He tilted his head back to see how far he was from the gangway that angled against the hull. He was encouraged by what he saw. He was halfway up the ladder. Only a few more rungs and he’d be able to reach the small platform at the bottom of the metal steps.
He grabbed on to a couple of rungs, pulled himself higher, and glanced up again. Someone was peering at him from between two thin metal posts that extended vertically from the deck where those climbing the ladder could use them as handholds. A crown of unruly hair framed the dark-skinned face of a man. His gap-toothed mouth was set in a wide grin.
The face disappeared, and an arm reached over the side. The hand at the end of the arm clutched a knife whose long blade was sawing through the rope ladder.
“Hey!” Austin called out, for want of anything more appropriate.
The knife hesitated, but went back to work and quickly severed the rope. The rope ladder dropped a short distance. Austin was slammed against the hull. The impact almost jolted his hands loose from the ladder. He held on and looked up again. Aw, hell, he muttered. The knife was sawing the second ladder rope.
He reached for a man line that had blown free and was twisting in the wind and got both hands on it as the knife went through the second rope. The severed ladder dropped into the crushing sea and instantly disappeared.
Austin’s head slammed against the side of the ship like a clapper in a bell. Galaxies whirled before his eyes. He clung tenaciously to consciousness aware that a single swipe of the knife blade against the line would send him to his death. He reached over and grabbed the bottom step of the gangplank, then swung under the platform, where he hoped he would be invisible to the happy knifeman.
He stayed there for a few moments. When he could hold on no longer, he pulled his body onto the platform and crawled on his hands and knees up the steps until he was at the opening in the deck rail. He leaped onto the deck in a clumsy defensive stance and was glad to see that no one was waiting in ambush.
Austin waved at Zavala, who was running a parallel course to the containership. Zavala waved back.
The captain’s frantic voice crackled in the walkie-talkie. “You okay, Kurt?”
Austin felt like newly ground hamburger, but he said, “Finest kind, Cap. I’m on the ship. How long do I have?”
“You’re about five miles from the rig. You’ll have to allow time for the ship’s momentum to stop or turn.”
Austin sprinted for the sterncastle, but a terrible sound stopped him in his tracks. Coming from a space between container stacks was a woman’s scream, and there was no mistaking the terror in her voice.
Chapter 12
CARINA HAD REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS only minutes before Austin had climbed aboard the ship. Her return to the land of the living had some drawbacks. Her head throbbed with pain. Her vision was squirrelly. Waves of nausea sloshed around in her stomach.
The ache and discomfort kept her from sliding back into oblivion, and she became aware that she was still in the container, her body lodged between packing crates. Her arms were bound tightly behind her back. In their haste, the hijackers had left her legs untied.
Combining sheer force of will with a lean physique strengthened from hours of working out at the UNESCO gym, Carina rolled onto her belly. Using her tight abdominal muscles to the max, she leveraged her body into a kneeling position. She stood on wobbly legs and waited until the dizziness passed. Then she backed up to a packing crate and rubbed the duct tape binding her wrists against the corner.
Splinters stabbed at her skin, but she ignored the pain. After a few minutes of self-inflicted torture, she slipped one hand free. She was prying the tape off her wrists when a figure appeared in the opening the hijackers had cut into the container.
Carina recognized the man’s face. She didn’t know his name, only that he was one of the Filipino crewmen she had seen working around the ship.
“Am I glad to see you,” she said with a sigh of relief.
“I am
Carina’s feminine antennae picked up the suggestion of danger in his voice. She glanced past the crewman’s shoulder. “Are the hijackers gone?”
“No,” he said with a grin. “We are still aboard.”
Carina tried to step past him. The Filipino shifted position to block her way.
“What do you want?” she said, regretting the words the instant they left her mouth.
The Filipino’s lips curled like slices of liverwurst in a frying pan. “I come to kill you. But, first, we have a little fun.”
He grabbed Carina’s shoulders. He was several inches shorter than she was but much stronger. He stuck his foot out behind her ankle and pushed against her chest. She fell backward. The crewman crashed down and pinned her to the floor. As Carina struggled to push him off, he produced a knife and slashed away the thin leather belt around her waist.
She beat at his face with her fists, scoring a few light punches on his unshaven chin that were more an annoyance than a defense. He stuck the knife into the side of a crate to free both hands—and Carina screamed at the top of her lungs. There was no one on the ship who could come to her aid, but maybe the piercing shriek would distract her attacker.
He backed off, and she lunged for the knife. He saw the move and smashed her in the jaw with his open hand. The blow nearly knocked her out. She stopped struggling. She could feel him jerking her jeans down to her knees, smell his foul breath, and hear his heavy breathing. She could only make feeble efforts to push him back. Then she heard a low, male voice.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the voice said.
The Filipino snatched the knife from the crate. He scrambled to his feet and whirled to face the intruder.
A broad-shouldered man stood in the jagged-edged rectangle of light, legs wide apart. His pale, almost-white hair looked like a halo in the backlight.
The Filipino sprang forward with his knife extended. Carina expected to hear a cry of pain as the blade plunged into flesh, but the only sound was a clink and a scrape, as if someone were sharpening a kitchen knife.
Austin had picked up a cuneiform clay tablet he’d seen lying on the deck. He was holding the flat stone down by his knees when he stepped into the container and saw the drama unfolding. When the man turned, Austin recognized the face that had peered out over the deck as he was climbing the rope ladder. With a speed that surprised his attacker, he had hitched the tablet up to his chest to shield against the knife thrust.
As the blade slid harmlessly off to one side, Austin lifted the tablet high above his head and brought it down as if he were beating a rug. The clay broke over the crewman’s head and shattered into dozens of pieces. The Filipino miraculously stayed up for a few second, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he folded like a concertina.
Austin stepped over the twitching body and offered his hand to the woman. She reached out and pulled herself to a standing position. With trembling fingers, she hoisted her jeans back up to her waist.
“Are you all right?” he said. There was concern in the coral blue eyes.
Carina nodded. She glared at the crewman’s body. “Thank you for saving me from that animal. I hope you killed him.”
“I probably did. Are you part of the ship’s crew?”
“I’m a passenger. The ship was hijacked. They came in helicopters. They took the
Austin thought she was talking about one of the ship’s crew. “Who?”
Carina saw Austin’s confusion. “The
Austin nodded. The woman’s reply made about as much sense as anything. He picked up the knife that had fallen from the crewman’s hand. “Sorry to hit and run. I’ve got to tend to a few errands. See if you can find another hiding place. We’ll talk later over dinner.”
