The concealed door resembled solid ice.
Someone had been sneaking up behind them. They used the gunmen as a diversion.
This must be Christov, Neve realized.
His plan had worked.
The two men slid together along the icy floor. Coleman punched Christov awkwardly with his left fist because Christov had pinned Coleman’s right arm.
Coleman’s entire body lay pinned under the larger man’s weight.
Neve glimpsed Christov lifting something up.
A knife!
The huge knife had holes for Christov’s fingers.
He speared the knife down.
Thwack!
Coleman jerked his head aside too late. The knifepoint sliced across his cheek and speared straight through his ear.
Neve heard the knifepoint thud into the ice.
All this happened in less than three seconds.
Neve knew Coleman couldn’t last long. Christov had the upper hand. He wasn’t like the other gunmen. He’d caught Coleman completely by surprise. His attacks came lightning fast.
I need to help!
Neve thrust down on her wheels.
She didn’t move.
Her wheels spun on the wet ice again. Without traction, she couldn’t move.
She couldn’t help if she couldn’t move.
Coleman bucked and twisted, trying to overbalance his attacker.
It didn’t work.
The larger man wrenched his knife from Coleman’s ear and stabbed down again.
The knifepoint sped at Coleman’s eye.
Coleman snatched for Christov’s wrist.
He missed.
Instead he caught a handful of blade.
The knife sliced deeply into the webbing between Coleman’s first and second finger. As the point sped at his face, Coleman managed to push the blade a few inches off target. Instead of plunging through his eye and into his brain, the knifepoint slid off his helmet.
Thwack!
The knife smacked into the floor again.
Damn this stupid ice. I need to reach them.
Christov was cutting Coleman to pieces and she couldn’t even reach them.
Neve toppled herself forward out of her chair.
Slap!
She landed flat on the icy floor.
When she looked up, Coleman had caught Christov’s wrist.
The knife hung suspended between them.
Coleman bore all of Christov’s weight with his left arm. His arm shook. His strength was flagging. The knifepoint began slowly descending toward his face.
By degrees the point inched closer and closer.
As the knifepoint parted Coleman’s eyelashes, Neve lunged. She thumped her fist into Christov’s leg. She held Coleman’s last electro-dart. The sharp prongs stabbed into Christov’s thigh.
Neve didn’t know what to expect.
The effect was instantaneous.
Christov had been struck by lightning. His back arched. His face grimaced. His eyes rolled back until Neve saw only whites. His arms and legs convulsed violently.
But Coleman was convulsing too!
Oh, my God, thought Neve desperately. I’ve electrocuted both of them!
Where the men touched formed a pathway for the electric shock to travel between them.
Neve looked for a way to separate them, but the electric shock did it for her. Christov convulsed right off Coleman.
The instant Coleman came free, his convulsions halted.
Christov wasn’t so lucky.
He continued thrashing on the ice like a fish out of water.
Neve crawled back to her chair and pulled herself back into the seat.
Coleman rolled over and tried to stand. He managed two steps before his legs folded.
‘This way,’ called Neve. ‘Crawl toward my voice!’
He must have heard her, because Coleman began crawling on his hands and knees toward her. She reached down and grabbed his body armor.
‘Pull yourself up my chair. Here. Quickly. Grab the handles. We have to go. Just hold on. Don’t let go.’
Coleman pulled himself slowly up her chair.
Neve heard the dead gunmen’s radios. More men were coming. They sounded close. Coleman couldn’t fight them. He could barely stand.
Neve pushed down on her wheels. Coleman’s weight provided extra traction. She rolled toward the concealed plastic door with Coleman staggering behind her.
Halfway through the door, Coleman fell to one knee.
‘Get up,’ Neve hissed. ‘Hurry. They’re right outside.’
Gripping her wheelchair handles, Coleman pulled himself up again. Neve got them both through the door. The door slapped shut.
They’d barely made it.
She heard gunmen charging into the bar behind them. She prayed they wouldn’t spot the concealed door. As silently as possible, Neve guided Coleman through the staff areas behind the ice bar.
Which way?
She had no idea.
She crossed through a lunch room, a store room, and then down a narrow corridor lined with lockers. At the end she found herself facing a stock elevator.
It wasn’t meant for people. It looked designed for moving inventory between the ship’s store rooms.
We can’t fit in there.
SLAP!
Neve heard the concealed plastic door being kicked open.
They’ve found the door, she realized. They’ll find us any second.
‘Hold on tight,’ she warned Coleman. ‘We have to turn around.’
Coleman didn’t answer, but he obeyed as Neve turned her chair around on the spot.
‘Now go backward,’ she whispered. ‘Bend down.’
Even bending, Coleman’s head and shoulders struck the wall above the stock elevator.
Neve heard boots running toward them.
‘Bend your knees,’ she hissed. ‘That’s it. Now go backward.’
She shoved back hard on her wheels, cramming Coleman up against the back wall of the tiny room. Even ducking her head, the ceiling rubbed hard against her scalp.
