Medusa Rising

by Cindy Dees

  “Talk to me, Adder,” Aleesha said to Isabella.

  “Head forward on Deck 4. Deck 9’s active but not alarmed. I’ve picked up a couple radio checks as guys have just come up on the Tangos’ frequency. They’ve undoubtedly gotten word that some cameras are down, but they haven’t panicked yet.”

  Aleesha turned to the kids, who looked at her expectantly. “I need all of you to stay together, move fast and be absolutely quiet. Your lives depend on it. Okay?”

  Nods from all of them. God, they looked scared. Good Lord willing, this would all be over in the next hour.

  She moved out, jogging down the hall. She moved well ahead of the kids and spray painted the security cameras as she went. Hopefully the trail of cameras Misty was painting out was confusing whoever was working the security station on the bridge—or at least slowing down the response to the cascading camera failures.

  She neared the forward stairwell and muttered, “Up or down, Adder?”

  “Just a sec. Crap. Movement on Deck 7. Down, Mamba. Fast.”

  Down it was. Although fast might be another story. She had a hundred-foot-long living snake of children trailing along behind her, and they could only move so quickly. There were small children aplenty, and it was a minor miracle they were still in somewhat orderly lines, let alone not stringing out along half the length of the ship.

  The good news was that the unused water tank was her favorite of the three hiding places. Once the children were hidden inside it, the Tangos would really have to look hard to find them. A quick pass through the ship wouldn’t do the trick. The SEALs could proceed with taking back the ship without any fear of children getting caught in the cross fire. There were still a thousand adult women aboard, but they should have the common sense to get out of the way of a firefight. Ideally, the SEALs would strike so hard and fast that the terrorists wouldn’t have time to snag women to use as human shields.

  She hustled down the forward staircase and glanced back over her shoulder at the kids who were just starting down it. They were staying fairly well clustered together and didn’t look in imminent danger of stampeding down the stairs and hurting each other. Outstanding.

  She raced ahead, knocking out cameras as she went. Once she’d blacked out everything between the kids and their hiding place, she circled back to urge them forward as quickly as possible. The children crowded into the narrow gray hallway, which was barely wide enough to accommodate three lines, as she led them aft to the ship’s water plant.

  She heard whispers behind her and called over her shoulder, “Quiet!” Sound would echo like crazy in here with all the metal surfaces. Even if the cameras were knocked out, someone patrolling on Deck 2 might hear the kids through the floor. The sound of tennis shoes shuffling and squeaking became the only noise once more.

  They arrived at the water tank, and she opened the crawl hatch. She reached into a pouch on her belt, pulled out a half-dozen cyalume glow sticks, and bent them until she heard the internal glass ampoules break. She shook the six-inch plastic tubes to mix the chemicals and passed the now brightly glowing sticks to the first kids to crawl inside the tank.

  “Quickly,” she said every dozen children or so. To the oldest ones, she occasionally mentioned, “Keep everyone moving away from the door. You all have to fit inside.”

  After the first few orange shirts crawled inside, she didn’t have to tell the kids that anymore, and she heard the adults inside directing the kids.

  “The Tangos have figured out something’s up,” Isabella announced a few minutes later. “I wouldn’t call it a full alarm yet, but two more men just headed for the bridge, and Viktor just left his room and is headed that way.”

  Crap! Not all the kids were inside the tank yet. It was taking a long time for them to crawl, one by one through the tiny door.

  “Status, Mamba,” Vanessa said.

  Aleesha looked down the hallway. “A hundred to go. Five to six more minutes.”

  Isabella cut in. “Two guys appear to be heading for the kids’ adventure area. Repeat. Two Tangos.”

  Vanessa and Kat should have no trouble taking them out. And when the Tangos failed to report in, Viktor would send down more men. But in the meantime she should have the extra few minutes she’d need to get the kids tucked away safely.

  While she continued to herd kids into the water tank, Aleesha pulled out the radio she’d taken from the dead American. She put it on, sticking the earpiece into her left ear as best she could. It was too big and wanted to fall out, but she would be able to hear what the Tangos were saying to each other—at least until they realized they were missing radios and changed to a backup frequency.

