In other circumstances, Sands might have expected Victoria to make some crack about the insipid commercialization of tragedy, but she was silent, her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock.
On screen were images of nuclear destruction, the smoldering rubble of cities under towering mushroom clouds. The first three were Seoul, Pyongyang, and Bashkiristan, the destruction so complete that none were recognizable but for the identifying captions at the bottom of the screen. The fourth city shown was Washington, D.C. The image held for a moment, then swept quickly, as if the camera had been jolted, before it cut. Sands caught a glimpse through the smoke of white monuments. He hoped that meant the devastation was not complete. Another image was shown, of wreckage in the Sea of Japan, and the loop repeated.
“Is it only those four cities?” Victoria asked.
“We can only pray,” Rashid replied.
Victoria looked at Sands. “Did you see at the end…?”
“It looked like the Washington Monument. Maybe the White House. Still standing.”
They watched as the loop repeated. The static image of Washington depicted terrible devastation, but it appeared to be a limited area. Sands noticed what looked like an arc of concrete in the foreground.
“That’s the Key Bridge,” he said. “Georgetown.”
“Where’s Carrie?” Victoria asked.
“Arlington.”
She nodded. Across the Potomac. If the nuclear device wasn’t too big, she might have been out of the blast radius.
Catfish put a hand on Sands’ shoulder.
“You okay, Bro?”
Sands didn’t answer. He glanced around at the monitors, with their rotating video feeds from cameras all over the ship. He turned back to Oleg, gestured at the screens on his console.
“The Psycho Ward. Have we got eyes in there?”
Oleg deferred to Ahmer.
“It’s the only place on the ship we don’t have the eyes.”
***
“Oh, but I have eyes on you.”
The one the inmates called Einstein smiled at Sands’ perplexed face on one screen among the bank of monitors that ringed his lab on Deck Seven. Dressed in a blood-mottled smock, he worked over a stainless steel table, similar to an autopsy table, but with higher sides, almost like a shallow bathtub. He hummed tunelessly as he picked up a bone saw and worked it with slow, methodical strokes.
A moist black nose edged up to the table and sniffed. Einstein spanked at it playfully with the broad side of his saw.
“Now Cerberus, you know I never give you raw food. You’ll get your doggie treat in a minute.”
With a final effort, the saw cut through. He set the saw aside, lifted up his specimen, and placed it in a large basin. What was left on the table was little more than a mass of blood, bone, and gristle. A split ribcage yawned over exposed vertebrae, the cavity emptied of every organ.
Einstein pushed a plunger at the head of the table, and with a whoosh the bottom dropped at an angle, exposing a gaping chute at the foot. The whole mess was washed away with a swirl of water like waste down a toilet. Einstein stripped off his latex surgical gloves and sent them down with the rest.
Humming again, he scrubbed his hands and forearms, all the way up to the elbow.
The animal whined again.
“I haven’t forgotten you. Why can’t you be as patient as your brothers?” He retrieved three slabs of Process from a container and tossed them one at a time to waiting mouths. “One for you, and one for you, and one for you. No fighting now, plenty for everybody.”
The artificial food was slurped down with much snapping and snarling. Einstein hefted the basin in both hands and regarded his latest specimen. It was a human head, severed at the Adam’s apple, mouth and eyes frozen in gaping surprise. Einstein smiled, pleased with his handiwork. With mock sympathy, he looked into the dead eyes.
“Alas, poor Fergus.”
***
President Stockdale’s face glowed an apoplectic red beneath the white frost of his hair. He was huddled in the executive bunker, many fathoms below the White House, with Brzinski, Secretary of State Lum, Secretary of Defense Mallory, and others of his staff. He stood behind his desk, his staff lined up before him as if he were a firing squad and they were the condemned. Spear and his team looked on from a respectful—and safe—distance.
“You assured me—you assured me—Kim’s nuclear arsenal would be taken out.”
