The Ship that Never Sank: The Para-Military Agent Book 1
From stormy seas to explosive surprises, trouble is brewing!
Rain lashed the VW Citi Golf’s windshield. Maria Meintjies downshifted. Kick-ass though it had been in the eighties, its engine was tiny. It toiled against the ocean gale.
Maria stomped on the gas. “Let’s go, Gogga.”
Glossy mansions towered on either side. They gave way to open space as Maria steered into the parking lot.
On a summer’s day, there would be no space here. Big Bay was one of Cape Town’s most popular beaches. This was no summer’s day. The sea was the color of iron, and the wind whipped its swells into massive waves.
Maria grinned.
You would have to be either exceptionally skilled or completely batshit to go surfing in weather like this. Maria Meintjies was both.
She slipped out of her North Face jacket and shivered in her wetsuit after exiting the vehicle. Her surfboard was comically large on the tiny car’s roof. Maria plucked it from its rack, fastened the leash around her ankle, and tucked it under her arm.
Sand blasted her face as she ran across the beach.
Rain and mist cloaked the iconic Table Mountain. There was nothing but turbulent water in every direction. Even Robben Island hid behind the silver haze.
The way Maria liked it.
She ran into the bitterly cold water. Her feet had turned numb before it grew deep enough to paddle.
Her strokes were swift. She didn’t have much time before work. Enough to catch a few waves and forget the bullshit at home.
Charlton would be pissy that she hadn’t made breakfast.
She gripped the surfboard and duck-dove beneath an oncoming wave. It rolled over her head in a churning cylinder. Fish flashed above the sandy bottom. Maria surfaced in the splattering rain.
This was no time to think about Charlton, about any of it. It was only her and the ocean.
Three more duck-dives brought her beyond the breakers. She sat on the board, barely out of breath from the hard paddle. Although the swells were enormous, the rain had smoothed out the chop. Her board barely moved on silky water.
Maria tipped her head back and let the rain fall on her face. The wind brushed her loose curls aside.
When she was little, her mom used to call her meerminnetjie. Little mermaid. Maria remembered wishing she was a mermaid. She could never spend enough time splashing in the waves.
She trailed her fingers in the water, wondering if such creatures lurked in the deep.
The swell shifted. Without looking, Maria knew the next set was coming. She paddled toward the wave.
When it broke, she was ready for it.
The takeoff propelled her forward. Maria popped to her feet and set her rail. Her board skimmed along the gray water. The world darkened as the wave’s foaming lip curled overhead.
She laughed. This was everything she needed—speed, energy, and unity with the ocean.
A fast bottom turn carried her back to the clean shoulder. She dropped into the stillness on the other side, breathless with delight.
Screw Charlton. Nothing mattered but this.
Maria paddled out for another set, hoping it wouldn’t make her late for work.
Then something torpedo-shaped and colossal zipped beneath her with unthinkable speed.
Maria sat up. A black shape split the water nearby, then vanished into the murky gray.
She grinned. “Hello, boys.”
An orca surfaced mere feet from her board. The rain glistened on his black-and-white skin. His dorsal fin drooped to one side. To the left, Maria noted. This was Port.
“Where’s your brother?” she asked him.
A blowhole huffed on her other side. Maria laughed. The other orca’s fin listed to the right, which had given him his name—Starboard.
“Morning,” she called.
The orcas circled her. Maria dangled her feet in the water, her pulse accelerating.
In her day job at Two Oceans Aquarium, she saw orcas every day. These were different. They were more than wild. They were notorious.
Port and Starboard did many things that made no sense, but showing up in Big Bay almost every time Maria surfed was on top of the list.
The swell rocked her board as another set rolled in.
Maria laughed. “Here we go, boys!”
The orcas sliced the water on either side as she paddled hard for the next wave. She rose and sped along its face, slicing a pale wake.
The orcas disappeared.
Maria looked around, careful not to disturb her balance. “Hey, where did you guys— Oh!”
The orcas burst from the wave’s lip and soared over her head. Maria whooped. They splashed into the water feet away from her. She lost her balance in distraction. Her board vanished beneath her.
She kicked it away and dove seamlessly into the water.
The wave took her. Maria let it. There was no use arguing with the ocean. Her only choice was to go with it. The wave spun her a few inches from the sandy bottom, then spat her out.
She had plenty of air as she kicked for the surface. It escaped in a stream of bubbles when the orcas reappeared.
They circled her, their tails working up and down. Their clicks and whistles were as intricate as language.
Blowholes huffed on either side as she surfaced and shook her hair from her face.
“Your breath smells like fish!”
