Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Andrew and Donnie’s benefit, but his calm way would help steady her at the controls.
    Flying low, only a hundred feet off the water, she noted most of the images on her radar scope were headed south, so picking out the Cigarette boat heading north hadn’t been difficult. There was one other boat heading north, about ten miles behind the Cigarette and on the same course, but moving about half the speed of the go-fast boat. A moment later, it came into view a few miles ahead.
    “Is that—” Andrew began to say.
    Charity finished his question. “Jesse’s boat?” The Huey quickly closed on the much slower fishing boat, then flashed past it. “Sure is.”
    “That was his daughter at the helm!” Andrew exclaimed, reaching for the radio.
    Charity touched his arm and stopped him. “What are you going to do? Order her to go back? Something tells me she’s already been told that. Forget it, this thing will be over before she gets there, and she’s not going to listen to reason.” Andrew looked over at her. “You know I’m right, big guy,” she added with a wink.
    Andrew nodded, undid his harness, and climbed past her to the rear of the Huey. They’d be over the boat in just a few more minutes.
    Charity turned on her earwig. All the team carried them and while they only had a five-mile range, they were near that now. “Tony, can you hear me?”
    “Weak and broken,” came his reply, punctuated by static.
    “Five miles out,” she said. “Rate of closure is forty-five knots.”
    “Roger, Charity,” Tony replied, his voice coming through the tiny earpiece much clearer now. “Slowing to seventy knots. Damned sea is flat as glass. Never seen it so calm. We’ll have to get Jesse to bring us all out here tomorrow and catch some fish.”
    Charity smiled, knowing that Tony was trying to ease the tension she and the men in back were feeling. That was just his way.
    McDermitt had been taken against his will, but he must have escaped and somehow contacted Stockwell. She’d seen how quickly and violently McDermitt could react when someone crossed him. He wasn’t the kind of man to make threats, intimidate, or mediate. Just swift and calculated action. If he was free, odds were good that whoever had taken him was hurting.
    Pulling back on the cyclic while decreasing the collective, Charity brought the chopper’s nose up slightly, slowing their airspeed as it descended. She looked back at Andrew and nodded.
    The air inside the helo swirled suddenly, and a loud roar could be heard outside her headphones as Andrew opened the cargo door on the port side.
    Being the heavier of the two, Andrew would go first. Charity slowed more and added just a little right pedal, while at the same time pushing the cyclic to the left. The two controls, used opposite, put the bird into angled flight, the nose pointing slightly to the right of their direction of travel.
    Over the headphones, she heard Tony talking calmly to Andrew, but she was concentrating more on Art’s hand signals. He was now standing in front of the passenger seat of the Cigarette, with Linda standing between them and Paul strapped into the port-side rear seat.
    “Over the boat in ten seconds,” she said over the intercom.
    “Roger that, mate,” Donnie replied. He and Andrew unplugged their comm link cables from the flight helmets they’d put on.
    Though she couldn’t see the men behind her, she knew that Andrew would be sitting on the edge of the deck, both feet planted firmly on the skids, and Donnie would be helping to steady him.
    No longer even looking where she was going, Charity followed Art’s signals and could feel the air change as her bird came down into the slipstream of the fast-moving boat. She made fine adjustments to the flight controls with a delicate hand, watching Art and feeling the way lower into the slipstream. Art continued to signal her forward with his left hand, his right hand held up at Andrew, palm out. Art then clenched his left fist,