“And it has been, Mr. President.” As usual, the others left it to Brzinski to take the lead in these situations. “There was always the contingency that one or two might slip through.”
“Well, one did slip through, didn’t it? It landed smack dab on Seoul. We haven’t heard a word from Park all morning. The very ally we were supposedly protecting!” He turned to Mallory. “And who told you to take out Pyongyang?”
“With all due respect, sir, we couldn’t let a strike against Seoul go without a response in kind.”
“Well, now we got five mushroom clouds, maybe more to come.” He shoved a finger toward the bank of monitors, each showing the same video feed being beamed to Inferno and around the world. “That bastard Karga even dropped a bomb on Georgetown!”
Lum spoke up. “Actually, sir, we believe that one was a suitcase bomb.”
“I don’t care if he smuggled it here in his penny loafers, it’s a mother-lovin’ mushroom cloud!”
He pointed at another video feed, this one showing the burning wreckage in the Sea of Japan.
“And that ain’t no fishin’ boat, Mr. Vice President. There were forty thousand men and women on that prison ship.”
“Criminals and terrorists,” Brzinski icily observed.
“Not to mention we took out two Justice International boats,” Mallory added brightly. “We ought to get points for that.”
Others laughed, but Stockdale whirled on Mallory with fury. “You think this is a joke?”
Mallory had never seen the President in this state. None of them had.
“No, sir.”
The President glared at Mallory, the line of the part in his hair as red as a fresh wound. His jaw worked against his clenched teeth, but if he had more to say, he didn’t get it out. He plopped into his chair, his rage spent.
When he said no more, Brzinski stepped forward. “Mr. President, if I may. The immediate crisis is over. There will be no more nuclear strikes, because there are no more madmen to launch them.”
Stockdale looked his vice president dead in the eye. “I suppose you mean Kim and Karga?”
“Who else?”
“I wonder.”
If Brzinski recognized the gibe, he ignored it. “At this moment, Mr. President, the world is holding its breath. Waiting for leadership. Your leadership.”
Stockdale sighed. “Leadership. How’m I gonna lead from this hole in the ground?”
Stockdale chewed his thumb. His face had gone from red to ashen, his eyes full of doubt. He looked like a man in over his head. Judging from the arch glances exchanged in the room, everyone saw it.
Lum, who had a background in counseling from his pre-political days, dared to put a comforting hand on the old man’s shoulder. “You’re safe here, sir.”
The President harrumphed. With his elbows on his desk, he chafed one fist in the other, his face turned aside. Lum backed away.
Brzinski’s eyes weighed Stockdale in the balance. Decisiveness, he firmly believed, was the primary asset of any leader. Quick and confident action. He knew well who among them in the room had it, and who hadn’t. He put on his best breezy smile and nodded at the gun and Bible on Stockdale’s desk. Picking up on Lum’s assurance, his voice took on a hearty tone.
“The President’s always safe when he has his trusty forty-four at his side.”
A round of chuckles infused the room with good cheer.
“You got that right,” Stockdale said with vigor. But there was no cheer in his eyes as he fixed his gaze on Brzinski. “And right now I’m in the
mood for some varmint-shootin’.”
Brzinski laughed lightly. He looked with admiration on the President’s pistol, traced the length of the barrel with his finger. “It is a fine piece. May I?”
Stockdale sat back in his chair and regarded Brzinski as if he were granting him a last wish before showing him the door. “Go ahead.”
Brzinski picked up the gun, turned it over in his hands. “Yes, a fine piece. Do you really keep it loaded?”
Stockdale leaned forward on one elbow, squinted an eye, and affected a John Wayne drawl. “Well, Pilgrim, a gun that’s unloaded ain’t good for nothin’!”
The room filled with sycophantic laughter. Brzinski cut it short by thrusting the gun forward and shooting the President square in the temple.
