Gale Force

51

Hiroki Okura peered out through a porthole at the salvage crew clustered on the starboard wall of the accommodations house. Listened to the drone of the Coast Guard helicopter as it climbed high in the air and flew away, out of sight. They’d taken someone with them, an injured man. Something had gone wrong.

It was serious, judging by the expressions on the faces of the crew members left behind. They stared up at the gray sky after the helicopter, faces flushed red from the bitter wind, eyes as dark as the water below. For a long time, nobody moved. They seemed to be waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

They were an interesting assortment, the salvage crew. Two women, and that alone was a rarity, this far out at sea. Stranger still, the younger of the women appeared to be in charge. She was in her thirties, Okura decided. He wondered how she’d managed to find herself aboard this wreck.

It didn’t matter. The salvage crew hadn’t noticed Okura, and that was perfectly fine with him.

He’d survived the perilous climb up the long string of Nissans, little by little, inch by inch, wave by thundering wave. He’d rested at the bulkhead where he’d killed Ishimaru, exhausted and weak from hunger. It hadn’t just been the money that had spurred him to keep moving, but also the knowledge that if he died here, he would die no better than Ishimaru—a failure, alone, in this cold, hellish pit.

So he’d climbed. Found the rope he’d left behind and lifted himself up the stairwell, clutching the briefcase and walking up walls, taking breaths where he could find flat ground, somewhere to set his feet. His muscles burned from exertion. Still, he pulled himself skyward, fought gravity and the storm and his own failing strength.

He didn’t know how long he’d climbed, but it could have been hours. Finally, when he’d nearly had enough, the darkness changed, almost imperceptible, yawned open in front of him, and he could suddenly see forms again, walls, the silhouette of his hands, the briefcase. The air became marginally fresher, cooler. The sound of the storm became louder. And he’d felt the knot where the rope tied off to a handrail, and then he knew he’d won.

Okura had collapsed in the hallway, the central spine of the Lion. Dragged himself and the briefcase behind to the galley, the food stores, and laid waste. Much of the ship’s food had gone bad; the galley reeked of overripe fruit and meat gone to rot, but Okura was too hungry to care. In the dim light from two salt-encrusted portholes, he’d eaten everything he could find, most of it stale: the cookies left out for the overnight watch, a whole box of rice crackers, chocolate. He’d found a can opener and drank chicken soup, cold, ate a whole tin of peaches, then a tin of pears.

With his strength mostly restored, he’d climbed his way back out of the galley and into the nearest stateroom, pulled the bedding and pillows from the bed and made a nest in a crook of the listing wall. He lay down and wrapped himself in the soft, letting the storm lull him into a well-deserved sleep.

NOW HE WAS AWAKE.

He’d heard the helicopter approach, listened as it settled into a hover above the ship. He’d pushed the blankets away and climbed up the stateroom to a porthole facing down the weather deck aft. Looked out just in time to watch the Coast Guard technician disappear down a hatchway, fifty feet away.

A man stood balanced on the wall nearby, a big man, older, a considerable mustache. He’d waited, his brow furrowed, occasionally walking to the hatchway and peering down into the abyss. Once or twice, he’d glanced back at where the stateroom jutted out from the accommodations superstructure, and for one brief, terrifying instant, Okura thought he’d been seen. But the man didn’t investigate, just looked up at the helicopter and then back down the hole, waiting on the Coast Guard technician’s return.

The man hadn’t been aboard the Salvation. None of this crew had been; they weren’t Christer Magnusson’s people. The Commodore team had carried themselves with a swagger, a certain confidence. They’d dressed alike, looked alike, didn’t speak much.

This crew was different. They didn’t have Magnusson’s cocksure demeanor, for one thing, but there was something else, too: these people were familiar, the way they interacted. The way their eyes met, how they seemed to communicate without needing words.

This wasn’t the Salvation’s people, no. This crew looked more like a family. But they were a family who had lost one of their own, and now they stood, impossibly small against the scale of the ship, with the vast, colorless sky above, looking up at where the helicopter had disappeared and waiting on their leader to make the first move.

Okura peered up at them through the porthole. Hoped that whoever the injured man was, his injury wouldn’t jeopardize this crew’s ability to bring the Lion to harbor. The second officer had fifty million American dollars riding on their success. His survival depended on it.