treadmill and leaped into a dive at the floor, hit on his hands, and did a front handspring directly toward him.
Michaels had never seen anything like this-!
Despite his training to go in when attacked, however, Michaels sectored off to his right, and the heel missed his nose by an inch. A good move, it turned out: If he’d gone in, he would have eaten it.
What the hell was this? Some kind of demented gymnastics?
The black man landed on his feet, then twirled around into a crouch facing Michaels. He danced from side to side, raising and lowering himself from almost upright into a full squat and back as if he were some kind of a crazed jack-inthe-box.
Reflections of Santos matched him in the floor-to- ceiling mirrors.
y:
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This was surreal, like something out of a Brace Lee I movie.
Santos had beaten a man to death, according to Jay, so I let’s not forget, he is dangerous.
Michaels kept himself angled at forty-five degrees, left foot forward, one hand covering high-line the other low- line, not moving.
“What kind of crooked stance is that?” Santos asked, grinning. “Not karate, not jujitsu. Not, for sure, Capo- eira.”
Capoeira? That rang a bell. It was the South American fighting style the African slaves either created or brought with them from the Old Continent to the New World. Acrobatic stuff, but that was pretty much all he knew about it. He had heard Toni talk about it. That would fit. Santos was from Brazil.
“Welcome to O-Jogo, homem branco!” The man leaped up and did a back flip, landed easily, one foot hitting before the other, one-two! He laughed.
Michaels felt another moment of panic. Get a grip here!^
Santos shuffled to Michaels’s right, almost as if dancing to some unheard tune.
Michaels didn’t move. Let him dance. He wasn’t doing any damage out there.
: Santos jinked in, just at the edge of kicking range, then jumped back, trying to draw the attack.
Michaels held his ground.
The black man smiled. “You know something, don’t you, Mr. White Man Federal Agent? But what is it, White? How well does it work?”
“Come and find out.”
“Oh, yes, I will.”
Santos shuffled the other way, stepped in, and feinted a high kick. He was too far away to connect, and outside Michaels’s range. Michaels stayed where he was.
“You waiting for me to make a mistake?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Santos laughed. Then he twirled and whirled and
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dropped, spun into a kind of crabbed cartwheel, and somehow ate up the space between them. His kick was low, and while Michaels dropped his stance, turned, and managed to get a sweeping block down, the kick was too powerful to do more than slightly deflect it. It glanced off his thigh instead of hitting it square on, but it still hurt even in passing.
Michaels should have blocked it, but it wasn’t major. The goal here was not so much to win as it was to not- lose. The winner was the guy who got to go home, under his own steam, and well enough to be able to hug his family.
Santos shifted back and forth from foot to foot, waving his arms in a pattern that was probably supposed to be hypnotic. “Not bad for an old man,” he said. “What you call this, Bronco?”
Branco. Must mean “white.” “Does it matter?”
“Just curious. Always lookin’ to educate myself more.”
“I’ll tell you all about it after we’re done. Maybe you can find a teacher in prison.”
Santos laughed, a deep belly rumble. “That’s funny. You expectin’ to be around after we’re done, me hi jail? No way. Tell me now.”
“I don’t think so,” Michaels said. He pivoted to follow Santos as he circled, switching his hands from high to low, still in the open-gate stance.
“Good economy,” Santos said, nodding. “No wasted motions. Maybe I let you live so you can tell me about this. Chinese, maybe? Burmese? Why don’t I know it?”
“You need to get out more. Lots of things you don’t know. We have the ship.”
“Maybe. But you don’t have Santos.”
Michaels took a deep breath. He let half of it out. “Relax, Alex,” he said quietly to himself.
The days he’d practiced the mental exercise Toni had showed him paid off. He dropped lower, with just enough tension to stay upright. His breathing deepened, and he
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felt much looser. Considering his current situation, this was more than passing extraordinary.
Santos raised an eyebrow. “What did you just do there, Mr. Federal Agent?”
Michaels smiled. “Bring your pretty little dance closer and see.” It was, Toni had always taught him, good silat to bait an opponent. Maybe it would make him angry enough to lose control, do something stupid. Probably not this guy, who looked as if he’d been carved out of stone and was just as impervious to trash-talk as he would be a hammer, but it didn’t hurt to try.
“I will, don’t you worry. But we have time, yes? No reason to rush. We might make the game last a while.”
Santos feinted a kick and punch, then spun and dropped, put his hands down on the floor, and shot out a mule kick with his left foot, low, aimed for Michaels’s knee-