The Pit (The Bugging Out Series Book 4)

by Noah Mann

“Shall we?” I asked, stepping onto the small dance floor and offering my hand to Elaine.

  “Yes,” she said, her acceptance both formal and touching.

  Then we danced. We looked into each other’s eyes and moved to the music. There was no precision to our steps. My attempt at leading approximated as much, but it wasn’t about the obvious things we were doing. Not about the swaying and the posture and the proper hold.

  It was about being. Just being. With her. In this place. On our way home. To a better place and future.

  That was the thought I held onto. Both of us did. So fiercely did Elaine and I embrace that disconnect from the blighted world that neither of us noticed that the music had stopped.

  “We have a problem.”

  Elaine and I froze mid-step. It was Schiavo. She’d come onto the floor, Martin with her. Beyond them, Westin stood next to the piano, his M4 in hand.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Someone’s missing,” she said.

  Fifty

  “The Marine garrison in Skagway entered the pit after we left to retrieve the bodies and any buried supplies,” Schiavo said, standing next to the radio where it had been installed on the bridge. “There were seventeen.”

  I looked to Elaine.

  “Kuratov had eighteen,” she said. “Including himself.”

  Right then Neil entered the spacious bridge and stood next to Lorenzen.

  “Westin said something’s wrong,” my friend said, and Schiavo brought him up to speed quickly.

  “We were all relying on witness counts, captain,” Lorenzen reminded her. “That number was based on what we were told. Could’ve been wrong.”

  “Off by one,” I said.

  Schiavo nodded, staring absently at the diagram of the ship she’d had the first officer pull for her. The long rolls of paper blueprints were spread out upon the navigation station table. Every compartment was depicted. Every cabin, every closet, every engineering space.

  “Could be,” she said.

  “But you don’t believe that,” Elaine said, reading the captain’s demeanor and body language.

  “No,” Schiavo said. “I don’t.”

  “You think he got aboard,” Neil said. “Kuratov.”

  “I do,” Schiavo confirmed.

  “Any real evidence that it’s him and not one of his men?” Elaine asked.

  Schiavo shook her head.

  “Call it a gut feeling,” she said.

  It was a feeling I tended to agree with.

  “If I’m one of his men and I crawl out of that hole, I surrender,” I said. “My leader promised me survival, and what did he deliver? I know I can have a full belly if I hand myself over. If I try to go covert...”

  “Then you’re going to be treated like a spy,” Schiavo said, finishing what I’d laid out.

  “Kuratov doesn’t have that option,” Lorenzen said. “Not after executing prisoners and holding children hostage.”

  “He’s a dead man if we find him,” Elaine said.

  “When we find him,” Neil corrected her.

  There was bravado in the exchange. But truth as well. Kuratov, if he was aboard, could be desperate. But he was certainly dangerous.

  “There were dozens of people loading the ship before we left,” I said, remembering the controlled chaos on the dock. “He could have grabbed a case of MREs and walked up that ramp in the midst of it all.”

  “No one would have noticed,” Lorenzen said. “All anyone was thinking about was getting home.”

  That was true. Everyone wanted to get home. To leave Skagway and set sail for places familiar and longed for. In that haste, though, had we skipped one very vital step in making sure our voyage would be successful?

  “The big bad wolf was dead,” Schiavo said. “Except, maybe he wasn’t.”

  * * *

  There were hundreds of spaces in which Kuratov could hide. Thousands, possibly. Passenger cabins, crew cabins, closets, engineering spaces, ducts, shops, restaurants, dry storage lockers, lifeboats.

  “We split up,” Schiavo said after gathering her team and the few of us who could support them.

  None of the seven listening to Schiavo thought that was anything close to a wonderful idea.

  “I don’t like it either,” she admitted. “If we double up, that’s four teams. It could take days to check everywhere.”