Port rolled, slapping the surface with one fin. Maria laughed.
Her board bobbed about twenty feet away. Maria reeled in the leash hand-over-hand. She checked the board’s fins and scrambled on.
“Ready for another one, boys?”
As one, Port and Starboard swiveled toward the open sea. They hung motionless in the water, as if listening to something Maria couldn’t hear.
“Boys?”
The orcas took off with astonishing speed. Their surge sent her board skidding backward. Maria clutched it. Their dorsal fins left foaming wakes as they sped away, faster than Maria had ever seen them move.
Were they hunting? Was there a white shark nearby?
Maria squinted at the horizon. Mist blurred the line where sky met sea.
A shadow moved in it.
Maria’s breath caught. This was impossible. She rose to her knees, straining forward.
A horseman stood silhouetted against the mist. He sat tall on a steed that should have moved on land, not water.
She saw him for less than a second, long enough for the impression to burn into her memory.
Then the wind changed, and the gathering storm swallowed orcas and horseman alike.
***
Maria stayed out as long as she could, but the horseman and orcas had vanished.
Finally, she caught a wave to shore.
Sodden and shivering, she ran across the beach with her board under her arm. The wind blew even harder now. Her Golf rocked violently as she wrapped herself in a towel and scrambled inside.
She turned on the windshield wipers and peered at the sea. It was raining too hard to see beyond the breakers.
Maybe she had imagined all of it. Especially the way the orcas had rushed toward the horseman, as if he’d summoned them.
The Golf’s dash clock had given up. Maria fished her phone from the bag under the seat.
She would make it to work on time if she left right now.
Instead, she swiped to her messaging app and tapped on the group chat near the top.
Her fingers flew over the screen.
>I saw him while I was surfing again! I think Port and Starboard know him!
There was no time to wait for an answer. Maria started the Golf. She raced along the waterfront, heading for Two Oceans.
***
Agent Damian Radu had had better Fridays.
Alone in the elevator, he leaned against the back wall. His hand ached from the endless forms he’d filled in, laboriously, in pen and ink. Certain species refused to digitize. Parchment could be a bitch to write on, too.
This wasn’t what he’d signed up for when he joined the Official Para-Military Agency years ago.
He glared at his reflection in the elevator’s shiny steel. “You heard the captain. Not much longer.”
The elevator halted on the ground floor. With a spring in his step, Damian walked across the New York City headquarters.
The cafeteria smelled delicious, but Damian didn’t pause. He worked the night shift, so leaving now meant missing the morning traffic headed to Brooklyn. Sitting in traffic was the last thing he needed after a day like this.
His car wasn’t the type for traffic. It hankered for the open road, the same as he did.
The parking garage was only half-full. Damian nodded greetings at colleagues heading to their vehicles.
“Marvin,” he muttered.
A young man paused at the door to his carriage. “Morning, Damian. Plans for the weekend?” He’d harnessed the carriage to eight…horses? They had fire where their eyes should be.
Damian pretended not to hear over the hoofbeats.
He passed a rack of magic carpets, a sleigh, and numerous black SUVs before reaching a stall containing a gray stallion with eight legs.
Sleipnir pinned his ears as Damian approached.
“I’m not Merritt. I don’t have any sugar for you,” Damian grumbled.
Sleipnir snapped his teeth.
“Bite me, Slippy.”
The stallion kicked the wall.
Scowling, Damian pawed through his trench coat’s pockets and found a breath mint. He unwrapped it and tossed it into the straw, to Sleipnir’s glee.
“I’m such a sucker.” Damian turned to his car.
He ran a hand over the polished roof. The 2023 Audi R8 was bright red with black detailing that added to its aggressive look. Its sleek lines screamed “supercar” even before Damian started the engine.
Then it screamed like a supercar. Damian savored the snarl of the tremendous V10.
“Let’s go home, Fast Red Thing.”
Embarrassment flooded him as he backed the car out. His best friend, Merritt Vale, was rubbing off on him. She’d insisted on giving his car a name, even if that name was Fast Red Thing.
Damian considered this ultimate disrespect.
He left the NYHQ campus, then stomped on the gas. Six hundred horsepower brought the FRT from zero to sixty in about three seconds.
Damian leaned back in the driver’s seat with one hand on the wheel and one on the shifter. His muscles relaxed as they roared across Staten Island.
This was always the best part of his day.
He cut in front of a truck and ignored the honks as they swept onto the freeway. Ignoring the speed limit, Damian cruised at a comfortable pace of a hundred miles per hour.
When he noticed the Lamborghini, it was because he admired it.
