by Thomas Waite
Don was already up, grabbing an extinguisher to put out the blazing sail. Lana couldn’t have been more grateful; the fire had put a bull’s-eye on the only target in the sea.
In less than sixty seconds, Don snuffed the fire. The man had serious cojones, Lana had to admit. The whole time he put out the flames in the bow, he was the only visible human target.
Lana raised her eyes above the gunwale again. She still saw nothing but darkness. No lights. No muzzle flashes. A strange silence had ensued. The SEAL who’d been screaming most likely had died, along with others, she guessed, based on what she had just seen of the explosion.
Then she heard the wind rushing through the hole in the jib, and Don yelling at her from twenty-five feet away: “We’ll use the genny. We’ll be okay.”
His words had barely registered when Red, balancing in the sinking bow of the armored boat, fired a rocket from a grenade launcher.
A heat seeker, she figured, when it ran a wickedly fast course across the rolling sea and blew apart the small vessel that had just fired on them.
When she looked back for Red, he and the bow of his boat had disappeared into the blackness.
Don jumped down into the Dehler’s cockpit, thrusting aside the extinguisher and grabbing the wheel.
He shoved a boxy lantern into her hands. “Up to the bow. We’ve got to rescue them if they’re still alive.”
She scrambled past the cables that helped hold up the mast, then grasped the railing all the way to the front of the boat. As she threw the switch on the lantern, she hoped like hell Red had taken out all the attackers because otherwise she was about to replace Don as the only target on the sea.
She immediately spotted three SEALs, including Red, trying to hold on to the other men, none of whom could possibly have been alive, their wounds gaping and deadly at a glance.
“Slow down, they’re to port,” she yelled to Don, pointing left.
He dropped the sails with the electric winches and started the engine to give them maneuverability.
Then he brought the stern in tight to Red and dropped Storm Season’s swimming platform, which fell to the water line. With the sea rising and falling, and the wind howling, Don did a superb job of holding the boat in position. Lana dragged the SEALs’ rocket-blasted bodies aboard, sickened by their wounds. Arms and legs were missing, faces blown away, and a chest had been ripped open. But she and the SEALs worked hard to claim what they could because those remains would mean much to their loved ones.
Only two of the dead still had intact life jackets. The other bodies were hauled to Storm Season by Red and Veal—another SEAL with a nickname, she presumed—and Kurt, who was bleeding from his shoulder. Struggling, he had to use that arm to push the dead onto the platform.
Finished loading, Red and his two compatriots climbed aboard. The SEAL commander told Don to head toward the wreckage of the enemy’s boat. He grabbed the lantern and joined Veal on the forward deck. Both had armed themselves with the boat’s AR-15s. Their own weapons were soaked and not firing.
Kurt settled on a cockpit bench and asked for a first aid kit. Lana brought it to him but he refused her offer to help.
She pulled out her semiautomatic handgun, as had Don, and joined the watch from the stern as he piloted them through the debris.
“No survivors. Seven dead,” Red announced after scanning the sea with the lantern.
“Was it them?” Lana asked, glancing back at the peninsula.
“No,” Red said, shaking his head.
Though Lana had no regrets over the deaths of these men, she averted her eyes, knowing how cruelly steadfast her memory could be. She’d already seen too much of the night’s carnage.
Red scrambled back to the helm and asked Don to slow the ship so he could check the bodies of his victims more closely. After relieving them of numerous weapons, including grenades, automatic rifles and pistols, and an RPG, he looked at various flag tattoos on three of the dead. “They’re Russians, and proud of it. Help me get them aboard.”
His compatriots pulled the bodies over the transom. Then Red said they’d also keep the wet armaments, “in case we have to argue about who violated international waters first.”
“What do you mean?” Lana asked.
“We can’t go back to Pitsunda,” Red said. “We can only go toward Russian waters, and this is far from over. They’re the ones who all but declared war. They fired two rockets at us and sank a U.S. navy vessel before we returned fire. So we’re going to take the battle to them. We don’t have any choice.”
Lana felt a chill deep in her core, like an icicle twisting in her gut. She knew it wasn’t from the mangled dead in the boat or the corpses floating limbless in the sea. It was from knowing that Red was right: none of them had any choice, and this really was just the beginning.
She also had no idea if the Russians the SEAL had just killed were on Squat’s payroll as enforcers, or coordinating their attack with Oleg and others farther north who might be targeting Galina at that very moment.
She checked for messages from Holmes or Esme, hoping for some good news about Emma and Tanesa.
Nothing.
Then she sent a message to Galina.
The wall of water hit Emma and Tanesa like a powerful wave, tumbling them and twisting them apart. Tanesa’s hand was torn from hers. Emma tried to swim to the surface, but for those first few moments she had no idea if she were upside down or right side up. As the fierce current swept her along she was terrified of smashing into the stone church or a concrete bench. She felt like a sock in the rinse cycle of a washing machine, lungs compressing for lack of air.
She broke through the surface gasping, only to see more water before it washed over her. The current was sending her rushing toward a sapling, which was good because when she hit it, the skinny tree bent and absorbed most of the impact. She held on, grateful it didn’t snap.
