by Matt Lincoln
“We’re right on schedule,” Lieu informed him as he came to a stop a few paces from where the captain was sitting. “It was a good idea to leave a few days early.”
“Of course it was,” Captain Hueng drawled.
After all, they had to make up for the lost time somehow. Technically, they were supposed to be docking in California. However, bypassing their original destination and circling around to the eastern coast allowed them to offload their special cargo with minimal interference from law enforcement. Of course, that meant that they were on the water for longer. The easiest way to do so while still meeting their deadlines was to set sail a few days ahead of schedule.
Hueng had found that, so long as the cargo ultimately made it to its final destination on schedule, no one really cared about what took place in the process. The American mega-corporation that owned the products being imported only cared that their stores were stocked on time, and the Chinese government certainly wasn’t putting much effort into regulating what was going on. In the end, it was surprisingly easy to get away with doing whatever he wanted, so long as he kept his head down and didn’t call attention to his actions.
“We should be arriving in about an hour,” Lieu continued before casually looking around the rest of the bridge, as though making sure no one else was listening.
“Arrangements have also been made to unload the special shipment,” he said quietly in English. “The contact is waiting for us at the port already.”
Captain Hueng nodded to indicate that he’d heard the man’s message, and Lieu turned to walk away.
It was safer, when discussing those kinds of matters, to speak in English instead of Chinese. Many of the crew didn’t speak English, which added an extra layer of security for them to discuss things without being overheard.
He stood up and stretched. Maybe he’d go back to his own cabin for a drink or two before they arrived. With such calm water and so little time left before they made it to land, it wouldn’t make much difference whether he stayed on the bridge or not.
As he left the control room and back toward where the crew accommodations were, he happened to glance out of one of the large windows. From there, he could just make out the corner of the large, bright red container that he knew held their special shipment. There was, on the surface, nothing about it that stood out from the rest of the surrounding containers. What was truly special about it was what was inside. That one container was going to net him a payout three or four times as large as what he would be receiving for all the legitimate product on the ship.
He turned away from the window and headed back toward his own quarters. Unloading the cargo was always the most stressful part. No matter how many deliveries he made, there was always a tiny inkling of doubt in his mind that something would go wrong. A few drinks would help to settle his nerves.
Thirty minutes later, he’d drank more than just a few, but he was too far gone at that point to care. He stood from where he was sitting at his desk, his computer open in front of him, playing an old DVD that he’d seen probably a hundred times already. The ship’s gentle rocking felt nice, and he staggered slightly as he made his way over to his cot.
It protested with a loud creak as he flopped down onto it.
How much time had passed since he’d come down here? He thought it over as he tried to decide how much longer he could laze around before he had to make an appearance. His crew could handle most of the work independently, but it wouldn’t look good for the captain to be completely absent.
He decided he could get away with another ten minutes before having to make his way back up to the bridge, and he closed his eyes.
Scarcely a second had passed before he heard a loud shout coming from the corridor just outside his door. He scrambled up and off his cot reflexively, his vision swimming slightly with how quickly he’d stood up. He could hear the sound of hurried footsteps as he approached the door.
The moment he opened the door, Lieu was there again in front of him, his face pale and his chest heaving from exertion as though he’d run all the way there.
“Captain!” he shouted frantically. “We’re under attack!”
Before Hueng could respond, a massive bang resounded from somewhere in the distance, and the ship rocked violently.
His mind reeled as he struggled to stay on his feet, despite the way the floor beneath them was tilting heavily to one side.
Who could possibly be attacking them?
He ran as quickly as he could back up to the helm, stumbling twice more as several more explosions rocked the ship.
“What the hell is going on?” he roared as he raced onto the bridge. Several of his crewmen were scrambling around in a panic, both up there and down on the main deck.
“It was a trick!” one of his officers yelled over the commotion. “The ship started sending out mayday signals as it approached us. We thought they needed help. Then they began to fire at us!”
The man pointed out toward the starboard side of the ship. Through the window, Hueng could see a huge vessel, almost as big as theirs. It looked like it might have been some kind of warship, or maybe another cargo ship that had been modified. Either way, the turrets mounted on the front sent chills of fear down his spine.
His first thought was that they’d been discovered. Someone had found out what they were up to, and the authorities had come to stop them.
Then he realized that this couldn’t be the case. Crime or not, neither the American nor Chinese governments were in the business of sinking entire trading vessels over one illegal shipment. This was somebody else.
“Status report,” he barked at one of the crew members standing nearby.
“We’re taking on a lot of water!” he screamed back after looking at the screens. “They’re firing straight at us with rocket launchers. The hull is filled with holes, and several of our men have been—”
Before he could finish, there was another bang as the boat shuddered and swayed. An alarm started to go off, probably to indicate that the ship was sinking.
