She had emptied oil from only six of the eighteen tanks in a zigzag pattern that caused the hull to creak mournfully from the added strain of her now uneven load. Once the explosives in the ship’s belly detonated, this additional stress against her keel would speed up her destruction. A shining pool that scintillated like a rainbow had already formed around the Arctica’s dark hull, and a few inches of her oxide red Plimsoll line showed above the waves.
Riggs looked at her watch. It was ten minutes past two. The boat sent to fetch her and the others would be here in minutes. As if echoing her thoughts, Wolf appeared at her shoulder and said, “The boat is approaching. It is time to go.” His accent masked any emotion he might have had, though Riggs doubted he was capable of feelings.
“Is it done?” Riggs asked, referring to the murder of the crew.
“Yes, they’re dead.”
As a precaution if any bodies were recovered or washed ashore, Wolf and one of his men had forcibly drowned each member of the Arctica’s crew in the saltwater swimming pool on the funnel deck. Each man had to be led up to the pool individually, rendered unconscious by a blow to the head, and held under water until his struggles had ended. It had taken them much longer than anticipated to kill all twenty-four.
Riggs and Wolf waited in silence for a few minutes, giving the deck crews enough time to resecure the hatches. Once Riggs’ watch swept past 2:20 P.M., she manually opened the eight screw valves that led from the sea suction inlet to the main lines feeding from the ship’s cargo tanks. As the final valves opened, the pressure of oil venting through the ten-inch pipes could be felt as a palpable presence in the room. The flow sounded like a locomotive hissing through a long tunnel. Where the three lines combined into the main thirty-inch artery, the torrent made a noise like a continuous explosion. Crude began pouring from the vessel, life blood from a mortal wound.
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.