“Screw me? Now there’s a thought,” Kyle replied in the same language. His smooth line wasn’t working, but the evening held promise. Swanson splashed water on his face, wiped it with a soft towel, and stole a few sips from the glass of iced tea at Shari’s side.
On the deck above, Jeff herded the potential investors to the railing and explained what was going to happen.
Kyle glanced at them. Soft men in shorts and bright shirts. “I gotta go to work now,” he said. “Blow up some shit for Jeff’s pals.”
“So go,” Shari ordered. She opened her eyes and gave him a smile.
Lady Pat lowered her steamy novel, peered at him above her sunglasses for a moment, and also got in a barb. “And Kyle, dear, please remember that these ladies and gentlemen are Sir Geoffrey’s dear friends, important guests and investors. So do be a good boy and try not to kill anyone, at least until after dinner, would you please?”
“Does that include smartass broads, m’lady?”
CHAPTER 3
THEY WERE FAR OUT IN OPEN WATER, the horizon an unbroken straight line all around. Through an optical illusion, it appeared to be above them, as if they were at the bottom of a saucer.
Swanson made his way to the broad lower aft deck, where he found a tall, thin man working beside three fifty-five-gallon drums. “Hey, Tim,” he said, and opened the protective, cushioned box in which a pristine big rifle lay like a jewel. “You ready?”
Timothy Gladden had been a captain with the elite British Parachute Regiment for more than a decade, leaving the Paras only because a broken right leg did not heal properly and doctors would not allow him to continue jumping out of airplanes. He resigned his commission and launched a vigorous new hobby as a triathlete, principally to prove the British Army diagnosis wrong. There was nothing wrong with his leg, nor with his Oxford-trained brain, and Sir Jeff had hired him into the corporate side of his growing weapons development business. Once a poor farm boy in Wales, Tim was now deputy chairman.