by Evan Graver
In the engine room, he swept the beam over the outer skin, checking for any breaks in her watertight integrity. Galina was an ice-strengthened ship, meaning her hull had extra thickness and the girders, beams, and bulkheads that reinforced her were thicker than what other ships possessed. Despite all the additional steel, a jagged rock could still puncture her skin.
Not spotting any water coming in, Ryan double-checked that the watertight doors were locked on his way to the bridge, a narrow room with a straight console running the width of the deck. Above the console were windows, the tops of which slanted outward. In the console’s center was the ship’s engine telegraph, and surrounding it were a blizzard of controls and gauges. He checked his GPS and glanced at the compass hanging from the ceiling.
Ryan stared out the windows, watching the bow dip into the waves and throw spray high into the air. The storm was driving the ship forward on a following sea. He called Greg, and the owner of DWR gave him the satellite phone number for the captain of the Star of Galveston.
After consulting the tiny GPS screen that showed the Galina had drifted about five miles before hitting the submerged rocks, he called Anders Mikkelsen on the Star.
Ryan was familiar with the ocean-going tug and her Danish captain. It was Ryan who had helped Anders get a job with DWR, and they had worked together on two previous operations.
“Ah, Ryan. How are you, my friend?” Anders asked.
“Not so great, Captain. I’m on the Galina. She’s broken free of the reef and we’re drifting north.”
“I see,” Anders said, worry in his voice.
“She just hit some rocks. I didn’t see a breach in the hull, but I dogged all the watertight doors on the lower level. How soon will you get here?”
“We’re transiting the Yucatán Strait and making ten knots toward your position. I’m afraid it will take me over two days to reach you.”
“If I stay on this course, we’ll ground in the Miskito Cays.”
“I have studied this problem. There is a chance the current will carry you out to sea.”
“It depends on what the storm does,” Ryan said. “If it turns north, then maybe, but if it goes ashore behind me, I’m pretty sure I’ll run aground again.”
“According to the latest from NOAA, the storm will hit Nicaragua behind you and turn north. They’re predicting that it’ll gather quickly into a hurricane when it crosses into the Gulf of Honduras.”
Ryan tried to visualize the storm’s track in his mind as Anders continued. “It’s about seventy miles wide and moving at eight miles per hour. We should miss most of it when she weakens over land. Do you have access to radar?”
“I have my sat phone and a handheld GPS.”
“I will pray for you. As you Yanks like to say, ‘Fair winds and following seas.’”
Ryan laughed. “I’ve got the following seas all right, but the winds aren’t fair.”
“It is good you laugh. I’ll see you soon.”
Ryan ended the call and plugged the phone into the charging pack. There were only a few charges left on it. Fortunately, Travis had also left him his charging pack. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the console. His beer was warm and the Mountain Dew barely cold in the cooler. He chose the soda, drinking it between surges in the ship’s motion.
He checked the GPS plot regularly over the next few hours. The Galina was making two knots of headway, and the radar app on his phone told him the tropical storm had crossed onto land, just as Anders had predicted. The winds were now blowing from the northwest, pushing the Galina offshore. If he extended the ship’s track, he figured that the storm should carry him clear of the Miskito Cays and into the Caribbean Sea.
At least he wouldn’t run aground again.
Chapter Eighteen
During the hours Ryan spent pacing the bridge, the Galina had become sluggish in the tall waves, wallowing at the stern. He now stood at the door of the engine room with the beam of his flashlight glinting off the water sloshing in the hold beneath the deck grates. Running aground was the least of his worries now.
He walked along the engine room catwalk, shining the light into the oily water, looking for the tear in the ship’s hull. There were still plenty of mattresses, blankets, and timbers aboard that he could use to plug the hole, but first he had to find it.
The Galina had struck the coral reef on her port side, but, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t spot the hole. He decided it must be close to the keel, and with the water already sloshing around in the hold, he wouldn’t find it without a dive mask and scuba tank.
