Plague Ship

by Clive Cussler

  She rushed forward. “We’ve got a live one!”

  Huxley peeled back the blankets. A young woman was sound asleep, the air tubes feeding directly into her nostrils. Her dark hair was fanned over the pillow, framing a face with pale, delicate features. She was bone thin, with long arms and slender shoulders. Julia could see the outline of her clavicles through her T-shirt. Even in repose, she’d obviously gone through an ordeal that had taken its toll.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she screamed when she saw the two figures in space suits hovering over her bed.

  “It’s okay,” Julia said. “I’m a doctor. We’re here to rescue you.”

  Julia’s muffled voice did little to calm the woman. Her blue eyes were wide with fear, and she backed up against the head-board, drawing the blankets over herself.

  “My name is Julia. This is Eddie. We are going to get you out of here. What’s your name?”

  “Who . . . Who are you?” the young woman stammered.

  “I’m a doctor from another ship. Do you know what happened?”

  “Last night, there was a party.”

  When the woman didn’t continue, Julia assumed that she was in shock. She turned to Seng. “Break out another hazmat suit. We can’t take her off the supplemental oxygen until she’s in it.”

  “Why’s that?” Eddie asked, tearing open the hazmat suit’s plastic wrap.

  “I think it’s why she survived and no one else did. The virus must be airborne. She wasn’t breathing the ambient air but drawing oxygen from the hospital’s oh-two system, and, when that went down, she started using this portable unit here.” Julia looked back at the girl. She estimated her age to be early twenties, either a passenger traveling with her family or a member of the crew. “Can you tell me your name, sweetie?”

  “Jannike. Jannike Dahl. My friends call me Janni.”

  “May I call you Janni?” Julia asked, seating herself off the bed and holding the flashlight so Janni could see her face through her suit’s faceplate. Jannike nodded. “Good. My name is Julia.”

  “You are American?”

  Just as Julia opened her mouth to respond, a deep bass sound filled the room. “What was that?”

  Eddie didn’t have time to tell her it was an explosion before a second, closer blast echoed through the ship. Jannike screamed again and yanked the covers over her head.

  “We have to go,” Eddie said. “Now!”

  Two more blasts rocked the Golden Dawn. One of them detonated a short distance from the ward, knocking Seng to the floor and forcing Julia to use her body to shield Jannike. A light fixture crashed from the ceiling, its fluorescent bulb shattering with a loud pop.

  Eddie got to his feet. “Stay with the girl.” He ran from the room.

  “Janni, it’s okay. We’ll get you out,” Julia said, and drew down the blankets again. Tears coursed down Jannike’s smooth cheeks, and her lower lip quivered.

  “What is happening?”

  “My friend is checking it out. I need you to put this on.” Julia held out the protective hazmat suit. “We have to do it very carefully, though, okay?”

  “Am I sick?”

  “I don’t think so.” Julia had no idea until she could run some tests, but there was no way she was going to tell the frightened girl that.

  “I have asthma,” Janni told her. “That’s why I was here in hospital. It was a bad attack that the doctor couldn’t control.”

  “Has it passed?”

  “I think so. I have not used my inhaler since . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “But you stayed on the oxygen?”

  “I saw what happened to Dr. Passman and to my friend, Karin. I thought maybe it was something they had breathed, so I kept using it.”

  “You are a brave and resourceful girl. I think you saved your life by doing that.”

  Knowing she had done something to help herself gave Jannike a bit of confidence, and hope that she would get off the ship alive.

  Eddie jogged back into the room. “The blast wrecked the hallway about twenty yards from here. We can’t go back up the way we came.”

  “Is there another way?”

  “We better hope so. I can hear the lower part of the ship flooding.”

  WATER SURGED UNDER the jammed door like a rising tide, and, if not for the protection of his hazmat suit, with its own air supply, Cabrillo would have drowned. After a few minutes struggling again to free his crushed prosthesis, he lay back and let the sea roar over him, as it rapidly filled the main engine room. The swell was already a foot and a half deep, and rising by the second.

