Chapter 19 - Blood on the Chesapeake
The blast blew the heavy steel door inwards off its latch, filling the enclosed wheelhouse with smoke and flying splinters of safety glass.
We swarmed the bridge in a dynamic cross-entry.
The ship’s civilian captain was face-down on the deck, hands locked behind his head, sobbing in terror. Two foreign mercenaries flanking the navigation console raised their weapons, but Hayes and the point operator cut them down before their fingers could find the triggers.
In the far corner of the wheelhouse, illuminated by the flashing red alarm displays of the radar screens, stood Derek Vance.
He looked unhinged. His designer suit from the gala was soaked, torn, and filthy. His hair hung in matted clumps across his sweaty forehead. In his right hand, he held a chrome-plated semi-automatic pistol.
With his left arm, he had six-year-old Julian locked in a brutal chokehold, using the sobbing, terrified child as a human shield.
"Stay back!" Derek shrieked, his voice cracking into high, manic hysteria. "Stay back, Evelyn, or I swear to God I’ll blow his brains out! I'll do it! Don't you test me!"
Julian was weeping silently, his small face red and streaked with tears, his eyes wide with horror as he looked at me. "Auntie Evelyn..." he whimpered.
"Shut up, you little brat!" Derek roared, digging the barrel of the gun harder into Julian’s temple.
"Derek, look at me," I said, stepping forward two paces, my service weapon lowered at my hip, projecting utter calm. "Look at me, Derek."
His wild, bloodshot eyes locked onto mine. "You ruined everything! You were supposed to be nobody! You were supposed to rot! Mother and I threw you in the gutter where you belonged! How did you get this rank? How did you get these men?! You’re nothing but a pathetic little charity case!"
"You killed our father, Derek," I said, my voice echoing clearly over the roar of the storm outside.
Derek’s face twisted into an ugly, venomous sneer. "The old bastard had it coming! He was going to turn me in! Me! His own son! He cared more about his precious naval regulations than his own family! He was going to let me go to prison! Mother knew what had to be done. She signed the papers. She gave him the tea every morning for three weeks until his lungs gave out!"
Julian gasped in terror at his father’s screaming.
"You're a murderer, Derek," I said softly. "And a traitor. And now you’re holding your own son at gunpoint. Is this the Vance legacy you slapped me in the face to protect?"
"Shut up!" Derek screamed, his hand trembling on the grip. "Tell the pilot to back off! Tell the Coast Guard to stand down! I have twenty million dollars waiting in an account in Constanța! If you let me go, I’ll leave the boy in Bermuda! Otherwise, he dies right here on this deck!"
"You aren't going to Bermuda, Derek," I said.
"Then he dies!" Derek shrieked, his finger tightening on the trigger.
In that split second, I didn't raise my gun. I didn't give the command.
I made eye contact with Julian.
"Julian," I said in a sharp, clear command voice. "Drop!"
The boy, remembering the military drills his grandfather had played with him as games, went completely limp, dropping his entire body weight downward.
Derek’s arm jerked down with the sudden shift in mass, exposing his shoulder and the right side of his neck for a fraction of a second.
A single shot rang out from Hayes’s suppressed carbine.
The round struck Derek squarely in the right shoulder joint, shattering the bone and severing the motor nerves instantly. Derek screamed in agony, the chrome pistol flying from his useless, paralyzed fingers and clattering across the deck.
I lunged forward, sweeping Julian into my left arm, pulling him behind my ballistic vest while drawing my sidearm with my right hand.
Hayes stepped forward, kicking Derek hard in the face.
Derek collapsed backward against the navigation console, clutching his shattered, bleeding shoulder, groaning in pathetic, whimpering misery as blood pooled beneath his ruined bespoke trousers.
"Clear!" Hayes called out.
The operators secured the bridge wings. Outside, the searchlights of the Coast Guard cutter *Dependable* cut through the darkness, illuminating the container ship from port side.
I knelt down on the deck, wrapping both arms around Julian. The little boy buried his face into my soaked uniform jacket, sobbing uncontrollably.
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"You're safe, Julian," I whispered, resting my chin against the top of his head, feeling the warmth of his small body against the cold steel of my armor. "Auntie’s here. Nobody is ever going to hurt you again."
***
