The Navigator (12 page)

“What about the woman?” Juan asked the baby-faced man. “What should we do with her?”

“Whatever you’d like,” the lead hijacker said. “She has caused us a great deal of trouble. Just make it fast.” He seemed to lose interest in the subject and turned his attention back to the canvas-wrapped object.

Juan stroked the handle of a knife hanging from his belt and strode off along the deck on his dark errand. He walked quickly in anticipation of his task. For days, he had watched Carina with lustful eyes, trying to imagine what she looked like under her layers of clothing. He licked his lips as he recalled the soft warmth of the supple female body that he had lifted into the container. He would only have a few minutes, but it would be long enough for her to experience a real man before he killed her.

As he broke into a trot, he glanced out to sea and was startled to see that a vessel had emerged from the fog and was pacing the containership. An inflatable boat with two men in it was bouncing over the waves toward the
Ocean Adventure.

The Filipino thought about calling for help, but that would not leave him enough time with the woman. Lust won out over good sense. He would handle this himself.

He crouched low and made his way along the deck. The boat seemed to be headed to a point amidships. The Filipino got there ahead of it. He drew his knife, flattened himself belly down on the deck like a crocodile waiting for its prey, and watched the boat as it drew nearer.

This was going to be a special day.

THE FLAT-BOTTOMED RUBBER BOAT bounced across the corrugated surface of the sea in a series of teeth-clacking belly flops. Zavala could have cut short the spastic flying fish leaps by reducing speed, but he had to keep the boat moving to stay with the containership.

“This thing feels like it’s got four flat tires,” Austin yelled over the high-pitched whine of the outboard motor.

Zavala’s reply was drowned out by a detached wave top that hit him full in the face. He blinked the water from his eyes and spit out a mouthful. “Damn potholes!”

He expertly steered the boat closer, jogging the tiller to counter the artificial surf stirred up by the huge hull. His steering arm felt as if it was being wrenched from its socket. The boat lost way with each turn. Within minutes, it had dropped back, until it was almost halfway down the length of the ship. But Zavala’s quick hand and steady eye had drastically cut the distance to the vessel.

The containership seemed like the legendary unstoppable force as it plowed through the seas that crashed against the high, flared bow. The flow of water against the hull created a barrier of white water that stood between Austin and his goal: the pilot ladder hanging down from the deck almost to the waterline. The
Adventure
’s deck was high above the water. The rope ladder was meant to provide access from a harbor pilot’s boat to a fixed gangway that slanted down the ship’s side.

From the deck of the
Leif Eriksson
, the task Austin had set for himself had looked difficult but not impossible. But the
Ocean Adventure
was as long as a skyscraper placed on its side. Even worse, this skyscraper was
moving
. As Austin looked up at the fortress-steep ramparts he hoped to scale, he wondered whether he had bitten off a bigger mouthful than he could chew.

He pushed the dangerously distracting thought from his mind, crawled up to the boat’s prow, and dug his fingers into the slippery-wet surface of the rubber pontoons. When he was ready, Austin lifted one arm and signaled Zavala to make his move. Zavala angled the inflatable in toward the ladder. The rolling white water knocked the boat back like a cow brushing away a fly. Zavala had to play catch-up again.

Austin clung to the bow as Zavala tried to keep pace without going broadside to a sea that could easily flip the boat over. Cold spray stung his eyes and blurred his vision. The noise created by the rush of water, the outboard motor, and the ship’s engines made communication, and even thought, nearly impossible. Just as well. If Austin thought about what he was about to do, he would not do it.

He was starting to tire from the constant beating. If he didn’t make a move soon, his biggest obstacle would be sheer exhaustion. Pluck and determination would come off second best against the simple laws of physics.

A voice crackled over his walkie-talkie.

“
Kurt.
Come in.” Captain Dawe was calling him.

“No can do,” Austin shouted into the mouthpiece. “Busy.”

“I know. I’m watching you. Just heard from the rig. The last anchor line is tangled. A collision looks like a sure thing. You’d better move away from the impact area or you could get caught up in a hell of a mess.”

