It didn’t seem possible for so much time to have passed, or for nobody to have come looking for them in all those hours, but based on what she was seeing it had to be true.
She stepped forward and nearly lost her balance. Talan caught her and eased her to the bulkhead.
“Hold on,” he said.
“I’m all right,” she murmured.
Talan released her and went to the door, touching it as if testing it for heat. Kristi noticed the glass in the window was sagging and discolored like melted wax.
“It’s okay,” he said. “No fire now.”
He pushed on the door and it squeaked open.
He stepped out and beckoned for her to follow. She stepped through and grabbed hold of the ship’s rail.
As Talan looked toward the bow, trying to gauge the condition of the ship, a man appeared through the drifting smoke, twenty yards aft. He was large-framed, broad-shouldered, and wearing black. Kristi couldn’t recall the crew wearing black.
The man turned to them, and she could see he held a machine gun of some kind.
She gasped. And out of instinct, perhaps, Talan pushed her to the ground just as machine-gun fire rang out. She watched helpless as his chest was riddled with bullets. He fell backward over the railing and into the sea.
Kristi lunged for the door and pulled on it, but before she could open it the man who’d appeared from the smoke was on her. He slammed it shut with a heavily booted foot.
“No you don’t, love,” he said with a distinctive snarl. “You’re coming with me.”
Kristi tried to squirm away, but he stretched out a big paw and grabbed her by the collar and then yanked her up to her feet.
KURT AUSTIN STOOD ON THE Argo’s bridgewing as the ship charged across the water. At 30 knots the bow was carving the ocean in two and blasting waves of spray up into the wind. Curtains of water spread out and fell, lacing the surface with patches of foam that were quickly left behind.
Kurt studied the stricken bulk carrier through the binoculars. He’d seen men going from hatch to hatch, dropping grenades or some kind of explosives into them one after another.
“That’s damn strange,” Kurt said. “Looks like they’re scuttling the ship on purpose.”
“You never know with pirates,” Captain Haynes said.
“No,” Kurt agreed, “but usually they’re after money. Ransom money or the chance to sell the cargo on the black market. Can’t do that if you’ve sent the ship to the bottom.”
“Good point,” Haynes said. “Maybe they’re taking the crew.”
Kurt took another look along the deck. The accommodations block sat at the tail end of the ship. The structure—which some sailors referred to as a “castle”—rose five stories from the deck like an apartment building.
It stood high and proud, but the flat foredeck of the ship was only just above the water, the tip of the bow no more than a foot or two from being awash. He could see little else through the fire and the smoke.
“I saw them shoot at least one poor soul,” he said. “Maybe they had an important passenger aboard, the rest being expendable. Either way. I doubt they’ll surrender.”
“We’ve got three boats ready to go,” Haynes told him. “The fast boat and our two tenders. You want in?”
Kurt put the binoculars down. “You didn’t think I was going to stand around and watch, did you?”
“Then get down to the armory,” the captain said. “They’re fitting out a boarding party now.”
ABOARD THE KINJARA MARU, the hulking leader of the “pirate” gang dragged Kristi Nordegrun across the deck. He was known by the name Andras, but his men sometimes called him “The Knife” because he loved to play with sharpened blades.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Where’s my husband?”
“Your husband?” he said.
“He’s the ship’s captain.”
Andras shook his head. “Sorry, love, you may now consider yourself single again.”
With that, she lunged at him, her hand slamming into his face. She might as well have punched a stone wall. He shook off the blow, threw her to the deck, and whipped out one of his favorite toys: a locking jackknife with a five-inch titanium blade. He locked the blade into place and held it toward her.
She shrank back.
“If you aggravate me, I’ll carve you up with this,” he said. “Understand?”
She nodded slowly, the fear plain as day in her eyes.
Truthfully, Andras didn’t want to cut her, she would fetch more money with a clean face, but she didn’t need to know that.
He whistled to his men. With the crew dead and the ship going down, the last part of a long job was done. It was time for the rats to leave the sinking ship.
They gathered round him and one of them, a scruffy-looking man with yellowish teeth and a fishhook scar on his upper lip, took special notice of Kristi. He dropped down, touching her hair.
“Nice,” he said, rubbing her golden locks between his fingers.
At that moment, a heavy boot hit him in the side of the head.
“Get out of it,” Andras said. “Find your own prize.”
Wearing a new welt on his face and a look of shock, Fishhook scurried away like a scolded hound.
“What are you going to do with me?” Kristi asked with surprising force.
Andras smiled. He was going to have his way with her and then he was going to sell her on the black market. A nice little bonus to the money he’d been paid for this job. But she didn’t need to know that either.
Ignoring her question, he put the blade away and dropped down beside her. Using a metal wire, he bound her hands, wrapping them several times before twisting the ends together. With a piece of cloth he gagged her. That would keep her quiet.
Before he could get her up, a voice shouted from above. “Ship approaching! Looks like a cutter or some type of frigate.”
Andras snapped his head up. He tried to peer through the thick smoke. He couldn’t see anything.
“Where, you damn fool?” he shouted. “Give us a direction.”
“West-northwest,” his man shouted.
