Seized (Hostage Rescue Team Series, #7) (27 page)

“We’re already overfull!” Dwi shouted at him, kicking out to prevent him from climbing on board. “Any more and we risk sinking!” He managed to dislodge the man and quickly slammed the door shut in his face, then scrambled up to the driver’s seat.

It was too much.

Carmela closed her eyes to avoid witnessing any more but the man and his children’s faces were now burned into her mind. A wave of nausea and guilt slammed into her.

She squeezed her eyes shut, her face crumpling as she buried her face in her mom’s hair. Out on deck someone began lowering their boat into the water. She felt the moment the hull brushed the waves, then the wires holding them released and they plunged into the water.

Several sharp cries of fear rang out. Her mom grabbed her hand, squeezed until Carmela’s bones ached, but she still didn’t open her eyes.

All those people. All those poor people trapped on deck or in the water
. That teenage boy. That father and his kids and so many others.

A sob ripped through her and she didn’t bother trying to hold it back.

“It’s all right now, ladies and gentlemen,” Dwi said from up front, sounding tired and out of breath. “I’m getting you all to safety now.” He started up the engine and turned them away from the ship. People all around them began to cry in relief, in grief and horror at having to leave others behind.

Her mother began to weep, her entire body shuddering with each harsh sob. Carmela kept her eyes shut and let the tears flow, thanking God that she’d lived through the harrowing ordeal.

She reached for the crucifix around her neck and thought of Sawyer, likely still back in Seattle, and clung to the image of his face she held in her mind as they chugged their way toward the other ship. He’d asked her to go away with him and after this she needed that more than ever. He’d be frantic when he found out what had happened on board. She wanted to reach out to him so badly, just to hear his voice, tell him she was okay.

I need you, Sawyer. God, I need you so much.

****

T
he icy water was already up to his thighs. His legs and feet were already numb from the cold.

Sawyer panted for breath as he and Ethan finished their sweep of the starboard side of deck two. The emergency lights had gone out around fifteen minutes ago, likely shorted out by the water. Everyone they’d found down here was already dead. And anyone trapped beneath the water line would be dead by now too.

“Vance, Cruz, report.” Tuck’s voice was terse in his ear.

“No one down here,” Ethan answered in between breaths. “We’re coming up to deck three now.”

“Copy. All but a handful of passengers have been evacuated. Helos are inbound, ETA six minutes. There’s no time to take the tangos’ bodies with us. Coast Guard ship is on its way but the survivors can’t wait that long. Head up to the nav deck for extraction.”

“Roger that,” Sawyer gasped out, sloshing through the water as fast as he could on the way to the forward staircase.

He and Ethan didn’t speak as they struggled through the icy water, then up the stairs to deck three. He couldn’t stop himself from scanning the victims lying on the carpet, soon to be swallowed by the rising water. Carm wasn’t one of them, and he thanked God for that because he couldn’t handle finding her body.

He needed to believe she’d been one of the lucky ones. That she’d gotten off the ship safely in one of the boats. It twisted his gut to think of her terrified and desperate enough to be one of the people to leap overboard in an attempt to save herself. Water that cold would kill her long before anyone could fish her out of it. It killed him to know she was close by but not know if she was even alive.

She is,
he told himself forcefully. He refused to let himself think otherwise.

The ship was eerily quiet on the inside except for the occasional groan as metal and wood shifted under the strain of the water flooding on board. That bomb had blown a huge hole in the starboard hull, large enough that the ship would likely be completely underwater in the next half an hour.

The muscles in his thighs and ass burned as they climbed flight after flight, making their way up to the navigation deck. At the top Sawyer paused a moment near the doorway to bend over, hands on his knees as he caught his breath. Ethan did the same, both of them panting, weak with fatigue and the adrenaline crash.

But then the tension inside him became too much. He reached out and put a hand on his buddy’s shoulder, bringing Ethan’s head up. Their gazes locked and Sawyer felt a crushing weight on his chest. “They’re probably on one of the lifeboats,” he gasped out.

Ethan nodded and looked at the floor. “Yeah.”

