“You’ll need it if you can’t make it back to the Oregon,” Juan replied.
“You’ll need it if they sink this ship.”
“No we won’t. If this ship goes down, Dominguez isn’t going to leave behind survivors. This mission is all or nothing. See you soon.”
Without waiting for an argument, Juan took off his headset, climbed out, and slammed the door behind him. By the time he reached the nearest hatch to join the others, the helicopter was beating a hasty retreat toward the northern horizon.
Maria Sandoval gingerly tightened the torn sleeve of her sweater around her left biceps where she’d been gashed by the glass she jumped through. The crude bandage was soaked with blood, but she didn’t want to cut off the circulation and render her arm useless.
When she leaped through the window, she had fallen ten feet onto the interior bulkhead wall of a cabin. She must have sat there for five minutes. Her mind replayed the deaths of her entire crew as she tried to rationalize the attack, the same type that must have been carried out against the company’s other vessels. These were no pirates, not if they didn’t take hostages. Obviously, their goal was to sink the ship with her on it and they weren’t going to give up just because she had pulled off the miracle of saving it.
She couldn’t return to the bridge to radio her situation. If the attackers boarded the ship, that would be their primary destination. After tending to her wound, Maria sought a hiding place until rescuers arrived.
Because of its extreme list, the ship she knew intimately was now foreign to her. She had to keep reminding herself that what used to be port was now down and what used to be starboard was now up.
The crew’s quarters—including the cabin where she was now taking refuge—galley, mess hall, and offices were all located in the one-story accommodation block atop the ship behind the bridge. Every deck below it was dedicated to cargo or equipment to run the ship.
Maria wanted to put as much distance between her and the bridge as she could. She lowered herself into the corridor. Her foot slipped onto the opposing door’s handle and it flew open, the dark room below nearly swallowing her in the process. She caught herself at the last moment and collapsed to her knees next to the yawning cavity.
Willing herself to her feet, she made her way down the hall toward the stern. Her first impediment was a corridor whose double doors were shut. To get across, she would have to stand on the doors. The frame at the top of the doors was too narrow to use at the ship’s current tilt. Two light stamps with her foot confirmed that they would hold. She crossed, fully expecting it to snap inward and cause her to plummet a hundred feet to the other side of the ship.
During her traverse she heard a helicopter and thought she’d been saved, but gunfire scared it away before she could attempt contact with it.
After a few more leaps across open cabin doors, she reached the rear of the accommodation block atop the ship. She had three options: hide in one of the rooms she’d passed, go out onto the open weather deck, or try to make her way down the stairs, where she could hide among the thousands of cars in the cargo holds. Since she would be seen immediately outside, and the hijackers would expect her to hide in the crew’s quarters, cargo was her choice.
It was only then that she noticed the tilt of the ship had lessened by five degrees, and it was continuing to decrease almost imperceptibly. The ship seemed to be righting itself.
At first, Maria was relieved, but then she had the horrible sense that something was wrong. She was sure she had shut the ballast tanks down. If some of them were now leaking, the remaining intact tanks would have to be rebalanced.
She had to get to the engineering station, though there was no way she could make it all the way to the engine room while the ship’s list was so pronounced. She would have to climb down the stairs and then wait until the decks were navigable before she could complete the trip.
She sprung the latch on the stairwell door and it swung down with a bang that was much louder than she thought it would be. She poked her head through and saw movement down the stairs.
Someone was coming.
She stood and looked for anything that she could use as a weapon. The only item close by was a fire extinguisher. She took it from the wall and crouched, ready to spray her attacker with foam before smashing him with the metal tank. Her breathing was ragged, but she minimized the sound by sucking in through her mouth.
She wasn’t sure if it was just one man or more, but it didn’t really matter. She was in no shape to make a run for it.
To her surprise, it wasn’t a head that poked out of the stairwell door. It was a mirror on the end of a stick. Her best chance was to rush the intruder, so she ran forward, stuck the fire extinguisher tube down the opening, and pulled the trigger.
A man below her shielded his eyes and dropped to his knees to avoid the spray.
“Hold your fire,” he said, but he wasn’t talking to Maria. He had turned to address someone behind him. The voice was oddly calm and controlled, and she even thought she heard relief in the way he said it.
Maria released the trigger and held the extinguisher up in a defensive posture. If they wanted to capture her alive, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
She could now see that there were four men in the stairwell. The man she’d sprayed stood and put his hands up. A machine gun strapped to his shoulder dangled harmlessly by his side. He was a tall, athletic man with close-cropped blond hair. He beamed up at her with a smile, genuine and warm.
“It’s okay,” he said in American English.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Juan Cabrillo. I’m captain of the ship that responded to your distress call. This is Eddie, Linc, and MacD.” The three men nodded greetings. All of them were as heavily armed as their captain.
“You were the ones in the helicopter?”
Juan nodded. “Unfortunately, the pilot had to get back to our ship. Your arm looks like it needs some first aid. Why don’t you put that down?”
