Dark Hunt: A Ryan Weller Thriller

by Evan Graver

  Dark Hunt

  A Ryan Weller Thriller

  Evan Graver

  Dark Hunt

  © 2020 Evan Graver

  www.evangraver.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any forms or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic, or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover: Wicked Good Book Covers

  Editing: Novel Approach Manuscript Services

  Proofreading: Gerald Shaw

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, business, companies, institutions, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Third Reef Publishing, LLC

  Hollywood, Florida

  www.thirdreefpublishing.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Evan Graver

  Chapter One

  Sea Tiger

  Caribbean Sea

  Captain Kristoffer Barsness wasn’t a superstitious man, but if ever there was a voyage full of omens, he was on it.

  Nothing seemed to have gone right since leaving port, and now the teeth of a tropical storm was gnashing at their stern. They were halfway across the Caribbean Sea, dragging the defunct cruise ship Galina Jovovich, named after a Russian actress, from the Port of Miami to the breaking yard in Bluefields, Nicaragua, where they’d cut her up for scrap.

  Barsness stared out of the water-streaked rear windows on the bridge of his ocean-going X-Bow tug, Sea Tiger, as it plowed through the driving rain, its thick tow cable disappearing into the darkness. This was the Sea Tiger’s first tow, but Barsness couldn’t count how many tows he’d made in the fifty years he’d been plying the seas.

  The old Norwegian ran a hand over his stubbly gray hair, cut short to the scalp to disguise where it was thinning on top. He was tall, with powerful shoulders and a thick chest sculpted from years of deck work as he’d made his way up through the ranks to command his own tug. He’d just come on for the midnight watch, and he sipped from a mug of coffee as he listened to Martin Aadland, his short, pudgy first mate, as he gave a summary of the previous four hours.

  But Barsness’s mind was on the Galina. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain, a Canadian firm had purchased the ship, designed by the Soviets to weather the brutal environments of the Baltic and North Seas, and moved her to Argentina, where they ran cruises to the polar ice caps of Antarctica. When the owners took the Galina to Miami for a much-needed retrofit, they’d mismanaged their funds and the vessel had gone into receivership. They’d left the ship to rot at a dock on the Miami River, where she was an eyesore to developers and owners of high-end condos. Eventually, the City of Miami had seized the vessel and auctioned her to the highest bidder to pay the crew and to recoup the government’s costs. The winning bidder decided she wasn’t worth saving and hired the Norwegian firm, Stavanger Marine, to tow the forty-five-year-old Galina to the breakers.

  The Galina Jovovich had a stout bow for breaking ice, and she contained a lot of extra steel to strengthen her hull, perfect for breaking and recycling, but, so far, the trip to Bluefields had been fraught with danger and inexplicable complications.

  Before they’d even left the Port of Miami, Sea Tiger’s tow cable had snapped. Fortunately, the harbor escort tugs had quickly corralled the wayward ship before the Galina could do any damage. The crew of the Sea Tiger had rigged the backup cable, but Barsness had his doubts about its strength. Stavanger might have provided him with a magnificent ship, but they’d cut corners, and one of those was the used backup cable. Even though it had been inspected and certified, it wasn’t the same as the original, which, in hindsight, Barsness thought, wasn’t that great either. Now, with the coming storm, there would be even more strain on the cable.

  Aadland finished his report by saying, “The tropical storm should pass to our west, but we’re in for a rough ride.”

  Barsness sipped his coffee, pondering the situation.

  When the captain didn’t speak, Aadland continued. “Seas are building to two meters and the winds are holding steady at a three, with gusts up to four.”

  As a young officer, Barsness had memorized the Beaufort scale, an empirical measurement of wind speed. A three was between twelve to nineteen kilometers per hour, and a four registered between twenty and twenty-eight.

  “What does the radar show?” Barsness asked, picking a piece of lint from his pressed white shirt. As always, the epaulets with the four gold bars remained fixed in place on his shoulders. He preferred to wear coveralls to prevent his uniform from becoming dirty and to avoid his wife’s curses when she had to remove a stain, but Stavanger Marine wanted their captains dressed for the part.

  Aadland moved the mouse on the computer and refreshed the screen. “It’s on track to cross the Virgin Islands, enter the Caribbean, and turn toward Jamaica.”

  No one had told Mother Nature that hurricane season had yet to start. She clearly had a mind of her own, and she’d created an early May storm.

  “We should cross ahead of it,” Barsness said, looking over his first mate’s shoulder…..

  “Aye, Captain,” Aadland replied.