  “We could enlist some help,” Elaine said, back in her pseudo tactical gear after changing from the evening gown. “We have people from Bandon who manned perimeters and have been in some serious skirmishes.”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t want,” Schiavo said, looking to me. “Stealth. Quiet. This requires that, too. If this turns into a panicked free for all, he’ll just hunker down. We need to catch him when he moves. When he breathes. When he coughs. Hell, when he farts. It’s move and listen. Move and watch. We take our time. That’s how I say we handle this.”

  For as much as the plan was unpalatable, her theory seemed close to spot on. Kuratov would have to leave some sign of his presence. Some trail. Being observant might very well be the best approach.

  Armed and observant.

  “All right,” Schiavo said. “We have eight warm bodies.”

  “Nine.”

  The correction came as that late addition to our group approached.

  “Martin...”

  Schiavo eyed him, puzzled and pleased. He carried a silver Winchester pump, a bandolier of 12 gauge shells slung over one shoulder. That he’d joined us in the ship’s empty theater was surprising. That he knew what was happening was not. Schiavo, to maintain good relations with the three communities on the voyage south, had informed Martin, Danforth, and Perkins of the possible threat to be dealt with. She’d asked them to keep the information confidential, while suggesting that they come up with some reason to have their people stay in groups.

  “We don’t really need volunteers,” Schiavo told him.

  “I need to do my part,” he said, nodding toward the captain next. “And you’re still not healed.”

  She half glared at him, half smiled.

  “If that’s not true, just say so, and I’ll be on my way,” Martin told her.

  Both Doc Allen and Hart had strongly suggested that Schiavo take the opportunity to rest during the downtime the voyage south would provide. Prowling through the ship on a hunt for some Russian super soldier was not that.

  “I wouldn’t mind you having some backup, captain,” Hart said.

  “Thank you for your input, specialist,” Schiavo said to her medic.

  Schiavo knew this was a losing battle. She could order Martin to stay behind, and could put herself out there, alone, weakened by her recent vising from a Russian machine gun round. If she did that, though, she’d be exhibiting not toughness in front of her men, but recklessness.

  “You’re with me, it looks like,” Schiavo acquiesced, turning to the plans again. “Now, let’s split this up.”

  * * *

  As I completed just over half of my search of the crew area four levels below the main deck, I was beginning to doubt some of what we’d assumed.

  What was Kuratov’s plan? What was he thinking? What end did he see for himself? And for us?

  I asked myself those questions as I slowed in a maintenance passageway. If Kuratov had snuck aboard and hidden himself somewhere, he had done so with some purpose. To simply hitch a ride south to the lower forty eight seemed unlikely. What would he do once there? Would he be able to disembark as easily as he’d slipped aboard?

  Was escape his only motive?

  “No,” I said softly to the deserted corridor. “He wants something.”

  But what?

  I thought on that. What would a man like Kuratov desire? An officer like Kuratov. A defeated officer like Kuratov.

  Satisfaction.

  Or, as it was known to most, revenge.

  Possibly he was aboard at this very moment setting in motion some plan to sink the Northwest Majesty
. To send all who were aboard to some watery grave. Could he do that?

  Unlikely, I thought. He would almost certainly need a cache of explosives to scuttle the huge ship, something he could not have snuck aboard, and which we, while provisioning the vessel, had not brought with us.

  Those obstacles, though, did not completely inform my dismissal of that possibility. To simply eliminate everyone seemed more an act of war than a search for retribution. So if not the whole, then what part of it? What individual cog of the machine that had brought him down did Kuratov want to seek his vengeance against?

  “No...”

  I knew. In a flash, I knew. If he’d snuck aboard with those loading supplies on the ship, that meant he would have spent several days in hiding. Using the escape and evasion training he had certainly mastered. In and around town. On the ship. Watching. Listening. And what would he have heard?

  He would have heard her name. He would have seen the handshakes and hugs offered to her.

  To Captain Angela Schiavo.

