The Jagged Edge

by AJ Frazer

  “I’ve got a deep-water inflatable life jacket down on the main deck and some boots that should fit,” said Davey, completely ignoring the question. This was a habit of Sagen and his crew that was starting to get to Dominic.

  He finished heaving on the jacket. He was seething. “Shall we?”

  “OK. Good.” Davey nodded, still apparently oblivious to Dominic’s testiness. “Let’s go down to the boat.”

  On the main deck, the wind was surprisingly strong. The area was bustling with activity as the crew made final preparations.

  “Mr. Elliston, here, put these on!” yelled Davey above the wind and commotion, handing him wet-weather boots, a helmet, and an inflatable life jacket. “We need to get the inflatables off the ship before the wind gets any stronger!”

  Dominic went into the main workshop area and quickly swapped his shoes for the rubber boots, put the life jacket over his shoulders and wrapped it around his waist. Finally, he swung the helmet, which looked like military issue, on his head. Dark-gray and black, it was a serious piece of kit, with a powerful LED light attached. The gear had a familiar feel. It felt good. Kitted up, he went out to find Davey, who was yelling at the crane operator.

  Davey pointed to the inflatable. “Mount up!”

  Dominic clambered aboard. Steve was at the helm, looking around nervously at the boat and the crew on the ship. The intensity was palpable as the powerful wind would make the launch difficult. Dominic was sitting on the floor at the rear of the boat, his back against the rubber wall of the inflatable. The seat he had sat in when he was last on board had been removed. Across from him was the man Sagen had briefly introduced earlier in the planning room. Dominic struggled to recall his name. James? Jack? Jason? J-something.

  J-something looked relaxed and smiled at Dominic before closing his eyes. He was singing or chanting something discernible only to himself. He was muscular yet compact, stoic yet almost childlike in his demeanor. He wore a similar outfit to Dominic’s but had a few extra attachments on his helmet.

  Davey was still barking at the crew on the deck and the crane operator in particular. “OK, hold tight! We’re launching!”

  The crane pulled the slack out of the stainless-steel lines attached to the inflatable. Then the boat lifted from its cradle and swung wildly in the wind. Dominic braced himself against the side of the boat. He could hear the hydraulic crane straining, the steel cables groaning and the men on the deck yelling, but it all washed over him as he stared down at the floor. The boat was swung out over the ship and lowered quickly.

  “Keep your arms inside the boat!” called J-something in an American accent. God, what was his name?

  Dominic knew to keep his arms inboard when launching from a larger vessel, having done it more times that he could remember in the Royal Marines. He released the sidewall of the inflatable, steadying himself on its floor.

  “Get your arm stuck between the pontoon and the ship and it’ll be the worst Chinese burn you ever get.” The American smiled.

  Dominic nodded his head.

  They landed on the water with a crash as the waves, which looked small from up on the deck, smashed them into the hull of the ship. Jared and Davey struggled to release the cables from the front and rear. The rubber sounded as if it was tearing with every scrape.

  “Clear!” yelled Davey from the front.

  “Jared!” called Steve calmly.

  Jared! That was it.

  The American was struggling to unfasten the big stainless-steel hook. “More slack!”

  Steve looked up the side of the ship, cupping his mouth. “More slack!” he roared.

  The crane operator miraculously heard him above the wind because the cable slackened and Jared released the clip.

  “Hold on!” called Steve, before he hunched over the wheel and pushed the throttles forward. The outboard engines screamed ferociously and they sped off. Even though Dominic was sitting down and braced, the G-force threatened to topple him sideways as they accelerated. Steve pulled away from the ship in a wide, graceful arc as the boat came up on the plane, going with the waves. Dominic shuffled into a more comfortable position, trying to go with the motion of the speeding vessel to minimize the onslaught of bumps and sudden changes in direction.

  After a torturous thirty minutes of full-speed steaming, Steve cut the throttles and the big Naiad drifted as the engines idled. The water was much calmer here, and the wind had died down significantly. In the dark distance, orange-and-white lights twinkled along the shoreline. Above them red lights blinked from the red-and-white smokestacks.

