Plague Ship

  Murph had been unable to come up with the solution without the distraction of the cold racking his body, and he really held little hope that it would come to him now, but he wasn’t one to give up.

  “Come on, Linda. Think. This is basically a floating city, right? What does it take to run a city?” She gave him a look that said she wasn’t interested in playing his game, so he answered his own question. “Food, water, septic, garbage removal, and electricity.”

  “Yes, they’re going to poison the garbage.”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “Or let’s look at this another way. A cruise ship is a hotel. What do you need to run a hotel?”

  “The same things,” Linda said, “Plus little mints on your pillow at night.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “I’m not trying to.”

  Mark suddenly shot forward in his seat. “You got it!”

  “Poisoned mints?” she said archly.

  “Who brings the mints?”

  “A maid.”

  “And what is she doing in your room in the first place?”

  “Cleaning up and changing the . . . Holy God!”

  “I remember back in Greece when we rescued Max’s kid. They had a bunch of industrial washing machines but no dryers,” Murph said. “They were training. The virus is introduced in the laundry. Passengers get fresh sheets every day. And if that doesn’t expose them to the virus enough, there are fresh napkins in the dining rooms as well as in the crew’s mess. How perfect is that? Wiping your mouth with a tainted napkin is as effective as giving someone a shot of the stuff. I bet within twelve hours of it being introduced into the washing machines, everyone on board comes into contact with viral-laden linens.”

  He clamped his hands over his head. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner? It is so obvious.”

  “It’s only obvious after you think of it. Kind of like finding something in the last place you look,” Linda teased, throwing Mark’s words back at him. She slowly levered herself to her feet. “Let’s go see if you’re right.”

  THE QUAD BIKE WAS DESIGNED to handle rough terrain, with its extra-large shocks and springs, but Juan was pushing the four-wheeler to its very limits as he chased after the pickup. With shells impacting scant feet ahead of it, its driver was forced to keep an erratic track, and Juan made up the lost ground quickly.

  “Chairman, it’s Hali. This is the forty-five-minute warning. Repeat, impact in forty-five-minutes.”

  “I hear you,” Juan said. They were now cutting into their margin of safety to clear out of the strike zone. “I just wish I hadn’t. Wepps, I want you to hold fire. George, I need you to distract the guy in the back of the truck so I can get close. Buzz them.”

  “Roger.”

  With a knee pressing him to the pickup’s bed and the barrel of an assault rifle jammed in his neck, Max had no idea what was happening around him. The gun was suddenly pulled away, and the guard fired a short burst. Max turned his head enough to see that he was firing into the sky. The Robinson suddenly flew over the truck, so low that the guard had to duck.

  Max used the distraction to ram an elbow into the guy’s groin. The blow was clumsy and awkward and didn’t seem to slow the man at all. He whipped the gun around, and Max blocked it with his arm so that, when it discharged, the bullets sailed harmlessly into the darkening sky. Eyes burning from the spent gunpowder, Max saw his opportunity and punched the guard’s exposed flank. The guard counterpunched Max in the face. The renewed agony seemed to goad Hanley and he went into a rage, swinging wildly, and slowly getting up to his knees to get more power behind his punches.

  The pickup’s bed was too confined for the guard to bring his assault rifle to bear, so he used it to shove Max off of him. Hanley went down, sweeping out his leg to knock the gunman on his butt. Max stood shakily, clutching the side of the truck to keep himself steady.

  Juan was not more than two feet from the pickup’s rear bumper, on an all-terrain vehicle. He was hunched low over the handlebars so the driver couldn’t see him. Max could see Juan’s lips moving, as he spoke to either George, still circling overhead, or someone on the Oregon.

  Max jumped the supine guard like a professional wrestler, only the elbow he smashed into the man’s gut wasn’t for show. The guard’s eyes bulged from his head, and his cheeks expanded as every bit of air in his lungs exploded out of his body.

