Starfish Prime (Blackfox Chronicles Book 2) Read Free Page B

been deposited in one large safe deposit box in a Dutch bank in Willemstad, C uraçao. The ill-gotten booty had been secreted away for thirty years after Char and four accomplices robbed a seagoing casino of what turned out to be over a million in gold. The ship was sunk by a rogue wave that also foiled the robbers’ escape. 
    One of the gang members had managed to hide the loot m oments before being captured and returned to Angola Prison. Nearly thirty years later, he escaped with some outside assistance and joined Char and Michael in recovering the gold. He and all of the original accomplices were now dead. This left Char and Michael in possession of the gold aboard a dead gangster’s yacht on an extended Caribbean vacation. 
    They used Curaçao as a base of ops, returning often to sell off a little gold to replenish the larder. Michael had thought he would grow sick of a life of leisure, but after almost three years, he was still relatively content. 
    The price of gold was generally rising, so the value of their stash had continued to increase slowly. Even after selling some of it to support their lifestyle, they were still sitting on over a million. Char had discussed eventually unloading the boat and finding some nice windswept beach to live out his old age, but nothing had been decided yet as there were many more islands to visit.
    Their hotel sat at the very tip of the thin fishhook-shaped peninsula, and it offered beautiful, expansive views in three d irections of the Caribbean and the old city. Bocagrande was a place where rich, well-heeled, mainly male tourists mingled with the young, beautiful, but predominately poor ladies of Colombia. 
    The hotel restaurant was called Las Chivas and according to the marquee was ‘furnished with rattan chairs and black and white tables made from natural products that showcased Colombia's cultural identity.’  More important, at least to
    Michael, was the fact that it offered bone-chilling air conditioning as he had a throbbing, Tequila-induced hangover. He stopped by the gift shop and bought an International Herald to help kill time while waiting for the arrival of his perennially late father. 
    Michael had made tentative plans to meet Char for breakfast at noon, but that hour slipped away and after numerous cups of strong Colombian coffee, he tired of waiting and decided he would order lunch, figuring the old guy would eventually give his girl the slip and come down to recharge his batteries.
    It was now just shy of one in the afternoon, and Michael badly needed a piece of red meat to jump-start his thinking and cut through the fog of last night’s alcohol. Toward that end, he poured part of a bottle of Aguila beer into some Sangrita and sipped it, hoping that a little hair of the dog would ease his hangover. “Carne asada, termino medio,” Michael said to the waiter. The man nodded and hurried away. Michael and Char were staying at the Hilton for a few days while the Good as Gold , their 80 foot Hatteras, underwent long-overdue maintenance.
    He had exited the two-bedroom suite without waking the man, deciding instead to leave Char in the clutches of the stri kingly beautiful Rubia, whom he had met, last night at the hotel’s nightclub. Michael was unsure whether his dad would be presented with a bill for the evening’s pleasure or whether the young  ‘art student’ was really as into viejos, or old guys, as she had claimed. Her friend had liked Michael, but for some reason he had felt like being alone last night. Running into Ramos had engendered a lot of old memories and left him deep in thought. 
    They had partied the night away in the club, buying and draining two bottles of top-shelf Tequila, about a dozen beers, and another three bottles of French champagne to lure in the women. At least ten hot Colombianas had hovered about the table over the course of the evening, although some had just used the venue to refill their glasses. 
    They concluded the