Chapter 11 #3
Oh, Declan was tired of his own plans. He was suffocating, really, because the more he struggled to find the right way out, the tighter the noose entangled.
“Grace, son. And mercy. We don’t realize it, but they surround us every day.”
His mom, again.
She sneaked in, sat down beside him in the raft, her voice soft in his memory, praying over him like she had for so many years when she’d come home from a shift and checked on him, even into his teens.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”
Declan put a hand to his chest, feeling his heart thump. His soul felt brittle, cracked and dry.
Of course, there was Austen again too, her words as they’d escaped the yacht: “We set ourselves at odds with God all the time. Whenever we take control of our own lives and say, ‘Thanks, but I’m in charge now.’”
He nearly laughed with the horror of it all.
Oh, he was tired of being in charge. He opened his eyes, stared at the stars, the moon waxing bright against the black.
“Whom have I in heaven but you?” Again, Austen’s voice, but... maybe...
God, I want to trust You.
But even as he thought it, his gut tightened.
No. No, he didn’t want to trust. Because what if... what if God didn’t show up? What if He didn’t rescue? What if...
What if he was lost at sea with no hope of rescue? “Like Paul being shipwrecked.”
He shook his head. Clearly God had a sense of humor.
“Sometimes God leads us into a place where we can’t fix it so that He will. He lets us get in over our heads. ‘Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.’”
Oh, Austen. Even in his memories, she was light and truth and hope.
Or maybe...
Maybe she simply reflected light and truth and hope. He sat up against the edge of the boat and scrubbed his hands down his face, looked again toward heaven.
Who else, really, did he have?
The wind caught his voice as he spoke. “God, I don’t know.... I want to believe that You care. That You’re not laughing at me right now. That I’m not...” He swallowed. “That I’m not lost from You.”
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Right. He drew in a breath, the knots inside tightening. “Oh, Lord, please... please forgive me for my pride. Help me trust You.”
He spoke the words aloud, but they echoed in his heart, right down to his parched soul.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”
“You. Are with me.”
Even as he said it, his body reacted. His heart stopped thumping wildly, warmth settled through him. And he breathed. Full and deep and?—
Untangled.
Oh. Oh.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” Amen.
Yes. Yes to it all.
Freedom from himself, from the need to control, to fix , everything. As if he could.
Yeah, what an idiot he’d been.
“Dec!”
He didn’t believe it at first, the voice in the wind. Surely he’d dreamed it. Or hoped it. Still, he grabbed the flashlight stored in the small survival kit. Flicked it on over the water.
Nothing.
“Stone!”
He shot the light toward the voice.
There. A large orange fender floated in the water, and clinging to it—“Steinbeck!”
The man’s face illuminated in the glow.
The life raft came with a flare gun and flare cartridges, an EPIRB (which he’d activated), and a couple of foldable paddles. Declan grabbed one and started to paddle to him, the flashlight in his mouth.
Steinbeck kicked toward him, finally grabbing the line that Declan threw to him.
He pulled himself to the flimsy ladder, clutched the edge of the raft, climbed up, and rolled onto the bottom.
He lay there, breathing hard, his hands on his chest. Only then did Declan see the wound in his arm.
“You get shot?”
Stein nodded. “Slowed me down a little. You’re a hard man to keep up with.” He looked over at him. “Good thing you left that fender garage open—it shot out all sorts of floating debris.”
Huh.
“I am so tired of getting shot.” Steinbeck pushed himself up, took a look at the jagged skin on his upper right arm. “Sorry about your yacht.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure insurance is gonna cover the ‘attacked by Russian pirates’ claim,” Declan said, but he smiled. Seriously? Steinbeck, alive?
Maybe God had heard him.
He chose to believe that. Even as the night faded to morning, the sunrise burning across the water.
Steinbeck had fallen asleep like the former SEAL he was—able to crash even in the midst of a tossing sea.
Maybe that was a twin thing too, because Steinbeck radiated the same hope Austen had, the kind that put Declan’s soul at rest.
He slept for most of the day, and woke when Declan pulled out the sea rations. Food tablets the size of small bars of soap. He gave one of the wrapped squares to Steinbeck.
“Great. Steak and eggs for breakfast.” But Stein opened the bar.
Declan found a pouch of drinking water and took a sip before handing it to Stein.
