It would have been far easier to hit the exercise room, pound the treadmill for five miles and then climb on the StairMaster, but they were at sea, and to Austin the sea had always meant freedom; freedom to roam and explore the world, freedom from traffic and smog and the sometimes claustrophobic existence of modern urban life. Out here — with the promise of dawn on the horizon — he wasn’t about to lock himself in a cramped windowless room for his morning workout even if it had air-conditioning.
Wearing black sweatpants and a faded gray T-shirt with the NUMA logo on it, Kurt felt as good as he could remember. He stood just over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and curly silver-gray hair that looked almost platinum at times. He considered his eyes a shade of blue, but apparently they were an unusual shade, as many people — especially the women in his life — had tried to explain.
As he closed in on his fortieth birthday, Kurt had rededicated himself to working out. He’d always been in shape. A career in the Navy and several years as part of a clandestine CIA salvage team required it. But with the decade number on his age going to four, Kurt was determined to get in the best shape of his life, better than he’d been at thirty, better than he’d been at twenty.
It was a tall order. It took more work, left more aches and pains, and was slower in coming than when he’d been younger, but he was almost there.
Ten pounds lighter than he’d been a year before, benching, curling, and lifting more weight in the gym, he could feel the strength surging through his body like it had in his youth when he believed he could do anything.
It was needed too. A career at NUMA came with lots of physical punishment. Beyond the regular labor-intensive work of any salvage operation, he’d also been beat up, shot at, and half drowned on a regular basis. After a while the dings started to add up. A year ago he’d considered taking up a standing offer to go back to work for his father, who owned a prominent salvage company of his own. But that felt like leaving on someone else’s terms, and if there was one thing Kurt Austin didn’t do, it was follow any lead but his own.
He stared out at the horizon as it changed from a deep indigo to a pale grayish blue. The light was rising even though the sun had yet to show its face. He stretched and turned, trying to crack his back. Off the starboard beam, something caught his eye; a thin trail of smoke, drifting skyward.
He hadn’t seen it during his run, the darkness had obscured it, but it was no illusion.
He squinted and stared, but in the predawn gloom he couldn’t make out the source of the smoke. He took one last glance and then headed for the stairs.
Austin stepped onto the bridge to find Captain Robert Haynes, the Argo’s commanding officer, standing with the officer of the watch, plotting out their course to the Azores, where the NUMA team would participate in an X Prize — like race to crown the world’s fastest two-man submarine.
The operation was a milk run. A pure research assignment given to Kurt and his partner, Joe Zavala, as a reward for all the heavy lifting they’d done on recent missions. Joe was already on Santa Maria Island making preparations and, as Kurt guessed, making friends, especially among the women. Kurt was looking forward to joining him, but before the minivacation could begin they would have to make a slight detour.
Haynes never lifted his eyes from the charts. “Done wearing out my decks?” he asked.
“For now,” Kurt replied. “But we’re going to need to change course to one-nine-zero.”
The captain looked up briefly and then back down at the chart table. “I told you before, Kurt, you lose something over the side, you’re going to have to swim for it if you want it back.”
Kurt smiled briefly, but the situation was serious.
“There’s a line of smoke off our starboard beam,” Kurt said. “Someone’s got a fire going, and I don’t think it’s a barbecue.”
The captain stood straight, the joking look gone from his face. A fire at sea is an incredibly dangerous event. Ships are filled with pipes and conduits that carry flammable liquids like fuel and hydraulic fluid. They often carry dangerous and even explosive cargoes: oil, natural gas, coal, and chemicals, even metals like magnesium and aluminum that burn. And unlike a fire on land, there’s really nowhere safe to run unless you abandon ship, the last option in any captain’s handbook.
Kurt knew this, as did every man on the Argo. Captain Haynes didn’t hesitate or even attempt to confirm the accuracy of Kurt’s assessment. He turned to the helmsman.
“Take us around,” he said. “Make your course one-nine-zero. Bring us to flank speed.”
As the helmsman executed the order, the captain grabbed a pair of binoculars and headed out onto the starboard wing of the bridge. Kurt followed.
The Argo was fairly close to the equator, and at such latitudes the light grew quickly. Kurt could see the smoke plainly now, even without the binoculars. Thick and dark, it rose skyward in a narrow vertical column, thinning out only marginally on the way up and drifting slightly to the east.
“Looks like a cargo vessel,” Captain Haynes said.
He handed the binoculars to Kurt.
Kurt trained them on the ship. She was a midsize vessel, not a containership but a bulk carrier. She appeared to be adrift.
“That’s oil smoke,” Kurt said. “The whole ship is shrouded in it, but it’s thickest near the aft end.”
“Engine-room fire,” Haynes said. “Or a problem with one of the bunkers.”
That would have been Kurt’s guess as well.
“Did you pick up any distress calls?”
Captain Haynes shook his head. “Nothing. Just regular chatter on the radio.”
Kurt wondered if the fire had taken out her electrical system. But even if it had, most ships carried backups, and every vessel of that size would have a few handheld transceivers, an emergency beacon, and even radios in the main lifeboats. To hear nothing from a 500-foot vessel burning and adrift seemed all but impossible.
By now the Argo had finished its turn and was heading dead at the stricken ship. Her speed was coming up, and Kurt could feel them surging through the water. The Argo could make 30 knots in calm seas. Kurt guessed the range at just over five miles, closer than he’d first thought. That was a good thing.
