It was a dynamic, like gravity. Some legacy of evolution, deep in human nerves, invisible and potent, like software.
She turned around. No sign of Shaw. A few yards behind her, Bad Luck was retching, loudly, over the guard rail. He looked up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
She could have been him. Laura forced herself to smile at him.
He gave her a look of tremulous gratitude and came to join her. She almost fled at once, but he held up a hand. “It’s okay,” he said. “I know I’m dosed. It comes in waves. I’m better now.”
“You’re very brave,” Laura said. “I’m sorry for you, sir.”
Bad Luck stared at her. “That’s nice. You’re nice. You don’t treat me like a leper.” He paused, hot little rat eyes studying her. “You’re not one of us, are you? You’re not with the Bank.”
“What makes you say that?” Laura said.
“You’re somebody’s girl friend, is it?” He grinned in a cadaverous parody of flirtation. “Lot of bosses on this ship. Top brass goes for those hot Eurasian girls.”
“We’re getting married, la,” Laura said, “so you can forget all about it, fellow.”
He dug into his jacket. “Want a cigarette?”
“Maybe you’d better save them,” Laura said, accepting one.
“No, no. No problem. I can get anything! Cigarettes, blood components. Megavitamins, embryos.… My name’s Desmond, miss. Desmond Yaobang.”
“Hi,” Laura said. She accepted a light. Her mouth immediately filled with choking poisoned soot.
She couldn’t understand why she was doing this.
Except that it was better than doing nothing. Except that she felt sorry for him. And maybe the presence of Desmond Yaobang would keep everyone else at a distance.
“What do you think they’ll do to us, in Abadan? Do with us, I mean.” Yaobang’s head just topped her shoulder. There was nothing obviously repulsive about him, but the chemical fear had etched itself into the set of his eyes, the lines of his face. It had soaked him through with an aura of creepiness. She felt the strong, irrational urge to kick him. The way a flock of crows will peck an injured one to death.
“I dunno,” Laura drawled, contempt making her careless. She looked at her sandaled feet, avoiding his eyes. “Maybe they’ll give me some decent shoes.… I’ll be okay if I can make a few phone calls.”
“Phone calls,” Yaobang parroted nervously, “capital idea. Yes, get Desmond to a phone and he can get you anything. Shoes. Surely. You want to try it?’”
“Mmm. Not just yet. Too crowded.”
“Tonight then. Fine, miss. Splendid. I won’t be sleeping anyway.”
She turned away from him and put her back to the rail. The sun was setting between two of the whirling wind columns. Vast under-lit cloud banks of mellow Renaissance gold. Yaobang turned and looked as well, biting his lip, mercifully silent. Along with the filthy brain buzz of the cigarette, it gave Laura an expansive feeling of sublimity. Beautiful, but it wouldn’t last long—the sun sank fast in the tropics.
Yaobang straightened, pointed. “What is that?”
Laura looked. His paranoia-sharpened senses had caught something—a distant, airborne glint.
Yaobang squinted. “Some little kind of chopper, maybe?”
“It’s too small!” Laura said. “It’s a drone!” Light had winked briefly from its blades and now she’d lost it against the clouds.
“A drone?” he said, alarmed by her tone of voice. “Is it voodoo? Can it hurt us?”
“Shut up!” Laura shoved away from the rail. “I’m gonna climb up to the crow’s nest—I want a better look.” She hurried across the deck, her sandals flopping.
The ship’s foremast had a radar horn and video for the guidance computer. But there was access for repair and human backup: a crow’s nest, three stories above the deck. Laura grabbed the cool iron rungs, then stopped in frustration. The damned sari—it would tangle her feet. She turned and beckoned to Yaobang.
There was a shout from above. “Hey!”
A man in a popsicle-red rain slicker was leaning over the crow’s-nest railing. “What are you doing?”
“Are you crew?” Laura shouted, hesitating.
“No, are you?”
She shook her head. “I thought I saw something”—she pointed—“over there!”
“What did you see?”
“I think it was a Canadair CL-227!”
The man’s shoes clattered as he came down quickly to the deck. “What’s a canadare?” Yaobang demanded plaintively, hopping from foot to foot. He noticed a pair of Zeiss binoculars around the other’s neck. “Where’d you get those?”
