Donovan disconnected the call and readjusted his headset. All the Huntington Oil Constellation class ships were double hulled. He knew the specifications since he and Meredith had talked at length about the need for safety years before the first ship put to sea. She’d pushed for ten feet of space between the outer and inner hulls and she’d been right. A year later, the Exxon Valdez had gone aground spilling ten million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. The North Star held forty-two million gallons of oil, and if Garrick managed to rupture the hull, the resulting eco-disaster would quadruple the Exxon Valdez spill. He had no doubt Garrick was in control of that ship and had every intention of creating a disaster that would dwarf the Exxon fiasco, and the blame would be squarely on Huntington Oil.
“Who was that? Anything going on?” Buck asked over the intercom.
“I need everyone to listen closely,” Donovan said. In the front seat, next to Buck was longtime Eco-Watch pilot Janie Kinkaid. Janie was in her mid-thirties, a pear-shaped brunette from Australia. When Donovan and Michael first met her, she’d been a charter pilot in Queensland. During an Eco-Watch mission, she’d impressed Michael with her flying skills.
With four older brothers, Janie developed a wicked sense of humor and a rough-and-tumble attitude toward life. Michael and Donovan later came to understand Janie had grown up around aviation and spent her entire life flying helicopters. They also learned firsthand that her drinking skills could put just about any man under the table. After that weeklong deployment, they’d stayed in touch, and when Eco-Watch expanded with a second ship in the Pacific, Janie had easily beat out all the other candidates. Michael was the first to tell anyone that her flying abilities were as good as anyone he’d ever seen.
Seated next to Donovan was Jason, Buck’s ex-Special Forces recruit from Anchorage. Everyone but Donovan was dressed in fatigues and bulletproof vests, and Buck and Jason carried multiple weapons. Donovan had a radio and was armed with a single Glock. Considering the news he was about to impart, he felt a little underequipped. “That was the crew aboard the da Vinci. Seems the Coast Guard has lost contact with three ships, two escort tugs and a supertanker. It’s possible that the terrorists have taken control of a fully loaded supertanker. At this point, no one knows where the tanker is, but the da Vinci is headed south as fast as possible, and once on scene, should be able to quickly pinpoint the tanker’s location.”
“What tanker is it?” Buck asked.
“Lauren says it’s a Constellation-class ship,” Donovan replied. “The North Star, why do you ask?”
“East Africa, years ago, when Somali pirates began hijacking tankers coming out of the gulf, my SEAL team trained how to regain control of such a ship. The Constellation class was one of several we used in our training scenarios. Janie, there’s a helipad port side amidships, more of a place to drop and go as opposed to an actual landing pad. For all we know, they’ll be shooting at us. Can you put down quickly and get out?”
“No problem,” Janie said with a nod. “Just don’t be shy about shooting back every now and then, if you know what I mean.”
“Will do. Once you drop us off, retreat and hover somewhere safe, out of rifle range, and stand by for an extraction. How much loiter time would you estimate you have?”
“Depends when we find them. Prince William Sound is a big place, but regardless, we’ll have forty-five minutes, maybe an hour of fuel remaining, mind you, that’s back to Anchorage. There are other, closer options. I promise not to get anyone wet.”
“That should work. Once we’re down, we’ll make our way to the bridge. Jason, let me remind you that this could end up being all hand-to-hand combat. Be careful where you shoot, nothing much good happens when you mix gunfire and a loaded supertanker.”
“There may be other complications,” Donovan said. “When the da Vinci offered to assist the Coast Guard in finding the ship, they were warned to stay out of Prince William Sound airspace or they’d be escorted to Elmendorf.”
“Michael just ignored them, right?” Buck asked.
“Yeah, he’s good at that, but my point is, if we swoop in on anyone in an Eco-Watch helicopter, we may run into opposition. That doesn’t mean that the ship has been hijacked, it means they read a newspaper.”
“Good point,” Buck replied. “But any tanker out of the shipping lane is in distress. Most vessels don’t allow guns on board, but these guys will most definitely be armed. It won’t take long for us to figure out who the bad guys are, and we’ll react accordingly.”
