She would be more inclined to whimper in fear were it not for how unconcerned these guys seemed about the storm. They were self-possessed and untalkative, exuding a certain cool self-confidence.
“There’s the Anna Belle!” the one called Bass shouted as they topped another huge, heaving swell.
“Where are its lights?” she shouted back.
Commander Perriman answered from behind her, “Good question. They may have lost power. If they’ve taken on enough water, they could have flooded their engines and backup electric generators.”
“That sounds bad” Nissa ventured to reply.
The SEAL called Ashe responded, managing to infuse his voice with dry irony, even while shouting over the storm, “It would suck to be them in a storm like this without power.”
The big twin motors on their rigid inflatable boat powered them up a half dozen more mountain-steep swells before they finally drew close to the darkened container ship. It was actually the scariest moment of the journey so far when a swell tilted the Anna Belle way over on its side toward them, a huge pile of containers looming overhead, threatening to topple the ship and kill them all.
“Suit up!” Perriman ordered the team. All the hoods came up. Nissa already had hers up, and it held in place the earbuds and throat microphones the team would use to communicate once they boarded the Anna Belle. She covered her eyes with the night-vision goggles that had been stowed around her neck. The three men beside her leaped into lime-green relief against the heaving black sea.
“Ship’s listing pretty bad,” Perriman commented over their discrete radio frequency.
“Fifteen to eighteen degrees to the port side,” Ashe replied. He sounded like an expert sailor. “She’s looking top-heavy, too. With those containers stacked high like that, they act as a wall to catch the wind. Hurricane could blow the ship over if they get crossways of a big enough gust.”
Okay, that sounded really bad.
“Let’s get on and off her as fast as we can,” Perriman ordered. “I don’t like the looks of her seaworthiness.”
Great. The ship they were about to board was on the verge of capsizing and sinking. Just how every girl wanted to spend her Saturday night.
They tied off their craft to a cleat low on the hull of the Anna Belle, and then Bass, using welded rungs on the hull, climbed the side of the ship like a freaking monkey. He lowered a rope ladder from the deck down to them.
“Up you go, Nissa,” Cole ordered. He clipped a rope that Bass threw down onto the body harness they’d made her wear and which they’d used to lash her into their boat.
She looked up at the rope ladder swinging around over her head and gulped. He must have seen her hesitation because he moved up behind her and leaned forward to shout in her ear, off microphone, “I’ll be right behind you.”
Right. As if that was reassuring. At least she knew to grab the rope ladder from the side and not to try to go up it facing the rungs head-on. With one rope of the ladder against her cheek, she turned her feet pigeon-toed to climb the ladder.
It was okay for the first ten feet or so. But then the ship got sideways of a swell, and it tilted toward her sickeningly. The rope swung out into space. She wasn’t even over the SEALs’ boat anymore. Black water yawned below her. I’m going to die. Frozen in terror, she squeezed her eyes shut and clung to the ladder for dear life.
The ship tilted back the other way, and the ladder swung back toward the ship, slamming her into the cold steel hull. She lost her grip on the wet ladder and swung out to the side on the safety rope, smashing into the ship’s hull hard enough to knock the wind out of her. She screamed, but the sound was ripped away from her by a huge gust of wind and rain that hit her with the force of a fire hose.
“Grab the ladder!” someone shouted.
She opened her eyes and swung sickeningly out in space as the ship rolled again, black water reaching up to her and the listing ship looming above, as if it was about to come down on her head and drag her to the bottom of the sea.
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