“There’s enough for a week at sea, so if you need it?—”
“I’m good,” Steinbeck said after taking a sip. He passed the pouch back to him. “Seal it well.”
He did and set it back in the accessories box. He also grabbed out a flare, just in case.
“I turned on the EPIRB last night, so...” He considered Steinbeck. “Why didn’t you go with Austen?”
Steinbeck’s mouth twitched. “Alosha.”
Declan raised an eyebrow.
“You dropped that name to the guard on the boat. It triggered a memory.”
He lifted a shoulder. “He’s a little famous in FSB circles. Sergei finally figured out it was me.”
“I’ll bet. How long have you been working the Petrovs?”
“A few years. Back when the Russian Bratva tried to assassinate our president, I was approached by an old SEAL friend I knew from Afghanistan. He’d gone MIA last I’d heard, which made him a good fit for clandestine work.
He was tasked by President White to start an off-books agency to keep an eye on the Petrov Bratva.
They’ve been doing everything they can to drag us into another war. ”
Steinbeck nodded. “I caught wind of this from Phoenix. She said that the Bratva was working with the Russian government to make a supersoldier. And you were their key player.”
“It looked that way, I know.” Declan had finished his nutrition cube. It tasted a little like grass. “Because it had to. I had to get the Russians to trust me so we could unravel their blueprint.”
“And the shell game you were playing with the boats?”
“I hoped they’d fall for it. Never did I intend for them to get the obsidite.” He watched as the falling sun rippled over the water, turning it a deep blue with gold-tipped waves. “Now, hopefully, they won’t.”
Steinbeck went quiet. “But you lost your lead, and your cover.”
“Probably. But...” He shook his head. “I’m ready to be done with all this. I hated lying to Austen. She deserved better.”
Steinbeck made a noise of agreement. He’d finished his nutrition bar too. “Sun’s going to get hot. You couldn’t have purchased a tented life raft?”
“It came with the boat. Austen is on the bigger, tented raft. There were two others—one on the port side and the other on starboard. They were attached to the walls, so they probably went down with the ship.”
Steinbeck looked away. “We hope.”
Declan frowned. And then—“You think some of those Russians got off the yacht?”
“Could have. There was a lot of debris in the water.”
“We need to find Austen before they do.”
Steinbeck lifted an eyebrow. “Great idea. Which way should we paddle?”
“Funny. But help is on the way.”
“How do you know?”
Maybe it sounded crazy to say “God put it in my heart.” But the surety had landed inside him during the night, and with the cresting of the dawn, settled into his bones.
And also, “I made a call to my contact before you grabbed me at the hotel. I saw Captain Teresa at a restaurant and was already trying to figure out how to get the Invictus back. I figured that the US embassy could impound it and maybe I could pull a few strings to free her. Didn’t see our siege on the radar, but I gave him my AIS signature to track. ”
“You’re thinking that when the Invictus went down, it would have blipped off their radar.”
“And they would have seen our EPIRB.”
“That’s my wild hope, but at this point...” He held out his hands. “We’re at the mercy of the sea. And hope.”
And he was back to “His mercies are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
“I can live with that,” Steinbeck said. He leaned his head back against the lime-green raft.
Hope. Yes. That’s what had seeded in him.
Please, God, show up. For Austen. For me and Stein.
And Phoenix, because looking at Stein’s drawn expression, maybe Declan was picking up his thoughts.
“How’d you meet her?” he asked.
Stein glanced over with a frown.
“I know you’re thinking about Phoenix.”
A muscle pulled in Stein’s jaw. “She’s probably fine. She’s scrappy and smart and...” He sighed. “Truth is, she probably ditched us. Again.”
“Why?”
“She’s... Let’s just say she has her own agenda. One that doesn’t involve getting picked up by American officials. So my guess is that she took that off the table.”
“Is she in trouble?”
“She is trouble.” But Steinbeck’s mouth hitched up one side when he said it.
Interesting.
“We met on a joint operation three years ago—both trying to rescue an asset who’d been kidnapped by.
.. you guessed it, our friends the Russian Bratva.
The Black Swans wanted him for their purposes.
.. and we wanted him for ours.” He shook his head.
“We got tangled up together for a couple days sorting it all out. In the end, she won. Betrayed me and left me for dead after her team blew up a café trying to extract her.”
“Left you for dead?”
He ran a hand across his mouth, sighed. “She called for help, but... I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“That’s what bounced you out of the military.”