“You game?” she asked him.
He gave a little shrug. “I do not have anything else planned.”
“Then it’s done,” Dom said.
In a matter of minutes, Meredith and Andris were sitting at the prow of the Zodiac. Miguel sat at the tiller, and Jenna helped them prepare their tanks, gauges, and buoyancy-control devices. Meredith tightened the sheath with her dive knife onto her thigh. Even recreational divers carried them. If you became entangled in a fishing line, which was a strangely common occurrence, it was a lifesaver.
The Zodiac bobbed over the waves. Water sprayed over Meredith’s face as she stared forward, her fingers wrapped around the rope tracing the gunwale. The storm front rose before them in a southeasterly direction. She hoped it stayed on more of an eastward vector than south, skimming them instead of slamming into them. It was not that the rain would matter when they were underwater. But the last thing she wanted was to be bobbing in the open ocean with Andris, far adrift from the Zodiac and the Huntress, because of some storm-driven swell.
The gurgle of the Zodiac soon settled as Miguel slowed the boat. He circled a spot for a moment, staring at his GPS. “This should be it. You two ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Meredith said.
“Remind me to thank you for volunteering me for this mission,” Andris said, adjusting the straps to his dive mask before slipping it over his face. “You owe me a very big favor for this one.”
“Come on,” Meredith said, securing her mask. “Think of this like a vacation. Nothing but a recreational dive to see the fish.”
“The last time somebody told me I was going to see the fishes at the bottom of the sea, they weren’t talking about diving.”
With that, Andris put in his regulator and tossed himself overboard. Meredith followed.
Into the abyss they dove.
-7-
Dom waited with Thomas, Chao, and Samantha at the table in the electronics workshop. The buzz of machinery droned on as they shared a moment of silence. Each contemplated the question hanging over them like precarious boulders just before an avalanche.
How did those people find us? How could they possibly have known where the Huntress was with enough certainty to launch an attack?
“Maybe they hacked us,” Thomas said.
“No freaking way, man,” Samantha said. “I would’ve noticed.”
Thomas raised a brow. “Kinsey’s people got into our systems before. You two practically let him in. Why would it be so hard to believe the FGL got access?”
At that, Samantha looked sheepish and stared at the back of her hands.
Chao shook his head vehemently. “No, we’ve been extraordinarily vigilant since then. Every outgoing and incoming signal from our comms, every bit of data we’ve transferred. We’ve kept to the strictest protocols of data segregation and quarantine for the files we pulled off the FGL labs in the Congo.”
“We’re clean,” Samantha said, her hands wide in an imploring gesture.
“Where does that leave us? Maybe one of the civilians or a crew member is privately radioing off our coordinates to Spitkovsky’s goons,” Thomas said.
“Hell no,” Samantha said.
Back and forth, they threw ideas at each other. Their voices rose with each point and counterpoint, the tension rising between them like a nuclear reactor going into meltdown. They were letting their emotions get the better of them. Letting frustration rule. These were smart people. They weren’t used to being fooled like this.
Dom needed to do something to defuse the situation. But his own thoughts were in turmoil. Half his focus was on Meredith, worrying about her mission. He felt as if he were wandering through the woods, looking for an exit.
Then he saw a hint of light in the distance. A possible answer.
Something about the attackers’ actions still didn’t sit right. Maybe they were looking at this problem in the wrong way. Looking at it backwards, even.
“Look, I’m just saying maybe something else got through,” Thomas said. “Maybe when you were downloading all that shit from the FGL’s labs, you hoovered up something you shouldn’t have.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” Samantha asked, her face red. “Nothing dangerous came in those files. The FGL don’t know shit about computers. If their cyber-warfare tactics are anything like their security, they’re the equivalent of a caveman throwing rocks at a tank.”
Chao sighed. “I’m not trying to throw us under the bus, but what if they were just honey-potting? Maybe they knew we were going to tap into their network, and they made it easy for us to sap their servers so we would syphon off some kind of tracking program.”
“Et tu, Brute? Et tu?” Samantha said, shaking her head. “If that was the case, they could have scrambled all of our systems. Why would they leave the ship functional, especially in an attack? Besides, I haven’t detected any outgoing messages or signals that we didn’t send. I’m telling you, we’re clean.”
Then something clicked in Dom’s head. “There’s no Trojan Horse on board. Nothing infected our comms.”
Something in him shifted as realization poured through like sunlight after a storm. Think backwards, he said to himself again. What was it that the boarding party had been after? If they had wanted to simply destroy the ship, they could have done so from the sky.
In fact, they might be planning to do that now that their mission to retrieve their target had failed. That made identifying how they were tracking the Huntress absolutely critical.
“Let’s break this down,” Dom said. “They didn’t come here to simply kill us. That would’ve been easier. Somehow they knew we had exactly what they were looking for. Something pretty damned important. They knew we had it, and they knew where we were.”
Thomas’s eyes brightened. “Damn that old man. They tagged him, didn’t they?”
“Right,” Dom said. “They wouldn’t want someone like that to just slip from their grasp.”
At once Dom saw the same realization pour through Chao and Samantha’s expressions.