“Deck room,” said Red Raincoat, meaninglessly.
“I know you, right? Henderson? I’m Desmond Yaobang. Countertrade section.”
“Hennessey,” Red Raincoat said.
“Hennessey, yes …”
“Give me those,” Laura demanded. She grabbed the binoculars. Under the flimsy poncho, Hennessey’s chest was padded and huge. He was wearing something. Bulletproof vest?
A life jacket.
Laura tore her sunglasses off, felt hastily for a pocket—none, in a sari—and propped them on her head. She focused the binoculars.
She found the thing almost at once. There it was, hovering malignantly at the twilit skyline. It had been in her nightmares so many times that she couldn’t believe she was seeing it.
It was the drone that had strafed her Lodge. Not the identical one, because this one was military green, but the same model—double rotors, dumbbell shape. Even the stupid landing gear.
“Let me see!” Yaobang demanded frantically. To shut him up, Laura passed him the binoculars.
“Hey,” Hennessey protested mildly. “Those are mine.” He was a thirtyish Anglo with prominent cheekbones and a small, neatly trimmed mustache. He had no accent—straight Mid-Atlantic Net talk. Below the baggy plastic poncho there was something lithe and weaselish about him.
He smiled at her, tightly, looking into her eyes. “You American? USA?”
Laura felt for her sunglasses. They’d pushed the sari back, showing her blond hair.
“I see it!” Yaobang burst out excitedly. “A flying ground nut!”
Hennessey’s eyes widened. He’d recognized her. He was thinking fast. She could see him shift forward onto the balls of his feet.
“Maybe it’s Grenadian!” Yaobang said. “Better warn everyone! I’ll watch the thing—missy, you go running!”
“No, don’t do that,” Hennessey told her. He reached under his poncho and tugged out a piece of machinery. It was small and skeletal and looked like a cross between a vice-grip wrench and a putty applicator. He stepped near Yaobang, holding the device with both hands.
“Oh, God,” Yaobang said blindly. Another wave of it was hitting him—he was trembling so hard he could barely hold up the binoculars. “I’m frightened,” he sniveled. A cracked, reflexive, little-boy voice. “I can see it coming.… I’m afraid!”
Hennessey pointed the machine at Yaobang’s ribs and pulled its trigger, twice. There were two discreet little coughs, barely audible, but the thing jumped viciously in Hennessey’s hands. Yaobang convulsed with impact, arms flying, chest buckling as if hit with an axe. He fell over his own feet and hit the deck with a clatter of binoculars.
Laura stared at him in stunned horror. Hennessey had just blown two great smoking holes in Yaobang’s jacket. Yaobang lay unmoving, face livid and black. “You killed him!”
“No. No problem. Special narcotic dye,” Hennessey blurted.
She looked again. Just for a second. Yaobang’s mouth was clogged with blood. She stared at Hennessey and began backing away.
With a sudden smooth, reflexive motion Hennessey centered the gun on her chest. She saw the cavernous barrel of it and knew suddenly that she was looking at death. “Laura Webster!” Hennessey said. “Don’t run, don’t make me shoot!”
Laura froze.
“Police officer,�
� Hennessey said. He glanced nervously off the port bow. “Vienna Convention, Special Operations Task Force. Just obey orders and everything will be fine.”
“That’s a lie!” Laura shouted. “There’s no such thing!”
He wasn’t looking at her. He kept looking out to sea. She followed his gaze.
Something was coming toward the ship. It was rushing over the waves, with astonishing, magic swiftness. A long white stick, like a wand, with sharp square wings. Behind it a slim straight billow of contrail air.
It rushed toward the bridge, at the stern, a needle on a thread of steam. Into it. Through it.
Raw fire bloomed, taller than houses. A wall of heat and sound surged up the deck and knocked her from her feet. She was down, bruised, flash-blinded. The bow of the ship bucked under her like a huge steel animal.
Roaring seconds. Pieces of plastic and steel were pattering onto the deck. The bridge superstructure—the radar mast, the phone antennas—was one vast, ugly conflagration. It was like someone had built a volcano in it—thermite heat and white-hot twisting spars of metal and lava globs of molten ceramic and plastic. Like a firecracker in a white wedding cake.
