A Billion Ways to Die

A
LSO
BY
C
HRIS
K
NOPF

SAM ACQUILLO HAMPTONS MYSTERIES

The Last Refuge

Two Time

Head Wounds

Hard Stop

Black Swan

JACKIE SWAITKOWSKI HAMPTONS MYSTERIES

Short Squeeze

Bad Bird

Ice Cap

ARTHUR CATHCART

Dead Anyway

Cries of the Lost

STAND-ALONE THRILLER

Elysiana

A

BILLION

WAYS TO DIE

CHRIS KNOPF

Copyright © 2014 by Chris Knopf

All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.

The events and characters in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to any person, living or dead, is merely coincidental.

For information, address:

The Permanent Press

4170 Noyac Road

Sag Harbor, NY 11963

www.thepermanentpress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Knopf, Chris.

A billion ways to die/Chris Knopf.

pages ; cm

ISBN 978-1-57962-363-0 (hardcover)
e-ISBN 978-1-57962-407-1

I. Title.

PS3611.N66B55 2014

813'.6—dc23                                      2014031734

Printed in the United States of America

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

S
teve Pednault, forensic accountant, again taught me a lot about financial skullduggery, all in the service of fiction, of course. For the first time, I fully engaged my human resources staff, Kathy Rozsa, Nancy Dugan and Mary Farrell, who helped with corporate hiring and firing. Paige Goettel pitched in with Haitian graffiti interpretations. She and Al Hershner also lent veracity to sailing scenes in the Spanish Virgins.

Legal counsel Rich Orr, former Assistant United States Attorney, advised on federal law enforcement structure. Sean Cronin informed me on munitions and related military gear, as well as lending his keen editorial eye as one of my prized readers. Other readers, Bob Willemin, Randy Costello and Jill Fletcher, also greatly improved the first draft, with Randy correcting my pidgin Spanish. Assist here also from Amarilis Guerra. Thanks also to post-galley readers Mark Baronas and Elena Palermo (courtesy of Marjorie Drake), and, in particular, my sister, Leigh Knopf, who saved Omni from serious gender confusion.

Special thanks to Ian McAteer of Edinburgh ad agency The Union for providing proper Scottish nomenclature and choice of adult beverage, subjects on which he has impressive familiarity.

Bob Rooney, Mintz + Hoke IT samurai, added his usual excellent tech support.

Any inaccuracy or deviation from their knowledgeable advice is the fault of the author alone.

Thanks to cover designer Lon Kirschner, production artist Susan Ahlquist, and copy editor Barbara Anderson for their usual stellar work.

Deep gratitude to another reader, retired agent Mary Jack Wald, who’s responsible for setting all this in motion twelve books ago. And to Marty and Judy Shepard, copublishers of The Permanent Press, who continue to have faith in me and my expanding cast of characters.

And to Mary Farrell, who continues with her abiding patience and understanding.

C
HAPTER
1

W
hen you sleep at anchor you learn the language of waves against the hull of your boat. That night, the persistent flip-flip spoke of a steady breeze roughing up the tops of low-rolling swells, which a quick look at the wind direction and barometer promised to be our rocking cradle straight through to morning’s first light.

This was hardly a remarkable event. It was the Caribbean, after all, a world where weather was both benevolent and predictable. Most of the time. Sometimes, it could ambush and kill, which is why you never stopped listening to the waves, even after falling asleep.

We were on our sailboat,
Detour
, in a familiar cove lined with palm trees and coarse, flowering bushes growing happily in the bleached blonde sand. The prevailing trades swept in from the hatch overhead, flicking strands of Natsumi’s black hair as she slept curled in the forward berth. Moonlight turned the white bed sheet blue and made her skin, darkened by months in the near-equatorial sun, darker still.

I was on my back, my head propped up by the pillow, my mind decelerating to the merely overwound. For this, I had only my genetic code and a lifetime of mental frenzy to blame. Tropical paradise notwithstanding.

I was slowly approaching the moment when the cacophony in my head had quieted enough for the little bay waves to take over, the hypnotic lapping against the hull a welcome prelude to sleep.

Then I was suddenly awake. I opened my eyes, though my focus was on the sounds of the night. Sounds and the absence of sound.

The waves had stopped for about a half-dozen beats, then restarted. Though now there was a catch in the rhythm, an occasional random flip, barely audible, but incongruent.

