Santiago Moncada was sure that he was too wound up to rest, but it was a long Aight and after a few hours of satisfied anticipation he turned to more practical matters. He wrote emails—directions to his lawyers, mostly, but he also sent personal notes to some of Armando’s more powerful contacts, acting the dutiful, horrified son. He worked on the eulogy he planned to deliver next week, surprised at how easily the words came—praise for the man his father had been, sorrow that his life had been taken, a firm commitment to continue Armando’s philanthropy work… which would require keeping the Moncada fortune intact, of course, not that he’d include that sentiment. He’d make a big donation to the Church in his father’s name, an amount that would silence the scolds. Not that any of it really mattered. Now that his birthright was at hand, he could afford to lose a few million here or there.
The long night, the drone of the engines, and a double whiskey finally slipped him into a light doze, his dreams painted gold. The plane carried them east and south through the empty hours, dawn breaking early and light filling the cabin, easing him into the day of his triumph. They were just south of Indonesia’s mainland and headed into the Banda Sea, where the pirates had hidden his gold. Moncada stared out at the deep, beautiful blue water, the sun reAecting from its surface. The pilot announced they’d be starting the descent soon, to offload their cargo.
Moncada let his full heart swell in his chest, breathing deeply, looking around his command center. Through the open door to the cabin behind theirs, the men of Alvaro’s team were scattered here and there, sleeping, scrolling on various devices. Ms. Braddock and her men were awake, Braddock watching one of the console screens.
Just as he marked her absence, Chloe Frazer came in from the corridor to the cockpit, leaning against the door frame. She looked tired, dark smudges under her eyes. “Sir, we’re five minutes out.”
Moncada felt his pleasure rise impossibly higher. He reached into the bag next to his seat and took out a very old bottle, rounded with a narrow throat, and a single glass. The Moncada seal was stamped on a red wax medallion across the label of the bottle. He carried them to the conference table.
“Al vencedor, los despojos!” he called, and poured himself a finger of the vermut, made with grapes from a Moncada vineyard. What could be more appropriate, than for him to toast a new golden age for their House with the rewards of the past?
“To the victor, the spoils,” he added in English, just so he could say it again.
He sat on the step to the lower part of the cabin and sipped the clear caramel-colored alcohol, relishing the sharp Aavor. “My grandfather used to make this vermut every winter. Who wants a taste?”
The handful of hired soldiers who’d come in looked nervous to be asked, not one of them stepping forward.
“Don’t be shy,” Moncada encouraged, holding out the bottle. “We’re a crew, are we not? All in this together!”
Always good to remind men with weapons that they’d be very well compensated for their efforts on his behalf. He wanted them firmly on his side.
Chloe reached up, accepted the bottle, and took a healthy swig. She passed it to one of the mercenaries, who followed suit, and then they were all on crowding forward, eager to toast his victory.
* * *
Braddock had hardly slept, coming up with ideas about her next steps and then discarding them. The closer they got to Indonesia, to Demar, the more she thought of how ridiculous Moncada’s claim to the gold was. The mercs were along to protect him from whoever got greedy, once the treasure was in view… but now they all knew where it was, didn’t they?
Moncada could see the men warming to him, nodding their heads at the taste of fine alcohol, and he started his dogged birthright refrain in a musing, expansive tone, like he was giving a sermon.
“Five hundred years ago, my family was betrayed. A small band of explorers found the world’s biggest fortune, and they hid it. Kept it all for themselves.”
There were a few shaking heads, scowls of disapproval; the mercs were eating it up. The bottle landed in front of Braddock, who wasn’t a big drinker.
If I have to listen to one second more of his bullshit, I’m entitled. She took a huge swallow, the brandy-spiked wine burning a trail down her throat. She felt slapped awake.
“For centuries, people searched for it,” Moncada went on, “all in vain. It was left to me to recover my family’s gold. And I’ll let you in on another secret… Nobody thought I could do it. Certainly not my father.”
He finished his drink and saw that Braddock was holding the bottle. He motioned at her with his empty glass, like she was a barmaid, and really, that was when she decided her next step. After all she’d done for him, to be summoned like a dog. He’d never seen her as anything else.
She carried the vermouth to the raised platform where Moncada sat, poured him a drink, then continued up the steps. She walked around the table, switching the bottle to her left hand so she could palm her karambit. She walked back toward the steps, gaze fixed on Moncada’s broad back, leaning forward to carry on with his story, drink in hand.
