Sea of Greed

He fired up the engine, pulled the anchor in and pushed the throttle forward. The Pavati began to move and Kurt steered to port, accelerating and heading back toward the waters above the sunken and obliterated LNG carrier.

Flicking through a battery of switches, he soon had every light in the boat shining. He grabbed the radio once again. “Joe, if you can hear this, I’m going to make a direct line between where we parked and the wreck. If you’re in the water, wave me down.”

With the boat at quarter speed, Kurt pulled out the night vision scope and scanned the area ahead. He was looking for Joe, but he noticed the freighter was no longer moored by the marine buoy. He looked to the horizon, but there were several ships to the north and he couldn’t tell which, if any of them, was the freighter.

Kurt really didn’t care, the only thing that mattered at this point was finding Joe. He slowed down as he moved into an area of floating wreckage. Despite a slow, careful search through every bit of floating debris he could find, there was no sign of his friend.

Circling around, he called for help once more. “Priya, this is Kurt, you’re supposed to be on the radio. Joe is missing and probably injured. I need you to locate him for me.”

At long last, the radio crackled to life with a response. A female voice came over the speaker. “Your friend Joe is dead,” the voice said coldly. “You killed him by destroying my laboratory. I hope it was worth it to you.”

“Tessa,” Kurt said in recognition.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s my name. And I now know yours… Kurt… Austin.” She dragged the name out as she spoke it, but followed it up quickly. “You can imagine who told me and what we had to do to her to get her to speak. This little helper of yours is tougher than she looks.”

Kurt’s priorities changed instantly. Tessa had Priya. There was no point in asking how. He turned the wheel and gunned the throttle, setting a course back toward the Great Sound.

“So now you’re adding kidnapping to your crimes,” Kurt said. “That’s not going to play well when they bring you in.”

“You’re laughable,” she said. “There’s no one here to bring me in. Even if there was, it’ll be too late by the time they act. I’ll be off this island in five minutes. And you, Kurt Austin, will never see me again.”

Kurt knew Tessa wouldn’t stay in Bermuda. Even if the Prime Minister of the island was in her pocket, he would rapidly switch sides with the full weight of the U.S. government and the world community coming down on him.

“It’s over for you,” Kurt said. “I’ll have U.S. Navy divers on that site in the morning and an international warrant out for your arrest by lunchtime.”

Her pitch went up. “The only things coming to an end are the Oil Age… and this young woman’s life… if you try to stop me.”

Kurt had every intention of stopping her. His boat was racing at full speed, flying across the waves. It would only take a small amount of damage to keep the Monarch on the water. He would come up with a way to cause that damage by the time he got to it.

“Think about it,” Kurt said. “The world is not going to bow down to you or let you hold it hostage. Every country on earth needs oil. That makes you everyone’s enemy.”