In the dusky light, she screamed for Tanesa, certain her closest friend was drowning. Then she spotted her about a hundred feet away getting hauled up onto a riverfront trail by one of those rough-looking guys who’d glared at them earlier.
Maybe they’re okay.
Tanesa was shaking badly, but Emma didn’t see any blood or obvious signs of broken bones. It took minutes for the swirling waters to settle before she even considered swimming to Tanesa. In the distance, she saw choir members dragging themselves from the water, but not Shawn. She yelled, asking if anyone had seen him. The only response came from a young girl who shook her head. The others looked shocked and battered by the flood.
Then she heard a guy say, “Hey, girl, lemme help you.”
A man about twenty with faux hawk hair pulled up alongside her in a kayak. It had an open deck, which would make it easy to board. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, though, because a closer look showed he was another one of the younger men who’d given them the stink eye. But now his eyes had softened—on her.
“Get on,” he said more firmly.
Her wet clothes clung to her as she boarded the kayak. She felt like an unwitting participant in a wet T-shirt contest.
She looked for Tanesa, but couldn’t see her now.
“Where’s my friend? I saw her getting pulled out of the water.”
“Yeah, that’s right, we saved her ass. Yours, too, now.”
He paddled like it was a Sunday afternoon lark in the park.
“There she is.” He pointed. “Now get off,” he added in a sharp voice, pushing her into hip-deep water.
Emma trudged across the grassy bottom as a huge guy, at least six foot six and two hundred fifty pounds, extended his great mitt of a hand.
She took it. That was when she saw the abject fright on Tanesa’s face and knew they had not found the comfort of strangers.
“How you doing?” the big man said. He looked like a boxer or kung fu fighter. Late t
wenties, shaved head, close-cropped beard, lots of muscle.
“Fine,” Emma muttered, back to eyeing Tanesa. “You okay?” she asked.
Tanesa shrugged.
“You’re not going to say ‘Thank you for saving my life’?” The big man glared and clapped his hands together so loudly they made Emma jump. “Show some gratitude. We look like the Coast Guard? We didn’t need to do that shit.”
Emma took Tanesa’s hand. “Come on, we’ve got to go find Shawn.”
“You aren’t looking for nobody,” the man said, dropping his hand on Emma’s shoulder. “Know why? ’Cause I’ve been looking at you two real close, and even with your hair all wet and funky, and looking like a couple of drowned rats, I know who you are. You’re those hero girls from last year. So do you know what that makes us?”
Emma was barely listening. What had mostly registered was that his grip on her shoulder was increasing its pressure.
“I asked you two a question, and I asked it nice. You better start learning some manners or we’re going to have to teach you some respect.”
“No, I don’t know what the hell that makes you,” Emma said, trying to shrug off his hand. It didn’t work.
“Your knights in shining armor. And I’d say you two give us some serious bargaining power.”
“Bargaining for what?” Emma demanded.
Before she got an answer she and Tanesa were surrounded and pushed toward a parking lot where a long black Hummer with darkened windows was parked.
“Get in the back with my friends,” the big man said.
Emma balked. “Bargaining for what?”
“Couple of hero girls like you haven’t figured that out?” he replied. “Your lives. What else? Now get the fuck in there.”
He pushed Emma so hard he sent her sprawling across the backseat.
Galina had barely slept after responding to Lana’s message. She’d worried that an attack on Lana’s boat could mean there would be an attack on hers. But so far the morning hours had passed peacefully under a brilliant sun whose heat had been lessened by a firm breeze.
She’d been keeping a keen eye on Oleg’s trawler, though, which rose and disappeared with the large swells. So did the boat she was on, captained by Abdul Majid Younes, as he had formally introduced himself yesterday.
“Does the other ship have any weapons on board?”
“A nine millimeter maybe, for shooting sharks. That’s all. Maybe a rifle.”
“What do you have?”
Captain Younes raised his eyebrows. “I have a few things lying around.”
The way he said that made Galina hope he had an arsenal aboard. He had fled Iran, after all. “If they take my daughter and me, they’ll kill us both,” she whispered; Alexandra was asleep on her lap.
“I protect women and children on my boat. It’s a matter of honor. You may not know it yet, but you picked the right man.”
Galina studied him openly. Could she really have been so fortunate as to have found a veritable prince in that tiny seaport? He’d betrayed no nerves thus far, sailing on course with hardly a glance back, casually drinking the powerful coffee he’d politely asked her to fix for him.
The cop he’d tied to the bench in the cabin was slumped over, evidently sleeping.
Captain Younes asked Galina to warm up cans of soup for all of them. She took on the duty of helping the officer, who brightened when he realized that she’d come to feed him, not fire a bullet into his brain.
“Just do what I say,” Galina told him as she spooned more broth and leeks into his mouth. “The cop I killed was a beast. He was trying to rape me. Don’t try to escape or hurt anyone and I won’t hurt you.”
When she returned to the helm, Oleg’s boat had neither gained nor lost distance on them.
“He doesn’t want to catch up,” Captain Younes said. “I’ve tested them, slowing down and speeding up. Always the same with them. I think he wants to know where you’re going and why.”