Austin made a snap decision. He pointed at the containership and shouted over his shoulder.

“Oil rig’s stuck, Joe. We’re going in.”

Zavala gave him a thumbs-up and smoothly cranked the tiller to move the boat within yards of the ship. Once more, the small craft was buffeted by artificial surf. Zavala kept the boat riding the roiling hull wash like a Hawaiian surfer until it was slightly ahead of the boarding ladder.

The rope ladder had become entangled in the “man lines,” the safety ropes that hung down from either side. Zavala brought the motor up to full throttle and went in at a shallow angle. The boat tipped on its side like a heeling sailboat. Zavala and Austin threw their body weight on the higher side. The boat rode the rushing water until it was within reach of the ladder slapping against the side of the ship.

Austin felt like a salmon swimming upstream as the boat danced on the churning water. With the ladder finally in reach, he wedged his feet under the pontoon sides of the inflatable, slipped out of his flotation vest, and rose in a semicrouch. He needed full freedom of movement, and the vest would be of little use if he screwed up. He would have only one chance and if he missed he would land in the water, get swept back alongside the ship, and likely be ground to pieces in the ship’s propeller.

He felt the boat falling away and he reached up, his fingers still inches from the bottom of the rope. He was extended out over the bow, clawing for air. The chasm that yawned between his fingers and the ladder was widening beyond the point of no return. Then the rope snapped closer, and he grabbed the bottom rung like an acrobat in flight.

As Austin’s fingers closed on the rung, Zavala swung the boat back away from the ship to avoid flipping over. Austin dangled at the end of the ladder, reached up blindly, and grabbed the next rung. The hard rubber step was slippery with seawater. He almost lost his grip when a wave washed up around his waist and dragged him down, but he held on and pulled himself higher.

The ladder had stabilized slightly with Austin’s body weight on it, but the double rope was still twisting on itself. He almost let go when his hand scraped against the steel hull. His knuckles felt as if they had been dipped in acid. He had no choice but to ignore the pain and keep climbing.

He tilted his head back to see how far he was from the gangway that angled against the hull. He was encouraged by what he saw. He was halfway up the ladder. Only a few more rungs and he’d be able to reach the small platform at the bottom of the metal steps.

He grabbed on to a couple of rungs, pulled himself higher, and glanced up again. Someone was peering at him from between two thin metal posts that extended vertically from the deck where those climbing the ladder could use them as handholds. A crown of unruly hair framed the dark-skinned face of a man. His gap-toothed mouth was set in a wide grin.

The face disappeared, and an arm reached over the side. The hand at the end of the arm clutched a knife whose long blade was sawing through the rope ladder.

“Hey!” Austin called out, for want of anything more appropriate.

The knife hesitated, but went back to work and quickly severed the rope. The rope ladder dropped a short distance. Austin was slammed against the hull. The impact almost jolted his hands loose from the ladder. He held on and looked up again. Aw, hell, he muttered. The knife was sawing the second ladder rope.

He reached for a man line that had blown free and was twisting in the wind and got both hands on it as the knife went through the second rope. The severed ladder dropped into the crushing sea and instantly disappeared.

Austin’s head slammed against the side of the ship like a clapper in a bell. Galaxies whirled before his eyes. He clung tenaciously to consciousness aware that a single swipe of the knife blade against the line would send him to his death. He reached over and grabbed the bottom step of the gangplank, then swung under the platform, where he hoped he would be invisible to the happy knifeman.

He stayed there for a few moments. When he could hold on no longer, he pulled his body onto the platform and crawled on his hands and knees up the steps until he was at the opening in the deck rail. He leaped onto the deck in a clumsy defensive stance and was glad to see that no one was waiting in ambush.

Austin waved at Zavala, who was running a parallel course to the containership. Zavala waved back.

The captain’s frantic voice crackled in the walkie-talkie. “You okay, Kurt?”

Austin felt like newly ground hamburger, but he said, “Finest kind, Cap. I’m on the ship. How long do I have?”