The aggressive black car was one of the FRT’s few rivals. With a single glance in the rearview mirror, Damian recognized the 2025 Temerario. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a hybrid, but this one packed a V8 that could reach ten thousand RPM without missing a beat.
He slowed to check it out, assuming it would continue away when he took the intersection.
Instead, the Lambo followed him onto I-278. Most traffic from Staten Island to Brooklyn would take this route to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
Tingles started in Damian’s gut and spread to his hands. His front teeth itched. His fingernails grew an inch.
Damian reined in his tension. The last time he’d allowed himself annoyance, he’d ripped the FRT’s steering wheel.
They reached the bridge. Only a couple of other vehicles marred the two-and-a-half miles of straight asphalt.
Damian casually put his foot down.
The FRT responded with a ten-cylinder bellow. Acceleration pinned him in his seat. The speedometer jumped. One-twenty, one-fifty. Around one-seventy-five miles per hour, Damian glanced at the rearview mirror.
The Lambo was gaining on them.
Damian didn’t care if this was a dangerous situation or a dick-measuring contest. He accelerated. They zipped down I-278 into Brooklyn.
Damian took the first exit and gunned the FRT into the maze of streets.
This was his territory, the narrow streets and avenues squeezed between tall buildings. It looked tidy on paper. In person, trees, cars, and dumpsters crowded the way.
When a red light flashed ahead, the Lambo was on his heels.
Damian tapped the brakes at the light. Metal kissed metal as the Lambo’s hood met the Audi’s fender.
This guy didn’t care about showing off his car. He was attacking.
The light remained red, but the intersection was empty. Damian dropped gears and spun the wheel.
The FRT plunged down an even narrower avenue. Run-down businesses flashed by on either side. The Lambo pursued with a shriek of hybrid energy.
Damian might not be able to outrun them, but he could outmaneuver them.
He cornered hard. The Audi stuck to the road and wasted no time drifting.
The Lambo snapped past, unable to react in time.
Through a cloud of white smoke, a familiar face stared at Damian from the passenger’s seat. Black hair whipped around pale cheeks. Fangs protruded beneath the upper lip.
Leo Accardi. One of the OPMA’s most wanted.
The Lambo vanished. Rubber screamed as its driver tried to backtrack. Damian laughed. He took two rights and a left in the time it took the Lambo to turn around.
They would never catch him now.
He eased to a more respectable pace as he approached his home, where Eiravel Stonehold cast a fearsome shadow. Not even Leo Accardi would venture into Little Avalon.
He would figure out what Leo’s problem was, and preferably put him behind bars. For now, Damian’s priority was dinner.
He drove into the gas station at the entrance to Little Avalon. A dwarf with a splendid copper beard filled his SUV at a nearby pump.
The dwarf waved. “Morning, Damian.”
“Morning, Callum.” Damian parked the FRT outside the grocery store beside the gas station.
Jackson Roott stocked the best pork pies. They came via brownie portal from the Iron Hills, so fresh they steamed despite their interdimensional journey. Damian smacked his lips.
He gazed at the store, tapping his fingers on the wheel. Should he grab two?
Would Tess be home today?
For the first time since leaving work, worry twinged in his gut.
Pull yourself together, Radu. Two it is. One can go in the fridge if she’s not there.
He was thinking of Tess and pork pies when he exited the car. Otherwise, he would have noticed the explosive device earlier.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
His attention snapped toward the ominous sound. The beeps sped up.
An amulet clung to the FRT’s fender. Runes glowed on its surface. They flashed red at ever-shortening intervals, matching the beeps.
Callum strolled toward the store, pawing through his wallet.
“Get back!” Damian yelled.
The dwarf looked up. “Huh?”
There was no time for another warning. Damian flung his arms around the dwarf, throwing them to the ground.
His elbow hit the asphalt with searing pain.
“What the—” Callum burst out.
The explosion rattled Damian’s fangs. He curled himself protectively around Callum. Fire rolled overhead. Everything smelled of smoke.
Heat, sound, and impact filled the world. Then, only a ringing in his ears.
Callum squirmed, panicking. Damian released him. He couldn’t hear the dwarf’s cries, but horror covered Callum’s face as he stared at the FRT.
What was left of it, anyway.
It blazed like a bonfire. Flames licked over the warped and naked metal. All that remained of his beloved Fast Red Thing.
Damian threw his hands up. “Again?”
Will Damian uncover who’s trying to kill him? And will Maria discover the truth behind the mysterious horseman on the waves? Find out on October 16th when
The Ship that Never Sank: The Para-Military Agent Book 1 is released. Until then head over to amazon and pre-order it today.