Hueng snatched a pair of binoculars off one of the tables behind him and looked out through the bridge’s windows. On the main deck, he could see the bodies of several crew members, and just beyond them was the attacking ship, edging closer and closer by the second. Just as his crewman had said, a group of men had lined up against the side of the boat with long, black weapons mounted over their shoulders.
Hueng had never seen anything like it in real life, only action movies about wars and soldiers. He watched as one of them fired, the impossibly large weapon almost causing the man to jump back against the recoil. In the blink of an eye, a plume of smoke was rising from the barrel of the weapon, and the boat was shaking again as another rocket struck its side.
“We have to get out of here,” Hueng muttered to himself before turning around to order an evacuation. “Get out! Everyone out! Get to the emergency life rafts!”
“Leave?” Lieu blinked at him, his eyes wide with shock. “But… what about the shipment?”
“We won’t be alive long enough to deliver it at this rate,” Hueng snapped back at him as he raced off the bridge.
He couldn’t deny that Lieu had a point. Not only would they lose out on a huge amount of money if they lost such a large shipment, but there was also a very good chance they would lose their lives as well. They were working with some dangerous people, and Hueng didn’t think they’d be too forgiving of the fact that they’d lost such a valuable shipment.
Time to start a new life, I guess, he thought bitterly to himself as he raced down the stairs toward the main deck where the life rafts were stored. He was almost there when another quake rocked the ship, this one much more intense than any of the ones before it.
He lost his balance and fell down the rest of the steps, hitting his head multiple times as he went. He finally came to a stop at the base of the stairwell, face up on his back. His vision was coming in and out of focus, and he felt queasy, as though he might
throw up at any moment.
He tried to get back to his feet but was stopped by an indescribable jolt of pain that ran up his leg as soon as he tried to move it.
He let out a guttural scream as he fell back onto the ground, the pain in his leg only intensifying with every second that passed.
He must have broken it, he realized as he looked around for some way out of this. The stairwell was strangely empty. Where was his crew? Had they all abandoned him?
He gritted his teeth against the pain in his leg, trying his best not to move it as he searched the cramped stairwell for something he could grab onto to get himself up.
Before he could spot anything, an odd, high-pitched creak echoed throughout the entire stairwell, followed by a series of cracking and popping noises. He looked up in confusion at the sounds, and his eyes widened with horror as he realized what he was hearing were the sounds of the bridge breaking.
Massive cracks were spider-webbing their way up the narrow stairwell, and bits of dust and plaster were raining down upon him as the cracks grew wider and wider.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard the sound of an explosion, followed by another quake. Then, right above him, a loud pop like something snapping before the entire structure began to crumble before his eyes.
He screamed as huge pieces of debris came falling toward him, unable to so much as move because of his leg. He wasn’t even able to register the pain before the world went dark around him.
2
Ethan
I shifted slightly to ease the cramping in my calves. Holm and I were currently staked out in the rafters of an old warehouse, waiting for a drug deal that, according to one of our informants, was supposed to be taking place tonight. We’d been working this case for a couple of weeks, and now that we had this information, all we needed was some proof that our suspect was actually responsible. For that, we needed to catch him in the act, preferably admitting as much as possible in the process.
We’d come up here early to hide out while we waited. From this vantage point, we’d be able to see everything as it happened, and when the time came to move in, we’d literally have the high ground. Birn and Muñoz were hiding outside nearby, keeping watch. As soon as we got confirmation that these were our guys, Holm and I would rush out and apprehend them, with Birn and Muñoz covering us from the outside to make sure they didn’t get away.
Unfortunately, the rafters themselves had very little space, which meant that Holm and I had to crouch and stoop just to fit. After just a few minutes of being crouched up there, my calf muscles were starting to protest the unnatural position.
“My legs hurt,” Holm grumbled petulantly from where he was crouched beside me, echoing my own sentiments. “Can’t they hurry up and get here already?”
“If they get here,” I mumbled back. “The tip we got might have been wrong. They were supposed to be here ten minutes ago.”
“This is starting to cut off circulation to my legs,” he grunted as he awkwardly slipped his phone out of his pocket before calling someone. I watched as he held the phone up to his ear for a moment before speaking.
“Hey Birn, any sign of them yet?”
I waited for a few seconds while Birn responded to Holm’s question.
“Okay,” Holm replied with an unhappy-sounding sigh. “We’ll keep waiting.”
“What did he say?” I asked as Holm maneuvered his phone back into his pocket as best he could in the crouched position he was in.
“He said that a car pulled up a few minutes ago,” Holm replied. “No one got out, though. It’s just parked there. He thinks they might be waiting for the other party to arrive.”
“Well, at least we know this is the right place.” I sighed as I resisted the urge to just sit down. It would definitely be a lot more comfortable, but I needed to make sure I stayed on my feet in case we needed to move quickly.
“How’d we get stuck in here,” Holm whispered, “while Birn and Muñoz get to wait in the car?”
