Devil's Gate Read online

  Satisfied, Nordegrun looked up.

  “Keep us on that line,” he said. “Since they’ve given us all this nice equipment, we might as well use it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Talan said.

  With the ship back on course, Nordegrun checked the chronometer. It was after ten p.m. local, the third watch was in place. Confident that the ship was in good hands, he glanced at the officer of the deck.

  “She’s all yours,” he said.

  Nordegrun turned to head below, checking the position of the tanker trailing them one last time. It had matched the Kinjara Maru’s course change and, oddly enough, had accelerated to 12 knots as well.

  “Monkey see, monkey do,” he mumbled as he walked for the door.

  Stepping out through the door and heading aft, Nordegrun squinted into the gloom. He could make out the lights on the ship following them. A strange hue, he thought. They were a bluish white, like the high-intensity headlights on modern luxury sedans.

  He’d never seen that on a ship before, even from a distance. All he could ever recall was the standard yellowish or plain white light that incandescent and fluorescent bulbs gave off. Then again, years back, no one thought they’d see a ship that was guided by a computer.

  He stepped into the stairwell and shut the hatch. Clambering down the stairs toward his quarters, Nordegrun felt a spring in his step. Unlike earlier generations, he and his officers were allowed to bring family aboard. Nordegrun’s wife of two years waited below, joining him for the first time at sea. She would go with him as far as Cairo, disembarking and flying home as the Kinjara Maru moved through the Suez Canal.

  It would be a good week, he thought, a vacation without taking one. If he hurried, he had time to join her at the ship’s mess.

  As he reached the lower deck, the lights in the stairwell dimmed. He glanced up. The filaments in the incandescent bulb above the door looked like embers on the verge of going out. Higher up, the fluorescent tubes began flickering at an odd rate.

  They returned to normal for a second, but there was no doubt in Nordegrun’s mind that they had some type of generator issue. Aggravated, he turned to climb back up the stairs.

  The lights dimmed again, then brightened until they were blazing white. The fluorescent tubes made a strange noise and then shattered simultaneously, raining glass down on him. On the wall, the incandescent bulb blew out in a loud pop, flashing the stairwell in electric blue and then plunging it into darkness.

  Nordegrun held the rail, shocked and surprised. He’d never seen anything like it. He felt the ship begin to heel over as if she were turning hard. With no idea what was going on, he raced up the darkened stairway and ran forward. Lights were blowing all over the ship.

  Nordegrun felt a spike of pain in his neck and jaw. Stress, he thought, the fight-or-flight reaction, as something went wrong with his vessel.

  He burst into the bridge. “What the devil is happening?” he shouted.

  Neither Talan nor the officer of the deck responded. Talan was busy shouting into the ship’s intercom. The OOD was wrestling with the computer, desperately tapping the override keys as the ship continued to turn.

  Nordegrun caught a glimpse of the rudder indicator full over to port. An instant later the screen flared and went blank. Sparks shot from another machine, and the pain in Nordegrun’s head got suddenly worse.

  At almost the same time, the officer of the deck fell to the ground, holding his head and grunting in pain.

  “Talan,” Nordegrun shouted. “Go below. Get to my wife.”

  The helmsman hesitated.

  “Now!”

  Talan left his post, Nordegrun grabbed the ship’s radio and tried to transmit. He pressed the talk switch, but the radio let out a high-pitched squeal. He reached for another device but suddenly felt his chest burning.

  Looking down, he saw the buttons on his coat glowing red. He grabbed one and pulled at it but it burned his hand. The noise in his head reached a crescendo, and Nordegrun fell to the ground. Even with his eyelids shut, he saw stars and flashes of light as if someone were pressing his eyes in with their thumbs.

  A pop in his head sent blood running out his nose. Something in his sinuses had ruptured.

  Nordegrun opened his eyes to see smoke filling the bridge. He crawled for the doorway. With blood streaming down his face, he pushed the hatch open and got partway outside. As he did, the noise in his head became a scream.

