Sudden Recall

by Jean Barrett

  Ozzie looked at them again with disapproval when they reached the gate. But all he said when he gave them their tickets and a brochure was a cool, “You have one hour to explore. Enjoy your visit.”

  Those who had disembarked ahead of them were already climbing the long stairway to the top deck of the carrier. There was no room to squeeze around them, though this was exactly what Eden longed to do as she and Shane followed them up the tall flight.

  Looking down, she could see the two gorillas on the speedboat glowering up at them. Their impatient craft, no longer willing to wait, was jockeying for a position at the floating landing. And all Eden could do was cry a silent, frantic plea to the line ahead of them: Hurry, hurry.

  As they neared the top, the elevation permitted them a view of the other three vessels at the point, a destroyer, submarine and Coast Guard cutter, all of them dwarfed by the enormous Yorktown. There was another sight directly below them, a chilling one. The speedboat had managed to nose in close enough to permit its two passengers to leap the gap from deck to landing. Eden watched them hurl themselves toward the stairway, prepared like a pair of bulldozers to shove their way through the crowd still ascending the flight.

  Shane, too, had seen them. “We’ve still got time,” he said calmly, drawing her up the last few steps.

  They emerged on the flight deck where an attendant greeted the arrivals, took their tickets and informed them they could either join one of the conducted tours or visit on their own any of the areas designated in their brochures.

  Shane pulled her off to one side. “Which way to the land side exit? Do you know?”

  Eden had visited the Yorktown only once before, and her recollections weren’t dependable. She certainly hadn’t remembered how vast the flight deck was, its length stretching out before them like a football field for giants.

  “Toward the stern, I think. Yes, I’m pretty sure of that.”

  “And we’re up near the bow. The expanse is too long and too open. Bruno and Boris would be on top of us before we could make it. And if they pull guns with all these people around—”

  “There must be security on board.”

  “Not enough time to call security.” Shane looked around, spotting an inside companionway that descended to the lower decks. “Let’s see if we can lose them below. On a ship this big that shouldn’t be too hard.”

  We could also get lost ourselves before we find that exit, Eden thought, but she didn’t argue with him as they sped through the shadow of the carrier’s soaring superstructure.

  They passed a group surfacing from the companionway, the guide telling his charges, “We’re going to visit the bridge now before we head for the Combat Information Center. It was the nerve center of the carrier during operations. Notice the antiaircraft batteries located on both port and starboard sides as we…”

  Eden looked back just before she and Shane plunged down the companionway. The two thugs had arrived on the flight deck. Had they spotted them? She had no chance to find out. She was too busy negotiating the steep companionway, which felt more like a ladder than stairs.

  The stairway carried them to the next level where they paused to consider their options. They found themselves in the huge hangar bays. Visitors wandered around, examining the World War II planes that were on display and the massive elevators that had lifted the aircraft to the flight deck above.

  “Still much too open,” Shane said. “We’d be asking them to catch up with us. Let’s go down again.”

  They descended to the next deck, and here the companionway ended.

  “You have the brochure,” Shane said. “Which way?”

  Eden consulted the diagram of the carrier’s layout in the brochure. It wasn’t a very adequate map. “To the left. That should take us to the rear of the ship.”

  They hurried along a corridor, passing facilities whose meaning was lost on Eden. But Shane seemed to understand them.

  “Wardroom,” he said.

  “What is—”

  “Officers’ quarters.”

  How would he know that? she wondered. And then she remembered what his disclosures under hypnosis had suggested. That he might have recently served in some branch of the military. This was further evidence of that possibility.

  With this area of the carrier being less interesting, there were fewer people around. But Shane wasn’t satisfied, and when they came to another companionway, he took them still lower in the ship.

  Their feet clanged hollowly on the metal treads. It was a lonely sound, and one that seemed to echo so loudly in the silence Eden feared their pursuers couldn’t help hearing it. Not that there had been any sign of them since they’d left the flight deck, but she kept worrying that at any moment she and Shane would turn a corner and run smack into them.

  Where were they now? she wondered when they paused again. She had lost count but thought this might be the fourth deck. Wherever it was, they were in the bowels of the ship. There was no one around. They seemed to be the only ones currently at this level.

  Shane turned to her. “I want you to have this back before we go on.” Removing the pistol from under his jacket, he held it out to her. “Just in case we get separated.”

  “Shane, no. It’s you they want, not me.”

  “Damn it, Eden, don’t fight me on this. I need you to have some way to defend yourself if I should get in a situation where I can’t protect you. I’ll be all right if I know that.”

  She could see he wasn’t going to move until she accepted the gun, and they were losing time. She took the pistol and tucked it into her purse. But she intended for them not to be separated.

  Praying to God they weren’t, she followed him down a long passage. Because if they were, she was afraid they might never find each other again. The ship was like a vast maze, and she no longer knew where they were. But Shane seemed by some directional instinct to be confidently working them toward the stern of the vessel and that vital exit.