Andras strained to see through the drifting cloud of soot and smoke. A large vessel approaching was bad news, but something far worse caught his eye; a thin white wake, close to the Kinjara’s hull.
He could see it in gaps between the smoke. It crossed toward the front of the ship, where it vanished in the dark clouds. He looked toward the bow, which was now awash in two feet of water.
A second later the oily haze parted, and a ribbed inflatable boat raced out of the smoke, gliding right up onto the bow. Two men lay prone on its forward section, aiming and firing M16 rifles.
Andras saw two of his men fall, and another was hit and hobbling. The others scrambled for cover as the fast boat beached itself on the deck near the Kinjara’s second cargo hatch.
Several men in fatigues piled out of the boat on either side as one of the shooters—a man with distinctively silver hair—aimed and fired with deadly accuracy.
Two more of The Knife’s men went down before the shooter rolled off the attacking boat and took cover behind one of the open cargo hatches.
“Americans,” Andras cursed. Where the hell had they come from?
5
IN AN INSTANT THE DECK of the freighter became a battleground. Bullets and shell casings flew in all directions. Andras moved quickly, grabbing Kristi and dragging her backward. He added the occasional burst to what had become a raging gun battle, but his plan was to do more than stand and fight.
As he pulled back, he saw the situation for what it was: a first strike. The Americans had stormed in, taking out a half dozen of his men, but they were now pinned down on the deck, caught in a sort of cross fire while the ship burned and slowly sank beneath them. He guessed they wouldn’t have done that intentionally, unless they had backup coming.
The sound of a loudspeaker echoed from the approaching cutter.
“Throw
down your weapons and surrender,” an authoritative voice demanded.
While he had no intention of doing anything of the sort, Andras was keenly aware of the danger to himself. But then, he was a man who’d made his life knowing how to turn the tables.
He reached one of the loading cranes. Grabbing the hook that dangled from it, he slipped it under the wire he’d wrapped around Kristi’s hands.
He threw the power switch and was rewarded with the sound of its hydraulic pump running. Before he sent her out, he ripped the gag off Kristi’s mouth.
She looked at him.
“You’re going to want to scream,” he said, “trust me.”
With that, he threw the lever and the crane sprang to life. It pulled her upward and began swinging her out over the battleground for all to see.
KURTAUSTIN CROUCHED BEHIND a steel hatch cover. His idea to race around the bow of the vessel and literally drive right up onto it had been a cunning move. With the smoke surrounding them and the Argo approaching from the opposite direction, Kurt and his men had taken the pirates by surprise, speeding onto the deck and hitting several of them immediately.
The one flaw in his plan had been the number of pirates. There were far more than he’d expected, more than a dozen, maybe close to twenty. Those who’d survived and taken cover now had him pinned down.
Sooner or later the other tenders from the Argo would arrive, giving them a numerical advantage, but until then it would be tough sledding.
The radio on his belt crackled, a call from one of the tenders. “Kurt, we’re approaching the stern, no resistance so far.”
He didn’t have time to reply as shells started pinging off the hatch behind him. He ducked lower, trying to see where they were coming from. Before he could decide what to do next, he heard a female scream. He glanced skyward to see a woman, in her mid-thirties, dangling from the hook of a crane.
Seconds later, a voice bellowed above the din.
“Are we ready to stop this madness?” the voice shouted.
Kurt didn’t look up, as that was a good way to get one’s head blown off, but the guns around him went silent.
Kurt glanced at the young woman. Blood streamed down her arms and across her clothes.
“Now that I have your attention,” the voice boomed, “you’re going to let my men get off this stinking garbage scow of a ship or I’ll blast this woman to shreds like a piñata.”
Kurt glanced around, sweat and smoke burning his eyes. He noticed water beginning to swirl at his ankles, and several feet away it poured into one of the open cargo hatches.
The ship was settling fast. The bow was now completely submerged with only a few high points sticking out like dead trees in flooded field. Worse yet, as the water began filling the forward cargo holds the weight on the front section would increase rapidly.
In a few minutes the Kinjara Maru’s fate would change from a gentle settling to a nosedive into the abyss.
“I’m waiting!” the hidden speaker shouted.
“Kurt?” a voice asked over the radio. “What do you want to do?”
Kurt looked up at the woman again. “Hold your positions,” he said into the radio.
“Well?” the unknown voice shouted, demanding an answer.
“Okay,” Kurt yelled back. “Take your men and get out of here.” He shouted to his men. “Hold your fire until they’re clear.”
Almost instantly Kurt heard movement, the pirates pulling back.
“Can anyone see him?” Kurt whispered into the radio. “He has to be up high.”
Someone must have risked a look because a shot rang out. A grunt sounded over the radio.
“No peeking,” the voice shouted.
“Damn,” Kurt mumbled. He keyed the mike on his radio. “Who got hit?”
No response. Then someone said, “It’s Foster.”
Kurt shook his head angrily. “You hit one more of my men,” he shouted to the unseen figure, “and I promise you’ll die on this boat!”
“I’m sure,” the hidden man replied, “that you’d like to believe that.”
