“Do you know how you caught me?” Xander asked.
Chris thought for a moment. “How do you think we caught you?”
Xander sneered. “Because we are alike. A hunter has to think like his prey in order to catch his prey. You think you are better than me, but you are not. You and I are one and the same.”
Suddenly, Mikhail sat up in the boat. “Where’s Xander?” he slurred, thrashing around frantically.
The outburst jolted Chris. The man’s vital signs must’ve been too low for Chris to recognize as still having life in them. Or maybe he’d somehow misread them.
He tried to calm Mikhail. “We got him. We got Xander. You can rest now.”
“Holy shit! I nearly pissed myself!” exclaimed Sonny.
Mikhail closed his eyes and his upper body dropped, but Chris caught him and eased him the rest of the way to the deck.
“I thought he was dead,” Hannah said.
“So did I,” Chris said. “We need to get him medical attention ASAP.”
Hannah pulled out her cell phone and made a call while pushing the go-fast harder. “I’m on it.”
Behind them, a helicopter approached the oil rig as it sank lower into the sea, and a string of boats headed toward the shore, away from the burning platform.
“We’re going to look awfully conspicuous showing up on shore armed to the teeth like this,” Chris said.
Sonny shrugged. “We can ditch the long guns.”
A swarm of boats appeared on the horizon. “We got visitors,” Chris said.
“Who?” Sonny asked.
Chris squinted his eyes, trying to make out more detail on the boats. “We’re about to find out.”
Xander let out a laugh.
Sonny gagged him. “You laugh one more time or make one more sound, and I’ll personally screw a bullet through your skull.”
Gradually, three Stenka-class patrol boats and one Zhuk-class patrol craft — leftovers from the Soviet occupation — and two forty-eight-foot-long rigid-hulled inflatable boats (RHIBs) came into view. “Azeri Coast Guard,” Chris said.
“Probably heading to the oil rig,” Sonny said.
Hannah shook her head, putting away her phone. “They’re heading in our direction. We better strip down to our primary gear and play it cool.”
The trio took off their assault rifles, assault vests, comms, and overt gear and stashed them in every available compartment on the boat, pulling out life vests and other gear to make room. Now their only weapons were concealed pistols and some ammo. When they took off Mikhail’s gear, he awoke for a moment and shouted, “Happy birthday!”
Sonny shook his head. “Damn, Dirt Dan.”
Mikhail drifted out of consciousness again and became quiet.
“How do we explain the two bodies on the deck?” Sonny asked. “I vote we just put some holes in Xander now and dump him over the side.”
“Hopefully the Azeri Coast Guard sails by fast enough not to notice,” Hannah said.
As the Coast Guard boats came closer, Chris’s anxiety grew. The Coast Guard faced the go-fast head-on, forcing Hannah to slow the boat.
“This isn’t good,” Sonny said. From one of the Coast Guard vessels, a man spoke Azeri through a megaphone. When the Coast Guardsmen aimed their rifles at Chris and his teammates, the message was clear.
Hannah stopped the go-fast.
“This really isn’t good,” Sonny said. Chris, Hannah, and Sonny raised their hands in the universal language of surrender.
One of the RHIBs pulled up alongside, and armed men shouted in Azeri at them.
“I’m sorry,” Sonny said, “I don’t speak pig latin.”
“Let me handle this,” Hannah snapped at him.
An older Azeri, probably senior in rank, said, “You speak English?”
“Yes,” Hannah said.
“You big trouble,” the senior Azeri said. “You steal Minister of Defense rum-runner boat.” Senior held up an iPhone. “Minister have GPS on rum-runner, and we track you with iPhone.”
“Uh-oh,” Sonny said.
Hannah held out her diplomatic passport. “I am a legal attaché for the United States of America, and I can explain.”
Chris wondered how she was going to talk her way out of this one.
Senior’s eyes stopped at Xander and Mikhail lying on the deck, and then he looked at Hannah. “Yes, you will explain.” He motioned to his men to board the go-fast and said something in Azeri.
Hannah pointed to Xander. “This man is a terrorist. He crashed a ship into the Shah Deniz Alpha oil rig.” Then she pointed to Mikhail. “Mikhail works for MNS, and we were helping him find this terrorist, but Mikhail has been shot and needs medical attention immediately.”
“I don’t know anything about this,” Senior said.
Some of the Coast Guard men pointed their guns at the trio while others handcuffed them. Chris breathed deeply. He didn’t like being handcuffed. After being kidnapped as a child, he never wanted to feel imprisoned again. And because no SEAL had ever been held prisoner of war, he had a reputation to uphold. But the Azeris weren’t the enemy, and he went through the motions of compliance.
The Coast Guard searched Chris and his team, clearing out Chris’s pockets, too, leaving him with nothing but lint. He tried to make out the type of handcuffs they’d used — ironically, the cheaper ones were made of softer metal, more prone to bending than breaking; whereas, the more expensive handcuffs were made of a stronger metal that was more brittle and easier to break. But he couldn’t discern which type of metal these handcuffs were made of.
After the Coast Guard handcuffed Xander, they removed his gag and plasticuffs. “She’s lying,” Xander said. “They are the terrorists, and they kidnapped me. Her passport is a fake.”
The Coast Guard rifled through the boat and found the assault rifles, assault vests, comms, and overt gear stashed in the compartments on the boat. Now they gripped their weapons more tightly and moved more anxiously.
“This is going well,” Sonny grumbled.
“I can give you a phone number to call at the US embassy,” Hannah told Senior.
A gray-haired man appeared from the cabin of the Stenka-class patrol boat, and he shouted out to Senior. Gray Hair seemed to be the highest-ranking man in the group, but Chris couldn’t make out what he was telling Senior. When they finished talking, Gray Hair barked orders at his men before he left with two Stenka-class patrol boats, the Zhuk-class patrol craft, and a RHIB. Senior was left with one Stenka-class patrol boat and his RHIB. Gray Hair and his men sped away, pointed at the burning oil rig.
Senior called out orders to his men. One Coast Guardsman took the helm of the go-fast and motored toward shore with two men standing guard over Chris’s team and Xander. The other Coast Guard sailors followed in the patrol boat and RHIB.
Senior said to Hannah, “I call US embassy first.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I can give you the phone number.”
Senior took out his cell phone. “I have number.”
While the senior Azeri made his call, Chris covertly rubbed the chain of his handcuffs against the metal of the boat, roughing up the links. The links of a smooth chain would slip against themselves, but rough links would gain more traction against one another. After scraping the chain links, Chris turned one hand around the other with a slight in-and-out motion, while keeping the other hand still. The chain links weren’t biting, so he worked on scratching them up some more.
Senior shook his head in disgust. “You Americans and your damn robot phone answering.”
As they neared shore, Chris rotated one hand again, manipulating the links in his handcuffs, and they finally bit into each other. Bingo! For a moment, the links seized up, but then he lost it. He tried to freeze them up again.
The Coast Guard boats and go-fast pulled up to a dock where the Coast Guard tied the vessels. As the Coast Guard escorted Chris and the others onto land, he tried to tighten up the links in his handcuffs again but failed. While walking, he attempted to rotate his hand slowly, so as to not alert the Coast Guard as to what he was doing.