Chapter 15. Between Three Flags

The pursuit that unfolded over the next forty minutes resembled less a naval engagement than a chaotic, almost absurd dance of four sides, none of which fully understood the true intentions of the other three.

The Intrépido, flying Valmara's flag, closed from the south, clearly intending to stop the Kestrel for a second inspection, but was forced to slow when its course crossed the Tarif warship's path, whose captain, judging by his sharp evasive maneuver, was every bit as surprised and irritated by the unexpected presence of a rival power in these waters as the Valmara sailors were.

"They're getting in each other's way," Morten observed, watching the radar with growing, though cautious, relief. "Neither warship wants to provoke an international incident by colliding with another warship at speed in contested waters. That buys us precious minutes."

Hale, however, shared none of that caution. His main ship, far faster and more maneuverable than the warships of either nation, broke through the resulting confusion with the determination of a man for whom international consequences mattered less than a lost prize, and began rapidly closing the distance to the Kestrel, ignoring the protesting radio calls from both warships demanding all parties in the chase halt immediately and provide explanations.

"He's coming straight through," Owen reported, tracking the approaching silhouette through the stern porthole. "Doesn't look like foreign flags are stopping him."

"Then let's hope the neutral corridor stops him where flags won't," Eva said, eyeing the narrow strip of water ahead, marked on Morten's chart as a dotted line with no clear jurisdiction.

Rafael's calculation rested on a fine point of international maritime law: neither of the three countries could officially claim the neutral corridor, which meant the Valmara and Tarif warships, bound by strict rules of engagement in contested waters, were obligated to slow at its border, awaiting diplomatic clearance to enter — a rule both captains, judging by their visible hesitation on radar, still seemed to take seriously, absurd as the moment was.

Hale, however, answered to no rules but his own, and when the Kestrel entered the neutral corridor, leaving the hesitating warships frozen at its border, his ship followed without the slightest pause, rapidly closing to a dangerously short distance.

"He's going to ram us or board us," Leyla shouted, watching the pursuing vessel's maneuvers. "Neither one looks like something a private security company has any right to do in waters that officially belong to no one."

"That's exactly why he's doing it here," Rafael answered grimly. "He thinks that because the waters are neutral, no one here can stop him or hold him accountable afterward."

He was wrong, though it would take time to understand that. Hale's ship, closing to dangerous range, launched a boarding line that caught the Kestrel's stern rail with a metallic screech that carried over the water louder than any gunshot, and in the next second a motor launch dropped from his deck carrying armed men, heading straight for the crew's vessel, trapped in the narrow corridor.

"Cut the line!" Eva shouted, and Leyla, grabbing a machete found on deck, threw herself at the mooring point, hacking through the thick cable with the fury of someone for whom that line symbolized not just physical threat, but all the pressure the crew had faced since Hale's very first visit aboard their ship.

The line snapped, whipping the free end across the deck with enough force to nearly catch Morten, who ducked just in time, but Hale's launch carrying armed men was already too close for the severed boarding cable to slow it completely.

It was at that exact moment — as both warship captains later described the event in official reports, filed independently and, notably, in matching detail — that both the Valmara and Tarif vessels simultaneously concluded that a private ship's demonstrative disregard for international maritime law, attacking a civilian vessel in neutral waters in full view of two sovereign states' military observers, represented a violation far more serious and unambiguous than any dispute over jurisdiction of a sunken galleon.

The Intrépido broke its hesitant halt at the corridor's border first, surging forward to cut across Hale's launch with an unmistakable signal to stop under threat of force. The Tarif vessel followed almost in sync, sealing off the launch's escape route from the opposite side of the corridor.

Hale, now caught between two warships of two nations that only minutes before had been rivals competing to stop him first, and were now unexpectedly united in condemning his own actions, froze in a hesitation that, for perhaps the first time in the entire operation, seemed to make him doubt his own invulnerability.

"I think," Morten said quietly, watching the scene unfold with almost disbelieving relief, "we just turned three enemies into two against one, and that one isn't us."

The Kestrel, meanwhile, kept moving through the neutral corridor at full speed, not waiting to see how the standoff behind them resolved — Rafael had rightly judged that the lull caused by the warships' intervention was unlikely to last more than a few minutes, and that the only sensible way to use that time was to widen the distance enough that even a Hale freed from his pursuers couldn't close it again.

"He's breaking free," Owen reported, watching through the stern porthole as Hale's launch, despite warning signals from both warships, cut sharply to one side, arcing wide around the frozen vessels. "The military didn't stop him, just delayed him."

"The delay is enough," Rafael replied, not looking up from the compass. "Five more miles to the corridor's outer edge, where Esperanza-Norte's waters will already be waiting for us — the only one of the three governments that hasn't sent a single ship against us yet."

Leyla, still wincing from the pain in her injured leg but stubbornly holding her post at the emergency systems, dropped the portion of ballast Morten had been asking for since the chase began — a maneuver that won the Kestrel an extra knot of speed at the cost of part of their fuel reserve, which now mattered far less than a few extra minutes of head start on the pursuit.

No one on deck said the obvious out loud — that the night's outcome still wasn't decided, that Hale, freed from the confused grip of two warships, remained a fast and stubborn enough opponent to close the gap again before the Kestrel reached the relatively safe waters of the third, still uninvolved state. But each of them, deep down, already felt the difference between the despair of the chase's first minutes and the cautious, not-yet-fully-formed hope settling over the deck along with the first truly bright rays of dawn.