The shock of the gun blast in the confined space jolted everyone like a slap across the face. Even Brzinski seemed surprised by its force. The President slumped forward, his head striking the desktop with a liquid thud. No one else moved, not even Spear.
Brzinski eyed the President’s lifeless body, the desktop covered with a spray of blood and gore, with something like wonder.
“Well, what do you know,” he said. “Old shit-for-brains had brains for brains.”
“What have you done,” Mallory demanded, his voice a feeble croak.
“Eliminated a problem.”
Lum regarded Stockdale like a nun who had walked in on a priest buggering an altar boy. “But—how will we explain this?”
Brzinski made a quick appraisal. “Lum, you’re Korean, aren’t you?”
Lum looked at Brzinski as if he didn’t understand the relevance of the question, but after a lifetime of enduring such queries, his answer was automatic. “My parents immigrated from Korea, yes.”
Brzinski nodded at Spear. Producing a Mac-11 like a rabbit from a hat, Spear cut Lum in two with a burst of fire.
If any of the other civilians in the room had any doubt what the score was, the stances of Spear and his team, weapons in hand, set them straight. They were backing Brzinski.
The former professor scanned his colleagues as he would students at the end of a lecture.
“Any other questions?”
-14-
Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.
—Josephine Hart
Sands marched across the open deck, a duffel of food and water slung over his shoulder, a rifle and ammo under his arm. Victoria came running after him, ahead of the others, who had piled out of the Vestibule to see what was happening.
“Sands! Sands, where are you going?”
“Off this ship.”
He came to a lifeboat—a big, enclosed, yellow capsule mounted on a chute that hung over the side. He opened the hatch and tossed his duffle inside.
“There’s sixty thousand people on this ship, Sands. What about them?”
“They can fight it out with you over the other twenty-nine lifeboats. Or you can come with me. Your choice.”
“Sands, listen to me. Why do you think I was sent here? My father—”
“I don’t want to hear your daddy issues.”
Victoria’s eyes blazed. Sands softened his tone.
“Look, I’ve got a wife and kid back home. They need me.”
“You’re kidding yourself, Sands. You lost them a long time ago.”
Sands had no answer for that. He picked up the box of ammo from the deck and set it inside the hatch.
“Anybody else coming?”
Catfish, Wolf, and Angel stepped forward.
Angel thumped his chest. “We’re with you, hermano.”
Sands looked at Ahmer. “How about you, Ahmer?”
Ahmer had taken a step forward, but abruptly stopped. The other Drones, who had seemed inclined to follow him, stopped too. Ahmer scanned their faces, but they gave him no sign, one way or another. He looked back at Sands, but there was no help there, either. Victoria stood firm, her feet spread wide, her arms crossed. Sands noticed that Lani mimicked her stance in female solidarity.
Sands had the sense that Ahmer would follow him, if he made an issue of it, and Lani would follow Ahmer, and pretty soon Victoria would be on the deck alone. All he had to do was say the word, but he told himself he didn’t care enough to bother. Anyway, Ahmer needed to decide things for himself.
“Just keep sitting on that pot, Ahmer.” To his friends, he said. “Let’s go.”
Sands turned and put a foot on the rim of the open hatch. A burst of what sounded like gunfire exploded around the lifeboat, and everyone hit the deck. With a creak and a moan of metal grating against metal, the lifeboat separated from its moorings and slid into the sea.
More explosions, from all around the deck, but it wasn’t gunfire. It was the exploding bolts that released the couplings that held each lifeboat in place. Inferno shed its thirty lifeboats into the sea like a dog shedding fleas. In an instant, they were so many yellow bobbers fading into the ship’s great wake.
Victoria was the first back on her feet. She met Sands’ eyes with a cool smirk. “Looks like I’m not the only one who wants to keep you on this ship.”
She turned and sauntered back to the Vestibule. One by one, Ahmer and the other Drones followed.
Catfish clapped Sands on the back. “Tough luck, Bro. For all of us.”