“You’re about five miles from the rig. You’ll have to allow time for the ship’s momentum to stop or turn.”

Austin sprinted for the sterncastle, but a terrible sound stopped him in his tracks. Coming from a space between container stacks was a woman’s scream, and there was no mistaking the terror in her voice.

CARINA HAD REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS only minutes before Austin had climbed aboard the ship. Her return to the land of the living had some drawbacks. Her head throbbed with pain. Her vision was squirrelly. Waves of nausea sloshed around in her stomach.

The ache and discomfort kept her from sliding back into oblivion, and she became aware that she was still in the container, her body lodged between packing crates. Her arms were bound tightly behind her back. In their haste, the hijackers had left her legs untied.

Combining sheer force of will with a lean physique strengthened from hours of working out at the UNESCO gym, Carina rolled onto her belly. Using her tight abdominal muscles to the max, she leveraged her body into a kneeling position. She stood on wobbly legs and waited until the dizziness passed. Then she backed up to a packing crate and rubbed the duct tape binding her wrists against the corner.

Splinters stabbed at her skin, but she ignored the pain. After a few minutes of self-inflicted torture, she slipped one hand free. She was prying the tape off her wrists when a figure appeared in the opening the hijackers had cut into the container.

Carina recognized the man’s face. She didn’t know his name, only that he was one of the Filipino crewmen she had seen working around the ship.

“Am I glad to see you,” she said with a sigh of relief.

“I am
very
glad to see you,
senorita,
” the man said with a wolfish gleam in his eye.

Carina’s feminine antennae picked up the suggestion of danger in his voice.

She glanced past the crewman’s shoulder. “Are the hijackers gone?”

“No,” he said with a grin. “We are still aboard.”

We.

Carina tried to step past him. The Filipino shifted position to block her way.

“What do you want?” she said, regretting the words the instant they left her mouth.

The Filipino’s lips curled like slices of liverwurst in a frying pan. “I come to kill you. But, first, we have a little fun.”

He grabbed Carina’s shoulders. He was several inches shorter than she was but much stronger. He stuck his foot out behind her ankle and pushed against her chest. She fell backward. The crewman crashed down and pinned her to the floor. As Carina struggled to push him off, he produced a knife and slashed away the thin leather belt around her waist.

She beat at his face with her fists, scoring a few light punches on his unshaven chin that were more an annoyance than a defense. He stuck the knife into the side of a crate to free both hands—and Carina screamed at the top of her lungs. There was no one on the ship who could come to her aid, but maybe the piercing shriek would distract her attacker.

He backed off, and she lunged for the knife. He saw the move and smashed her in the jaw with his open hand. The blow nearly knocked her out. She stopped struggling. She could feel him jerking her jeans down to her knees, smell his foul breath, and hear his heavy breathing. She could only make feeble efforts to push him back. Then she heard a low, male voice.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the voice said.

The Filipino snatched the knife from the crate. He scrambled to his feet and whirled to face the intruder.

A broad-shouldered man stood in the jagged-edged rectangle of light, legs wide apart. His pale, almost-white hair looked like a halo in the backlight.

The Filipino sprang forward with his knife extended. Carina expected to hear a cry of pain as the blade plunged into flesh, but the only sound was a clink and a scrape, as if someone were sharpening a kitchen knife.

Austin had picked up a cuneiform clay tablet he’d seen lying on the deck. He was holding the flat stone down by his knees when he stepped into the container and saw the drama unfolding. When the man turned, Austin recognized the face that had peered out over the deck as he was climbing the rope ladder. With a speed that surprised his attacker, he had hitched the tablet up to his chest to shield against the knife thrust.

As the blade slid harmlessly off to one side, Austin lifted the tablet high above his head and brought it down as if he were beating a rug. The clay broke over the crewman’s head and shattered into dozens of pieces. The Filipino miraculously stayed up for a few second, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he folded like a concertina.

Austin stepped over the twitching body and offered his hand to the woman. She reached out and pulled herself to a standing position. With trembling fingers, she hoisted her jeans back up to her waist.