  Juan’s only consolation was that the rest of his team hadn’t ventured this deep into the Golden Dawn and would be able to escape relatively easily.

  During his earlier examination of the engineering spaces, he hadn’t seen any victims of the virus, or whatever had been unleashed on the ship, telling him that the vessel had been running on automated mode, with just two men on the bridge and no one down here to monitor the power plants. With no one to infect, he wondered, how long would the pathogen remain in the air? Hux might have an idea, but this was a new virus, even for her, so, at best, she could make only a calculated guess.

  The air conditioners had been shut down for a while, letting dust and microbes settle. Had enough time elapsed? Cabrillo could only hope so, because he knew that by lying in the torrent of rising water and thinking about it, he was just putting off the inevitable.

  He worried his right arm free of his sleeve and snaked it down across his chest to his right leg. He took a handful of cloth from the bottom of his pants and yanked it upward over his artificial limb, giving him access to the straps that held it in place. With practiced fingers, he released the straps and popped the slight vacuum seal that held the leg to his stump. He felt an immediate measure of freedom after detaching the limb, although his suit remained pinned beneath the door.

  Now for the hard part. Juan reached over his shoulder to crank up the airflow in his suit and felt it balloon out against its seams. He carried three things on him at all times. One was a cigarette lighter, although all he smoked was an occasional cigar; the other two were a compass, no bigger than a button, and a folding knife. He pulled the knife from his pocket and opened the blade with one hand. He had to lie in a fetal position to reach as far down his pant leg as he could, fighting the weight of water still pouring in from under the door.

  The knife was as sharp as a scalpel and sliced though the protective hazmat suit with ease. Air began to gush from the slit, and, for a moment, was able to hold back the force of water trying to exploit the cut, but the suit soon began to fill. Juan worked faster, slicing through the material in a race to free himself before he was overwhelmed by the flood. He was lying on his side, and the water pressed against his face forced him to turn his head and try to raise himself a couple of inches without losing track of where he was cutting the suit.

  His new position was too awkward to allow him to work efficiently, so he took a deep breath and lay flat again, torquing the blade around his calf, to keep cutting away the trapped suit material. His lungs screamed for air, but he ignored his body’s needs, working with preternatural calm despite the danger. He tried yanking himself free, but the tough plastic cloth wouldn’t tear. He tried again with the same results. Now he had to breathe, so he heaved himself upright to clear his helmet of water, but there was too much pressure. The helmet wouldn’t drain.

  Cabrillo’s lungs convulsed, allowing a trickle of bubbles to escape his lips. It was like suppressing a cough, and the corresponding pain in his chest was an unnecessary reminder that his brain was starving for oxygen. He was already becoming light-headed. He pulled savagely at the suit and felt it tear slightly, but it wouldn’t give completely. Juan tried to force himself to calm down, but survival instincts were overwhelming any sense of logic. He bent down yet again to work the knife, though this time he hacked at the suit in a frenzy, all the while pulling against it with his last bit of strength.r />
  Without warning, he tumbled back. Either he had completely cut away the boot portion of his suit or it had ripped. He rolled onto his knees and pushed himself from the floor, feeling the water drain from the suit through the rent in its fabric. Fearful of exposing himself to anything, he allowed himself only a tiny sip of air, barely enough to clear the creeping shadows that filled his mind.

  He stood, letting the rest of the water that had filled his suit to sluice down his body and out. With seawater surging under the door, Juan couldn’t stand steady on one leg, so he hopped a couple of feet to a workbench. Leaning against it, he quickly tied off the shredded remains of the suit, making the tightest knots he could. He dialed down the airflow when the suit became rigid. He was sure a little would leak through the cut, but, with positive pressure on the inside, he didn’t think anything could enter. In all, his exposure had been nominal, and having spent nearly all of his exposure time under water he was confident that he would be okay.

  That was until he remembered he was trapped in a sinking ship, with no way out and no way to communicate with his team or the Oregon.

