Chapter 1
Mediterranean Sea Early Morning, Tuesday, 19 June
Drinking as a competitor’s sport wasn’t very smart and Scott Evers knew that as well as any other who participated, but knowing didn’t improve his mood as he awoke in darkness with a pounding headache. The cabin was cramped, airless. He fumbled about trying to breathe, trying to think, unable to escape the images of Cynthia playing at the water’s edge with little James. A beautiful moment from Cynthia’s most recent video and a little too close for comfort.
The Sea Shepherd listed. Scott reached up with both hands, grabbed at the low ceiling to steady himself, realizing only then that the blaring alarm was what had awoken him. Remnants of the dream images fell away. Calm found him—the kind that availed itself only to those who thrived in the chaos of the storm.
The Shepherd was modeled after the Island-class patrol vessels used by the British Royal Navy in fishery protection patrols. She was 201 feet in length, 36 feet at beam, with a 14-foot draught, and her twin diesel engines helped her reach speeds approaching 20 knots. Her raised upper decks, reinforced to withstand just about anything Mother Nature could throw at her, gave an extended bird’s eye view to the captain and anyone else in the enclosed wheelhouse at the top.
The mission aboard the Shepherd was a daring one. The Shepherd’s job was to disrupt fishermen on the Mediterranean who were exceeding their quotas. Bluefin tuna spawned in the Mediterranean then swam out to the North Atlantic, but overfishing was depleting the tuna to the point of collapse.
Scott wasn’t an environmentalist—he was about as far from one as a person could be. His mission aboard was to protect the Shepherd’s standard crew of 45 and keep them from doing stupid things that would get them killed.
One hand gripping the ceiling as the Sea Shepherd turned hard to port, Scott twisted to reach his utility belt on the wall hook. He clipped it on, felt for its holster, even as he slipped on first one boot and then the other. A sharp pull to the laces of each fitted the quick-tie military boots into place. Last thing he wanted was to be slipping about the deck as he assessed the situation topside.
Red lights in the passageway signaled trouble. He moved double-time, rushing past agitated crewmembers headed in the other direction. Scott knew without asking they ran to the armory. Edie among them, looking uncharacteristically ashen, shouted out, “Libyans sank the Bardot III .”
Scott gripped Edie’s shoulder, “Are you certain?” Last he checked, the Libyans were friends, or at least friendlier than they’d been in the past under Ghadoffi.
Edie’s reply was drowned out in more confirmation than Scott needed: the screams of jet fighters racing by, close to the deck. Without seeing the jets, Scott knew they were French. French peacekeepers were the only ones daring the no-fly zone north of Libya right now, though the nearby USS Harry S. Truman had a Carrier Air Wing with several squadrons of fighter jets aboard too.
“Divers in the water,” Edie cautioned, before continuing on.
Divers in the water explained the tight circle the Sea Shepherd was turning. The divers were out cutting the nets of the purse seiners, freeing ensnared tuna. Fishing in near total darkness was a tactic to escape scrutiny, but it didn’t fool the crew of the Sea Shepherd .
Topside, Scott found the usual in the early dawn light. Garet Dietrich, chief of Scott’s security detail, was kneeling behind a riot shield being held by Lian Qu, who everyone called Kid after Billy the Kid because he was too quick to draw his gun. Kid and the chief were taking cover from the heavy metal chain links men on five Tunisian fishing boats were hurling while the Shepherd ’s crew responded with stink bombs and water from fire
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