“What about the ship’s crew?” Jason asked. “How many?”
“All together, they’ll be twenty-five to thirty officers and crew. Most of them will probably be locked below somewhere, if they’re still alive. There could also be officers held hostage on the bridge.”
“Security at the Valdez oil terminal is pretty tight,” Jason said. “I’m thinking the bad guys had to have boarded later, by small boat, so there couldn’t be all that many of them on board.”
“That’s how I’d do it, especially in this weather. A small boat could easily go unobserved in these seas,” Buck said. “It wouldn’t take but a few men to overpower an unarmed tanker crew. I’m thinking there could be as few as five, as many as ten. We saw from surveillance cameras in Hawaii that there were probably four or five guys that boarded the Japanese fishing vessel. From what I could see, they may have had military training, but certainly not at the elite level. These guys are criminals, thugs, and should be treated as such. The two of us should be more than enough to take them down.”
“Three of us.” Donovan corrected him.
“No way you’re setting foot on that ship.” Buck turned to face Donovan. “The group who has sworn to destroy you are aboard this tanker. They’re armed, and when we show up, they’re going to feel trapped and desperate. Jason and I spent years training for this very thing, it’s not a hobby. The only place you need to be is out of the line of fire.”
Donovan started to argue, but Buck cut him off.
“I won’t accept any other scenario. I see how gingerly you’ve been moving today. You got your ass kicked yesterday. The answer is no. Any more resistance, and I abort this mission and resign. Your choice.”
Donovan knew that Buck was right. He’d hired Buck to make the tough decisions regarding security, and he’d just made the call. Donovan needed to step back. He hated to admit it, but the two former Special Forces soldiers spoke a language and had a lethal confidence that Donovan didn’t possess. Being left out made sense, and if his calculations were correct, Garrick would fight to the death rather than surrender to live the rest of his life in jail. The decision left a bitter taste in Donovan’s mouth, but if at the end of the day, Garrick and Nikolett were dead, then that’s all that mattered.
“It’s why you hired me,” Buck said, softening his tone.
“I know.” Donovan nodded his agreement. “It’s just not my style to sit and watch.”
“I’m well aware how difficult this is for you, but this is my area of expertise. I promise we’ll get them.”
Donovan sat back as Buck continued planning with Jason about making their way to the bridge of the North Star. If Garrick was aboard the ship, then Nikolett was probably with him as well. Had they taken Erica with them, or was she already dead? The thought of her death sent a jolt of sadness through his body. He wasn’t in love with her. He didn’t really know her, but maybe that was the worst part. She was smart, capable, beautiful, spontaneous, and perhaps what he already missed was not the loss of what was, but the loss of what could have been. The potential had seemed enticing and now it was most likely gone forever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lauren sat with her eyes locked on the monitor. Whatever she’d momentarily seen was gone. It was a brief, ghostly, infrared blur, then it vanished. She dared not blink for fear of missing it again. She looked at the television camera and found nothing but ice below them and clouds and mountains ahead. The synthetic-aperture radar suggested that the mom
entary heat source could have flashed due to a brief alley through the mountains ahead that led all the way to Prince William Sound. It could have been anything, a small boat, a low-flying bush plane, or helicopter.
Michael had canceled their clearance with air traffic control the second they were below eighteen thousand feet. They were now at twelve thousand feet between Valdez and the Yale Glacier. The da Vinci rocked from the turbulence generated by the nearby high terrain, and Lauren tightened her seat belt. Michael’s plan was to drop below the highest peaks and weave their way to Prince William Sound below Elmendorf’s radar. Ahead of them stretched an ice field that seemed to go forever.
The range of her radar had been decreased by their loss in altitude and also by the terrain that blocked the line of sight to the northern portion of the sound. The poor weather made for very little boat traffic in the sound. The only targets she’d picked up so far were the heat signature from the Coast Guard ship speeding south. Beyond were the heat signatures of a half dozen ships and she’d locked onto the two she assumed were the escort tugs. One was burning. The flames clearly visible on her monitor, leaping from what was left of the bridge. The other generated very little heat and seemed to be adrift. There was no sign of the North Star.