We’re in!
She’d done it. She’d crammed Coleman, herself and the wheelchair inside the small steel box.
She looked for the controls.
There were none.
Of course. They’re on the outside.
She reached out and groped for the controls. She found them. She pushed one of the buttons.
The doors began slowly closing.
Very, very slowly.
SQUUUEEEEEEK.
She looked down. The door was scraping her foot rests.
Neve hauled back on her wheels.
She just needed an extra inch!
She found it.
The doors closed, sealing just inches from her nose. A moment later she heard people shouting and hitting the buttons, trying to open the door.
Come on. Move!
The elevator obeyed.
The small steel box carried its cramped passengers upward.
Christov came to his senses.
Where the hell am I? It’s freezing in here.
He was lying on the floor, looking at a strange ceiling. The ceiling appeared to be made of ice.
Everything came rushing back.
He remembered how Elizabeth had tricked him.
She’d betrayed him. Stolen from him. Everything he’d worked for was falling apart around him.
What more could I have done?
Christov had designed Pharmafirst’s offshore security system himself.
He’d monitored every computer with key loggers. Real time algorithms analyzed this data continuously for suspicious activity. No computer had outlets for removing data. He’d replaced all the computers’ hard drives with acid drives. The moment the drive was disconnected from the network, internal vials of fluorosulfuric super acid ruptured and destroyed the data.
Christov insisted that every shred of data in the facility be stored on acid drives. He also p
ossessed the only tool that allowed an acid drive to survive outside of its computer. Even then, every disconnected drive began a forty-eight hour countdown until it acid-wiped.
No other electronic devices entered the offshore site.
No laptops.
No tablets.
No mobile phones.
Not even a calculator. The staff entered wearing nothing but paper gowns. Pharmafirst provided everything else on Pia Pia Island. They completely transformed the abandoned World War II outpost. They repurposed its overgrown airstrip, empty buildings and elaborate network of concrete bunkers into a world-class medical research center.
Christov’s staff worked on Pia Pia in four month cycles.
Everyone except Elizabeth.
Elizabeth never left.
She took up permanent residence. In hindsight, Christov realized she was searching for a weakness.
She found one.
A psychopathic one.
Christov’s security protocols ensured the security and research staff never made physical contact.
They never mingled.
They couldn’t.
Their working and living areas functioned independently.
They only ever saw each other through glass.
Christov was the only exception.
Elizabeth had determined that Christov himself was his security system’s only weakness. At two in the morning Elizabeth called him urgently from the laboratories. She needed to transfer a computer’s acid drive around a network fault. She couldn’t wait for the morning technicians.
Christov suited up, entered the labs and unlocked the acid drive she needed. He watched her begin fitting the drive into another computer.
He’d left the labs a walking weapon.
Elizabeth had infected them both.
To be sure she’d passed the infection to Christov, she’d contaminated his bio-hazard suit with the unfinished drug.
Like her, his blood group provided immunity from the violent side effects. He wouldn’t feel the infection.
He could only spread it.
When Christov woke the next morning, half his staff was killing the other half.
Fortunately only one half remembered how to use their firearms.
A search found Elizabeth missing. Her research vessel was also gone. In the labs, Christov found all the acid drives wiped. All their research data was destroyed. All the drives were useless.
All but one.
By 7 am, Christov knew the truth.
Elizabeth had sabotaged the labs, stolen a single acid drive and escaped the island on the missing vessel.
By 11 am, Christov found the vessel.
Elizabeth knew he would.
She’d already set herself adrift in the life raft. A life raft was much harder to find.
When she’d set off her distress beacon, she clearly hadn’t expected to be rescued by the First Lady of the Sea.
Christov had no idea she’d been conspiring with the U.S. Government. He had no idea what deal she had made. But a deal had been made, and the Marines were here to collect on that deal.
The data stored on the acid drive represented billions of dollars of investment. Without that research, Pharmafirst would be ruined.
Christov was responsible.
And right now he was lying on his back, staring at the icy ceiling in a bar, having been electrocuted to within an inch of his life.
His limbs began to respond.
He checked the countdown on his watch.
Thirty-nine minutes.
One of Christov’s men reached down to help him sit up.
‘I’m all right,’ he croaked.
He yanked the dart from his leg.
That bitch in the wheelchair stabbed me with this.
He’d been moments from killing the Marine captain.
Christov should have known.
The woman in the wheelchair was a scientist too.
Scientists couldn’t be trusted.
Ben checked his compass again.
It felt surreal to be steering the largest cruise ship on the planet using a compass that fit into his pocket.
Confident with the ship’s course, he locked the controls and braced himself for what came next.
Christov had arrived with the intention of killing every last person on the ship. That included the survivors who’d reached the lifeboats.
Ben knew how Christov planned to kill the survivors.
When the cruise ship had abandoned the lifeboats, the boats would have grouped together. The staff scattered throughout the boats knew the procedure.
