Author's note: I haven't forgotten about Pen and the Indie! It's just that the plot bunnies have been doing their own thing. What can you do?
Chance was wrong, Ames thought, you should never underestimate the power of a short skirt and a winning smile!
Pen had guided her to the best position to greet all the incoming boats, and Ames was watching the progress of the Indie as it slowly made its way through the marina. She was wearing an incredibly short skirt and a tank top that left a bare strip of flesh across her midriff. It was chilly, as the wind swept straight off the ocean, but her skimpy outfit was all part of the plan. She pulled her pashmina a little tighter around her shoulders, and fished a handful of fliers out of the oversize beach bag that hung from her shoulder.
"Hi there!" Ames beamed, as another boat full of tourists passed her slowly. "I see you guys have been having fun! Why not keep the party going at Bar Evissa? It's two-for-one on cocktails with this flier and we have a great DJ in tonight for you guys!"
Ames' sales patter met with mixed responses. Sometimes the crew would shoo her away from the boat with threats of reporting her to the harbour master, but other boats, usually those with young male passengers on board, greeted her with whoops and catcalls and grabbed at the fliers and yelled at her to climb aboard. Ames only made that mistake once, when the Indie was still a way off, thinking that if she hopped on and off a few other boats first, it wouldn't seem as conspicuous when she climbed aboard the Indie. Big mistake. The passengers on board were all men in their early twenties and the smell of stale beer hit her just a second too late. They were all very taken with her skimpy outfit, and she had had to endure several minutes of fighting off wandering hands before she'd managed to squirm free and jump back onto the walkway.
Undeterred, she launched back into her sales pitch for the benefit of the next boat, ignoring the taunts being shouted at her by the passengers of the boat she'd just escaped. As jumping on and off the boats wasn't really a viable option, she'd have to modify her plan slightly to get on board the Indie. Until then she just continued grinning and handing out fliers.
Ames was beginning to worry that her fingers were so cold that she'd have trouble lifting the guns and slipping the Marley rounds in, but eventually the Indie drew level with her.
"Hi there!" Ames called with renewed enthusiasm, leaning a little too far to hand the flier to the men watching her with interest from what she thought of as "the pointy end" of the boat. She 'tripped' over the railing along the side of the Indie and the men had no choice but to catch her as she fell towards them in a flurry of leaflets, beach bag and pashmina. She lifted the first guy's gun as she crashed into him, letting the wind catch her pashmina so that neither man could see her hands as she swapped out a live round for a Marley one. She replaced the gun as the men helped her to her feet.
"Are you okay miss?" The other man asked. He seemed to think Ames' ass was an appropriate place to support her with his hand.
"Oh my god! I am such a klutz!" Ames said, trying to ignore the way the guy's hand was making her flesh creep. She tried to stand on her own but squealed and grabbed hold of him, feigning a twisted ankle. "Ow! My ankle!" Using the oversized beach bag to shield her hands from both the men, she leaned heavily on her second target and managed to swap out the bullet in his gun too.
Two down, one to go.
"What's going on?" the third man called, leaning out from the wheelhouse. "Get her off the damn boat!"
Ames decided that now was probably the time to start crying. "I'm going to get fired, I know it!" she wailed. "I've dropped all my fliers and now I can't even stand up! I've been freezing my ass off in this stupid marina for hours and it's all for nothing! I need this job and now they're probably not even going to pay me!"
Ames knew that most men tended to go to pieces at the sight of a woman crying, and she was relieved to find that Santiago's men were no exception. The added pressure of trying to keep a low profile whilst they had two hostages on board a stolen boat definitely worked in her favour too.
"She can't walk! She's busted her ankle!" the man Ames was clinging to called out.
The man in the wheelhouse swore as he realised that Ames' heart-breaking sobs were beginning to attract attention.
"Okay," he called out, with a distinctly insincere smile. "Bring her in here out of the cold. We'd better take care of our little stow-away."
The two men lifted Ames up and carried her inside the wheelhouse, and she had to bite her lip to stop herself from smiling at her plan working so smoothly.
