Sea of Greed

“What happened to you?” the second man said, looking at the blood on the bearded man’s lips.

“Never you mind,” he snapped. “Check the engine room, check the galley, check every space on this boat. They wouldn’t leave a cripple here alone.”

Priya seethed at the word cripple. “You’ll never find them. This yacht has a hidden panic room. By now, they’re calling the Coast Guard or the harbor police. You and your friends are all going to prison.”

The burly man stood over her, laughing. “Give me that computer.”

He reached for it, but Priya had one last trick up her sleeve. Reaching under the arm of the robe, she tapped the screen on the forearm of the dive suit, pressing the swim mode button to full strength.

Her body flipped awkwardly as the artificial muscles in the suit squeezed. One leg went down, but the other flew upward, right into his crotch. The man dropped the computer and doubled over in excruciating pain.

Priya rolled onto her stomach, grabbed the laptop and pulled herself toward the balcony once more. To her surprise, the strange swimming motion of the legs helped her move more quickly.

She reached the railing, pulled herself up and was about to throw herself and the computer overboard when a hand grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back so forcefully that chunks of hair were ripped from her scalp.

She landed against the bulkhead. A pale hand with long, thin fingers reached forward and grabbed her arm. The power to the suit was shut off and Priya’s legs stopped flailing. She looked up to see Tessa Franco standing over her. “What were you doing under my aircraft?”

Priya suddenly felt foolish. She’d brought this on herself. She should have stayed put as Kurt and Joe had directed her to.

She tried to play it off. “Hatcher wanted me to take pictures of the plane. He said no one knew how it got off the water so easily. You’re using high-pressure air for cavitation.”

“You’re a very good liar,” Tessa said. “Where are Hatcher and that weird friend of his?”

“Like I told the mountain man over there,” she said, “you won’t find them until the police get here.”

Tessa didn’t hesitate. She slapped Priya across the face once and then added a backhand slap for good measure.

Priya’s face burned, but she said nothing more. Just then, one of the other men returned. “There’s space for a powerboat on the lower deck, but the boat is gone.”

As Tessa turned away, Priya took a chance. She threw her arm forward, punching the laptop. It skittered across the balcony, slid under the railing and dropped into the sea.

Tessa looked down at Priya. “There must have been something on that computer she wanted to hide. Look around,” she said to her men. “Grab any other computers, phones or radios you can find. Anything that might be useful to us.”

Priya wondered again if she’d done more harm than good.

“And pick her up,” Tessa said to the broad-shouldered, bearded man. “She’s coming with us.”

41

LNG CARRIER, CONTROL SPHERE

KURT WAS in midair, diving away from the pipes, as the heat of ignition flashed across him, singeing the hair on the back of his neck. Bits of pipe flew in all directions, clanging off the other tanks, while the echo of the blast traveled around the sphere like rolling thunder.

Hitting the floor, Kurt rolled and popped up on one knee. Looking back, he saw a jet of flame pouring from the stub of the ruptured pipe. It shot outward and down, scorching the neighboring tank and rapidly beginning to melt the floor.

The fire scattered Volke and his men. They ran and stumbled in every direction.

“I didn’t think you would really do it,” Joe said, making his way to Kurt’s side.

“He left me no choice,” Kurt replied.

A secondary explosion knocked everyone to the ground and the floor tilted as one of the supports gave way.

Kurt and Joe rushed forward, jumping to the next section of flooring.

“Look,” Joe said, pointing.

The catwalk had fallen. The crewman with the flashlight fell, dropping through the suddenly open section of deck and into the bottom half of the sphere. Another figure in white overalls clung to the railing.

“That’s Millard,” Joe said.

“Let’s grab him and get out of here.”

Working his way around, Kurt stretched out a hand, grabbed Millard by the back of his clothing and pulled him to safety.

“You’re coming with us,” he shouted.

The scientist did not protest. “The ship is going to explode, we have to get out of here.”

The sphere shook with more tremors as a smaller tank exploded. They were all knocked off their feet.

The sound alone felt as if it would bust Kurt’s eardrums, but it was the sudden pressure change that concerned him most. He turned back to see a rupture in the wall. Air and smoke were venting out and seawater was blasting in horizontally, crashing through the floor grating and swirling in the lower half of the sphere.

Kurt saw a churning vortex of foamy water rising. Storage tanks had been ripped from their moorings, barely hanging on the scaffolding. Like the pipe Kurt had damaged, many of them were spraying fire.