  He fell to the deck, his face angled aft. Behind him what looked like electricity was arcing between the rail and superstructure. Farther off he saw the ship with the strange lights still trailing them. It remained ten miles off but now glowed a dozen times brighter as if it were covered in Saint Elmo’s fire.

  Nordegrun’s mind was so far gone, he could do nothing but stare at it. And then his body stiffened in some type of convulsion, the pain spiked beyond anything he could have imagined, and Nordegrun screamed as his skin burst into flame.

  3

  Eastern Atlantic, June 15

  AS DAWN BROKE OVER THE ATLANTIC, Kurt Austin stood near the bow of the NUMA vessel Argo, wiping sweat off his face with a towel. He’d just finished fifty laps around the main deck. Only, because the deck did not encircle the ship, he’d been forced to enter the superstructure at the end of every lap, race up two flights of stairs and across the main transom, then down two flights and back out to begin the next lap.

  It would have been far easier to hit the exercise room, pound the treadmill for five miles and then climb on the StairMaster, but they were at sea, and to Austin the sea had always meant freedom; freedom to roam and explore the world, freedom from traffic and smog and the sometimes claustrophobic existence of modern urban life. Out here—with the promise of dawn on the horizon—he wasn’t about to lock himself in a cramped windowless room for his morning workout even if it had air-conditioning.

  Wearing black sweatpants and a faded gray T-shirt with the NUMA logo on it, Kurt felt as good as he could remember. He stood just over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and curly silver-gray hair that looked almost platinum at times. He considered his eyes a shade of blue, but apparently they were an unusual shade, as many people—especially the women in his life—had tried to explain.

  As he closed in on his fortieth birthday, Kurt had rededicated himself to working out. He’d always been in shape. A career in the Navy and several years as part of a clandestine CIA salvage team required it. But with the decade number on his age going to four, Kurt was determined to get in the best shape of his life, better than he’d been at thirty, better than he’d been at twenty.

  It was a tall order. It took more work, left more aches and pains, and was slower in coming than when he’d been younger, but he was almost there.

  Ten pounds lighter than he’d been a year before, benching, curling, and lifting more weight in the gym, he could feel the strength surging through his body like it had in his youth when he believed he could do anything.

  It was needed too. A career at NUMA came with lots of physical punishment. Beyond the regular labor-intensive work of any salvage operation, he’d also been beat up, shot at, and half drowned on a regular basis. After a while the dings started to add up. A year ago he’d considered taking up a standing offer to go back to work for his father, who owned a prominent salvage company of his own. But that felt like leaving on someone else’s terms, and if there was one thing Kurt Austin didn’t do, it was follow any lead but his own.

  He stared out at the horizon as it changed from a deep indigo to a pale grayish blue. The light was rising even though the sun had yet to show its face. He stretched and turned, trying to crack his back. Off the starboard beam, something caught his eye; a thin trail of smoke, drifting skyward.

  He hadn’t seen it during his run, the darkness had obscured it, but it was no illusion.

  He squinted and stared, but in the predawn gloom he couldn’t make out the source of the smoke. He took one last glance and then headed for the stairs.

&nb
sp; Austin stepped onto the bridge to find Captain Robert Haynes, the Argo’s commanding officer, standing with the officer of the watch, plotting out their course to the Azores, where the NUMA team would participate in an X Prize–like race to crown the world’s fastest two-man submarine.

  The operation was a milk run. A pure research assignment given to Kurt and his partner, Joe Zavala, as a reward for all the heavy lifting they’d done on recent missions. Joe was already on Santa Maria Island making preparations and, as Kurt guessed, making friends, especially among the women. Kurt was looking forward to joining him, but before the minivacation could begin they would have to make a slight detour.

  Haynes never lifted his eyes from the charts. “Done wearing out my decks?” he asked.

  “For now,” Kurt replied. “But we’re going to need to change course to one-nine-zero.”

