off in different directions to search the ship. She and Cole were supposed to make their way to the bridge. He was going to have a word with the captain and obtain the guy’s cooperation—at gunpoint if necessary. The other team members would go below decks, searching the ship and making their way to the bridge by other means.
Hanging on to the deck rail with both hands, she followed Perriman aft toward the conning tower. In a storm this bad, they didn’t expect to see any crew above deck, and indeed, the open area between the tall stacks of shipping containers and the ship’s superstructure aft was deserted and dark.
Perriman stopped in front of a hatch, and she endured a nauseating roll by the Anna Belle way over to one side, the sickening pause while the ship teetered on the brink of capsizing, and then the roll back the other way.
How Cole unlocked the steel door, she had no idea. But she was relieved when he threw it open. She dived inside and helped him haul the heavy door shut against gravity as the ship rolled again. He threw the handle and latched the door behind them.
The relative quiet and the relief from the hammering pain of hurricane-driven rain was intense. The ship still rolled like a big dog beneath her feet, but in here, she couldn’t see the ocean and had less of a sense of being ready to capsize.
Perriman hand-signaled her to follow him. She nodded and fell in behind him as he raced silently up a set of metal stairs. He paused at the doorway to the next deck, peering through a tiny window before opening the door. Bracing herself against the wall as the ship rocked, she followed him into what looked like a small dining room.
“Stay here,” Cole breathed.
Gladly. She nodded and he disappeared behind a swinging door into the kitchen, according to the ship’s diagrams that they’d studied on the helicopter ride out here. Perriman swung back into view, staggering a little as the ship heaved.
“Clear,” he announced.
Deck by deck, the two of them cleared their way up the superstructure toward the bridge. Oddly, they didn’t run into a single crew member. Maybe the captain had sent everyone to strap themselves in the sleeping quarters below decks to ride out the storm. Cole had mentioned that such a thing was possible, so she wasn’t completely freaked out by how deserted the command portion of the ship was.
They turned the corner to the last flight of steps leading to the bridge. Unlike the living areas below, this space was guaranteed to have crew members in it. Cole paused, checked over his shoulder that she was ready with her pistol drawn and then he charged the bridge.
She went in on his heels, awkwardly spinning left as the deck tilted underfoot to cover Cole’s back as he spun to cover the right half of the space.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed.
The bridge was deserted.
From up here, she could see outside again, and the ship rolled dangerously far over onto its side as she glanced out. From this high up in the air, the list was even more pronounced, and she all but froze again in panic.
Perriman jabbed at his throat mike. “Bridge is abandoned. I repeat. Abandoned. Report if able.”
Bass and Ashe both reported immediately that they’d been unable to find any crew members aboard the vessel.
“Complete your search and join us on the bridge,” he ordered.
She looked over the panel of controls. Every needle was at zero. The ship was completely shut down. This could not be good. “Can we start the engines or something?” she asked.
“Diesel engines are not as simple to start as flipping a switch. But maybe I could get a generator online.” Perriman fiddled with a set of controls to one side of the ship’s wheel, and then swore quietly. She gathered that meant they weren’t going to get any lights on.
“Batteries are dead, too.”
“Has the crew abandoned ship?” Nissa asked.
Perriman frowned. “They sent no distress signals.”
“Maybe there was no time to send one?”
“The ship’s still afloat. Granted not for long the way she’s listing, but still. We could send a signal right now if we had even an inch of battery power. I can’t believe they ran the batteries all the way down before they got out a call for help.”
The door opened behind them and Nissa spun fast, jumpy as heck, weapon drawn. It was Bass and Ashe.
“Funny thing, boss,” Bass said. “The generators looked like someone took a sledgehammer to them. The batteries were pulled free of their moorings and smashed up, too.”
“The engines?”
“I couldn’t see any damage at a glance,” Ashe replied. “But I got nothing when I tried to start up the diagnostic panel at the engineer’s panel. I looked under the console and found a bunch of ripped out wires beneath it.”
Curious, Nissa dropped to her knees to take a peek under the dashboard in front of her. “Uh, guys. All the wires and conduits I’m seeing down here are trashed, too.”
“So the ship’s been sabotaged,” Cole responded. “Why?”
The ship leaned particularly far onto its port side just then and everyone grabbed on to something to stay upright. She stared in dread at the tall stacks of containers tilting perilously.
“I’ve being doing weight and balance calculations on ships my whole naval career, and I’ve never seen a ship this badly loaded. The manifest showed the cargo spread out in three layers over the entire deck, not stacked six high all afore midships like this,” Ashe complained. “She feels too light in the water for the weight listed on the manifest, too.”
Cole looked at him keenly. “What are you saying?”
Ashe shrugged asking instead, “Hey, Bass. Are the holds full to the brim with wheat like the manifest said?”
“Negative. All the holds are empty.”
“Holy hell,” Ashe breathed. “Sir, we have to get off this ship immediately. She’s in imminent danger of capsizing.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, the storm’s getting worse. Fast. The idea was to turn this ship around and sail it back to New Orleans with the prisoner in custody.”
Ashe replied urgently, “Even if we could get the engines running, this ship is top-heavy as hell and has no ballast below decks. I can’t believe she hasn’t gone over already. I’m telling you, sir, we have to get off the Anna Belle now.”
“And you’re sure no one but us is still aboard?” Cole asked.
Bass and Ashe both nodded and murmured in the affirmative.
Perriman ordered tersely, “Let’s get out of here, ASAP.”
After that, it was all elbows and assholes as they raced downstairs, Ashe’s warning ringing in Nissa’s ears.
The trip back down the rope ladder of doom wasn’t nearly as bad for Nissa because she was so bloody relieved to be getting
