Ja smiled at Hugh. “And you have thirty-seven thousand very conveniently placed soldiers just over the border, ready to lead the charge. I imagine it won’t take long.”
“Why do this?” Hugh said. “Why not take it into the heart of Kim Jong Il’s palace in Pyongyang and blow him to bits? He’s your problem, not us.”
“We will need help in rebuilding,” Ja said.
“You certainly will,” Hugh said, “and we’re just the folks to do it. Look how well we’re doing in Iraq.”
Ja continued to regard him with a tranquil expression. “When did you find me out?”
Hugh saw no reason not to tell him. The longer they spent talking, the longer Hugh stayed alive. “Last October I got word of your meeting with Fang and Noortman. I’ve been tracking you since then.”
Ja gave him an approving smile. One of the men said something to him. “Fire when ready,” he said almost casually.
“No!” Hugh said, and stumbled forward to do something, anything.
“Help me,” Ja said to one of the men, and they took Hugh by the hands and feet and tossed him out of the container. Hugh landed hard and awkwardly. He heard something crack, and he didn’t think it was anything he’d landed on.
Over the wind and the waves he could hear men shouting. Over the shouting he could hear the engine of the missile ignite. “No!” he shouted, and grabbed something to haul himself to his feet.
He was on the starboard side of the Star of Bali and was the first on board the freighter to see the Sojourner Truth bearing down at flank speed, cutting through the green swells like a juggernaut.
He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard screaming over the ship’s loudspeaker in what he thought was Mandarin. “We surrender! U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Coast Guard, we surrender! I am a citizen of Hong Kong! I demand asylum! Take me with you!”
Now there was screaming and swearing from the container. A man appeared in front of him with a very large weapon he didn’t recognize, but then he’d never been much of a one for firearms. The man raised the weapon to his shoulder.
“No,” Hugh said, this time to more purpose, and threw himself at the man. This yo-yo was not going to get any free shots at Sara. They crashed to the deck in a horrible tangle.
But Sara had provided for that, too, as he heard the distant chatter of an automatic weapon and heavy thuds began sounding in the containers all around him. The man beneath him tried to club him with the stock of his weapon but it was too long to maneuver between them. Hugh, trying to pull away before the two ships hit, was helped when whoever was at the wheel-Fang? It would explain the Mandarin-yanked at the rudder in an attempt to get out of the cutter’s way. The deck listed to starboard and Hugh let gravity do the rest, breaking into a stumbling run between the containers toward the port side of the ship.
He was knocked off his feet when three thousand tons of Coast Guard cutter crashed into the Star of Bali. It was louder than any 747 he’d ever heard on takeoff. It shook like the biggest earthquake he’d ever been in.
Time seemed to proceed in slow motion. The ship shuddered. Metal tore and screeched and groaned. A man fell from above, and then another. The man with the weapon had chased Hugh to the port rail. He lost his balance and his back hit the railing. Momentum flipped him over the side.
He let go of the weapon in a frantic attempt to grab something to halt his fall. What he grabbed was the front of Hugh’s Mustang suit, pulling Hugh halfway over the railing.
Hugh tried to fight free but the various beatings he’d taken in the last hour were catching up with him. He was overcome by a wave of dizziness and followed the man over the side.
JANUARY
MOM!“GLORIA POINTED. NEXT to her Eli watched, his eyes wide, his hand clutching hers. ”I saw, honey,“ Lilah said, pale. They’d all seen, an almost front-row seat, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, apparently deliberately, ram a freighter in the middle of Resurrection Bay. The boat was listing to port as everyone on board leaned against the port rail and stared, most of them with their mouths open.
“There are people going into the water,” Lilah said, and turned to wave frantically at the bridge where the skipper stood with his mouth open. “There are people going into the water! We have to pick them up!”
“BULL’S-EYE, CAPTAIN,” OPS CALLED out, “dead amidships.”
There was no cheering on board the bridge of the Sojourner Truth.
They could clearly see the nose of the missile pointing skyward from the container. They could also see the smoke from the fuel pouring out of the opposite end of the container.
“We weren’t in time!” Mark Edelen shouted.
There was a groan. “No,” someone said. “This isn’t happening.”
All they could do now was watch.
The momentum of the freighter continued forward, dragging the cutter down the freighter’s starboard hull. The skin of the other ship punctured and peeled back.
“There goes another compartment,” someone said.
“And another.”
The force of the strike had pushed the freighter’s starboard side down. “She’s shipping water,” the chief said.
“That missile is launching!” Ops shouted.
Sara, hands clenched on the arms of her chair, watched with dread.
And then the weight of all the water that had been pouring into the gaping wound in the freighter’s side began to move. The Star of Bali began to roll to the left, slowly at first, through vertical and then heavily to port. The containers on deck began to break loose and fall off. The one with the missile in it clung stubbornly to its fastenings.
“Helm amidships, emergency full astern!” Sara shouted.
“Helm amidships, emergency full astern, aye,” Cornell said imperturbably. The engines of the Sojourner Truth paused for a moment and then started again, grumbling at first, then opening into a full-throttle roar.
Sara leaped from her chair and ran out onto the starboard wing. The freighter’s natural stability was trying to regain the vertical. The weight of the water she had shipped through the holes torn in her side wouldn’t allow it, pushing her over on her starboard side again. The weight of the steel in her hold increased the speed and violence of the roll.
The missile launched, with the Star of Bali starboard side down, the momentum of the roll giving impetus to the launch, like a kid throwing a rock with a sling.
“Come on,” the chief muttered behind her. “Come on.”
“Oh my God,” Tommy said steadily and clearly, “I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins-”
Sara rounded on Ops with such a ferocious expression that he backed up a step. “It’s got an internal gyroscope, right? It can correct its own course?”
Ops was pale. “If it gains enough height-”
The contrail of the exhaust seemed to twist and turn on itself.
“-because I dread the loss of heaven-”
Sara raised the binoculars she had thought to snatch on her way outside. The mountains behind the missile loomed large. Were they large enough? “Thumb Cove,” she said. “Thumb Cove, how high are the mountains in back of it?” Too late to go check, too late-
For agonizing seconds the missile looked as if it would clear the land-mass. Sara tried to think what it could hit, and how she could warn them. Valdez, and the oil terminal? Cordova? Would it go inland? Or could it still self-correct its course in midair? If it did, did it have enough fuel to still make Elmendorf and Anchorage? Would it fall short? If it did, where would it fall?