JANUARY
IN THE INFLATABLE, HUGH was too terrified to be seasick. The walls of water surrounding the small boat were so high he could barely see the sky, and the boarding team was so packed in and so bristling with weapons that even if he was sick he wouldn’t have been able to do anything but puke down the front of his Mustang suit. The coxswain was a square-shouldered young man with a large flat brown mole on his left cheek. He had his teeth bared in what looked more like a snarl than a grin, and his hands on the controls were quick and deft.
Hugh had insisted on going with the boarding team. “I speak Korean,” he had said. Since he was the only person on board who did, it had been impossible to gainsay him, and Sara was the first to back him up. She knew what he was thinking because she was thinking the same thing. No way was he letting whatever it was on board the Star of Bali any closer to a populated landmass, especially his populated landmass.
Suddenly the stern of the freighter was looming above them, water smacking against the hull and rebounding to spray them all. Ostlund slapped Ensign Reese’s helmet. “Go!”
Ensign Reese, the best arm on the ship in Ops’ opinion, stood up and braced himself against the steering column. Everyone ducked as he swung a rope with a grapnel on it around his head, once, twice, three times, and let fly.
It missed. He reeled it back in as the coxswain, cursing under his breath, coaxed the small boat back beneath the stern. Another wave smacked the stern of the freighter and rained down on their hapless heads.
Again, Reese started the windup, once, twice, three times, and it flew up, up, and over the stern, and Seaman Lewis grabbed him around the waist as he hauled on the line as hard as he could. Seaman Lewis was six feet four inches tall and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and he had been selected for this mission for just that reason. If Hugh was not mistaken he was wearing Seaman Lewis’s pants.
“On belay,” Lewis bellowed.
“Feels solid!” Reese yelled. The coxswain turned the small boat off the stern of the freighter, just enough to keep the line taut, or as taut as possible in these heaving seas.
Seaman Delgado, the size of a monkey and just as agile, stepped up to the rope. He was five-one and wouldn’t tell anyone what he weighed, but he had been observed in the gym bench-pressing one-fifty. He wore no pack and carried only a sidearm.
“Go!” Ostlund shouted, and Delgado went up the rope hand over hand without pause and vanished over the stern. A second later the grapnel came hurtling down, splashing into the water next to the small boat, to be reeled in briskly by Ensign Reese.
The coxswain took that as a sign and opened up the throttle to maneuver the small boat around to the freighter’s starboard side. He dropped off the stern a little, where they endeavored not to be squashed by the freighter’s rise and fall, and waited.
Hugh noticed a sheen of white across Ostlund’s shoulders, and reached out to touch it. Ice. He looked around and noticed that the small boat was adding a layer of ice with every wave they took. He started beating on the sides with his fists, and everyone else woke up from their frozen stupor and started beating. It got rid of most of the ice so long as they kept beating, and it warmed them up a little, too.
“There!” Ostlund said, after what seemed hours and was probably only minutes. Hugh followed his pointing finger and saw a rope ladder rattle down the hull of the freighter. The coxswain goosed the engine until they were alongside, and kept them alongside until Ensign Reese managed to snag it. Hugh looked up and saw Delgado grinning down at them from the gunnel, and his mind numbly remembered the briefing. This would be the pilot’s ladder, the ladder the ship would let down to board the local marine pilot when the ship got close enough to port to need one.
Ostlund was first up.
“Mr. Rincon?” Ensign Reese said.
It was a very small ladder, and the hull of the freighter seemed impossibly high.
“Mr. Rincon?” Ensign Reese said again.
In some small part of his mind that was still functioning Hugh knew he was holding up the line and endangering the mission. He grabbed the side of the inflatable and rose shakily to his feet, losing his balance immediately and pitching forward. He flung up his hands to catch himself and by sheer luck fell into the ladder.
The sea fell away from beneath the inflatable and he was left clinging to the ladder. His feet scrabbled automatically for the narrow slats of wood that formed the steps. The hull of the freighter rolled away from him and he found himself lying face down against it, his knuckles caught between the rope of the ladder and the metal of the hull.
“Go!” Reese shouted. “Go now!”
His feet fumbled for the rungs and he gained a few shaky steps before the hull of the freighter rolled back and he found himself swinging wildly away from the hull, the ladder twisting and twirling. He looked down and saw faces turned up to him. When the ship rolled back he slammed hard against the hull.
“Ouch,” he clearly heard someone say.
“Climb, goddammit, Mr. Rincon! Climb! Climb now!”
Reese’s urgency got through, and Hugh unclenched one hand for the next rung, and the next, fighting the heave of the sea and the roll of the freighter and the shove of the wind and the sting of the spray. About halfway up he lost all contact with his feet, and his hands were bloodied and painful from rubbing against the hull. It felt like an hour later when a hand grasped the back of his Mustang suit and began to pull. “It’s okay, Mr. Rincon, I’ve got you,” Ostlund’s voice said, and the next thing he knew he was sitting on the deck and dry-heaving between his legs. Nothing had ever felt as good to him as the solid deck of the Star of Bali beneath his ass.
When he recovered enough to look around, the coxswain was climbing over the gunnel. He staggered to his feet in time to see the inflatable fall off the hull of the freighter. The line fastening the small boat to the bottom of the rope ladder pulled taut, twisting the ladder into a helix.
This had been much discussed in the planning session. “Mr. Ryan said they had fifteen people on board the Agafia. We have to assume there are at least that many on board the Star of Bali,” Sara had said. “We can fit ten of you, plus Mr. Rincon, into the small boat without swamping her. We will need every gun we’ve got. Everyone boards. They can leave the small boat tied off to the ship.” An escape hatch, in case things went sour, was what she was thinking.
On board the freighter, Delgado closed the door behind the coxswain and slammed down the hatch handle. He donned his pack and shouldered his shotgun. “This way,” he said, and they followed him single file through bundled pallets of rebar and angle iron stacked as high as the hold.
They came to a hatch. Ostlund put his ear to it for a moment. “Can’t hear a goddamn thing,” he said cheerfully, and cranked it open. Delgado slithered through, gave an all-clear, and motioned the rest of them inside. Hugh was last in, and he closed the hatch behind him. Ostlund tied a strip of red cloth to the hatch handle. “Hansel and Gretel,” he told them, “only better than bread crumbs.”
They went through a series of corridors without seeing a soul. “Where the hell is everyone?” Lewis said in a hoarse whisper. “This is getting creepy.”
Hugh didn’t say what he was thinking. He was thinking the crew of this ship was dead, every last one of them, the same way the crew on the Agafia was dead. He touched the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson in the holster strapped to his side. It comforted him.
They went through an exterior hatch and began to climb the outside stairs to the bridge. The fresh air was welcome to them all, but especially to Hugh, in whom fear was beginning to be superseded by nausea. He was almost wishing he were back in the small boat. He thought of Sara. He’d seen her standing on the bridge wing, watching as they pulled away from the cutter. Don’t worry, babe, he thought, I’ll be back. Me and Arnold Schwarzenegger.