Chapter 8 - The first person who disobeyed him out loud
Everything changed because one frightened twenty-year-old stopped being frightened first.
Owen Pike should have backed away when Kane pointed the gun at him.
Instead, he stayed where he was, chest heaving, eyes fixed on the man who had watched him collapse from dehydration and treated his survival like inconvenience.
“You gonna throw me overboard too, sir?” he asked.
The whole deck heard him.
Kane’s hand tightened.
“Stand down.”
“No, sir.”
Nobody missed the tremor in Kane’s jaw.
He could starve people.
Humiliate them.
Lie to them.
He could even kick a diver into the Pacific.
But he could not survive public disobedience and remain the man he had been five minutes earlier.
He swung the weapon toward me.
“Petty Officer Cole orchestrated this mutiny.”
I took one slow step forward.
“You did.”
He smiled thinly. “You think one case and one rat-faced lieutenant end me?”
Reed held up the oilskin pouch with the memo signed by Rear Admiral Vale.
Kane saw it.
For the first time, true panic stripped the polish off his face.
So that was the center of it—not the water, not the satellite boards, not even the hidden freighter.
It was the connection upward.
The proof that his corruption was protected from above.
He lowered the gun just enough to think.
That was when Morgan finally moved.
Not toward me.
Toward Kane.
“Sir,” he said carefully, “put the weapon down.”
The deck went dead silent.
Kane turned his head an inch. “Are you countermanding me, Sergeant?”
“I’m telling you every man here saw Petty Officer Cole come back with evidence. And every man here heard NCIS.”
Kane laughed once, but nothing human lived inside the sound.
“You weak idiot.”
Then he grabbed Bennett.
It happened that fast.
He pulled her in front of him, arm locked around her throat, gun pressed below her jaw. The deck recoiled as one body. Bennett went rigid, face flushed with terror and rage.
“You want courage?” Kane asked. “Watch what it buys.”
No one moved.
Even Morgan froze.
Kane began backing toward the internal access hatch leading below, dragging Bennett with him.
“If anyone follows me, the corpsman dies.”
I met Bennett’s eyes.
She did not look pleading.
She looked furious that she had become leverage.
That helped.
Fear invites mistakes. Anger can still think.
“Kane,” I said, keeping my voice flat, “you don’t need her.”
“No?”
“No. You need me.”
He smiled again.
“That’s the first true thing you’ve said all day.”
He was right.
I was the only diver trained to reach the lower void quickly.
The only onboard witness tying the case, the cargo, the overboard order, and the Deck Four compartment together.
He needed to either control me or kill me.
That meant Bennett still had value—as a shield, not a body.
“I’ll come with you,” I said. “You let her go.”
Reed hissed, “Hannah—”
“Quiet.”
Kane studied me.
Then his eyes slid to the black case still strapped across my chest.
“And the evidence.”
“After she walks.”
He thought about it.
I could see him calculating angles, doors, distances, loyalties, odds.
Then the secure radio on the bulkhead spoke again, almost gently.
“Colonel Kane,” Ward said, “if you harm the corpsman, every charge you’re facing becomes the least of your problems.”
Kane’s face twisted.
“Then you’d better hurry, Agent.”
He yanked Bennett backward through the hatch.
May you like
And before it slammed shut, I heard him shout a single order down the passageway:
“Prepare the scuttle charges.”
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