His story made sense, and she was desperate. She dropped the extinguisher. The four of them climbed out of the stairwell.
“Are you with the U.S. Navy?” she asked.
“No. Just Good Samaritans. Do you mind if one of my guys puts a new bandage on there?”
She nodded. Eddie sat her down, opened a first aid kit, and removed her slapdash bandage.
After examining the wound, he said, “It doesn’t look too bad, but it’s going to need a few stitches from Hux.” Eddie began to wrap it with gauze and tape.
“I’m glad your injury isn’t more serious. You’re the captain, I presume?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Maria Sandoval. How did you know that?”
“When we received the distress call, we did some quick research about your vessel and I saw your name as the master. I don’t imagine there are many other women on the crew.”
“My crew,” she repeated in a low tone.
“Where are they?”
“Dead. Those bastards killed them all after they escaped on our lifeboat.”
A haunted look flashed through Juan’s eyes. As a captain himself, he would be able to imagine what it would be like to lose a crew that way. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are they doing this?”
“We’ll talk about that later. First, we need to keep them from sinking this ship. We saw one of them on the bridge.”
Maria went ashen. “Then he set more of the ballast tanks to drain. That’s why the list is correcting itself. I emptied two of the tanks to keep us from capsizing.”
“That was quick thinking to save your ship.”
“When will your ship arrive?”
“It won’t be here for at least twenty minutes.”
Maria’s shoulders sagged at the news. “I don’t even know how they put those holes in my ship.”
“It has to be some kind of submarine,” Juan said. “We saw one of the holes when we flew in. It was a perfect circle.”
“There were eight holes put in the hull at the same time, and we didn’t detect anything on sonar. What kind of submarine can do that?”
“I don’t know. There may be more than one. If so, they’re probably remotely operated.”
“Then we’re dead. How can we stop them from attacking again?”
“They might be single-use weapons. The men outside wouldn’t be climbing onto the ship if the subs were coming back.”
“We need to stop the ballast tanks from draining completely,” Maria said. “We’ll be too top-heavy if that happens. Once we reach a critical angle the other direction, we’ll flip right over.” The list continued to decrease.
“Do you think they have explosives?” Eddie asked Juan.
“If they had enough to put a sizable hole in the ship, they would have planted it on the hull outside.”
“They had grenades,” Maria said. “That’s how they sank the lifeboat.” The vision was seared into her memory.
Juan turned back to her. “What stations can you operate the ballast tanks from?”
“Just the bridge and the engine room.”
“What’s your cargo?”
“Cars and SUVs on all the decks except the bottom one. We’re carrying construction equipment there.”
“Can we get from the cargo holds directly to the bridge?”
“Yes.”
“He’s probably sabotaged the bridge controls,” Linc said. “That’s what I would have done.” Maria didn’t ask how he would know that, but given how these men were armed, she was quite sure they weren’t from any standard commercial vessel. They had to be former military. But she didn’t get the sense that they were pirates. Too helpful and concerned about her welfare.
“They’re going to outnumber us at least two to one,” Juan said, “so taking them head on is risky. We’ll have to try outflanking them. Are you able to travel, Captain Sandoval?”
“Maria. And yes. Why?”
He took a small computer tablet from his pocket. To her amazement, Juan brought up a detailed layout of her ship on its screen.
“Where did you get that?” she said.
He grinned at her. “Remember that research I told you about? I need you to show us the fastest way to the engine room.”
The accommodation block ended at the halfway point of the Ciudad Bolívar, and the weather deck covering the ship’s back half was a flat expanse of metal ringed by exhaust vents. Juan and his group would have to traverse one of the vehicle decks during their journey. Maria stayed with them. Not only was it risky to leave her alone with Dominguez’s team scouring the ship but she insisted on coming.
The list continued to lessen, which was fortunate because climbing down to the engine room in the aftmost bottom deck using ropes would take hours they didn’t have. Maria knew her ship better than anyone else and she estimated that they would have ten minutes of relatively easy travel when the deck would be transitioning from thirty-five degrees aport to thirty-five degrees astarboard. If the pitch were any greater, they wouldn’t be able to keep their footing without belaying ropes.
Of course, everything would be moot if the draining procedure caused an unforeseen imbalance in the ship’s center of gravity or if one of the vehicles came loose and caused an avalanche of them to pile up against one side of the ship. Then the end could come so suddenly that they wouldn’t have time to find an exit. The Ciudad Bolívar would become their tomb two miles under the surface of the Caribbean.
As they picked their way down the staircase by standing on the railings, Maria said, “Do you think the risk of sinking unexpectedly will keep this Dominguez from sending men to the engine room?”
Juan threw a look at Linc. “Unfortunately, we’ve met the lieutenant before and he recognized Linc from an encounter where we made him look bad to his superiors, so there’s a personal angle. He’s the type who’ll want to make sure we don’t get out of here alive even if that means risking his own life to do it. If he returns with anything less, Admiral Ruiz will have his head on a pike.”
“Maybe literally,” Linc added.
Maria’s eyes went wide. “Admiral Dayana Ruiz?”
