She stared through the riflescope for him, tense as one of the trawler’s steel cables.
The cop must have seen her burgeoning panic: “I can help,” he yelled from the cabin. “Cut me loose.”
Don’t be a fool, she warned herself. He works for them. Galina realized she must look scared and desperate. But I’m not stupid.
As Oleg’s ship rose back into view, she tried again to pick him out with the scope. Still no luck, but she fired anyway, hoping to give Oleg the impression that she’d sighted him. What else could she do with the ship sailing ever closer?
Captain Younes’s VHF radio crackled. Someone was trying to reach them, but the voice kept breaking up. She couldn’t tell if it was Oleg, or possibly Lana or someone else on her boat. Or maybe another boat entirely.
Each time her ship rose on a swell, Galina looked over the stern, then both sides, ready to shoot. Oleg, she realized, could be anywhere. The radio crackled again.
She crawled forward, still holding the hunting rifle, and reached up, grabbing the VHF mouthpiece from next to the wheel. Clicking it, she thought she heard Oleg’s voice, when she wanted more than anything to hear Lana’s again.
“Drop dead!” she shouted.
“I think that was the other captain trying to reach you,” the cop yelled from the bench in the cabin.
Galina froze. Was the cop trying to confuse her? But if that were the other captain on the VHF, where was Oleg? A haunting question.
The answer came, but not on radio waves.
As Younes’s trawler rode up another swell, Oleg appeared right beside her ship in a Zodiac with an electric outboard.
For the briefest moment, she thought he would fall away and she could rush the railing and shoot him at will. But in the same instant he hurled himself over the gunwale with his pistol in hand and lunged toward her.
She tried to raise the long hunting rifle, but it was cumbersome in such close quarters. He grabbed the barrel, pushing it down as she fired, and jerked the weapon from her hands.
He tossed it aside and pointed his nine millimeter at her face as he walked toward her. His smile returned. Cocky as ever, he shoved the pistol into the back of his pants, as though daring her to fight him with her hands.
She threw herself at him, knowing Alexandra’s life was at stake, too.
He swatted her arms away easily, seized her neck, and, still smiling, started choking her.
Lana hung up Storm Season’s VHF radio in frustration. There was a lot of co-channel interference, probably from the unknown numbers of unseen boats plying the waters in an attempt to escape the hazards of staying moored or docked in rising seas. Even so, Lana was pretty sure she’d heard Galina say, “Drop dead,” although it could have been from another boater frustrated by the radio interference.
“That crap happens,” Don said to Lana. “I’m guessing the troposphere is lit up with signals about now.”
“That’s not the kind of interference we should be worrying about,” Red shouted, studying Galina’s trawler with his binoculars. “Dernov’s going aboard. Oh, shit, he’s grabbing her. He’s strangling her!”
“What?” Lana asked, grabbing the binoculars when he set them aside and started tearing off his pants and shirt.
Veal quickly followed his commander’s lead. Kurt joined the rapid disrobing.
“No,” Red said to the wounded man, without slowing down his own efforts. “Not with your shoulder. It’d be like trolling for sharks.”
“You’re swimming over there?” Lana said as Red and Veal pulled on dark skullcaps and goggles that fit as snuggly as their shirts and briefs. Each hitched on what looked like tool belts with knives, lights, flares, and handguns.
“Why do you think they call us SEALs?” Red said, pulling on flippers. “I want you two to stay right on course until you risk a serious chance of getting shot, then just sail away.”
The pair climbed over the starboard side, out of view of Galina’s boat, and disappeared instantly into the sea.
Oleg and Galina were no longer in sight, either; Lana guessed they were struggling on the deck. If she’s still alive.
Don kept checking the water for the SEALs’ reappearance, but neither man had surfaced after two minutes. “They’ve got to be on a different set of swells by now.”
Lana nodded, still glassing the trawler with Galina. “I can’t see them.”
“Did you see the guns on their belts?” Don said. “German. Heckler & Koch. They shoot steel darts. They’re made for the water, but they can do a lot of damage in the air, too.”
Lana listened, but kept moving the binoculars over Galina’s trawler. Oleg and his prey still hadn’t reappeared. It was hard not to imagine her dead on the deck. At least the son of a bitch wouldn’t get away.
Before she looked back at Don, he spun the wheel, veering from the trawler they’d been heading toward since early morning. “I hope that doesn’t give away too much,” he said, “but we’re in gunshot range now.”
As Don jibed, she checked messages. Maybe Galina had overpowered Oleg somehow. Or there was news from Holmes or Esme.
Only Holmes had left a message: “We’re looking for the kids. Church members said they were driven away by the Fourth Street Kings gang.” But what perplexed Lana was Holmes’s order: “Tell Don.”
She followed Holmes’s directive.
Don listened, studying the sea with the binoculars Lana had set down. Still no sign of Red or Veal. He had her repeat the message before responding: “Tell your boss to set up communications directly between me and Michael Prince. He’s their leader.”
“Why, Don? I can’t just tell Holmes to do that.”
“Yes, you can because Prince and I have some history. That’s why he told you to tell me. Now do it, and then you can tell me why you never said a word about our daughter going missing.”
Lana messaged Holmes. Looking up, she remembered all too vividly the reason she’d never told Don about Emma: she’d figured a convicted drug dealer would be useless in this situation.
“You’re right,” she said to him. “I should have told you. I’m sorry.”
Don held the binoculars on Galina’s trawler. Without lowering them, he responded to Lana: “Goddamn right you should have told me. I know that crew. They run a lot of drugs in DC. They’re fully integrated vertically, from the Colombian producers down to street dealing. You do not fuck with them. But guess what?” He lowered the binoculars and stared at his ex-wife. “You do not fuck with our daughter.”
At any other time in their lives, Lana would have considered Don’s words mere bluster. But she didn’t now. Maybe it was nothing more than hope on her part, but she’d been seeing a different side of him since the shades had been lifted on his secret life. It was a scary side, to be sure, but she was deeply grateful to discover it. They needed someone who might spark fear in the men who’d taken Emma. Maybe he could do the same to Oleg Dernov — or just kill him.
There was still no sign of him or Galina.
Emma and Tanesa had been squashed into the Hummer’s backseat between two “soldiers.” That was what the big guy called the young men next to each of them. The pair called him Prince. Both had semiautomatic pistols pressed into Emma’s and Tanesa’s sides.
“They know to shoot if you try any shit. You hear?” Prince said from the front passenger seat. A guy almost as large was behind the wheel.