“Don’t speak ill of the dead. General Lugar was an extremely capable officer, that’s all you need to know.”
The death of General Giorgio Lugar had been a source of rumor and gossip since it had occurred. He was a talented and dedicated officer, known in the Intelligence Division as “The Devil with a Thousand Ears” for his almost supernatural ability to gather information.
It was ironic that he was so blind to his own daughter’s behavior. She spiraled downward into delinquency without his knowledge. When he finally learned of her behavior and confronted her, she stabbed him in the back in a fit of rage.
“In any case,” Luke continued, “I’m looking over these documents that the general left behind so I can carry on his work. I try to be thorough, but with our busy schedule, there simply isn’t enough time to keep up with every single case.”
“Sir, is there anything I could be of assistance with?”
“No.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Or on second thought, you could carry a message for me.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Tell my wife not to wait up. I’m going to be late.”
The barracks, where unit members slept, were not far from Luke’s residence, where he lived with his wife. It was but a short walk.
“Yes, sir,” Slay answered, obviously trying to suppress a smile. The stoic leader of the Special Unit was actually a very caring and loving husband—a secret only the Blackhawk members knew.
“Is something funny?” Luke gave him a sharp look.
“No, sir. I’ll get to it right away.”
Slay rushed out of the room.
Having woken from a good night’s sleep for the first time in too long, the Casull siblings brought their carriage to the docks the next morning. They spotted Berkens talking to a boatman next to a small ship with the words “The Inox” painted on the side. The captain smiled as they approached.
“The weather doesn’t look too good,” Pacifica muttered, looking at the ominous gray clouds and gathering fog. “Should we be sailing in this?”
The captain waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll be fine. Come on, folks.” He urged them along with a charming grin. “Let’s get this show on the road, hm? Today’s my day off and I’d like to get a move on.”
The siblings led their horses up the gangplank and onto the deck. Although the boat’s only passengers were Berkens, the three Casull siblings, the horses with their carriage, the captain, and his assistant, the Inox was already quite crowded. This was mostly due to the six enormous, specially-bred cows on the bottom floor of the ship that were used to power the two huge wheels propelling the boat through the water. At the boatman and assistant’s shouts of encouragement, the cows treaded along, powering a system of gears and rods to turn the wheels. Boats powered by animals were more reliable than sailboats as they weren’t dependent on favorable winds to make good time.
That left only a cargo cabin on the upper floor for the horses and carriage, and a deck and its passenger cabin for everyone else. It was a bit tight, but nobody complained.
“What an unusual boat,” Raquel commented as she walked along the deck’s perimeter.
“You don’t see a ship like this one every day, do you?” the captain’s assistant said. “Our propulsion system is complex, but with it we can regulate our speed very well.”
The captain’s assistant was a middle-aged man who seemed to have taken an instant liking to Raquel. He’d followed her around since she boarded the boat, and seemed to be trying to put an arm around her. Raquel was far more interested in the ship than in him and didn’t notice his interest.
With the boat’s only low-ranking employee thus distracted, Shannon was left with the task of securing the horse carriage to the floor and walls of the ship’s hold. As he sighed, he happened to glance out onto the pier. He scowled.
“What is it?” Pacifica asked him.
“Nothing much,” he answered vaguely. For a moment, he thought he’d seen the young medicine girl from the day before, but he’d caught such a brief glimpse that he couldn’t be sure.
“All right, the drawbridge is coming up!” the captain shouted. “Is that carriage secured yet?”
Shannon got back to work.
The longer the ship spent on the water, the blacker the sky became. The fog got thinner, but the wind started to pick up. Just before noon, about three glocks after departure, the first raindrops started to fall.
“Oh, boy. This isn’t good.” Mere moments after the captain spoke, a fat raindrop splattered on Pacifica’s nose. Within a matter of minutes, the drops picked up speed until everyone and everything was drenched.
The perpendicular current started to speed up, and the boat tilted under the force.
“We’re gonna be okay, right?” Berkens asked as he ducked into the passenger cabin with Shannon and his siblings. He didn’t sound very concerned.
“It’ll be fine. It might be a bumpy ride, but the Inox won’t sink.”
Boats like the Inox were designed for weather conditions like this, when the winds were too rough for sails. A large hydrofoil protruded underwater to give the boat additional buoyancy and stability—it was designed not to tip even in the worst weather. But nothing could keep it from shaking violently.
Pacifica and Shannon both gripped the railings, their faces pale and drawn with seasickness. They’d never spent much time on boats.
“Come on, you two.” Berkens rolled his eyes at the nauseated siblings. “It’s not that bad.” He didn’t look the least bit disturbed as he sat calmly on the floor. Shannon wasn’t surprised—he couldn’t imagine anything that could make the huge priest ill.
Raquel, unlike her siblings, was fine. She looked completely peaceful as her body swayed in sync with the rocking boat.
“Hmm.” Berkens looked at the floor and furrowed his brow. “Did you hear that?”
Neither Shannon nor Pacifica were in any condition to hear anything, and the captain was at the helm outside in the rain.
But Raquel did respond. “I think I heard a loud thud…”
At that moment, a bloodcurdling cry ripped through the air.
Shannon and his sisters exchanged looks. The captain hurriedly locked the helm and headed toward the door that led downstairs to the cargo room. A moment later, the rest of them followed.
The carriage horses stood calmly in the cargo room. Furrowing his eyebrows, the captain went to the lower level to find the problem. The siblings crouched on the floor of the cargo room to see what was happening below, and their breaths caught in their throats.
A pool of crimson blood was spreading across the floor.
The assistant lay on the floor across the room, spitting up an unbelievable amount of blood and writhing in agony. One of the cows had stamped its huge hoof into his stomach in an act of frustration.
“What the hell is this?!” Clearly astonished, the boatman loosened his grip on the ladder. Unfortunately, at the same moment, a violent tremor shook the boat.
Shannon reached out for him instinctually, but his grasp came up empty. The captain tumbled from the ladder.
A panicked cow lunged toward him, snapping free of the ropes that bound it. A moment later, the rest of the cows followed suit, trampling both the captain and his assistant. The captain didn’t even have a chance to scream.