Chapter 8 - Black Water
The Atlantic storm was churning gray waves five feet high as our interceptor boat cut through the open water beyond Brooklyn Harbor.
Salt spray blasted across the armored glass of the cockpit, mixing with the relentless autumn rain.
Beside me sat Marcus, his fingers rhythmically checking the thirty-round magazines of his tactical carbine.
Behind us in the passenger cabin, Clara sat wrapped in an insulated black windbreaker, her face deathly pale but her eyes burning with a desperate, wild fury.
I had tried to force her to stay at the safe house, but she had looked at me with those hazel eyes and said she would jump off the Brooklyn Bridge before she let Marcus take her son again.
“Radar has a large contact twelve point four miles off the coast of Montauk Point,” the helmsman called out over the roar of the triple outboard engines.
“It’s registered as a Panamanian scientific research vessel, Boss.
Two hundred and ten feet long, equipped with a rear helipad and satellite communications arrays.”
I picked up the night-vision binoculars and scanned the pitch-black horizon.
Through the green phosphor glow, the massive silhouette of the Leviathan rose out of the surging black water like an iron fortress.
Deck lights glowed faintly along the superstructure, illuminating armed guards stationed along the railings in wet-weather gear.
“They have a surface-radar sweep running,” Marcus warned, pointing at the spinning sensor dome on their bridge.
“The second we close within a mile, they’ll light us up with heavy caliber fire.”
“Cut the running lights and drop the engine RPMs,” I ordered the helmsman.
“We take the zodiac rafts around the stern blind spot near the engine exhaust vents.”
The interceptor slowed to an idle two miles out, rocking violently in the heavy Atlantic swell.
Clara stood up, grabbing my sleeve with surprising strength.
“Ethan, you don't know what he’s capable of,” she whispered, her teeth chattering from the damp cold.
“He doesn't view Leo as a human being.
To him, that little boy is just a vial of fresh blood to pump into his dying veins.
If he realizes you’re boarding, he will kill Leo just to spite us.”
“He won't get the chance, Clara,” I said, checking the chamber of my silenced tactical pistol.
“I spent twelve years building an army because I thought I failed you in that fire.
I am not leaving this ocean without your son.”
I handed her a compact ceramic firearm and showed her the thumb safety.
“Stay in the secondary cabin until Marcus gives the all-clear.
If anyone wearing a black uniform opens that door, you don't hesitate.”
Clara looked at the cold black metal in her palm, her knuckles whitening as she clicked the safety off.
“I won't,” she said, her voice steadying for the first time since I pulled her from that alley.
Marcus and four of our most trusted enforcers loaded into the rigid inflatable boat lowered from the stern.
The small black craft skimmed over the crests of the dark waves, completely invisible beneath the stormy sky.
As we closed the distance to fifty yards beneath the Leviathan’s massive iron hull, the sound of the ship’s auxiliary generators drowned out the thrum of our small outboard motor.
A steel boarding ladder hung down near the ship’s ballast discharge port, used by the supply skiffs from Red Hook.
Marcus fired a pneumatic grappling hook over the rear gunwale, its rubber-coated prongs catching firmly onto the steel railing above.
“Boarding in three, two, one,” Marcus whispered into his radio headset.
I caught the rope and hauled myself up into the freezing rain, climbing the sheer wall of wet iron until my boots hit the teak decking of the aft platform.
A guard stepped out of the shadow of the emergency crane, lighting a cigarette beneath the shelter of an awning.
Before he could flick his lighter, I caught him from behind, driving the heel of my palm under his chin and dragging him into the darkness behind the lifeboats.
He slumped against the deck, disarmed and unconscious, before the glowing cigarette butt even hit the water.
I checked his tactical radio; the frequency was buzzing with German-accented medical jargon:
“Dr. Weber, donor preparation is complete in Medical Bay Two.
Patient Vance is prepped for the femoral catheter line.
Initiate the pediatric sedation now.”
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My heart pounded like a war drum in my ears.
We were out of time.
