Sea of Shadows

more threatening. It also slowed the search process, as it required his team members to work one-handed, the other hand being constantly occupied by a weapon.

Hayes had requested Modified Security Condition Two instead, which would require only the odd-numbered members of his teams to operate with weapons drawn, allowing them to protect their even-numbered buddies. To Hayes’ mind, it was a decent compromise; half of his team would have two hands to work with, and all of them would have some protection.

Isam was a snake. The VBSS teams hadn’t found any contraband yet, but Hayes was certain the man was a smuggler. Everything about the cagey old bastard and his crew pointed in that direction.

Hayes leaned on the railing of the bridge wing and looked down toward the darkened forecastle. The fore deck was cluttered with equipment and deck fittings, visible now only as dark shapes. There were a hundred places to hide down there. A hundred good places for somebody to ambush his teams. “Shit,” he said softly.

* * *

Three decks below, Operations Specialist Chief Harry Deacon stood at the entrance to the forward cargo hold. He scanned the darkened compartment and felt his jaws begin to tighten. “This looks like a real good place to get somebody killed,” he said softly.

The cavernous space was crammed with Conex boxes. The huge shipping containers were stacked far closer together than international shipping laws allowed, forming a maze of narrow passageways with walls of corrugated steel.

The lighting system, inadequate when the ship had been designed, had seen fifty-odd years of hard use. Less than half of the fixtures worked, and those had been fitted with energy-saving sodium-vapor lamps. What little light they produced was largely eclipsed by the towering rows of shipping containers.

Deacon counted thirty Conex boxes in this hold. With the twenty-two they had found in the aft cargo hold, his team had fifty-two shipping containers to search. Deacon had six men, including himself, to do the job. There were no ladders or catwalks to the containers on the upper level, so his team would have to haul themselves up with climbing harnesses.

He shook his head in disgust. The United Nations bureaucrats who had drafted the Security Council resolution that mandated these searches had not had a clue of what they were really asking; that much was patently clear. He shook his head again. This was going to take all goddamned night.

“Come on,” he said. “Get that first box open. And don’t forget to write down the number off the box car seal before you cut it off.”

* * *

Electronics Warfare Technician Second Class Paul Allen stepped up to the doors of the first Conex box with a pocket-sized notebook and a pair of orange-handled wire cutters. The EW2 was Chief Deacon’s second in command on the Blue Team. “We’ve got it, Chief.”

The chief nodded. “I’m going to head aft and check on Carlin and Finch.” He turned and disappeared into the darkness.

Allen nudged his partner, an eighteen-year-old seaman named Steve Blandy. “Get your flashlight on this box car seal so I can get the number off of it.”

Blandy pointed his flashlight as ordered. “God damn! It smells like a stable in here. What the hell are they shipping? Yaks?”

Allen ignored him. It did stink down here, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise. A lot of these old freighters smelled like shit.

Blandy looked down and prodded the deck with the toe of his left boot.

“One of these days, one of these rusty old bitches is going to fucking sink on us.”

“Pay attention to what you’re doing,” Allen said. “Hold the light steady.”

Blandy switched his attention to the flashlight. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I’m not kidding, though. Last week, when we were searching that Omani freighter, Jenkins put his foot right through a deck plate. It was rusted as thin as paper.”

Allen scribbled the last few digits of the serial number from the boxcar seal and slid his pen and notebook into his hip pocket. “Jenkins is always saying crap like that. He’s so full of shit his eyes are brown.”

“Not this time,” Blandy said. “I was there. I saw it happen.”

Allen latched the jaws of the wire cutters onto the thin metal of the seal.

“Eye hazard — look away.”

Both men turned their faces away from the door of the shipping container, and Allen squeezed the handles of the wire cutters. The seal parted with a metallic twang and fell to the deck.

Allen turned back toward the container. “Clear.” He retrieved the errant seal and shoved it into a canvas pouch attached to his belt. He grabbed the latching handle of the Conex box and lifted. The handle moved slowly, with a groan of protest. “Give me a hand with this,” he said.

Blandy went rigid. “Shhhh …” He swung the beam of his flashlight around to cover a narrow corridor between two rows of stacked shipping containers. “You hear that?”

Allen gave him a sour look. “Knock it off, goofball.”

Blandy’s hand went to his holster. He unsnapped the strap and wrapped his hand around the butt of his 9mm. “I’m serious,” he said, playing the beam of the flashlight around in the labyrinth of shadows.

“Somebody’s down here.”

“We’re still in Security Condition One,” Allen said. “That weapon stays in its holster.”

“Do you see me drawing the damned thing?” Blandy whispered.

“Anyway, we can cock and lock if we’re threatened, even in Security Condition One.”

“I don’t see any threat,” Allen said. “And I don’t hear anything.”

“Shut up and listen!” Blandy hissed. “There it is again!”

Something thumped in the darkness, followed by a scraping sound.

Then there was silence.

Allen put his hand on the butt of his own 9mm. “I heard it that time.”

He keyed his headset mike and spoke in a low voice, “Blue One, this is Blue Two, over.”

Chief Deacon responded immediately. “This is Blue One, go ahead, over.”

“Blue One, this is Blue Two. We have somebody moving around down here, approximately ten yards forward of my position. Do you have any teams working in this part of the hold besides us? Over.”

“Negative, Blue Two. Our personnel are all accounted for. I am in route your position. Take cover and don’t do anything until I get there, over.”

“Blue Two, aye.”

Allen touched Blandy’s shoulder. “Shut off your flashlight and get down.”

The beam of Blandy’s flashlight vanished, plunging them into the yellow-tinged gloom of aging sodium-vapor lamps. The cargo hold was not completely dark, but the shadows were numerous and thick, and the feeble glow of the overhead lamps did little to penetrate them.

Both men crouched against the doors of the steel shipping container.

They were still exposed to the sides and the rear, but at least they had cover against attack from the forward end of the compartment — the direction from which the sounds had come.

They heard the noises again. They seemed to be closer this time.

“That’s it,” Blandy said. “I’m drawing down.”

“No you’re not!” Allen whispered fiercely. “Keep your weapon holstered. That’s an order.”

“This is bullshit!” Blandy hissed. “At least three of these fuckers are unaccounted for, and there could be a half dozen more who aren’t even listed on the crew manifest. You can bet your ass they don’t have to get a note from mommy to draw their fucking weapons.”

Allen held up a hand. “Shhhh …”

Something else was moving — something behind them. Allen looked over his shoulder. Damn. They had no cover in that direction. Hopefully it was the chief. But what if it wasn’t?

Allen bit his lower lip. Maybe Blandy was right. Maybe it was time to stop thinking about the rules and start thinking about self-preservation.

In the pre-mission briefings, the Combat Systems Officer was always saying, “No matter how spooked you are, it’s nearly impossible to accidentally shoot a man if your weapon is holstered.” When