Dana Stabenow - Blindfold Game

She didn’t wait for a reply. “Chief, fall off to starboard. Let them think they’ve chased us off.” They hunched over the Transas again. “Okay, Tommy, what’s your best guess for intercept?”

Tommy punched in some numbers. “If we want to surprise them, right here.”

“We do. How long?”

“About an hour.”

Sara looked over her shoulder at the receding stern of the freighter. “Man, that’s just cutting it too damn close.” She turned back. “Lay in a course. Chief, we slow down over long enough to pick up the crew.”

“What about the inflatable?”

“Leave it, we don’t have time. Ops, break out the machine guns. Order the gunners to lay down a covering fire to suppress the hell out of that bastard with the rocket launcher when we catch up to them.”

“Aye aye, XO.” Ops took the portside hatch at a run.

She slipped and slid across the deck and grabbed the microphone. “Attention all hands, attention all hands, this is XO Lange.” She paused. She really didn’t know what to say this time. She only hoped she didn’t start a mutiny. She struggled to sound as calm as possible, as if one heard this kind of order everyday on board a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. “You’ve got about an hour to prepare for collision, I say again, one hour to pre pare for collision. Batten everything down and keep one hand on those survival suits. I say again, all hands, prepare for collision.”

HUGH WOKE UP TOthe feeling of someone pushing a red-hot poker through his lower left back. He groaned, partly in pain, partly in humiliation. He’d been shot in the ass. He could hear Kyle laughing. “Shut up, Kyle,” he muttered.

“Hello,” someone said in Korean.

With a tremendous effort, he turned his head and pried his eyes open to see a pair of combat boots in front of his face. He groaned again.

“Yes, you have been shot,” the voice said. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Me, too,” Hugh said, surprised that he still had the ability to speak.

“I have noticed that there is no blood, so I assume you are wearing body armor.” One of the shoes nudged him. “Get up.”

Sweating, straining, Hugh pulled himself to his knees, where he threw up on the combat boots.

“Very amusing,” the voice said. “Stand up.”

He pulled himself the rest of the way to his feet, and stood, swaying, partly from the motion of the ship, partly because little stars were flying around his head and chirping. Or was that little birds twinkling?

He was on deck. They must have dragged him there. That would explain why every bone and muscle in his body ached.

The deck beneath his feet jarred and twisted and his hand slipped and let go of whatever it had been holding on to. Hands caught him and set him ungently back on his feet but not before he’d caught a face full of spray. He blinked around at the circle of hostile faces.

“Careful,” the voice said, revealing itself to be a young Asian man with sallow skin and expressionless dark eyes. Not Kyle, then. “We wouldn’t want you falling overboard.”

He held a pistol in his hand that Hugh recognized. He looked down and though his head swam at the movement he could see that his holster was empty.

“Who are you?” the man said.

Hugh licked his lips. “Could I have some water?”

The man nodded at someone behind Hugh. A bottle of Evian appeared. Hugh almost laughed but he was afraid it might hurt. He unscrewed the cap and drank thirstily.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” Hugh said.

The man gave a little bow. “Ja Yong-bae.” Almost as an afterthought he brought the pistol up and hit Hugh in the face with it.

Hugh went down again, and was caught again by the same rough hands and dumped back on his feet.

“Who are you?” the man repeated.

A head appeared over the side of the container and said something to Ja that Hugh didn’t catch over the sounds of wind and sea. “Don’t stop!” Ja shouted.

He turned back to Hugh. “You came from a U.S. Coast Guard ship. I must assume that you have captured the Agafia. Where is my brother?”

One brother per boat. “He is a prisoner, along with those of his men who survived.”

“You lie,” Ja Yong-bae said. “He would rather die than live in captivity. As would I.”

“Why are you doing this?” Hugh said.

The man gave a very European shrug. “I would have thought it was obvious.”

“It isn’t. Please explain it to me.” Hugh was only half paying attention to their conversation. He didn’t know what Sara was going to try next, but he knew Sara and he knew something was coming and that it would be big and bad. Sara didn’t do redundant. And she would be operating on the assumption that he was dead, so she would not be constrained by fear for his safety, and she would be highly motivated for revenge. Hugh wanted off the Star of Bali, and he wanted off now. If Ja offered him the chance to jump overboard he’d take it and thank him.

Ja considered. “Why not? There is time, and you have come so far.”

He had Hugh hoisted up over the side of the container. There wasn’t a lot of room inside because it was mostly filled with the missile and its launcher. Men hunched over the controls.

“Why do this?” Hugh said. It had bought him time before and he liked to go with what worked. “Who do you work for?”

“Myself.”

“You trained with al-Qaida in Afghanistan.”

Ja raised an eyebrow. “You’re remarkably well informed for a member of the United States Coast Guard.”

What the hell. “I work for the CIA.”

Ja’s eyebrows raised. “Do you,” he said after a moment. Then, amazingly, he smiled. “It took you long enough to catch up with me. Didn’t I leave enough clues?”

With a groaning of gears, the head of the missile began to rise.

“WE’RE JUST COMING UPon the northern point of the island, Captain.”

“Are they in sight yet?”

Everyone on the bridge strained to look. “No.”

Sara hoisted herself into the captain’s chair to see if height would give her an advantage. The dark green seas were whipped into whitecaps by the winds howling up out of the southwest, but the swell was way down, and what was left of it was pushing them north.

It would also be pushing the Star of Bali north.

“Let’s kill the lights,” she said.

Ops nodded. The ship’s lights went out, inside and out. Sara got down and walked out onto the starboard wing and looked back. Even their running lights were out. They were as indistinguishable from the dark green water as a two-hundred-and-eighty-four-foot white hull with an orange stripe down both sides and a big white square retractable helo hangar could be. She wondered where Laird and Sams were, if they were alive and safe.

Probably not, because if they had been they would have been able to yell for help, and if they had been able to yell for help there would have been no need for the task in hand. She hoped yet again that she was doing the right thing. She hoped she wouldn’t lose any more of her crew.

Sara had heard all the cliches about command, but she had never understood until now the definition of the word “lonely.” She turned and saw Mark Edelen looking at her, and thought she saw condemnation in his eyes.

She squared her shoulders and went back inside, this time climbing into the captain’s chair without thinking about it.

They were coming up Eldorado Narrows all ahead full, as fast as the EO could push all four generators. Fox Island, a series of three mountain pillars connected by two ridges, was passing by on their left. The ridges were high enough that they couldn’t see the Star of Bali, presumably passing up the outside of the island as the Sojourner Truth was passing up the inside. Which meant that the ridge concealed the Sojourner Truth from the Star of Bali as well.