Artifact

Chapter 20

  Following McKendry's lead - which was mostly to remain flexible and mobile until something better came up - Keene worked his way into the shelter of the thick deck manifold tubing. There, safely hidden, they watched in angry horror as the terrorists emerged from the bridge housing and crew cabins, dragging limp bodies toward the railing as if they were out-of-fashion mannequins.

  "Cleaning up their mess. The sharks will take care of the rest," Keene muttered as Selene Trujold's followers went to the white deck rails and, one at a time, wrestled the bloody forms overboard into the sea.

  McKendry looked even more concerned. "They're going to get the captain, too. When they enter his cabin, they'll find the guy we left on the floor. "

  "Crap! They'll know we're aboard. Let's go. "

  McKendry put on a burst of speed, sprinting forward to where one lone man had wrestled the uncooperative body of a thin dark-haired crewman to the side. The terrorist used his shoulder to push the victim up and over and waited for the splash. He turned just in time to see McKendry and Keene closing in on him from both sides.

  As if they had coordinated it ahead of time, Keene punched the terrorist in the jaw while McKendry smashed a pile-driver fist into his gut, making the man retch. Then the two men picked him up and dumped him over the tanker railing to join the dead bodies he had dropped into the calm water.

  Keene looked at his partner. "Pity he didn't have a chance to take off those bloody clothes. With so many hungry sharks around tonight, I'm sure he'll be quite the dining attraction. "

  Moving at its top speed, the tanker soon left the floating bodies behind.

  They heard the bass chatter of helicopter blades, fast dark aircraft coming in from the main Oilstar complex on Trinidad. They saw lights in the sky drowning out the stars above the dark and quiet channel.

  "Party's over. Good old Frikkie to the rescue," Keene said.

  On the bridge, Selene's silhouetted form stood straight, like an empress surveying newly conquered territory. "Time to go. Set the detonators for twenty minutes. "

  With a click, she switched off the loudspeaker system. She and her companion on the bridge disappeared from the lit windows and came around the bridge housing, running down the outer stairs to the main deck level.

  Once again hidden from sight, Keene and McKendry watched Green Impact troops drop packaged, blinking explosives through the flung-open hatches for the below-deck storage chambers. Top hatches led down into the crude-oil storage chambers, a honeycomb of tanks that comprised theYucatan 's cargo space. Keene and McKendry saw the terrorists link the timers and detonation cables, rigging everything together on a small cluster of timers outside the top hatches.

  "I thought the point of Green Impact was to protect the environment. " Keene shook his head in disgust. "Some conservationists. "

  The Green Impact members began to scramble toward the bow of the tanker. Selene gestured urgently for her team to hurry. Apparently the terrorists had boats tied up to the hijacked oil carrier. As each man finished, she signaled him to go over the side and climb down ropes tied to the anchor windlass. When only one of her group remained, she waved to him and grabbed the rope herself. He gathered the wires from the explosives by the petroleum cargo hatches and ran back to the detonator.

  That's some piece of work, Keene thought, watching Selene go over the side, moving with the sleek grace of an otter. At that distance, he could make out cinnamon-colored hair, cut short and practical, and skin the color of burnt sienna. He couldn't really see her face, but judging by her narrow frame he would guess that she had delicate features. Dangerous, beautiful, tough; doubtless a challenge for any man. "There goes our chance to get Frik's Cracker Jack prize. "

  "I'm more interested in saving this tanker," McKendry said. "No matter what Frik tells us. "

  "Looks like now or never, Terris. " Keene scanned the tanker deck frantically for a means to get to the linked detonators before all the bombs went off.

  "Any ideas?"

  "Got it. " Keene pointed to two old company bicycles leaning against the fifty-gallon drums; the bikes were used for traversing the long deck on regular inspection runs. "There's our mode of transportation. " He grabbed one, holding the handlebars as he swung himself over and began to pound the pedals. McKendry mounted a bicycle of his own. The dented wire basket rattled between the handlebars as they closed the distance.

  Keene's sense of the absurd made him wish he had a little bicycle bell to ring. "Not exactly James Bond style," he said, hunched over and gripping the handlebars. "More like Encyclopedia Brown. "

  McKendry grinned. "I vote for Harry Potter. "

  "We could sure use a bit of magic right now. "

  The thin tires hummed across the oil-stained plates of the deck, ignoring the painted boundary lines that made theYucatan look like some child's board game.

  "Here comes Evel Knie - . " The chain slipped on Keene's bike. He skinned his ankle on the pedal but kept pumping until the bicycle got moving again. McKendry passed him, saving his breath and using his stronger legs to push the bike for all it was worth.

  They both picked up speed.

