Piranha

When she leaped through the window, she had fallen ten feet onto the interior bulkhead wall of a cabin. She must have sat there for five minutes. Her mind replayed the deaths of her entire crew as she tried to rationalize the attack, the same type that must have been carried out against the company’s other vessels. These were no pirates, not if they didn’t take hostages. Obviously, their goal was to sink the ship with her on it and they weren’t going to give up just because she had pulled off the miracle of saving it.

She couldn’t return to the bridge to radio her situation. If the attackers boarded the ship, that would be their primary destination. After tending to her wound, Maria sought a hiding place until rescuers arrived.

Because of its extreme list, the ship she knew intimately was now foreign to her. She had to keep reminding herself that what used to be port was now down and what used to be starboard was now up.

The crew’s quarters—including the cabin where she was now taking refuge—galley, mess hall, and offices were all located in the one-story accommodation block atop the ship behind the bridge. Every deck below it was dedicated to cargo or equipment to run the ship.

Maria wanted to put as much distance between her and the bridge as she could. She lowered herself into the corridor. Her foot slipped onto the opposing door’s handle and it flew open, the dark room below nearly swallowing her in the process. She caught herself at the last moment and collapsed to her knees next to the yawning cavity.

Willing herself to her feet, she made her way down the hall toward the stern. Her first impediment was a corridor whose double doors were shut. To get across, she would have to stand on the doors. The frame at the top of the doors was too narrow to use at the ship’s current tilt. Two light stamps with her foot confirmed that they would hold. She crossed, fully expecting it to snap inward and cause her to plummet a hundred feet to the other side of the ship.

During her traverse she heard a helicopter and thought she’d been saved, but gunfire scared it away before she could attempt contact with it.

After a few more leaps across open cabin doors, she reached the rear of the accommodation block atop the ship. She had three options: hide in one of the rooms she’d passed, go out onto the open weather deck, or try to make her way down the stairs, where she could hide among the thousands of cars in the cargo holds. Since she would be seen immediately outside, and the hijackers would expect her to hide in the crew’s quarters, cargo was her choice.

It was only then that she noticed the tilt of the ship had lessened by five degrees, and it was continuing to decrease almost imperceptibly. The ship seemed to be righting itself.

At first, Maria was relieved, but then she had the horrible sense that something was wrong. She was sure she had shut the ballast tanks down. If some of them were now leaking, the remaining intact tanks would have to be rebalanced.

She had to get to the engineering station, though there was no way she could make it all the way to the engine room while the ship’s list was so pronounced. She would have to climb down the stairs and then wait until the decks were navigable before she could complete the trip.

She sprung the latch on the stairwell door and it swung down with a bang that was much louder than she thought it would be. She poked her head through and saw movement down the stairs.

Someone was coming.

She stood and looked for anything that she could use as a weapon. The only item close by was a fire extinguisher. She took it from the wall and crouched, ready to spray her attacker with foam before smashing him with the metal tank. Her breathing was ragged, but she minimized the sound by sucking in through her mouth.

She wasn’t sure if it was just one man or more, but it didn’t really matter. She was in no shape to make a run for it.

To her surprise, it wasn’t a head that poked out of the stairwell door. It was a mirror on the end of a stick. Her best chance was to rush the intruder, so she ran forward, stuck the fire extinguisher tube down the opening, and pulled the trigger.

A man below her shielded his eyes and dropped to his knees to avoid the spray.

“Hold your fire,” he said, but he wasn’t talking to Maria. He had turned to address someone behind him. The voice was oddly calm and controlled, and she even thought she heard relief in the way he said it.

Maria released the trigger and held the extinguisher up in a defensive posture. If they wanted to capture her alive, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them.

She could now see that there were four men in the stairwell. The man she’d sprayed stood and put his hands up. A machine gun strapped to his shoulder dangled harmlessly by his side. He was a tall, athletic man with close-cropped blond hair. He beamed up at her with a smile, genuine and warm.

“It’s okay,” he said in American English.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Juan Cabrillo. I’m captain of the ship that responded to your distress call. This is Eddie, Linc, and MacD.” The three men nodded greetings. All of them were as heavily armed as their captain.

“You were the ones in the helicopter?”

Juan nodded. “Unfortunately, the pilot had to get back to our ship. Your arm looks like it needs some first aid. Why don’t you put that down?”

His story made sense, and she was desperate. She dropped the extinguisher. The four of them climbed out of the stairwell.

“Are you with the U.S. Navy?” she asked.

“No. Just Good Samaritans. Do you mind if one of my guys puts a new bandage on there?”

She nodded. Eddie sat her down, opened a first aid kit, and removed her slapdash bandage.

After examining the wound, he said, “It doesn’t look too bad, but it’s going to need a few stitches from Hux.” Eddie began to wrap it with gauze and tape.

“I’m glad your injury isn’t more serious. You’re the captain, I presume?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Maria Sandoval. How did you know that?”

“When we received the distress call, we did some quick research about your vessel and I saw your name as the master. I don’t imagine there are many other women on the crew.”

“My crew,” she repeated in a low tone.

“Where are they?”

“Dead. Those bastards killed them all after they escaped on our lifeboat.”

A haunted look flashed through Juan’s eyes. As a captain himself, he would be able to imagine what it would be like to lose a crew that way. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are they doing this?”

“We’ll talk about that later. First, we need to keep them from sinking this ship. We saw one of them on the bridge.”

Maria went ashen. “Then he set more of the ballast tanks to drain. That’s why the list is correcting itself. I emptied two of the tanks to keep us from capsizing.”

“That was quick thinking to save your ship.”

“When will your ship arrive?”

“It won’t be here for at least twenty minutes.”

Maria’s shoulders sagged at the news. “I don’t even know how they put those holes in my ship.”

“It has to be some kind of submarine,” Juan said. “We saw one of the holes when we flew in. It was a perfect circle.”

“There were eight holes put in the hull at the same time, and we didn’t detect anything on sonar. What kind of submarine can do that?”

“I don’t know. There may be more than one. If so, they’re probably remotely operated.”

“Then we’re dead. How can we stop them from attacking again?”

“They might be single-use weapons. The men outside wouldn’t be climbing onto the ship if the subs were coming back.”

“We need to stop the ballast tanks from draining completely,” Maria said. “We’ll be too top-heavy if that happens. Once we reach a critical angle the other direction, we’ll flip right over.” The list continued to decrease.