The Spear of Atlantis (Wilde/Chase 14)

by Andy McDermott

  A large metal panel began to slide across the opening, about to seal the vault – but before it could fully close, it was halted by the trapped rope and a stanchion.

  Still holding the marker, Nina hurried to the narrow gap. The Emir lay below, unmoving. ‘Hey!’ she cried. ‘Your Majesty – Fadil! Can you hear me, are you okay?’

  He did not respond.

  Eddie and Macy were almost at the top of the waterslides when the alarm sounded. ‘Daddy?’ the young redhead said nervously. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I dunno, but . . .’ People were reacting with increasing concern as it became clear the warnings were not going to stop. ‘We need to find your mum.’ There was nothing to suggest the problem was anything to do with Nina . . . but he had the horrible feeling that given their past experiences, it was more likely than not.

  The stairs behind them had already become a choke point as people retreated. ‘Down the slides, quick,’ he ordered. A woman blocked the top of the nearest tube, paralysed by indecision. He moved her aside firmly, then dropped on to the slide and hoisted Macy on his lap.

  ‘Daddy,’ she objected, pointing to a warning sign. ‘It says only one person at a time!’

  ‘Sometimes it’s best not to do what you’re told,’ he replied, wrapping his arms protectively around her. ‘Just don’t tell your mum I said that!’

  He pushed himself off, rushing water carrying them down the tube. Macy shrieked as they hurtled through it, picking up speed until they splashed down in the large pool. Eddie immediately swam clear, pulling Macy with him. ‘You okay?’ She spluttered, but nodded.

  They reached the shallows, sluicing towards the poolside. Olivia was standing by the lounger where they had left their belongings, looking around in alarm. ‘Olivia! We’re over here!’

  ‘Eddie!’ she cried. ‘Is Macy all right? What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I need to find Nina.’

  ‘You think she has something to do with this? Why?’

  ‘Because I married a bloody trouble magnet! Macy, you stay with Olivia. I’m going to—’

  ‘Oh my God!’ a woman wailed. ‘The ship’s on fire!’

  Grey smoke gushed from a hatch halfway down the deck. The fear already susurrating through the passengers became full-blown panic. The crew tried to maintain order, but they were too few to handle the hundreds on the activity deck.

  Eddie swore under his breath. The chaos would make it even harder to find Nina. But he had to try – and some instinct was also telling him something was wrong, beyond the obvious. The smoke . . .

  No time to waste thinking about it. ‘Stay with Olivia!’ he told Macy again, before racing for the most direct way to the lower decks – the travelators descending into the mall. He was still dripping wet and clad only in trunks, but modesty was his last concern as he vaulted a barrier and weaved through the fleeing crowd.

  Macy snatched up her bag and ran after him. ‘Macy! No, come back!’ Olivia cried in horror as her great-granddaughter disappeared into the throng, but it was too late to stop her.

  The woman in the darkened room stared at her monitor, lips tight at the sight of panic spreading across the grid of CCTV feeds. She hesitated – then hit another key.

  A plague of red crosses spread across the screen. The crew were now denied access to every camera aboard the Atlantia.

  But they were locked out of more than merely the video systems.

  Captain Snowcock hurried on to the bridge. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  The watch officer faced him with deep dismay. ‘Fire alarms have been tripped all over the ship, and we can’t shut them off.’

  ‘Is there a fire?’

  ‘We don’t know, sir! Some smoke alarms have gone off too, but none of the automatic fire suppression systems have activated.’

  The captain turned to the video wall. ‘Where are the smoke alarms concen—’ He broke off as all the CCTV feeds went blank. ‘What’s happened to the cameras?’

  Another officer stabbed at his keyboard with increasing frustration. ‘I can’t access anything – I’ve been locked out!’

  ‘Captain!’ called another man. ‘I was talking to the lifeboat deck, and the intercom just went dead!’ He hit a button and spoke into a microphone, but to no avail. ‘The PA system is down as well.’