Lauren checked the time. A little less than forty minutes had passed since they’d turned around. She did the math. Even at the tanker’s maximum speed of seventeen knots, it couldn’t have traveled more than thirteen or fourteen miles. Unless Garrick had already somehow scuttled it, in which case, all they were looking for was a forty-two-million-gallon oil slick.
She’d added Air Force tactical frequencies to the others she’d been monitoring and heard no alarming chatter out of Elmendorf, but the Coast Guard frequency had been busy. There’d been several transmissions between Coast Guard Command Center Anchorage and the Coast Guard cutters Long Island and Mustang. They’d both been ordered to investigate. They were one-hundred-ten-foot Island-class cutters, no capability for a helicopter, but each had a top speed of nearly thirty knots. She hadn’t been able to ascertain either ship’s actual position, and nothing that size was showing up on her equipment. She’d also heard some communications about an Alaskan State Police helicopter departing Anchorage. Again, she had no firm grasp of the timelines involved, but people were alarmed, and in turn, making things happen.
“In less than five minutes, we’ll be out of the mountains, and you’ll have a better view.” Michael reported from the cockpit.
“Michael, can you take us down Unakwik Inlet? I saw a momentary flash of something generating heat down there. We should check it out.” Lauren immediately felt Michael roll the da Vinci into a steep turn to the right. She checked the moving map display; they were now headed directly toward the Meares Glacier. It would require another sharp turn where the glacier ended and Prince William Sound began, but it would allow them to fly the length of Unakwik Inlet.
Lauren kept her attention focused on the screen. Dead ahead was the precipice where the Meares Glacier met the sea. It was little over a mile wide at its terminus and three hundred feet tall. Lauren was in awe of the magnitude of the glacier. Below, in the turquoise-colored water were thousand of chunks of ice that had calved from the face. Some were no larger than a basketball, others the size of a house. Michael banked the da Vinci to the left until they were flying down the center of the inlet. The fjord was fifteen miles long and two miles wide. Michael was flying just below the ragged edges of the overcast, but his vision was in no way encumbered since the da Vinci was equipped with all the latest enhanced-vision systems. Michael could fly the Gulfstream as if it were a sunny day.
A small heat source blinked into view dead ahead. It was blocked by the surrounding terrain, so Lauren only had a small indistinct picture. As they ate up the miles, the shape began forming on her screen. Seconds later, she could make out what looked like an angled edge, followed by a massive bow wave and a huge anchor. The North Star was angling toward the entrance into Unakwik Inlet.
“Michael, do you see it?” Lauren zoomed in on the bridge, knowing that the high-resolution camera captured everything. She panned back and forth and then backed off and had just enough time to shoot the entire deck before the da Vinci ripped past the ship. Lauren was pressed into her seat as Michael pulled at least two Gs bringing the Gulfstream back around for another look. Lauren hit redial on the satellite phone as she played back the frames she’d just taken. Six stories above the deck, the bridge superstructure towered above the ship. The detail was remarkable. She could see the windshield wipers moving back and forth, the spinning radar antenna, and each individual section of railing. In one of the dozens of windows that stretched the entire one-hundred-fifty-foot width of the North Star, Lauren stopped the video. Standing close to the glass, holding a pair of binoculars was a familiar face. Nikolett Kovarik.
Michael was leveling out the wings of the da Vinci and coming up behind the supertanker. Lauren switched her screen back to real time just as Donovan answered the phone.
“Did you find it?” Donovan asked.
“The North Star is steaming full speed toward Unakwik Inlet.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Janie! Unakwik Inlet. How far?” Donovan snapped.
Janie glanced down to the chart on her knee and immediately banked the helicopter to the north. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“We’re fifteen minutes away,” Donovan told Lauren. “How much time do we have?”
“They’re doing sixteen knots. They’ll reach the very end of the inlet in fifty-six minutes,” Lauren replied. “I saw Nikolett on the bridge—they’re aboard.”
