Free The Hunter From the Woods by Robert McCammon

Kpanga, but his attention had already returned to focusing the lights on the horizon in his binoculars. Michael thought Kpanga was awfully unconcerned about the fact a first mate had just taken an order from a second mate. The African wore a black suit and an open-collared indigo shirt. Kpanga’s flesh was the hue of purest ebony from the heart of the dark continent. He was thin and tall, about the same height as Michael. He had a cap of close-cropped hair with a widow’s peak. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles with round lenses, and Michael thought he looked more like a first-year law student than the first mate of a rust-gnawed freighter.
    “Where were you walking to?” Medina inquired acidly. He grinned, which was almost his undoing. “Home to your momma?”
    Michael Gallatin increased the intensity of his green eyes. He said nothing, his face placid. Medina’s grin vanished.
    “Careful the way you look at me, man!” the second mate warned, which was nearly his second brush with disembowelment.
    “Very strange, this is,” said Kpanga, lowering the binoculars. He had a melodic British accent tinged with the smooth rhythm of his tribal tongue. He cast a gaze at the wayward crewman. The Sofia ’s lights sparked off his eyeglasses. “Return belowdecks, if you please.”
    “We ought to make an example of him.” Medina didn’t quite know when to stop edging toward a fast and brutal reckoning.
    “Return belowdecks, if you please,” Kpanga repeated, as if the second mate had not only never spoken but wasn’t even standing there.
    Michael nodded. The African once more peered through the binoculars. Medina waited for a further provocation. Michael thought he could tear the Spaniard’s beard off in about three seconds. He looked toward the distant lights. Another freighter, most likely. Also headed for England? Before Medina could speak again, Michael turned away and went forward to the stairs he’d ascended from his little bunk in Hell.
     

Five
    The Captain

     
    It was a small movement. A small sound. A change in the thudding of waves against the hull. A quietening of the labored diesels.
    Michael Gallatin sat up on his bunk.
    Had he been asleep at all? Maybe for two hours. Everything was still semi-dark. A few other crewmen had felt the change in their sleep as well, and were groggily stirring. Someone spoke out in Polish, as if from a dream. A question that had no answer.
    Michael’s heartbeat had quickened. He swung himself off the bunk and because he was still mostly dressed all he had to do was pull on his boots, his jacket and his woolen cap. Then he was up the stairway into the night.
    A cold, stinging drizzle hit him in the face. He saw, first of all, that the lights of a ship were about five hundred meters off the port beam. The ship’s bow was aimed toward Sofia . Michael judged it was making maybe ten knots. A shrill alarm went off in him. Sofia was slowing nearly to a glide. He saw a signal lamp blinking up at the second ship’s wheelhouse. Sending morse code to Sofia . He took a moment to decipher it.
    Stop your engines. We are overtaking.
    “Damn it,” he breathed, and then he went to the stairs leading up along the side of the superstructure and raced to the wheelhouse at the top. At the locked door, he balled up his fist and started hammering.
    The door opened and a startled-looking Enam Kpanga peered out. Raindrops flecked his glasses. He said, “What are you—”
    Then he stopped speaking, because Michael shoved him back and walked into the low-lamped wheelhouse, where a Swede with a face like the business end of an axe was manning the helm. Before him, the wide rectangular windowglass was streaked with rain.
    Medina was standing at the engine order telegraph, the brass instrument by which the bridge communicated speed changes to the engine room. Michael saw that the pointer was set to the Ahead Two-Thirds position instead of what would normally be All-Ahead Standard . Medina’s hand was