  Jared went to Steve and leaned over the small, full-color GPS screen mounted beside the helm.

  “Yep, this is the spot,” said Steve.

  “Agree,” said Jared. “Time to start the party.” Dominic noted again Jared’s accent and cadence. Possibly Texan. He looked back at Dominic. “Gimme a hand with this, would’ya?”

  Dominic looked up. “Sure. What is it?”

  “It’s my party trick.”

  Dominic got to his feet and went to where Jared stood, just in front of the helm. A big black case lay on the floor of the boat. Jared had turned on the light attached to his helmet. It pointed directly into Dominic’s face as the American turned to face him, causing him to squint. “Mind the light!”

  “Sorry,” replied Jared. “OK, one, two, three, lift.”

  They heaved the case to the back of the boat and put it down gently.

  Jared pulled at the metal latches on the side and lifted the lid. Inside was a stubby black weapon, which Dominic recognized immediately as a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. It looked simple enough—a round cylinder with two large bolts at each end. Though in this case simple and destructive were not mutually exclusive.

  “Jesus, what are you doing with this?” asked Dominic.

  Jared looked up at Dominic and again the bright light dazzled him. “Shootin’ it.”

  “I get that, but at what?”

  Jared shrugged. “The factory.” He lifted the weapon out of the box and laid it on the floor of the boat. He then lifted the high-density foam padding from the case to reveal a long sinister-looking missile. “Pick up the launcher for me, would’ya?”

  Dominic stared at it dumbfounded.

  “Just lift it off the floor. It won’t go off!”

  Dominic obliged and lifted the launcher. He was comfortable with most deadly weapons, but he’d not done a lot with ground launched missiles. He felt the heft, the cool metal, the smooth surface of the handle.

  Jared attached the Command Launch Unit to the side of the weapon and took the whole thing from Dominic, hoisting it to his shoulder in a natural, practiced motion. “This here’s the FGM-148 Javelin solid-fuel rocket launcher. The brochure says it’s good for two point five clicks, but I know it’ll do nearly double that. Guided by infrared homing, she’s detonated by mechanism impact force. Each one of these puppies will set you back two hundred and fifty thousand dead US presidents.”

  Dominic knew a bit about the Javelin, having seen their effects firsthand in war-torn cities. But he was more interested in how Jared was trained in using them. “You seem to know a lot about them,” said Dominic.

  “Hell yes. I spent time at Fort Benning in Georgia learning how to light this candle and watch it go boom!” Jared chuckled.

  So, thought Dominic, Jared was a Jarhead. That made remembering his name easier. “You’re seriously going to fire this thing from an inflatable boat? It won’t melt the rubber pontoons?”

  Jared stopped fiddling with dials and spun around, the launcher on his shoulder pointing directly at Dominic, and looked blankly at him. “Hadn’t thought of that. Boys, we might be swimming back!” He chuckled to himself. “Nah, just shittin’ ya, Dom, buddy. Don’t you worry, sir, we got this under control.” Jared turned back around and laid the launcher half in, half out of the case. He then went to the bow where Dominic and the others had congregated.

  “OK, boys, seriously now, when t
his thing lights up you’re gonna get a wicked hit of lead oxide in the exhaust. Best to hold your breath for as long as you can after it goes loud.” Jared clapped his hands together. “Safety briefing over. Enjoy the show.” He pivoted and walked back to the stern. He hoisted the Javelin to his shoulder. “Oh, and guys—stay up there.”

  “He’s seriously firing that thing from a boat?” said Dominic to the others.

  “He’s a mad bastard, but he knows his knitting,” said Steve.

  Dominic now realized why they had been using angle grinders to remove parts of the wing tower when he had been looking for Sagen on board the ship—nothing to obstruct the launch.

  Jared leaned back against the stainless-steel railing that went down the center line of the boat behind the helm. His right shoulder supported the Javelin and his head was buried in the targeting device attached to the side. He was completely still, almost breathless. “Time, Davey?” he called, calmly, his tone now all business.