“Today is the day I restore the Moncada fortune, bring honor back to my House, and earn my place in—”
Braddock hooked the polished blade to his throat and slid it across, deep enough to slice his larynx—effectively, finally shutting him up. Blood sheeted from Moncada’s throat, down his expensive shirt.
He looked up at her, confused, before the pain hit. He grabbed his gushing throat, hands shaking. He crumpled to the Aoor, confusion turning to rage in his shocked, wide eyes.
Braddock stared down at the dying man. “Daddy was right. You don’t have what it takes. The House of Moncada dies with you.”
She took the room’s temperature in a glance as she crouched down. The mercs were stunned, watching the scene play out like a movie, but not one of them moved. Scotty and Hugo had tabs on them, giving her an extra moment to enjoy Moncada’s impotent fury, his wild, rolling eyes, the diminishing spurts from his cleanly cut throat. A pool of blood widened and spread across the thrumming Aoor, framing his upper body in glistening red.
“I wanted you to understand that before you left us,” she added, and though she wanted to savor it longer, she needed to take command. Power abhorred a vacuum. She slashed again, low on the jugular. It was over before she stood up, his mouth falling open, the light fading from his sightless eyes.
Santiago Moncada was dead.
Braddock raised the vermouth over his corpse and drank deeply. She faced the mercs. All hard men, displaying varied degrees of dismay and dawning comprehension. A couple of them were working themselves up to do something dumb, her old buddy Juan Alvaro chief among them. Moncada was his paycheck.
“If any of you want to cry over him, go ahead,” she said, firmly. “The rest of you can split the gold with me. Even shares for everyone.”
That calmed them down, fast. Juan’s shoulders relaxed, and Braddock knew she had them. She meant it, too. She couldn’t transport that kind of bulk without help… and if a few of them died along the way, more for the rest of them.
“On boord wi’ ’at,” Scotty said. “Alwees bin a bit ay a union man, m’self.”
Didn’t matter if the mercs understood his thick brogue, they caught the tone—affirmative, agreeable, pleased. A man had backed her up. She saw furtive nods exchanged.
“Where’s Chloe?” Braddock asked, ready to claim the gold keys—they might still be necessary—but the girl had slipped out of the cabin. Hiding, maybe, trying to digest that her golden ticket had been punched.
She motioned to the eager mercs who promptly headed out, unslinging their riAes. Braddock wiped her knife and snapped it back into the sheath on her thigh, casting one last, disdainful look at Santiago Moncada before following. She heard and felt the change in the cabin’s pressure as the cargo hold dropped open below and aft, a low roar vibrating the airframe. They were still too high to start unloading—it seemed that one of the mercs had jumped the gun—but the plane’s descent remained steady enough. There were only two men down there prepping the cargo, they’d need more hands before they reached the drop zone… but retrieving those keys was her first order of business. Killing Chloe Frazer to get them would be her pleasure.
* * *
As soon as she saw Jo Braddock walk behind the table, Chloe’s instincts kicked in, adrenaline dumping into her bloodstream.
She’s not left-handed, why is she carrying the bottle with her left hand?
Chloe backed out of the group in a series of casual poses, lifting her small, heavy shoulder bag as she passed her seat, easing toward the open passenger cabin.
Braddock’s attack was so graceful it looked like a dance move, her muscular arm moving smoothly in front of Moncada’s throat. The second Chloe saw red, she turned and got out. The cargo hold was big and packed with boxes, plenty of places to hide.
She hit the door to the back and was through, into the roaring hold.
The ramp was open at the end of the long space, a brilliant rectangle of blue sky and rushing air. A couple of mercs were up by the opening, unhooking lines of crates from the netted walls, but they wouldn’t see her if she kept low and didn’t call attention to herself. They prepped pallets of water and boxes of tools, everything they needed to find Elcano’s stash. The whole operation had just been taken over by a murderous bitch who hated her.
Good times, Chloe thought, running through her options as she worked her way past Moncada’s car, parked facing the open ramp, strapped down with nylon belts. Too bad driving away wasn’t on the list. It would be nice to be armed, but her Walther was usefully packed into a waterproof duffel with her clothes, strapped to one of the crates by the ramp. She hadn’t expected to need it on the way, and she’d have to stand up like a target to get to it, so that was a last resort. She could try for one of the mercs’ weapons, lord knew they were strapped, but there was about to be a bunch of them roaming the hold, looking for her. Even if she caught one alone, she didn’t like her one-on-one chances against any of these bogans. And dead set, even if she had a gun, she’d have to kill at least Braddock and her team, or they’d keep trying to kill her. She was a very good shot, but so were they and there were more of them.
