Rogue Justice (5 page)

An instant later, the image of Hussein was gone and so was the other madman.

His corpse, hideous and ravaged, had disappeared into the gloom.

The queasiness rose again in the pit of Jia-li's stomach as another wall of water swept over the rail. "Jason, watch out," she yelled. The boat heaved wildly. There was a loud bang that sounded like a shotgun blast. Something had torn loose on the deck—she couldn't make out what it was—but the flying missile struck Jason on the forehead, knocking him unconscious again.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Jia-li roared in frustration, fighting desperately to loosen the rope binding her wrists, the skin now raw and bleeding. It was no use. The knots only pulled tighter. She looked up, pleading for help. The skies burst forth with one final torrent before the downpour finally stopped. An instant later, everything went quiet, spooky quiet—and for several minutes there was almost no sound, save for the water lapping against the boat's hull and the occasional squawk of a seabird.

Jia-li blinked her teary eyes, fighting with every breath to remain conscious. The slightest movement hurt like hell. As the temperature began to drop, she curled up into a ball, shivering uncontrollably, the cold penetrating so deeply into her bones, it felt as if someone had wrapped her body in a blanket of ice. She could already feel her systems beginning to shut down, the early stages of hypothermia setting in. Growing up in the Northeast, she had endured some of the harshest winters imaginable and recognized the symptoms—weakness, drowsiness, shallow breathing, loss of concentration, the constant shivering.

Anxious moments passed.

Then... the boat began to rock, gently at first, but soon more violently.

She sensed it before she saw it—an immense black mass slowly rising out of the water on the port side of the boat.

Time slowed to a crawl.

Jia-li felt a sickening fear.

Fear beyond anything imaginable.

She was staring into the fathomless black eye of a one-hundred-ton monster.

Chapter 4

28 March, 3:30 PM AKDT

Juneau, Alaska

The fierce storm pounding the coast of Washington had moved north and it kept getting worse. Waves were coming in seismic bursts of fury, tall as buildings, with sustained winds of more than 80 miles per hour. At the National Weather Service offices on Mendenhall Loop Road, meteorologists huddled around computers tracking what they called a "bomb"—a rare confluence of weather fronts fueled by a massive low-pressure system. Initial forecasts had called for winds of 40 to 50 miles per hour. They were wrong. In fact, the storm was moving faster, with far greater intensity, than anything on record. The barometer continued to drop, and no one seemed to have any idea what the storm would do next.

* * *

One hundred forty miles due west of Juneau, the
Dawn Quixote
was taking the full brunt of Mother Nature's wrath. For more than two hours, the sturdy, sixty-eight-foot wooden vessel had been hammered by
mountainous seas, the waves stacking up as tall as California redwoods. Winds whipped through the riggings making a fearsome, screaming sound, and through that noise, the crashing torrents thundered down. The dizzying punch of the ocean came seconds later.

Sixty feet up, sixty feet down, WHAM!

Sixty feet up, sixty feet down, WHAM!

Captain Zora Flynn maintained a white-knuckle hold on the wheel, flexing her long, tendril-like fingers to keep the circulation flowing, alert searching eyes scanning the angry sea. The fiendish storm had wiped out all satellite signals, rendering the GPS useless. She was navigating on instinct, fighting hard to keep the ship afloat, fighting even harder to control her fear. Fear was the bogeyman as surely as the savage elements. Fear clouded judgment. And where there was fear, there was shame, a lesson her mother had taught her as a young girl.

Yet, this was a moment Zora had been preparing for since landing her first crew job six years earlier. She had signed on with the skipper of a lobster boat out of Hyannis, Massachusetts, working her way up from cook to first mate. She'd learned everything there was to know about gear, fuel, bait, radar, engineering, navigation, rigging, tying knots, splicing line, cleaning fish, managing the fish hold. She'd learned about compass error; that good seamanship was equal parts common sense and experience; and how to calculate revenue, expenses, profits, losses, and crew payments as reflected on the "settlement sheet."

It all came down to crew seniority and the size of the catch: no fish, no pay.

But this trip wasn't about fish or money. Not anymore.

This trip was about survival.

Ascending the liquid slopes took everything the tough, old seiner could handle. The descent was like dropping off the edge of the earth, the bow free-falling into the deep trough on the other side. Zora braced for another monstrous wave, shouted to the rugged-looking man standing next to her in the wheelhouse. "Jesus, Rico, we're getting the shit kicked out of us here. If I take my hands away for even a second, she rolls sideways. You ever see weather like this?"

"No, Skip, she's one mean motherfucker, all right." At thirty-seven, first mate Federico Lapenda was a year older than his captain and the most senior member of the crew. A master welder and exceptional mechanic, he had a lean, confident look that commanded respect.

But right now, his face was as white as an oyster.

They stared out the pilothouse windows into a tortured black sky. Seconds later, another giant swell crashed on the foredeck and their world lit up like the Fourth of July. The wave hit with such force, the boat groaned as if she were in agony, listing so far to starboard the mast nearly dipped into the water. The lights dimmed, flickered, came back up.

"The generator," Lapenda shouted. "I just checked the damn thing a minute ago."

"Don't worry about it now, Rico. Listen, are all the hatches and portholes dogged down?"

"Uh-huh."

"What about the decks and engine room?"

"Roger that too, Skip. Any gear not nailed down is either stowed or lashed. She's as ready as she'll ever be."

"Let's hope it's enough."

"Yeah," Lapenda said, staring out at the blistering tempest. "You know something, Skip? When I was a kid and things got really rough, momma always said we should turn to the Lord. She'd say, 'What would Jesus do?'"