  A few seconds later, another round from the ship’s main gun hit just in front of the pickup truck. The driver slowed and veered left, giving Juan a chance to pull up alongside the vehicle.

  “Max, stop screwing around and jump!” Juan shimmied forward on his seat to give Hanley as much room as possible.

  Max crawled over the rear gate to crouch on the bumper. He reached out with a leg, getting it over the saddle seat before throwing his weight. He landed solidly, clutching at Juan’s waist to keep himself firmly planted.

  Nigel, the English guard driving the truck, chose that moment to look in his rearview mirror. Realizing the prisoner was escaping, he swerved toward the ATV, forcing Juan to slam on the brakes. Nigel jammed on his, and then when the ATV started to scoot away he went after it.

  With two big men astride the quad bike, the vehicles were evenly matched for speed over the rough ground. Juan couldn’t pull more than a few feet ahead of the pickup, and, no matter how sharply he turned, the driver kept with him. The Responsivist had to have realized that if he stayed close to the fleeing four-wheeler, the big cannon targeting him wouldn’t fire.

  “He’s toying with us,” Juan spat, glancing over his shoulder to see the truck’s flat grille less than five yards from their rear wheels. “And we don’t have time for this. By the way, it’s good to see you, and, boy, is your face a mess.”

  “Good to see you, too,” Max yelled over the wind. “And it feels worse than it looks.”

  “Hold on,” Juan warned, and sent the ATV over the hill that led back to the road. They roared down it at a breakneck pace, Juan turning the handlebars so that the bike skidded onto the macadam. He cranked the throttle, as the pickup fishtailed behind them.

  They gained fifty feet, tempting Juan to call in a shot from the Oregon, but the pickup was much faster than the ATV on the smooth road and closed up the gap again before he could issue the order.

  “Wepps, prepare to fire HE at the end of the dock.”

  “Standing by.”

  “What are you doing?” Max called anxiously.

  “Plan C.”

  They flew down the road, although not at the ATV’s top speed. Cabrillo needed to keep a little in reserve. They shot past the still-flaming ruin of the guardhouse, threading around smoldering sheets of corrugated metal. Juan hit the dock and opened the throttle as far as it would go, expertly judging speed, distance, and time.

  “Fire.”

  The pickup’s driver hung back, not understanding why the ATV would intentionally corner itself on the pier, but when he realized it wasn’t slowing he hit the gas to keep close.

  “George,” Juan shouted into his radio. “Prepare to pick us up in the water.”

  The pilot replied something that was lost to the wind.

  Juan and Max rocketed down the length of the dock, coming up on fifty miles an hour.

  Max finally realized what Juan was doing and shouted, “You crazy son of a biiiii . . .”

  They flew off the end of the dock, sailing out almost twenty feet, before splashing into the sea. An instant later, the pickup screeched to a halt in a four-wheel drift that almost flipped it on its side. Before the truck fully settled on its suspension, the door flew open and the guard raised his assault rifle, wanting nothing more than to kill the two men as soon as they surfaced.

  The high-pitched whistle lasted less than a second, giving the guard no time to react.

  The explosive shell actually hit the dock and not the truck, but it hardly mattered. Both were disintegrated by the blast, sending debris arcing across the sea.

  Juan helped Max claw
his way to the surface. He spat out a mouthful of water and surveyed the damage behind them. Half of the dock was simply gone, while the rest had become splintered timber and destroyed pilings.

  “Was that strictly necessary?” Max grumbled.

  “Remember me telling you about one of my first missions with the Company?”

  “Something about a Russian satellite.”

  “An Orbital Ballistic Projectile weapon.” Juan pulled his arm out of the water to check his watch. “It’s going to obliterate this island in thirty-eight minutes. I, for one, want to be as far from here as possible.”

  The Robinson R44 was trailing smoke when it appeared over the cliff, beating its way to the dock. That must have been what George had tried to tell us, Juan thought, that their helo was damaged. Adams deftly swung the chopper over the two men, hovering just above them, the downdraft kicking up a choking mist of roiled seawater. He came down even lower, until the skids were awash. Juan reached up to open the door and helped Max clamber into the chopper. It dipped dangerously as his weight upset the center of balance.