  ‘Someone’s cut us off – we’ve been hacked!’ Snowcock realised. ‘All right. The safety of the passengers is our absolute top priority. Use walkie-talkies, use cell phones, run down and shout if you have to, but get everyone to assemble at their muster points.’

  ‘We’re going to launch the lifeboats?’ asked the watch officer.

  ‘I want to be ready if we need to,’ the captain replied.

  ‘Dammit!’ said Nina. She had called to the Emir again, but he had not stirred. ‘Now what the hell do I do?’

  Aside from the doors through which she had entered, there were two other exits from the exhibition hall: another set of double doors at the far end, and a single, noticeably more heavy-duty door in one corner. The vault entrance?

  Try to open the vault, or get help? The latter, she decided, hurrying back to the entrance. Somebody from the Emir’s entourage would surely be on their way – they might even be outside already, unable to unlock the doors.

  The Emir’s code came easily to mind: March 2015. The black glass panel lit up with a keypad as she raised her hand to it. She started to tap in the numbers.

  The woman watched Nina over the CCTV feed. ‘She’s about to open the door. Get ready!’ she snapped into her headset, simultaneously entering another command.

  More alarms whooped, seven short, shrill notes followed by a prolonged wail. ‘This is the captain,’ came Snowcock’s voice over the public address system. ‘The ship is being evacuated for your safety. All passengers, proceed calmly to your assigned muster stations and follow the crew’s instructions.’

  Snowcock himself regarded the loudspeaker set into the bridge ceiling with shock. ‘That was from the drill before we left Dhajan,’ he said as the message continued. ‘It’s a recording! Can’t someone shut it up?’

  ‘No, sir,’ replied an officer. ‘We’re still locked out.’

  ‘It’s telling the passengers to do what we wanted anyway,’ the watch officer pointed out.

  Snowcock fixed him with a withering stare. ‘This is my ship, Mr Mallay. I give the orders, not someone using my voice!’ He turned to the other bridge crew. ‘Do we still have engine control?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the helm officer replied.

  ‘Okay – all stop! Full reverse on the azipods, stop the ship! Get word down to the lifeboat deck and prepare the boats for launch!’

  Pandemonium erupted around Eddie as he hurried through the mall. He imagined that the passengers had given the mandatory safety briefing the same attention as its counterpart before an airline flight – in other words, little to none – but now they had to find their way through the colossal ship to a point that could be several decks down and hundreds of metres along, through confined corridors filled with panicked crowds.

  Screams ahead. Someone had fallen, people behind tripping over them in their blind rush. Where the hell were the crew? He hopped up on to a bench to check his surroundings. All the main exits were jammed with people – but then he saw a smaller side door open. A pair of crewmen hurried out.

  Eddie glimpsed white-painted stairs beyond the doorway. The crew had a network of service corridors that let them carry out the nuts-and-bolts business of running the liner without inconveniencing the passengers. If he could get inside, he could bypass the crush in the public areas . . .

  A fleeting gap opened in the crowd. He made a flying leap into it. The door started to swing shut. He shoved towards it. If it closed, he wouldn’t be able to open it again—

  He reached it just before it slammed. Throwing it wide, he rushed through and charged down the stairs.

  Macy saw her father’s leap just before she reached the bottom o
f the travelator. She climbed on to the bench to look for him over the crowd.

  A familiar bald head disappeared through a doorway. ‘Daddy!’ she called, but he was already gone.

  The door started to close again. Clutching her bag, she raced after him. ‘Look out!’ she shouted. ‘I’ve lost my daddy, I need to catch him!’

  The cries of a young girl were enough to halt some of the fleeing passengers, if only for a moment. But that was all Macy needed, gaps opening in front of her. ‘Thank you, thanks!’ she gasped, darting through the door just before it locked. She found herself at the top of a flight of stairs. ‘Daddy!’

  He was nowhere in sight. Worried, she scuttled down the stairwell.

  ‘Where is His Majesty? Where is my brother?’

  Snowcock turned as Alula and several members of the royal entourage swept on to the bridge. ‘Your Royal Highness,’ he said. ‘If you would please let us—’

  She glared at him, hands on hips. ‘Nobody knows where he is, and now you are abandoning ship!’

