Free Killing Chase by Ben Muse

erbium?”
    “No, but they sound like something straight off the periodic table.”
    “Correct. They are just a couple of the seventeen chemical elements found in the periodic table that Sergei’s firm mines. These seventeen elements are important to our modern way of living. They make computers and smartphones smaller, and power hybrid cars. They also help in the medical and dental fields, among numerous other uses. It’s quite a lucrative business, but the mining isn’t easy. They’re called rare earth elements, but they are plentiful in the crust of the earth, just not in large, concentrated quantities. Sergei plucks these metals as well as gold and silver from ocean depths of over four thousand meters.”
    “So, a bottom feeder in love and business.”
    My father rolled his eyes. “Sergei is a former Russian nuclear sub commander who discovered his skill set and the private sector were a perfect match. He’s made billions.  
    “So, Anna works in Wilmington managing what exactly?”
    “She runs his legal department for his American portfolio. Homeland security, rightly or wrongly, has a hundred-mile no-mining zone off the coast. There are rumblings of a big find somewhere off the coast of Virginia, but the environmentalists are rattling their sabers, so I expect them to tie this issue up in litigation.”
    “Which means Anna will be very busy running point as Mr. Durov seeks permission to mine?”
    “Correct.”
    “Does she have a boyfriend?” I hated derailing the conversation for something so trivial, but we both knew this question would come up.
    “So, we get to the real question. No, she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
    “And you know this how?”
    “I have my ways.”
    “I’m giving her a tour of the ship tomorrow, unless we somehow get lost and have to call for help.”
    “Maybe you two should get lost. Goodnight son.”
    He hung up, and I left the room to sweat. In the gym, a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall displayed our trip information. We’d been underway for three hours and forty five minutes, knocking out one hundred ten miles and leaving us five hundred ten nautical miles from Nassau. The ship was moving at twenty knots and estimated to arrive Friday afternoon at three.
    After I finished with the weights, I decided a thirty-minute hot-tub soak on the sun deck was in order. It would be a solo celebration to cap off my first day of freedom. Normally at this time of the night, I would be reading Steinbeck or Hemingway in my dimly lit cell with Sam’s snoring rattling the walls.
    I went back to the room and changed into a pair of dark-blue swim trunks and a white, terry cloth robe that had a replica of the ship embroidered on the front. I left the room, stopped at Anna’s door, and contemplated knocking and asking if she wanted to take a break and go for a dip. The idea sounded a little forward and desperate when I ran it through my head a second time, so I walked on.
    There was a chill in the air, fifty feet above the water on the sun deck. It was mid-March after all, at night, and we were in the open Atlantic moving at almost twenty-five miles an hour. Perfect hot tub weather. I grabbed an Evian from the fridge behind the bar and tossed my robe on the L-shaped couch. The temperature extremes on the surface of the eight-person, LED-lit tub caused steam to emanate off the water. I slipped in with just my head above the frenetic surface, and powerful jets pounded me from all angles as I sat facing the front of the boat, a three-quarter moon overhead in a clear, starlit sky. I slid off the seat and fully submerged myself, then surfaced and ran my hands through my hair. It was time to relax, reflect, and think about the future.
    My first thought was that there was no way my father was involved in something that could harm the country. Self-absorbed and a narcissistic? Yes. Traitor to his country? Not a chance. He certainly didn’t need the money either. Maybe Special Agent Brighton Jenna