Steel Fear

by Brandon Webb

  Another hypo. A scalpel.

  And a charcoal pencil, sharpened to a fine point.

  Talk to me, Scottie. I’m a doctor. You can tell me anything.

  124

  In the dark Frank started to make micromovements, a tensing of muscles. Finn spoke in a voice so soft the man could barely hear him even from the distance of a few inches.

  “I like you, Frank. But I’ll kill you without a thought.”

  Frank stopped struggling.

  The emergency lights popped on, releasing their pale glow into the compartment and diluting the blackness to a dark murk.

  “Listen close,” Finn said, loud enough for them both to hear. “Here’s how it works.”

  He walked them through it.

  Dewitt unlocked Finn’s cell door via the electronic locking system at the Sheriff’s desk, then came over and slowly knelt down, hands clasped behind his head. Finn released Frank and in the same instant had his knife point pressed to Dewitt’s temple, freeing Frank to perform the next task, which was to set two chairs facing the back bulkhead, six feet apart. Finn then cuffed them both to the chairs and gagged them with strips of material he hacked from their own shirtsleeves.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Frank,” he said. “How?” He leaned closer as he tied Frank’s gag. “Next time, frisk both legs at the same time.”

  He could see the thoughts racing through the man’s head, trying to work out how Finn had slipped that goddamn knife from spot to spot while Frank was frisking him.

  The e-lights blinked out—and now the red safety lights came back on again.

  Finn shook his head. A $5 billion warship, coming apart like a piece of cheap prefab furniture, all because of the arrogance and incompetence of one man.

  He tightened Dewitt’s gag, then leaned down by Frank’s ear again.

  “Hey, Frank, that thing I said before? How I liked you, but I’d kill you without a thought?”

  Frank nodded, eyes wide. Finn gave his shoulder a pat. “I was kidding.”

  As Finn headed to the door Frank struggled to speak, eyes bulging with the effort. “Uh-ah ih AH!”

  About which part?

  But the prisoner was already gone.

  125

  Finn shut the brig door behind him and stood for a moment, leaning back against the passageway bulkhead. The effort it had taken to push away his grief over Kennedy, to dive deep into that cave of memories, to poke at the bear again and again, it was all catching up to him now. The assault on his senses, not from the outside but from the inside, had left him drained.

  Breathe in, two, three, four. Breathe out.

  Conscious of his back against the steel.

  Conscious of the soles of his feet pressing against the deck, his toes gripping.

  Conscious of his hand’s grip on the little mahogany speargun.

  He looked down at the speargun—Reason One for getting himself arrested in the first place. He knew he might need a primary.

  He could have taken one of the guard’s sidearms, but those were so rarely used that he didn’t trust they’d be in good working condition. Besides, only a lunatic would start a gun battle inside a steel maze.

  He stepped away from the door, slipped around a corner into a narrow recess cobwebbed with cables and pipes and ductwork.

  Breathe in, two, three, four, breathe out.

  The Sheriff would be back inside ten minutes, max. Psycho Doc was on his way down, too, and if he got there first, Finn would take him. But if the Sheriff got there first, Finn needed to be in the wind. He had an extremely narrow window in which to escape undetected. He needed to use those few minutes to maximum advantage. He needed—

  Finn slid to the deck and passed out.

  126

  Captain Eagleberg was losing it.

  Now the lights were back on, but flickering. Then there was a POP! followed by a split second of darkness. Then those blasted, useless e-lights again.

  “Mother of God!” he barked into the phone. “Whatever it is, just find it and fix it! Put your best man on it!”

  Arthur Gaines knew that wasn’t going to happen—their best man was miles away on the Stockdale, banished there by the captain himself—but he wasn’t about to share that thought. Arthur’s mind was on Chief Finn.

  Something bothered him.

  “Cap,” he said once Eagleberg was off his phone. “Anything strike you odd about that encounter with Chief Finn last night? Anything strange?”

  “Everything about that knuckle-dragger is strange,” the captain snapped. “Man’s a walking freak show.”

  “No, I mean, the way he went off on you. It wasn’t just disrespectful. It was over the top. Almost as if he wanted to be tossed in the hole.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Call,” barked the captain.

  Arthur dialed the four-digit number for the brig and put the handset to his ear. After a moment he hung up without a word and looked at the captain. “No answer.”

  He punched in another number.

  “Mac. Arthur. We’re not raising anyone in the brig. Have your nearest MA get over there on the double and report back. I’ll hold.” He looked at Eagleberg. “Man’s on his way down to the brig now.”

  Thirty seconds went by, Arthur listening, head down. Then he gave a grim nod. “Copy. Hold a sec.” He looked up at Eagleberg. “Security overpowered. Finn’s gone.”

  “FUCK!” said Eagleberg.

  Everyone on the bridge froze. None had ever heard the captain utter any oath stronger than “Balls.”

  “Tell him to have every goddamn MA fan out across the ship,” he snapped at Arthur. “Launch a full security sweep. Find this lunatic!”

  Arthur spoke quietly into the phone. “You heard?”