  ‘Someone has hacked into the ship’s systems and triggered the fire alarms,’ the captain told her. ‘It appears to be a hoax, but the evacuation is precautionary until we’re sure.’

  ‘But I saw smoke.’

  ‘I know; we’re still investigating. And I assure you we’re doing everything we can to regain control of the situation.’

  Her dark eyes narrowed. ‘Do it faster, Captain,’ she said, the threat to his position clear. ‘The Emir is missing. He must be found, now!’

  Snowcock’s announcement had made Nina pause. Now she jabbed in the last two digits of the code. Whatever was happening, she had to help the Emir.

  The lock clicked. She reached for the handle—

  An alert flashed up on the woman’s screen: the exhibition hall’s doors had unlocked. ‘Now!’

  The door burst open, knocking Nina to the floor.

  5

  Dazed, Nina looked up – as men in black masks rushed into the room.

  The leader thrust a silenced gun at her face. ‘The marker! Where—’ he began, before seeing the golden disc in her hand. ‘Give it to me!’

  Shocked, she held it up. He snatched it from her. ‘I have it,’ he said.

  His controller acknowledged him. ‘Opening the marina door now,’ she replied, checking the grid of security cameras. ‘Your escape route is clear – the passengers have run from the smoke.’

  ‘How long before we can leave?’

  ‘Two minutes to open the door and extend the dock. Go in . . . thirty seconds.’

  The masked man acknowledged another radio message, then shouted a command to his companions – in Arabic, Nina realised. They moved towards the doors at the room’s far end.

  He kept his gun fixed upon her as he followed. ‘Do not come after us,’ he growled.

  His companions reached the exit, then waited. He slipped the marker into a satchel. To her surprise, Nina saw that the others were leaving empty-handed. While the most valuable treasures of Atlantis had been lowered into the vault, even the smallest of those remaining were still worth thousands of dollars on the black market, but they had been completely ignored. The golden disc was their only objective.

  A chill of realisation. There was only one reason why they could want it.

  To find the Atlantean spearheads.

  The service sections could be opened from inside without a keycard or code, which was a great relief to Eddie as he reached a door. He shoved it wide – then coughed.

  The wide hallway he entered was full of smoke. But that alone wasn’t what brought his instinctual feeling of wrongness rushing back. Rather, it was the smell. It was one he knew well from his time in the military, a sharp, sulphurous odour.

  A smoke grenade.

  ‘Someone’s remembered Speed 2,’ he muttered as he ran aft. The film’s villain had created the illusion of a fire with smokers to prompt a cruise ship’s evacuation, and somebody was doing the same here.

  The hallway opened out into a lounge area at a cross-passage. One of the holographic ship’s maps stood at its centre. He stopped, tapping at a touchscreen. He knew roughly where Nina had gone with the Emir, but he needed to find the exact route.

  Exhibition halls . . . there. The rotating hologram of the Atlantia opened up to highlight his path. Further astern, one deck down. He rounded the display and hurried on.

  The woman’s gaze snapped to unexpected movement on one of the CCTV feeds.

  A bald man wearing nothing but swimming trunks was leaving a lounge on Deck 6. That anyone was in the smoke-filled section at all was concern enough, but she recognised the face.

  ‘Eddie Chase is coming your way!’ she warned al-Asim. ‘He must be trying to reach Dr Wilde.’

  ‘Then stop him!’ came the snarled reply.

  She frowned, and quickly entered more commands.

  Eddie raced down the new passage, the smoke becoming more dense ahead. Another bomb nearby, he guessed – whoever was behind the chaos wanted to drive people out of this part of the ship—

  Amber warning lights flashed and a fire door began to slide across his path. He instantly knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Someone was actively trying to keep him from Nina.

  He increased his pace, easily clearing the rumbling barrier—

  ‘Daddy!’

  He whirled in alarm. Macy was running after him – and the door was closing between them. ‘No, get back!’ he shouted.

  His daughter didn’t listen, diving through the shrinking opening. She hit the thick carpet with a shriek as the door thudded shut behind her.