"Yeah, so what
would
he do about now?"

"Damned if I know."

Zora threw him a penetrating look. "Well, maybe you should ask him."

"Yeah," Lapenda said, thoughtfully. "I guess maybe I should."

A long moment passed between them.

"All right, then," Zora said. "In the meantime, you better jump into your survival suit. Tell Cassidy and McCabe to do the same."

"You got it, Skip. Be back in a flash."

Zora watched Lapenda fight his way out the wheelhouse door, straining so hard the veins on his neck looked like they might explode. He was a good man. So were her two deck hands, Luke McCabe and Blake Cassidy. Cassidy was twenty-three, built like an NFL linebacker and every bit as tough. Give him a tool to grip and a broken valve to fix, and he was happy as a clam. McCabe was two years younger. Ex-army, fit and strong, he rolled his own cigarettes, and could spin a yarn with the best of them.

Zora had hired them on five consecutive runs now, probably some kind of record. Most young fishermen folded their tents after one or two trips, beaten down by the back-breaking, sleep-depriving, mind-numbing grind. She wondered how they were holding up in the cramped berthing compartment below. Dragon's Alley, they called it.

For the next twenty minutes, the furious assault continued. It seemed like twenty hours. The
Dawn Quixote
cleared some swells and punched through the crests of others. Then, with a sudden jolt, the boat dropped into another deep trough, vertical walls of water climbing both sides of the vessel like hungry predators. The wicked weather had pushed Zora's body past all limits of human endurance, and her mind began playing tricks. She closed her eyes, trying to shake the disturbing images that roared through her head.

In her vision, the dark gray mass had turned to stone. She was seven. She and her best friend, Callie, were horseback riding in the Idaho hills. It was getting dark. Zora knew a shortcut back home, double-dared Callie to go. She said she was too scared. Zora persisted. They rode into the narrow passage. Neither of them saw the rattlesnake, but Callie's chestnut gelding did. He reared up defiantly, then staggered sideways as his foreleg slipped over the edge of the cliff. One horrifying instant later, horse and rider disappeared into the abyss. Callie's chilling screams echoed off the granite walls, spooking Zora's Appaloosa. Zora reflexively wrenched in the reins, but couldn't hold on. She was catapulted out of the saddle. The next thing she remembered was waking up in a hospital bed, hooked to a bunch of machines, floating in and out of consciousness, the awful smell of antiseptic turning her stomach. She was surrounded by a legion of somber-faced strangers in blue scrubs, Callie's desperate cries still coursing through her head.

She heard those cries still, most every night, in fact.

Damn ghosts.

The flash to the past took only a few seconds, yet the haunting memories had a sobering effect. Zora swore she would not be responsible for any more death. Not on her watch. No way.

The maverick seas were now three times as high as the
Dawn Quixote
, the winds gusting out of the southeast at more than 100 miles per hour. It was like being mauled by a giant grizzly, only worse. Merely maintaining balance on the heaving bridge was exhausting, aching muscles stabbing at her like ice picks. She'd read somewhere that "pain was weakness leaving the body," but she couldn't get her head around it now.

Zora had already tuned the VHF and single-sideband radios to emergency channels—channel 16 on the VHF, 2182 megahertz on the SSB. She tried both frequencies again hoping to raise another boat, but got nothing but static. Then she issued an urgency alert. "Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan," she said in a sharp, measured tone. "Hello all stations, this is the fishing vessel
Dawn Quixote
. We are one hundred fifty miles west-northwest of Sitka, Alaska." She rattled off the coordinates. "We're taking on water, but the pumps are keeping up for now."

More static.

She repeated the call.

Still nothing.

An instant later, Lapenda burst through the wheelhouse door wearing his one-size-fits-all survival suit. The bulky orange get-up was made of neoprene and looked something like a space suit with its hood, feet, and mitten-shaped gloves. It was designed to delay hypothermia and keep its occupant afloat. How long they'd last in these seas, though, was anybody's guess.

"How are Cassidy and McCabe doing?" Zora asked.

"Hangin' in," Lapenda replied. "Cassidy said they tried playing a few hands of gin rummy, but the floor kept jumping up and swallowing the cards."

"I'm sure. Are they suited up?"

Lapenda nodded in the affirmative.

For a long moment, their eyes locked—and that's when fate intervened, in the form of a massive Norwegian tanker called the
Polar Seas
. In a heavily-accented voice, the ship's captain radioed that the vessel was en route to Valdez, and currently six miles from the
Dawn Quixote
's position. He said he could be at her side in less than half an hour.

Zora decided then and there that the only way to save boat and crew was to successfully execute two back-to-back maneuvers, moves she knew would send shivers up the spines of even the most seasoned mariners. She felt them herself. The first—coming around in an angry sea—could cause the vessel to roll heavily and capsize. The second—hiding under a ship—was exactly that, and in this case it was a very
big
ship. The deck of the
Polar Seas
could swallow three football fields. From keel to flying bridge, she was as tall as a twelve-story building.

Some thirty minutes later, right on cue, the giant tanker approached to starboard, slowed to six knots, her course altered slightly to the northeast.

Zora then explained her hair-raising plan to a skeptical captain.

Finally, after a long pause, he said, "Roger,
Dawn Quixote
, we'll slow to nine knots." The voice was calm, reassuring. "You'll need to turn onto a parallel course with us. The winds are still out of the southeast. If you can keep position amidships, that's the sweet spot. We'll do our best to calm it down for you over there. Good luck, captain. Over."