  He groped blindly through the darkness with his hands held in front of him, using his sense of touch to locate his position within the cavernous engine room. Without his artificial leg, movement was clumsy and difficult, but he finally found another workbench he’d seen earlier. He opened drawers and felt around, identifying tools by feel, until he found what he had hoped would be there.

  The flashlight wasn’t as powerful as the one he’d lost, but its beam gave him a mental lift. At least now he wasn’t blind. He hopped across the engine room, hampered by the rising floodwater that reached his knees. He passed the twin diesels and reached the far watertight door. This one was down securely. He searched for a manual release that would allow him to open it, but there was no such mechanism.

  He felt the first tentacles of panic tickling the back of his mind and crushed them down savagely. Not knowing the extent of damage done to the ship by the scuttling charges, he didn’t know how long the Golden Dawn would stay afloat. If she remained stable, like she was now, it would take a couple of hours for the engine room to fill, more than enough time to think up an alternative escape route or for Eddie and the others to find a way to rescue him.

  No sooner had that thought occurred to him than a prolonged moan reverberated through the hull, a rending of metal pushed past its stress point. He physically felt the ship lurch toward the bow. The water in the engine room sloshed in a titanic wave that crashed against the far door. It rushed back, and Juan had to leap onto a table to keep from being crushed against a bulkhead. He shone his light across the room and could tell that the rate of water bubbling up from the forward part of the ship had doubled. Seawater fountained from under the door in angry geysers, as if the ocean was eager to claim its latest victim.

  Cabrillo’s hours had just turned into minutes.

  He flashed the light around, looking for any way out of the sealed room. The seed of a crazy idea struck him, and he turned the beam to one of the massive engines and the ducts rising from it. The light slowly drifted upward, his eyes following. “Aha!”

  JULIA TURNED TO JANNIKE DAHL, keeping her voice as soothing as she could. “Janni, sweetheart, we have to get you out of here, but, in order to do that, you need to put on a protective suit like the ones Eddie and I are wearing.”

  “The boat is sinking?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is. We have to go.”

  Julia turned on the suit’s battery-powered fans and scrubbers and unzipped the back. She didn’t tell Janni that the garment wasn’t for her protection but rather for the crew of the Oregon, in case she was already infected. Making sure to keep the air flowing through the tubes in her nose, Janni slid her coltish legs into the hazmat suit and shrugged it over her narrow shoulders. Julia helped tuck her long hair into the helmet. Hux could tell it hadn’t been washed in several days. Jannike’s asthma attack had kept her in the infirmary for a while.

  “Take a deep breath through your nose and hold it for as long as you can,” she ordered.

  Janni’s chest expanded as she drew the pure oxygen into her lungs. Julia unhooked the cannula from around Janni’s ears and tossed the tubing aside. She pulled the two halves of the suit closed and zipped it up. It took her another minute to secure the seams with duct tape.

  Hux had to give Eddie Seng credit. Despite the urgency, he showed not the slightest sign of impatience. He understood that the young woman was bordering on catatonic shock and needed to be treated as though she were a child. Considering what Janni had been through, Julia thought she was doing fine.

  When Eddie had returned from his brief exploration, he’d taken a moment to drape sheets over the two bodies outside Janni’s cubicle. The girl still stared at the shrouded figures as Julia led her past. The three reached the hallway where nothing could have been done about the multitude of corpses. Julia felt Janni’s hand stiffen in hers, but, to Janni’s credit, she stayed with them. In Hux’s other hand, she carried her sample case.

  “That way is blocked,” Eddie said, jerking a thumb in the direction they had come. “Janni, is there another way to reach the main deck from here?”

  “This hallway just stops.” She made sure to look him in the face so as not to stare at the dead. “But there is a metal door at the end I have heard the crew use to work on something down below. Maybe there is a way out.”

  “Perfect,” Eddie said. “Must be an auxiliary access hatch.”

