Prologue The Burning Ship #2
Joe was a pilot. He knew the numbers better than Kurt. “Twenty minutes tops. Less if they had to fight a headwind coming out.”
“That’s when Ahab will go,” Kurt said. “We need to find him and stop him before the timer runs out.”
“What about Major Gushan?”
“He’s either being held hostage or he’s dead. If he’s alive, he’ll be with Ahab.”
Joe looked around at the smoke. “If the safe place is ahead of us—and they still want to bring some of their cache with them—then there’s only one spot left to hide. The forward cargo hold.”
Kurt agreed. The forward hold was smaller and could be sealed off from the rest of the ship.
That kept the smoke and fire at bay while the smugglers waited for their chance to escape.
It also had side hatches down close to the waterline for taking on provisions in port.
They would make it easy for Ahab and his men to get off the ship and onto a boat.
“That means we have to go inside,” Kurt said.
Joe nodded. From their packs they pulled small hoods that went over their heads and shoulders.
The hoods had acrylic lenses and filters that would remove the smoke and particulates, allowing them to breathe.
The hoods wouldn’t protect them from an inferno, but they’d make it possible to run through a corridor or two. That was all they needed.
—
In the forward hold, nine men waited nervously, while one man bravely faced his death.
The ship was burning. The smoke had begun drifting through the ventilation system.
The bulkheads themselves were growing warm to the touch.
The sound of a helicopter thundering past every minute or so added to the tension.
They had a boat prepared. Stacks of weapons and metal drums carrying the radioactive materials lay strapped into place.
The boat itself sat on a conveyor belt designed to move cargo in and out of the hold.
The belt ended beside a roller-equipped ramp that would be deployed and extended to the water once the side door was opened.
This was their path to freedom. But with the helicopter outside they couldn’t risk a move.
“You can’t get away now,” a battered and beaten Chinese man said. “You’re trapped.”
Gushan was down on his knees, his hands tied behind his back. His face was bruised from kicks and punches. A gash just beneath his right eye streamed blood like red war paint.
“They will run out of fuel and crash before I have to make any move at all,” an entirely average-looking man said. About the only thing that stood out on Ahab was a jutting jaw, hidden now by a grimy beard.
“They won’t come alone,” Gushan said. He wore a crewman’s overalls, having infiltrated the ship to search for the radioactive materials that Ahab intended to use in the dirty bomb.
“Alone is exactly what they are,” Ahab insisted.
“The other helicopter never left Shanghai. My associates saw to that. There won’t be any rescue.
They cannot possibly land on the burning deck.
And by the time your ships get here I will be long gone, this freighter will be on the bottom, and your body will be food for the crabs and fish of the South China Sea.
But before that happens you will tell me how you learned that I was aboard this ship. ”
Major Gushan stared up at the man who’d been beating him. “The high command has a source in your organization,” he said.
“Who?” Ahab demanded.
Gushan shrugged. “They don’t share the name of a source with someone like me.”
Ahab grew irritated. He knew it was a lie. Just a way to put doubt into his mind. But he was tired and angry. His face was itchy from the salt and the heat. His eyes had begun to sting from the traces of smoke.
The helicopter rumbled by again. Another pass or two and it would have to leave. Ahab was certain of this. He would wring the information out of the major or end his life before then.
He picked up a length of metal from the deck, examining its jagged end. “I’ll ask you one more time,” he said. “But first…”
He lunged forward with the staff, thrusting it downward and through the major’s gut. It stuck out through his back, the jagged tip grinding into the metal deck behind him.
Gushan howled in pain and writhed around the stave like a fish impaled with a spear. Ahab used the leverage it gave him to make Gushan bow down before him. “Assuming you can speak, I will take that answer now.”
Gushan coughed and choked and drooled a string of blood. Then bravely shook his head.
Enraged, Ahab grabbed the metal shaft with both hands, intending to rip the major apart. But a rifle crack sounded, his leg exploded in a spray of blood and bone, and it was Ahab who went to the ground.
His men raced for cover. Some of them diving to the deck, others hiding behind the stacks of machinery and equipment in the hold. A firefight erupted as shots rang out from all sides. Ahab watched several of his men go down.
“Throw your weapons away,” a voice demanded from the rafters.
Crawling desperately for cover, Ahab was stunned by the timbre of the voice, it was loud and deep and cut through the clamor circulating in the hold.
“The Chinese navy is surrounding the ship,” the voice added. “It’s over.”
Almost poetically the helicopter raced by once again. But Ahab heard the pitch of the rotors change. It was headed out, going back to the mainland at last. They still had a chance.
