Chapter 11 - Boarding in the Swell
The high-speed pilot tug smashed through the eight-foot swells of the outer bay, sending blinding walls of icy salt spray over the wheelhouse. Victor stood braced against the navigation console, his boots planted wide against the violent pitching of the deck. His scorched left hand throbbed under the wet bandages, but the adrenaline surging through his blood drowned out the pain.
Beside him, two of his most trusted terminal veterans—men who had sailed with Victor long before the skyscrapers replaced the shipyards—checked their harnesses.
""We have two minutes before she clears the outer buoy!"" the tug’s captain shouted over the howling wind and roaring diesel engines. ""If Anton hits the shoal at this speed, the impact alone could detonate the forward hold!""
Ahead in the black, rain-swept darkness, the monstrous silhouette of The Vance Endeavor loomed like a floating fortress. Every running light on the four-hundred-foot cargo vessel was extinguished; only the faint, ominous glow of the radar dome broke the night.
""Match her speed along the port quarter!"" Victor ordered, slinging his rifle across his chest. ""We board via the maintenance ladder behind the ballast discharge!""
The tug surged forward, slamming against the steel hull of the freighter with a deafening screech of grinding metal. Sparks showered across the churning water as the rubber fenders shredded against the iron rivets.
A heavy titanium grappling hook shot upward from the tug’s pneumatic launcher, catching the freighter’s safety rail with a solid, metallic thud.
""Go!"" Victor roared.
One of his men scrambled up the line, but before he reached the deck, the sharp crack of an automatic weapon rattled from the bridge wing above. The man cried out, losing his grip, plunging backward into the foaming black water between the two hulls.
""Man down!"" the captain yelled, reaching for the throttle.
Victor didn't wait. He grabbed the wet ascending line with his good right hand, his teeth clenched against the screaming agony in his scorched left palm as he hauled himself upward through the freezing rain.
He cleared the gunwale just as a second burst of gunfire tore through the deck plating where his head had been seconds before. Victor rolled across the wet non-skid surface, coming up behind a heavy steel winch, his rifle coming to his shoulder in a single, fluid motion.
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Fifty feet down the darkened corridor of the superstructure, Anton Vane stood backlit by the bridge emergency lamps, holding a submachine gun, his face twisted in desperate, drunken defiance.
""Welcome aboard your funeral, Victor!"" Anton screamed over the wind.