Wolf shrugged. “Back to plan B.”
Angel added, “I never trusted those little boats anyway.”
They went back to join the others, leaving Sands standing there in impotent rage. He gripped his bullpup in his hands, scanning the deck for something to lash out at.
From his lab, Einstein watched in amusement as Sands looked him in the eye and blasted a surveillance camera into oblivion.
***
That night, Sands sat brooding on deck. No one had spoken to him since that afternoon, and that was the way he wanted it. But he wasn’t surprised when Ahmer showed up with a plate of noodles he had stirred up in the snack bar.
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
“You should eat anyway,” Ahmer said, setting the plate down beside him. “The more real food and water you eat the faster the Process will flush out of your system.”
Sands grunted, but he left the plate where it lay. Ahmer sat down, and Sands grunted again.
“You have family on the outside.” Again, Ahmer had a way of asking a question so that it sounded like a statement.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“I have a mother and two sisters. My father was killed by terrorists.”
“So that makes you the man of the family, I guess,” Sands said. “Must be nice not to have any competition.”
Ahmer frowned at the cruel remark. He sensed there was some deeper significance to it, but he couldn’t fathom what it was.
“My mother would sing to us every morning. She would come each to our beds and sing us awake. Very much I would like to hear her voice again.”
Sands sighed. “My mom got knocked up behind a club in SoHo by some French guy. Or ‘Gee,’ I guess you’d say. Shacked up for a while. Thought she was in love. French guy splits. She’s so broken up, when I’m born she names me ‘Sans.’ As in ‘without.’ Sans Guy Simon, that was the idea. But I guess whoever filled out the birth certificate didn’t know French.” He shook his head. “She was just a kid. A stupid, selfish kid.”
Ahmer considered the story, his expression dour.
“You’re not laughing, Ahmer. That’s the funniest story I know.”
“You think you are a bad man,” Ahmer said. “But I do not think you are a bad man.”
He got up and walked back to the Vestibule.
“That kid’s determined to find your creamy marshmallow center.”
Sands craned his neck to find Victoria emerging from the shadows behind him. He stood to meet her, and before Victoria could make another crack, he grabbed her by the wrist.
“I want to talk to you.”
He pulled her to a blind spot he had picked out where no surveillance camer
as could see. He turned her wrist up to expose the birthmark-like smudge that adorned it.
“We can start with this.”
Before she could answer, Sands heard a familiar whistle. It was Catfish, signaling him over to the Vestibule. Sands released his grip on her arm.
“What is it, Cat?”
Victoria followed after Sands, rubbing her wrist, a cryptic glint in her eye.
“We might have a line on that self-destruct device.”
Sands entered the Vestibule to find everyone crowded around Bao’s console.
“I think we’ve found the bomb,” he said.
On his view screen were two pallets stacked chest high with what looked like brown, paper-wrapped bricks. Rigged between the two pallets was an electronic device with a digital readout.
Wolf said, “If that’s C-4, we’ve got a problem.”
There were markings on the packages, but Sands couldn’t make them out. “Can you zoom in?”
Bao tapped some keys, and the image grew larger and grainier. But the black lettering was clear enough: C-4.
“Can you get a bead on that readout?”
Bao nudged the camera until the red digital readout was center screen. The device looked something like an old digital clock, its red, squared-off numerals reading 04:06:23 and counting down.
Sands looked at Wolf. Wolf shook his head.
“Where is this, Bao?”
“The Engine room.”
“Below decks.”
“That’s right. Lowest level of the ship.”
“You can disarm it, right?” Oleg asked, his eyes shifting from Sands to Wolf and back. “That’s part of your training? Disarming bombs?”
“Yeah, two problems with that. First, we’ve got to go through nine circles of hell just to get to it, and whoever is pulling the strings isn’t about to make that easy on us.”
Inferno 2033 Book Two: Perdition Page 8