Clive Cussler - Crescent Dawn

“Did you get off a distress call?”

The exec shook his head grimly. “No time.”

Hammet took a headcount of his crew seated around him, noticing his third officer was absent.

“Where’s Cook?”

“He was taken to the bridge early on. My guess is, they had him piloting the ship.”

A short time later, the door to the mess was thrown open, and the third officer brusquely shoved inside by another gunman. Sporting a large bruise on his cheek, the young officer stepped to the table and approached Hammet.

“Glad to see you’re okay, Captain,” he said.

“What can you report?” Hammet asked.

“Sir, they had me pilot the ship at gunpoint. We tracked north at full speed all night, following a black freighter named the Ottoman Star . At around dawn, we docked alongside her in a small protected cove. We’re still in Turkish waters, about ten miles north of the Dardanelles.”

“Any idea who these people are?”

“No, sir. They spoke Turkish but made no demands. Can’t imagine why someone would hijack an empty water tanker.”

Hammet nodded in response, quietly wondering the same thing.

The Israeli tanker crew was held aboard the ship for another twenty-four hours, given access to the galley but little else. Several times Hammet approached the guards with questions or requests but each time was silently rebuked with the muzzle of a gun. Throughout the day and night, they could hear the sound of workers and machinery echoing from the forward deck. Sneaking a peek out the porthole, Hammet could glimpse a crane swinging crates from the freighter to the tanker.

They were finally taken off the ship late in the day when some additional guards arrived and they were ordered to help load the ship. Marched down the pier, Hammet was shocked to see what had been done to his vessel. The assailants had cut away a pair of huge holes in the forward deck. The tanker’s twin forward storage tanks, which each held 150,000 gallons of water, were now exposed like a half-open can of sardines. The captain could see that the crates he had witnessed being off-loaded from the freighter now lined the perimeter bulkheads of each exposed tank.

“The idiots have converted our tanker to a cargo carrier,” he cursed as they were led ashore.

His dismay only grew when the crew was marched into the south warehouse and directed to transport the small boxes of plastic explosives from the Army container. They were guided back to the tanker, where they deposited the explosives in the center of the two open tanks. Hammet took a second to study the crates already loaded aboard, seeing they were filled with fifty-pound bags marked “Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil.”

“They mean to blow up the ship,” he whispered to his exec as they were marched back for a second load of HMX.

“With us in it, I imagine,” the exec replied.

“One of us needs to try to slip away. We’ve got to find some help to stop this madness.”

“As the captain, you’ll be the first missed.”

“With that bloody head wrap, you wouldn’t be far behind,” Hammet said.

“I’ll try,” came a voice from behind them. It was the tanker’s helmsman, a diminutive man named Green.

“It’s dark in the warehouse, Green,” Hammet said. “See if you can get lost in the shadows.”

But the guards were poised to prevent an escape and ordered Green back in line every time he lingered or tried to drift away from the others. Reluctantly, he joined the line of explosives haulers.

The crew continued their forced labor until the explosives in the container dwindled. Hammet curiously noted a dark-eyed woman in a jumpsuit monitoring their progress from the tanker’s deck before taking a position up on the bridge. As they returned to the warehouse for what he knew would be the last load, Hammet turned to his helmsman.

“Try to stay behind in the container,” he whispered.

The captain passed the word for his entire crew to quickly crowd into the container before a guard yelled at them to slow down. But it gave Green the chance to slip to the back of the container. He quickly climbed to the top shelf, then stretched against the side of the wall, his bantam body barely visible from below. Hammet let the other crewmen carry out the last of the explosives, then walked out of the container with his palms up.

“No more,” he said to the nearest guard, then followed the others across the warehouse.

Stepping quickly, he couldn’t help craning his neck as the guard walked over and peeked into the container. Satisfied that it was empty, the guard turned and slammed the door shut. Hammet turned away, holding his breath as he prayed for silence. But his hopes vanished with the sound of the dead bolt sliding closed with a sickening thud that Hammet felt all the way down to his toes.

The tires of the commuter plane kicked up a cloud of dust as they touched down on the dry runway of Çanakkale Airport a short distance southeast of the Dardanelles. The plane turned toward its designated terminal, slowly pulling to a stop as its twin propellers fell quiet. Summer watched from behind a barricade as her brother stepped off the plane with the last passengers. He walked with a slight limp and sported a few small bandages but otherwise appeared healthy. But as he stepped closer, she could see that he carried the worst of his wounds internally.

“Still in one piece, I see,” she said, giving him a hug. “Welcome to Turkey.”

“Thanks,” he replied in a low voice.

Gone was his usual positive energy and upbeat disposition. Even his eyes seemed darker, Summer thought. Not sad and mournful, as she might have expected, but cold and almost angry. It was a look she had never seen in her brother before. Gently grabbing his arm, she led him toward the baggage claim.

“We read the news about the attack on the Dome of the Rock, never imagining you were involved,” she said quietly. “Then Dad heard through the grapevine that you were there and had prevented the explosion.”

“I only stopped one of the charges from going off,” he said bitterly. “The Israeli security forces kept me out of the news while they patched me up at an Army hospital. I guess they didn’t want the presence of an American to muddy up the local politics.”

“Thank goodness, you weren’t severely injured.” She paused and looked at him with concern. “I’m sorry to hear about your Israeli friend.”

Dirk nodded but said nothing. They soon reached the baggage claim and found his luggage. Making their way to a small borrowed van in the parking lot, Summer said, “We’ve got one more pickup to make.”

Driving to the opposite end of the airport, she found a dilapidated warehouse building marked “Air Cargo.” Requesting a pickup for NUMA, she was handed a pair of overnight packages, and then two men wheeled out a small crate and loaded it into the rear of the van.

“What’s in the crate?” Dirk asked as they pulled away.

“A replacement inflatable boat. The Aegean Explorer lost two of her dinghies during a melee over a shipwreck.”

Summer filled Dirk in on what she knew about the discovery of the Ottoman wreck, the death of the two NUMA scientists, and the abduction of Zeibig.

“The Turks haven’t busted the guys in the yacht?” Dirk asked.

Summer shook her head. “Dad’s pretty livid over the response from the local authorities. The Explorer was impounded for a few days and blamed for the deaths of Tang and Iverson.”

“Justice rules for those with power. That’s tough news about Tang and Iverson. I’ve worked with them on other projects. Both good men,” he said, his voice trailing away as the discussion of death directed his thoughts to Sophie.