“You mean the Japanese dude is microchipped like a puppy?” Samantha asked.
Dom nodded grimly. They hadn’t brought back much from the lab in the Congo, but what they had managed to retrieve was absolutely vital to the FGL’s mission.
“Let’s throw the bastard overboard,” Thomas offered. “Easiest solution. Guy deserves a watery grave.”
“I’d feel sorry for the fish that eat him,” Samantha said.
“You both know we can’t do that,” Dom said, although an angry voice at the back of his head told him Samantha and Thomas weren’t wrong. Heaving Matsumoto overboard like so much flotsam was too kind a fate for the man. “But we need him alive. We have to find out what he knows.”
“The guy was out of his goddamned mind last time you talked to him,” Thomas said. “Maybe he’s gone senile. You think he actually has a shot at recovering?”
“He definitely won’t recover if he drowns in the middle of the Atlantic,” Chao said.
“Exactly,” Dom said. “Besides, what if we throw him overboard and the FGL still track us down? We’ll have killed Matsumoto for nothing. That’d be a huge opportunity to learn something that could change the course of this war gone because we acted too hastily. I want to find out if he’s chipped or tagged or whatever, see if it was through him they were tracking us, and keep the old man alive.”
The others nodded. If Matsumoto wasn’t tagged, if there was a bug somewhere else on this ship, they would have to go over every square inch of the Huntress. Every bulkhead, every deck. All their cargo. Maybe even the air ducts and lab air filtration systems. All before Spitkovsky sent another wave of attackers.
At the moment, exhausted as he was, the task seemed almost as daunting as stopping the goddamned Oni Agent from turning the world into Skulls.
“Chao, Samantha, I want you to ensure Spitkovsky hasn’t compromised our computer systems,” Dom commanded. “Thomas, have anyone n
ot performing repairs to critical ship systems start the search for physical bugs on the ship.” He stood. “I’m going to go brief the medical team.”
“If something is embedded in Matsumoto,” Samantha said, a wicked grin on her lips, “can you promise Lauren won’t use painkillers when she digs it out?”
-8-
The OR was normally cooler than the rest of the ship, but sweat was trickling down Lauren’s forehead and stinging her eyes. She resisted the urge to wipe it away. It wouldn’t do much good except for smearing Terrence’s blood across her mask. Heat swelled under her operating gown. It wasn’t just a result of the intense lights or Divya and Peter crammed in beside her.
Terrence’s wounds were some of the worst that she had seen. His pulse was weak, and parts of him were simply so much shredded meat. But despite all the odds, it seemed as if he would pull through. Lauren’s role in helping suture his vessels was almost over. Peter had taken control of the OR like the master surgeon he was. He wasn’t the easiest man to get along with. His arrogance tended to seep into his everyday conversation and interactions, and it wasn’t always pleasant. But in the OR, that confidence was an asset. There was no deliberation, no waffling about for answers. Only action.
There was no doubt in Lauren’s mind that Peter had saved Terrence’s life. His skill was unparalleled. Each member of the team brought their own immense strengths. Divya, with her deep knowledge of rare and tropical diseases complementing her internal medicine abilities. Sean, with his epidemiological education and ability to translate what they discovered in the laboratory to real-world results. And without doting on her own ego too much, Lauren tied the team together with a rich scientific background in the CDC coupled with her breadth of general medicine experience. Everyone had a vital role to play in this skeleton crew.
“He’s going to live,” Peter said without any air of drama.
Divya breathed a sigh of relief. The surgery wasn’t done yet, but they could see their exit on the highway. They had already completed the most dangerous parts of the procedure.
Their success had come at a tremendous cost. Terrence had lost both his legs.
They had had no other choice. The limbs were so damaged as to be impossible to repair. There simply was so little left that wasn’t charred or shredded. It had been a grisly sight.
She already dreaded telling him what they had been forced to do when he woke. It wasn’t just about the missing legs, but what it meant for his future. The potential follow-up surgeries. The months of rehabilitation and pain. And the part she knew he would take the hardest: he could no longer serve as a Hunter in the field. At least, not anytime in the near future, and not without sophisticated prosthetics.
“He’s going to need more help than we can provide.” Lauren was now cleaning some of the less demanding wounds. “Unless anyone has any better ideas, I think he needs to go back with Shepherd. A military hospital will be able to treat him better than we can.”
“As long as they don’t treat him like a prisoner,” Peter said.
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Lauren replied. “This medical bay has been stressed as it is. We were never built to care for long-term patients. Emergency medical procedures, quarantine for bioweapon infections...but Terrence is going to need more work to keep what he has left of his legs.” She glanced down. Just about half of his thighs remained. “He needs a proper facility for limb salvage, pain management, physical rehab, and a prosthetist. This is beyond any of our skills.”
“He’s as good as dead if they still think we’re part of this Oni Agent madness,” Peter said, pulling a suture through a loop. “Should we condemn the man by sending him away? At least here he’ll be alive.”
“If he doesn’t get the help he needs now, then think about what we’re sentencing him to. Think about the quality of his life if he’s in constant pain. Think about if we can’t get him mobile again. Peter, you’re good at what you do, but even you have to admit we can’t do this.”
