The Devil's Waters

CHAPTER 53





At the foot of the stairwell, Wally ordered Doc and Quincy to stay on deck.

“Nicholas is going to send lifeboats. Find life jackets and put ’em on. We’ll send the crew down to you. Get them into the rafts. Watch your asses till we’re off this ship.”

Wally turned for the staircase. He couldn’t trust the elevator, not with the ship going under. No telling when the power was going to cut out.

Doc stopped him. “Wally.”

“Make it quick.”

“Let me grab a rifle. I can head back to the bow, stay out of sight until Raage lets her go. I can put a bullet into that f*cker and get LB out of there.”

Wally came down the few stairs he’d climbed to rest a hand on Doc’s shoulder. He spoke mildly.

“I already thought of that. Raage kept my NVGs; he’ll be watching. You and I both know he’ll cut her throat if he sees anything he doesn’t like.”

Doc opened his mouth to argue. Wally cut him off.

“This ship is going down. I want my men off it. LB made the right call. He can do this. I know he can. So do you.”

Wally turned for the staircase. With the slow tilting of the ship, the steps grew steeper as he labored up the six flights. The wounds in his back and legs almost tripped him several times. Out on the water, an acre of froth bubbled around the settling hull from a breach somewhere below the waterline.

Wally radioed Jamie on the port wing that he was coming up.

Reaching the bridge, Wally caught his breath. The lights had been turned on inside the pilothouse. The carnage and destruction made for a grim scene. The crew had dragged the two murdered hostages away from the windshield to lay beside Drozdov below the chart table. Four dead Somalis had been hauled out to the starboard wing. Trails of blood crisscrossed the floor, which sparkled with shattered glass. The crew had gotten on their feet now, still huddled, except for the fat Russian with the chest wound. While Wally watched from the doorway, Dow and a Filipino hoisted the Russian by the arms to skid him away to the chart table beside his crewmates. Another red track marred the floor.

The chief engineer, Razvan, stood at the dash, palms planted in front of a computer screen. He wheeled on Wally approaching.

“Captain. We are listing two percent by the stern. My engine room is flooding. Explain.”

“She’s sinking.”

The engineer stabbed a finger at his screens. “Yes! This I know!”

“Call the warship. Alert them we need assistance for evacuation.”

“This has been done. I must ask you.”

“What?”

“Who has done this?” The Romanian’s tone turned belligerent. “You? America? Did you decide to hide your secrets?”

“The pirates did it.”

“Pirates? I think America. Grisha with bullet in chest, he tells us before dying. Everything! The machines, Iran, the pirates, and Iris Cherlina.”

Wally grabbed the engineer by the lapel. “Come here.”

Razvan stumbled behind him. Wally dragged him through the shot-up door onto the port wing.

Wally jammed the engineer into a steel corner. He sent Jamie with his two bandaged thighs to find Sandoval and get him down the stairs.

Wally took his hand off the engineer. Razvan lost his bellicosity, cowed now by the bloodied soldier pressing him.

Wally drew his words out slowly. “What did he tell you?” He laid a finger into the engineer’s chest as if pushing Play.

Razvan sputtered a fast story about Iris Cherlina, the Chechen Mafia, Somali Sunnis, the accident on board the Valnea, and Yusuf Raage. Iran was to receive an illegal shipment of electronics from America, Israel, and Russia. Iris Cherlina had made up her mind to stop it. She’d sabotaged the ship and arranged to have it hijacked and exposed to the world.

When Razvan was done, Wally yanked again on the engineer’s shirt. “Listen to me good. You tell your crew that no one says a thing about any of that, to anyone. They stop talking about it right now, even to each other. You understand?”

“Understood.” Wally let him go. Razvan collected himself. “Captain.”

“What?”

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know. And trust me, you don’t want to know. Let it go.”

“Did you blow up my ship?”

“No. We didn’t. The pirates did.”

“This makes sense to you?”

“Shut up.”

Razvan recognized the end of this discussion. “I will arrange crew to evacuate.”

Wally asked, “How long until she sinks?”

“Hard to know. At rate of incline, I suppose thirty, forty minutes. The first half will take the most time. Once bow is in the air, the rest, pff, five minutes.”

“Then get moving. Can your men carry the bodies?”

“Yes. But Captain, not the Somalis.”

“Yes. The Somalis.”

Razvan turned to his duties with a mutter: “Du-te dracului.”

A hundred yards off the Valnea’s port side, the warship eased into place, sweeping her searchlight down the freighter’s hull. The first lifeboats arrived. Before going back into the bridge, Wally cast his eyes far forward to the bow. He could not make out LB and the pirate under the steaming light; the last cargo gates blocked his view. In his imagination, LB sat quiet, the way he always did before a mission.

The crew were strong, carting the nine corpses down the staircases. Drozdov and the pair of dead Filipinos were carried across the shoulders of unwounded sailors, then traded off as fatigue set in. The five dead Somalis were thin, bony men. Dow carried the machine-gunned boy. Grisha was the only burden too heavy to be taken away alone; three Filipinos hefted him. The crew said not a word leaving the ship, stalwart bearing their dead and their killers. Wally wanted to relieve the chief engineer carrying Drozdov, take the captain across his own shoulders. But his wounds vexed him, and his hands needed to be on a weapon until all were safely off the ship.

