Operation Sea Mink (6 page)

“Then wait for the aid to come.”

“Assuming it’ll come,” Smitty mumbled.

“Don’t worry,” Miller said. “Worst case scenario, they’ll come for the cargo and take your body back with them.”

Smitty’s frown deepened. “Nice.”

“What?” the first mate asked, his eyes wide. “He’s joking, right?”

Miller patted the panicking first mate on the shoulder, nearly knocking the skinny kid over.

T
HE CARGO HOLD
was dark, dank, and smelled of blood and oil.

Miller walked down the stairwell, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Behind him followed du Trieux, Hsiung, and Morland, in that order.

Now that the call for aid had been sent from the chopper, it was time to secure the cargo. With any luck, they could load the missile onto the bird and lift it back to the compound before the aid arrived. Miller wasn’t one-hundred-per-cent certain of who’d arrive when, or if, aid came. If a squad of Harris’s men showed up, things could get complicated.

Miller’s hands slid down the stairwell railing, then quickly dropped off once he reached the first landing. He activated the search light he’d mounted to the side of his rifle, flashing it around him.

There would have been a reason why the captain and his squad had disappeared trying to secure the cargo, and they’d probably had ten men. Miller had four. His palms felt slick with sweat, but he proceeded, allowing the remainder of his team to follow.

The lights in the cargo hold were non-functional when Miller tried to toggle the switch. Overhead, long rectangular fluorescent fixtures hung dark and lifeless.

From what he could see using his mounted light, there was a one-meter-wide walkway, without a railing, that went around the perimeter of the cargo hold. A center catwalk led across the middle to the other side. The pathways were narrow enough to maneuver around the hold, but Miller and his team could only advance in single file.

The walkway itself was clear of debris, but the mouth of the cargo hold below housed crates upon crates—stacked several meters high, reaching up and toward the ceiling and creating a maze-like labyrinth.

How Miller was supposed to find one crate amongst all these others, he had no idea. Not to mention how he and his team were going to get to it once they located it. There didn’t appear to be any ramp or stairs leading down.

A loud crash sounded to the left.

Swinging around, Miller led the group down the walkway and toward the noise. At the tip of the hold, Miller stopped and angled his mounted light down toward the cargo.

Below, a stack of wooden crates had been smashed opened. There appeared to be leafy greens inside. Lettuce, spinach, and some variety of purple kale. A pack of a half-dozen goliath brutes were making a meal of it.

They didn’t take too kindly to having the sharp glare of the lights flashed into their beady black eyes. They growled and, with surprising speed, scattered into the maze of crates like cockroaches.

“Shit,” Miller breathed.

“Over there,” Morland said, shining his light farther into the center of the cargo hold, near the middle catwalk.

With Morland in the lead, they returned from the direction they came.

The bodies of the captain and his crew were strewn along the floor, crunched between crates and crushed into bloody pulp. Some had been disembowelled; their entrails lay splattered against the hold floor.

“They don’t have flashlights,” Morland said, shining his light on the remains.

“So the lights worked at some point,” Hsiung offered.

“Think we can get them back up and running?” Miller asked du Trieux.

She shined her light across the ceiling, following the electrical cords from the light fixtures to their origin, a panel in the wall housing a circuit breaker of some sort. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“How are we supposed to know which box is the one we’re looking for?” Morland asked.

Hsiung shone her light near the center of the cargo hold. “It’s right there.”

“What?” Miller twisted around to see.

“See that long crate right there? It’s the only box labelled in English,” she explained, “and the captain and his posse’s bodies are surrounding it. They were trying to protect it. They’d already rigged a pulley system to that crane over there. Are you all blind?”

“It’s dark in here,” Morland said.

“Uh-huh.”

Miller signalled the others to follow suit as he reached across and grasped the dangling rope attached to the rectangular crate. Taking hold, Morland and Hsiung pulled along behind him, with Morland at the tail end.

The crate rose, the ropes groaning under the strain.

Below, a brute appeared amongst the bodies of the crewmen. Lurching forward, the goliath bumped the crate, causing it to swing to the side and crash into another stack of crates.

