Riggs smiled. “Let’s get off this coffin ship. I just need to stop and use the radio to complete our cover as hapless victims about to die, and then we’re gone.”
Any conversation Mercer and Krutchfield planned to have about the two civilians helping to retake the Petromax Arctica became moot when they saw the cauldron of oil blooming around the supertanker’s fantail. Even from a distance of half a mile, the sharp smell carried to them on the salty breeze.
“Madre de Dios,” the Hispanic SEAL mumbled. He crossed himself quickly.
“They didn’t wait for the rescue boat.” Krutchfield stated the obvious. “We’re too late.”
“Maybe not,” Mercer said tightly. He looked at Hauser, who regarded the crippled ship with horror. “Captain?”
“I don’t know,” Hauser finally said. “I can’t tell how bad it is until I’m aboard. It looks as if they reversed the sea suction and used it as a discharge outlet. Or they may have holed her. I can’t be sure.”
The Arctica’s stern pointed toward the open ocean and her bow speared eastward inside Puget Sound. The cabin cruiser raced along the entire quarter mile of her length to where a rope ladder dangled from her aft port rail. Like an iceberg that hides four-fifths of its bulk underwater, the true dimensions of the supertanker could not be fully comprehended even as they passed down her hull. The ship’s side, as black as sin and as smooth as glass, scrolled by endlessly as Krutchfield guided the Happyhour to the boarding ladder. It defied belief that something so vast could have been wrought by human hands, yet Mercer and the rest could see only part of the ship. Below them, the hull sank into the depths for sixty feet, the equivalent of a six-story building.
At the stern, Mercer looked behind them to see the full scope of the tanker and was reminded of the photographs he’d seen of China’s Great Wall, a continuous slab stretching to infinity. It was a chilling sight.
The entire hull was surrounded by a thick poisonous moat of oil.
“Hold fast,” a voice called from high above, a tiny blob that was a face peering over the rail of the Arctica. “We are coming down.”
Krutchfield and his two remaining SEALs had put on yellow rain jackets to camouflage their black uniforms, and so far it seemed to have fooled the man on the tanker. The next few minutes would be telling as the SEALs started up the ladder, their weapons hidden under the rubberized slickers.
“No, go back down. We’re finished,” the terrorist aboard the tanker shouted, his words torn away by the breeze tunneling down the Juan de Fuca Strait.
Krutchfield ignored the order as he scrambled up the swaying rope ladder, his feet kicking effortlessly on the rungs, his remaining team members following closely. They looked like a single organism as they climbed, undulating upward in a fluid motion. Mercer waited for half a beat before he committed himself to the task, knowing that Hauser would follow. The Captain no longer cared if he was recognized by Riggs or one of the terrorists. The Petromax Arctica was his ship, nominally under his command, and he would do whatever was necessary to prevent her destruction.
Mercer was three quarters of the way up the ladder when Krutchfield heaved himself over the railing and onto the deck. He thought about the ladders he used to climb as a boy in the granite quarries of Barre, Vermont, where he was raised. He used to be able to scamper up them like a monkey, unburdened by the fear that now clamped onto his stomach and knotted every aching muscle in his body. Above him, the last of the SEALs reached the top and disappeared from view. Without knowing what waited, he followed.
Suddenly the rope ladder jerked, bucking so hard that Mercer paused to see if Hauser was in trouble below him. Looking down, he saw the older man shaking the ladder to catch his attention. Reflexively, Mercer glanced upward in time to see one of the SEALs pitch over the side of the ship. A heartbeat later, the sound of gunfire reached him.
The lifeless corpse of the Hispanic commando flew by, pinwheeling through space until he landed flat on the water, white spume like a policeman’s chalk outline erupting around his body. Mercer jerked the pistol from his belt as he listened to the gunfire over his head. He couldn’t stay where he was, exposed and vulnerable, and rather than backing down, he surged upward, bobbing his head quickly over the railing to assess the situation.
The deck was empty except for a handful of shining brass shell casings that rolled on the white steel deck. Wisps of acrid smoke still filtered from the necks of the spent shells, singeing his nose even sharper than the leaking crude. There were thick strings of blood splashed across the deck leading toward a closed hatchway.
A mechanical-sounding voice almost made Mercer lose his precarious perch. “Devil Fish calling Mud Skipper. Standing by.”
He’d forgotten that he had Krutchfield’s comm link to the Tallahassee. Tucking his pistol under his arm to free his hand, Mercer reached for the radio. “This is Mud Skipper. The condition is… Oh, shit, I don’t know. Just wait. I’ll be back in touch.”
He jammed the radio back in his coat pocket and rolled onto the deck, finding cover under the port side lifeboat davit, the empty mechanism offering protection from every side.
The pain he had endured before, the agony of being beaten and shot and crashed and drowned and nearly incinerated, meant nothing at this instant. Adrenaline, the natural drug he had become addicted to so long ago, coursed through his body, giving clarity to everything he saw or felt or sensed. Mercer was on automatic and nothing else mattered.
“Hauser, move it. We don’t have time,” he called, rushing past the rope ladder.
Mercer slammed his shoulder against the superstructure door as Hauser came onto the deck. The heavy steel crashed back against a bulkhead, and beyond lay a dim carpeted hallway. Eight feet down the corridor, a dark lump on the deck revealed itself to be the body of one of the terrorists, his chest ripped open by a SEAL’s machine pistol. As Mercer stooped to pick up the pistol left lying near the corpse, Hauser came up behind him. The smell of oil lay heavy in the air, coating their throats like a thick mucus and burning their eyes so that they were red and raw.
“We have to get to the pump room.” Fear and tension made Hauser speak unnaturally loudly, his voice booming in the corridor.
Gunfire rippled in the distance. A fierce battle raged a deck below them.
“We’re not going to make it this way,” Mercer said, guessing they were cut off from the pump room.
“We can get there from the other side of the ship, but we need to go back outside and cross the hull on the funnel deck. I’ll lead you.”
“No, stay behind me. I can’t risk you if we get ambushed. Just call out directions.” Mercer was already running the way they’d come, the two automatic pistols held in his fists like a western gunslinger.
Hauser guided Mercer up several flights of stairs, their feet slipping on the steel treads. On the lower bridge deck, the area that housed the crew’s mess, theater, library, and dispensary, Hauser paused to look into the mess. Seeing that it was empty, a dark look crossed his face. He feared the worst for his boys. They crossed the width of the ship on the funnel deck at the very top of the superstructure. From this vantage, nearly eighty feet above the water, Mercer could see the widening stain of oil like a cancer around the supertanker. He had no way of judging the amount of crude already lost, but even a single drop was too much. A high wave passing down Juan de Fuca Strait met the resistance of the slick and was crushed under the oil’s weight into a ripple that could barely undulate the sea’s glossy surface. The two men dashed across the funnel deck, the Arctica’s captain on Mercer’s heels as he dodged between vent stacks, mechanical housings, and the elevator’s machinery shack. Hauser almost ran into the mining engineer when Mercer stopped just short of the swimming pool. The limp bodies of Hauser’s crew floated on the surface of the water like so many neglected toys. The gruesome tableau held both men immobile for long seconds as they stared mutely at the horror before them.