By the time they reached the main deck, the freighter’s pitch was clearly accelerating. The floor sloped badly toward the stern, and each moment brought the bubbling water closer to the super-structure. Quincy and Doc handed out life vests from a locker to every crewman and PJ. Vests were secured on each corpse. Two at a time, the crew leaped over the side, followed down by the spotlight from Nicholas. Three rescue craft from the frigate hauled the sailors aboard. The warship had divers in the water to assist. Dow and Mouse stepped up to help drop the corpses to them.

The PJs waited until one last crewman remained on the ship, the body of Drozdov. They gave the captain the honor of letting him stay to the end, then released him into the night air. His corpse did not bob up quickly but stayed underwater for long seconds, perhaps caught in the drag of the great hull slipping below the surface. The spotlight found him in the froth, face-down, as if watching his ship slide away.

Fitz eased the RAMZ into place below the PJs. Wally teamed the wounded with the unhurt. Sandoval jumped with Mouse, Jamie with Doc, Quincy with Dow. Below, Fitz helped each over the side. Robey’s body lay curled in the bow.

Wally was poised with the toes of his boots over the edge, the team waiting below. Nicholas’s spotlight hit him. He felt like he’d been through a grinder, his uniform full of holes. In the searchlight, his hands appeared washed out.

Deep inside the ship, a giant fist seemed to beat once against the hull, followed by a trailing groan. The next moment, the emergency lights around Wally extinguished. Far forward, the steaming light on its tower snuffed. All the power on Valnea was finished.

“Good luck,” Wally said to LB. He stepped into the air, to plunge in the spotlight away from the Valnea.

The salty gulf was an instant sting in his many wounds, then a soothing, cooling stroke. Fitz motored to him quickly, and Quincy hauled him in.

Wally arranged himself on the inflated edge. Robey had the bow to himself; the PJs kept toward the stern. Away from the freighter now, the big ship’s backward slide into the deep was even more dramatic. She retreated into an acre-wide skirt of bubbles and white roiled water.

Fitz pivoted the Zodiac in the spotlight cast down by the Nicholas, powering for the warship. Wally stood dripping as the inflatable swung alongside the lowered gangway platform. Before stepping out of the raft, he reached down for Jamie.

“Come on.”

The young PJ leaned away from Wally’s outstretched hand.

“Not till we find LB.”

Sandoval and Quincy, the other wounded PJs, nodded in agreement.

Wally stepped onto the platform by himself. “Okay. Stay on the water till you recover LB. And the woman, Iris Cherlina.”

Doc said, “Roger.” Fitz motored away, back into the spume rising from the sinking freighter.

A contingent of armed marines met Wally at the top of the gangway. A sergeant approached to salute.

“An honor, sir.”

“Sergeant.”

“Captain Goldberg would like to see you on the bridge.”

Wally motioned the guards onward.

The marines led him inside the superstructure. Wally climbed the stairs slowly. The guards were patient with him. Goldberg waited out on the port catwalk, watching the Valnea.

Goldberg offered a hand. “Captain.” He shot a glance over his shoulder at the dark freighter a hundred yards off. Her bow rose above the waterline, the bulb fully visible.

“Makes no sense,” Goldberg said, “sinking a ship like that. Pirates.”

“None.”

Goldberg surveyed Wally. “You okay, Captain?”

“I could use a day off, thanks.”

The warship’s spotlight swept the dark waters between the two hulls. The light found the PJs in their Zodiac, plying the foam around the disappearing freighter.

Goldberg turned on Wally. “Captain, why are your men still on the water? Is everyone off that boat?”

“Dismiss your guards, Captain.”

Goldberg sent the pair of marines off the catwalk.

“All right. What’s going on?”

Wally pointed midship at the big spotlight. “I need you to turn that off, sir. And I need you to back away one mile.”

“Do what?”

Wally asked, “Sir, what are your orders?”

“Once your men are on board, I’m to put a total blackout on you. You’ll have no contact with any of my crew. I’ll post guards outside your quarters. I apologize. I reckon it’s not the welcome you were looking for.”

“I understand. Start the blackout now. Cut off that light. Everything that happens on that ship is classified.”

As Wally finished speaking, the searchlight slid up the freighter’s exposed hull. The beam scanned the blank, falling face of the cargo deck. It snagged on a lone figure running downhill along the starboard corridor. The beam followed Iris Cherlina over the rail, her quick drop into the foam. Fitz wheeled the Zodiac around to fish her out of the water.

“Hold it,” Goldberg said. “Are there more survivors on board?”

“No, sir. There are not.”

Goldberg hesitated, going against his instincts.

“Sir, do it now.”

Goldberg snatched up an intercom phone. “Bridge, kill the spotlight.”

The beam shut down. In the returned darkness, the Valnea receded into a skirt of pale water, gasping as she sank. From this distance, her backward slide was plain. She reared her head as the stern disappeared, dragged down by propeller, engine, and the inrushing void. Water reached the base of the superstructure, flowed up the corridors. Two life rafts had already popped to the surface, inflating automatically. The Valnea screeched, echoing in her filling hold.

Goldberg spoke into the intercom. “Helm, hold distance of one mile from that ship.” He hung up. Wally thanked him. Goldberg raised a silencing hand.

“Don’t say any more to me, Captain. Stay here as long as you need. I’ll have your marine escort waiting inside.”

Goldberg entered the bridge. Wally set elbows on the rail, watching the Valnea rise and recede. He took off his helmet to let the breeze cool his wet hair.

Iris Cherlina was safe. On the lifting bow, the battle had begun.