The rope slipped in Miller’s sweaty hands and dropped a foot before Morland howled and leaned back, stalling it before it completely slithered out of their grasps.

“Trix?” Miller grunted.

“Morland, watch your six!” du Trieux shouted.

“What the...”

The rope reeled from Miller’s grasp, slipping through his fingers. The crate dropped, but stopped just short of smashing to the floor.

Gripping the rope tightly, his palms burning through his gloves, Miller heard Morland shriek and checked over his shoulder.

A brute had climbed atop another stack of crates and bounded onto the center catwalk. Morland swung around and dodged the goliath’s first attempt to bite off his arm, but the beast swung its massive head back around and knocked Morland clean off the platform.

Miller released the rope and reached for his hunting knife, but couldn’t reach the brute.

The crate lurched to the floor, sending Hsiung, still holding the rope, into the air.

Miller faced the goliath brute as it lurched forward, snapping the air in front of it. Swinging his blade, Miller caught the beast across the face, slicing a deep ribbon of flesh just under its tiny black eye.

The creature roared in protest and backed off.

Shots rang out.

Below, Morland had regained his footing and fired upward, hitting the attacking brute in the face and sending it slipping over the edge.

Just then, the hold was flooded with fluorescent light as the overhead fixtures illuminated the carnage.

Brutes on all sides of the group, on each side of the walkway, roared and sprinted back into the depths of the hold in search of darkness.

Du Trieux came up behind Miller and grabbed the rope. Together they pulled Hsiung down from the ceiling, where she was dangling like a worm on a hook and spitting what Miller could only guess were expletives in Chinese. When her feet finally reached the platform, she, Miller, and du Trieux wrenched up the cargo crate, Morland dangling precariously beside it.

B
ACK ON DECK,
with the crate safely secured to the chopper, Miller waved to Smitty on the bridge, and waited with the others for the pilot to return.

If all went as planned, they’d have a response to their distress signal and could bug out of there, take the crate back to the compound, and maybe sleep for a week or two.

It was dark out now and the team was exhausted. The blazing sun had set and Miller took a moment to marvel at the depleted New York City skyline. It was all dark, save for a bright beacon of yellow in the distance which came from the Astoria Peninsula.

Within minutes, Smitty arrived. He climbed into the cockpit and checked if their distress signal had received a response. There was none. When he exited the chopper, he eyed the crate they’d attached to the landing gear and scratched his head. “We don’t have enough fuel to fly back to the compound with that,” he informed them. “Even if we lost the additional man aboard. We spent too much circling the freighter trying to find a safe spot to land.”

Miller ran his palm against the leg of his uniform. “Then we wait for rescue. In the meantime, we’d better secure the rest of the freighter.”

B
ACK UP ON
the bridge, Miller watched as the first officer released the controls. He hadn’t been too keen on the idea to begin with, but after Miller had convinced him the freighter was a lost cause, he willingly dumped some of the ship’s fuel into the water.

Miller glanced outside to the edge of the deck and could just make out du Trieux as she fired a flare into the slick. The oil burst into flames and set the water ablaze.

Even from the bridge, Miller could hear the pseudo-whales and surrounding animals squealing as they burned.

“Pull up a chair,” he said to the crewmen as he eyed the scorching ocean. “This could take a while.”

5

M
ILLER FELT A
slap on his knee and slowly opened his eyes.

He’d been dreaming of Billy; of the day that he’d taken him to buy his favourite Armani suit. Miller could still smell the wool and leather inside the outlet store. He could still see Billy frowning when Miller had tried on a Hugo Boss three-button pinstripe and realized his build was all wrong for the cut.

“You look like a linebacker wearing skinny jeans,” Billy had said with a sparkle in his grey eyes. “Just
no
.”

Miller shook the image from his head.

Seeing the look on du Trieux’s face, he briefly worried he’d said something embarrassing in his sleep, but she nodded toward the first officer.

The first mate gripped the communications microphone in his palm, his knuckles white. He was yelling at someone in a mixture of Korean and English about evacuating the crew, but the line went dead and he turned pale and sweaty.

“What’s going on? Has the aid arrived?” Miller asked.

“Not exactly,” du Trieux said.