By now the water was lapping at Kurt’s thighs. It felt like the tide coming in, only way too rapidly. The ship’s equilibrium was changing. As the pitch increased, loose items began sliding down the deck toward him.
Kurt glanced up at the woman again. She had to be in tremendous pain. He wanted to shoot the scum who’d hung her up there, but he didn’t dare risk a look for her tormentor.
Then the sound of large outboard motors starting echoed from over the starboard side of the ship. In a moment, the soft rumble turned to a fierce roar, and what looked like a stripped-down powerboat began racing off into the distance.
“Go,” Kurt shouted.
His men sprang into action.
“Hawthorne’s down,” someone said.
“Get him up,” Kurt shouted. “Get him and Foster into the boat.”
“What about the search?”
“I doubt these guys left any survivors,” he said. “Either way, you don’t have time to look.”
The ship had tilted ten degrees nose down, far enough for a length of chain to come sliding toward him like a great metallic snake.
Kurt dodged the chain. It hit the edge of the cargo hatch and poured itself into the cavernous space below, rattling ominously as the links slid over the edge until the chain released itself into oblivion.
“Get off the ship,” Kurt ordered.
“What are you going to do?” one of his men asked.
“I’m going to get that woman.”
6
AS THE KINJARA MARU FOUNDERED, Kurt Austin scrambled forward and up the sloping deck. The footing was treacherous where the deck had become coated with water, oil, and sludge. He pulled himself upward with anything he could grasp.
Reaching the ladder that led up to the crane, Kurt climbed it, catching sight of the pirates racing away to the south. Putting them out of his mind and hanging on to the railing, he reached the crane operator’s hutch.
A strangely shaped folding knife with a black handle and a steel or titanium blade stood on its point, embedded into the crane operator’s seat. A little present left behind by the thug who’d strung the woman up. Kurt grabbed it, folded it up, and slid it into a pocket.
Turning to the control panel, he checked for power. Thankfully, the lights on the panel remained illuminated.
“Hold on,” he shouted to the woman, realizing even as he spoke that she wasn’t holding anything at all, but guessing that “Hang in there” would have had a terrible ring to it.
Years in the salvage business had left Kurt very familiar with cranes. He grabbed for the control handle that would retract the crane back to his position. As he operated the lever he heard a whirring sound, and the crane jerked backward a few feet and then slammed to a halt. The poor woman swung back and forth like a pendulum, crying and screaming in pain. Seconds later a hydraulic warning light came on.
It was only then that Kurt noticed red liquid pouring down the side of the crane. He glanced and saw that the hydraulic line had been cut clean through. Now the little gift made sense to him. He could almost hear the thug laughing.
His headset crackled.
“Kurt, we’re off the ship, but you should know that we can see the top of the rudder. The fantail of this thing is coming out of the water.”
Kurt looked forward. The front quarter of the ship was submerged, debris floating everywhere. Time was running out fast.
With the crane dead, he had little choice. He dropped his rifle and began to climb out onto the crane’s boom. It was a tricky crawl made worse by the grease, oil, and hydraulic fluid. Trying to keep the boom underneath him, he scooted forward.
From behind him, a group of steel barrels came tumbling down the deck. One of them hit something sharp, sparked, and then exploded. The blast knocked Kurt sideways. His feet slipped, and the weight of his boots threatened to drag him off the boom.
Ahead of him, the woman scream
ed, sobbing as she shouted out to him. “Please,” she begged. “Please hurry.”
Kurt was doing all he could just to hang on. He glanced back. Fire enveloped the hutch he had been standing in only moments before. Moving had been a lucky break, but not if it just postponed the inevitable.
He swung his legs to one side and then back the other way and up, catching the boom with one leg. A smaller secondary explosion echoed from below as the smell of kerosene enveloped him. Down through black smoke, Kurt could see flames licking across the water as the burning fuel spread, blasts of heat roasting him as he moved forward.
Another ten feet and he reached the spot where the woman was hooked. The wire wrapped around her wrists was slicing into her skin. Her arms were scarlet with flowing blood, and her face was pasty white.
He grabbed her by the arms and tried to pull her up, but he had no leverage. Swirling waves of heat rose up from the crackling fires below. The ship shuddered as something internal broke loose. One of the engines or even the cargo sliding around.
“Kurt, she’s going,” came the call over the radio. “Any minute she’s going.”
I’m aware of that, Kurt thought. He grabbed her arms again.
“Pull yourself up,” he shouted.
“I can’t,” she cried. “My shoulder is out.”
That didn’t surprise Kurt. But it left him with only one choice.
He grabbed the knife from his pocket, flipped it open, and slid it under the wire that held the woman. Trying desperately not to cut her but knowing he didn’t have much time, Kurt began to saw. The wire snapped all at once, and the young woman plunged toward the ocean.
Kurt pushed off and dropped in after her.
Smoke and fire passed him in an instant. He hit the water, and felt one leg strike something beneath it. When he came up, the woman was right in front of him, bravely trying to tread water with one arm.
Kurt grabbed her and splashed away from the flames of burning gas and oil. Quickly, he realized a much greater danger. The water was swirling around them. He felt it pulling at his feet like the undertow at the beach.