Drone

A half mile away, Udi and Pearce kept discreet watch from a fishing boat they’d rented. They pretended to be sport fishing mako sharks, which were running hot this time of year, but their eyes were fixed on the surveillance gear they’d rigged to keep tabs on both the Castillos and the two women on their team. A couple of big rods and reels were rammed into their holders in the back of the boat, and thick steel shark lines trailed in the water behind them. Pearce sat strapped in the fighting chair holding another rod, the butt end jammed into the gimbal between his feet. Udi was in the cabin, the boat cruising slowly on autopilot. Pearce chummed the water behind the slow-moving boat every now and then, mostly to keep a half dozen gulls circling overhead.

“Your wife can really ski, Udi.”

“Base jumping, parasailing. She does it all. Well, except cook.”

“Next pass, Udi.”

“Roger that.”

Stella brought the ski boat around for another run. The big inboard engine whined even louder as she pushed the needle on the tach into the red zone. Tamar leaned deep into the curves she was cutting in broad swathes through the ocean. They pushed past the Castillo yacht and out into the blue water, getting ready for another turn.

Suddenly, the ski boat’s inboard motor sputtered, then cut out, and the high-pitched whine disappeared. The silence was startling.

The ski boat’s bow had ridden high like a haughty stallion when the engine roared; now it sagged into the water, spent. Tamar had tossed the rope aside as soon as the engine died. She glided to a graceful halt until she gently sank into the water near the ski boat. Voices echoed on the water, some cheering, some booing. The Castillo boat was nearest, but it was at least a quarter mile away. A gull wheeled in the sunlight above it.

Tamar grabbed hold of her ski and paddled to the back of the ski boat where Stella helped her up onto the skier’s platform. Stella took the ski and stowed it as Tamar climbed all the way in. They flashed a lot of skin in the process.

More cheering erupted from the Castillo yacht.

The two gorgeous women stood in front of the engine compartment, feigning confusion.

Udi watched the Castillo boat. Nobody was racing out to rescue the damsels. “What’s taking them so long?”

“Maybe chivalry is dead. You ready?”

“Yeah.” Udi had slid into the cabin and was working a joystick. A video display was in front of him.

“There,” Pearce said, without pointing.

A small rubber launch with an outdoor motor pushed off from the near side of the Castillo yacht and buzzed toward the two stranded women. Pearce lifted a pair of civilian-grade field glasses.

“Two of them. Mexicans.”

“You were expecting Italians?” Udi asked.

“You’re up, wisenheimer.”

Pearce watched the motor launch approach the stranded ski boat. They tossed a line over and Stella caught it and secured it to one of the davits. Pearce could hear the men in his earpiece ask in Spanish what was wrong. Stella pretended to not speak any Spanish, though she was more fluent than Pearce was. The two Mexicans were just deckhands from the Castillo boat, not the Castillos themselves, thankfully. No telling what stunt the twins would have tried to pull on two vulnerable women in a boat on open water this far from shore. The Castillos still weren’t scheduled to arrive on their yacht until tomorrow night.

Pearce swung his binoculars over to the Castillo yacht. An M40A5 bolt-action sniper rifle with a Leupold Mark 4 scope was tucked under a piece of canvas by his feet just in case things went south. There was even more powerful ordnance stored in the cabin if things went really south. He watched the gull circling high overhead.

Inside the cabin of their fishing boat, Udi was working the joystick controlling the SmartBird drone, a perfect example of biomimicry. It was designed and patterned to fly like a gull, including the long, rhythmic beats of its wings that appeared perfectly organic, so much so that it often found itself in the company of other gulls. Pearce had purchased the second-generation drone—smaller, faster, and even more anatomically correct than the original—from the German manufacturer Festo a few months earlier, but this was the first chance he’d had to deploy it in an operation.

The SmartBird drone featured an onboard camera, of course, and the Castillo yacht was fixed squarely in the center of Udi’s video screen. Udi maneuvered the drone in a leisurely circle, careful to keep the gull between the sun and the yacht. If anyone decided to watch the mechanical bird, the blinding sun would keep the surveillance brief.

Pearce watched the two Mexican deckhands lift the inboard motor cover and inspect the ski boat’s dead engine. The girls giggled and shrugged, feigning stupidity. “Academy Awards all around, ladies,” Pearce chuckled.

Stella slipped a hand behind her back and flipped Pearce the bird.