  It would have been faster to cross through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, but, given their current problems, Barsness had decided to use the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to avoid maneuvering around the Windward Passage’s heavier traffic. The extra time in transit now put them dangerously close to the storm’s track, and the decision seemed to put everyone on his ship in peril. Barsness shuddered at the thought of being caught in a hurricane with the cruise ship in tow.

  He ordered the mate to turn them onto a new course that would swing them farther south and wide of the storm, avoiding the worst of the pounding waves and driving winds. He glanced through the window again at the ship under tow. Its black hulk was lit with battery-powered running lights to prevent collisions, but he could barely make them out. Were the batteries dying already? There was no way he could put crewmen on the Galina to change them, not in this weather. He shuddered again. The old ship was spooky.


  As Sea Tiger changed course, turning broadside to the mounting waves, the tow cable sagged and creaked as the Galina took the tension, like a giant dog shaking on a leash. Barsness had never seen anything like it.

  “Keep it steady,” he snapped at the helmsman, Erik Sorbo, a skinny, fresh-faced man with blond hair and blue eyes who was a recent graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy. Despite Sorbo being in his early twenties, Barsness still thought of him as a kid.

  “Aye, sir, I’m trying,” Sorbo said. “The waves are making it difficult.”

  “Stand aside,” Barsness barked.

  Despite the captain’s struggle with the controls, even he could not keep the tow cable from sagging. The cable’s pop was audible on the bridge each time the tension returned. Barsness cursed, wishing he had a wheel to control the tug, instead of these bloody joysticks.

  “She’s not going to make it if this keeps up, sir,” Sorbo said.

  Barsness relinquished the controls back to the helmsman and allowed him to wrestle with the two ships while he kept his mouth shut. The joystick controls on this modern ship just weren’t his forte.

  Once Sorbo had completed the turn, the tension on the cable lessened. Barsness hoped the currents of the heavy following sea would give them an extra push on their way across the Caribbean. Their transition of the Mona Passage would have allowed them to make a straight run for Bluefields, but now they were dipping south toward Venezuela, making the voyage longer and less profitable due to the extra fuel being burned by the Sea Tiger’s powerful engines.

  He picked up his coffee mug and sipped again, gazing out at Galina Jovovich’s weak running lights. Had the starboard light gone out?

  With luck, the seas would smooth out and they’d make it to the breaking yard with only a day or two of delay. While the winds were still blowing hard, the waves didn’t seem as tall, lessening the pitch and roll of the Sea Tiger.

  They monitored the storm as it continued to form in the east. Capt. Barsness retired from his watch to sleep for four hours before he would spend the coming day on the bridge. He yawned as he walked to his cabin. He hung his shirt on a hanger in his closet and washed his face in the sink.

  Stepping to his bunk, he dropped into bed, worried about the storm, the delay in delivering the ship, and his wife, Ruth, being home alone. He concentrated on the pleasant days they had spent together, sitting on their porch and watching the ships on the Vesterelva River sailing to and from Fredrikstad.

  His alarm clock woke him from a fitful sleep, and a rising sun greeted him, streaking the sky with brilliant reds. Overnight, the waves had increased, and he could feel the Sea Tiger plunging and tugging at her cable. He jammed on his shoes and tugged on his shirt, buttoning it as he raced to the helm.

  “What’s happening, Martin?”

  “The storm track has changed. It’s heading right for us. I’ve already made a course correction, but we’ll just have to ride it out. We can’t move fast enough to get out of the way.”

  Barsness cursed and glanced at the Galina. She crested the waves uneasily, her bow plummeting up and down, straining against the tow cable. There wasn’t anything to do but ride it out and pray for the best. He would stay on duty all the way to Bluefields if needed.

  Outside, the waves continued to mount as the clouds obscured the sun and day turned into night. Rain lashed the windows, driven sideways by the high winds. With one hand on the back of the pilot’s chair, Barsness continuously scanned the stormy sea beyond the front and rear windows, then checked the radar screens and instruments. They would get the worst of it; of that, he had no doubt.

  It was late evening when Aadland came on deck. “You need to rest, Captain.”

  “Not now, Martin. I must see the ship though this storm. Then I’ll rest.”

  The tropical storm tracked right along their course, as if sensing the Galina wanted nothing to do with being towed to the breaking yard. She seemed to fight them at every step. Barsness continued to fret about the integrity of the cable and the tow harness. He looked back, the Galina’s bow just visible, the rest of the ship shrouded by the heavy rain and fog. Had the batteries in the running lights died? he wondered.

