The Navigator

Chapter 12

CARINA HAD REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS only minutes before Austin had climbed aboard the ship. Her return to the land of the living had some drawbacks. Her head throbbed with pain. Her vision was squirrelly. Waves of nausea sloshed around in her stomach.

The ache and discomfort kept her from sliding back into oblivion, and she became aware that she was still in the container, her body lodged between packing crates. Her arms were bound tightly behind her back. In their haste, the hijackers had left her legs untied.

Combining sheer force of will with a lean physique strengthened from hours of working out at the UNESCO gym, Carina rolled onto her belly. Using her tight abdominal muscles to the max, she leveraged her body into a kneeling position. She stood on wobbly legs and waited until the dizziness passed. Then she backed up to a packing crate and rubbed the duct tape binding her wrists against the corner.

Splinters stabbed at her skin, but she ignored the pain. After a few minutes of self-inflicted torture, she slipped one hand free. She was prying the tape off her wrists when a figure appeared in the opening the hijackers had cut into the container.

Carina recognized the man’s face. She didn’t know his name, only that he was one of the Filipino crewmen she had seen working around the ship.

“Am I glad to see you,” she said with a sigh of relief.

“I am very glad to see you, senorita,” the man said with a wolfish gleam in his eye.

Carina’s feminine antennae picked up the suggestion of danger in his voice. She glanced past the crewman’s shoulder. “Are the hijackers gone?”

“No,” he said with a grin. “We are still aboard.”

We.

Carina tried to step past him. The Filipino shifted position to block her way.

“What do you want?” she said, regretting the words the instant they left her mouth.

The Filipino’s lips curled like slices of liverwurst in a frying pan. “I come to kill you. But, first, we have a little fun.”

He grabbed Carina’s shoulders. He was several inches shorter than she was but much stronger. He stuck his foot out behind her ankle and pushed against her chest. She fell backward. The crewman crashed down and pinned her to the floor. As Carina struggled to push him off, he produced a knife and slashed away the thin leather belt around her waist.

She beat at his face with her fists, scoring a few light punches on his unshaven chin that were more an annoyance than a defense. He stuck the knife into the side of a crate to free both hands—and Carina screamed at the top of her lungs. There was no one on the ship who could come to her aid, but maybe the piercing shriek would distract her attacker.

He backed off, and she lunged for the knife. He saw the move and smashed her in the jaw with his open hand. The blow nearly knocked her out. She stopped struggling. She could feel him jerking her jeans down to her knees, smell his foul breath, and hear his heavy breathing. She could only make feeble efforts to push him back. Then she heard a low, male voice.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the voice said.

The Filipino snatched the knife from the crate. He scrambled to his feet and whirled to face the intruder.

A broad-shouldered man stood in the jagged-edged rectangle of light, legs wide apart. His pale, almost-white hair looked like a halo in the backlight.

The Filipino sprang forward with his knife extended. Carina expected to hear a cry of pain as the blade plunged into flesh, but the only sound was a clink and a scrape, as if someone were sharpening a kitchen knife.

Austin had picked up a cuneiform clay tablet he’d seen lying on the deck. He was holding the flat stone down by his knees when he stepped into the container and saw the drama unfolding. When the man turned, Austin recognized the face that had peered out over the deck as he was climbing the rope ladder. With a speed that surprised his attacker, he had hitched the tablet up to his chest to shield against the knife thrust.

As the blade slid harmlessly off to one side, Austin lifted the tablet high above his head and brought it down as if he were beating a rug. The clay broke over the crewman’s head and shattered into dozens of pieces. The Filipino miraculously stayed up for a few second, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he folded like a concertina.

Austin stepped over the twitching body and offered his hand to the woman. She reached out and pulled herself to a standing position. With trembling fingers, she hoisted her jeans back up to her waist.

“Are you all right?” he said. There was concern in the coral blue eyes.

Carina nodded. She glared at the crewman’s body. “Thank you for saving me from that animal. I hope you killed him.”

“I probably did. Are you part of the ship’s crew?”

“I’m a passenger. The ship was hijacked. They came in helicopters. They took the Navigator.”

Austin thought she was talking about one of the ship’s crew. “Who?”

Carina saw Austin’s confusion. “The Navigator. It’s…it’s a statue.”

Austin nodded. The woman’s reply made about as much sense as anything. He picked up the knife that had fallen from the crewman’s hand. “Sorry to hit and run. I’ve got to tend to a few errands. See if you can find another hiding place. We’ll talk later over dinner.”

He slipped through the hole in the container and was gone. Carina stood there in a daze. She wondered whether she had dreamed up this avenging angel who could save her life, coolly dispatch her attacker, and suggest having dinner, all in one breath. She didn’t know who he was, but she decided to take his advice. She glanced without sympathy at the Filipino, then beat a hasty exit from the container and lost herself in the labyrinth of cargo stacks.

AS AUSTIN’S FEET pounded on the enormous deck, he knew that he was facing long odds. His detour to save a damsel in distress was going to be fatal to both of them. There was just too much horizontal and vertical distance to cover on foot. The deck stretched out ahead of him. He still had to get to the top of a bridge house as tall as an apartment building.

He pumped his legs in a touchdown sprint. He was moving so fast that the metal gleam glimpsed between stacks didn’t register in his brain until he was several yards past it. He turned back and poked his head into the opening. The gleam had come from the chrome handlebars of a bicycle leaning against a container. Austin would have preferred a Harley-Davidson, but the battered old Raleigh three-speed used by crewmen to get around the giant ship would do.

He pulled the bike out, threw a leg over the seat, and started pedaling, using all the power in his muscular legs. As he sped along the deck, he noticed several bodies on the deck at the base of the bridge tower.