But ten minutes later, as he trained the binoculars on the superstructure and increased the magnification, he spotted several things that were less than good.
Flames were licking out through various hatches all along the deck, meaning the entire vessel was burning, not just the engine room. The ship was definitely listing to port and was down at the bow, meaning she was taking on water as well as burning. But worst of all, there were men on the decks who seemed to be dragging something toward the rail.
At first Kurt thought it was an injured crewman, but then they let go of the person, dropping him to the deck. The man tumbled as if he’d been shoved and then got up and began to run. He made three or four steps, only to fall forward suddenly onto his face.
Kurt snapped the binoculars to the right just to be sure. He could clearly see a man holding an assault rifle. Without a sound he saw the muzzle flash. One burst and then another.
Kurt turned back to the man who’d fallen. He lay utterly still now, facedown on the deck.
Pirates, Kurt thought. Hijackers with assault rifles. The cargo vessel was in deeper trouble than he’d guessed.
Kurt lowered the binoculars, fully aware that they were now heading toward more then a rescue.
“Captain,” he said. “Our problems just multiplied.”
4
ABOARD THE KINJARA MARU, Kristi Nordegrun struggled with the darkness. Her ears rang with a strange sound, and her head pounded as if she’d been drinking all night. She lay on the floor, her limbs stiff and folded under her in an awkward tangle.
Try as she might, she could not even remember how she’d gotten there, let alone what had happened. Based on the numbness in her legs, she guessed she had been in that position for a long time.
Unable to stand yet, Kristi propped herself up against the wall, fighting an unbalanced equilibrium.
She was in the deepest part of the crew’s quarters, several flights below deck and near the center of the vessel. She’d come here because the mess was on this deck and she was going to meet her husband for a late meal before they retired for the night. She looked around but didn’t see him. That concerned her.
If she had been knocked unconscious for some time, surely her husband would have found her. Then again, if the ship was in trouble, his first duty was as captain.
Kristi realized she could smell smoke. She couldn’t remember an explosion, but the ship was definitely on fire. She remembered her husband telling her there were some waters of the world where terrorists planted mines. But it seemed not to concern him on this journey.
She tried again to stand, fell to the side, and knocked over a table upon which cans of soda stood. In the darkness she heard a strange sound, like marbles rolling around.
The noise moved away from her but continued until ending with several dull clunks. At that moment Kristi realized what had happened: the cans were rolling away from her, gathering speed until they hit the bulkhead.
Her equilibrium was definitely off, but so was the floor. The ship was tilting, listing. Panic gripped her. She knew now that the ship was sinking.
She crawled to the wall, bumped into it, and then followed it to the door. She pushed on the door. It moved a few inches and then hit something soft. She pushed again, leaning her shoulder into it and shoving it a few more inches. Trying to squeeze through, she realized the object blocking her way was the body of a man, lying against the door.
As she pushed, the man moved a fraction, rolling over and moaning.
“Who are you?” she said. “Are you hurt?”
“Mrs. Nordegrun,” the man managed to say.
She recognized the voice, one of her husband’s crew members from the bridge. A nice man, from the Philippines, her husband had said he’d be a good officer one day.
“Mr. Talan?”
He sat up. “Yes,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“I have no balance,” she said. “I think we’re sinking.”
“Something happened,” he said. “We have to get off the ship.”
“What about my husband?”
“He’s on the bridge,” Talan said. “He sent me for you. Can you make it to the stairs?”
“I can,” she said. “Even if I have to crawl.”
“Is better that way,” he said, finding her hand and guiding her in the right direction.
“Yes,” she agreed. “We need to stay underneath the smoke if we can.”
Before getting married, Kristi had been a paramedic and then a trauma nurse. She’d been on the scene of many accidents and fires and even a building collapse. And despite her fear and confusion, her past training and experience were kicking in and taking over.
Together, they began crawling along the floor. Fifty feet on, they found another crewman, but they could not wake him.
Kristi feared the worst but had to be sure. She checked the man for a pulse.
“He’s dead.”
“How?” Talan asked.
She didn’t know. In fact, she could find no marks on him, and his neck seemed uninjured.
“Perhaps the fumes?”
The smoke was thicker here, but it didn’t seem dense enough to kill.
Kristi put the dead man’s hand back on his chest, and the two crawled on. They reached the stairwell and pushed the door open. To Kristi’s relief there was less smoke inside, and by holding on to the railing she could stand.
As they began to climb, a thin shaft of light shone down on them. In the hallway, some of the emergency lights were working while others were out, and at first Kristi guessed that this illumination came from an emergency light in the stairwell, but there was something odd about it. The light was whiter, more natural, and it seemed to dim and brighten sporadically.
Two levels up was a door with a tempered-glass window in it. Kristi guessed that the light was coming from there, but it made little sense to her. It had been dark when she’d gone to the ship’s pantry. How could it be daylight?
She knew there had to be another explanation. She kept climbing, trying to keep up with Talan. As they reached the landing at the top, daylight streamed in from outside, obscured off and on by waves of smoke that drifted by.
“It’s morning,” she said, dumbfounded.
“We must have been unconscious for many hours,” Talan said.
“And no one came to find us?” she asked, the fear in her heart stirring at the implications.
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.”
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