Christov’s helicopters had powerful guns. Ben had witnessed them tear apart a Black Hawk helicopter in seconds. That firepower directed against the vulnerable lifeboats would be devastating.
The lifeboats wouldn’t stand a chance. That bobbing flotilla of fragile life would be blown apart in seconds.
Those people were Ben’s responsibility, and Ben knew how to hurt Christov.
He cautiously picked up the dead gunman’s dropped flamethrower. It felt heavier than he’d expected. He wedged the flamethrower into the lowest rung on the ladder.
Next he hauled himself up the ladder, wincing as his bullet wounds flared. He imagined how Karen felt being forced up this ladder at gunpoint.
Climbing up onto the bridge, he took his first proper look at the helicopter that dropped his wife.
He opened the cockpit door. The wind tore it from his grasp, forcing it fully open. The sliding cargo door already gaped open.
He looked inside.
He forced himself.
Inside the chopper looked claustrophobic and terrifying.
They pushed her out of this door. She and the others.
He imagined Karen’s reaction when gunmen began pushing the other officers to their deaths. He imagined her crying. Begging for her life. In the end, she would have fought. She would have struggled right up until they shoved her out the door.
Ben knew what happened after that.
He saw her falling.
Screaming.
Landing.
He slapped a hand over his eyes, holding back the emotions that wanted to curl him into a ball.
Instead, he hauled up the ladder and pulled free the flamethrower. Taking the wind into account, he braced himself a moment and then squeezed the trigger.
Flames burst from the weapon.
First he directed the roaring flames into the cockpit. The cockpit transformed into a blazing red inferno.
He fired again.
This time his flames roared through the cargo door. He filled the entire helicopter with fire.
Retreating from the heat, he held the trigger and painted the helicopter with flames from cockpit to tail rotor.
The entire chopper caught on fire.
He’d done it. Dropping the weapon, he retreated down the ladder in case the chopper exploded. Through the hole in the ceiling he watched black smoke pluming high above the ship.
That’s a message Christov can’t ignore.
Erin scanned the cameras.
She turned back to King and Forest. ‘I can’t tell which way the cameras are facing. They’re too high.’
All three crouched outside a ‘Make-Your-Own’ pizza restaurant. A lattice covered in plastic ivy shielded them from the cameras.
Forest tried his radio again.
No one answered.
Erin had tried using three different telephones to call the bridge.
What’s happened to Ben and Karen and the other bridge officers? Did they evacuate?
Hopefully Karen had reached a lifeboat. Of all the people on board, Karen was Erin’s closest friend.
Erin realized both Marines were watching her. They seemed much more confident with real firearms.
‘We need to reach the helipad,’ said King.
‘What about the bridge?’ asked Erin.
‘If they’re using the cameras, they’ve already captured the bridge,’ explained Kin
g.
Forest nodded. ‘The others will head for the chopper with Neve and Justin.’
Erin realized they wanted her opinion.
She nodded. ‘With a helicopter we can call for help. That’s a priority.’
‘So which way?’ asked King.
Erin pointed. ‘The stern-most fire stairs. We’ll be exposed, though.’
‘We have to risk it,’ decided King. ‘Let’s go.’
King took off. Erin followed. She barely heard Forest’s boots behind her. Forest moved incredibly quietly.
Erin pointed at the fire stairs ahead. ‘There they—’
Forest snatched her arm.
‘King!’ he hissed.
King halted instantly.
Both Marines looked around. Erin had been focusing on the fire stairs. Now she looked around herself.
Dozens and dozens of corpses had been dragged into the surrounding restaurants. Erin could see they’d been killed by gunfire. Gunmen had clearly wiped out a large pack of crazies on this level.
Why drag the bodies out of sight?’
‘It’s a trap,’ hissed King.
Forest nearly wrenched Erin’s shoulder from its socket. He yanked her toward the Mediterranean Deli.
Then Erin saw fire.
A tremendous cone of fire spurted out from behind the closest pile of bodies. The flames roared toward them, scorching the deck where they’d stood. Fire pursued them right into the deli.
Erin ran for her life.
She sprinted with the Marines.
They weren’t fast enough.
The flames caught them.
Erin felt a volcano erupting behind her. She felt lava spewing from the volcano and engulfing her legs.
She looked down.
I’m on fire!
Flames licked up her pants on both sides.
Oh, my God. I’m on fire!
Forest tackled her to the floor. He and King smothered the flames with their gloves. Forest dashed away as King scooped her up like she was made of feathers.
He ran a few steps and threw her.
Erin felt her entire body sailing over the deli’s tall glass counter. Her legs knocked hanging salamis and braids of garlic flying.
She braced for impact, but instead felt strong, wiry arms pluck her from the air.
Forest had caught her.
Together they dropped behind the counter as King came leaping over.
Erin winced as pain flared up her legs. Fire had burned both her calves. She suddenly inhaled something revolting.
HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) Page 25