“I think he already knows all that. He’s a master hacker.”
It made sense that Oleg would stay back so he could try to capture both her and whoever she was meeting. Or simply kill them, for that matter. What he would fear most, she figured, was having them work together against him. Otherwise, Galina was certain he would have tried to grab her as soon as he could.
She sent Lana a message about Oleg’s careful stalking of her boat. Most of her morning had been spent trying to hack into the U.S.S. Delphin, fearful that at any second the crazy man Oleg had in that sub would launch another Trident II. But she hadn’t been able to penetrate the sub’s cybersecurity. What she had found was deeply curious, though: A tremendous amount of data was flowing from Moscow to the submarine, which was now deep in the South Atlantic. That location was also the best guess of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, which had released that information to the news media.
The data flow surprised her. It was as if her fellow Russians no longer saw any reason to hide their involvement in the hijacking of the sub or the bombing of Antarctica. Which was crazy. Any evidence linking them to either could be a casus belli for nuclear retaliation. It made no sense to her. But there was no denying the data.
Twice Oleg left her messages. In one he’d had the gall to say that if she came back to him now she could still be his “good bad girl again.” She shook her head in amazement. Didn’t he realize that she’d shoot him if she had the chance?
She stroked Alexandra’s head and prayed they’d both survive the rendezvous and whatever Lana had planned for it.
“Up ahead,” Captain Younes said, pointing. He was looking through his binoculars. “I see a sailboat. It looks the right size.”
She stood to take a look, glassing the sea, but catching only a glimpse of gray sail in the distance.
Galina turned around to look at Oleg’s boat. It had started to close the gap.
“He’s closer,” she said to Younes.
“I have been looking,” the captain said calmly. “I saw him speeding up before you did. But I’m afraid my friend is pushing his engine as hard as he can, and he’s a little faster than I thought.”
Galina told Alexandra to go back to her bunk and stay bundled up. The child must have sensed the urgency and danger because she scampered down the companionway, past the prisoner, and into the forward bunk.
Her mother raised the Glock and racked the slide to ensure a bullet was in the chamber.
Captain Younes nodded approvingly. “Take the wheel,” he told her.
He opened a locker in the cockpit and pulled out a shotgun and a hunting rifle. Pointing to the former, he said, “That’s for if they get close. The other one is to make sure they never do.”
“Are you good with those?” she asked.
“Good enough not to get caught in the middle,” he replied, “because that’s how you get crushed.”
Ten minutes later, with Storm Season in sight, a bullet ricocheted off a winch drum that operated the towing booms for the nets.
Calmly, Captain Younes put the trawler on autopilot, then picked up the hunting rifle, searching for Oleg with his scope.
The next shot struck Younes directly in the head. The captain dropped to the deck, dead, looking as if an axe had hacked open his skull.
Galina dropped below the level of the gunwales, shaking uncontrollably. Alexandra raced to the cabin doorway.
“No! Go back!” Galina screamed. “Now!”
The six-year-old darted to her bunk, but Galina knew that her little girl had seen Younes’s fatal wound and the copious blood washing across the deck.
She looked up at the wheel wondering how she could possibly steer the boat and try to keep Oleg at bay.
You don’t have to steer, she reminded herself: Younes had put it on autopilot.
“I can help,” the cop yelled from inside the
cabin.
Galina ignored him, picking up the rifle. Staying as low as she could, she peered through the scope.
In an eerie replay of what she’d seen as they’d sailed from the inlet, she spotted Oleg staring back at her through an eyepiece of his own. Only this time it had a rifle attached.
He fired again.
CHAPTER 25
OLEG’S SHOT MISSED GALINA’S head by less than six inches, but tore through the cabin walls with enough force to leave a bullet burn on the cop’s chin. An inch closer and the man would have lost his face.
Galina took no notice of this, worried far more that Oleg’s ammo would rip through the length of the trawler and kill Alexandra in the bunk at the front of the cabin. She wished she could hide her daughter behind one of the nets’ heavy winch drums, but she didn’t dare try to move her now.
She poked the hunting rifle over the gunwale and eyed Oleg again, firing as soon as she saw him.
The rifle kicked back into her shoulder with enough force to surprise her, but not enough to keep her from seeing that she’d made Oleg duck.
Still smiling?
Galina then shot out a window in the pilothouse of his ship. The glass shattered completely. She saw the captain duck away from the wheel.
As she scanned the trawler for Oleg, another bullet ripped into the stern a foot below her. A second shot followed quickly, nicking the railing inches from her head.
She ducked again, hoping they were getting closer to Lana’s boat. Galina needed help.
She crawled forward and peered over the port side, exposing herself as little as possible. She started to raise the binoculars when Lana’s sailboat rose easily into view on a swell. It was still more than a mile away, but in minutes their paths would cross if Younes’s trawler kept trudging along.
But a glance backward showed Oleg’s ship still catching up. It seemed to be gaining speed as it moved closer.
Oddly, though, he had stopped shooting, which made her uneasy. His boat was still disappearing when it moved down a swell, granting her only glimpses to shoot at him. She had little faith in her ability to do more than make him take cover.
