H. Dark Hunt: A Ryan Weller Thriller Book 7 Paperback

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CHAPTER 1

Sea Tiger
Caribbean Sea

Captain Kristoffer Barsness wasn’t a superstitious man, but if ever there was a voyage full of omens, he was on it.
Nothing seemed to have gone right since leaving port, and now the teeth of a tropical storm were gnashing at their stern. They were halfway across the Caribbean Sea, dragging the defunct cruise ship Galina Jovovich, named after a Russian actress, from the Port of Miami to the breaking yard in Bluefields, Nicaragua, where they’d cut her up for scrap.
Barsness stared out the water-streaked rear windows on the bridge of his ocean-going X-Bow tug, Sea Tiger, as it plowed through the driving rain, its thick tow cable disappearing into the darkness. This was the Sea Tiger’s first tow, but Barsness couldn’t count how many tows he’d made in the fifty years he’d been plying the seas.
The old Norwegian ran a hand over his stubbly gray hair, cut short to the scalp to disguise where it was thinning on top. He was tall, with powerful shoulders and a thick chest sculpted from years of deck work as he’d made his way up through the ranks to command his own tug. He’d just come on for the midnight watch, and he sipped from a mug of coffee as he listened to Martin Aadland, his short, pudgy first mate, as he gave a summary of the previous four hours.
But Barsness’ mind was on the Galina. The Soviets had originally designed the ship to weather the brutal environment of the Baltic and North Seas, but with the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the ship had fallen into disuses until a Canadian firm had purchased the ship and moved her to Argentina, where they ran cruises to the polar ice caps of Antarctica. When the owners had taken the Galina to Miami for a much-needed retrofit, they’d mismanaged their funds and the vessel had gone into receivership. The owners had left the ship to rot at a dock on the Miami River, where she was an eyesore to developers and to the owners of high-end condos that overlooked the wharf. Eventually, the City of Miami had seized the vessel and auctioned her off to the highest bidder to pay the crew and to recoup the government’s costs. The winning bidder decided she wasn’t worth saving and had hired the Norwegian firm, Stavanger Marine, to tow the forty-five-year-old Galina to the breakers.
The Galina Jovovich had a stout bow for breaking ice, so she contained a lot of extra steel to strengthen her hull, perfect for breaking and recycling, but, so far, the trip to Bluefields had been fraught with danger and inexplicable complications.
Before they’d even left the Port of Miami, Sea Tiger’s primary tow cable had snapped. Fortunately, the harbor escort tugs had quickly corralled the wayward ship before the Galina could do any damage. The crew of the Sea Tiger had rigged the backup cable, but Barsness had his doubts about its strength. Stavanger might have provided him with a magnificent ship, but they’d cut corners, and one of those was the used backup cable. Even though it had been inspected and certified, it wasn’t the same as the original, which, in hindsight, Barsness thought, wasn’t that great either. Now, with the coming storm, there would be even more strain on the cable.
Aadland finished his report by saying, “The tropical storm should pass to our west, but we’re in for a rough ride.”
Barsness sipped his coffee, pondering the situation.
When the captain didn’t speak, Aadland continued. “Seas are building to two meters and the winds are holding steady at a three, with gusts up to four.”
As a young officer, Barsness had memorized the Beaufort scale, an empirical measurement of wind speed. A three was between twelve to nineteen kilometers per hour, and a four registered between twenty and twenty-eight.
“What does the radar show?” Barsness asked, picking a piece of lint from his pressed white shirt. As always, the epaulets with the four gold bars remained fixed in place on his shoulders. He preferred to wear coveralls to prevent his uniform from becoming dirty and to avoid his wife’s curses when she had to remove a stain, but Stavanger Marine wanted their captains dressed for the part.
Aadland moved the mouse on the computer and refreshed the screen. “It’s on track to cross the Virgin Islands, enter the Caribbean, and turn toward Jamaica.”
No one had told Mother Nature that hurricane season had yet to start. She clearly had a mind of her own, and she’d created an early May storm.
“We should cross ahead of it,” Barsness said, looking over his first mate’s shoulder.
“Aye, Captain,” Aadland replied.
It would have been faster to cross through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, but, given their current problems, Barsness had decided to use the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to avoid maneuvering around the Windward Passage’s heavier traffic. The extra time in transit now put them dangerously close to the storm’s track, and the decision seemed to put everyone on his ship in peril. Barsness shuddered at the thought of being caught in a hurricane with the cruise ship in tow.
He ordered the mate to turn them onto a new course that would swing them farther south and wide of the storm, avoiding the worst of the pounding waves and driving winds. He glanced through the window again at the ship under tow. Its black hulk was lit with battery-powered running lights to prevent collisions, but he could barely make them out. Were the batteries dying already? There was no way he could put crewmen on the Galina to change them, not in this weather. He shuddered again. The old ship was spooky.
As Sea Tiger changed course, turning broadside to the mounting waves, the tow cable sagged and creaked as the Galina took the tension, like a giant dog shaking on a leash. Barsness had never seen anything like it.
