On the monitor they saw the rotors increase to a blur and the body of the helo begin to lift. Sara made it to the port wing of the bridge in time to see them appear, and then Sams really goosed it. The helo shot past the bridge in a bright orange blur fifty feet off the deck.
Sara stared after them, until recalled to where she was by the wind and the cold and the snow and the fog and the ice and, oh, the hell with it. She went back inside.
“Will she do it, Sara?” Hugh said.
“Who? Oh. The Sunrise Warrior‘? Yes.”
He was silent. “What?” she said.
“I guess what I meant was, will the rest of them let, what’s her name, Kincaid, do it?”
“Yes,” Sara said firmly, “they will.” She couldn’t stand still. She paced back and forth in front of the controls console and around it several times, not an easy thing to do on a packed bridge in twenty-foot seas, until Chief Edelen said, in a very respectful voice, “Why don’t you have a seat, XO?”
She stared at him. He gestured at the captain’s chair. The back was ripped up but someone had cleaned off the blood and guts and bone.
“No,” she said, a little more strongly than she ought to have. Hugh, standing next to Tommy over the radar screen, looked up. She recovered, and managed a smile. “Thank you, Chief. But no.”
After that, she stood in front of one of the intact forward windows, staring through the fug on the other side of it, praying for the sun to rise.
USCG HELO 6S
HARRY SAMS HAD SEVENTEEN years on helos, first with the U.S. Navy and then with the U.S. Coast Guard. He was fond of quoting that old aviation aphorism, “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” He didn’t hold with that other old aviation aphorism, “Any landing you walk away from is a good landing,” either. He not only wanted to bring home his people alive and well, he wanted his craft intact and ready to fly again.
Which was why he was wondering, with the very little portion of his brain allowed to do anything so entirely frivolous, why it was that he was speeding twenty-five feet above twenty-foot swells at a hundred fifty-seven knots with a cargo hold full of Coasties armed to the teeth toward a blip on a radar screen that had already proved itself to be rather better armed than the average Bering Sea catcher-processor.
And then the Agafias lights loomed up out of the driving snow and fog, and there was no time to think of anything but the job at hand.
The processor was pitching and rolling and yawing worse than the Sojourner Truth, which meant it would be noisy on board with the creak and groan of the ship, the slipping and sliding and rolling of everything not lashed down, and the whip and slap of the ocean.
“Target in sight,” he said into the mike, and heard Ryan reply, “Target in sight, aye.” Next to him Laird moved like an automaton, hands in constant motion, senses reaching out to listen to the bird, to what she was saying, how she was handling a tailwind of forty-five knots and gusts of over fifty.
“I’m not making any test runs,” Sams said. “We don’t have enough fuel for that. One shot is all we get. Everybody ready?”
“Ready, Lieutenant,” Ryan said.
“Ready, Lieutenant,” Airman Cho said.
“Okay,” Sams said. “It’s all going to happen very, very fast, so be ready.” He took another look as the Agafias stern came into view, and added, “And she’s making ice as fast as the Sojourner Truth, so watch your asses, Ryan.”
“Watching our asses, aye aye, sir.”
Sams banked rapidly to slide up her hull, slowing speed as they approached the bow. The only even reasonably empty space was a triangular section forward of the mast and boom, framed by the two massive anchors and the bow itself. He estimated a bare twenty square feet, if that. The good news was that the six containers stacked on the foredeck hid the helo from the windows on the Agafias bridge.
“Lieutenant?” Laird was looking at him.
Sams shook himself back into the present. “Are we good to go?”
Cho had the line hooked to the hoist. The helo came around the bow and Sams popped up on a rapid flare, virtually halting the helo in midair, letting it hang there like it was painted on the fog. Cho dropped the line and out of the corner of his eye Sams saw it hit the deck. A second later a man in a Mustang suit was sliding down it. He grabbed the end, belayed it around a stanchion, and five more men, bristling with weapons, hurtled down in rapid succession. Cho disconnected the line at the hoist and let it fall and Sams let the helo fall forward.
