SHADOWS ON THE WATER

Rhys Taylor has spent ten years riding steel hulls across dangerous seas, trusting his crew, trusting his instincts, and trusting that trouble usually stays in port.

In Istanbul, that illusion ends.

A stranger with a British accent slides into Taylor's booth and offers him a job that doesn't exist on any manifest: become an MI6 informant-an extra set of eyes and ears in a world where smugglers, radicals, and terrorists move through shipping lanes like ghosts. The pay is generous. The mission is simple.

Observe. Report. Don't play hero.

But when Taylor's old shipmate Harold "Digger" Graves confirms the threat is real, Taylor says the code word-Albatross-and steps into a shadow war he never asked for.

Aboard the cargo ship Ocean Crest, the routine grind of watches and paperwork turns into a slow-burn nightmare. Two crewmen don't fit: Massud, a guarded Syrian deckhand with shifty eyes...and Omar, an engine-room mechanic with a history that doesn't belong on any crew list. Then there are the crates-unmarked, oddly stowed, and never meant to be opened.

In the black water of the North Atlantic, Taylor overhears a whispered plan: a rendezvous at sea with an unmarked vessel. When the transfer comes, it isn't drugs or weapons.

It's worse.

A sealed package marked with biohazard warnings. A delivery system designed to turn a bustling American port into ground zero. And a ticking clock-because New York is only days away.

Now Taylor and Digger must do the impossible: stop a terror plot without sparking a mutiny, without tipping their cover, and without turning the Ocean Crest into a floating coffin.

Because on open water, there's nowhere to run.

And in the shadows beneath the waves, one mistake can cost thousands of lives.