Caleb’s voice died in his throat as he tried to give the order to cast off.

The face of one of the women chained to the pipe flashed through his mind. Her bare foot bled, her toes smashed from where she’d desperately kicked at the wall, trying to call for help. The corners of her eyes teared up.

Eyes the color of a morning sky just as dawn broke.

Caleb balled his hands into fists.

Dammit, I’m going to see those eyes every time I go to sleep. Like I could ever sleep again.

He looked back up at the cabin cruiser. The vocal wail and percussive thump-thump-thump of a foreign metal band floated down from Tomaz’s cabin window. Caleb considered once more.

The Nepos would probably gift-wrap and hand him over to avoid any conflict with the Tarantus family once they found out what happened.

If came to him in a flash.

What if they never found out what happened?

He put out a hand to stop Martín from untying the gangplank.

“We’re not casting off just yet. Gather the rest of our crew. Pick up the tool kit in the forward compartment and meet me on the bow deck.”

Martín gave him a puzzled look. “Boss?”

“Go. Hurry.”

Caleb turned and ran for his cabin. Once inside, he grabbed his light blue windbreaker jacket off a hanger in the closet and put it on. Then he knelt by the side of his bed and slid back a little wooden panel to reveal a numeric keypad. He tapped in a code and the gun safe he’d hidden where the box spring would’ve been under his mattress clicked open with a snick.

He pulled out the bolt-action rifle and checked the magazine. A quintet of .223 cartridges sat inside. Caleb replaced the magazine and then reached inside the gun safe again to take out a soft leatherette bag.

Unzipping the bag, he took out the pair of grenades that the aftermarket military parts dealer had given him as a twisted ‘thank you’. They gleamed with an evil light. He stuck the two explosive weapons into the jacket’s inside pocket and then headed outside.

His crew waited for him on the deck. Martín cradled a tool box taken from the forward compartment in his arms. Joaquín held the four-foot long crowbar they used to reach the furthest compartments inside the ship. Bastian leaned up against the rail, looking bored.

“All right, listen up,” Caleb said, without preamble. “Tomaz has kidnapped a bunch of women and chained them up in one of his forward cabins. We have a chance to save them without triggering too much of a fight, but only if we move now.”

“Too much of a fight?” Martín said, with a gasp. “You really want to do get up in someone else’s business? That’s estúpido, Boss.”

“We do this right, no one will be the wiser. Tomaz is upstairs, drunk and high as hell. I’ll take care of him. The rest of the crew’s all in the engine room, trying to fix whatever they let break.” Caleb pointed to Joaquín’s crowbar. “If they’re not in there already, just shove ‘em inside and then jam the door with that.”

“This is insane!” Bastian said, his voice quickly rising to a shout. “I’m not going to be part of this, I didn’t sign on to start a war between the familias!”

Whip-fast, Caleb raised the Remington, reversed it, and slammed the steel butt into Bastian’s face. The man’s nose broke with the snap of ice dropped into a hot drink. He slumped to the deck without so much as a groan.

Caleb slung the rifle over his shoulder. He reached down, grabbed the man’s body, and pitched it over the side and into the unforgiving maw of the sea. Bastian bobbed face-down in the water without moving.

“Either of you want to join him?” Caleb asked quietly.

Martín and Joaquín quickly shook their heads.

“Come on, then.”

Caleb led the way back aboard the Rabszolga. He slid open the side door and found himself in the main corridor once more. The sound of men arguing came from the aft compartment, where the door to the engine room lay ajar.

He motioned to his two crewmen, who poked their heads inside timidly. He jabbed a finger at them, then at the door aft. They nodded.

Caleb moved forward, taking the rifle in hand once more as he did so. Tomaz’s music grew deafening as he drew abreast of the rusty door that he’d opened earlier.

Then he heard something, just barely audible over the din.

A woman’s muffled, anguished squeal.

Quietly as possible, he opened the door again.

The crewman he’d spoken to before was there, facing away from him. The man had his mouth pressed against the first woman’s neck, licking or sucking at it. Chained as she was, she couldn’t move much to get away from him. She screamed through the silvery tape covering her mouth.

Anger boiled up inside Caleb as if someone had lit a gas torch in his gut.

