Chapter 83 - The Ghost Ship of the Channel
The salt spray struck my face like a shower of freezing needles.
Dover was nothing more than a faint constellation of amber lights fading into the roiling mist behind us. We were three miles out into the open high-seas corridor of the English Channel aboard the *Valkyrie*, a stripped-down, matte-black forty-foot littoral patrol vessel leased through Arthur’s private maritime security channels.
Twin high-output diesel inboard engines thrummed through the carbon-fiber deck beneath my non-slip boots. The ocean was black as crude oil, churning with four-foot swells that sent plumes of white foam crashing over the bow. Mack was standing behind the wheelhouse console, an oilskin slicker pulled tight over his broad shoulders, his weathered face lit by the dim emerald glow of the radar screen.
"Target contact bearing zero-four-zero!" Mack barked over the roar of the engines and the howling Channel wind. "Ten miles out and steaming hard! She’s running dark, Nina—AIS transponder is completely dead. She’s cutting straight through the commercial shipping lane without navigation lights like a damn ghost!"
I pulled the collar of my thermal tactical jacket higher against the bitter sea wind and stepped up beside Jonah at the starboard gunwale. He was wearing full black tactical gear, a combat harness fitted with magnetic climbing ascenders, high-tensile grappling lines, and water-sealed communications gear.
"She’s running dark because Dekker knows he’s being hunted," Jonah said, handing me a pair of military-grade night-vision binoculars. "Look through the thermal filter."
I raised the lenses to my eyes. The pitch-black horizon resolved into an eerie palette of phosphorescent greens and reds.
Through the curtain of sea fog, a monstrous silhouette loomed against the black waves. The *Cimmerian Queen* was colossal—a floating fortress of steel containers stacked five stories above her deck line, her massive bulbous bow cleaving through the gray swells with terrifying momentum. Plumes of hot exhaust churned from her twin funnels, glowing incandescent white under the thermal optic.
"She’s fortified," I observed, zooming in on the bridge wings and the forward catwalks. "Look at the container stacks near the midship crane. Those aren't standard cargo boxes."
"Converted command modules," Jonah confirmed, his jaw tightening. "Reinforced steel plating, gun ports, and perimeter infrared floodlights. Julian Vance spared no expense when he hired Leviathan. That ship is an armed redoubt on a keel."
"How do we get up?" I asked, looking at the towering, sheer steel wall of the ship’s hull, which rose nearly sixty feet above the surging waterline.
"The pilot ladder on the port quarter," Jonah said. "Maritime regulations require container vessels to maintain an external pilot recess. Even if Dekker pulled the ladder, the mounting bracket is welded to the hull plates. We run the *Valkyrie* under her blind spot behind the stern wake, fire the pneumatic magnetic grapnels, and winch up before their deck patrols spot the engine wash."
"And if they do spot us?"
Jonah reached down, his thumb flicking the safety of his tactical carbine off and on with an easy, practiced motion. "Then we don't bother asking for permission to come aboard."
Arthur’s voice crackled through our encrypted earpieces from his remote command suite back at Dover. *"Nina, Jonah, listen to me carefully. I’ve just intercepted an encrypted sat-burst transmission from Dekker’s bridge to an offshore terminal in the North Sea. The buyer for your father’s magnetic drive is already en route by helicopter. A private Russian defense syndicate representing an offshore shell company called Iron Helix. If Dekker transfers that cargo to their chopper, our legal leverage evaporates. You have thirty-five minutes before rendezvous."*
"Understood, Arthur," I replied into my throat mic, feeling the blood ignite in my veins. "Mack, throttle up! Put us in her wake!"
Mack roared an affirmative, slamming the dual throttles forward. The *Valkyrie* rose on her hydroplane foils, launching across the black chop like an arrow released from a longbow. The colossal, rust-streaked stern of the *Cimmerian Queen* swelled rapidly in our vision, towering over us like a moving iron cliff.
"Hold on!" Jonah shouted, his arm wrapping around my waist, bracing us against the shuddering force of the hull impact as we entered the churning white foam of the freighter’s massive twin screws.
Up close, the *Cimmerian Queen* was deafening. The grinding roar of her ninety-thousand-horsepower low-speed diesel engine vibrated directly through the water, rattling the fillings in our teeth. The smell of burning heavy bunker oil and brine filled the freezing air.
Jonah stepped to the bow, raised a heavy pneumatic launcher, and aimed at the narrow steel catwalk sixty feet above.
He pulled the trigger.
A sharp *thwack* cracked through the roar of the engines as a titanium magnetic claw surged into the sky, trailing an ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene line. An instant later, the solid, ringing *CLANG* of magnetized steel echoed down the hull plates.
The cable snapped taut.
Jonah turned to me, his slate eyes blazing with a fierce, unbreakable resolve. "Ladies first, Ms. Croft?"
May you like
I hooked my ascender harness onto the line, looked up into the howling darkness of the North Sea fog, and smiled. "Only if you're right behind me, Jonah."
***