  “Bring him in at all costs, Mac,” the captain shouted. He snatched the handset from his XO and barked directly into it. “The man is extremely dangerous. I am authorizing the use of deadly force. I repeat: deadly force.” And handed the phone back to Arthur.

  A kill-or-capture command.

  Emphasis on the kill.

  127

  Scott Angler was pissed off.

  He was pissed off at their fucking thin-skinned captain for reassigning Jimmy Suzuki and leaving the whole engineering department a rudderless mess. If the fucking lights hadn’t gone on the fritz again, if full lighting had come on when it was supposed to and they weren’t still drenched in that dim fucking red light like a block of Copenhagen whorehouses, he might have noticed something was off.

  He was pissed off at Arthur Gaines for not standing up to his boss and straightening some of this shit out.

  He was pissed off at Selena Kirkland for letting that dick run this ship his way and not jumping all over his Yankee blueblood ass.

  He was pissed off at Jackson for…fuck, he couldn’t focus well enough through the haze of shock and pain to work out exactly what the fuck he was pissed off at Jackson for but let’s just say for being fucking Jackson.

  Mostly he was pissed off at himself.

  He was pissed off that he’d let himself be blinded by his own certainty that Finn was the psycho they needed to worry about, that he’d been so goddamn cocksure of himself that he let his attitude override his instincts.

  He was pissed off that when Lew got to Jackson’s office and he showed him the jersey and goggles and explained what Monica had told him, and Lew said, “What else did she say?” he didn’t pick up the edge in his voice.

  He was pissed off that he’d let Lew get behind him, whack him on the back of the skull with a pistol butt, and shove a needle into his neck.

  He was pissed off that he and Lieutenant Halsey were not going to do breakfast in Hawaii together.

  And it was his own goddamn fault.

  And now here he was, trussed
like a boar, his skin hanging in strips off his face, about to die—and for no good fucking reason.

  He hadn’t been afraid to die in the bush or on the battlefield. He’d gone into the shit willingly. Fuck it, he’d gone in eagerly. The thought that there might be an IED out there with his name on it, or a 7.62 round, a mortar shell, hell, a rusty bayonet carving up his guts, he truly and heartily did not give a three-inch shit. Dying out there in the thick of things, giving his life to help make his country a better place or at least maintain its status as toughest and meanest motherfucker on the block, that would be an honor.

  But being wasted here? Now? By this piece of dirt?

  It was an embarrassment.

  Gave new meaning to the word “waste.”

  So Stevens, that twisted little fuck, thought the threat of extreme pain would terrify him into talking, telling him where she was. And, when that didn’t work, that actually inflicting some of that agony on his person would inspire an even greater terror, a terror impossible to deny.

  His mistake.

  It didn’t terrify Scott.

  It just pissed him off more.

  “Okay—okay,” he groaned.

  His capacity to speak was nearly gone, frozen out of him by whatever drug Stevens had shoved into him. Succinylcholine, probably, a partial dose, not enough to paralyze him, just enough to turn him into oil sludge. He was losing strength and mobility—but not feeling. No, he felt every bit of it. When Stevens made those little horizontal incisions in his forehead, then grabbed the little skin-tabs and pulled, peeling his face like strips of flypaper, old Scottie felt it, all right.

  He felt it plenty.

  Maybe Lew was right.

  Maybe it would make him talk.

  “No more…” he whispered. “No—more. She’s…”

  Just to breathe was an effort.

  His tormentor paused, hands in his lap, then cocked his head and leaned in closer to hear. An undisguised look of triumph on his face. I win, that look said. I knew you’d talk.

  Scott marshaled every atom of will he could to speak one last time. It felt like pulling up a tree stump with his bare hands. He took a breath, then another, then croaked out the words.

  “She’s—crawling—up your ass crack—you pathetic dipshit.”

  He tried to laugh, but all he could pull off was a faint wheeze.

  It would have to do.

  128

  Finn had been out for no more than a minute when he was stirred to consciousness by the first MA barreling down the ladder. He darted away from the brig’s door and into a recess just behind the ladder as the man came huffing through to check on the prisoner’s status and inquire as to why the hell no one was answering the phone.

  By the time the Sheriff came stomping down Finn had pulled himself up to hug the ladder’s underside, hanging by his fingers and toes in the surreal crimson shadows, hugging his body to the structure like a Ninja sloth, the Sheriff’s speargun with its single bolt strapped to his body.

  Clutching on to the ladder’s steps from underneath, he fought to beat back the waves of nausea and dizziness. The shards of memories were crashing through him now, disjointed and in no logical sequence, and he couldn’t stop them—

  The sound of the destroyer’s ballast pump, whoojah, whoojah, whoojah—

  His back against the brick-and-plaster wall, the child’s sightless eyes—

  A fat slice of chocolate cake on a plate on the kitchen table—

  He had just managed to find his footing in the present moment—and then the churn of images snatched at him and pulled him back in, a psychic undertow sucking him down, then spitting him out again to totter briefly on the sand and rocks, only to suck him back under seconds later.