  The captain looked up briefly and then back down at the chart table. “I told you before, Kurt, you lose something over the side, you’re going to have to swim for it if you want it back.”

  Kurt smiled briefly, but the situation was serious.

  “There’s a line of smoke off our starboard beam,” Kurt said. “Someone’s got a fire going, and I don’t think it’s a barbecue.”

  The captain stood straight, the joking look gone from his face. A fire at sea is an incredibly dangerous event. Ships are filled with pipes and conduits that carry flammable liquids like fuel and hydraulic fluid. They often carry dangerous and even explosive cargoes: oil, natural gas, coal, and chemicals, even metals like magnesium and aluminum that burn. And unlike a fire on land, there’s really nowhere safe to run unless you abandon ship, the last option in any captain’s handbook.

  Kurt knew this, as did every man on the Argo. Captain Haynes didn’t hesitate or even attempt to confirm the accuracy of Kurt’s assessment. He turned to the helmsman.

  “Take us around,” he said. “Make your course one-nine-zero. Bring us to flank speed.”

  As the helmsman executed the order, the captain grabbed a pair of binoculars and headed out onto the starboard wing of the bridge. Kurt followed.

  The Argo was fairly close to the equator, and at such latitudes the light grew quickly. Kurt could see the smoke plainly now, even without the binoculars. Thick and dark, it rose skyward in a narrow vertical column, thinning out only marginally on the way up and drifting slightly to the east.

  “Looks like a cargo vessel,” Captain Haynes said.

  He handed the binoculars to Kurt.

  Kurt trained them on the ship. She was a midsize vessel, not a containership but a bulk carrier. She appeared to be adrift.

  “That’s oil smoke,” Kurt said. “The whole ship is shrouded in it, but it’s thickest near the aft end.”

  “Engine-room fire,” Haynes said. “Or a problem with one of the bunkers.”

  That would have been Kurt’s guess as well.

  “Did you pick up any distress calls?”

  Captain Haynes shook his head. “Nothing. Just regular chatter on the radio.”

  Kurt wondered if the fire had taken out her electrical system. But even if it had, most ships carried backups, and every vessel of that size would have a few handheld transceivers, an emergency beacon, and even radios in the main lifeboats. To hear nothing from a 500-foot vessel burning and adrift seemed all but impossible.

  By now the Argo had finished its turn and was heading dead at the stricken ship. Her speed was coming up, and Kurt could feel them surging through the water. The Argo could make 30 knots in calm seas. Kurt guessed the range at just over five miles, closer than he’d first thought. That was a good thing.

  But ten minutes later, as he trained the binoculars on the superstructure and increased the magnification, he spotted several things that were less than good.

  Flames were licking out through various hatches all along the deck, meaning the entire vessel was burning, not just the engine room. The ship was definitely listing to port and was down at the bow, meaning she was taking on water as well as burning. But worst of all, there were men on the decks who seemed to be dragging something toward the rail.

  At first Kurt thought it was an injured crewman, but then they let go of the person, dropping him to the deck. The man tumbled as if he’d been shoved and then got up and began to run. He made three or four steps, only to fall forward suddenly onto his face.

  Kurt snapped the binoculars to the right just to be sure. He could clearly see a man holding an assault rifle. Without a sound he saw the muzzle flash. One burst and then another.

  Kurt turned back to the man who’d fallen. He lay utterly still now, facedown on the deck.

  Pirates, Kurt thought. Hijackers with assault rifles. The cargo vessel was in deeper trouble than he’d guessed.

  Kurt lowered the binoculars, fully aware that they were now heading toward more then a rescue.

  “Captain,” he said. “Our problems just multiplied.”

  4

  ABOARD THE KINJARA MARU, Kristi Nordegrun struggled with the darkness. Her ears rang with a strange sound, and her head pounded as if she’d been drinking all night. She lay on the floor, her limbs stiff and folded under her in an awkward tangle.