  In the middle of the Caribbean, the storm stalled and built into a raging hurricane, delivering force twelve winds at over one hundred miles per hour and creating forty-foot waves. Barsness ordered a further course deviation to the south, trying to skirt the edge of the storm.

  His heart sank when he heard the tow cable part with a sound like a cracking whip. The loose end smacked the tug’s steel superstructure with a resounding thud that reverberated through the hull.

  “Ninety degrees to port, now!” Capt. Barsness shouted.

  Sorbo jerked the joystick and the big tug responded at once, leaning hard to the left. Coffee mugs slid off consoles and shattered on the deck. Loose papers fluttered through the air as Barsness clutched the back of the helmsman’s seat. The sudden maneuver would put them out of the direct path of the rudderless ship behind them.

  “Straighten up, Erik,” Barsness said, and Sorbo righted the tug. “Maximum speed to the south.”

  Barsness swore under his breath. Sea Tiger was a state-of-the-art ship, with the newest and the best of everything. How could this have happened? He’d never lost a ship under his tow. This would be the end of a long and prosperous career, but that was a worry for later. Right now, all that mattered was the safety of the Sea Tiger and his crew.

  Aadland struggled across the bridge to where Barsness stood behind Sorbo’s seat. “We have to track the Galina.”

  “We’ll find her again,” Barsness answered.

  “Her AIS has been dismantled and she has no running lights,” Aadland cried.

  While under tow, the Galina didn’t need the Automatic Identification System that provided course and speed along with the ship’s name, as no one had expected her to break loose. Now that she was adrift in the powerful storm, there was no telling where she’d end up.

  “May God have mercy on her,” Barsness said, as the Galina Jovovich disappeared into the raging tempest.

  Chapter Two

  Everglades Explorer

  Miragoâne, Haiti

  Captain Darrell Smith leaned over the middle hatch of Everglades Explorer, a 220-foot-long general cargo vessel, and stared into the hold. Thirty feet below, crewmen and Haitian day laborers piled bags of rice into the slings attached to the two onboard slewing cranes. He straightened and glanced around before shaking a cigarette from the half-empty pack and lit it with a plastic lighter. Smith put the lighter and the smokes back in his pocket, ran a hand through his sandy blond hair, and let the breeze cool his lean frame.

  He turned and scanned the small harbor of one of the world’s poorest and most dangerous countries. Low green hills rose steeply from the placid blue waters of the Bay of Miragoâne, part of the larger Gulf of Gonâve between Haiti’s two large peninsulas. The town itself was a collection of bland concrete block buildings whose flat roofs seemed clustered one atop the other, leaving little room for the narrow streets and back alleys. Dominating the town’s landscape was the large spire of the Saint John the Baptist Cathedral.

  Smith had been to Miragoâne enough times that he knew the names of the local hookers, and his crew of Hondurans and the Estonian engineer each had their favorite. The women seemed to instinctively know when the ship would arrive, and they’d be waiting on the dock along with the usual pickpockets and thieves who were always ready to creep aboard in the dead of night and rob them blind.

  White box trucks sat along the dock with a crowd of workers piling rice bags into the back of each as Explorer’s cranes deposited them on the quay. For every worker carrying a bag, there were five more standing around, either smoking or chatting. He couldn’t wait to get this rusty tub unloaded and head back to Miami, but first he had to make a few more stops on his usual trade route.

  He kept a watch rotation, but even so, his crew would get drunk on Clairin, the Haitian
version of rum, and spend their evenings fornicating on the aft deck or in their staterooms. Frankly, Smith didn’t mind and, at one time, he, too, had partaken in the local dalliances, but he had a wife and a baby now. He hadn’t decided if he loved his new wife or not, but he loved that little girl. They’d gotten married because he’d knocked her up, and so far, things were working between them.

  Robenson Girard came up the gangway and approached Smith. He was the local fixer, and he was tall and lean with a shaved head and a death’s head grin. Smith liked the man, and he often brought a few extra goods not listed on the manifest for Girard to sell, and they’d split the profits. He’d brought everything from rolls of used carpet to discounted mattresses. Once, Smith had given Girard an old Honda CB750 motorcycle as a present. It was Girard’s most prized possession, and it had won his loyalty to Smith.

  “Cap’n Darrell,” Girard said, “the port officials want you to move as soon as the holds are empty.”

  “I figured,” Smith replied, smoke trailing from his nostrils. “There’s three more ships on the hook, waiting to offload.”

  “What did you bring today?” Girard asked.

  Smith grinned. “Bolts of cloth, but I have something special for you.”