He stood off far enough to grab some fog for cover but not too far to be out of range of the boarding team’s radios. He made a wide circuit of the ship and was rewarded when Ryan’s voice came over the air. “All down safely, Lieutenant. See you back in Kodiak. You did say the beer was on you, right?”
“In your dreams, Ryan. Good hunting. And watch your back!”
Laird brought up Cape Navarin on the GPS and set a course, and as he did so the Sojourner Truth loomed up out of the mist looking like the wrath of God. She was even throwing a few thunderbolts by way of the portside 25-millimeter cannon.
The shells crossed the Agafia’s bow with inches to spare and were immediately followed by a voice on a loudspeaker turned up high enough to be heard on the moon, never mind over the storm. “Fishing vessel Agafia, this is the United States Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth. Heave to and prepare to be boarded. I say again, heave to and prepare to be boarded.”
And the guns on both sides opened up and Sams pointed the helo’s nose at three-five-zero and hit the gas.
ON BOARD THE AGAFIA
THE MEN ON BOARD the Agafia were demoralized and panicking, especially the mercenaries. They had shot at the American ship and then proceeded to lead it farther south, as Jones had instructed. The storm was hitting them hard, tossing the ship around like a Ping-Pong ball in a bathtub full of Jell-O. It never stopped, everyone was getting slammed into bulkheads, hatch handles, and other crewmen.
Fang’s men were more disciplined and had the advantage of time served at sea, but they, too, were growing increasingly alarmed. Someone had come at them out of the snow and the sleet and the hail and had begun shooting. Windows had shattered; men had been hit and were screaming in fear and pain. At first Chen thought the ship’s crew must have broken loose and were trying to retake the ship, and then he remembered that Jones had put them all over the side.
And then a blue-hulled ship with a rainbow on the bow materialized on their starboard side on what looked like a course to ram them amidships. Even Jones yelled at that. Chen spun the wheel into a blur, only to find that way blocked by the Sojourner Truth. All three ships were pitching and tossing violently, adding to the feeling of an uncontrollable and imminent doom.
During those precious minutes when the bridge crew of the Agafia was preoccupied with finding some sea room in twenty-foot seas, Ryan’s men were working their way aft, picking off the enemy one at a time. Later, his report would state that most of these fell overboard into the Bering Sea. Hank Ryan had helped carry Captain Lowe’s body below. He still had the captain’s blood on his uniform and he was not inclined to show mercy, especially when he didn’t know what his team was facing in the way of opposition on board the Agafia. He knew that they had at least one big gun, and that was all he needed to know.
The first man they took out was the mercenary who had run aft to man the Browning machine gun newly bolted to the Agafia‘s deck. Ryan disarmed the weapon by pulling the bolt securing it to its stand and letting it follow its gunner over the side.
They were on the bridge fifteen minutes later without a scratch on any of them. One Asian guy was screaming something at them in his native tongue, which no one understood or even tried to very hard. From the way the other four surviving crew looked at him, he was the boss.
Ryan almost shot him down where he stood before he remembered that command might actually want to talk to the boss, so he said, “Secure them all below somewhere and mount a guard. If the
y so much as sneeze, shoot ‘em. The rest of you, let’s start looking for Mr. Rincon’s missile launcher.”
An hour later, they had inspected the Agafia bow to stern, containers hold, engine room, galley, and staterooms, and they still hadn’t found it.
USCG HELO 6S
ICE WAS BUILDING UP on the rescue hoist. No one in the aircraft said anything about it because what was the point, but the silence was getting a little strained.
Laird pointed at the radar screen. Sams nodded without leaning over to look. The radar was degrading because ice was building on the nose of the aircraft, too.
They’d left the Agafia with forty-five minutes of fuel remaining in their tanks. They’d been in the air forty-seven minutes. Sams avoided looking at the fuel gauge, concentrating instead on the horizon, a dark gray, featureless expanse. He’d put some altitude between the helo and the deck so he’d have some choices when the time came.