Ryan left the engine room and spun the wheel in the center of the door, causing four rods, called dog arms, to move outward over the door’s frame, pulling the door tight against a rubber gasket thus forming a watertight seal. These watertight doors sealed off the various compartments, preventing the floodwater from invading the whole ship.
In the library, he perused the shelves, looking for something of interest to take his mind off the storm and the fact that he was on a sinking ship.
The first book that struck his fancy was Vastness of the Sea by Bernard Gorsky. It told the tale of Gorsky, a Frenchman, and his three partners, who explored and photographed the undersea wonders beneath their sailboat, Moana, in the mid-1950s. Gorsky kept a running commentary of the things they saw, both above and below the water, and documented their struggles to cross the oceans, eat from the sea, and record their story.
Ryan read the book in one sitting and wanted to know what happened to the men after they left Tahiti. Had they circumnavigated the world and returned to France? He stowed the book in his bag to take with him and walked to the library to find another. He tried various books, but none of them satisfied him the way Gorsky had. Despite the weather, the rats still peeked out at him as he sat on the green sofa. He would stomp his feet or yell at them, but they ignored his gestures and continued to point their noses toward him and sniff the air. Ryan found it most unsettling.
He finally landed on Endurance by Sir Ernest Shackleton, a paperback covering Shackleton’s exploration of the Antarctic and how his ship had become locked in ice, forcing the crew to escape in small boats across a storm-tossed sea to a whaling station on a distant island.
Startled awake by the ringing sat phone, Ryan sat upright, knocking the paperback off his chest, and sending the rats scurrying away before he could grab the phone.
“What’s going on?” Greg asked when Ryan finally pressed the Answer button.
“Nothing much, just taking a nap and reading some books they left in the library.”
“Glad you’re enjoying your cruise.”
“It’s a little rough. I’ve put in a complaint with the captain.”
“What’s the situation?”
“Situation Normal … you know the rest.”
“Anders tells me you’re adrift and hit some rocks.”
“Yep, and there’s a hole below the waterline amidships, near the engine room. She’s taking on water, but I can’t find the leak.”
“Keep a close eye on it,” Greg said.
“I’m not hanging out down there, if that’s what you mean.”
“Damn, can’t you be serious for two minutes?”
“Probably not, but this shit isn’t life or death. The ship will stay afloat until Star of Galveston gets here and we can get some pumps to dewater her. What’s the storm doing?” Ryan asked.
“It’s tearing up the coast on its way north.”
“Well, it’s pushing me out to sea, and we should avoid the rocks around Miskito Cay.”
“I’d be happy if she grounds again,” Greg replied. “I’m worried about you.”
“Isn’t that sweet? I’ve got an inflatable life raft all picked out. The CO2 charges are full, and the EPIRB batteries are working.”
“Glad to hear it. Call me if you need anything.”
“What’s the latest down there?” Ryan asked.
“This storm has everything screwed up. All my
salvage equipment coming from Texas City has had to reroute to the east because of it. Which puts us behind schedule even further, and the cable company is charging the hell out of me for that cable you cut, even though it wasn’t properly marked on the charts. Plus, we’re getting penalized for every day we aren’t laying cable.”
“Can’t you claim perils of the sea?”
“We are. I have a whole passel of attorneys working the phones and charging me exorbitant fees.”
“Seems about right.”
“Perils of the sea works for the EPC,” Greg said, “but my insurance doesn’t have a perils of dumbassery clause for people who cut subsea cables.”
“Ha ha, you’re hilarious,” Ryan said. “I’m not the one who didn’t mark it correctly.”
“I’m just messing with you. I gotta go,” Greg said. “Stay safe, brother.”
“Will do.”
Ryan shut off the phone and walked to the engine room. The water had barely risen, according to the mark he’d left on the ladder from the catwalk down to the deck grates. He swung the beam of his flashlight across the water, watching it slosh back and forth, its surface covered in a sheen of oil from the bilges and shining with the colors of the rainbow under his beam. After marking the water level again by scratching the paint with the tip of his tactical folding knife when the ship rolled upright, he went back topside.
