David Morrell - The Covenant Of The Flame

If the approaching foreign vessel had been military in nature, the United States military would have gone on alert. But since the vessel was civilian, it required a less severe response. The Air Force immediately contacted the Coast Guard, and since O'Malley's cutter was the nearest government vessel in the area, the Sea Wolf was at once dispatched to investigate.

Now, five hours after having received his orders, O'Malley – a red-haired, twenty-year veteran with a home in Portland and a wife and daughter whom he loved very much – continued to frown at the blip on the radar screen.

'That's it, Captain,' a crewman said. 'She just crossed the two-hundred mile boundary. She's in our waters.'

'And drifting.' O'Malley sounded as if his best friend had died.

'That's what it looks like, Captain.'

'And still no response to our radio messages.'

'Affirmative, Captain.'

O'Malley sighed. 'Battle stations.'

The crewman pressed the alarm. 'Aye, aye, Captain.' Through the cutter's hull, the alarm sounded muffled but effectively shrill. Below, it would be excruciating, the rest of the crew snapping into action. 'You think there'll be trouble?'

'That's the problem, isn't it?' O'Malley said.

'Excuse me, Captain?'

'What should I think? Trouble? For sure. Obviously something's wrong. The question is whose trouble – ours or that trawler's? I guarantee this. My dear departed mother, God rest her soul, didn't raise her son to be a dummy.'

'I second that opinion, Captain.'

'Thank you, Lieutenant.' O'Malley allowed himself to grin despite his nervous preoccupation. 'And I promise you, I'll do everything in my power to insure that every mother's son in my command lives to see his family again.'

'We already know that, Captain.'

'I appreciate your confidence, but it won't get you a better rating on your duty report.'

The lieutenant chuckled.

'I want a boarding party,' O'Malley said.

'Yes, Captain.'

'Armed.'

'Yes, Captain.'

'Get the Zodiac ready.'

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

O'Malley continued to frown toward the radar. Thirty minutes later, the Sea Wolf's night-vision screen revealed the enormous South Korean trawler wallowing in waves a thousand yards ahead, its bulky outline made eerily green by the monitor.

The lieutenant straightened, cocking his head. The Air Force wasn't exaggerating, sir. I've never seen a darker ship.'

'I want every gun manned,' O'Malley said.

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

'Still no response to our radio messages?'

'Afraid not, sir.'

'Pull portside and hail them on the bullhorn.'

O'Malley nervously waited as a communications officer crouched protectively beside a housing on the deck and blurted questions through the bullhorn.

'Ahoy, Bronze Bell!'

'Ahoy! Please, respond!

'You have entered United States waters!'

'Please, respond!

'Ahoy, do you need assistance?'

'Fuck it,' O'Malley said. 'Get a team in the Zodiac. Make sure they're fully armed, Berettas, M-sixteens, and for God's sake, make sure they're fully protected from our deck when they cross to the trawler. The fifty-caliber machineguns. The forty-millimeter cannons. The works.'

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

The Zodiac, a rubber outboard-motor-powered raft, sped toward the Bronze Bell , its seven-member team holding M-16s at the ready. In the dark, as they reached the trawler and threw grappling hooks connected to rope ladders over the trawler's side, O'Malley said a quiet prayer for their safety and mentally made the Sign of the Cross.

The team shouldered their rifles, unholstered their pistols, jacked a round into each firing chamber, and clambered briskly up the rope ladders, disappearing over the side.

O'Malley held his breath, regretting that his duty required him to remain aboard while these other men – good men, brave men -potentially risked their lives.

Something was very wrong.

'Captain?' The two-way radio beside O'Malley crackled.

Picking it up, O'Malley answered, 'Reception is clear. Report.'

'Sir, the deck is deserted.'

'Understood. Remain on battle alert. Establish sentries,' O'Malley said. 'With caution, check the lower decks.'

'Affirmative, Captain.'

O'Malley waited the longest five minutes in his life.

'Captain, there's still no sign of anyone.'

'Keep checking.'

'Affirmative, Captain.'

O'Malley waited another tense five minutes.

Flashlights wavered on the trawler's deck. Lights came on. The two-way radio crackled. 'Captain, we can't find anyone . The trawler appears to be completely deserted.'

O'Malley knew the answer to his next question. The team would surely have reported the information. But he had to ask it anyhow. 'Did you find any corpses?'

'No one alive or dead, Captain. Unless they're hiding somewhere, the vessel's been abandoned. It's kind of spooky in a way, sir.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, Captain, the television's on in the crew's recreation area. There's a radio playing in their quarters. There's food on plates in the galley. Whatever it is happened, it must have been fast.'

O'Malley frowned. 'What about damage to the trawler? Any evidence of a fire, any reason they might have abandoned ship?'

'No, sir. No damage at all. And anyway, the lifeboats are still aboard.'

Then what the hell happened? Where in God's name did they go? How ? O'Malley nervously wondered but didn't allow his apprehension to affect the sound of his voice. 'Understood,' he said with authoritative calmness. The trawler's engines?'

'Shut down, but we got them started again. No problem, Captain.'

'Fuel?'

'The tanks are half full.'

'What about the shortwave radio?'

'We found it turned off, but it's in working order, sir. If they wanted to, if there was trouble, they could have sent a Mayday alert.'

'No one's reported hearing any. Keep checking.'

'Aye, aye, Captain.'

O'Malley set down the walkie-talkie. Pensive, he stared through the darkness toward the lights on the massive trawler. On occasion, he'd heard stories about vessels found abandoned at sea. The explanations were usually obvious: a rustbucket that an owner had scuttled in order to collect insurance but that had failed to sink as the owner intended, or a yacht that pirates had looted after killing the passengers (raping them as well, if there were females) and throwing the corpses overboard, or a fishing boat that drug smugglers had abandoned because they feared that the Drug Enforcement Agency suspected their cargo and was about to try to capture them.

In previous centuries, O'Malley was aware, a crew would sometimes (though rarely) mutiny, execute their captain, toss him to the sharks, and use lifeboats to escape to a nearby coastline. Again from previous centuries, he knew about ships upon which a plague had broken out, one-by-one the corpses of victims hurled overboard until the last man alive, suffering from the hideous disease, had managed to complete a diary about the ordeal and then jumped into the ocean, preferring a quick, relatively painless death by drowning instead of a prolonged, agonizing one.

Then too, O'Malley had heard legends about crewless ghost ships, The Flying Dutchman , for example, although in that case the captain was reputed to be still aboard, doomed to drift for all eternity because of a gamble that he'd lost with the Devil.

The most famous abandoned ship was the Marie Celeste , a brigantine transporting commercial alcohol from New York to Italy, found crewless between the Azores and Portugal in 1872. But O'Malley had never understood why that ship acquired its mysterious reputation. After all, its sails had been damaged, its cabins soaked with water, its lifeboats missing. Obviously a severe storm had frightened the crew into thinking that the Marie Celeste was about to sink. They'd foolishly used the lifeboats to try to escape and been swallowed by the storm-churned sea.