  He was about to follow Hanley when a stream of autofire bracketed the helo.

  “Go!” he shouted, and clutched the skid.

  George didn’t need to be told twice. He revved the engine and tore away from the dock, where another pickup truck had appeared with two men in its bed, hammering away at them with AKs.

  Hanging by his arms and legs like an ape, Juan clung to the Robinson’s skid for all he was worth. The wind buffeting him was brutal, and his wet clothes felt like ice, but there was nothing he could do about it. The Oregon was only a couple miles out, and he didn’t want George to slow down for him to climb in the cabin.

  Adams must have radioed ahead about the situation, because every light on the ship was ablaze and extra crewmen were on deck to assist in the landing. The helmsman had already turned the bow away from Eos Island, and the old girl was under way.

  George gave himself plenty of clearance as he came over the fantail. He ignored the warning lights flashing and horns sounding in the cockpit that indicated his beloved chopper was in her death throes. He imagined the oil burning away in the overheated transmission, as he gently reduced his altitude.

  Juan let go of the skid when he was a just above the waiting hands of the deck crew. They caught him easily and lowered him to his feet. They scrambled out of the way to give Adams the room he needed to set the Robinson on the deck.

  “Helm, flank speed,” Juan ordered the instant the skids kissed the pad. “Sound general quarters and rig the ship for collision.”

  Adams killed power as soon as he felt the skids bump down, but the damage was already done. Flames erupted from the engine cowling and around the rotor mast. Crewmen were standing by with fire hoses, and he and Max jumped from the chopper amid a torrent of spray.

  George looked back when he was a safe distance away, his handsome face drawn. He knew the chopper was a total loss.

  Juan clamped a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get you a shiny new one.”

  They went inside before the wind became too strong. In the Oregon’s wake, Eos Island crouched in the sea, an unsuspecting ugly lump of rock that was not long for this world.

  CHAPTER 38

  THOM SEVERANCE WASN’T SURE WHAT TO DO. THE guards at the dock had reported capturing Max Hanley as he tried to escape the facility through the exhaust vent, of all things, and then they said they were being attacked by a black helicopter. For a brief instant, he feared the UN was behind the assault, what with rumors of their squadrons of black choppers. He caught a few snippets of garbled conversation over the walkie-talkie and then everything had gone silent. The cameras mounted atop the guardhouse were out, so he finally ordered a vehicle to check out the dock.

  “They escaped, Mr. Severance,” the guard captain reported. “Hanley and another man in the chopper. The guardhouse has been destroyed and so has the dock. A lot of my guys are missing.”

  “Are there any more of them?”

  “I’ve got patrols sweeping now. So far it appears as if it was just the one man.”

  “One man killed all your guards and destroyed the dock?” he said doubtfully.

  “I have no other explanation.”

  “Very well, continue checking, and report anything out of the ordinary immediately.

  Severance raked his fingers through his hair. Lydell Cooper’s final orders had been very specific. He wasn’t to send the signal for another two hours. But what if this had been the vanguard of a much larger assault? To delay might mean failure. On the other hand, if he sent the signal early it could mean that not all the virus had been attached to the feed lines of the laundry machines on all fifty cruise ships.

  He wanted to call his mentor, but this was a decision he felt he should make on his own. Lydell was en route with Heidi and her sister, Hannah. They wouldn’t arrive until after the virus was released. He had had full control of the Responsivist movement for years, and, yet, like a son taking over a family business, he knew that he was under a constant microscope and wasn’t truly in charge at all. He never forgot that Lydell could override any decision he made, without warning or explanation.

  He had chafed at that a little, not that Cooper interfered much. But now with the stakes so high, he wished he had that safety net of being told what to do.