  Try as she might, she could not even remember how she’d gotten there, let alone what had happened. Based on the numbness in her legs, she guessed she had been in that position for a long time.

  Unable to stand yet, Kristi propped herself up against the wall, fighting an unbalanced equilibrium.

  She was in the deepest part of the crew’s quarters, several flights below deck and near the center of the vessel. She’d come here because the mess was on this deck and she was going to meet her husband for a late meal before they retired for the night. She looked around but didn’t see him. That concerned her.

  If she had been knocked unconscious for some time, surely her husband would have found her. Then again, if the ship was in trouble, his first duty was as captain.

  Kristi realized she could smell smoke. She couldn’t remember an explosion, but the ship was definitely on fire. She remembered her husband telling her there were some waters of the world where terrorists planted mines. But it seemed not to concern him on this journey.

  She tried again to stand, fell to the side, and knocked over a table upon which cans of soda stood. In the darkness she heard a strange sound, like marbles rolling around.

  The noise moved away from her but continued until ending with several dull clunks. At that moment Kristi realized what had happened: the cans were rolling away from her, gathering speed until they hit the bulkhead.

  Her equilibrium was definitely off, but so was the floor. The ship was tilting, listing. Panic gripped her. She knew now that the ship was sinking.

  She crawled to the wall, bumped into it, and then followed it to the door. She pushed on the door. It moved a few inches and then hit something soft. She pushed again, leaning her shoulder into it and shoving it a few more inches. Trying to squeeze through, she realized the object blocking her way was the body of a man, lying against the door.

  As she pushed, the man moved a fraction, rolling over and moaning.

  “Who are you?” she said. “Are you hurt?”

  “Mrs. Nordegrun,” the man managed to say.

  She recognized the voice, one of her husband’s crew members from the bridge. A nice man, from the Philippines, her husband had said he’d be a good officer one day.

  “Mr. Talan?”

  He sat up. “Yes,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “I have no balance,” she said. “I think we’re sinking.”

  “Something happened,” he said. “We have to get off the ship.”

  “What about my husband?”

  “He’s on the bridge,” Talan said. “He sent me for you. Can you make it to the stairs?”

  “I can,” she said. “Even if I have to crawl.”

  “Is better that way,” he said, finding her hand and guiding her in the right direction.

  “Yes,” s
he agreed. “We need to stay underneath the smoke if we can.”

  Before getting married, Kristi had been a paramedic and then a trauma nurse. She’d been on the scene of many accidents and fires and even a building collapse. And despite her fear and confusion, her past training and experience were kicking in and taking over.

  Together, they began crawling along the floor. Fifty feet on, they found another crewman, but they could not wake him.

  Kristi feared the worst but had to be sure. She checked the man for a pulse.

  “He’s dead.”

  “How?” Talan asked.

  She didn’t know. In fact, she could find no marks on him, and his neck seemed uninjured.

  “Perhaps the fumes?”

  The smoke was thicker here, but it didn’t seem dense enough to kill.

  Kristi put the dead man’s hand back on his chest, and the two crawled on. They reached the stairwell and pushed the door open. To Kristi’s relief there was less smoke inside, and by holding on to the railing she could stand.

  As they began to climb, a thin shaft of light shone down on them. In the hallway, some of the emergency lights were working while others were out, and at first Kristi guessed that this illumination came from an emergency light in the stairwell, but there was something odd about it. The light was whiter, more natural, and it seemed to dim and brighten sporadically.

  Two levels up was a door with a tempered-glass window in it. Kristi guessed that the light was coming from there, but it made little sense to her. It had been dark when she’d gone to the ship’s pantry. How could it be daylight?

  She knew there had to be another explanation. She kept climbing, trying to keep up with Talan. As they reached the landing at the top, daylight streamed in from outside, obscured off and on by waves of smoke that drifted by.

  “It’s morning,” she said, dumbfounded.

  “We must have been unconscious for many hours,” Talan said.