Below them, the ship was still pitching. Hennessey had lurched to his feet and made a run for the railing. For a moment she thought he was going to jump. Then he was back with a life preserver—a big ceremonial flotation ring marked in Parsi script. He stumbled and rolled and got back to her. There was no sign of his gun now—he’d folded it again, tucked it away.
“Get this on!” he shouted in her face.
Laura grabbed it reflexively. “The lifeboat!” she shouted back.
He shook his head. “No! No good! Booby-trapped!”
“You bastard!”
He ignored her. “When she goes down, you have to swim hard, Laura! Hard, away from the undertow!”
“No!” She jumped to her feet, dancing away from his lunging attempt to tackle her. The back of the ship was vomiting smoke now, huge black explosive volumes of it. People were scrambling across the deck.
She turned back to Hennessey. He was down and doubled over, hands knotted behind his neck, bent legs crossed at the ankles. She gaped at him, then looked to sea again.
Another missile. It slid just above the waves, its jet flare lighting the rippled water with flashbulb briefness. It hit.
A catastrophic explosion belowdecks. Hatch covers leapt free from their hinges and tumbled skyward like flaming dominoes. Up-leaping geysers of fire. The ship lurched like a gut-shot elephant.
The deck tilted, slowly, inexorably, gravity clutching at them like the end of the world. Steam rose with a stink of scalded seawater. She fell to her knees and slid.
Hennessey had crawled to the bow rail. He had an elbow hooked around it and was talking into something—a military field telephone. He paused and yanked its long antenna out and resumed shouting. Gleefully. He caught her eye and waved and gestured at her. Jump! Swim!
She lurched to her feet again, lusting blindly to get at him and kill him. Strangle him, claw his eyes out. The deck dropped under her like a broken elevator and she fell again, bruising her knees. She almost lost the flotation ring.
Her shins were wet. She turned. The sea was coming up over the starboard bow. Gray ugly waves thick with blasted chunks of flotsam. The ship was eviscerated, its guts spewing out.
Fear overwhelmed her. A panic strength to live. She ripped and kicked her way out of the enveloping sari. Her sandals were long gone. She pulled the ring over her head and shoulders. Then she scrambled to the bow rail, clambered over it, and jumped.
The water rushed over her, warm and dank. Twilight was leaching from the sky, but the ship’s blaze lit the straits like a battlefield.
Another minor explosion, and a flare of light by the ship’s single lifeboat. He’d killed them. Good God, they were going to kill them all! How many people—a hundred, a hundred and fifty? They’d been herded into a cattle car and taken out to sea and butchered! Burned and drowned, like vermin!
A drone hummed angrily just over her head. She felt the wind of it on her sodden hair.
She got the ring wedged under her armpits and started swimming hard.
The sea seemed to be boiling. She thought of sharks. Suddenly the opaque depths beneath her naked legs were full of lurking presences. She swam hard, until the panic strength faded into chilly shock. She turned and looked.
It was going. Stern last, rising above the sea in the last hissing remnants of flame, like a distant candlelit tombstone. She watched it for long, thudding heartbeat seconds. Then it was gone, sinking into nothingness, blackness, and ooze.
The night was overcast. Darkness came on like a shroud. The rush of afterwash hit her and bobbed her like a buoy.
Another hum overhead. Then, in the distance, in the darkness, the chatter of machine-gun fire.
They were killing the survivors in the water. Shooting them from drones, out of darkness, with infrareds. She began swimming again, desperately, away.
She couldn’t die out here. No, not blown to shreds out here, killed like a statistic.… David, the baby …
An inflatable boat surged by, dark man-shapes and the quiet mutter of an engine. A slap in the water—someone had tossed her a line. She heard Hennessey’s voice. “Grab it. Hurry up!”
She did it. It was that, or die here. They tugged her in and hauled her up, over the inflatable’s hull. Hennessey grinned at her in his drenched clothes. He had companions: four sailors in white round hats, neat silky uniforms, dark with a gleam of gold.
She sprawled in the rippling bottom of the boat, against a hull black and slick as a gut, in her sari blouse and underwear. One of the sailors tossed the flotation ring overboard. They picked up speed, heading away, up the straits.