“Full speed? I can’t believe they’d do this—the devastation will be catastrophic. Alert the Coast Guard, tell them everything, and then call me back.”
Donovan severed the connection, still reeling from the enormity of what Garrick had accomplished. “That was Lauren. They’ve found the North Star, and it’s steaming toward Unakwik Inlet. She confirmed that Nikolett Kovarik is on the bridge, so we can dispense with any pleasantries or hesitation about boarding the vessel.”
“Once we’re on the deck, it’s roughly four hundred feet from the helipad to the first external gangway that leads up to the bridge,” Buck explained. “Jason, you’re going to take the outside route, no chance of getting lost. I’m going to take the inside route.”
“Guys, I know I’m just driving this thing, but can I throw something out there?” Janie offered. “We’ve got some lines stowed in the back. I land on ships all the time. If there’s a flat spot you like, I’ll hover over it, and you can rappel down far closer to the bridge than four hundred feet. The top of the bridge might even be an option, and they’d never see it coming.”
“That’s brilliant, Janie,” Buck said. “It’s your call. Jason, get the lines ready.”
When Donovan’s phone rang again, he answered immediately.
“We’ve got problems,” Lauren said. “The Coast Guard ordered us to leave the area. They’ve closed Prince William Sound. Every vessel has been ordered to stay in port or anchor at the nearest suitable refuge and await further instructions. I’m pretty sure fighters are being scrambled as we speak as are state law enforcement personnel. In the Coast Guard’s eyes this is a full-blown terrorist attack, and we’re in the middle of it. Maybe even the cause.”
“Does anyone have the slightest chance of reaching the North Star before we do?”
“No,” Lauren replied. “There’s a Special Emergency Response Team being scrambled via helicopter out of Anchorage, I don’t have an ETA, and I don’t see them yet on my equipment.”
“Okay. If fighters show up, do what they ask. Your flight data recorders will prove your innocence. How far out are we?”
“Seven minutes.”
“Keep talking,” Donovan urged. Buck pointed out front, and Donovan leaned over to catch his first glimpse of the North Star. Through a momentary snow squall, the distinctive blue hull with all white above
decks distinguished it as one of the Constellation-class tankers. It looked impossible for a huge ship to be in such a narrow channel, but the tanker plowed through six-foot waves like they weren’t there.
Buck leaned in toward Janie and pointed toward the tanker. “See that very top platform, the one with the radar antenna spinning on top?”
“Yeah, sure.” Janie nodded. “Is that where you want off?”
“If I made it so that the antenna wasn’t turning, could you hover while we go down a line to the platform? It would save precious minutes.”
“No worries. How about if I come in low and behind, use the exhaust stack of the ship to block any view of us. When we’re right on them, I’ll climb fast and put you right next to the platform. They might hear us, but they won’t know where we are.”
“If you can do that, you’ll be my hero. We’ll be out fast, you break it off, and get out of automatic weapons range and wait. You’re our ride off if we can’t stop the damn thing.”
“Will do.”
“Hand me one of those lines,” Buck said, reaching back to Jason.
From his seat behind Buck, Donovan spotted the platform that Buck had pointed out. The tallest point on the North Star was a three-legged raised platform with two radar antennas spinning on top. The entire structure rose ten or twelve feet above and slightly aft of the main bridge and the platform itself was large enough to accommodate both Buck and Jason. From this angle, Donovan could see that there was a stairway that led down from the platform, to a hatch that looked as if it would connect to the bridge. The obstacles were the two spinning radar arrays. Buck made a knot every three feet or so in the line to assist with the descent. Donovan could smell the diesel exhaust from the ship as they dropped down to wave-top level.
Buck and Jason tied off the lines to the seat belt harness. They worked quickly with the certain knowledge that in minutes they’d be out the door onto the ship.
“You ready?” Janie asked, as the stern of the tanker loomed large. They were tucked in close; no one from the bridge could possibly see them. “When I climb, I’m going to offset to the left of the platform so you’ll both be going out the doors on the right side of the helicopter.”
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