  “Fifty-eight seconds,” Davey said.

  “‘K,” acknowledged Jared. He was rock steady, despite the gentle swaying of the inflatable on the water. “Count me down, Davey boy.”

  “Forty-five,” said Davey. Dominic noticed him put a hand to his ear. “Scout has confirmed that we’re a go.”

  “K,” replied Jaren.

  “Thirty … Fifteen …”

  Dominic couldn’t believe what was about to happen. Firing a missile into a steel mill would be catastrophic. If the missile hit one of the blast furnaces, the explosion would engulf the entire plant and likely kill anyone in the vicinity.

  “Remember to hold your breath when he fires,” said Steve quietly.

  Dominic realized he was already holding his breath. He was torn about what to do. Let this play out and be an observer. Or step in and try to end the madness.

  “Five … four …” called out Davey without drama.

  “Stop it! You can’t do this!” called Dominic, starting for Jared.

  Steve grabbed his shoulders and held him back.

  “Time!” yelled Davey.

  Everyone looked at Jared, who had not taken his eye off the targeting device.

  Stillness.

  Then a loud pop from the launcher, followed two seconds later by a deafening roar and bright light twelve feet away from the boat. The rocket tore through the darkness, lighting up the water between them and the lights in the distance as Dominic held his breath. It arced up high in the sky before leveling out and beginning its descent, leaving a trail of thick smoke. A few seconds later and the glowing exhaust from the rocket traced a path directly into a cluster of lights on land.

  The explosion lit up the skyline. A moment later the sound hit them as a dull thud against the still night.

  “There she goes,” said Jared. “Time, please, Davey.”

  Dominic shrugged off Steve’s grip but didn’t bother to advance on Jared now that he’d fired the missile. “You’re all insane! There are people working there!”

  “Two minutes and counting,” said Davey calmly.

  Dominic looked at Davey. “Two minutes until what?”

  “That missile was targeted at an empty storage section of the plant. We’ve got eyes on the ground who confirmed that the night crew were nowhere near the target. Now we wait two minutes for the crew to clear out. Protocol for them is to evacuate to a muster station in the event of any explosion. We know their drill results. Two minutes and they’re cleared. That’s when we level the place and no one gets hurt.”

  Jared was loading another rocket into the launcher. “Time, please.”

  “Fifty-two seconds,” replied Davey.

  Steve put a hand on Dominic’s shoulder. “We’re not monsters. We’re not here to murder, we’re here to save people.”

  Jared shouldered the weapon again and braced himself against the stainless-steel railing, motionless.

  Steve’s hand remained on Dominic’s shoulder. It was clearly there to restrain him if he tried to stop Jared.

  “Time?” asked Jared.

  “Thirty seconds.” Davey counted down to zero again.

  Dominic watched on, speechless. The efficiency, order, and precision was not what he’d expected from a vigilante eco-terrorist group. He couldn’t help but be slightly impressed.

  The pop and boom of the second rocket overwhelmed the hum of distant alarms from the steel plant. The rocket lit up the water again as it carved a path to the target. To Dominic’s left, his peripheral vision caught two more bright flashes a hundred meters away. That must be Sagen’s team. The three rockets traced high in the sky and came down with catastrophic effect on the steel plant.

  Davey and Jared were hooting and screaming, fist-bumping, and backslapping. In the distance Dominic could hear similar celebrations on the other inflatable. He was shocked at the power and devastation they had just wrought. And it had all happened in under ten minutes.

  Grace and panache, thought Dominic. Wasn’t that how Sagen had described the way they would take out the plant?

  “Right, come on, boys!” said Davey. “Stow the kit, we need to get a move on.”

  Jared and Davey secured the launcher back in the case and with as much care as if it were a blade of grass, tossed it overboard. They had already drilled large holes in the bottom of the case to allow it to fill with water and sink quickly. Dominic paused to question the environmental impact of a hulk of deadly metal at the bottom of the sea, but thought it wasn’t the time to bring it up.

