by Jack Soren
“Fuck! Tanaka, did you get all that?”
“Jesus, yes,” Tanaka said.
“Can you get a message out to Fahd? Find out if Lew left the Atlantis Explorer?”
“Not possible. Like I told you, I don’t know anything about the communications jamming equipment. And anybody who does is locked up in a room waiting to be gassed.”
“Goddamn it! Jonathan shouted, slamming the butt of his gun into the bulkhead.
“Uh, who are you talking to, Sport?” Maggie asked, eying Jonathan like he’d lost his mind.
“Jonathan. Jonathan!” Tanaka shouted.
“What?”
“You’ve got less than five minutes before the gas is released. We can deal with this after the gas clears. Right now, you’ve got to get your mask!”
“No time,” Jonathan said, knowing there was no way he could get to his room in time. And it wouldn’t help Maggie anyway, there was only one mask there. Tanaka had the other. If they didn’t want to spend the next twelve hours asleep, they had to get out of there. And fast.
“Shit,” Tanaka said. “Okay, get your asses up on deck and as far away from enclosed spaces as you can. The wind’s coming from the west. I’ll turn the ship. Get to the starboard helipad. And I mean right to the fucking rail. Go!”
Jonathan dropped the messenger bag and started to run, but realized he had no idea where the starboard helipad was. Then Maggie grabbed him and slammed him up against the wall.
“Stop fucking around, Jonathan! You’re scaring me. I need you here right now.”
“I am here,” he said pushing her away. “I don’t have time to explain. Just trust me. We need to get to the starboard heliport. We’ve got maybe four minutes before the gas is released.”
“Four . . . but how do you—”
“Maggie!” Jonathan shouted, and this time he grabbed her by the shoulders. “Which way?”
“Uh, down here, across the ship, then up to the deck.”
Jonathan grabbed her hand and ran. He tried not to think about Lew, but it was impossible. If the kid was wrong about the crate, and Lew was on board somewhere, he was about to die.
Abandon Ship!
Chapter Twenty-four
Above the Jirojin Maru
1:25 P.M. Local Time
“THERE IT IS!” Tatsu said with relief. Because of the wind, the flight had taken longer than expected. She had been starting to worry they weren’t going to find the ship. Though part of her thought that might be the best scenario.
“What’s he waiting for? Tell him to land,” Per said into his headset.
“I don’t know,” Tatsu said. She spoke to the pilot in Japanese.
“We can’t land!” The pilot shouted to her. “The storm was moving away, but now it’s swung back again. The wind sheer will slam us onto the deck!”
“Well?” Per said when the pilot stopped talking.
“He says the storm is still too strong. He can’t land.”
“I suggest you encourage him.”
Tatsu looked at her watch and knew that in the next couple of minutes, the only thing on that ship would be corpses.
She argued with the pilot—not for Per, but for herself—but he wouldn’t change his mind.
“He won’t land. Says he couldn’t even if he wanted to. He’s not being defiant, it’s the truth. I’ve seen landing accidents in weather a lot milder than this.”
Per looked at the pilot, then back at Tatsu. He seemed to be trying to work something out. Then he looked down at the ship.
“The wind is coming from the west. Tell him to come in from the back of the ship and to get as low over it as he can.”
“And then what?” Tatsu asked, already knowing the answer.
“And then we jump.”
It took some doing, but she finally convinced the pilot to try.
“Get ready! We’re going in,” she shouted. Maybe Umi will get her wish after all, Tatsu thought as she worked to keep her mind from envisioning a fiery helicopter death.
The helicopter banked to the west to ready its approach, the wind rocking them back and forth like some kind of crazy pendulum in the sky. They swung around, and the pilot aimed the nose of the helicopter at the deck far below them, shouting something over and over.
“What’s he saying?” Per asked.
“There’s no real translation. The closest is ‘this is fucking crazy.’ ”
And then, for the first time she could remember, Per smiled.
