The result was a weighty silence. Ops repeated the hail. Same response. Ops looked at Lowe and raised one shoulder. Lowe climbed up into his chair. “XO.”
Sara presented herself. “Sir.”
He nodded at Hugh, standing silently to one side. When Lowe spoke, he was at his most formal, which could be extremely intimidating and which immediately straightened the spines of everyone within hearing. “Regardless of the reliability of the intel provided by Mr. Rincon of the CIA”-his voice was even and pleasant but no one on the bridge was left in any doubt as to the captain’s opinion of Hugh’s employer-“the Agafia has already crossed the Maritime Boundary Line, trespassing multiple times on the territorial waters of the United States. We have in hand a letter of no objection from District. We can board and seize her at our discretion.”
“Agreed, sir.”
“However. We are looking down the maw of a nine-sixty-millibar low, heavy seas, and freezing spray. These are not ideal conditions for a boarding.” A wintry smile broke through. “I’m not even going to ask for a GAR assessment on launching the helo.”
This actually raised a chuckle around the bridge, which did nothing to lessen the level of tense expectation. “We’re good to go, Captain,” Sams said, and next to him, Laird echoed his assent.
“No, you’re not,” the captain said, “but if Mr. Rincon’s information is correct, we don’t have a lot of choice here. Therefore, I-”
“Captain?” Tommy said, her puzzled expression reflected in the green back lighting of the radar screen.
“Tommy-”
“Captain, the Agafia. She’s come about.”
“What?” Lowe pulled upright. “Come about? You mean she’s coming at us? Why would she-”
They all looked up to see lights bearing down on them out of the fog. The next thing Sara knew she had been hit by a couple of hundred pounds of hurtling male that knocked her across the deck from next to the captain’s chair to up against the starboard hatch, which fortunately was closed or they would both have tumbled out onto the starboard wing of the bridge.
She lay there, stunned into immobility, staring up at Hugh. She opened her mouth to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing and at that moment four of the forward bridge windows blew in with a sound like a thunderbolt, only ten times as loud. There were loud thumps and crashes as high-velocity metal projectiles stitched a line across the bridge five feet high.
Glass broke, metal housing splintered, flesh was shredded, and the bridge was filled with screams, curses, the angry howl of the wind and the bitter force of the blowing snow.
JANUARY
ON BOARD THE USCG CUTTER SOJOURNER TRUTH
SARA HAULED HERSELF TO her feet with numb hands reaching for anything left intact. “Captain,” she said, groping her way forward, trying to find some footing in the debris on the deck, fighting the roll of the ship’s hull. The sleet driving through the shattered windows seemed to penetrate every pore.
She heard a moan. Someone swore. This time she yelled. “Captain!”
Her outstretched hand touched an arm. It was dangling down the side of the captain’s chair. The ship jerked, off course because the helmsman was no longer at his post, and the motion caused the body attached to the arm to fall to the floor. She had to jump out of the way to avoid being knocked over.
She got her eyes open against the wind enough to see that Captain Lowe was dead, his torso severed almost in two by a large gaping wound, a bloody mass of torn tissue and splintered bones. The motion of the ship caused his body to roll onto his back. His eyes stared in surprise at the ceiling.
Sara looked around and slowly the rest of the bridge came into focus.
Tommy was clutching a shoulder, a dark liquid seeping from between her fingers, her other hand clutching the radar console to pull herself erect. The helmsman, Razo, had been thrown from his chair and lay facedown on the floor, unmoving. His head looked misshapen. Ops was bleeding from his right temple and Sara could hear him swearing. “Ops?”
“I got hit by some glass, XO, I’m okay!”
Everyone was yelling to be heard over the wind roaring in the broken windows. It didn’t help when general quarters sounded and alarms whooped up and down the length of the ship. “Chief? Chief!”
A hand came up to grasp the controls console and Mark Edelen pulled himself to his feet. His face was bruised and his right eye was swelling shut, but the rest of him was mercifully intact. “Find out if our controls still work and put our ass to the storm!”
“Aye aye, XO!” He stumbled over bodies and binoculars and broken glass to the helm. A few minutes later the gale roaring through the bridge had eased.
“Sara!” Hugh said, voice fighting the sound of the wind. “You’re bleeding!”
She looked down and saw with some surprise that he was right. No wonder her left arm felt so numb. She touched her reddened sleeve and found a three-inch splinter of metal run completely through the flesh. It didn’t hurt yet, but it would.
She raised her head and saw them all gaping at her.
“XO,” the chief said, taking a step forward and being thrown back by the movement of the ship.
“Are you okay, XO?” Tommy said.
“I’m fine.” She looked around and raised her voice. “How is everyone else?”
There were more wounds from flying glass and debris. Due to the chest-high sills of the windows, most of those wounds were to the upper torso, shoulders, arms, and heads. The captain and the helmsman had both been seated, the helmsman behind the captain and to his left. They were the only fatalities on the bridge.
“Tommy?”
Tommy had to shout to be heard. “XO!”
“Does the pipe still work?”
“I don’t know, XO!”
“Try it! Pipe damage control to the bridge at once! And Doc!”
Tommy was shaken but still capable of thought and action. “Doc and damage control, aye aye, XO!”
“Sams! Laird!” Sara lurched across the bridge, staggering from one handhold to the next, slipping and sliding in blood and glass. “Sams!”
“We’re here, XO!” Both had facial wounds from glass cuts but were otherwise unhurt.
The pipe worked. Tommy must have cranked the volume knob all the way over to the right because her voice blasted out all over the ship, loud and high but amazingly calm. “Damage control, Doc Jewell, report to the bridge immediately, damage control and Doc Jewell, to the bridge at once.”
Sara continued to move around the bridge, trying to assess the damage. The Transas hanging from the bulkhead in front of the window before the captain’s chair was gone, nothing left but shreds of circuit board and wire, but the one over the plot table was still there, to all appearances intact and still working. The radar console was still blinking out contacts, too, but then it was located almost directly behind the captain’s chair, which had taken the brunt of the attack.