  I turned and backtracked the way I’d come, turning right and shoving the door to the crew stairwell open, bounding down three steps at a time. Down one deck. Then two. Until I reached bottom and a door that warned against entry. Engineering, the space beyond was marked. Through the barrier before me I could not just hear the thrumming of the massive engines, I could feel them. My whole body seemed to vibrate from the soles of my feet upward.

  This was where Schiavo had tasked herself with searching. Beyond this door. And I had no way of knowing if she was in there alone, or if the boogeyman had already found her.

  She wouldn’t be alone, though. Martin would be with her. That bettered the odds if she was being stalked, but by how much. Kuratov was, according to all that I’d learned from Schiavo and her men, a ruthless, cunning, highly capable killer.

  But he was also desperate. And, I was thinking, either weak or ill. For all his supposed prowess, his unit, after ravaging both Ketchikan and Juneau, and eliminating the Skagway garrison, had been bested by a smaller force led by a freshly minted commander with little combat training. Was it possible that he, or many of his men, had been wounded in that battle to take the northernmost point of their campaign?

  Something, I suspected, had degraded his ability, and his unit’s ability. Whatever it was, it might hint at a fatalistic streak now emboldening the man. That could either harden his resolve, or weaken his faculties.

  As I pushed the door to the engineering space open, I was hoping it was the latter.

  The noise within was deafening. I came almost immediately upon two crewmen, part of a complement of workers that was beyond skeleton. In an assignment that likely required dozens, the pair I encountered were holding their own. They pointed to my unprotected ears as I entered and handed me a pair of earplugs. I inserted the hearing protection and moved past. They eyed me with curiosity, not suspicion as I moved into the space.

  Huge turbines spun at dizzying speeds nearby. I worked my way along a narrow catwalk that hung off their supporting structure. Ahead I saw nothing in the brightly lit space. No hint of life. No Kuratov. No Schiavo or Martin, either.

  Continuing on, I came to another thick door, one that let me out of the incredibly loud power plant space and into an adjoining area where long banks of electronic controls and displays dominated one entire wall. Another crewman was stationed in here, his hearing protection more modest in the quieter work area.

  “What are you doing in here?” the young and serious man asked.

  He was from the Philippines, I thought, as were much of the crew which had stayed on after their vessel had been requisitioned by the Navy.

  “Have you seen anyone come through here?” I asked, shouting a bit, if only to hear myself through the surprisingly effective ear plugs.

  The worker gave no answer, just pointed, to another door at the far end of the space. I nodded a thank you and continued on, both relieved and puzzled that I was finding nothing. To locate Kuratov so soon was far from a certain outcome, but if he was truly aboard he would have to know by now that a search was underway, and he would have to conclude that he was the subject of it. The time to make his move was dwindling. In his mind, he might feel compelled to act.

  But he had not taken any action in here.

  I pushed through the next door, the noise abated here enough that I pulled the earplugs. As soon as I did I heard the footsteps. Two sets.

  The next door just ahead opened and Schiavo and Martin came through.

  “Eric,” Schiavo said, surprised. “You finished your section?”

  I shook my head, suddenly feeling like an idiot.

  “We cleared all the way forward on this deck,” Martin said.

  “That’s good,” I said, plainly wanting to kick myself.

  “What is it?” Schiavo asked, approaching as she noted my frustration.

  I explained my theory that Kuratov might be targeting her specifically. She didn’t dismiss it outright, but didn’t abide by its logic either.

  “You might be giving him too much credit,” Schiavo said. “I’ve been thinking that he’s not really all there right now.”

  “Too easy a time taking him by surprise,” I said. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “I mean, I’m sure he’s furious, but what’s he going to do?” she asked.

  “What’s he even capable of?” Martin added.

  I wasn’t feeling as foolish anymore. But I also wasn’t feeling great about our ability to find the man if he was just aboard, hiding in a dark corner.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked Schiavo.

  She thought for a moment.

  “Once everybody’s done and we meet on the bridge, we’ll just go into waiting mode.”