JONATHAN FELT LIKE he’d been climbing stairs forever. They’d run into a couple of straggler guards, without masks and doomed to die in the next few moments. Jonathan had disarmed them, but before he could inoculate them, they ran off. Against Maggie’s protests, they had chased the guards down into the bowels of the ship. They finally managed to catch up to the guards and inoculate them, but not before losing precious time.
Maggie, on the other hand, didn’t seem winded at all. She was obviously in better shape than he was. They’d run half the length of the ship and started climbing all the way up to the top level, the equivalent of running up a seven-story building.
Too long. It’s been too long.
He couldn’t believe the gas hadn’t been released yet. A tiny voice in his head said maybe it’s all a hoax, but he knew that was foolish wishing. The kind of thinking that gets people killed.
“There!” Maggie shouted as they reached the top level and turned down a final corridor. At the end of it was an opening where they could see the heliport. It was pouring rain out, and the way it was whipping across the opening made it obvious the storm had swung around again.
She grabbed his hand, and they ran. “Told you we’d be . . . all right . . .”
Up ahead, six feet before the opening, white-blue vapor began pouring from the air vents in the corridor bulkheads. Maggie and Jonathan came to a stop and turned around. The same vapor was pouring out vents ten feet behind them. They were trapped.
Maggie collapsed against Jonathan’s chest as they both watched the slivers of their escape cloud over. Time seemed to stand still. He listened to the sound of the rain and wind at the end of the corridor, the hiss of the gas all around them, the heaving panting of their exhaustion.
He tried to take solace in the fact that they’d saved everyone on board, but it wasn’t enough. He kept hearing Corsair say “part of it” over and over. What was the rest of Umi’s plan? Who would die then, while he and Maggie were sleeping? Jonathan thought about Lew, who might or might not be dead already. And then, oddly enough, he thought about that kiss Maggie had laid on him back in his stateroom. And he decided.
It wasn’t time to give up. Not yet.
“Come on! Take a deep breath and cover your eyes!” He shouted over the roar of the weather outside. He expected her to say it was a waste of time, but she did just as he asked.
And then they ran faster than they had before, not breathing and blind. They bounced off the bulkheads a few times but finally felt the wind and rain peppering them. They were outside. Jonathan let out his breathe and dropped his arm from his eyes.
“We made i—Jesus, Maggie look out!”
THEY WERE OUT of control. The helicopter had caught a pole mounted to the deck on its first approach, sheering it off and flinging it into the ocean, a foot-high, three-inch round stub the only thing left to indicate that something had once been there. The rotor was damaged, the pilot was fighting with the stick between screams, and they were spinning like a tether ball on a string. Somehow, the pilot was keeping the bird from slamming into the deck, but just barely.
Tatsu looked out the window and saw the tail almost mulch two people on the deck. She recognized one of them as Ms. Reynolds, the security chief Umi had hired, but she didn’t recognize the man. She watched the man shout, then dive and knock Reynolds out of th
e way of the spinning tail just in time.
The real problem was that they couldn’t open the door to even try to get out. The centripetal force was pinning it shut. Per took his jacket off to free his robotic arm from the cumbersome material and instead of grabbing the handle of the door, as he’d been trying to do, he grabbed the hinges and ripped them from the metal. Then he punched the door with his arm, and it flew away from the chopper, far into the ocean.
The storm was inside now, rain pelting them so hard, they could barely keep their eyes open.
“Grab onto me!” Per yelled. She could barely hear him over the shrieking of the wind, but she did as he said, wrapping her arms around him. And then they jumped.
As they flew through the air, Tatsu waited for the spinning chopper to slam into them and cut them to shreds. But pushing off as they had had unbalanced the chopper, and it warbled away from the ship and into the ocean. They were falling incredibly fast, but Per caught one of the upper deck’s metal cables in his artificial hand, and they jerked to a stop for a moment. The force was too much even for that incredible device, though, and soon they were falling again. They slammed hard onto the deck beside the other two people lying there, barely missing the jagged pipe stub sticking out of the deck.
Tastu heard Reynolds say her name in astonishment, then she passed out.