  Finn was drowning.

  “Goddammit—find that sneaky little cocksucker!” The Sheriff’s voice came blasting out from the brig’s interior. “Pappyfucking piece of shit took my little beauty!”

  Breathe in, let it hold, five, six, seven, let it out…

  It had been over fifteen minutes since Psycho Doc had called down saying he was coming to visit the prisoner. He hadn’t showed.

  He wasn’t coming.

  Which meant he had shifted his game plan.

  Finn had to get to Jackson. Had to warn him.

  If it wasn’t already too late.

  He felt the treads shake as the Sheriff and her MAs went storming back up the ladder. He waited ten seconds, then began to move, silently slipping out sidewise, around and up onto the ladder, then through the grated door and out into the labyrinth.

  129

  Sitting outside Admiral Kirkland’s war room, Jackson reminded himself why he was about to turn over the incident file and let command know just how bad this bad actor was. That every rational consideration told him to turn over the file. That Procedure itself told him to turn over the file.

  The problem was, he didn’t believe it.

  SOCOM be damned, he just didn’t buy it.

  He had no idea why the guy had put himself back in the brig, or whether Eagleberg really could make his threats stick, but if Jackson handed this file over to the admiral Finn would never see the sun again.

  And he didn’t believe Finn had done it.

  Any of it.

  He stood, quietly walked out, and made his way back down through the maze to his own neighborhood. When he reached his office he put his hand on the door handle—and stopped.

  Jackson took his hand away and stood still. Smacked his lips, then did it again. Made a face. He sniffed the air.

  Impossible.

  He sniffed the air again.

  He shook his head.

  Pull it together, Robbie.

  He grabbed the handle again and opened the door. Stepped into his outer office and flipped the switch for the overheads. The compartment’s red safety lights came on. Still no daytime lights.

  He crossed the small space to the inner door, to enter his own office—

  And stopped. Sniffed the air one more time. Made a face.

  “Foutaise,” he whispered. Bullcrap. There was a distinct scent in here. Unmistakable.

  Impossible, but unmistakable.

  One of Sister Mae’s foul-smelling concoctions. He could smell it. He could taste it on his tongue.

  He would stake his life on it.

  All at once the full daytimes snapped on, the white lights momentarily blinding him. There was a POP! and the light began flickering off and on, like a bad connection about to blow.

  He thought he heard a faint grunt. Coming from where, out in the passageway?

  Now the white lights crapped out altogether and the e-lights popped on yet again, the faint illumination so weak it gave the compartment and everything in it a spectral cast.

  He opened the door and stepped inside.

  In the pale gloom he could just make out the form of Scott Angler, slouched on one of his couches.

  “Scottie?” he began. He took a step toward the figure. “What’re you—”

  He froze.

  Scott wasn’t moving.

  Some kind of mask hung from his face in strips, like strands of papier-mâché.

  Something protruding from his left eye socket.

  A pencil?

  130

  Jackson stood blinking in the near-darkness, trying to make sense of the visual information, when a voice thundered at him, punching him like a haymaker in the gut—

  DROP! it bellowed.

  Sister Mae’s voice.

  Right in his ear.

  Jackson dropped.

  Without thinking, just crashed to the deck.

  As he went down he felt a sharp sting in his upper back, something stabbing into the meat of his trapezium.

  He spun and lashed out with one foot, connec
ting with his attacker’s legs. The man fell to the floor but twisted away like a swamp eel, Jackson’s roundhouse hitting nothing but air.

  He felt something slash through his jacket across his back.

  He struck out with a backhand but hit—nothing—and, then…he…

  felt himself going into

  slow motion

  as if he

  were drunk

  and thought

  Craaappppp…

  That hypo cap.

  The sting in his shoulder—a hypodermic. Slowing him down.

  The red safety lights snapped on.

  Lying on his back now, Jackson got a glimpse of his assailant.

  In the unreal crimson glow, the face looked like a Halloween mask.

  Jackson thought his brain would go POP! like the lights.

  Lew?

  The mask leered, the figure lunged forward.

  Jackson felt the scalpel being thrust into him, just under the rib cage.

  131

  “Goddammit,” said Eagleberg. “The SEAL. The goddamn SEAL. I knew that man was trouble.”

  Arthur wasn’t listening; he was calculating. They had approximately seventy masters-at-arms on board the Lincoln. With more than thirty out sick that still left nearly forty, all small-arms qualified, most of them carrying. Which sounded like a big number—but there were more than four thousand different compartments and spaces on the ship. That was a lot of space to cover. And the SEAL was smart. When it came to evading capture, probably the best there was.

  “Artie. Have all mess facilities shut down, PDQ. And put me on the PA. I need to make an announcement.”

  “Sir?”

  The entire time they’d been at sea the captain had addressed the ship on their PA system exactly once, and from Arthur’s perspective it had been a mild disaster. Ye gods, he hoped the man didn’t cock this up.

  “The 1MC,” Eagleberg repeated. “Now.”

  Arthur switched on the hand mike to the 1MC system and handed it over.