When it did, it came fast, and it looked like a tall iceberg, so he didn’t see it at first. Laird shouted and pointed, and there it was, a steep cliff footed with a narrow strip of beach. He eyeballed it. It ought to be wide enough for the fifty-one foot rotor.
It had to be.
One engine died, and they made the beach.
The other died, and they started to fall.
After that, they started to spin.
JANUARY
BERING SEA
ON BOARD THE USC6 CUTTER SOJOURNER TRUTH
SARA WAS ICILY CALM. “I believed you, I backed your story with the captain. Now he’s dead and there is no missile launcher on the ship we just boarded at gunpoint.”
Hugh was standing on the bridge, his hands dangling at his sides. “I don’t understand it,” he said.
“That makes you and a ship full of Coasties who don’t understand it,” she said.
There was a rumble of agreement which she stilled with a glare.
“Noortman gave me the port, he gave me the ship, he gave me everything.” Hugh stopped suddenly, brows furrowing.
Sara waited. When he didn’t say anything else, she said, “Yeah, well, your thumbnail-pulling skills must not be quite up to CIA par because it looks like he lied through his teeth.”
Hugh met her eyes and the words dried up in her mouth. She’d never seen that expression on Hugh’s face. “They were running with their lights on,” he said.
“Who was?”
“The Agafia. They were running with their lights on.”
“So?” she said. “It’s kind of, oh, I don’t know, the law?”
“Why? If they wanted to run from you, why run with their lights on? Why make it easier to follow them?”
“I can find a boil on the ass of a wildebeest in Africa with our radar,” Sara said. “I don’t need running lights.”
“Still, it helped you find them,” Hugh said. “And what about Noort-man?”
“What about your unimpeachable source?”
“They didn’t kill him,” Hugh said. “They may have killed Peter, but they didn’t try to kill Noortman.”
“And Peter is?” Sara said.
“The arms dealer in Odessa who brokered their deal with the North Korean for the cesium and the North Korean missile launcher. Why? Why try to kill him and not kill Noortman?”
Sara said, a little impatiently, “Peter was a danger to them, Noortman wasn’t?
“That’s not it,” Hugh said. “Or not all of it.”
The Agafia was riding their stern, under the command of Ensign Ryan and the prize crew. The Sunrise Warrior, after the spectacular maneuver that had so ably distracted the attention of the Agafia’s hijackers long enough for Ryan’s team to board and take control of the ship, was keeping pace off their starboard side. “Greenpeace is signaling us, XO,” the chief said.
“Tommy?”
Tommy’s lips moved as the light blinked.“ ‘I am now in possession of one Get Out of Jail Free card. Agreed?”“ At Sara’s look, Tommy said, ”I’m just reading here, XO.“
Sara gave a grudging nod. “Send ‘Agreed.”“
“
“We’re heading back up to the line to continue our work. Good luck with yours, Sojourner Truth.”“
“Once a crusader, always a crusader,” Chief Edelen said. “That was pretty slick back there. I wonder who their master is?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Let’s forget we ever saw them.”
“Forget who, XO?”
The Sunrise Warrior altered course and was almost immediately swallowed by the storm.
“Maybe they didn’t mean to kill him,” Hugh said. “Peter,” he said when Sara looked momentarily blank. “In Odessa. Maybe we were just supposed to think that they tried. The bomb went off in the middle of the night, long after everyone had gone home.”
Hugh was beginning to shiver. He was soaking wet from standing out on the bridge wing, trying to follow what was going on on the other ship. Sara made a sound of disgust. “Follow me,” she said, and led him to her cabin. She muscled him into a chair. “You,” she said to the first person she saw, “towels, lots of them, and find him some dry clothes.”
The towels came immediately; the clothes took a little longer. Halfway out of his shirt, Hugh said, “They didn’t want us to find out what weapons they had bought. But they didn’t mind if we knew what the target was.”
She was still angry, but she was listening. The Agafia had been commandeered by pirates, those pirates had fired on the Sojourner Truth with a machine gun that appeared to have been freshly mounted specifically for the purpose, and Sara knew there had to be more of a reason for that than that the Sojourner Truth had caught them with their nets in American waters. Especially since she hadn’t.