So, no weapon yet, what else? She moved to the south wall, where the bulldozer was strapped down. She could hide, hope Braddock didn’t investigate every corner. She could try to negotiate for her life, haha; with what? Easiest to kill her and take the gold crosses. Braddock would prefer that, anyway.
I could take a parachute and jump. The safest choice at the moment, but then she’d be sitting in the ocean, hoping she could find an island to swim to before she died of thirst or exposure.
And even if you get away, what then? She’ll have the gold, you’ll never even see it.
None of the options struck her right, but the situation was Auid, and looking for a hiding place gave her time to think it over. The hold was essentially a single huge room, but there were stacks of pallets and boxes throughout hooked to rails, draped netting creating shadowy aisles of cargo to either side. Many of the individual crates themselves were chuted, if she could just wriggle into one of them, get dropped to Demar—
Behind her, multiple heavy bootsteps clattered across the deck.
* * *
Nate nearly cried with relief when they heard the plane’s ramp open. He’d gone past uncomfortable and into numb misery hours ago.
“Okay,” Sully said, and Nate’s tingling fingers fumbled for the release.
The narrow lid cracked open, filling the tiny trunk with sweet, cool air that didn’t smell like Sully. Nate pressed his eye to the crack, but couldn’t see—
Oops. A handful of mercs marched past the car, holding riAes. Nate waited until they were gone and gently pushed the trunk open. He grabbed the frame and unfolded himself out into a crouch, limbs howling from having been locked in place for so long. Ahead of them, between the Gullwing and the open ramp, guys with guns were spreading out through the dim hold. Getting the crates ready, presumably; that’s why Sully had said they had to wait for the ramp to open, so they’d have a cleaner run at the map.
So why do they have their weapons out?
“That was the longest ten hours of my life,” he whispered, as Sully crawled out. “You really have no concept of personal space, do you?”
“You want to get caught?” Sully whispered, shaking blood into his limbs. “Keep talking. C’mon, time to move.”
He pointed up at a door leading to the cabins ahead, closer to the cockpit. Sully’s plan, such as it was, was to steal the map back and then hide until they landed. They’d sneak off and hire a speed boat to take them to the gold. Sully knew a guy who knew a guy in Papua New Guinea. Without having to pack up soldiers and equipment, they could get to the hiding place before Moncada’s team, assuming there was some further clue about the exact location on the map—Nate hadn’t had time to study it before Chloe had clocked him.
Chloe. He and Sully hadn’t talked about her—they’d kept talking to a minimum, in the sweaty, stiAing trunk—but Nate was half-hoping they might run across her, talk her into reconsidering. Or at the very least that she wouldn’t shoot them… yeah, maybe it was better to avoid a meeting.
Nate followed Sully through the door and they came out at the back of a row of seats. An empty cabin of belted seats with some kind of overbuilt room ahead of it, like a villain’s command center in a movie, full of consoles and screens.
They hurried ahead. There was a raised platform at the front of the new room, and on the table that overlooked all the computer stuff was the map, half curled back into the shape it had held for centuries.
Talk about luck—
Nate saw the body sprawled in front of the table and stopped walking. Sully hurried on, up the steps to the platform, and grabbed the map. He rolled it up, tucking it into its carrier, a rigid black plastic tube with a carrying strap. Nate just stared at the corpse. Santiago Moncada, megalomaniacal billionaire, his throat cut deep in a couple of places. The smooth-talking aristocrat lay in a thick puddle of his own blood and stared at the ceiling with filmed, blind eyes. His luck had run out.
“Hard to find a good partner in this game,” Nate said.
Sully was already walking back through the cabin. “Maybe now you’ll start to appreciate me more.”
The steady roar of the plane’s engines changed, deepening, and Nate’s ears popped.
“We’re descending. Must be getting close to the drop zone,” Sully said. “We should find some parachutes.”
“Parachutes?” Nate’s voice cracked. What happened to hiding until we land?
“You know a better way to jump off a plane?” Sully asked, clearly rhetorically as he crouched back into the hold.
I don’t want to go skydiving! They didn’t know how close they were to anything, they could splash down mid-ocean or end up stranded on one of a thousand bare rocks—
—and what about Chloe? If she’d been in on Moncada’s death, that was one thing, but…
But then who were those guys looking for, with their guns out?
Sully was already out of earshot, and a last look at Moncada’s dead, staring face reset Nate’s priorities. He hated the new plan, hated not knowing Chloe’s situation, but he didn’t want to end up dead. From that viewpoint, picking seaweed off a rock with Sully was miles better than hanging out up here.