Getting her hands on the third man's gun was going to be a lot harder though. Santiago's men dumped her in a seat behind what she assumed was some kind of navigation console, and the third man, who Ames took to be the guy in charge, was steering the boat through the marina from another console about five feet away. His gun wasn't holstered like the other guys' weapons were; it sat in front of him is plain sight on top of the console itself. Ames' heart sank as she realised that it was highly unlikely that she would be able to complete this part of her mission. Still, she had to try, and with a bit of luck if they caught her doing something suspicious she would be taken bellow deck to be held hostage with Pen's crew, and she would at least be able to slip one of them the spare earpiece.
The Indie was making steady progress through the maze of the marina and Ames guessed that they were maybe five or ten minutes away from the rendez-vous. It was now or never.
Ames got unsteadily to her feet, taking care to preserve the illusion of a twisted ankle, and lurched towards the man steering the Indie.
"Oh my god, you have like totally saved my life!" she gushed, throwing her arms around him. She was still carrying her over-size bag, and used it to knock the man's gun to the floor. "Ooops! Did I drop something?"
"Get the fuck off me!" the man snarled, shoving her away.
Ames had hoped to be able to pick up the gun from the floor and make the switch in the process, but the man was too fast for her and grabbed her wrist as she reached for it.
"Huh! Why am I not surprised?" the man grunted. Ames tried to get back into character as the air-head bar promoter, crying and apologising, but Santiago's man just hit her across the face with a back-handed blow that sent her crashing to the floor. He looked around warily, checking to see whether anyone had seen him hit her, but the concerned citizens who had taken such an interest in the girl sobbing over the loss of her fliers had since moved on. Satisfied that he was in the clear, he called his colleagues into the wheelhouse and gave them instructions to take the girl below deck and tie her up, out of the way.
"I still don't quite understand your plan, Guerrero," Ilsa said. "I thought we came here to warn Bala Perdida."
"He needs to know that the threat is real," Guerrero explained, adjusting the sight on his sniper rifle. "If he doesn't believe that his life is in danger, he won't be willing to accept that one of his men is plotting against him."
"So you're going to let the assassin take a shot at him?"
"Yes. As along as Eduardo does his job, Bala Perdida should be fine."
"But…"
"Bala Pedida is a creature of habit," Guerrero interrupted impatiently. "He is usually in his office at this time of the evening. The easiest way to get a target into position for this type of hit is with a phone call. At nine pm the phone on his desk will ring and the sniper will have him exactly where he wants him. We have the advantage of knowing exactly when the hit is supposed to take place, so it's Eduardo's job to let him answer the phone and get him to hit the deck before the shot is fired."
"That sound awfully risky, Guerrero!" Ilsa said. Colgrove didn't look much happier about it either.
"It can't be helped. As long as Eduardo is as loyal as my intel says he is, it should be fine."
"Why don't you just shoot the sniper first?" Colgrove asked. "I mean, that's what you've got your gun for, right?"
"I won't know where he is until he takes the shot. My job is to make sure he doesn't fire a second time."
"He's just walked into his office with Eduardo!" Ilsa said.
"Good. Now shut up."
Ilsa and Colgrove watched the tiny figures on the smart phone's screen, and sure enough, at nine pm precisely the phone rang and Bala Perdida went to answer it.
Ilsa held her breath as he picked up the handset and brought it up to put it against his ear. Eduardo's timing was perfect, he launched himself at Bala Perdida just as the phone reached his ear, knocking them both to the floor behind the desk. Almost simultaneously, the wall behind where Bala Perdida had been standing a split second before exploded in a shower of dust and plaster.
"Gotcha," Guerrero muttered, before squeezing off a shot. He watched his target through the scope for a moment, until he was apparently satisfied that he had hit the mark.
"How did you know…?" Ilsa started to ask.
"Muzzle flash," Guerrero replied. He got out his cellphone and placed a call. "Hey dude. That was a warning shot. Call it a professional courtesy, from one pro to another. You try and take another shot though, and you won't ever need to wear a hat again. If you want to make things right with Bala Perdida, I suggest you confirm the hit with your client and meet me at Tony's in two hours."
Ilsa caught the muffled sound of someone cursing on the other end of the line before Guerrero hung up.