Midnight Black by Mark Greaney

Author:Mark Greaney [Greaney, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2025-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Six

Clouds over the eastern portion of the Gulf of Finland blotted out much of the moonlight, and as Court Gentry stood on the aft deck of the Arctus Pearl and looked to the sky, he was damn glad about that, because the Russians were coming.

He stood on the port side of the southeasterly sailing cargo ship, while on the starboard side, probably about a mile off the bow by now, a Russian patrol boat approached. Court had seen it through binos twenty minutes earlier when he’d been on an upper deck, and he’d been tracking it off and on, going back to starboard intermittently while getting all his gear ready on the port-side deck.

The boat was a Rubin-class, operated by the Coast Guard of the FSB Border Service of Russia, and it appeared that it was coming to take a look at the inbound cargo ship.

Court didn’t think the Russian FSB planned on boarding the Pearl in open waters; that would have been a complicated task, but it was likely the vessel would come abreast and sail alongside, using its massive camcopter drone to fly around and search the outside of the Pearl. They’d board in port, of course, search the insides of the ship, most likely, and Court wanted to be off the boat by then because he hadn’t made it this long in this business by taking unnecessary risks.

Though he knew he needed to get into the icy water soon, he continued to wait. He’d leave the Pearl at the last possible moment because the ship was sailing towards land, and every minute he remained onboard the moving craft equated to another ten minutes or so that he wouldn’t have to be in the unforgiving ocean.

That said, he was all decked out and ready.

He wore a neoprene full-body and formfitting scuba dry suit, with strips of gray electric tape he’d applied to cover up the four bullet holes the suit had received while in the backpack on the bed in the holiday cottage the evening before. He’d taped up the bullet holes in the watertight pack, as well, and it lay on the deck next to him filled with a small backpack, clothes, his identification documents, and a thick wad of rubles he’d been carrying since he’d acquired them on the black market in Serbia several months earlier, as well as some candy bars and water. All his clothes and food and even the tennis shoes he had packed were brands commonly sold in Russia, and this made it less likely he’d stand out if he were on a train, waiting for a bus, walking down the sidewalk, or purchasing dinner from a street vendor.

The bag also had several lead weights in pouches on the outside so that it would sink along with Court.

On his body he carried a titanium diving knife with a four-and-a-half-inch serrated blade and a smaller folding knife in a utility pocket of his buoyancy control device, along with more weights to help him sink.

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