“I protect women and children on my boat. It’s a matter of honor. You may not know it yet, but you picked the right man.”
Galina studied him openly. Could she really have been so fortunate as to have found a veritable prince in that tiny seaport? He’d betrayed no nerves thus far, sailing on course with hardly a glance back, casually drinking the powerful coffee he’d politely asked her to fix for him.
The cop he’d tied to the bench in the cabin was slumped over, evidently sleeping.
Captain Younes asked Galina to warm up cans of soup for all of them. She took on the duty of helping the officer, who brightened when he realized that she’d come to feed him, not fire a bullet into his brain.
“Just do what I say,” Galina told him as she spooned more broth and leeks into his mouth. “The cop I killed was a beast. He was trying to rape me. Don’t try to escape or hurt anyone and I won’t hurt you.”
When she returned to the helm, Oleg’s boat had neither gained nor lost distance on them.
“He doesn’t want to catch up,” Captain Younes said. “I’ve tested them, slowing down and speeding up. Always the same with them. I think he wants to know where you’re going and why.”
“I think he already knows all that. He’s a master hacker.”
It made sense that Oleg would stay back so he could try to capture both her and whoever she was meeting. Or simply kill them, for that matter. What he would fear most, she figured, was having them work together against him. Otherwise, Galina was certain he would have tried to grab her as soon as he could.
She sent Lana a message about Oleg’s careful stalking of her boat. Most of her morning had been spent trying to hack into the U.S.S. Delphin, fearful that at any second the crazy man Oleg had in that sub would launch another Trident II. But she hadn’t been able to penetrate the sub’s cybersecurity. What she had found was deeply curious, though: A tremendous amount of data was flowing from Moscow to the submarine, which was now deep in the South Atlantic. That location was also the best guess of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, which had released that information to the news media.
The data flow surprised her. It was as if her fellow Russians no longer saw any reason to hide their involvement in the hijacking of the sub or the bombing of Antarctica. Which was crazy. Any evidence linking them to either could be a casus belli for nuclear retaliation. It made no sense to her. But there was no denying the data.
Twice Oleg left her messages. In one he’d had the gall to say that if she came back to him now she could still be his “good bad girl again.” She shook her head in amazement. Didn’t he realize that she’d shoot him if she had the chance?
She stroked Alexandra’s head and prayed they’d both survive the rendezvous and whatever Lana had planned for it.
“Up ahead,” Captain Younes said, pointing. He was looking through his binoculars. “I see a sailboat. It looks the right size.”
She stood to take a look, glassing the sea, but catching only a glimpse of gray sail in the distance.
Galina turned around to look at Oleg’s boat. It had started to close the gap.
“He’s closer,” she said to Younes.
“I have been looking,” the captain said calmly. “I saw him speeding up before you did. But I’m afraid my friend is pushing his engine as hard as he can, and he’s a little faster than I thought.”
Galina told Alexandra to go back to her bunk and stay bundled up. The child must have sensed the urgency and danger because she scampered down the companionway, past the prisoner, and into the forward bunk.
Her mother raised the Glock and racked the slide to ensure a bullet was in the chamber.
Captain Younes nodded approvingly. “Take the wheel,” he told her.
He opened a locker in the cockpit and pulled out a shotgun and a hunting rifle. Pointing to the former, he said, “That’s for if they get close. The other one is to make sure they never do.”
“Are you good with those?” she asked.
“Good enough not to get caught in the middle,” he replied, “because that’s how you get crushed.”
Ten minutes later, with Storm Season in sight, a bullet ricocheted off a winch drum that operated the towing booms for the nets.
Calmly, Captain Younes put the trawler on autopilot, then picked up the hunting rifle, searching for Oleg with his scope.
The next shot struck Younes directly in the head. The captain dropped to the deck, dead, looking as if an axe had hacked open his skull.
Galina dropped below the level of the gunwales, shaking uncontrollably. Alexandra raced to the cabin doorway.
“No! Go back!” Galina screamed. “Now!”
The six-year-old darted to her bunk, but Galina knew that her little girl had seen Younes’s fatal wound and the copious blood washing across the deck.
She looked up at the wheel wondering how she could possibly steer the boat and try to keep Oleg at bay.
You don’t have to steer, she reminded herself: Younes had put it on autopilot.
“I can help,” the cop yelled from inside the cabin.
Galina ignored him, picking up the rifle. Staying as low as she could, she peered through the scope.
In an eerie replay of what she’d seen as they’d sailed from the inlet, she spotted Oleg staring back at her through an eyepiece of his own. Only this time it had a rifle attached.
He fired again.
CHAPTER 25
Oleg’s shot missed Galina’s head by less than six inches, but tore through the cabin walls with enough force to leave a bullet burn on the cop’s chin. An inch closer and the man would have lost his face.
Galina took no notice of this, worried far more that Oleg’s ammo would rip through the length of the trawler and kill Alexandra in the bunk at the front of the cabin. She wished she could hide her daughter behind one of the nets’ heavy winch drums, but she didn’t dare try to move her now.
She poked the hunting rifle over the gunwale and eyed Oleg again, firing as soon as she saw him.
The rifle kicked back into her shoulder with enough force to surprise her, but not enough to keep her from seeing that she’d made Oleg duck.
Still smiling?
Galina then shot out a window in the pilothouse of his ship. The glass shattered completely. She saw the captain duck away from the wheel.
As she scanned the trawler for Oleg, another bullet ripped into the stern a foot below her. A second shot followed quickly, nicking the railing inches from her head.
She ducked again, hoping they were getting closer to Lana’s boat. Galina needed help.
She crawled forward and peered over the port side, exposing herself as little as possible. She started to raise the binoculars when Lana’s sailboat rose easily into view on a swell. It was still more than a mile away, but in minutes their paths would cross if Younes’s trawler kept trudging along.
But a glance backward showed Oleg’s ship still catching up. It seemed to be gaining speed as it moved closer.
Oddly, though, he had stopped shooting, which made her uneasy. His boat was still disappearing when it moved down a swell, granting her only glimpses to shoot at him. She had little faith in her ability to do more than make him take cover.
But the swells also gave Galina breathing room when he couldn’t shoot her. She used that time to message Lana that Oleg had shot and killed the captain of her boat. She tried to communicate quickly, but her boat still rose and fell several times on the rolling sea before she turned her attention back to Oleg’s trawler, freezing when she saw the vessel only half a soccer field length away.