Chapter 12 - HUNTING THE LEVIATHANGabriel woke to the smell of diesel smoke and salt water.
His head pounded with blinding agony, warm blood crusted against his hairline. He pushed himself up from the wet wooden floorboards of a ship's bridge.
“Easy, Gabriel,” Henri’s voice groaned from the corner.
Henri was propped against the bulkhead, his chest bruised and taped from the taser shocks, but his eyes were clear, burning with a dangerous, vengeful focus.
Beside him sat Madeleine, wrapped in dry blankets, gripping her silver rosary with steady, unbroken resolve.
“Where are we?” Gabriel croaked, his throat raw.
“Aboard the Santa Maria,” Henri answered, gesturing to the burly, bearded captain standing at the ship’s radar console. “Captain Alvarez is an old smuggling contact of mine. Evelyn’s men threw us aboard and told Alvarez to sail south or get sunk. But Alvarez doesn't take orders from Black Anchor.”
Gabriel stumbled over to the navigation table. “Where is Claire?”
Alvarez tapped the glowing green phosphor screen of the maritime radar. “Thirty miles ahead, running full throttle toward international waters. She’s aboard the Acheron—a four-hundred-foot private research vessel registered out of Monrovia. High-speed turbine engines, private helipad, and private security forces.”
“Can this rust bucket catch them?” Gabriel demanded.
“In open water? Not a chance,” Alvarez grunted, chewing on an unlit cigar. “The Acheron makes thirty-two knots; we top out at fourteen. But they aren't heading for open sea yet. They’re threading the Devil’s Throat shoals to avoid the coast guard cutters.”
Henri leaned over the nautical chart, tracing a jagged finger across a narrow, shallow channel between two barrier islands. “The Devil’s Throat is barely thirty feet deep at low tide. If Alvarez cuts through the old smuggler’s trench near Dead Man’s Reef, we can intercept them right where the channel narrows to two hundred yards.”
Gabriel looked at Henri. “We don’t have weapons. They have automatic rifles and private military contractors.”
Henri kicked open an iron hatch beneath the navigation console.
Inside lay four crates of commercial underwater demolition dynamite, pneumatic spear guns used for deep-sea salvage, and two high-powered maritime distress flare launchers.
“We don’t need an army to sink a ship, Gabriel,” Henri said, his jaw tightening into a grim, ruthless grin. “We just need to put a hole in her engine room.”
Madeleine stood up, walking toward the two young men. She took Gabriel’s hand and Henri’s hand, joining them together in her warm, weathered palms.
“Bring my daughter home,” she said, her voice steady, stripped of all tears. “And make sure those monsters never hurt another family again.”
Gabriel looked at his brother-in-law. The mistrust that had poisoned them since the crematorium dissolved entirely in the shared crucible of grief and determination.
“We get her back,” Gabriel said.
“Or we go to the bottom together,” Henri agreed.
For three grueling hours, the Santa Maria pounded through the mountainous swells of the storm-swept channel. The wooden hull groaned under the strain, seawater washing across the forward deck in freezing sheets.
Just as the clock struck 3:00 AM, the silhouette of the Acheron materialized out of the rain like a predatory leviathan.
Her decks were brightly illuminated with halogen floodlights, radar arrays spinning atop her massive superstructure.
“They’re entering the shoals!” Captain Alvarez shouted over the roar of the diesel engine. “We have five minutes before the channel opens into deep water!”
“Cut the running lights!” Gabriel ordered. “Bring us alongside their starboard blind spot!”
The Santa Maria went completely dark, gliding through the black water like a ghost ship.
Using the noise of the crashing waves and the howling storm to mask their approach, Alvarez brought the wooden freighter within thirty yards of the Acheron’s towering steel hull.
Gabriel and Henri strapped the waterproof packs of demolition charges to their backs, gripping two heavy grappling hooks attached to climbing lines.
“Ten seconds to contact!” Henri hissed.
Gabriel threw the first grappling hook.
The three-pronged iron anchor sailed through the storm, catching firmly onto the Acheron’s lower service catwalk rail with a dull, heavy clink.
Henri threw his hook a second later, securing the secondary line.
Gabriel looked back at Alvarez, who gave a single, solemn nod from the wheelhouse.
May you like
Then, Gabriel grabbed the line and swung his body out over the churning black abyss of the sea, pulling himself hand-over-hand up the freezing steel side of the monster ship.
Above him, on the private observation deck, an alarm bell began to ring.
