Cindy Dees - Her Mission With A Seal

Panic paralyzed her so completely that she couldn’t even form thoughts, let alone take action. She bumped along the hull of the ship as it tilted away from her, and by some miracle, she banged into something hard and rough. The rope ladder. She grabbed it with both hands and wrapped her legs around the rope, hanging on with superhuman strength she didn’t know she possessed. God bless adrenaline.

A big green shape came up the ladder. It didn’t stop at her feet, though. It moved up behind her until the figure’s head was at her waist.

“Keep going!” It was Cole.

Not. A. Chance.

No way was she letting go of the rope to keep climbing.

He climbed until his head was level with hers, his body spooning hers, his longer arms grasping the rope ladder around her slender frame. Warmth from his body penetrated the back of her wet suit as he plastered his entire body against hers.

“One foot. Just put your right foot up one rung for me,” he shouted into her ear as another huge gust of wind buffeted them. “It’ll be calmer on the deck of the ship.” His breath was warm against her exposed cheek. He felt alive. Vital. Real in the midst of this unreal nightmare.

He patiently talked her through the rest of the climb, one hand and one foot at a time. Bass kept tension on her safety rope from above, helping her make the climb, and Cole steadied her with his big body and strong arms, protecting her from the worst of the storm.

It took a lifetime, but eventually Bass hauled her onto the deck beside him. She lay on her belly and although there was nothing left in her stomach, she dry heaved anyway, so terrified she didn’t think she was ever going to be the same again.

Of course, Ashe jogged up the ladder as if it was a walk in the damned park. The party all aboard, they knelt together in the shadow of a pile of containers, shadows among the shadows in their black sea-land suits and black facial camo grease. Of course, she looked the same, her blond hair tucked under her neoprene hood, her skin blackened like theirs.

“Any sign of movement out here?” Perriman asked.

Bass replied, “Negative.”

The deck tilted steeply beneath her, and she looked down at water as the ship listed worse than ever.

“Man, she feels top-heavy,” Cole remarked.

Ashe replied, “She looks violently misloaded. Death trap. This storm gets much worse, and she’s going down.”

“Then let’s get our guy and get the heck off her,” Perriman ordered. “You have your orders.” He glanced at Nissa huddling miserably against a container and said off mike, “You’re with me.”

The team split up and ran off in different directions to search the ship. She and Cole were supposed to make their way to the bridge. He was going to have a word with the captain and obtain the guy’s cooperation—at gunpoint if necessary. The other team members would go below decks, searching the ship and making their way to the bridge by other means.

Hanging on to the deck rail with both hands, she followed Perriman aft toward the conning tower. In a storm this bad, they didn’t expect to see any crew above deck, and indeed, the open area between the tall stacks of shipping containers and the ship’s superstructure aft was deserted and dark.

Perriman stopped in front of a hatch, and she endured a nauseating roll by the Anna Belle way over to one side, the sickening pause while the ship teetered on the brink of capsizing, and then the roll back the other way.

How Cole unlocked the steel door, she had no idea. But she was relieved when he threw it open. She dived inside and helped him haul the heavy door shut against gravity as the ship rolled again. He threw the handle and latched the door behind them.

The relative quiet and the relief from the hammering pain of hurricane-driven rain was intense. The ship still rolled like a big dog beneath her feet, but in here, she couldn’t see the ocean and had less of a sense of being ready to capsize.

Perriman hand-signaled her to follow him. She nodded and fell in behind him as he raced silently up a set of metal stairs. He paused at the doorway to the next deck, peering through a tiny window before opening the door. Bracing herself against the wall as the ship rocked, she followed him into what looked like a small dining room.

“Stay here,” Cole breathed.

Gladly. She nodded and he disappeared behind a swinging door into the kitchen, according to the ship’s diagrams that they’d studied on the helicopter ride out here. Perriman swung back into view, staggering a little as the ship heaved.

“Clear,” he announced.

Deck by deck, the two of them cleared their way up the superstructure toward the bridge. Oddly, they didn’t run into a single crew member. Maybe the captain had sent everyone to strap themselves in the sleeping quarters below decks to ride out the storm. Cole had mentioned that such a thing was possible, so she wasn’t completely freaked out by how deserted the command portion of the ship was.

They turned the corner to the last flight of steps leading to the bridge. Unlike the living areas below, this space was guaranteed to have crew members in it. Cole paused, checked over his shoulder that she was ready with her pistol drawn and then he charged the bridge.

She went in on his heels, awkwardly spinning left as the deck tilted underfoot to cover Cole’s back as he spun to cover the right half of the space.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed.

The bridge was deserted.

From up here, she could see outside again, and the ship rolled dangerously far over onto its side as she glanced out. From this high up in the air, the list was even more pronounced, and she all but froze again in panic.

Perriman jabbed at his throat mike. “Bridge is abandoned. I repeat. Abandoned. Report if able.”

Bass and Ashe both reported immediately that they’d been unable to find any crew members aboard the vessel.

“Complete your search and join us on the bridge,” he ordered.

She looked over the panel of controls. Every needle was at zero. The ship was completely shut down. This could not be good. “Can we start the engines or something?” she asked.

“Diesel engines are not as simple to start as flipping a switch. But maybe I could get a generator online.” Perriman fiddled with a set of controls to one side of the ship’s wheel, and then swore quietly. She gathered that meant they weren’t going to get any lights on.

“Batteries are dead, too.”

“Has the crew abandoned ship?” Nissa asked.

Perriman frowned. “They sent no distress signals.”

“Maybe there was no time to send one?”

“The ship’s still afloat. Granted not for long the way she’s listing, but still. We could send a signal right now if we had even an inch of battery power. I can’t believe they ran the batteries all the way down before they got out a call for help.”

The door opened behind them and Nissa spun fast, jumpy as heck, weapon drawn. It was Bass and Ashe.

“Funny thing, boss,” Bass said. “The generators looked like someone took a sledgehammer to them. The batteries were pulled free of their moorings and smashed up, too.”

“The engines?”

“I couldn’t see any damage at a glance,” Ashe replied. “But I got nothing when I tried to start up the diagnostic panel at the engineer’s panel. I looked under the console and found a bunch of ripped out wires beneath it.”

Curious, Nissa dropped to her knees to take a peek under the dashboard in front of her. “Uh, guys. All the wires and conduits I’m seeing down here are trashed, too.”

“So the ship’s been sabotaged,” Cole responded. “Why?”

The ship leaned particularly far onto its port side just then and everyone grabbed on to something to stay upright. She stared in dread at the tall stacks of containers tilting perilously.