Father Mulligan, Book #8 of the Asps Series - Pepper in action.

Today’s excerpt is from Father Mulligan, Book #8 of the nine-book Asps Series.  Pepper takes out a bad guy, and sends his boat to sea as Suzan and an MI6 agent watch for a distance.  Enjoy and have a wopnderful day.

m.j.

 

To say Pepper was a workout fanatic would be an understatement.  Her stomach rippled with a lovely six pack.  Also—in spite of her seventy-plus years—she sported nice, firm, muscle tone all over her body…without being muscle-bound.  All this—coupled with the dark of night, Pepper’s black clothing, topped with a black watch cap—caused the man at the helm of the boat to assume the person who had stood up and climbed onto the pier was the person he was to pick up.

As the boat gently bumped the pier, he realized his mistake, even as Pepper jumped aboard with her Asp pointed directly at him.  She grumbled, in a calm, even voice, “Aldridge couldn’t make it—he’s in custody.  Please raise your hands.”

Not having been told whom he was picking up, the man didn’t know who “Aldridge” was—he didn’t care.  If some dame thought she could jump on his boat with a gun pointed at him and get by with it, she was sadly mistaken.  His thought process having run through his mind, the man made the last mistake of his lifetime as he reached for a loaded, pre-cocked forty-five, next to the helm housing.  When he got it, then started to turn full face toward Pepper, he died in the process.  She fired one shot into the turning left side of his head, about an inch from his left eye.  He fell to the deck like a sack of potatoes, never realizing the mistake he’d made.

On the park bench, the SIS agent muttered, “Blimey…your lady friend doesn’t fool around.”

Suzan just laughed as she watched Pepper take the helm, add just a bit of throttle, to turn the boat back the way it had come from.  Twenty feet from the end of the dock, Pepper cut the engine to idle again.  She waited a few moments to make sure the boat was drifting very slowly back toward the dock and slightly in the direction of the boat she had been sitting on.  That pleased her to no end, as she soon had the backpack off, the engine room door raised from deck level, and she started planting some of her explosives.  When she had things set up the way she wanted, she set a timer on the explosives for one hour and forty minutes.  She took the backpack to the mast to place a set of explosives around the base of it, set another timer for ten minutes less than the first one, then placed what was left of her explosives around a spot on the mast, higher up.  When another timer was set to coincide with the one lower on the mast, she nodded as went back to the helm.  She discarded the backpack as she walked, but soon was putting on a life vest, having seen what she wanted to see—the name of the boat on it.

Even as the boat was nearing the boat she had sat on, she moved the throttle to a slow ahead speed, checked a compass she brought, set the desired course, reached in her pocket for a GPS device—which she placed where the dead man’s gun had been—then locked the helm in place.  Next, she hurried to the stern of the boat, stood facing the boat, before she did a nice backflip, right into the water, as the boat went on its merry way.  She stroked strongly toward the ladder descending down from the pier.  When she reached it, she climbed up, intent on heading to the car.

Suzan stood up, shook hands with the SIS agent, took out a note pad she had in the utility pockets of her tight, black fatigue-type pants, and wrote a plane’s identification number on it.  “You might want to be at the control tower at the main airport in about an hour…plus, maybe about fifteen minutes.  Be sure they get this identification number correct when we call it in.  Take care.”

“This the number to your plane?”

“Don’t be silly.  It’s to a plane owned by some ass who made a foolish landing at our Sedona Airport.  Just want to cause him some grief trying to explain to whomever how he was nowhere near here.  In about twenty minutes, you can pick up the two cars you were nice enough to get for us.  See ya.”

“So long—nice to meet you lot.”

Suzan flipped her hand with her back to him in a friendly wave as she walked toward the car.  She arrived just as Pepper was getting in the far side.  As Suzan drove off, Pepper joked, “Got a new boyfriend?”

“Hush, you saw who it was.  The note I wrote him wasn’t my phone number,” then explained about the false plane identification number. 

Pepper laughed, “Good move.  Now get me back to the plane—I’m soaked clear through to the skin.”

Suzan laughed as she sped toward said plane.  When they arrived, they hurried aboard.  While Suzan went forward to warm the engines, Pepper started undressing.  The life vest came off first.  She handed it to Drew, who was glad to see the boat’s name on it. He stood there with Boris as they watched Pepper strip to the skin, before she reached into her overnight bag, took out a small towel, and dried off.  She glanced at Boris as she asked, “Getting a good eyeful?”

“Oh, yes…very nice.  See why Drew keeps you around.”

 

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