“He’s not listening,” the first mate said, turning around, looking panicked.

It’d been two days since they’d been trapped on the freighter with the crew. The current had pushed them around Governors Island, in the end, and they’d floated right past the Statue of Liberty their first night, and were heading towards the open Atlantic. Scanning the land to the west, Miller guessed they were someplace just south of Delaware.

Each time the wildlife had attempted another onslaught they’d burned the sea and pushed them back. But the fuel supply was dwindling, and Miller wasn’t sure how many more times that would work.

Morland and Hsiung had spent the better part of the day before clearing out the cargo hold of brutes to get proper food and provisions, but their ammo was dwindling. An evacuation couldn’t happen soon enough.

Given the reaction from the first mate, who’d introduced himself as Ryung, Miller didn’t think an evacuation was what the approaching boat had in mind. The modified tug boat they’d used to transport the EMP from Boston for the operation against Stockman’s comms was coming in quick off the port bow. The men aboard were wearing S-Y security uniforms.

Miller borrowed Ryung’s binoculars and peered out the bridge window.

“He said no crew, only to give him a special cargo,” Ryung said. “That you’d know which one he meant. I asked him, ‘What about my men?’ He said again, ‘No men. Only special cargo.’ That wasn’t our deal, Miller. No evacuate my men, no cargo.”

Miller adjusted the binoculars and focused on the crew of the incoming boat. He spotted Kimball—that asshole who had questioned him about researching Samantha—one of Harris’s men. “Oh, boy,” he mumbled under his breath.

Du Trieux nodded, glumly.

Taking the communications mic off the bridge console, Miller pressed the side button and cleared his throat. “Kimball, you old dog. How you been? Long time no see.”

Through the binoculars Miller watched as Kimball smirked, then spoke into his own mic. “Miller. Good. Is our cargo secured?”

Miller released the button and turned to du Trieux. “Have the team bring up those crates of greens from the cargo hold and have Smitty warm up the chopper.”

Du Trieux nodded, then disappeared out the bridge door.

“What’s going on?” the first mate asked.

“Just give me a second, Ryung,” Miller said. He hated where this was headed, but didn’t see any alternative. “Cargo is secured,” Miller said into the mic. “Are you our ride back to the compound?”

“Not quite,” Kimball said. “Our orders are to retrieve the cargo, and nothing else.”

“That’s funny,” Miller said. “Those aren’t my orders, and I got here first.”

“Situation’s changed since you left,” Kimball answered.

Miller watched the boat through the binoculars as Kimball put a hand on his hip and shifted his weight. The small vessel came to a sliding stop several meters away from the freighter, just far enough to give the surrounding oil slick a wide birth.

“Gray Matheson has relinquished his position as CEO of Schaeffer-Yeager, and Robert Harris is in charge,” Kimball said. Miller almost dropped the mic. “There’s nothing you or Cobalt can do about it, other than to get out of our way.”

Miller swallowed, his mouth suddenly bone dry. “I’m going to need verification of that information, Kimball. You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”

“Verify all you want, but I’m not waiting for my cargo much longer. I’ll give you ten minutes.”

Miller handed the mic to Ryung, and patted him on the back. “I’m sorry, kid.”

“Sorry? Why’re you sorry?”

Leaving the bridge, Miller made it out onto deck in record speed.

Coming up the stairwell from the cargo hold were Morland and Hsiung, lugging a half-bashed-in crate of limp lettuce and soggy spinach.

“What do you want with this?” Morland asked.

“There’s a boat off the port bow. On my go, chuck that on top of it.”

Morland pursed his lips. “You got it.”

At the chopper, du Trieux and Smitty cleaned fungus out of the fuel intake and the air filters.

“Wish I’d had more of a heads-up,” Smitty said, as Miller approached. “Without a full crew to help, this could take a while.”

“Do the best you can,” Miller said, hopping inside and booting up the communications array. After a brief delay, Miller tapped into the Northwind network, but immediately received an error message and was unable to connect. Clicking again, he got the same result. If he didn’t know any better he’d think the network had been disabled, but that would give credence to Kimball’s fantasy that Gray Matheson had stepped down as CEO, and there was no way Miller could believe that.