Page 26 of Grayson

“Keep working, U-Jin.”

Two engineers emerged from the control room arguing over a clipboard. Hunter intercepted the first and drove him silently against the bulkhead. Brunson swung the door wide enough to catch the second, and Sonny was there to pull him down before a hand reached the alarm.

U-Jin opened a service panel and worked quickly, bypassing safeguards and breaking the propulsion controls in ways no hurried repair could reverse. The great engine faltered. Its rhythm staggered, recovered, and staggered again as alarms began to blink across the control desk.

“That sounds bad,” Sonny said.

“To them,” U-Jin replied, “it sounds expensive.”

He shut down the auxiliary generator next. The lights died in a cascade from the engine room to the decks above, and emergency lamps came on in weak red intervals. The freighter’s wake flattened as the propeller slowed, leaving the ship helpless in the black water.

A warning horn began to pulse through the ship, one low note every five seconds. Somewhere in the darkness, doors slammed and men shouted to one another.

“So much for quiet,” Brunson said. Hunter drew his weapon.

“Quiet got us inside. Now we make confusion work for us.”

Hunter signaled them upward. On the lowest cargo deck, locked cages of contraband filled the passage: ammunition, counterfeit medicine, bundles wrapped in plastic, and animal crates from which nothing moved. No voices came from there, only the creak of stressed steel.

On the next deck, a guard appeared at the far end with a flashlight and a pistol. The beam skimmed across Sonny’s shoulder. Brunson knocked it aside as Hunter closed the distance, and the four men left the guard secured beneath a stairwell before the dropped light stopped spinning.

The crew quarters were cramped and stale. They cleared each cabin, finding bunks, cards, liquor, and men waking too slowly to understand what had happened. Every threat was disarmed, restrained, and placed face down in the mess under Brunson’s watch.

Sonny found the manifest in the purser’s office, but its cargo columns were coded and the passenger count was blank. A penciled symbol appeared beside a refrigerated hold near the bow. He showed it to Hunter.

“This mark repeats beside every false container number.” Hunter folded the page. “People aren’t cargo.”

“Tell that to the men upstairs,” Sonny said. Hunter pointed down.

“After we get them out.”

They moved through a transverse passage where condensation ran down the bulkheads. Behind one steel door, they found more weapons and forged passports stacked by nationality. Behind another, they heard a cough, then the scrape of someone drawing back from the other side.

The cough came again, smaller this time, followed by a hurried whisper. Then heavy footsteps sounded at the far end of the passage. U-Jin glanced from the chained door to the approaching shadows.

“We cut it now, they hear us.” Hunter raised his weapon.

“We wait, the people inside stay locked in a crossfire.” Brunson set himself beside the bulkhead.

“Then we don’t wait.”

The lock was chained from the corridor. U-Jin cut it, and Hunter opened the door slowly with both hands visible. Women and children crowded the cold compartment, wrapped in blankets and torn coats, their faces pale in the red emergency light.

No one moved until Sonny knelt and set his weapon on the floor.

“We’re taking you off this ship,” he said softly. A woman near the front translated, and the silence broke into whispers that spread through the hold.

Brunson opened a duffel filled with water, foil blankets, and compact life vests. Hunter arranged the captives in small groups, placing the older children beside the youngest.

“Stay between us and keep one hand on the person ahead,” he said. U-Jin checked the passage, then marked the safest route to the boat deck with strips of white tape.

“Safest isn’t safe,” he warned. “It’s just the route with fewer guns.”

They climbed deck by deck as the disabled ship rolled beneath them. Sonny led with the flashlight shielded against his chest. Hunter stayed among the hostages, lifting children over high coamings, while Brunson guarded the rear.

The horn stopped mid-pulse. In the sudden quiet, a child’s shoe squeaked against the deck. From above came the click of a weapon being charged. Sonny switched off his light.

“Nobody move,” he whispered. A thin beam searched the stairwell, descending one step at a time.