Read Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) for Free Online

clapped her hands. “He’s gone back to being nonverbal. Happy, happy, joy, joy!”
    Bran opened his mouth to tell them to stop poking at each other like children. But before he could say anything, a dull pop, pop echoed across the water, barely discernible above the snap of the mainsail as it tugged against the boom basket when a particularly strong gust of briny-smelling wind pulled the fabric tight.
    The fine hairs on the back of Bran’s neck stood on end, his adrenaline spiked, and hundreds of missions to the ass-ends of the earth flashed through his brain. If he lived ten thousand lifetimes, he’d recognize that sound for exactly what it was…
    Automatic gunfire.
    Pop! Pop, pop, pop! Another barrage carried over the waves and slammed into his eardrums like percussion grenades.
    “ Maddy! ” He hadn’t realized he’d roared her name aloud until he saw Alex jump straight into Mason’s lap and turn to stare at him with wide, frightened eyes.
    “Huh? What?” she asked, then squawked when Mason hopped from his seat and bobbled her like a hot potato. Once Mason set her on her feet, she smacked him on the arm and glared. “What the heck was that all about?” she demanded. “You could’ve launched me overboard and—”
    But that’s all she managed before another unmistakable pop sounded over the water.
    “What is that?” she asked, pushing her glasses up the medicated bridge of her nose.
    “Gunfire,” Mason gritted .
    “ Gunfire? ” Alex’s face went so white it was hard to see where the zinc oxide stopped and her skin started. “Wh-why? There isn’t hunting on the Dry Tortugas, is there? I mean, what could anyone possibly hunt? There are only seabirds and turtles and…it’s dark. ”
    “That’s not the sound of a fuckin’ hunting rifle,” Mason grumbled between clenched teeth, lifting his eyes to Bran. The look on Mason’s face was one Bran knew all too well. It said one thing and one thing only: Trouble. The kind of trouble that separated men into two distinct categories: the quick and the dead.
    Without conscious thought, Bran turned the key and engaged the catamaran’s dual engines, adding their man-made horsepower to Mother Nature’s wind power. The butterflies in his stomach grew lead wings and fell like rocks.
    “Get the M4s!” he yelled, disgusted to hear his voice was nothing more than a reedy bark of sound, barely discernible over the roar of the engines and the hiss of the waves against the twin hulls as the sailboat picked up speed.
    It must have been loud enough. With a hitch of his chin, Mason disappeared inside the cabin.
    “What are M4s?” Alex called, blinking against the salt spray splashing over the deck as the catamaran plowed up one wave and down another.
    Bran didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His pounding heart was sitting in the back of his throat, strangling him. He once again lifted the field glasses, but he couldn’t see much of anything beyond the spray of white water kicked up by the outboard engine of a dinghy that had detached itself from the fishing boat and was now plowing toward the shore of Garden Key.
    When Mason reappeared on the deck—two minutes later? Ten? Bran couldn’t say; time was moving at a snail’s pace—their trusty weapons were strapped to his back.
    Now, it wasn’t unusual for a boat to come equipped with firearms. The open oceans were the last great frontier, and it behooved a smart captain and crew to always be able to defend themselves. What was unusual was for a boat to be carrying fully automatic, gas-powered, 5.56 mm NATO round-firing pieces of death-dealing machinery, the kind of weapons strictly off-limits to civilians unless you bought them out of the back of a van or, in Bran’s and Mason’s case, unless you appropriated them from good ol’ Uncle Sam—with the blessing of their CO, of course.
    “Oh! My! God! ” Alex screamed when she saw the rifles. “Where the heck did those come from?”
    Bran barely spared her a