Besides, where was the Agafia’s crew? A three-hundred-and-forty-foot catcher-processor, between ship’s crew and fish handlers, could have upward of a hundred people on board. There was a cold feeling in her gut. “What did the survivors say about the processor’s crew?”
Hugh, as the only Korean-speaking person on board, had tried to talk to the pirates via Ryan’s handheld. “Nothing. Same thing they said about everything. They’re not talking.”
Sara smiled, and he shivered again. “Maybe when it calms down enough to bring them over here, you will find them a little more forthcoming face-to-face.”
“Maybe.”
Someone had actually found a pair of pants that would cover Hugh’s long legs. He stood up to pull them on. He paused. “They had to know we’d catch on.”
“Who? Who knew? And zip up your pants.”
For the first time since he’d come on board he looked at her as Sara, his wife, instead of the executive officer of the Sojourner Truth. “Making you nervous, babe?”
Her brows snapped together. “Knock it off. This isn’t the time or the place.”
“You’re right, it isn’t.” He stepped into sneakers that were only half a size too small and sat down again to tie them, returning to his line of thought as he did so. “The terrorists knew we’d catch on.”
“What?” Sara was a little bewildered at the rapid change of topic.
“It is next to impossible to keep a secret in that world,” Hugh said. “There is always somebody standing around with his ears wide open who is going to sell what he hears to the highest bidder. They knew that.”
“So?”
“So,” he said, eyes bright with realization, “they set up a dummy to distract us.”
Sara caught on. “You mean they wanted us to catch the Agafia?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why else choose a ship that has that high a profile with the U.S. Coast Guard? What did you call it, a High Interest Vessel? You’d already chased it back across the line on this patrol, and multiple times before.”
He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “And that’s why they shot at us! They didn’t mean to sink us, or even hurt us that badly.”
“Of course not,” Sara said acidly. “I myself never mean to kill people I shoot a
t.”
Unheeding, he said, “What they wanted was to get and keep our attention for a nice long time. It was just their bad luck that their strafing us took out our communications. They wanted us to yell for help, Sara. They wanted everything we’ve got in the Bering, hell, in the North Pacific Ocean to come chasing after them.”
She already knew the answer, but he waited so expectantly for her to ask the question. “Why?”
“So that the ship with the weapon on it could slip through.” He finished tying his shoes and sat back in the chair. “Noortman, you little shit,” he said, sounding almost admiring. “And after all we meant to each other.”
He looked up and saw Sara’s startled gaze, and laughed out loud. “It’s a long story. Don’t worry, I survived, virtue intact.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Sara, has anything odd happened out here lately?”
“Odd? You mean, other than my ship coming under fire, my captain being killed, and me sending a boarding team to commandeer said ship in a helo with an aircrew of three I may have sent to their death? No. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing we don’t run into every day out here, and twice on Sundays.”
“Before this,” he said patiently. “Have you heard anything over the air, seen anything that didn’t quite fit?” He lifted his shoulders and spread his hands. “Maybe ship traffic where it shouldn’t be?”
Before the words were all the way out of his mouth she was on her feet and headed up the ladder outside her stateroom, Hugh dogging her heels.
“XO,” Ops said. He and all five of his techs were jammed inside the comm room, looking like they wished they had hammers in their hands instead of tiny little screwdrivers and alligator clips. All the equipment had its faces off, revealing a colorful mass of wire and dials and digital readouts and computer boards. Mostly it looked like a mess. A nonfunctioning mess.
“Anything yet?” Sara said without hope.
Ops shook his head. “We caught a stray bullet back here and it must have ricocheted around somehow.” He displayed a misshapen piece of metal that looked entirely too small to have caused this much damage. “We don’t even know what it hit yet, that’s why we’re looking at everything. They took out our satellite dish. They must have nicked the antenna array, too. And I can’t send anyone up there in this weather to fix it. Even if we had the parts.”
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