“You know her?” Juan said.
“I met her only once when I was serving in the Navy. She was three ranks above me. She’s a brilliant tactician, but she has a reputation for being ruthless.”
“Now you’re finding out just how ruthless. We think she’s been sinking your company’s ships to put it out of business and bankrupt the owner for her own political gain.”
“How do you know that?” Maria stopped climbing. “Wait a minute. You weren’t just on a passing ship. You knew this was going to happen, that my ship was targeted.”
“We tried to warn your company, but they wouldn’t listen, so we made the trip out here ourselves.”
“You’re American, but you’re not in the military. What’s the connection?”
“I can’t tell you that, but let’s just say that Ruiz and Dominguez are not too happy after our business dealings with them.”
Maria seemed content not to probe further, so they kept going down the stairs as the ship righted itself. When they reached the deck carrying the construction vehicles, Maria stopped them.
“It will be easiest to get there from this deck,” she said. “We can take the ramp at the far end down to the stairwell that leads to the engine room. Once I’m at the engineering station, it will only take me a few seconds to stop the ballast tanks from draining. Hopefully, it will be when the ship is upright.”
Although Juan was anxious to reach the engine room before Dominguez did, they waited to leave the stairs until the deck was walkable. Even with the ship listing at only thirty-five degrees now, they would have to be careful with their footing or they’d be somersaulting down a hill made of steel.
With his weapon at the ready, Juan took the first step out onto the vehicle deck. His rubber-soled shoes gave him plenty of traction, so he was able to take in the immense hold.
The hoistable deck above had been raised to accommodate the huge equipment. Bright fluorescent lighting allowed him to see the length of a football field in either direction. Only the interior loading ramps interrupted the view. Juan scanned the hold for a few moments but saw nothing moving. The immense space was eerily silent.
“All clear,” he said to the others. “Maria, show us the way. Eddie, keep a hand on her. Linc, you take point.”
Linc kept one hand on the deck as he came out like a roofer edging his way down slippery shingles. Eddie held on to Maria’s uninjured arm as he guided her out of the stairwell. Once they were used to the angle of the deck, they started moving toward the ramp. MacD followed, and Juan covered the rear.
Now that they were on a more expansive surface, Juan could easily sense that the ship was slowly leveling. In a few minutes it would be dead even.
The loading ramp was only twenty feet ahead. Once they reached it, they’d be able to lean against the ramp’s port wall for stability as they walked.
A clink from behind drew Juan’s attention and he turned just in time to see Dominguez and five of his men drop into the hold from a stairwell near the bridge about a hundred yards away.
Juan yelled, “Down!” a second before the Venezuelans opened fire.
Bullets careened off the metal and shattered glass windshields. Juan returned fire and found out for himself how hard it was to aim while digging his feet into the floor at such an extreme angle. He took a bead on Dominguez but Dominguez slid down to find footing on a bulldozer. Instead, Juan’s shot hit another man, who screamed and fell out of sight.
He looked ahead and saw his group unharmed. “Get down the ramp!”
Eddie grabbed Maria and scrambled forward b
ehind Linc, but another volley of shots ricocheted off the floor next to Maria and the distraction caused her to slip.
She slid down the deck, but Eddie slid down below her, put his shoulder into her, and practically threw her to Linc, who enveloped her wrist in his huge hand and dragged her to him.
The effort caused Eddie to lose his own footing, but MacD wasn’t close enough to latch onto him. Eddie scrabbled for purchase, but he was already accelerating and there was nothing to grasp. He went zooming below the undercarriage of a road grader.
Linc got Maria to the safety of the ramp, where he lay flat to take more careful aim on Dominguez. Now their attackers’ shots were even more scattered.
Juan ignored the bullets pinging off the walls around him. He raced over to the road grader and braced himself against its wheel while MacD provided covering fire. Juan peered around the tread and was relieved to see Eddie clinging to a truck axle halfway toward the port side.
It would take him several minutes to climb back on his own. It was time they didn’t have.
“Toss me your rope,” Juan said to MacD.
“Ah’ll anchor it up here,” he replied, taking it off his arm.
“No, you and Linc need to take Maria to the engine room. If she doesn’t keep the ballast tanks from emptying, we’re all dead.”
MacD grimaced at the order, throwing the coils to Juan, who caught them and shrugged them over his shoulder. Linc laid down a barrage, allowing MacD to join him and Maria.
They took one last look at Juan, who waved them to go on. He was shielded, at least for the moment, by the blade of the grader in front of him.
Juan activated his throat mic. “How are you doing, Eddie?”
“I scraped myself up pretty well, but I don’t think anything’s broken. Is Maria all right?”
“She’s fine. I sent her ahead with Linc and MacD.”
“You want me to come up there?”
“No, I’m coming down to you. We’ll see if we can keep Dominguez occupied here instead of chasing after them.”
Juan knotted the rope around the road grader’s suspension so he could control his descent. It unspooled all the way to the opposite side of the hold. Eddie was able to put a hand on it and let go of the axle.
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