White Hot (11 page)

She and Clint carefully made their way forward to the other chute. They slipped into the dark confines of the enclosure, but this time Clint left the hatch a few inches ajar. Unfortunately, the small wedge of light it let in barely registered.

Even so, by now she was used to the darkness and barely noticed it. But the sea had grown rougher, and she had to hang on to each rung for dear life as she climbed, fearful of losing her grip. Her calves and thighs had started to burn from all the climbing, and her palms felt like they had big blisters. Thank goodness Clint was right behind her.

Every pitch of the boat had their bodies swinging back and forth precariously. By the time they reached the top of the chute, she’d broken out in a clammy sweat. Clint climbed up behind her, stopping on the rung below so their heads were even. After he’d let her catch her ragged breath for a few moments, he helped her climb up and sit on a perilously narrow ledge that formed a lip going around the inside of the access chute. There was barely enough room for their butts to perch on, and they had to bend over to keep from hitting their heads on the scuttle.

Then he reached up and lifted the small round deck hatch a fraction of an inch. Hanging on to the jagged edge, they both peered out through the narrow crack for a quick check.

Thankfully, the hijackers were not standing anywhere
close. But she could hear one of them yelling. Her pulse quickened. What was happening with her crew?

Clint raised the scuttle another few inches, gradually letting their eyes get used to the glare from the midsummer sun. It was late, probably eight or nine o’clock by now, but the sun would be up all night. Anxious to actually see the crew, she stretched up as high as she could and swiveled around to look.

A big wave hit and she swallowed a gasp. She clung to Clint’s arm as he grabbed her and they rolled with the motion of the ship.

“Steady on,” he whispered. “You okay?”

She nodded. But her heart was beating triple-time. She didn’t know what terrified her more, the thought of being discovered by the pirates and shot, or slipping off the ledge and falling with a big, bloody splat at the bottom of the three-story shaft.

She took a fortifying breath and they lifted their heads again to look out, this time really taking in what was happening on deck.

All thoughts of her own safety fled.

The seven members of her crew had been shoved into a line in front of the tall midship structure that housed the crew deck, quarterdeck, and the bridge. The two women were huddled at the center of the hostage line; Carin’s arm was around Ginger, who was weeping. The second mate, Lars Bolun, stood at one end, his shoulders slumped inward and his arms banded across his stomach as though against intense pain. Sam could see dark blotches of blood on his face.

Her own stomach clenched, and guilt stabbed through her. Bolun had told the pirates he was
Île de Cœur
’s captain, taking the punishment intended for Sam.
It should be her out there bleeding.
Clint was undoubtedly correct in assuming the second mate had done it to give her and Clint a fighting chance to rescue the crew.

She couldn’t let them down.

Her people were surrounded by three hijackers carrying
nasty-looking machine guns. They were dressed head to toe in black, like some kind of damn ninjas.

A fourth man paced up and down the line yelling at the captives, occasionally shoving one roughly into the bulkhead. She couldn’t hear his words, but it was obvious he didn’t like their responses. Or rather, the lack thereof.

When no one answered his increasingly loud and impatient questions, the pirate raised the stock of his machine gun and bashed Johnny Dorn hard on the side of the head. The crack of his skull reverberated sickeningly through the air.

Johnny sank to his knees, crying out. At that, Ginger started to sob even louder.

Sam clapped a hand over her own mouth to stifle the cry that bubbled up. The
bastard
! She white-knuckled the rim of the hatch with her other hand, swallowing down waves of rage.

Clint wasn’t watching the brutality. His narrowed eyes had fastened on something off to starboard. Even so, he looked as furious as she’d ever seen him. She followed his gaze and saw another ship, much smaller than
Île de Cœur
, moored about a football field away. A fishing trawler. Undoubtedly the vessel the pirates had arrived on. The name “Eliza Jane” was lettered across the rear escutcheon, and she was flying the Australian flag.

Outrage swept through her. If these pirates were Aussies, she was from Mongolia!

But her attention was once again grabbed by the brutal scene unfolding next to the midstructure. This time Frank received the blow from the pirate leader. It was even harder than the first. Sam could barely breathe for her fury.

Clint’s hand cupped her chin and forced her face around to look at him. His expression was deadly. His molten eyes held hers as he shook his head in firm warning. She made herself take a deep, steadying breath so she wouldn’t launch herself out of their hiding place to defend her crew. In her head she knew there was nothing she could do that wouldn’t result in disaster for all concerned. But her heart
hurt like it had been caught in a vise and squeezed till it bled.

She fought back the despair flooding through her. For all her earlier bravado, she felt utterly useless now, too terrified and emotional to think straight, let alone help the situation.

That had to change. Her crew was counting on her.

She told herself she must work to be cool and professional, despite her anger. Like Clint. It was obvious he was seething inside, yet she could see his concentration and almost hear the cogs in his head turning, coming up with a solution to this terrible situation.

She’d barely bolstered her inner resolve when the scumbag pirate leader stopped in front of Shandy and stared malevolently into his kind, leathery face.

Oh, no.

Sam felt herself totally losing it.

Clint’s arm caught her around her middle, as though he knew nothing in the world would stop her from jumping up to save the old man. But she never got the chance.

Because when the pirate leader raised his rifle to deliver the blow to Shandy’s head, it wasn’t the stock he aimed at the old man. It was the muzzle.

Then he pulled the trigger.

A shower of crimson erupted from the chief engineer’s head as he crumpled to the deck.

Dead.

For a moment Clint froze, unable to move.

