He leaned farther and stared into the depths.
Deep in the midnight waters, a glow glided out from under the ship. It slowly slipped off to starboard and floated determinedly away. Painter’s brow crinkled. He recognized what he saw. A submersible. Why?
The answer came immediately with the question.
With the mission over, the sub and the main assault team were bugging out. All that was left was the cleanup. To leave no witnesses.
He knew the purpose of the sub’s presence. To come in baffled and silent, too small to detect…
“They’ve mined the ship,” he said aloud. He calculated in his head how long it would take for a sub to clear the blast zone.
Kara said something, but he had gone deaf to her.
Painter swung from the window and hurried to the door. The firefight seemed to have settled to a stalemate of sporadic shots. He listened at the door. Nothing sounded close. He slid back the bolt.
“What are you doing?” Kara asked at his shoulder, sticking close but clearly irritated by her own need to do so.
“We must get off this boat.”
He cracked the door open. A few steps away lay the opening to the middeck. The winds had kicked up as the edge of the coming storm brushed over the Shabab Oman. Sails snapped like whips. Ropes rattled in stanchions.
He studied the deck, reading it like a chessboard.
The crew had no opportunity to reef and secure the mainsails. The Omani sailors were pinned down by a pair-no, three gunmen-hidden behind a pile of barrels stacked at the far end of the middeck. The masked men had the perfect vantage point to guard the forward sections of the ship. One of the pair kept his rifle pointed toward the raised stern deck, protecting their rear.
Closer, a fourth masked gunman lay sprawled on the deck, facedown, blood pooled around his head, the body only a few steps from Painter.
He took in the situation with a glance. Similarly ensconced behind crates on this side of the middeck were the four Omani border-patrol agents, the Desert Phantoms. They lay on their bellies, rifles pointed toward the gunmen. It was a standoff. It must have been the Phantoms who had waylaid the assault team’s rear guard, pinned them down, kept them from escaping over rails.
“C’mon,” Painter said, and took Kara by the elbow. He dragged her out the suite’s door and toward the lower stairs.
“Where’re we going?” she asked. “What about getting off the boat?”
He didn’t answer. He was too late, but he had to be sure. He clambered down the stairs to the next landing. A short passage led to the guest quarters.
In the middle of the hall, bathed in the light from the single overhead lamp, a body draped across the floor. Facedown like the masked man above. But this was not one of the attackers.
He wore only boxers and a white T-shirt. A tiny dark stain marred the center of his back. Shot from behind as he attempted to flee.
“It’s Clay…” Kara mumbled in shock, hurrying forward with Painter.
She knelt near the boy’s body, but Painter stepped over him. He had no time for mourning. He hurried to the door toward which the graduate student had been heading, seeking a place to hide or to warn others. Too late.
They’d all been too late.
Painter stopped outside the door. It was cracked half open. Lamplight flowed into the hall. Painter listened intently. Silence. He steeled himself against what he would find.
Kara called to him, knowing what he feared. “Safia?”
2:02 A.M.
OMAHA SHOVEDout an arm as the ship rolled beneath him. The darkness of the bilge threw off his sense of balance. Water sloshed over his shoes, chilling his ankles.
A crash sounded behind him…and a curse. Danny was faring no better.
“Do you know where you’re going?” Coral asked Omaha, her voice frosty, echoing a bit in the dank bilge.
“Yes,” he snapped back. It was a lie. He kept trailing one hand along the sloped wall to the left, praying he’d find a ladder leading back up. The next one should lead to the main storage hold under the middeck. Or so he hoped.
They continued in silence.
Rats squeaked in sharp protest, sounding larger in the darkness, as big as wet bulldogs. Their numbers multiplied in the imagination. Omaha heard their bodies splashing through the bilge waters, running ahead of them, likely piling into an angry mass at the stern of the ship. In an alley in Calcutta, he had seen a rat-gnawed corpse. The eyes gone, the genitals eaten away, all soft places gnashed. He did not like rats.
But fear for Safia drove him onward, his anxiety heightened by the darkness, the spates of gunfire. Bloody images flashed across his mind’s eye, too terrible to dwell upon. Why had he put off telling her how he still felt about her? He would gladly drop on his knees now to have her safe and sound.
His outstretched hand struck something solid. He reached out and discovered rungs and nail heads. A ladder.
“Here it is,” he said with more confidence than he felt. He didn’t care if he was right or wrong or where the hell the ladder led. He was climbing out.
As Danny and Coral moved closer, he mounted the rungs.
“Be careful,” Coral warned.
The gunfire continued above. Close. That was warning enough.
Reaching the topmost rung, he searched until he found the inner handle to the hatch. Praying it wasn’t locked or weighted down with cargo, he shoved up.
The hatch flew open with ease, swinging back and crashing against a wooden support pillar.
Coral hissed at him. No words, just protest.
Blessed light flowed over him, blindingly bright after the gloom below. The smell was also refreshing after the salt and mold of the ship’s bilge.
Fresh-cut hay.
A large shadow shifted to his right.
He turned and found himself facing a huge horse, looming over him. The same Arabian stallion that had broken free earlier. It threw its head and huffed at him. Eyes white with terror, it raised a hoof in threat, ready to stamp out the sudden intruder into its shipboard stables.
Omaha ducked back, cursing their luck. The bilge hatch had opened into the stallion’s stall. He spotted other horses in neighboring stanchions.
He turned his attention to the stallion. The horse tugged at the lead tethering him in place. The spooked Arabian was better than any armed guard. But they had to get out and reach the crated weapons in the neighboring hold.
Fear for Safia fired his blood. He had come this far…
Trusting the ropes held the horse, he dove out of the hatch, rolled flat across the planks, and passed under the fence that closed off the stall.
Gaining his feet, he dusted off his bare knees. “Move quick!”
He found a horse blanket, brightly colored in reds and yellows. He waved it at the stallion, keeping it distracted so the others could climb to safety. The horse whinnied at his motions, but rather than growing more perturbed at the additional intruders, the stallion pulled at the ropes that secured it, drawn to the saddle blanket.
Omaha realized it must recognize its own blanket, a promising sign that someone was about to take it for a ride, to let it out of the stalls. Alarm heightened the stallion’s desire to break free.
With regret, he lowered the blanket back over the fence once Danny and Coral reached his side. The stallion’s large eyes met his, scared, full of the need for reassurance.
“Where are the guns?” Coral asked.
Omaha turned from the stall. “Should be over there.” He pointed past the ramp that led to the upper deck. A stack of crates, three high, stood along the back wall. A Kensington crest marked each one.
As Omaha led them across the hold, he kept his head low with each new burst of gunfire. A repeated exchange of gunfire, a volley back and forth. The deadly match sounded like it was coming from outside the double doors at the top of the ramp.