I sat up, as if the higher elevation would improve my hearing. I slowed my breath and stilled my heart. The breeze freshened suddenly, causing a piece of rigging to clang rudely against the aluminum mast. The boat shimmered a brief moment and heeled so slightly to port. A puff and nothing more, I realized. I smiled at myself and lay back on the bed, inhaling a deep cleansing breath as the first step in regaining the calm of a few moments before.

It took barely minutes for the caress of the waves and the warm, freshly scented air flowing down into the berth to restore calm to my mind and luxurious weight to my limbs.

My eyes gave up the will to stay open and the first shreds of the coming dreamscape skittered into view. Wakefulness came and went a few more times, though I’d likely slipped all the way into slumber when I heard another alien sound. My eyes snapped open and my ears were now filled from the inside with sizzling alarm.

Through the open hatch above me I saw the black shape of a man wearing a helmet and an optical device over his face. He had a rifle pointed at my head.

“Permission to come aboard,” came a voice from deep inside the other-worldly apparatus.

N
ATSUMI
WOKE
up and made fearful little grunting sounds as she covered herself in a top sheet snatched from the bottom of the bed. I lay still, my hands raised from the bed. The man mumbled something into a device on his shoulder and we felt the boat rock, followed by the sound of heavy footfalls crossing the cockpit and descending into the boat through the companionway. Lights came on in the main living area. Doors to the other berths and the head opened and closed. The man above us nodded and said something else, and another man filled the narrow passage that led to our berth. He reached up to the dome light on the ceiling and flicked it on. He wore the same helmet and optical device. His rifle was slung over his shoulder and he held a handgun with a black barrel and yellow grip. It was pointed at Natsumi.

“Get dressed,” the man above us said.

“My clothes are in the salon,” said Natsumi.

The man in the passageway backed up. She slid off the bed and shuffled after him, using the sheet to form a makeshift kimono. I was in a pair of loose, flowered shorts. I grabbed a T-shirt left nearby and stepped into my flip-flops. In the salon, the man felt through a stack of Natsumi’s clothes, then watched her put on underwear, shorts, bra and T-shirt. She tried to put on a pair of sneakers, but he shook his head and said, with a soft Spanish accent, “Nothing you can run in, baby.”

He tossed her a pair of flip-flops that matched mine, forcing the recollection of when we’d bought them two months before, ashore on Tortola.

Then he frisked me, his hands large, strong and deft. Hands that said, “I will crush you if you even hint at resistance.” He emptied my pockets of wallet, ChapStick and Swiss Army knife.

We were directed up the companionway to the cockpit, where we walked into a bright light. I looked down and saw scuffs on the cockpit floor. I remembered absurdly that I was nearly out of black skid remover. The light flicked off and in my near-blindness I counted the shapes of three men. One of them gripped my arm and moved me around the helm and down to the swim platform. Natsumi bumped into me from behind, so I knew she was still with us.

An inflatable boat was tied to the swim ladder. A fourth man was in the boat behind the wheel. He was in a wet suit, his face blacked out so only the whites of his eyes caught the beam from the flashlight as it slashed through the heavy night air.

I imagined him in the water, harnessed to the inflatable, using a slow, silent breaststroke to pull the commando-filled boat across the bay.

We were forced into the boat and placed side by side on a bench suspended between the pontoons. One of the men put a zip tie around my wrist, then looped another through a lifeline and cinched it tightly. They did the same with Natsumi. The inflatable rocked crazily as the men found their positions and released the tether from our boat. One of them slapped the helm and the man in the wet suit started the twin engines, nearly silent despite their impressive size.

The boat dug into the water as we spun away and motored out of the cove and into the moonlit ocean, bucking against the waves, causing an occasional burst of sea spray to douse our T-shirts. I held tight to the lifeline and tried to ignore the plastic zip tie cutting into my wrist.

I slipped my free arm around Natsumi’s waist and she put hers around mine and we held firmly against the watery motion and the dread-filled darkness.

T
HE
MOTION
of the boat as it rose and fell over flat, lazy swells told me we were well into the Caribbean when one of the men put a black hood over Natsumi’s head, then one over mine.

Now the wave action became more keenly felt, and the sound of the pontoons slapping at the water and the deep hum of the twin outboards filled my mind. Natsumi pressed hard into me, her message, “I’m frightened, but I’m okay. I just need to know you’re there next to me.”