The closest sailor leaned toward her, an Anglo about forty. His face looked as white as a sliced apple. “Cigarette, lady?”
She stared at him. He leaned back, shrugging.
She coughed on seawater, then gathered her legs in, trembling, wretched. A long time passed. Then her brain began to work again.
The ship had never had a chance. Not even to scream out an SOS. The first missile had wiped out the bridge—radio, radar, and all. The killers had cut their throat first thing.
But to kill a hundred people in the middle of the Malacca Straits! To commit an atrocity like that—surely other ships must have seen the explosion, the smoke. To have done such a thing, so viciously, so blatantly …
Her voice, when she finally got it out, was cracked and weak. “Hennessey …?”
“Henderson,” he told her. He tugged his drenched red rain slicker over his head. Beneath it was a bright orange life jacket. Under that a sleeveless utility vest, bulges and little metal zips and Velcro flaps. “Here, put this slicker on.”
He shoved it at her. She held it numbly.
Henderson chuckled. “Put it on! You want to meet a hundred red-blooded sailors in wet underwear?”
The words didn’t quite register, but she started on it anyway. They were speeding in darkness, the boat bouncing, the wind tearing and flapping at the raincoat. She struggled with it for what seemed an endless time. It clung to her bare wet skin like a bloody hide.
“Looks like you need a hand,” Henderson said. He crawled forward and helped her into it. “There. That’s better.”
“You killed them all,” Laura croaked.
Henderson aimed amused glances at the sailors. “None of that, now,” he said loudly. “Besides, I had a little help from the attack ship!” He laughed.
Sailor number two cut back the engine. They were coasting forward in darkness. “Boat,” he said. “A sub is a ‘boat.’ Sir.”
In the darkness, she heard water cascading and the gurgle of surf. She could barely see it in the dimness, a vague blue-black sheen. But she could smell it and feel it, almost taste it on her skin.
It was huge. It was close. A vast black rectangle of painted steel. A conning tower.
A monstr
ous submarine.
9
It was huge and alive, ticking over like some transatlantic jet, drizzling seawater with sharp pneumatic huffing and a deep shuddering hum. Laura heard drones hissing past her in the darkness, taxiing in to land on the hull. Evil, waspish sounds. She couldn’t see them, but she knew the machines could see her, lit by her own body heat.
The inflatable collided gently with the sub, a rubbery jolt.
The sailors climbed a detachable rope ladder up the dark curving hull. Henderson waited as they left. Then he smeared wet hair from his eyes and grabbed her arm.
“Don’t do stupid shit,” he told her. “Don’t yell, don’t act up, don’t be a bitch. I saved your life. So don’t embarrass me. Because you’ll die.”
He sent her up the ladder ahead of him. The rungs hurt her hands, and the slick steel hull was deep-water-cold under her bare feet. The flattened hull stretched out endlessly into washing darkness. Behind her, the conning tower loomed thirty feet high. Long spines of black-and-white antennas sprouted from its peak.
A dozen more sailors clustered on the hull, in elegant bell-bottom trousers and long-sleeved blouses with gold-braided cuffs. They tended to the drones, manhandling them down a series of yawning hatches. They moved with a strange tippy-toeing, hunch-shouldered look. As if they found the empty night sky oppressive.
The inflatable’s crew expertly hauled it up after them, flinging rope hand over hand. They deflated it, trampling out air in a demented sombrero dance, then stuffed the wet rubber mass into a seabag.
It was all over in a few moments. They were jumping back into their vast steel warren, like rats. Henderson hustled Laura over a hatch coaming onto a recessed floor. It sank beneath their feet. The hatch slammed over her head with an ear-popping huff and a squeal of hydraulics.
They emerged from the elevator shaft into a vast cylindrical warehouse lit with sullen yellow bulbs. It had two decks: a lower floor, beneath her bare feet, of solid iron, and an upper one of perforated grating. It was cavernous, two hundred feet long; every ten feet it was cut, left and right, by massive bulging elevator shafts. Shafts nine feet across, steel silos, their bases stuck with plugs and power cables. Like bio-tech tanks, she thought, big fermenters.
Islands in the Net Page 31