  The lone terrorist at the front hatches heard the buzz of tires and looked up. He dropped the detonator box and slung the rifle off of his shoulder. Like an experienced professional, the man didn't call out, but simply aimed the weapon.

  Keene ducked and swerved the bicycle, but the terrorist shot twice, coolly confident. The sharp crack of the high-powered rifle sounded simultaneously with Terris McKendry flying backward, as if someone had hit him with two sucker punches. Blood spurted from his back as he flipped off of the padded seat. The bicycle coasted forward another five feet and crashed into a set of fifty-gallon drums.

  McKendry's body bounced once on the deck and lay still.

  Keene shouted his friend's name and skidded on the bike, wiping out as the terrorist fired one more shot and missed. The bullet punctured one of the big metal drums and spilled a harsh-smelling solvent.

  Though he had seen his partner tumble to a bloody halt on the deck, Keene didn't watch to see if he moved or not. Though the terrorist had a rifle, he had no choice except to charge forward recklessly, yowling like a madman.

  The chattering helicopters came closer, searchlights shining onto the tanker in the water. The terrorist, fixed on completing his mission, glanced upward, then at Keene, measuring the distance between them. Scuttling backward toward the bow and his escape, the man grabbed a grenade from his belt, yanked the pin, and chucked it like an inexperienced baseball player down into one of the open hatches of the small forward oil-storage chambers. He was reaching for his gun when Keene barreled into him.

  The man's hands tangled in the rifle's shoulder strap.

  Moving in a blur, Keene wrapped a powerful forearm around his throat and yanked backward as he leaped up, pressing with his knee. He pulled back with all the strength in his shoulders until he heard the man's neck snap.

  Keene grinned a feral snarl that wasn't at all a look of triumph. "There - "

  The grenade went off inside the oil chamber.

  Sealed by bulkheads, the explosion wasn't enough to rip through the double walls of the tanker. But the fire and the pressure wave vomited upward, a powerful geyser slamming like a hot avalanche and hurling Keene and the broken marionette of the already-dead terrorist off into oblivion.

  As he flew into the black void over the sea, he wondered if he would be meeting Satan or Saint Peter. Whichever way he went, he hoped that Arthur and McKendry and the other departed Daredevils would be there.

  The afterlife would be way too dull without them.

  The Oilstar security helicopters came closer, but McKendry knew they would arrive much too late. Selene Trujold and Green Impact had already gotten away.

  He dragged himself forward on his elbows. He couldn't breathe. Redhot bands of pain tightened around his chest like a medieval torture instrument,
and he could feel the gaping wet gunshot hole in his chest, the raw crater of the exit wound in his back. His right side seared where the other shot had grazed his ribs. Shock had diminished most of the pain - that would come later, if he survived long enough - but he could hear the gurgling when he breathed that told him his lung had probably collapsed. He couldn't tell how much he was bleeding, only that it was too much.

  The curtain of fire from the grenade exploding in the storage tanks had nearly blinded him, but he had seen it throw his friend and the last terrorist overboard.

  There was no time to grieve.

  The most important job right now was to save the tanker. He might die in a few moments from the gunshots, but that would be better than becoming part of the funeral pyre of an exploding oil tanker.

  With his eyesight focused more by sheer determination than because of the quality of light, McKendry crawled forward. The terrorists had left the detonators behind. He had seen the man adjust the timers. At any moment, the explosions would go off, engulfing theYucatan in flame.

  Every movement was the greatest effort he had ever made in his life. Leaving a long trail of blood, like the markings of a scarlet garden slug, he reached the open fuel hatches and the hastily rigged box of detonators and timers that connected all the explosives dropped into the storage tanks. He felt dead already. Hoping to hang on for just a few more seconds, he made one last, impossible effort.

  His outstretched hand touched the connected detonator boxes, and he saw the last few seconds ticking down: fifteen. . . fourteen. . . thirteen. . .

  He worked with the big knife he had taken from the terrorist in the captain's cabin. The wide macho blade severed the first couple of wires. So weak he could barely lift the knife, he brought it down as if he were chopping onions, again and again.

  Another wire cut, and another.

  In his state, he could not tell how many connections there were, how many remained, but he couldn't bother with details. His vision was failing, and the blood did not seem to stop pouring out of his wounds. The bright orange glare from the explosion at the bow continued to blind him.

  Joshua Keene was gone, blasted far out into darkness.

  Hoping he had done enough, McKendry raised the big dagger, point downward, and stabbed the central detonator box, skewering it like a bug on the end of a pin. A few sparks erupted, then died.

  It was absolutely the last he could manage. Seeing the helicopters circle for a landing, he collapsed on a deck that smelled of oil and blood as the unmannedYucatan continued to drift into the Caribbean night.