A Billion Ways to Die Read online

  ALSO BY CHRIS KNOPF

  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

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Steve 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.

  CHAPTER 1

  When 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.

  NATSUMI 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 cr
ush 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.

  THE 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.”

  The men in the boat said nothing. I understood the futility of asking questions. No words of mine would change the fact that we were utterly in their power, and yet our own silence seemed to enforce a perverse equality. Emotional distance in defiance of physical helplessness.

  My breath, trapped inside the cloth hood, smelled foul. It must be what fear smells like to dogs, I thought. A pungent, degraded smell.

  After at least another hour, the boat suddenly slowed and changed direction. Now more perpendicular to the swells, we flopped over peak and trough. Then I felt fresh acceleration and another sharp turn. We were maneuvering.

  The men started moving around, throwing random undulations into the natural pitch and roll. I heard a voice, speaking low, then a response. The motors dropped down to idle and the gear lever was slipped into neutral. We bumped into something immovable, knocking me into Natsumi. She breathed in sharply and her body tensed. A voice came from outside and above the boat. I heard the whirr of an electric winch, then felt a line weighted at the end smack into my shoulder. A hand gripped me for balance. The boat wobbled and bobbed, and banged steadily into a solid mass. I heard metallic clicks and one of the men shout, “Secured.”

  The boat performed one more loopy dance and we were suddenly free of the water. The winch whirred louder and a fresh breeze pushed us into the solid thing, which this time we slid against, causing a scraping sound.

  I gripped Natsumi a little tighter.

  Moments later, the upward movement reversed and I felt the boat move smoothly through the air. I braced for what I knew would follow.

  Not necessary. The landing was firm, but gentle. The clicking sounds started again, the winch whirred once more, other softer sounds told of people moving quickly, but efficiently. Someone snipped the zip tie off my wrist and yanked me to my feet. Natsumi was pulled away from me. I heard her say a quiet little “Oh.”

  Two men helped me over the pontoon. When I was standing on a solid, roughened surface, strong hands pulled my arms back behind me and another zip tie cinched both wrists together—unbreakable plastic handcuffs.

  They took off the hood and I saw the topsides of an old metal vessel, with a center pilothouse, outriggers and cranes. Commercial fishing.

  I didn’t see Natsumi, or anyone other than two of our three abductors. They pushed my head down to get through a hatch at the top of a narrow stairwell. Supported from behind, I barely made it down the steep passage without falling forward. Light from a rusty bulkhead fixture filled my eyes when I reached the bottom. Everything was coated in layers of paint, white on the walls and ceiling, grey on the floor. Rust showed in spots and around the seams. It was damp and the air was soft and heavy, perfumed with stale salt water.

  I was guided down the passage to a door less than ten feet away. At the door, I was shoved face forward against the bulkhead, held in place by a strong hand at the back of my neck. Other hands gripped my wrist and put a cool piece of metal to each of my fingertips. A moment later, I felt a sharp pinprick in the crook of my arm. Taking blood.

  Then one of the men cut off the zip tie and they gave me a gentle push into a bare room, closing and securing the door behind me. The room had a wooden bench against one wall, a big aluminum bucket about the size of a spaghetti pot in the opposite corner and a single, blazing light bulb inside a cage overhead. Plumbing and conduit ran across the ceiling. One of the water lines had a sprinkler head that looked new. A large drain was set in the middle of the floor.

  That was it.

  I sat on the bench and looked more carefully around the inside of the room. There was nothing to see but plain metal surfaces, textured by years of scraping and repainting the walls and building up the sand finish on the floor. The inside of the door was an uninterrupted plane—no latches, knobs or windows.

  I looked around for another hour. Nothing changed. That was all there was. I lay down on the bench on my back with my knees up. The light bulb hurt my eyes, but closing them was little better. So I stared above me and studied the rows of randomly sized pipes attached with heavy metal fittings to the ceiling.

  I traded this for time on my right side. Then my left. Then I sat up on the bench until that became unbearable, so I repeated the process. I sought other configurations but there was nothing that would make the room any better than painfully uncomfortable.

  After a few hours of this, exhaustion began to war with my tattered nerves and sore eyes. I rolled on my right side, facing the wall, with my forearm across my eyes, shutting out the angry glare. Under the circumstances, I’d gained maximum comfort, and I think I slept for a short time.

  Cramps drove me awake and onto my back again. I kept my arm over my face until stiffness in my shoulder forced it away. I sat up and swung my feet down to the floor. Head down, I opened my eyes and waited for my pupils to adjust.

  I looked around the room again, but it had only become uglier and more forbidding. Of course, I told myself, that’s what’s supposed to happen. Anger started to creep up my throat, but I swallowed it down. That was supposed to happen as well, I thought. A loss of emotional control. That I wouldn’t give them.

  I stayed upright on the bench, leaning back against the wall. I experimented with keeping my eyes closed for ten minutes, then opening them for about the same length of time. For whatever reason, it became easier to gaze into the intensely lit room. I breathed evenly and calmed my mind down to near torpor.

  With new cramps showing up in new places, I lay down again on my back, holding one hand up to shield against the light. I focused on the sprinkler head as the only thing in the room not covered with uneven globs of paint. I studied it, admiring the neatly soldered coupling in the water line, the symmetrical flower-shaped deflector, the shiny metallic bulb—designed to shatter under the heat of a fire and i
gnite the system—within the sturdy brass frame.

  Shiny metallic bulb?

  I turned my head away and rested my eyes, then looked again. I once did market research for a company that made fire suppression equipment. I’d seen plenty of red, blue and yellow bulbs, but never metallic. I glanced away, staring at another section of the ceiling for a few minutes before letting my eyes travel slowly back across the ceiling and onto the sprinkler head.

  The bulb wasn’t even shaped like a bulb, more of a cylinder. A cylinder that connected to the deflector, at the center of which was a tiny black dot.

  I moved my eyes away and sat up again, concentrating on a new line of thought. My mind traveled from my flip-flops up my legs to the flimsy shorts and T-shirt. All soft material. I looked around the room for the hundredth time, coming to the same conclusion. There was very little there, and nothing detachable with bare hands. The wooden bench under me was four stout legs glued to a butcher-block slab. The bucket in the corner was just a bucket.

  With a bucket handle.

  I leaned back and rubbed my stomach, screwing up my face in discomfort. I bent forward, then back. I stood up and stretched to my full height, my palm against my midsection. I sat back down and tried to stay upright, but clearly was having trouble doing so.

  I interrupted the routine for short periods, but then returned to worrying at my gut, burping and lying curled up on my side. After about an hour of this, I slid off the bench and went over to the opposite corner. I got on my hands and knees with my head over the bucket. My body jolted a few times and I shook my head, trying to cast off the sickness and pain. I sat back on my heels and held the bucket with two hands, pulling it up against my body.

  Crimps at each end of the handle fit over raised rivets. The handle was strong, but flexible. The rivets were worn and only slightly bigger than the crimps that secured the handle. With my head drooping disconsolately, I studied how the relationship between the attachments shifted as the handle was raised and lowered a few inches. I tested the connections by jamming my thumbs between the handle and walls of the bucket. One side was sturdy, the other loosened by years of hard duty.