There was nothing else Sawyer could say that wouldn’t make this already epic goatfuck of a situation even worse. He squeezed Ethan’s shoulder in reassurance. “Come on, let’s go get the rest of those passengers off this boat.”

Outside on the sharply tilted deck, their team waited with the SEALs and a group of about twenty remaining passengers. None of them were Carm or her mom, but he’d already assumed that because Tuck hadn’t told them otherwise.

All of them looked exhausted, passengers and operators alike.

Sawyer gazed out at the water, at the people swimming or now floating motionless in the waves. The lifeboats were almost at the Coast Guard ship now, and he knew a Navy vessel wasn’t far behind. They’d be the ones responsible for cleanup and retrieval of the bodies during the recovery mission that was no doubt being planned even now.

The cold wind whipped around him. His teeth began chattering, shivers wracking his body despite the insulation of the dive suit. A few minutes later the beat of rotors reached him. Overhead the silhouette of four Pavehawks crossed over the face of the moon. They circled overhead, moving into formation, then one of them broke away and descended toward the deck.

He stood back while a few of the SEALs helped load some passengers aboard. A second helo dropped down and hovered above the deck close to him. The remaining passengers rushed over.

A crewmember from the helo lowered a hoist and Sawyer and Ethan helped secure the first passenger. A woman holding an infant. She was crying, clearly in shock. In her state Sawyer didn’t trust that she wouldn’t drop the baby, and with the deck tilted like this there was no way for the helo to land and make it easier for her to get aboard.

“I’ll go up with her,” he shouted to Ethan, handing him his rifle and turning back to the woman. The rotor wash beat down on them, intensifying the cold. He got them secured in the harness and wrapped his arms around her, sandwiching the screaming baby between them.

The crew hoisted them up to the doorway. The airman waiting there took the baby and handed it to a medic aboard, then it was the mother’s turn. A sharp pain lanced through Sawyer’s right shoulder as he helped maneuver her into the helo. He hissed in a breath and cradled his arm as they lowered him back to the deck.

It took another twenty minutes for them to load the last of the passengers aboard the birds, which flew them over to the waiting Coast Guard vessel and offloaded them the same way.

The minutes dragged past as they waited for the helos to return for them. They huddled together on the listing deck for warmth, none of them speaking. Below them, the waterline was already less than ten meters down.

Finally two birds lifted away from the Coast Guard ship and turned back toward them. Sawyer took what felt like his first full breath since he’d boarded the ship—

Metal groaned and popped as the ship took a sharp turn to starboard. Sawyer threw out his right arm to catch the railing and the sudden pain in his shoulder made him light headed. His mind felt hazy as the two helos dropped into a hover above them. The hoist was too slow, they had to use the fast ropes.

One by one the SEALs began climbing up the rope of the first bird while Tuck held theirs and ushered Evers upward. Sawyer cradled his arm across his chest and waited his turn, his heart thudding hard. If the ship turned any more, they’d all be thrown into the water and he
really
didn’t want that to happen.

Blackwell was next, climbing one hand over the other up the rope, then Bauer. Schroder went next, then Ethan. Sawyer moved to the base of the rope, waited until his buddy was aboard before gripping the rope. Just hold out long enough to get me inside, he told his shoulder, and reached for the rope.

The deck tilted abruptly beneath his feet. He swore as his feet slipped, and grabbed the rope, tweaking the already damaged tendons in his shoulder. A cry of pain locked in his throat.

Tuck caught him around the waist to steady him and gave him a shove to get back to the rope. “She’s going over, hurry!”

Pressing his lips together, Sawyer grasped the rope and hauled himself upward. Ethan’s face was sticking out the open side door of the helo above him, along with Schroder and Bauer. They were all yelling at him, reaching their hands out for him.

Climb, you bastard
, he ordered himself.
Climb before you fall and knock Tuck into the water with you.

His fists clenched tight around the rope as he wound his feet around it. The first few pulls hurt like a bitch, the next five torture, and by the time he neared the top his right shoulder was a mass of searing agony.

Ethan was reaching for him, straining to get his hand close to Sawyer’s, his face a mask of concern, mouth open as he yelled something Sawyer couldn’t hear.

