Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

The timing of the SEAL commandos was uncanny. Krutchfield hadn’t even shouted when the boat’s regular helmsman bumped Hauser from the conn and burped the engines, bringing them back alongside the weathered cabin cruiser. The three men on the pleasure boat’s deck turned in unison as they started to overtake the odd-looking craft that had just passed them. But by the time they suspected anything was amiss, three of the SEALs had appeared over the gunwale and opened fire while Krutchfield and another commando leaped the narrow gap between the two speeding craft.

The H amp;K MP-5s the SEALs carried whined like buzz saws, pouring a hundred rounds into the cruiser in just a few seconds, blowing off pieces of fiberglass and worn woodwork, dicing the three men at the controls. There was a steady pulse of return fire from the boat’s lower cabin, the distinctive chattering crash of an AK-47. Krutchfield’s partner was caught halfway through his leap to the cruiser, the Russian-manufactured weapon stitching across his Kevlar body armor. None of the bullets pierced the vest’s ballistic material, but the hydrostatic shock tossed him into the empty space between the boats, his body vanishing in the clouds of cordite smoke that fouled the air. He hit the water with a bone-breaking splash, but his scream went unheard as the running battle continued.

Another burst from the SEALs tore a jagged hole in the hull around the porthole where the shots had originated. There was a brief scream piercing the sounds of automatic fire, and suddenly it was over. Krutchfield was at the controls of the cruiser, standing proud in an ankle-deep mire of blood and shattered bodies. He cut the engines at the same time as his helmsman slowed the assault boat, both craft hissing to a slow crawl, the echoing sounds of the battle dying away.

Mercer was the first from the SEAL boat onto the cabin cruiser, whose name he saw was Happyhour , with Hauser only a breath behind him. Krutchfield’s other two SEALs swarmed over next, like extras in a pirate movie, their eyes bright with battle lust, their gun barrels hot from the fray. The helmsman arced the assault boat away from the Happyhour , carving a tight crescent in the Strait to pick up their fallen comrade, the powerful motors bellowing like caged animals as he gave them their head. While Krutchfield heaved bodies over the side of the captured boat, his two teammates ducked down the narrow steps to the belowdeck cabin. By the time Krutchfield had finished, they were back on the bridge. One of them, a compact Hispanic with a gap where one of his teeth had been, was wiping his knife against a napkin he’d taken from the galley. Red smears bloomed from the blade’s passage.

“There were two of them, jefe ,” he remarked casually, slipping the blade back into its inverted scabbard on his combat harness.

“Shit,” Krutchfield exclaimed. He turned to look over his shoulder at the distant wake of his boat.

There had been five terrorists on the boat. With one SEAL down in the water and the other out to get him, there were only three commandos on the Happyhour .

Mercer knew what the navy lieutenant was thinking and spoke before Krutchfield did something rash. “We don’t have time to wait for them,” he said. “JoAnn Riggs is expecting this boat in a couple of minutes. We don’t need to make her any more suspicious by being late. There were five men sent to pick her up. There are five of us, including Hauser and me.”

“Dr. Mercer, we’ve been trained for this type of sortie; it’s what we get paid for. I understand why you and Captain Hauser are here, but I can’t authorize you to board the Arctica until we have her secured.”

“We don’t have time to argue about this, Lieutenant. Let’s get going. We’ll discuss it on the way, but no matter what, we can’t wait here for your other men.” Mercer knew that Krutchfield would have no choice but to allow him to come along. They were going to need the extra firepower.

“Mercer, JoAnn Riggs would recognize me right away. I’d be more of a liability than an asset,” Hauser pointed out.

“I know. I just thought about that. How about if you follow us about five minutes after we board? We should have the area around the boarding ladder secured by then. Believe me, we’re going to need you if Riggs has already started to scuttle the ship. I don’t know anything about tankers.”

“I thought you said you worked for Alyeska?”

“No, I don’t. I’m here as a favor to Andy Lindstrom, the Chief of Operations. Kind of filling in, so to speak.”

“Oh, shit, we’re in trouble,” Hauser breathed.

“Tell me about it.” Mercer was staring over the bow of the racing cabin cruiser. A half mile ahead, the VLCC Petromax Arctica appeared, her one-hundred-sixty-foot-wide beam making her head-on profile look like a solid wall of preformed steel tucked against the north bank of the ten-mile-wide Juan de Fuca Strait.

While the sight of her unimaginable size was awe inspiring, Mercer couldn’t help but think she looked like a ghost ship.

As the cities of Seattle and Vancouver expanded during the ’80s and ’90s, fueled by immigration from Asia and the technology companies that seemingly grew out of every garage and basement, great pains were taken to ensure that the pristine Pacific Northwest was left as virgin as possible. Unlike the megalopolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, DC, that’s been spoiled forever by two hundred years of sprawl, the environs of Puget Sound were still beautiful rugged forests and mountains and clear cold waters that supported both commercial fishermen and the needs of the avid sportsmen. Wildlife flourished, especially in the Sound itself, where marine creatures from majestic whales to playful otters abounded. The crab beds around Seattle were legendary, teeming with the delicious crustaceans even after years of harvesting, and the national forests were perfect habitats for deer, beaver, and dozens of other woodland species. To all but the most vehement environmentalists, the area was the model of ecology and industry working together in productive harmony.

Where the sea rushes between Victoria Island and the mainland, a few miles from the city of Port Angeles, the VLCC Petromax Arctica hulked low in the water, her belly swollen by 200,000 tons of oil so her rails seemed only a few feet above the waves sliding against her. While tankers were not an uncommon sight in the Strait, one of the Arctica ’s dimensions was. But more disturbing than her presence was the feathery tail of smoke leaking from her square funnel. Her engines were turning only enough for station’s keeping against the tide flowing into the Sound.

While the past quarter century is full of stories of supertanker accidents, the Exxon Valdez , the Amaco Cadiz , and the Torrey Canyon being the most famous, many of the giant vessels have been lost through storm or accident or mechanical fault. During a single month in 1969, three tankers of over two hundred thousand tons were lost or severely damaged, and few outside of the oil industry ever knew of these incidents. While the causes of disasters vary, it’s rare that a single fault can sink one of these behemoths. Many factors, from weather to a simple human mistake to a complete design flaw, are necessary to pull a supertanker under the waves. Not until the space shuttle has a single device possessed so many backup systems and fail-safes — all designed to prevent the type of disaster about to unfold in the waters leading to Puget Sound.

In Ivan Kerikov’s plan, the destruction of the tanker was to occur shortly after the cancellation of her sale to Southern Coasting and Lightering. Since the crippled ship could not make it as far south as San Francisco Bay, the plug had been pulled on the deal a few days early, a minor detail that only slightly altered the intended outcome of the operation. Captain Hauser’s valiant actions merely shifted the target city to Seattle. While not as sentimental as San Francisco, it was an equally fragile ecosystem that would suffer just as cruelly when the crude washed up on its coastlines.