Jesus God!

No way had he been expecting the violence to escalate this quickly—no matter who the hijackers were.

His stomach twisted. But he should have guessed.

The likelihood that these tangos were ordinary pirates was now virtually nil. They were focused, organized, carried Chinese regulation Type-85 submachine guns, and were not afraid to use them. No, these thugs had every attribute of a Chinese military special ops death squad. And the leader’s behavior matched exactly the reputation of the infamous Xing Guan. Clearly, he meant business.

And if Clint was right, the business was him.

Jolting out of his frozen suspension, he grabbed Samantha before she could do something really stupid. He dragged her off the ledge onto the ladder, fighting her the whole way down as her shock dissolved into quivers of fury.

She flailed, not wanting to go, but he didn’t loosen his hold, so she had no choice but to continue climbing to the bottom. Her whole body vibrated with anger under his iron grip. He could feel she’d be back topside in a shot if he didn’t mercilessly control her movements. It was a damn miracle they made it down to the orlop without her plunging them both to their deaths.

They made their way hastily back to engineering, narrowly missing being spotted by the guard that had been posted at the engine room.

When they finally reached the hideaway, he firmly shut and latched the door behind them, then drilled a hand through his short hair and tugged, feeling it spike up between his fingers.

Since the engines still weren’t running, they’d have to talk quietly or the guard might hear them.

“You need to calm down,” he clipped out as she paced like a caged tiger, tears streaming down her face. Now that they were safely hidden, the bottled-up fear was slipping through her bravado.

“Calm down? I want to
kill
them,” she muttered, a soft sob choking past her control. “No. Killing is too
good
for them. I want to feed them to the sharks! Bit by bloody bit!”

He couldn’t deny he shared the sentiment.

But though he doubted she could actually bring herself to take a life, he also knew that if she did kill one of Xing Guan’s apes, she’d probably be charged with murder, regardless of how justified the act. Despite public belief to the contrary, a civilian vessel and its crew had no legal recourse to use force against armed hijackers, even if the attackers clearly had deadly intent.

Piracy was against the laws of every country on the planet, with stiff penalties, but there was no international justice system to enforce those laws or to mete out punishment even if the lawbreakers were served up to local authorities on a silver platter unless the attack was committed in territorial waters. If a ship’s crew fought back when attacked on the high seas, especially if they killed one of the
aggressors, the crew members responsible as well as the ship’s captain would be brought up on professional charges. Because unlike the international legal system, the world’s marine shipping authorities embraced a clear-cut set of rules. At the very least, the defending crew would be stripped of their merchant marine papers, unable to work on any decent ship again. And depending on the country, they could also be formally charged in court with any crimes committed. In the United States, the letter of the law tended to win out over logic and moral justice.

It was an outdated, lopsided system, one that badly needed revising—and enforcing—to reflect the brutal realities of the modern seafaring world. But that didn’t help them today.

Luckily, Clint had no such qualms or restrictions on his own responses. He was a soldier under orders and would do whatever necessary to protect his country and the information he carried.

Yeah, and Samantha.

He grasped her by the shoulders and urged her onto the hammock. She was shaking so badly he was afraid her legs would give out. She teetered, sitting on the edge, wrapping her arms around her middle in agitated despair, clutching that stupid hat in her white-knuckled fingers.

“I can’t believe they killed Shandy,” she said hoarsely, slumping as the adrenaline in her bloodstream crashed.

“I can’t either.” If this was an official Chinese military mission they’d just violated every international convention in existence.

Clint thought furiously, debating what the hell to do about this newest disaster. It was happening fast, and he needed to get a handle on the situation and his options for fighting it.

“Why would they do this?” she demanded tearfully. “What did they hope to accomplish by killing an innocent old man?”

Clint pushed out a breath, wishing he didn’t know the answer firsthand. “Terror,” he enlightened her. “After this,
the crew will follow any orders, do anything the hijackers want.”

She looked up at him in even deeper dismay. “Like what? They’ve seized the ship and the cargo. What else can they possibly want?”

Yeah. A total mystery.

Not.

He couldn’t meet her gaze he felt so guilty. The muscle in his cheek felt like a Mexican jumping bean.

Suddenly her watery eyes widened, and she practically tumbled out of the hammock, landing on wobbly feet and staring at him in horror.

Shit.
The woman was too smart for her own good.

“You!”

Shit shit shit.

She stalked over to him, grabbed the front of his borrowed uniform shirt in shaking fingers, and bunched it in her fists. “My God. Please tell me my ship isn’t being held hostage and my chief engineer dead because I had the bad judgment to let
you
on board!” Her green eyes burned like an Alaskan forest on fire.

His heart felt like an animal caught in the blaze.

“I can’t,” he admitted, keeping his voice and his temper under control. Not to mention the floodgates of guilt. He’d been on plenty of life-threatening ops before, but he wasn’t in the habit of dragging unwitting civilians into the fray. This time he hadn’t had a choice. He really hadn’t.

But that didn’t mean he felt less awful about what was happening.

“God
damn
it!” she seethed, letting his shirt go with another sob. “When will I
ever
learn never to trust a man?”

He frowned. Where had
that
come from?

“Samantha…” He knew better than to reach for her. “Please, I—”

“Don’t ‘Samantha’ me,” she spat out. “While we were busy fucking each other’s brains out, as you so succinctly put it, my ship was taken over by madmen. Madmen who are out to kill
you
. Oh, don’t try to deny it. But it’s my crew
who are dying for my mistake! Oh, God, this is all my fault!”