Chapter 11 - The Whistleblower’s Dilemma
"Stay where you are," Briggs' voice rasped through the speaker. "I'm coming back myself."
Two minutes later, the heavy watertight door leading from the superstructure groaned open. Briggs stepped onto the slick steel deck, holding a waterproof flashlight in his left hand, his pistol cocked in his right.
He looked wild. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his uniform disheveled, the fiberglass cast around his wrist gray with grime.
"Where is it?" Briggs demanded, shining the beam into the dark shadow of the winch housing. "Where’s the body?"
"Right behind you, Ryan."
Briggs whipped around, swinging the pistol up, but I was already inside his arc.
I struck his injured right arm with a sharp palm strike.
The agony of fractured bone slamming against the cast detonated through his nervous system. A high-pitched, strangled scream tore out of his throat as his hand spasmed open. The .45 clattered across the steel diamond plate and vanished through a scupper hole into the black ocean below.
I drove my forearm into his chest, pinning him against the cold steel bulkhead. The tip of my dive blade rested one millimeter beneath his jugular vein.
"Make a sound," I whispered, "and you test how fast this harbor empties your blood."
He was panting, his eyes bulging in pure terror. He could feel the cold edge of the steel pressed against his pulse.
"Mitchell..." he stammered, his bravado entirely crushed. "Listen to me... listen... they set me up. They set both of us up."
"Save it for the judge advocate," I said.
"No, you don't understand!" Briggs pleaded, tears of pain and panic streaming down his mud-streaked cheeks. "Sterling... Sterling isn't selling this gear to brokers! He's running an unsanctioned paramilitary supply ring for private corporate syndicates in South America! They told me if I didn't push the manifests through, my sister's house in Fayetteville would burn with her kids inside!"
I didn't move the knife. "You spent four days humiliating recruits, forging documents, and you tried to shoot me in a live-fire range this morning. You don't get to play the victim now."
"I have the master ledgers, Mitchell!" he sobbed, his legs shaking violently against the steel deck. "Sterling’s real records. The encrypted ledger on the satellite relay in the bridge! The one with the bank accounts in the Cayman Islands! If I don't punch the authentication code into the system before midnight, the whole ship gets scuttled at sea with all hands on board! They were never going to let this crew reach international waters!"
A heavy thud shook the ship's hull.
Below our feet, deep in the engine room, the primary diesel generators kicked on with a low, bone-shaking roar.
The mooring lines groaned under sudden strain.
The ship was getting underway—with or without the clearance tugs.
"They're leaving," Briggs gasped. "Sterling’s commander on the bridge is cutting the lines! We're trapped on this rust bucket!"
Through the mist over the harbor, three blue and red emergency strobes appeared at the entrance of the commercial channel. The coast guard cutters were responding, but they were still two miles away against an outgoing tide.
I looked at Briggs. His arrogance was gone. The bully who had laughed at women in uniform, who had kicked at my knee to break my career, was reduced to a sniveling wreck begging for his life in the rain.
"Get on your feet," I ordered, wrenching him away from the bulkhead by the collar of his shirt.
May you like
"What are we doing?" he cried.
"We're taking the bridge," I said. "And you're going to show the whole world who your boss really is."