The compass said he was heading northeast, but he didn’t know if he would clear the Miskito Cays yet, as the ship was still many miles away. To his eye, the waves were still the same height, but the wind looked to be dying. The radar app confirmed the storm had moved ahead of him and his ground speed had decreased, moving the ship at just over a knot.
Night fell, and he ate more canned stew before he ensconced himself in the crane cab again, drinking warm beer and smoking another cigarette. The ship was riding a little lower, but Ryan thought she’d hold until the tug arrived. He really hoped she grounded herself on another shoal to keep from sinking.
He woke up several times during the night, but he didn’t leave the cab. Ryan accepted that he was just a passenger on this ghost ship. Again, he thought about what his future held as he flicked ash out the window. He had options. He could get in his sailboat and never look back or go to Texas and work with Greg at Trident. Maybe he could start his own firm and continue to be a salvage consultant, or he could just say, ‘to hell with all of it,’ and go live in the mountains somewhere. When he thought about the cold, wet snow sifting down from leaden gray skies, he shivered and concluded that he wasn’t a mountain man. Maybe he could find a woman to go with him and live like Gorsky and his friends had, making the sea their life on a little boat as they sailed the globe. There were plenty dating sites he could try.
Ryan put his chin down, crossed his arms, and tried to sleep, but his thoughts turned introspective again. There was only one woman he wanted to sail into the sunset with. The last time he had seen Emily Hunt, he’d rescued her from an international arms dealer who’d held her hostage in exchange for gold Ryan was salvaging from a sunken freighter. When the ordeal was over, Emily had stalked up the accommodation ladder to a waiting airplane without looking back at him and had sent his DHS handler to tell him that she never wanted to speak to him again.
Despite the time that had passed since they had parted, he could still remember the curves of her body, the way the sun shone on her thick mane, the color of ripened wheat—what he liked to call her Viking hair——and how her cornflower-blue eyes sparkled when she smiled. She was the only woman he ever believed he would marry, and she’d become the measuring stick for all others.
He lit a smoke. It was a habit Emily had found disgusting and had asked him to quit. And he had. Now here he was, imbibing again.
“What a sad sack you are, Weller,” he muttered to himself. He shifted in the seat, trying to get more comfortable. Idly, he flipped the knobs and switches inside the cab, toggling the joystick in a circle. Nothing happened, just as he knew it wouldn’t.
He settled in and closed his eyes. Somewhere out there, in the darkness, the Star of Galveston was racing toward him. After a few moments, he walked to the bridge. When he was standing behind the console, he checked the compass heading, used the GPS to verify his location, and removed the hot and cumbersome load-bearing vest. He went to the library, wearing a headlamp, picked up an old, dog-eared thriller novel by John Buchan called The Thirty-Nine Steps, and returned to the crane cab.
He awoke with the sun, as its rays burned through the cab. The paperback had slipped from his hands and lay on the floor, and his headlamp’s batteries were dead. He cursed himself for not turning it off, but he only had one more day before the Star of Galveston arrived on station and he could flee this rat-infested tub.
As he luxuriated in the sunshine and puffed on a cigarette, he noticed two things. One, the seas had fallen to two-foot-high rollers; and two, there was a panga racing straight toward the Galina Jovovich.
He stepped out of the cab and ran along the deck and up the steps to the bridge to get his binoculars, keeping low to avoid being spotted by the men in the boat.
That was when he heard voices.
Chapter Nineteen
Everglades Explorer
Jamaican Channel, Caribbean Sea
The Everglades Explorer slowly steamed across the Caribbean, making eight knots toward the town of Puerto Cortés on Honduras’s eastern coast. Masoud Sadiq, the pirate leader, stood on the bridge with his captain, learning how to maneuver the freighter. It was the captain’s fault the ship hadn’t been ready to move as soon as they’d upped anchor, because he was unfamiliar with the ship’s controls. After several long seconds, the man had gotten a handle on the situation and they’d headed out to sea.