  What would it matter if they missed a couple of ships? Lydell’s calculations of the disease’s vector only called for forty shiploads of people in order to infect everyone on the planet. The extra ten were insurance. When questioned why some of the ships escaped infection, he could claim the dispersal devices failed. And if they all worked, no one would ever know.

  “That’s it,” he said, slapping his thighs and getting to his feet.

  He strode into the ELF transmitter room. A technician in a lab coat was bent over the controls. “Can you send the signal now?”

  “We aren’t scheduled to send it for another couple of hours.”

  “That isn’t what I asked.” Now that his decision had been made, Severance’s haughtiness had returned.

  “It will take me a few minutes to double-check the batteries. The power plant is off-line because of the damage to the exhaust system.”

  “Do it.”

  The man conferred with a colleague deep beneath the facility using an intercom, speaking in arcane scientific jargon that Severance couldn’t follow.

  “It will just be another moment, Mr. Severance.”

  THE RUSSIAN SATELLITE’S electronic brain marked time in minute fractions as it streaked over Europe at seventeen thousand miles per hour. The trajectory had been calculated to the hundredth of an arc second, and when the satellite hit its mark a signal was sent from the central processor to the launch tube. There was no sound, in the vacuum of space, as an explosive gush of compressed gas blasted the tungsten rod out of the tube. It was pointed almost straight down, and it began its fiery trip to earth, descending at a slight angle, as its builders had designed, so it could be confused with an incoming meteor. Hitting the first molecules of the upper atmosphere created friction that merely warmed the rod. The lower it fell, the more the heat built, until the entire length of the rod glowed red, then yellow, and, finally, a brilliant white.

  The heat buildup was tremendous but never approached tungsten’s melting point of over three thousand degrees Celsius. Observers on the ground could see the rod clearly, as it hurtled across Macedonia and the northern Greek mainland, leaving sonic booms in its wake.

  THE DIGITAL CLOCK on the main monitor was into the single digits. Juan had avoided looking at it before Max’s rescue but now couldn’t tear his eyes off of it. Max had refused treatment in the medical bay until after the impactor hit Eos, so Hux had brought her kit up to the Op Center and was working on his injuries. The seas were smooth enough for her to do her job, even though the Oregon was charging eastward at top speed.

  Max usually had a sarcastic comment about Juan running his engines above the red lin
e, but he knew full well what was coming and kept it to himself. They weren’t yet at the minimum safe distance from the blast, and if the Chairman thought getting out and pushing would help he’d do it.

  Hali Kasim tore his earphones off his head with a curse.

  “What is it?” Juan asked anxiously.

  “I’m picking up a signal on the ELF band. It’s from Eos. They’re sending the trigger code.”

  Cabrillo paled.

  “It’s going to be okay.” Max’s voice sounded nasal because of the cotton balls stuffed in his battered nose. “The wavelengths are so long, the full code will take a while to broadcast.”

  “Or they could release the virus at the first sign of an ELF signal,” Hali said.

  Juan’s palms were slick. He hated the thought that they had come so far only to fail at the eleventh hour. He wiped his hands on his wet pants. There was nothing he could do but wait.

  He hated to wait.

  WEARING THEIR CUSTODIAL UNIFORMS, Linda and Mark prowled the lower decks of the Golden Sky once again, trying to remember where the ship’s laundry was located. There were only a few crewmen roaming around, and each was too lost in his own suffering to question two unfamiliar faces.

  The whine of dryers spooling up drew them to their destination. Steam billowed from the dimly lit room. None of the Chinese workers looked up from their duties when the two stepped inside the laundry.

  A man leaning just inside the door that they hadn’t seen grabbed Linda’s arm in a tight grip.

  “What are you doing here?” he challenged.

  She tried to yank her arm free. Mark recognized the guy as one of the men who had arrived by helicopter with Zelimir Kovac. He should have known they would post a guard. He moved to intercede, and the man drew a pistol and pressed it against Linda’s temple.

  “One more step and she’s dead.”

  The laundry workers were well aware of what was happening but went about their business of transferring clothes, folding sheets, and pressing shirts.