Chapter 5 - The transfer under the blood-red sunset
We did not have a strike team.
We had a bruised diver, a half-starved engineer, a battered lieutenant, and a corpsman whose loyalty had finally outweighed her caution.
It would have to be enough.
Alvarez led us through a maintenance passage that ran parallel to the lower cargo deck. It stank of hot metal and salt. Through gaps in the paneling, I could see the sea turning red beneath the setting sun.
At 200 meters out, a civilian freighter ran dark and close.
Santa Mercedes.
No marker lights beyond the minimum.
No radio call on the official ship network.
Just a slow predator easing alongside a military transport as if they had done this often enough to stop fearing it.
We reached a viewing grate above the lower deck.
Below us, Kane supervised the operation himself.
Cases of bottled water came first.
Then medical kits.
Then two sealed gray containers with restricted handling labels taped over with generic supply tags.
Morgan and four armed men worked the crane. A civilian crewman on the freighter received each pallet with practiced speed.
Reed’s jaw tightened.
“He starved the crew while selling their water.”
“Not just water,” Alvarez whispered.
He pointed to one gray case. “Satellite comm boards. Those don’t belong in general logistics.”
That made the theft bigger. Not greed alone. Capability.
I slid the memory card into the small service tablet Bennett carried for medical logs. It loaded three route files, eight altered manifests, and a compact ledger.
The first three payments made my stomach go cold.
Shell accounts.
Foreign transfers.
And one domestic wire routed through a defense subcontractor with federal ties.
Kane was not freelancing.
He was a node.
Then one of the pallets shifted on the crane hook.
A side latch burst open.
Instead of water, tightly packed military-grade encrypted drives and satellite phones spilled across the deck in a black avalanche.
Below us, everyone froze.
Kane looked up like a man who could hear his future collapsing.
Morgan cursed and moved to reseal the container. One of the civilian crew tried to help.
That was when Reed stood up from behind the grate and shouted down to the whole lower deck.
“Everybody look!”
Every head snapped upward.
I rose beside him.
Kane’s face went white with fury.
“Seize them!”
Morgan raised his weapon.
Bennett slammed the emergency cargo brake.
The crane locked with a violent shriek.
The half-loaded pallet swung free, smashed into the ship’s bulkhead, and burst open completely.
Drives scattered across the deck like black teeth.
The men working below did not move to collect them.
They were staring at what had just fallen out of “routine cargo.”
Kane took one step backward.
That was the first time I saw him lose command of his body before he lost command of the ship.
Then he did what panicked men in pressed uniforms always do when facts begin to outnumber them.
He made it personal.
“Petty Officer Cole is a federal plant!” he roared. “She manipulated every one of you!”
He wasn’t wrong.
Not entirely.
But I had never manipulated thirst.
Or collapsed men in sun.
Or sold what kept them alive.
Before I could answer, Morgan swung the maintenance hatch open from below.
Armed men flooded the passage.
May you like
And Kane pointed straight at me.
“Take her below Deck Four,” he said. “If the diver wants secrets so badly, she can drown with them.”
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