Tidal Rage

sniffed the air, but any trace was lost in the gentle breeze, and he walked off. It had taken less than forty seconds from arrival to disposal.
Elisa dropped like a stone, six decks into the wake. There were no windows, balconies, or open spaces on the five decks below, and no CCTV. The killer had picked his spot well. With only a single bald eagle as a spectator, the pod of orcas played with their new toy. They flipped Elisa's cadaver from one to another. Finally one submerged, with Elisa between its teeth. Elisa did not resurface, lost forever to the ice-cold depths of the Inside Passage.
Today was not a good day to die; it was destiny of a sort. Her life cut short; Max Cutler would never see his sister again.

Chapter One
Sebastian was conceived in the sex pit of Patpong, a chaotic tangle of market stalls, shops, restaurants, and drinking dens in the heart of Bangkok. The mainstays of business were alcohol and sexual encounters. The demand for underage girls was constant, and many of them were either dead or diseased by the age of twenty-five.
Those that survived were much cheaper to purchase by the hour or for a night. In some cases, the boys had their Adam's apples shaved and their penises strapped tightly between their legs. Most times, you could not tell the boys from the girls. Some of the less discerning customers did not care, and some preferred their boys to look like boys.
The acrid aroma of sex was everywhere: the sickly stench of sour flesh and bodily fluids. The smell intermingled with the scents of dried shrimp and coconut milk emanating from the heady mix of food stalls that lined the streets.
A man (or indeed a woman) could have all their primal needs satisfied within this area: food, shelter, and sex. Not just any sex; there was a whole menu of the type, gender, transgender, size, and age, all of questionable quality, but copious quantity.
The sex workers of Patpong worked mainly from bars, controlled by a pimp who was primarily a bar owner. In some bars, they sat around the tables; in others, they were corralled together like cattle in pens, waiting to be picked by the multitude of lustful beings that passed them by.
Some men would choose the cheapest sex workers, who were generally unkempt, infested, walking skeletons, apparently afflicted by sexually transmitted diseases. These customers were playing Russian roulette with their lives; sometimes due to economics, other times by choice.
Somewhere beneath the neon lights in Silom Road, an overweight sex tourist, between visits to the Emerald Buddha Temple and the water market, heaved and sweated Sebastian into existence.
Sebastian's mother, Kim, was originally from a small village on the outskirts of Chang Mai, to the north of the country along the Burmese border. Kim was twelve when her father sold her to Luau Wan. He wanted her to work in his factory in Bangkok sewing teddy bears; that was the lie he had told her father. As soon as Kim's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, he needed to decide. Kim's father needed money for an operation, and the 700 US dollars he received for Kim would pay for the initial treatment. He had no option but to sell his only daughter, who was not worth as much to him as her brothers; they could earn their keep in the fields, harvesting rice.
Kim never had a chance to work in a factory or a shop. Not yet a teenager, she lost her virginity to a US three-star general on leave from Vietnam. Luau Wan received 500 US dollars—the market rate for a confirmed virgin.
Unfortunately for Wan, he could only sell Kim as pure for the first year. Within twelve months, the heroin she was hooked on started to take its toll. To the discerning customer, it was noticeable that, although only thirteen, she was no longer fresh.
After two years, Kim had been moved by Luau Wan down to Pattaya, to his bar on Walking Street, preferring fresher meat for his establishment in Bangkok. Kim would sit on the wooden veranda one floor up, which jutted out over Walking Street. The street consisted of a multitude of two-floor wooden buildings facing each other, some five yards across over a dusty mix of tarmac and grit. The alley consisted of bars, money exchangers, Thai boxing venues, even more bars, and brothels.
From Kim's vantage point on the veranda, she could see the multitude of European sex tourists and American soldiers. The lustful intermingled with curious visitors. Kim was the near-nude centrepiece, and they would cheer as she was goaded into pole dancing to entice even more clients.
Kim had to make money to pay for her habit. She needed the heroin to survive and could no longer live without the white powder, even for a day.
Like most pimps, Luau Wan kept most of Kim's takings, leaving her with just enough for the drug and basic food. Kim would get laid or offer other services at least seven times a night. To fall short would mean a beating, but even worse was the withdrawal from the heroin she so craved.
Kim was sixteen years old when the scented condom burst, and she conceived Sebastian. The father was a twenty-stone German car worker from Hamburg called Fritz. Had the rupture happened twenty minutes earlier, the father would have been Joachim from Sweden. Had it been an hour earlier, it could have been Karl from London, or Gregg from Washington. These two had met in a bar and had agreed to share her and the price.
The magnetic appeal of child sex for some of the world's lowlifes was clearly apparent in this area of Bangkok.
Kim had been forced on the pill since she was twelve and had no idea how she became pregnant. After the first beating, Luau Wan had allowed