Removing his belt, he cinched it around his leg, pulling it tight and stemming some of the blood loss.
With his leg stable and numbness already setting in, Ahab drew a long-barreled pistol from his chest pack.
The weapon was oddly shaped, fitted with attachments.
It almost looked like a homemade weapon, but was actually a modified competition pistol.
Ahab was so accurate with the weapon, he’d once shot a man dead by firing a bullet down a sixty-foot length of pipe no wider than a tennis ball.
The shell had flown dead center down the pipe, striking its target on the far end without ever grazing the sides.
If he could spot the intruder, even just part of him, he would not miss.
“Open the hatch,” he ordered.
One of his men had been standing near the controls. The man threw the switch, and the huge cargo door cracked open and slid backward. Orange sunlight poured into the vast compartment, filtering through the smoke.
“Anyone who makes a move for that door is a dead man,” the voice shouted in warning.
Ahab had heard only one voice. Even in the brief gunfight the attackers had fired only a few shots.
Through the intense pain he calculated the reality.
A large group would have opened fire en masse, taking out most of the smugglers in a single volley.
There could be only one or two men stalking them now.
“They’re up in the rigging above the cranes,” he said to his men. “Pin them down.”
His men took potshots at the catwalks and ladders that ran across the top of the hold. Ricochets rebounded, but neither Ahab nor his men faced any return fire.
Ahab crawled to a new position, spotting a man slithering along the yellow steel I-beam rail that supported one of the mobile cranes. He raised his weapon and fired.
The first shot plunked the beam dead center. He cursed himself for missing, but he was unsteady and losing blood.
He aimed again, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. This shot missed the steel rail and grazed the man’s arm. Not a fatal wound, but one that drew a reaction. The target rolled off the I-beam and dropped onto a catwalk.
Ahab fired again, but the man leapt down onto a cargo container and out of sight.
“Get the boat ready!” Ahab yelled.
One of his men activated the conveyor belt. The ribbed inflatable boat began to move.
While another one of his men engaged the second attacker, Ahab saw his chance. “Help me,” he shouted. “Get me up!”
The man who’d started the conveyor rushed to Ahab’s side, lifting him up and assisting him across the deck. They reached the boat and tumbled inside.
As the boat neared the open hatch, gunfire burst forth from beside the cargo container. Bullets ripped into the inflated sections of the boat. They plugged the control column and the engine, but hit neither Ahab nor the other smuggler.
Ahab fired back, forcing the attacker to take cover once more. The ribbed boat neared the top of the ramp. Two more of his men ran forward, jumping into the boat. They fired their weapons in all directions, trying to keep the attackers pinned down.
The front end of the boat tipped over onto the slope. Just then the American who’d hidden behind the cargo container reappeared. The outside light lit upon him as he stepped forward.
Ahab saw him fully now. Tall and lanky. Silver-gray hair. Weathered face streaked with sweat and grime but marked by intense blue eyes.
Ahab raised his pistol, intending to put those eyes out, but the rifle in the other man’s hands chattered first.
Another spread of shells hit the boat, but this time they ripped into the metal cases. Gobs of contaminated radioactive liquid erupted outward. The fluid doused Ahab and his men. It burned with a cold fire as if some infernal curse were being conjured upon them.
One of the men screamed. Another dove off the boat, hitting the ramp and tumbling into the water below. Ahab focused only on his enemy, pulling the trigger one last time, firing his final bullet as the boat went over the ramp and raced down into the sea.
He never saw the outcome of that shot. The boat had sped downward too quickly. It hit the ocean, nearly throwing him out. Its momentum carried it away from the freighter.
It drifted aft, moving into the thick smoke and deflating slowly. It vanished in the clouds of burning diesel near the stern.
The boat would be found a mile from the freighter, adrift, swamped, and floating on its side; buoyancy provided by two compartments that still contained air. It was discovered empty, the smugglers, the weapons, and the radioactive materials it had once held long since spilled into the sea.
—
Inside the cargo hold, Kurt and Joe took three men prisoner, covered the others’ bodies with tarps, and gave aid to the grievously wounded major. They didn’t dare remove the metallic spear that had punctured his gut, but they cut the ends off and did their best to staunch the bleeding.
The major grunted as they laid him on a makeshift stretcher. “Thank you,” he said. “I would like to see the sun again before I die.”
They carried him toward the open cargo door and placed him on the deck, where he could see the sun through the smoke. Kurt looked him over. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to die from a flesh wound like this.”
The major offered a half smile, then he looked up at the sun and closed his eyes.