  “Are you sure?” Martin asked.

  “We’ll let the crew know to report anything out of the ordinary,” Schiavo said. “We can stay ready. And stay in pairs at least. That’s probably the best we can do. Just stay sharp.”

  I nodded. She was right.

  “I’ll go finish my deck then find Elaine,” I said.

  “We’ll see you on the bridge,” Martin said.

  * * *

  It took me just under forty five minutes to complete the sweep of the crew area I’d already started. I found nothing. No signs at all of any unexpected presence. Then I headed for the bridge.

  I never made it there. Westin and Enderson were coming my way on the main deck.

  “Something up?”

  “Going to check out a report of an MRE pouch in a cleaning closet,” Enderson said.

  That could be a hot lead, I knew. What reason would there be for that discarded item to be in a closed space? None that were innocent, I thought.

  “You want some backup?” I asked.

  “Sarge and the Captain are already on the way,” Enderson told me.

  “Did you see Elaine on the bridge?”

  “I think she was heading back to your cabin,” Westin told me. “The Captain cut her and Martin loose when this report came in.”

  Elaine was heading back to the cabin. On her own.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Before they could say anything more I was moving toward the stairs. Our cabin was six decks up. I ran up the wide, switchbacking staircase, then sprinted down the hall toward our cabin.

  Fifty One

  Three steps into the cabin I shared with Elaine I froze. The door had just clicked shut behind. Across the space the balcony slider was open, cool air tossing the curtains about. And right in front of me, on the foot of the bed we’d made after rising in the morning, there lay a small round of metal, reddish in color. It was one of the simple, plain medallions that Kuratov gave to his men. I’d discarded the one given to me on Mary Island, tossing it into Skagway’s harbor days before we’d departed. This was not mine. This one came from somewhere else.

  From someone.

  Click...

  I had hardly turned a few degrees toward the sound behind when
the hard side of a folded hand struck me on right temple. A dull shockwave spread across my head and spilled down through my body as if I was a hollow vessel. Every ounce of energy I’d possessed was instantly gone. My legs collapsed and my body tipped forward, bouncing off the edge of the bed and thudding to the floor, the world above me dark and spinning, flickers of light drizzling in from the edge of my vision. Light that formed a full body halo around the figure coming down at me.

  “Eric Fletcher,” the voice said, the accent dripping with guttural Slavic inflection as it continued in stilted English. “You now know hell.”

  It was Kuratov. Aleksy Kuratov. The boogeyman in our waking nightmares. And he was here, hovering over me, hands stripping my weapons away even as I mounted a dazed attempt to resist. The beefy Russian simply swatted my hands away and spun me onto my stomach once I was disarmed. My jacket was yanked down past my elbows and the man expertly twisted the fabric to bind my arms together. He drew a foot back and drove a painful kick into my ribs, then flipped me again so that I lay face up.

  Then he lowered himself so that he was sitting on my chest. He bent forward, looking into my eyes from just a few inches away.

  “Eric Fletcher,” Aleksy Kuratov said, a sickening stench on his breath.

  My vision was almost fully back, the daze I’d been knocked into dissipating.

  “You are him?”

  He knew my name. And he held some interest in me. Why, I had no idea.

  My confusion lasted just for a moment.

  “Gershin say it was you,” Kuratov said, ogling me with eyes that were sallow and glassy. “He say it was your idea.”

  Gershin...

  “You are Eric Fletcher.”

  He’d gotten to Gershin where he was being held in the old constable’s office. Through a window in the single cell. Just large enough to provide communication from inside to outside.

  I was right, I knew. I’d just had the target wrong. Kuratov wanted vengeance, but not against the person who’d led the assault. He wanted satisfaction from the one who’d conceived it.

  Me.

  “I cut your face like you cut Gershin’s face,” Kuratov said, producing a small but menacing knife to bolster his threat. “Cut your tongue out, your nose off, then your eyes.”