Peter let out a long exhalation, his brow crinkling. “You’re the leader.”
“It’s not that I want to wash our hands of him,” Lauren said.
“I agree with Lauren,” Divya said. “He needs better care than we can give.”
Peter’s eyes narrowed. Lauren couldn’t tell if it was because he still strongly disagreed with them or because he was focused on his work. “I know you’ll do what’s best for him.”
I will, Lauren thought. But Peter did bring up an important point. They would be taking a risk sending Terrence back to the United States. She recalled how Shepherd had been treated. He’d been thrown in a cell and waterboarded for his association with the Hunters. She hoped they could establish better relationships with Kinsey now that they had hard evidence proving their innocence. But even a verbal agreement with the general didn’t mean much in the way of assurances. This whole war had been a charade of shadowy operations and distrust.
Before Lauren had a chance to say anything else, the hatch to the med bay slammed open. Dom stood there by himself and pointed at Terrence through the acrylic partition. She mouthed, “He’ll live.”
Relief washed across Dom’s face. But the expression didn’t last long. He strode toward the OR and clicked the button to activate the chamber’s intercom system.
“I don’t want to distract you from your work, but I’ve got another urgent task.”
“What’s the issue?” Lauren asked, dabbing at the blood along Terrence’s torso as she continued to clean his wounds.
“Matsumoto might have a chip or something implanted in him. We think Spitkovsky was using it to track us.”
“Seriously?” Lauren asked.
“Seriously.” Dom pressed a palm against the partition. “If I’m right and the FGL is tracking us through him, we’ve got to find out how to stop it.”
Lauren hesitated. She didn’t want to leave Terrence.
“We can’t withstand another attack,” Dom said. “And you can bet the last one was just probing for weaknesses. Next time, we won’t be so lucky.”
Divya and Peter looked up at Lauren as if waiting for her to reply. There was no way Peter could take a break to search for the tracker. Lauren, however, was performing duties anyone trained in basic first aid could handle at this point. And besides, Divya had far more emergency medical training than her.
Lauren left the operating table. She stripped off her operating gown and gloves as she exited the chamber. With the back of her hand, she mopped the perspiration dripping down her forehead.
“What exactly am I looking for?” Lauren said, leading Dom to Matsumoto’s bedside. “Is this like one of those microchips you put in a pet?”
Dom shook his head. “Chao says that type of chip is too small to allow active tracking. What we’re looking for would be bigger.” He held his fingers, counting off each attribute. “It’s got to have a battery, an antenna, and a GPS module. We’re talking something at least the size of a house key.”
“I’m guessing if Spitkovsky was worried about losing him, it won’t be easy to find.” Lauren let out a long breath. “I might need your help in this.”
“Whatever you need.”
Matsumoto still slumbered. It was still difficult to believe that this man, skinny and ancient as he was, had been responsible for the original development of the Oni Agent. For just a moment, she wondered how intelligent he must have been—probably still was—to have developed the original iteration of the Oni Agent so many decades ago. If only he had devoted his intellect to something to benefit humanity instead of destroying it.
She pulled the sheet back from Matsumoto’s body. His wrinkled skin hung off his body as if it were another sheet she could remove.
“If they implanted something like that in him, then maybe we can find a surgical scar. It would require a small incision point.”
“Understood,” Dom said.
Lauren probed at the old man’s leathery skin, searching for even a hint of hard scar tissue
. The man had been around the world long enough to accumulate a history book’s worth of scars and scrapes. But most were signs of unintentional injury, often in odd locations or on his hands, where a transmitter couldn’t be concealed. She searched methodically, but his abdomen and limbs seemed clear.
“Help me turn him over,” Lauren said. She showed Dom how to lift the man gently, placing him on his side so he could still breathe. As he held him there, she searched his back.
There it is, she thought. A perfect surgical incision covered in tough white tissue. Poking at the skin, she felt a hard nodule. Something jutted out where no bone should be.
“I think I found it,” she said.
“Where?” Dom asked.
“Right at the base of his skull.”
***
Dom tapped his fingers along the table in the electronics workshop. He had moved his temporary headquarters here as a kind of mission control for his crew. Not a single one of them was doing something they had planned for today. This morning, he had assumed they would be sailing toward Lajes as usual, arriving tomorrow, and maybe enduring a bit of rain.
But the day’s plans had changed. Dom should’ve learned by now that the only constant was change. The key to surviving the apocalypse was to always, as cliché as it sounded, expect the unexpected.
Meredith was descending toward the helicopter wreck. Lauren was prepping Matsumoto for surgery. Samantha and Chao were at their stations, still sifting through the Huntress’s computer systems. The rest of the crew was scouring the ship for bugs.
A knock at the hatch caused Dom to turn. Shepherd entered. He wore extra civilian clothes Dom had had on hand. But there was no mistaking him for anything other than a military man. The expression on his face and the rhythm of his gait exuded confidence.
“Something on your mind?” Dom asked.
“How can I help?” Shepherd asked. “I’m sitting here watching your crew work their asses off. The last thing I want to be is a buffet-binging cruise ship passenger.”
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