“Keep it steady,” he snapped at the helmsman, Erik Sorbo, a skinny, fresh-faced man with blond hair and blue eyes who was a recent graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy. Despite Sorbo being in his early twenties, Barsness still thought of him as a kid.
“Aye, sir, I’m trying,” Sorbo said. “The waves are making it difficult.”
“Stand aside,” Barsness barked.
Despite the captain’s struggle with the controls, even he could not keep the tow cable from sagging. The cable’s pop was audible on the bridge each time the tension returned. Barsness cursed, wishing he had a wheel to control the tug, instead of these bloody joysticks.
“She’s not going to make it if this keeps up, sir,” Sorbo said.
Barsness relinquished the controls back to the helmsman and allowed him to wrestle with the two ships while he kept his mouth shut. The joystick controls on this modern ship just weren’t his forte.
Once Sorbo had completed the turn, the tension on the cable lessened. Barsness hoped the currents of the heavy following sea would give them an extra push on their way across the Caribbean. Their transition of the Mona Passage would have allowed them to make a straight run for Bluefields, but now they were dipping south toward Venezuela, making the voyage longer and less profitable due to the extra fuel being burned by the Sea Tiger’s powerful engines.
He picked up his coffee mug and sipped again, gazing out at Galina Jovovich’s weak running lights. Has the starboard light gone out?
With luck, the seas would smooth out and they’d make it to the breaking yard with only a day or two of delay. While the winds were still blowing hard, the waves didn’t seem as tall, lessening the pitch and roll of the Sea Tiger.
They monitored the storm as it continued to form in the east. Captain Barsness retired from his watch to sleep for four hours before he would spend the coming day on the bridge. He yawned as he walked to his cabin. He hung his shirt on a hanger in his closet and washed his face in the sink.
Stepping to his bunk, he dropped into bed, worried about the storm, the delay in delivering the ship, and his wife, Ruth, being home alone. He concentrated on the pleasant days they had spent together, sitting on their porch and watching the ships on the Vesterelva River sailing to and from Fredrikstad.
His alarm clock woke him from a fitful sleep, and a rising sun greeted him, streaking the sky with brilliant reds. Overnight, the waves had increased, and he could feel the Sea Tiger plunging and tugging at her cable. He jammed on his shoes and tugged on his shirt, buttoning it as he raced to the helm.
“What’s happening, Martin?”
“The storm track has changed. It’s heading right for us. I’ve already made a course correction, but we’ll just have to ride it out. We can’t move fast enough to get out of the way.”
Barsness cursed and glanced at the Galina. She crested the waves uneasily, her bow plummeting up and down, straining against the tow cable. There wasn’t anything to do but ride it out and pray for the best. He would stay on duty all the way to Bluefields if needed.
Outside, the waves continued to mount as the clouds obscured the sun and day turned into night. Rain lashed the windows, driven sideways by the high winds. With one hand on the back of the pilot’s chair, Barsness continuously scanned the stormy sea beyond the front and rear windows, then checked the radar screens and instruments. They would get the worst of it; of that, he had no doubt.
It was late evening when Aadland came on deck. “You need to rest, Captain.”
“Not now, Martin. I must see the ship through this storm. Then I’ll rest.”
The tropical storm tracked right along the course of the Sea Tiger, as if sensing the Galina wanted nothing to do with being towed to the breaking yard. The Galina seemed to fight them at every step. Barsness continued to fret about the integrity of the cable and the tow harness. He looked back, the Galina’s bow was just barely visible. Heavy rain and fog shrouded the rest of the ship.
Did the batteries die in the running lights? he wondered.
In the middle of the Caribbean, the storm stalled and built into a raging hurricane, delivering force twelve winds at over one hundred miles per hour and creating forty-foot waves. Barsness ordered a further course deviation to the south, trying to skirt the edge of the storm.
His heart sank when he heard the tow cable part with the sound of a cracking whip. The loose end smacked the tug’s steel superstructure with a resounding thud that reverberated through the hull.
“Ninety degrees to port, now!” Captain Barsness shouted.
Sorbo jerked the joystick and the big tug responded at once, leaning hard to the left. Coffee mugs slid off consoles and shattered on the deck. Loose papers fluttered through the air as Barsness clutched the back of the helmsman’s seat. The sudden maneuver moved them out of the direct path of the rudderless ship behind them.
“Straighten up, Erik,” Barsness said, and Sorbo righted the tug. “Maximum speed to the south.”
Barsness swore under his breath. Sea Tiger was a state-of-the-art ship, with the newest and the best of everything. How could this have happened? He’d never lost a ship under his tow. This would be the end of a long and prosperous career, but that was a worry for later. Right now, all that mattered was the safety of the Sea Tiger and his crew.
Aadland struggled across the bridge to where Barsness stood behind Sorbo’s seat. “We have to track the Galina.”
“We’ll find her again,” Barsness answered.
“Her AIS has been dismantled and she has no running lights,” Aadland cried.
While under tow, the Galina hadn’t been equipped with an Automatic Identification System that provided course and speed to a satellite tracking system, as no one had expected her to break loose. Now that she was adrift in the powerful storm, there was no telling where she’d end up.
“May God have mercy on her,” Barsness said, as the Galina Jovovich disappeared into the raging tempest.