MAGGIE WATCHED THE wounded helicopter skip across the surface of the rough sea a few times before the tail dug into the water, the force snapping the chopper in half. A second later, a ball of fire exploded in the sky, the heat searing even from this distance. She turned away until the blast subsided, and when she turned back, the helicopter was all but gone. Maggie looked back at Tatsu and the strange little man who had jumped from the helicopter with her on his back.
“Who the hell are you?” Maggie asked.
“Per Broden.”
“How do you know—” Maggie’s question was cut short as gunfire strafed along the deck between them.
Everyone looked up at the source. Two stories up, Alex Corsair straddled the railing wearing a gas mask and firing a machine gun in short bursts at them. He’d shed his suit jacket and was a stark figure against the dark, roiling storm clouds that seemed to be trying to engulf the entire ship. Maggie knew despite everything else, Alex was a crack shot. The listing of the ship was the only thing that had saved them. Maggie drew her gun and took aim but before she could fire, Jonathan knocked her arm down and her shot embedded into the bulkhead.
“Jonathan! What are you doing?”
“I need him alive,” Jonathan said. Then they heard more shots, but not aimed at them. Someone in a guard’s uniform was similarly straddling the railing two decks above Alex, wearing a gas mask and firing at him.
“It’s Morgan!” Maggie shouted. She knew why Morgan was still here and trying to kill Alex; Umi didn’t want any loose ends. But Morgan hadn’t counted on their ragtag group being scattered around the deck of the ship.
They watched as Alex tried to turn, but his focus was taken by trying to keep his balance. Then two pink clouds bloomed on his right arm and shoulder as Morgan fired again.
“No!” Jonathan shouted, opening fire on Morgan.
A second later, Maggie joined in. The listing of the ship threw their aim off as well, bullets dancing across the bulkhead all around Morgan. He ducked and took off. Alex stood wavering, two more red flowers on his crisp, white shirt. He seemed to be trying to raise the machine gun for another shot, but his arm wouldn’t obey. And then he toppled over.
The machine gun clattered down beside Jonathan, then Alex landed on his back, blood shooting up into the air like one of those timed fountains in Vegas. Maggie saw why. Alex had landed on the jagged piece of pipe sticking out of the deck, impaling him through his abdomen. His mouth worked as he tried to grab this foreign thing sticking out of him, but his blood-slicked hands just slid off it, over and over.
“COVER ME,” JONATHAN said to Maggie as he rushed to Alex’s side.
“Corsair. Corsair!” Jonathan said. Alex just stared at the sky, blood bubbles coming out of his mouth, staining his brilliant white teeth a ghastly red. He was laughing, or trying to. Jonathan pushed up Alex’s mask, grabbed his head in his hands and turned it so they were looking at each other.
“B . . . better talk quick, darling,” Alex said, blood staining his crisp, white teeth.
“The big guy you hit with a pipe by the moon pool. Did you kill him? What did you do with the body?” Jonathan asked.
“Not sure. Bastard bent the pipe. Glad I didn’t have to go toe to toe with him,” Alex said, then he fought a violent coughing bout. “I sent him down to Ashita. My gift to the iron bitch. Wish . . . wish I could watch him pop out down there and reveal her secrets.”
“What secrets?” Maggie asked, moving beside Alex.
“I’m sorry I used you, poppit. You’ve got a good heart, even after all you’ve been through,” Alex said. “And you were a great lay, darling.” Jonathan’s head snapped down and looked at her. She seemed to ignore it.
“Alex, what secrets? What exactly is Ashita? Some kind of underwater habitat, like a science station? If we go down there, what can we—”
Alex grabbed her arm, his eyes wide with fear.
“Don’t go down there, Maggie. Whatever you do,” Alex said in a harsh whisper. “She’s not done. This is just the start. Thought I could take my money and run. Not meant to be.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Jonathan said.
Jonathan looked up at Per Broden and the young girl apparently named Tatsu a few feet away. The man had pulled her into his lap, almost like he was protecting something he needed. Tatsu was still out, but she was moving—alive.