  Eddie scooped her up. ‘Oh my God! Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she gasped. ‘I almost got squished!’

  ‘You almost . . .’ Parental anger cut through his relief. ‘Macy, that was stupid! You could have been killed!’

  Her eyes went wide in dismay. ‘But – but Eden jumped through a door like that in the movie.’

  ‘This isn’t a movie! This is real life, and you can get hurt!’ He saw tears welling. ‘But you’re okay,’ he quickly reassured her. ‘I told you to stay with Olivia. Why did you follow me?’

  ‘B-because you said Mom was in trouble! I wanted to help her.’

  He couldn’t fault her for that; it was exactly what he had done. He let out a humourless laugh. ‘And I’m sure she’ll appreciate it – after she’s had a rant at me for letting you get into trouble!’ He hugged her, then put her down. The door was now closed; the only way was onwards. ‘Okay, stay with me. And if I tell you to do something, you have to do it, no arguments. Yes?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Come on, then.’ He took her hand. ‘Let’s go and find your mum.’

  ‘Mom,’ she said quietly as they started down the passage. His laugh this time was genuine.

  ‘The route to the marina is clear,’ said the woman in al-Asim’s earpiece.

  ‘What about Chase?’ he asked.

  ‘He won’t reach you in time.’

  ‘Good.’ As the others ran out, he looked back at Chase’s wife. She hadn’t moved, but he knew she would spring up the moment he left the hall, either to follow the raiders or help the Emir. Both choices had been prepared for. He shot her a final menacing glower, then hurried after his men.

  Nina waited until the sound of running feet faded, then jumped up. The intruders had the marker, and they also obviously had a plan to get it off the ship. If she could disrupt it . . .

  But the Emir was still trapped in the vault. She looked through the gap. The Arab royal hadn’t moved. ‘Can you hear me?’ she called.

  This time, he stirred. ‘What . . . what happened?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Some guys with guns just took the marker! This whole thing – it’s a heist!’

  ‘Then stop . . . you have to stop them . . .’ He tried to lift his head, but slumped back down, falling still again.

  ‘Shit,’ Nina whispered. What should she do?

  It took her less
than a second to decide. Stop the bad guys, as he’d asked. If she encountered any of the crew, she could tell them the Emir needed help, and once she found how the thieves intended to escape the ship, either someone on the Atlantia could stop them, or the authorities in Spain or Morocco could be alerted.

  A last look at the Emir, then she kicked off her high heels and ran after the raiders.

  ‘Should be just down here,’ Eddie told Macy as they pounded along a wide corridor. The smoke in the air had thinned almost to nothing.

  ‘Here, Daddy!’ she cried as they reached an open set of double doors. Gold gleamed in the large room beyond. ‘These are from Atlantis,’ Macy confirmed as they entered. ‘Where’s Mom?’

  ‘I dunno.’ But something had definitely happened; there were conspicuously large gaps behind rope cordons, as if whatever was on display had been removed. Hunks of broken glass littered the floor in one area, the base of a stanchion poking out from a narrow slot in the floor. ‘Nina? Hello, anyone here?’

  He went to investigate the hole – only to flinch as a panel retracted. The stanchion fell through with a clang. Other panels moved aside, glass display cases rising smoothly into the hall.

  The cabinet before them was damaged, one of its sides missing. That explained the fragments on the floor – and Eddie immediately realised that something was missing from the display. Atlantean relics were laid out on dark blue velvet, but there was an obvious gap in the line-up.

  ‘It’s a trikan!’ Macy said, worry replaced by excitement on seeing the ancient weapon. ‘A real one, look!’

  ‘I’m more bothered about what isn’t there,’ Eddie replied. He was about to take a closer look when a door across the room opened. ‘Wait there,’ he told her as he ran towards it. ‘Nina! Is that you?’

  But it was not his wife who emerged. ‘Mr Chase?’ said the Emir, surprised. ‘What are— Where is Dr Wilde?’

  ‘I dunno, I was hoping you could tell me! What happened?’