Chapter 19 - The Chase on the High Seas
The Scylla was an 800-foot Panamanian-flagged container carrier that had cast off from the Port of Seattle two hours ahead of schedule, using forged customs clearances to slip into the Strait of Juan de Fuca before federal seizure orders could be filed.
On board was the ghost behind North-Pac: Viktor Ramos, a former international maritime smuggler who had brokered the black-market shipments that nearly killed Lily Vance.
The Pacific gale was at full fury by nightfall. Thirty-knot winds whipped Puget Sound into a cauldron of eight-foot whitecaps, rain driving across the black water like shotgun pellets.
The US Coast Guard Cutter Terrapin was slicing through the swells at twenty-five knots, its twin diesel engines roaring with deafening intensity. On the open aft deck, I stood braced against the safety netting, soaked to the skin beneath my heavy storm parka. Beside me, Titan wore an orange tactical flotation harness fitted with a heavy-duty lifting ring and a strobe beacon.
"We can't board by sea-ladder in this chop!" the Coast Guard boarding officer shouted over the wind, pointing up toward the towering steel wall of the Scylla two hundred yards off our port bow. "The swell is too erratic! The only way onto that deck is via the MH-65 helicopter hoist!"
"Then hook us up!" I shouted back.
Titan looked up at the orange Jayhawk helicopter hovering fifty feet above the cutter's rolling flight deck, the downwash from its twin rotors flattening our clothes against our skin. He had trained on helicopter hoists during his search-and-rescue certification, but doing it over a pitching deck in an open-ocean storm was a nightmare of disorientation.
I knelt beside him, clicking the heavy steel carabiner from the helicopter hoist cable directly into the dorsal D-ring of his tactical harness.
"Together, boy," I murmured, wrapping my left arm securely around his chest, locking my legs into the harness loop. "Eyes on me."
Titan didn't pull away. He leaned his heavy skull firmly against my chin, his muscles tightening, putting his entire existence into my hands.
The cable snapped taut.
With a sickening lurch, we were lifted off the pitching deck of the cutter into the pitch-black, howling void of the storm. The ocean churned fifty feet below, a black abyss dotted with white foam. Titan remained completely motionless in the hoist, his paws tucked neatly beneath his body, his eyes fixed steadily on my face, trusting the cable, trusting the harness, trusting me.
The helicopter swung across the churning wake of the container ship, lowering us rapidly toward the towering stacks of containers on the Scylla’s stern deck.
The crew chief hit the release. My boots slammed hard onto the non-skid metal deck of the freighter, and Titan landed beside me in a low, balanced stance, immediately unhooking his cable with a quick release of my thumb.
The ship's stern was a maze of rusted steel ladders, tie-down cables, and shadow.
Two armed deckhands patrolling the catwalk above the engine casing spotted us through the driving rain. One of them raised a heavy automatic carbine, shouting in Spanish into a handheld radio.
"Titan, take the gangway!"
Titan scrambled up the steep iron steps with supernatural agility. The steel was slick with seawater and diesel residue, but his claws dug into the metal grating with relentless traction.
The gunman tried to bring his weapon down, but Titan cleared the top landing like a thunderbolt. He hit the man's midsection, carrying both of them down onto the narrow catwalk. The carbine slipped through the safety railing, tumbling eighty feet straight down into the black foaming wake of the ship.
I took the second crewman with a direct tackle from behind, subduing him with plastic flex-cuffs against the salt-crusted deck.
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From the bridge wing above, a loudspeaker crackled to life, Viktor Ramos’s voice booming through the storm:
"Officer Cole! You think you are a hero? You are on my ship now. And out here, there are no city judges to save your hound!"