“Because you said you didn’t want to miss out on the action,” I reminded him as I edged closer to the massive hole in the rafters. We’d come here earlier to have a look at the place, several hours before the deal was supposed to happen. When I’d noticed that the rafters had almost completely rotted away, I’d suggested one pair hide up there while the other kept watch. Holm had immediately called dibs on lying in wait up here, insisting that waiting in the car sounded boring.
A ladder at one end of the warehouse led directly up to a small hatch into the rafters.
“Yeah, well…” he grumbled as he shifted his legs around, “I didn’t realize from down there that there’s barely enough room to crawl around up here.”
“Just be patient,” I chuckled. “They’ll be here any minute, and then we’ll get first dibs on the action.”
My phone vibrated with a new message at just that moment.
Heads up. Another car just pulled up. They’re heading inside now.
“Looks like it’s showtime,” I whispered to Holm just before the door to the warehouse creaked open.
I peered down into the open space below, careful to stay far enough back in the shadows that I wouldn’t be spotted. I watched as three men strolled inside. Two of them were flanking another one, shoulders tense and clearly on high alert. The other two strolled in a little ways behind the first group.
“Is that him?” Holm murmured.
“I think so,” I replied as quietly as I could as I looked down at the man between the bulky duo. He was shorter than the two goons by a head, wearing an expensive-looking suit and a smarmy smirk.
Devon Milton. Wall Street tycoon and heir to a prestigious software company. He was our prime suspect and suspected leader of a highly organized drug trafficking ring. We’d been sure for over a week now that he was our guy, but nothing we’d thrown at him so far had stuck until now. We basically had him red-handed. All we had to do was observe him in the act, and we’d be able to drag him in.
“You always conduct business in nasty dumps like this?” one of the two men who’d trailed in after him sneered. He and his buddy were both tall, broad-shouldered, and mean-looking. The one speaking had a shortly cropped buzz cut and a plethora of what looked suspiciously like prison tattoos up and down one of his arms.
“It’s prudent in my line of business to be discreet,” Milton replied smugly. “It may not be the most attractive of locales, but it’s far enough away from pretty much everything else that there’s very little chance anyone will bother us.”
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, I thought to myself, the urge to punch that stupid smug grin off his face growing stronger with every second that they went on speaking.
“Yeah, whatever,” Buzz Cut grunted. “So, do we have a deal or what? You better not have dragged me all the way out here just to blow me off.”
“You should learn to have a little more patience,” Milton drawled as he clasped his hands behind his back.
“You little—!” Buzz Cut snarled as he took a single aggressive step forward, clearly as tired of the guy’s annoying attitude as I was. The bodyguards were on him in an instant, though, both guns drawn and pointed directly at him.
Buzz Cut stopped in his tracks and went completely still, his hands clenching and unclenching with anger.
“Now, now,” Milton sighed. “Let’s all just calm down. We came here to do business, right?”
The two guards lowered their weapons and fell back in line with their boss. Buzz Cut did the same thing a second later and moved back to stand beside his partner.
“Good.” Milton smirked. “Now, let’s discuss terms. I’ll supply you with ten containers of product per week. You’ll keep a ten percent cut of the profits, bumped up one percent for every container extra you manage to sell within a one-week period.”
“Alright,” Buzz Cut replied gruffly. “And what about that bonus we talked about?”
“Of course,” Milton replied as he gestured toward one of the goons. �
��It’s right—”
He stopped talking abruptly as a low sound reached his ears. The sound of my phone vibrating with a new message.
I clenched my jaw and cursed internally as I quickly moved to silence the phone. I’d made sure to put everyone other than Birn and Muñoz on silent to ensure something like this wouldn’t happen. As quietly as I could, I lifted the phone to see what had happened. To my surprise, it was a message from Birn.
I frowned in confusion. They knew how important this was and how screwed we would be if they discovered us. Why the hell was he texting me?
“It’s right where?” Buzz Cut barked impatiently.
“Did you hear that?” Milton mumbled as he looked around in confusion.
“Man, what the hell are you talking about?” Buzz Cut scoffed.
Even Milton’s guards seemed confused, though a lot more alert now that their boss had claimed to have heard something.
I swore under my breath as I slowly moved to unlock the phone and check the message. Before I could, and to my utter horror, the phone suddenly started to ring.
“Who’s there?” Milton roared as his guards suddenly pulled their weapons.
“Dammit,” I hissed as I answered Birn’s call and pressed the phone to my ear. “What are you doing? Why—”
“Incoming!” Birn interrupted me. “A bunch of cop cars just pulled up. They’re about to storm the warehouse!”
As if on cue, the door suddenly burst open, and several uniformed officers spilled inside.
“Freeze!” one of them yelled. “Nobody move! Put your hands up!”
“No!” Holm groaned at the same time that Buzz Cut and his friend turned around and opened fire at the cops.
“Crap,” I grunted as I hurried over to the small hatch that led down into the main area of the warehouse. “Let’s go before they get away.”
I kicked the hatch open and practically slid down the ladder with Holm right behind me.