  Following the beam of his flashlight, they threaded their way down the corridor and, as Janni had said, there was a large oval hatch embedded in the bare steel wall. Eddie undogged the lock and peered inside. He was confronted with a tangle of pipework that took him a moment to decipher. “This is the pump room for the main swimming pool. The water is dropped down here for filtering, then sent back up.”

  The ship suddenly creaked, as though her hull was splitting, and the Golden Dawn lurched, nearly knocking Jannike to the floor. Julia steadied her as she and Eddie exchanged a glance. Time was running out.

  Eddie went through the open hatch and looked for another way out. There was a second hatch on the floor, surrounded by a metal railing. He dropped to a knee to free the locks and heaved the door open against its protesting hinges. A ladder dropped into the darkness. He descended as best he could, the hazmat suit making the narrow space difficult to negotiate. He was in another mechanical room ringed with electronics cabinets. It was a distribution node for the ship’s electric supply and, normally, would have been buzzing with current. Now the room was silent. An open door gave way to another darkened hallway.

  “Come on down,” he shouted, and waited at the base of the ladder to guide Janni the last couple of rungs. Though Eddie was of below-average height, he felt he could encircle the girl’s waist with his hands, even with her suit bulking her up like a snowman.

  Julia descended a second later, and Eddie led them out of the room. He asked Jannike, “Do you recognize where we are?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied after peering into the gloom. “Many parts of the ship are off-limits to the hotel staff, and I have not been on board for that long.”

  “It’s okay,” Eddie said reassuringly, sensing her frustration at not being more helpful.

  With the Dawn settling bow first, Eddie turned aft. He could feel a slight strain in his thighs that was telling him he was climbing uphill. The angle was mild, but he knew it would grow steeper as more compartments flooded.

  Because of his suit, he never felt the breeze that suddenly came from behind him. It was the tremor in the deck plates below his feet that told him to turn. A wall of water barreled down the hallway at the level of his thighs, a solid green mass that struck them before he could shout a warning. Caught in the maelstrom, the trio was borne along the crest of the wave, tumbling helplessly, until the swell’s momentum slowly petered out. They were dropped to the deck, a tangle of limbs, as the sea continued to flow ar
ound them.

  Eddie was the first on his feet, and he helped Janni stand. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Doc, you okay?” he asked.

  “Just a little rattled. What happened?”

  “A bulkhead must have failed close to the bow and let the wave through. We still have some time.”

  They continued on, sloshing through the ankle-deep water. Eddie checked the stencils on each of the doors they passed, hoping to find one marked stairwell, but luck wasn’t with them. Down here were rooms for dry storage and storage for spare parts. An I-beam track along the ceiling allowed the crew to use winches to move heavy equipment from there to the nearest elevator. He thought that could make an alternate plan if they didn’t find stairs. He had no doubt he could climb up an elevator shaft, Hux most likely, too, but he didn’t think Jannike had the strength. If not for the suit, maybe he could have her cling to his back while he made the ascent. It was something to consider.

  He almost missed a door to his right and had to stop to play the light across the stencil: WATERCRAFT STORAGE.

  “Bingo!”

  “What is it?”

  “Our ticket out of here,” Eddie said, and pushed open the door.

  By the light of his torch, he could see a line of gleaming Jet Skis and two-person runabout boats. They were resting on specially designed cradles. There was a large hole in the ceiling the boats could be lifted through and a set of circular stairs leading up to the next level. He climbed, with the others in tow.

  This was where passengers could rent one of the personal watercraft when the cruise ship was in port. There was a registration counter along one wall, and posters everywhere with safety reminders. The floor was covered in a nonskid indoor/outdoor carpet, and on the outside bulkhead was a door sized like that of a suburban garage. A hydraulically controlled ramp was folded along the door’s length. When the door was open and the ramp deployed, it would act as a small dock.

  Eddie tapped the steel door with the butt of his flashlight. Rather than return a sharp echo, it rang with a dull thud. He tried higher up and finally got the results he wanted. “The ship’s sunk to within two feet of the top of the door,” he reported. “When I open it, this room is going to flood.”