He brought the rifle up.

“Hey. Hey, idióta.”

The man jumped as if stung. He whirled about, eyes wide as he realized who spoke to him.

“You! You trying to rob our Kapitány!”

“No, just repossessing something he shouldn’t have taken in the first place. Now, move over there.”

Tomaz’s crewman screwed up his face as if he didn’t understand.

“I said move,” Caleb repeated. He motioned with the long barrel. “Over there.”

Suddenly, the man lunged forward in a desperate attempt to grab the rifle. Caleb’s heart skipped a beat. He pulled the Remington’s trigger a fraction of a second before the man’s hand grabbed the weapon.

The rifle’s report sounded like a thundercrack in the small room. The .223 round drilled through the crewman’s forehead and blew out the back of his head. Then it shattered the porthole window before exiting the cabin.

Iron smells of blood filled the room, as did the strangled, duct-taped sound of the women’s screams. A fine red mist covered Caleb’s forearms. He put it out of mind as he worked the rifle’s bolt action. The spent cartridge case landed on the bare floor with a ting.

Shouting echoed down the hallway from the aft compartment. Martín and Joaquín tumbled backwards as two more of the Rabszolga’s crewmen shoved their way out of the engine room. The first, a burly man covered in tattooed skulls, knocked Joaquín down, put his knee in his stomach, and began beating him.

Caleb knelt and brought the rifle up. Martín spotted his captain, saw the black maw of the rifle’s muzzle. He immediately dropped to the floor.

A second squeeze of the trigger. The burly man jerked back. He fell over, a red circle painted in the center of his chest. The final crewman let out a curse, turned, and ran.

Caleb worked the bolt. Squeezed the trigger. Dropped him before he reached the door to the aft deck.

Tomaz’s boozy voice called from upstairs.

“Próbálok, aludni!”

Heart pounding in his chest, Caleb took the stairs two at a time. The door to Tomaz’s cabin still lay wide open, the music continuing to pound out a raucous beat that made his eardrums throb.

Don’t let him come out, don’t let him come out, Caleb pleaded to himself. He stopped just outside Tomaz’s cabin and set the rifle down. He took out a grenade with a trembling hand.

A hail of pistol fire erupted from inside the room. Bullets ricocheted off the interior bulkheads with horrific twangs of metal on metal. One round punched through the wall less than an inch from Caleb’s shoulder.

“You want me, Kalchak?” Tomaz slurred drunkenly. “You come get some! Pokolba veled!

Caleb didn’t answer. He pulled the pin on the grenade, held it a second, and threw it into the cabin. Then he retreated down a couple of steps and covered his ears.

A bang! followed by a cry of pain.

He snatched up his firearm and charged into the cabin, rifle held at the ready.

It wasn’t necessary.

Tomaz lay bleeding out on the floor, the remains of one leg gushing crimson. Shrapnel from the grenade had shattered or pierced anything that hadn’t already been broken. Caseteja White lay scattered like baby talcum on the cabin’s cheap carpet.

A spent pistol lay nearby, its empty magazine ejected. Tomaz looked up bleary surprise at Caleb.

“Son…of a…bitch,” he remarked. “I thought it was Kalchak…come to stab me in back. But you…you solved my riddle.”

“Yeah, I did,” Caleb said. “I couldn’t leave here after I figured it out. After I saw what I did.”

“You are so…what is word? Sentimental.” Tomaz practically spat out the word. “That will get you killed...”

“I’ll take the risk,” Caleb replied.

Tomaz blinked. His eyes rolled back as his last breath wheezed out.

Caleb’s shoes squished in the dead man’s blood as he knelt by Tomaz’s body, searching the pockets. He found a key ring and headed downstairs. His two crewmen waited for him at the base of the stairs. Joaquín rubbed his rapidly swelling jaw and winced.

“You all right?” Caleb asked.

Joaquín shrugged. “Had worse from a bouncer in Boca.”

“Any more of this boat’s crew in the engine room?”

Martín shook his head. “You got the last of ‘em.”

“Good. Take this.” Caleb shoved the keyring into the man’s hands and pointed to the rusty door. “There’s six women chained up in there. Free them, head them over to the Second Chance. Then get our inboard engine up and running. We need to get moving as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, Boss. What are you–”

“I’m going to sink this tin can.”

