Her Mission With A Seal. Cindy Dees

encompassed her entire body and attached to the donut-shaped life vest the guys inflated around her neck.

      “What’s this for?” she asked as Cole checked the connections around her neck.

      He paused at his task to gaze at her from a range of about one foot. Lord, he was gorgeous with those lean cheeks and firm jaw. His voice rumbled comfortingly. “If you end up in the water, the kit provides a layer of insulation to extend how long you can survive hypothermia by hours or days. It also protects you from sharks. They can’t smell you through the material. In pockets attached to the interior of the bag are water, rations, a small desalinization kit, a GPS locator beacon, a mirror and an emergency radio. My team and I know how to climb into one in the water and bail out any seawater. But since you haven’t had the training, we’re popping you into yours now, to be safe. Try to think of it as a sleeping bag, and it won’t freak you out so bad.”

      “Thanks.”

      How did he know that being wrapped up in this giant condom was scaring her half to death? She’d always struggled with claustrophobia, and this situation wasn’t helping matters one little bit. She fought like crazy not to hyperventilate and hung on by a bare thread to the ability to breathe.

      She muttered under her breath, “Please, God, don’t let me need this stupid contraption.”

      Cole cracked the first smile she’d seen from him. Even in the dark, it was dazzling. “It’s purely a precaution.”

      But when he had all four of them lash their safety harnesses together with rope and bungee cord, she had to wonder just how unnecessary a precaution it really was.

      They finished the Boy Scout knot project before she asked on radio, “Does someone want to tell me why we’re suddenly preparing for disaster, here?”

      Bass answered, “Jessamine has gone from a Category 1 to a Category 3 hurricane in the past few hours. Weather service is now forecasting that she’ll spin up into a high Cat 4 or Cat 5.”

      “Isn’t that just special?” she responded sarcastically.

      Everyone laughed.

      Seriously? They could laugh while sailing around in the middle of a hurricane in a rowboat with motors?

      The SEALs took turns at the tiller, wrestling the ocean until they became exhausted and had to switch out. The interminable journey settled into a steady-state nightmare, and the team chatted on headset to pass the time. The good news was the hurricane wind at their backs was blowing them landward at an impressive clip, shaving hours off their journey.

      Ashe took the radio from Bass and had an earnest conversation with someone at the other end that culminated in him saying, “Let me know when you’ve run the numbers.”

      Ashe piped up after a few minutes, “The Coast Guard has pulled the Anna Belle’s manifest and compared it against what we saw on the ship. She definitely left New Orleans with a belly full of wheat. But sometime in the past twenty-four hours, the ship’s crew must have dumped all of it overboard.”

      That made everyone frown. The weight of the wheat low in the ship’s belly would have been critical to making the ship safe and stable.

      “And,” Ashe continued, “the Coast Guard checked with the harbormaster. She left the port of New Orleans loaded three deep in containers across her entire deck, not six deep, all fore of the beam, like we found her. The crew of the ship moved the containers after they sailed. They intentionally built a high-profile stack that would catch the most wind.”

      “Were they trying to sink the ship?” Nissa blurted.

      Cole answered grimly. “Seems so.”

      “And then there’s the missing crew and sabotaged engines,” Bass piped up.

      “And no distress calls,” Cole added. “The crew definitely intended to scuttle the ship.”

      “Oh, they’ll succeed,” Ashe responded. “Once Jessamine cranks up another ten feet of seas and another twenty knots of wind, that huge wall of containers is going to catch a gust and take the Anna Belle right over.”

      “Assuming she doesn’t drift crossways of a couple big waves and break her beam first,” Bass commented. “Either way, that ship’s going down in the next few hours if she’s not already sunk.”

      “But why?” Cole asked.

      Nissa had an idea why. The others speculated, but discarded every idea they came up with. When they all fell silent, she spoke up reluctantly, “What if this was all an elaborate scheme to fake Markus Petrov’s death?”

      The team turned as one to stare at her. “It’s a hell of an expensive ruse,” Cole replied. “Twenty million dollars plus or minus for the ship, several million dollars’ worth of wheat, and who knows what other cargo in the containers. Then there’s the cost of paying off the crew, and of making them all disappear. Something like a fifty-million-dollar escape route? That seems pretty improbable.”

      “But that’s the point,” Nissa replied. “Markus Petrov is obsessive about secrecy. And goodness knows, he has fifty million bucks lying around to burn. The man has been a mobster for thirty years. My CIA colleague who got inside his outfit said the man was clearing a million dollars a week.”

      Bass swore, then drawled, “I’m in the wrong business.”

      “I thought all you cops are on the take,” Ashe teased the Cajun. Apparently, Bass had been called off military reserve status and reactivated as a SEAL recently. When he wasn’t on active duty, he was a civilian police officer.

      “New Orleans Police Department has cleaned up its act in the past couple of decades, thank you very much,” Bass retorted.

      “Indeed. They kicked you out, didn’t they?” Cole quipped.

      The guys laughed, apparently oblivious of the monster storm spinning up around them. She envied them their ability to find humor in this nightmare.

      Cole looked over at her in her exposure pouch. “The only problem with your theory that Petrov engineered the sinking of the Anna Belle is that no one knew he was aboard her. We were lucky to get a tip from one of Petrov’s guys we captured in the gun battle last week.”

      “Or maybe that tidbit was intentionally leaked to us so we would believe he died when the Anna Belle turns up missing or is found sunk.”

      “The ship will be tough to find,” Ashe offered. “We’re in close to eight thousand feet of water right now.”

      Aww, jeez. She did not need to know that.

      “What’s the next move Petrov will make, Nissa?” Cole asked.

      All of a sudden, everyone was staring expectantly at her.

      “I have no idea. I was only sent out here with you to make the ID on Petrov.”

      She was one of the few people on earth who’d seen even a photograph of Markus Petrov, and it had been taken twenty years ago. The tech gang at Langley had run an aging simulator on the image, though, so she had a rough idea of what he would look like now. More important, she knew every detail of his life that the CIA had uncovered and could ask the right questions—and furthermore know if she was getting the right answers—to make the identification. And, of course, she was a trained psychological operations officer. She could probably manipulate the guy into talking when most other people could not.

      Cole gave up his position at the tiller to Ashe and flopped down beside her, breathing hard. It took a minute or so for his respiration to return to normal, but then he said to her, “My orders are to capture Markus Petrov with extreme prejudice.” Meaning he had authorization to do whatever it took to catch the guy, no holds barred. He continued, “I’m going to need you to stay with my team until we catch up with him.”

      But this was supposed to be a quick out-and-back mission for her. Fly to New Orleans. Make the ID. Fly back to Langley, Virginia, and resume her regularly