  The faint revving of the other inflatable’s outboard motors could be heard as their power was unleashed. Once they were sure the case was gone, Steve started up the engines and eased the boat forward. The inflatable reared up and roared off, back out into the blackness of the ocean.

  As they sped away from the shore, Dominic couldn’t help but look back at the burning inferno. The surge of adrenaline he felt clashed with the concern he had for the people at the steel plant. He told himself that they had waited for the workers to clear out. He prayed that they had all done so. But then, two minutes didn’t seem very long.

  The journey back to the ship was rougher, as they were punching head-on into the swell. The boat bounced and lurched off the waves and Dominic felt his stomach introduce itself to his throat as the boat left the water at the top of one wave before landing hard on another. He’d left his sea legs back with his commando days. Finally, Steve throttled back and Dominic poked his head up enough to see the lights of the Eclipse Horizon.

  Pulling the inflatable up alongside the ship, Steve stationed the boat beside two rope ladders.

  “Dominic, up you go!” Davey helped him up to the rubber pontoon and onto the ladder, which he climbed unsteadily in the rolling sea, his heart beating hard.

  Once he was up on the deck, he looked back down to see what the others were doing. He saw Steve and Jared open up the drainage holes at the back of the boat to allow the sea to spurt in. Then Davey took a large knife and stabbed the rubber pontoons; the air hissed loudly as it escaped.

  Steve and Jared quickly climbed the ladders. Steve shut off the motors, made one last check of the boat and leaped onto the rope ladder, leaving the inflatable to sink stern first.

  A rope attached to the bow kept it attached to the ship.

  “Nice job!” said Jared, slapping Dominic on the shoulder as he stood beside him watching the stern of the now deflatable drop below the water, weighed down by the heavy outboard motors.

  Nice job? Dominic didn’t like being thought of as one of the team. He was only there to observe and report. He considered making a point of it to Jared, but lost interest when he realized that the adrenaline of their ride back had worn off and he was now feeling sick and dog-tired.

  He saw Sagen on the other side of the ship, ordering people around but Dominic didn’t have the energy to speak with him now. Instead he took himself off to his cabin, undressed, and hit the bed. He just wanted to sleep and forget about the whole evening. Lying exhausted, his head pounded
from the adrenaline hangover. Like any hangover, he figured, it was always best to sleep through as much of it as possible.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Dominic awoke the following morning, the ship felt different: no noise, no vibrations, no gentle rolling. He dragged himself out of bed and went to the window. The captain was true to his word: the Eclipse Horizon had made it to Corfu without incident and was now at anchor.

  He dressed and stuffed what few belongings he had brought into his duffel bag. “Travel light, live even lighter” was once his motto when on assignment, a motto he had left in the wake of all his successes long ago.

  Heading to the bridge he found Sagen talking to the captain. He waited for their conversation to finish. It was no chore; he spent the time marveling at the beauty of the Corfu coastline, the steep green hillsides that rose from the azure water wrapped in a duvet of blue sky. Its beauty was typical of the Mediterranean coast. Typical, but never to be taken for granted.

  “Dominic!” Sagen walked toward him. “Trust you slept well?”

  “Out like a light.”

  Sagen smiled. “Me too. So are you ready to head to shore? We’ll be leaving shortly. All going well, we’ll lunch on the terrace of Nausicaa Tavern and look out over this stunning ocean.”

  “Sounds very romantic.”

  “Oh it is, Dominic. We shall talk and we shall eat, but unfortunately we shall not be staying long. A quick drive to the airport and from there we go our separate ways, my friend.”

  “Well, I hope that we can talk more. I would like to finish my piece.”

  “Of course, of course. I’m an open book.”

  Dominic nodded. He was still unsure of what to make of the man. It was true, Sagen had been very open with him so far—incredibly so—but there were moments where he would cloud over, throwing up barriers and walls. Dominic sensed that he was hiding more than he was sharing.

  “Now,” continued Sagen, “if you can be on the aft deck in twenty minutes, we’ll hitch a ride to shore. Hope you brought decent walking shoes.” Sagen did not wait for a reply; he simply turned and left with a wave of his hand.