Chapter 9 - The Abandoned Ship
“We have to abandon ship!” Julian screamed, coughing violently as the toxic black smoke from the burning electrical console filled the pilot house, stinging our eyes and turning the air into a suffocating, chemical soup. He crawled frantically across the carpet toward the external sliding door leading to the upper bridge deck, abandoning all thoughts of his brother, his money, or his pride.
I didn't follow him immediately. In any maritime evacuation, you secure your survival assets before leaving the primary platform. I pulled my ruined silk tunic up over my nose and mouth to act as a rudimentary particulate filter, squinting through the blinding, white-hot glare of the magnesium fire as it melted through the underlying fiberglass superstructure.
I scrambled down the mezzanine stairs into the main salon. The smoke was banking down rapidly from the ceiling, leaving barely three feet of breathable air near the floorboards.
Marcus was coughing uncontrollably in the leather chair, his eyes streaming with tears, his face purple as he thrashed against the nylon cable ties securing his wrists to the heavy table base.
“Kate!” he choked out, his voice reduced to a desperate, ragged rasp as he saw me drop to my knees beside him. “Please! God, please don't leave me here! It’s burning! I can’t breathe!”
I looked at him through the gloom. Ten minutes ago, he had coldly calculated my death in the freezing waters of the sound; five minutes ago, he had ordered his brother to shoot me in the chest with a burning flare. The absolute, ruthless justice of leaving him to burn with the ship he had chartered for my execution was a dark, tempting thought that crossed my military mind for a fraction of a second.
But I am a soldier of the United States, not a murderer. My integrity is not dictated by the morality of my enemies.
I reached to my ankle, pulling a small, serrated rescue knife I had stripped from Captain Briggs’s life vest in the engine room. I slipped the steel blade beneath the thick nylon cable ties binding Marcus’s wrists and sawed upward with three aggressive, sawing motions.
The plastic snapped.
“Get to the aft deck,” I ordered, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him off the chair before he could collapse from smoke inhalation. “The motorized Zodiac tender is strapped to the swim platform. Move!”
We stumbled together through the shattered glass of the starboard salon doors, bursting out onto the open teak deck into the freezing, clean embrace of the Pacific fog. The difference in air quality was a physical shock; we both collapsed onto our knees on the wet wood, hacking and gasping as our lungs cleared the toxic electrical smoke.
Above us on the upper bridge deck, flames were now licking out of the pilot house windows, casting a terrifying, flickering orange glow against the dense gray fog enclosing the vessel. The heat radiating from the fiberglass superstructure was intense, warming the freezing night air.
“Where... where is Julian?” Marcus wheezed, wiping soot and tears from his face as he pushed himself up against the stainless-steel railing.
“He went out the upper side door,” I said, looking toward the stern swim platform.
My blood ran cold.
The heavy, davit-mounted crane that held the sixteen-foot motorized Zodiac tender had been swung outward over the dark water. The lifting cables were dangling empty in the fog.
I ran to the edge of the stern railing, looking down into the freezing, black water of the sound.
Thirty yards away, barely visible through the swirling gray mist and the orange reflection of the yacht’s fire, the motorized Zodiac was speeding away from the burning vessel. At the tiller sat Captain Briggs, his head wrapped in a bloody rag from our engine room encounter. Sitting in the bow, clutching a waterproof duffel bag containing the remaining cash and ship's documents, was Julian.
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“Julian!” Marcus screamed over the roar of the fire behind us, his voice cracking with absolute, horrified betrayal as he gripped the stern railing. “Julian, come back! You left us!”
The Zodiac didn't slow down. Julian didn't even turn his head to look back at his older brother or his wife trapped on the burning seventy-foot hull. He simply stared straight ahead into the fog, disappearing into the darkness as the sound of the outboard motor faded into the rhythmic booming of the distant foghorn.
