Chapter 12 - THE SHIP OF GHOSTS
Harbor Crown listed heavily to starboard when the destroyer reached it.
Fire covered the aft deck.
Black smoke disappeared into the storm.
Commander Cross transferred me aboard by rescue boat.
Ruiz came with me.
The crew had evacuated the upper compartments.
Eleven engineers remained trapped below.
Water flooded through the damaged hull.
The emergency hatch had warped shut.
I recognized the design.
It was an older version of the hatch I had held open five years earlier.
Cross looked at the scars visible above my collar.
“You do not have to go down there.”
“Yes, I do.”
We descended into smoke.
The deck shook beneath each wave.
The trapped engineers hammered against the other side of the hatch.
Ruiz attached hydraulic equipment to the locking mechanism.
The pressure lines failed.
A crew member found a manual release beneath the floor.
It required someone to hold the lever while the hatch opened.
The compartment was already filling with burning fuel.
I took the lever.
Cross objected.
I ordered him to begin the evacuation.
The first engineer crawled through.
Then the second.
Fire spread along the wall behind me.
Pain returned to my back as heat reached the old scars.
The final engineer was unconscious.
Cross dragged him beneath the hatch.
“Let go,” he shouted.
I released the lever.
The hatch slammed shut as the compartment collapsed.
Ruiz pulled me up the ladder seconds before the lower deck flooded.
All eleven engineers survived.
Firefighters stabilized the vessel.
Federal agents opened the insured containers.
They did not contain generators.
They contained counterfeit aviation control systems, naval pressure assemblies, and restricted microprocessors.
Each crate bore inspection seals from Vale Maritime subsidiaries.
In the captain’s cabin, Ruiz found a satellite phone.
The call history showed repeated contact with Arthur.
The captain admitted Arthur had ordered him to abandon the ship after setting the engine-room charge.
He refused.
Harlan Pike activated the device remotely.
We also found a locked briefcase attached to a flotation buoy.
Inside were original contracts signed by Arthur and Marcus.
Marcus had not signed one accidental shipment.
He had signed seventeen.
When I confronted him, he collapsed into the interview-room chair.
“Father told me the equipment would never enter active service.”
“You believed that seventeen times?”
“No.”
“After the first three, I stopped asking.”
Seven sailors had died because Marcus stopped asking.
He covered his face.
“I deserve whatever happens.”
“That is not for you to decide.”
“What do you want from me?”
“The truth.”
“Even if it destroys what is left of our family?”
“Our family was destroyed when everyone chose silence.”
Marcus agreed to testify.
The following morning, Arthur’s attorneys released another recording.
It showed Admiral Reed receiving the envelope inside Vale Manor.
A bank transfer appeared beside the footage.
Five million dollars had entered an account linked to Reed one day later.
The media called it a bribe.
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The Department of Defense suspended Admiral Reed before he could testify.
The man who had saluted me in front of the world was escorted from naval headquarters in silence.