He left his men to handle their tasks while he moved aft down the corridor. He had to step over the lifeless body of the burly crewman he’d shot before entering the engine compartment. The large room normally throbbed with the sound of the ship’s beating heart, but this one now lay silent.

Caleb walked past where the Rabszolga’s crew had torn open one of the gear boxes. Their attempted fix seemed to involve replacing belts and slathering grease everywhere. He found what he was looking for nearby.

He found the raw water intake used to cool the engine. The head valve drew water into the engine’s coolant jacket through a fitting called a seacock. On military vessels, these could be opened to quickly scuttle a ship.

A civilian ship would need a little more help to complete the same process.

Caleb jammed the grenade into the bend of the head valve and pulled the pin. He sprinted for the compartment’s door and then down the hallway. A bang! was followed by the gurgling sound of cascading water.

Martín removed the gangway as he crossed over. The other ties to the cruiser had already been removed. Caleb gave the order to set course due west and headed down into his yacht’s main cabin.

The women, despite their disheveled state, had ransacked the kitchen for whatever food and drink they could find. What was left in his larder consisted of beer, or snack foods out of boxes and plastic bags.

It pained him more than he cared to admit when they looked up in fear as he entered the room. He heard hurried whispers in accents similar to Tomaz’s between them.

“Do any of you speak English?” he asked.

The brunette that had bloodied her foot signaling for help put down the bag of goldfish crackers she’d been devouring. She nodded.

“I do. A little.” She gave him a wary look. “Are we belonging to you, now?”

Caleb shook his head. “No. Once we get to shore, you are free.”

The brunette passed this information on to the others. Two broke down in tears, while the others began chattering excitedly. She turned back to Caleb, eyes shining once more.

“You are good man. Who are you? I am–”

“No,” Caleb said firmly. “No names. Once I drop you off, you go find help. Tell them you escaped from a ship. I never existed. Do you understand? You never saw me.”

The woman looked puzzled at that, but she finally nodded.

Caleb went back up to the helm and stood next to Martín. They didn’t speak for a long time, not until a burbling sploosh in the distance behind them announced the Rabszolga slipping beneath the surface and starting her plunge into the depths.

“I don’t know how this is going to play with our employers, Boss,” Martín said. “If they ask me, I don’t dare lie about–”

“No, I don’t blame you,” Caleb said. “I know what they do to beat the truth out of people. Just…don’t say anything. I told the women we’d free them, but we never existed. I’ll let the Nepomucenos know that I made the delivery, and that the entire crew – Tomaz especially – were stoned or coked out of their minds before I left.”

“Not too far off the truth there.”

“With luck, they won’t look too far into it. Even the Tarantus family might figure those women overpowered a drugged-up crew and made it to shore on the Rabszolga’s life raft.”

“Might. Yeah.” Martín said skeptically.

The sun began to slide down towards the western horizon, making them squint as the coastline appeared. Caleb guided them to a spot north of Boca Raton, where a secluded, private dock jutted out into the water. Steamy mangrove swamps spread out from either side, hiding the wooden structure from all but the most eagle-eyed observers.

They maneuvered their ship up close. Joaquín jumped over as they did so, line in hand, and began fastening the vessel to the first dockside cleat. He straightened up to catch a second line, then froze.

He looked over to Caleb, his face ashen with fright.

“Boss! Boss!” he called, trying to keep his voice down. “Look over there! What do we do?”

Both Caleb and Martín glanced towards the base of the dock.

Caleb’s heart sank, while Martín whispered a heartfelt Madre Dios.

Deacon Love strolled down the dock towards them. The man’s comb-over and loud Hawaiian shirt looked just as comical as ever. But his face was a stony mask. The Deacon’s humorless eyes scanned the Second Chance, missing nothing.

“Good to see you, Sorrel Amor,” Caleb said, with a welcoming smile. “What brings you all the way out here?”

“Cut the act, water rat,” Sorrel snapped. He jabbed a finger at the yacht, then directly at Caleb. “I’ve got a van ready for those six mujeres you swiped from Tomaz Tarantus. And I have a car waiting for just us. You have a lot to answer for.”