As he got closer, he could see that the men were still alive but tied hand and foot and lying facedown. He tossed the bike aside and went over to a heavyset man who was struggling against his bindings. Austin told him to hold still and sliced the wrist tape with one swipe of the knife.

The man used his freed hands to push himself over onto his side. Austin saw that he was middle-aged, and his weathered face was framed with heavy jowls. The man’s eyes went to the knife blade, but he seemed to relax when Austin cut his leg bindings and asked if he were a ship’s officer.

“I am Captain Lange, master of the Ocean Adventure.”

Austin helped the captain to unsteady feet. “What happened to the hijackers?” he said.

“I don’t know. They came on helicopters.” Lange pointed sky-ward. “They landed on top of the containers. Who are you?”

“A friend. Introductions later.” Austin braced the captain by his shoulders to make sure he had his attention. “Your ship is on a collision course with an oil platform. You’ve only got a few minutes to stop or change course or you won’t have a ship.”

The blood drained from the captain’s face. “I saw them set the autopilot.”

“You’ll have to disable it as soon as possible. I’ll free your men.”

“I’m on my way,” the captain said, wobbling toward the bridge on stiff-kneed legs.

Austin quickly cut the tape binding the other crewmen and told them to follow the captain to the bridge. He wasn’t worried about running into the hijackers. They would be unlikely to stick around after putting the ship on its disastrous course. He knew his instincts were on target when he heard the threshing sound of helicopter rotors above his head.

WITH THEIR MISSION accomplished, the hijackers had been preparing to abandon ship. Their baby-faced leader had finished inspecting the lines securing the canvas-wrapped object when the second Filipino who’d been embedded in the ship’s crew ran over.

“Juan isn’t back,” said the man, whose name was Carlos. “I don’t know what he’s doing.”

The leader smiled. “I know exactly what your friend is doing. He’s disobeying orders.” He climbed through the door into the nearest helicopter.

“What should we do?” Carlos said.

“Keep him company, if you’d like.” He smiled and closed the door.

A panicked look came to the Filipino’s face. He dashed for the other helicopter and clambered into the cabin as the rotors reached takeoff speed. The helicopter rose slowly from the containers. Dangling from the fuselage was a line with a hook attached to the end of it. The helicopter moved around to stern.

The helicopter hovered over the object wrapped in canvas. The chopper dropped down and engaged the hook of a rope loop at the top of the object. Austin watched the maneuver from around the corner of the bridge house.

In the brief time Austin had known the hijackers, he had come to dislike them intensely. Bending low, he ran toward the object and undid the hook attached to the end of the helicopter’s Kevlar line. He wrapped the line around a bollard and hooked it to itself.

He was running back to the shelter of the bridge house when he felt as if a hot iron had been plunged into his ribs. Someone was shooting at him and he’d been hit. Ignoring the pain, Austin hit the deck and rolled over several times.

A second before he made a prairie dog dive into an open hatchway, he looked up and saw the second helicopter. A gun barrel protruded from the open door.

With all the confusion, the pilot of the other helicopter was unaware that his aircraft was attached to the deck. He tried to gain altitude and gave the helicopter extra power to compensate for the weight. The chopper reached the end of the line, came to a jarring halt, and began to gyrate like a kite on a string.

The line caught in the rotor blades, which severed the connection. Spinning crazily, the helicopter arced out over the waves and crashed into the sea with an impact that sent up a monumental splash.

Austin peered from the hatchway. The other helicopter circled over the expanding circle of foamy bubbles. A man stood in the helicopter door, looked down at Austin, and they locked eyes for a second. A smile spread across the man’s cherubic face. A second later, the helicopter banked off and flew away from the ship.

Austin climbed back onto the deck and saw why the helicopter hadn’t bothered to make another pass. The Great Western oil rig loomed directly ahead.

With the wind whipping at his clothes, he gazed up to the bridge, silently cheering the captain on. He could imagine the desperate struggle in the pilothouse as the captain tried to avoid a calamity. The ship was still moving at full power. Austin put himself in the captain’s place. Even if Lange killed the engines, the ship would continue moving on its momentum. The captain would want to maintain even the tiniest shred of control that the engines would allow.

As the ship closed in on the platform, Austin detected a shift of a few degrees to the right. The ship was finally going into its turn. It would need sea room to miss the rig. Austin knew that a ship the size of the Ocean Adventure didn’t turn on a dime.

He leaned over the rail and saw crewmen scrambling on the oil platform like ants on a floating leaf. A couple of service boats strained against the lines attached to the platform. Icy fingers grabbed at his heart as he pictured the inevitable collision.

Someone was calling Austin as if from afar. He realized that the voice was coming from the walkie-talkie earpiece dangling at his side. He stuck the plug in his ear.

“Kurt, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Austin cut into Dawe’s frantic soliloquy.

“Just dandy. What’s happening with the rig?”

“They’ve untangled the last anchor.”

The sentence was barely out of the captain’s mouth when Austin saw a burst of foam where the rig’s anchor had pulled free of the water. White water boiled around the rig’s legs. The wakes forming behind the legs indicated that the platform was on the move.

The rig’s evasive action would still fall short. The ship would strike the front right leg within seconds. Austin braced himself for the impact.

At the last instant, the ship’s bow moved slightly more to starboard. There was a tortured scraping of metal on metal as the side of the ship grazed the leg. The platform was free of its anchors, and, instead of resisting, which would have spelled its doom, the rig gave way to the force of the impact.

The oil platform rocked from the blow, then slowly stabilized and continued moving out of the danger zone.

A ship’s horn was blowing madly. The Leif Eriksson had been keeping him company.

Zavala’s voice came over his earpiece.

“That’s one way to scrape the barnacles off your hull. What do you do for an encore?”

“That’s easy,” Austin said. “I’m going to make a dinner date with a beautiful woman.”