  They met no one in the gloomy passage. Stacked berths in the open compartments off either side indicated these were the quarters for the crew.

  Where were their enemies? she kept wondering. Far away in another part of the carrier or close behind them? It was unnerving not to know.

  They turned a corner and traveled along another passage. No stacked berths here, but there were several doors that puzzled Eden. They were constructed of thick steel and had small window openings that were barred. The doors opened outward and had been swung back against the passage walls, permitting her glimpses of the compact interiors.

  “Cells,” she said. “They look just like jail cells.”

  “They are,” Shane said. “This is the ship’s brig.”

  They went on to the end of the passage, expecting it to branch off into another corridor. But the passage dead-ended in a solid wall. The heel of Shane’s hand slapped its surface in frustration.

  “I should have known it wouldn’t run through without coming up against a bulkhead. We’ll have to go back, maybe try another level.”

  They were losing time, Eden thought as they turned around and retraced their route. They should have been off the ship by now, not caught down here where—

  Shane put a hand on her arm, bringing her to a halt. “Listen,” he whispered.

  And then she heard it, too. The sound of approaching footsteps from somewhere around the corner in front of them. They were followed by voices. Male voices raised in an argument.

  “We’re wasting our time.”

  “I’m telling you, that guy I asked said he’d seen a couple matching their description headed down this way.”

  The footsteps came to a stop.

  “All right, maybe we’ll have better luck finding them if we separate. You go on looking here, and I’ll go back the other way. Just watch your step. This bastard is tricky, and we don’t want to lose him again.”

  Eden didn’t need to see their faces to know who they were. And here we are trapped in this dead end, she thoug
ht, her body rigid with fear.

  Hand still on her arm, Shane drew her swiftly back the way they had come. When they reached the first cell, he motioned her inside. Pulling the door after him so that it was just barely ajar, he joined her in the cell.

  In the dimness she could make out a narrow bed against the wall at a right angle to the door. In the opposite corner was a stool and next to it a sink below a mirror. Except for these, the cell was bare.

  “Get on the cot,” he whispered, “and make yourself as small as possible.”

  She could tell by the certainty in his voice that he had a plan, but there was no time to ask him about it. Obeying him, she placed herself on the bed and squeezed into the corner, legs drawn up against her breasts. Once silently settled, she reached into her purse and withdrew the pistol, gripping it tightly in her hand.

  Shane had flattened himself against the wall close beside the door. His gaze was focused on the mirror opposite him. She guessed then what he intended. While she had curled into the corner on the bed, he had quickly managed to angle the mirror over the sink so that now, from his position next to the door, it gave him a reflected view through the window of the passage outside.

  Eden couldn’t see that stretch of passage from her own position. But she knew seconds later, by the way Shane’s tall figure tensed in readiness, that their opponent was coming down the hall. More seconds passed as they waited, an indication to Eden that the lone enemy must be pausing to check out areas as he advanced.

  Come on, come on. Just get here, will you?

  As she watched in unbearable suspense, Shane’s body seemed to coil like a taut spring. His timing had the perfection of a professional athlete. In one instant he was crouched there. In the next he was at the door, his body driving against it with all the force of a linebacker in lightning action.

  The thick steel door burst outward, slamming into Shane’s target. The blow must have been a powerful one. Eden heard a single startled yelp followed by the sound of a heavy body striking the floor. Then there was silence.

  Shane shot out into the passage. Eden, scrambling off the bed, followed. She found Shane bending over the sprawled body of the towheaded gorilla.

  “You can put that away,” he said, indicating the pistol in her hand. “We’re not going to need it.”

  “Is he—”

  “No, just stunned. But from the looks of that nose, he’s going to be feeling pretty miserable when he comes to. And probably as mad as a bull. Take a leg and help me drag him into the cell.”

  The burly figure never stirred as they dumped him into a corner of the cell. But from the way Shane’s fists were balled as he stood over the man, Eden knew he was ready to deal with him if he regained consciousness before they left the cell.

  “Can we lock him in here?” she asked.

  “Probably not. They would have fixed these doors so that some tourist didn’t get himself trapped inside the brig. But maybe—” His glance fell on the bed. “Let’s slide the cot out into the hall.”

  The bed was just long enough, once they had situated it crossways in the passage, to reach from the wall on one side to the closed cell door on the other side. Its stout steel frame made an effective wedge.

  “That should hold him,” Shane said. “At least until a tour wanders this way and hears him shouting his head off.”

  “Can we get off this level now before the other one turns up again?”

  “I vote for that.”

  They made their way cautiously back to the nearest companionway. There was no sign of the towhead’s companion, but Eden remained anxious about his whereabouts as they climbed the stairway to the level above them.

  “Third deck,” Shane said. “Let’s see if this one will take us to that exit.”

  “Where are we now?” Eden wondered a moment later, consulting the brochure again. “I’m still lost, and this map is useless.”

  They had entered a mammoth room furnished with long tables and benches.