Once they were underway, they dumped the bodies of the dead overboard, and the computer specialist hacked the Automatic Identification System, or AIS. By law, the ship needed an AIS, which broadcasted the ship’s position, course, and speed to various tracking websites via satellites. Sadiq’s specialist had spoofed the system so the information changed to mirror ships close to them. Now, there wasn’t much to do until they reached Honduras.
Sadiq stepped onto the bridge wing and took deep breaths as he stared across the vast expanse of rolling blue sea. He was no stranger to the salt air filling his lungs, having grown up on the banks of the Mediterranean Sea in the town of Latakia, Syria. His father was a contractor, building housing units on the coast, and his mother was a beautiful homemaker, who had taught him the Shia faith mixed with Alawis, a doctrine incorporating other forms of religion, including the celebrating of mass, drinking wine, and reincarnation.
He’d joined the Syrian Arab Army at eighteen to serve his mandatory two-year conscription, and he quickly caught the attention of the 14th Special Forces Division. There Sadiq had received training in air assault tactics and conducting counter-insurgency operations. For ten years, he bounced around Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, conducting sabotage, kidnappings, assassinations, and terrorist attacks against the Americans and the Jews.
It was during this time that he began to resent the Americans for interfering in the Middle East, pushing their democracy and capitalism around like a new form of religion; one many young Muslims were swayed by. They watched American television shows via satellite dishes and wanted to dress like American actresses and actors. Not only was the Great Satan a threat to their way of life, but the United States also tore at their religion and demanded that Muslims not adhere to the strict tenets of the Quran. When the Quran said to attack infidels, the Americans said it was outdated and misunderstood. Sadiq had seen them strip religion from their own lives, and he believed that if the Americans had their way, they would take it away from the Muslims as well.
In 2011, when civil war had broken out in his country, he’d chosen to stay with the Syrian Arab Army. He was an Alawite like the president, Bashar al-Assad. He had fought the rebels and then the Americans and the Russians. Again, he saw their in
terference as problematic, and no one was willing to stand up to them and protect his homeland. They’d imposed sanction after sanction on his country and derided it for being a hotbed of terrorism.
The turning point for Sadiq had been when an American cruise missile attack had killed his father. Sadiq was the eldest son, the one who shouldered the burden of his mother’s care. He joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the burgeoning movement intended to recapture the land and bring about the return of the caliphate. They wanted to kill all the infidels, and Sadiq wanted nothing more than to do the same. He sent money home to his family, even after ISIS cut their fighters’ pay in half.
For him, joining the movement was not so much about spreading ideology as it was about revenge. During his initial indoctrination, he realized that revenge and ideology were twin driving forces. Kill the infidels, or make them repent and pay the jizya, or tax, as ordered by the Prophet Mohammed in the Quran until they did so by willing submission and felt themselves subdued. Then, and only then, would he receive his vindication.
He had conceived of this attack against the United States many years ago and had approached several ISIS leaders with the plan, but they were too busy conquering land in Iraq and then trying to defend it. When they had turned him down, he didn’t know if they were uninterested or if they thought the plan was unfeasible. But when the group’s founder, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, had killed himself by detonated a suicide vest during an American raid, Masoud Sadiq’s phone had rung.
Sadiq had briefed General Golnar, the new head of ISIS, and Golnar had given him the green light. Because of his dedication to the cause, the leaders trusted Sadiq to carry out his vision. It had taken months for him to find the men he needed. Most of ISIS’s fighters had no experience aboard an ocean-going vessel, and thus he needed to train them accordingly. The logistics had taken even more time to arrange, and then he’d had to find the right ship. Spotting the pattern in the Everglades Explorer’s route from Miami to Miragoâne, Haiti, to Puerto Cortés, Honduras, then to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and finally back to Florida, he knew he had his ship.