“Mikawa but not Mikawa. Ashita will kill for her,” Alex said. It made no sense to Jonathan.
“Alex. Alex!”
“Tatsu knows. She was there at the start. Ask her,” Alex said, grabbing both her arms to try and sit up. “Ask her!”
And then he fell back to the deck. Lifeless.
“What happened?” Tatsu said, coming around. She looked at the dead, bloody man a few feet away, then at the damage around the heliport.
“We were just about to ask you the same thing,” Jonathan said.
Chapter Twenty-five
Unknown
LEW FELT LIKE he’d been on a weeklong drinking binge. Every muscle in his body ached from his swim, and his head throbbed from where the well-dressed stranger had tried to knock his melon out of the park. When he’d woken up, he’d had the terrifying thought that he’d been buried alive. He’d reached out in the darkness and felt his wooden prison, about the size of a large coffin, complete with sealed lid. He’d pushed on it as hard as he could in his current state, but the invisible barrier wouldn’t budge.
As terrifying as that had been, what was working harder on his psyche at the moment was that he didn’t seem to be alone in his box. Beneath him, he could feel at least two bodies. Or what felt like bodies because there was something odd about them. Lew had experience lying with corpses—in Iraq, hiding under a pile of them had kept him alive. But this was different.
First, there was no smell. The smell that would live in Lew’s nightmares until his dying day was unmistakable—and missing. And what he did smell was foreign to him—a kind of plasticky, burned smell. But not burned flesh. That too—unfortunately—he had experience with. Still, they definitely felt like bodies. But not bodies. They were too cold and hard, even for corpses. Lew knew the only one way to find out what was going on was to get out. Unless, of course, he really had been buried, and there was nothing outside his box besides a ton of dirt.
Lew convinced himself that didn’t make any sense. The closest dirt to where he’d been laid out with that pipe was hundreds of feet under the ocean, or many kilometers to the east on the island of Iwo Jima. He worked to calm himse
lf, then drew his knees up to his chest and kicked out at the lid to his enigma. If nothing else, being in an oversized coffin meant he had enough room to get some momentum.
At first, the lid refused to give way, but after a few more hits—each one sending a spike of pain through Lew’s aching head—the nails around the edges of the lid began to give a little with loud squeaks. Relief filled Lew’s chest when the slight cracks allowed brilliant light into the box. There was enough that he could have turned to see who—or what—he was lying on, but he knew it was a better idea to wait until he was free to do that. He was still dangerously close to a freakout.
Four or five more kicks, and the cracks turned into troughs of light. He squinted against the harsh brightness. He could see deep blues and bright whites outside his prison. And then, with a final kick, accompanied by a strength-empowering yell, Lew kicked the lid completely off the box. Without waiting to even register where he was, he fought his muscle aches and climbed out, his bare feet slapping down on the cold, white cementlike floor. He stayed hunched over for a few moments, catching his breath. When he finally did look around, it took his brain a while to comprehend what he was seeing.
“What the shit?”
He was in a large, mostly white room filled with crates of varying sizes, furniture, and steamer trunks. The ceiling was about twelve feet high, and all but one wall was nothing but stark white. It was the fourth wall that was playing with his mind. Made out of several large triangles fitted together, each as tall as him, the panes were transparent. It had to be some pretty thick Plexiglas, Lew reasoned, because on the other side of the glass was the ocean floor. The light, both in the room and for about twenty yards beyond the glass, seemed to be coming from the triangles themselves.
Lew slowly padded over to the triangle wall, shivering now that he was out of the warm confines of his box. He leaned forward and looked out the glass, feeling like he was at some kind of reverse aquarium. Sealife was everywhere outside—plants waving gently back and forth in the invisible current, strange-looking fish braving the light and periodically approaching the triangles before abruptly turning and shimmying away. The ocean itself was filled with a kind of cloud of plankton and sediment drifting through the light, like dust in a sunbeam.