There was no way his right arm could make the final pull, but he had no choice. Clamping his jaw tight, knowing it would hurt like a mother, Sawyer flung up his hand for Ethan.

Ethan caught it, locked his fingers tight around his hand and hauled upward, his face screwing up with the effort of lifting Sawyer’s weight. It was the last thing Sawyer saw for the next minute.

He screamed as something popped and tore in his shoulder, screamed again as Ethan relentlessly hauled him up and into the belly of the helo. White-hot agony ripped through the joint, like someone had stabbed him with a glowing red brand.

Someone else grabbed hold of his other arm and pulled him along the deck. Sawyer curled into himself and cradled his shoulder, gagging at the relentless pain.

Hands started to roll him over. He snarled at whoever it was but they just kept going until he was on his back. When he managed to pry his eyes open at last he was panting, shaking all over from the pain. Schroder and Ethan were both staring down at him in concern.

“Your shoulder?” Doc asked.

He forced a nod and bared his teeth in warning, his left hand cupping the joint protectively. “Don’t fucking touch it,” he spat.

Schroder’s eyes widened and he held up both hands in surrender. “Okay, I won’t.” He shot Ethan a
can-you-believe-this-guy
look.

More of the guys crowded around, all staring down at him. “What’s wrong?” Tuck shouted over the pulse of the rotors. Sawyer wasn’t sure but he assumed from the motion they were already flying back to shore.

“Fucked up his shoulder,” Ethan told him, setting a comforting hand on Sawyer’s good arm and giving it a squeeze.

Sawyer ignored them all, struggling with the pain outside as well as within. Through the fiery bursts of agony he made himself turn his head to see out the open doorway, just in time to see the Coast Guard ship as they flew over it.

His heart sank. More than even making the pain in his shoulder go away in that instant, he needed to find Carmela. Or at least know that she was okay.

The hand on his left arm tightened and he looked up into Ethan’s face. “We’re gonna find them, man,” his buddy promised him. “I know they’re fine and we’re gonna find out where they are as soon as we get to shore.”

Sawyer laid his head back against the deck and closed his eyes, still cradling his shoulder, and prayed Ethan was right.

––––––––

T
he weight of exhaustion made it nearly impossible to keep her eyes open.

Carmela shifted on the cot and lowered the ice pack one of the medics had given her earlier for her head. It had been over four hours since the Coast Guard ship had brought them to shore, where the FBI had bussed all the passengers to this high school gym in Anchorage currently serving as a triage station for everyone.

She and her mom had already been checked over and treated for their injuries. A few cuts, scrapes and bruises, which could have been so much worse.

The true damage was on the inside. The horrors of what she’d witnessed over the past few hours would never be erased.

Carmela had received a couple stitches in her scalp and a painkiller since she hadn’t shown signs of a concussion.

Apparently she had a thick skull.

They’d given their information to an Army nurse and then FBI agents had come to talk to them. When they’d found out she’d been face-to-face with Wira, they’d asked question after question until her mind began to spin. They’d told her the SEALs had rescued the captain of the ship. She’d asked them about Ethan and Sawyer, had begged them to contact them, but the agents had been far more interested in whatever intel she could give them about what had happened on board.

At this point she didn’t know where he was. Seattle? L.A.? When he found out they were in Anchorage, would he and Ethan fly here? She wasn’t even sure if they could get the time off to do that right now.

Her mom sat at the end of the cot, one hand absently trailing up and down Carmela’s calf. All around them people were receiving medical attention and being reunited with loved ones.

The anxious expressions on the faces of those still waiting to see their family and friends were hard to bear. They knew as well as she did that many people would not be coming through those gym doors, either killed by the gunmen or having succumbed to the frigid water when they jumped into the sea.

Someone came by and offered them sedatives to help them sleep. Carmela refused it but her mother took one and stretched out on the cot beside her to sleep.

Carmela laid on her back and stared at the ceiling, unable to bear the strained faces around her as they waited for news of their missing loved ones, and unable to close her eyes because images from tonight kept flashing back at her.