  “Crew’s mess,” Shane said.

  He led them through the sea of tables to the far wall where a series of serving hatches, their doors raised, revealed on the other side the main ship’s galley with what seemed like acres of stainless-steel equipment.

  They spared the galley no more than a glance. Their interest was in the open doorway just ahead of them and the passage beyond it. Its width indicated it was a main corridor with the promise of stretching all the way to the exit in the vicinity of the stern.

  They were passing the last hatch when there was a sudden eruption of noise somewhere off that corridor. It sounded to Eden like the banging of locker doors, as if someone was conducting a hurried investigation. The other thug searching for them?

  “Stay here while I take a look,” Shane said.

  He was gone, moving out into the passage before she could object. He should have taken the gun with him, not left it with me, she thought. Slipping the pistol out of her purse again, she hung back by the open hatch and held the weapon in readiness in case it should be needed.

  Eden’s attention was on the figure of Shane prowling up the passage. She had no awareness of any stealthy activity in the galley on the other side of the hatch. When from the corner of her eye she did finally catch a shadowy movement, it was too late. A hand lunged out over the counter, gripping her by the arm just below her elbow.

  Eden cried out and then began to struggle against her attacker, whose face beneath his streaky blond hair was livid on the other side of the hatch. He wrestled her for possession of the pistol, and for a moment she was able to hold on to it. But in the end the semiautomatic leaped out of her hand and went flying off into the galley where it landed with a thunk, disappearing somewhere among the clutter of equipment.

  Not satisfied with her surrender of the gun, her attacker began to drag her toward him, as if he intended to pull her through the hatch. Eden resisted but lost ground inch by inch against his superior strength.

  His forearm was directly beneath the door of the hatch when Shane raced back into the mess and, with the same speed he had used in defeating their enemy’s partner, caught the edge of the door and brought it smashing down on his arm.

  Abruptly released, Eden staggered back from the hatch and the savage howl of pain on the other side of its lowered door. What followed was a blur of events so swift they scarcely registered with her.

  Had the gorilla managed to free his arm? He must have. Then must have, from the sound of it, gotten off a wild shot that struck metal on the other side. Her gun or his own? She would never know. Nor did she even know if he had a weapon in his hand when he vaulted over the counter through one of the other hatches.

  Not that his enraged performance was of any use to him. Eden had the impression of Shane being ready for him, his fist connecting with some portion of its owner’s heavy body before it even landed. That same body went crashing into one of the tables with such force that it was robbed of consciousness.

  The next thing Eden knew, this time with full awareness, Shane was rushing her along the corridor outside.

  “What just happened?” she asked, trying to sort it out.

  “Not much. You all right?”

  “Dandy. I lost my gun.”

  “You can buy another.”

  Yes, she guessed it wouldn’t be smart going back and trying to find the pistol. Not with a flock of people charging toward them behind an alarmed tour guide.

  “What’s going on back there?” the guide demanded.

  “Couple of guys fighting in the mess,” Shane informed him innocently. “We got out of there.”

  “Did one of them have a gun? I thought I heard gunfire.”

  “Beats me.”

  “I’ve called security. You folks stay here,” he instructed his group. “And, kids, please, no more slamming of locker doors.”

  “This the way off the ship?” Shane asked him.

  “Yes, straight ahead, but don’t you think you ought to wait until you explain just what
—”

  Shane and Eden were on their way to the exit before he could stop them.

  Chapter Nine

  “Cleveland?”

  Shane, his hand protectively cupping Eden’s elbow as they fled along the pier away from the Yorktown, turned his head and looked at her. There must have been a puzzled expression on his face, because she breathlessly elaborated on her question.

  “We’ve been just a bit too occupied for me to ask you this until now, but on the tour boat when that old man asked us where we were from, and I said Chicago and you said Cleveland…”

  “Ah, that Cleveland.” He was beginning to understand. “And you were wondering if maybe it popped out of me like that because Cleveland is where I’m from. Sorry, Eden, it didn’t mean anything. It was just a place I snatched at. At least I think that’s the explanation. Look, there’s a taxi pulling up. Let’s see if we can grab it.”

  Four young sailors, eager to explore the ships that their predecessors had served on, were settling with the driver when Eden and Shane reached the taxi. The cabbie was happy to have another fare back into the heart of the city.

  And Eden was equally happy to put Patriots Point behind them. Shane noticed the relieved look on her face as they pulled away from the maritime museum. But there was also a slight note of regret in her voice when, after a hurried glance through the back window, as if to assure herself they weren’t being followed, she turned to him.

  “I don’t suppose there was any hope of getting either of those two to tell us exactly what’s going on.”

  Shane shook his head. “I wouldn’t have minded having a go at it, but security would have been on top of us before we had the chance to get anything out of them. And security—”

  “Would have turned us over to the police, and we have to stay free to find Nathanial. I do wish, though, there had been time to look for my gun. If the police get it, and with it being registered to me—”