  There wasn’t much chatter yet. Viktor must have called for his patrols to check in, though, because they were reporting in one after another. No surprise that he’d directed two of the Montfort boys to go look in on the children. With a pang, she hoped the slowest Montfort wasn’t one of the two that Vanessa and Kat were about to take out.

  The end of the line of children came into sight. Maybe twenty more kids to go. “Hurry, hurry,” she urged them. Two orange shirts brought up the rear, and then they were all inside.

  She squatted down to have a look. It was a tight fit. Misty tapped her on the shoulder—she’d circled back and joined the party—and Aleesha moved aside to let Misty and Karen climb inside. They’d guard the kids until the SEALs finished the op.

  “Take care of them,” she murmured off microphone to her teammates. They flashed her thumb’s-ups and she gently closed the door without latching it.

  “All tucked in,” she announced over her radio frequency.

  “Copy,” Isabella said. Aleesha’s acknowledgment was the signal for Isabella to move to the next step of the plan and clear the SEALs to board the ship. They should be only a few minutes away by now, coming in on fast boats.

  The first thing Viktor would likely do once he suspected something was amiss was confirm that the children—his most valuable hostages—were still secure. Once he got word that the kids were missing, the SEALs predicted he’d send his men throughout the ship in search of the children. Just like hornets under attack, they’d pour out of their rooms looking for someone to sting. It was during this first all-out search that the SEALs would board the Grand Adventure. And it was during this time that the Medusas would be at the highest risk. Their job was to lay low, stay out of the way and help the SEALs as needed. Aleesha would loiter in the general vicinity of the water tank where the kids were hidden and would draw off any terrorists who got too close to the children.

  Once the SEALs snuck aboard with as much stealth as forty heavily armed commandos could manage, they’d move fast through the ship. They’d make heavy use of the microburrs to avoid the hijackers while boarding and to locate and take out as many terrorists as they could find once all the SEALs were in place. The SEALs would neutralize terrorists singly or in pairs until Viktor figured out what was up and circled the wagons, drawing his men all together, presumably surrounded by a bunch of the women hostages.

  Now a quiet knock sounded from the other side of the hatch, signaling everything was okay inside. It was time for Aleesha to move on to her next task—hiding from the hornets so she wouldn’t get stung.

  Jack monitored the SEALs’ progress from the Roosevelt’s bridge. They reported in every five minutes or so, their voices taut and the boats’ engines straining in the background. It sounded as if they were getting the hell pounded out of them in the rough seas.

  He checked his watch constantly. The Medusas should’ve assaulted the kids’adventure area by now. A few minutes later, the kids should be clearing out of the adventure area. Now, the kids should be getting into their hidey-hole. The SEALs should be about halfway to the Grand Adventure. The terrorists were probably checking out the inoperative cameras, and the kids should be safely tucked out of the line of fire. Very soon Isabella should be calling the SEALs and clearing them to board.

  Sure enough, about a minute later and
right on time, Isabella, who was coordinating the movements of the Medusas, radioed for the SEALs to complete their run and board the ship. So far, so good.

  But about two minutes later—twenty minutes into the mission—all hell broke loose. The radar operator across the bridge of the tender ship called out that he’d just seen something big pop up at exactly the spot where the SEALs should be right now.

  “How big?” Jack called out.

  “Ship-size. But it’s gone now, sir.”

  He frowned. What in the hell was that about?

  And then the radio in his ear erupted with shouting SEALs. “We’re hit! Man down! Get a head count! Medic!”

  The chaos was complete. Gripping the edge of the map table before him, Jack strained to make sense out of it. Any sense at all. As best he could tell, four boats had been sunk and the fifth one severely damaged but afloat.

  They’d been attacked. Hit hard. But by what? He raced over to the radar con. “Show me where you saw whatever you saw,” he ordered the seaman.

  The kid pointed out a spot on the plotted course of the SEALs, at a distance from the Grand Adventure of about three miles. Well within the range of a shoulder-launched surface-to-surface missile like a Stinger II. God damn it!

  “What did you see?” Jack ordered tersely.

  “I’m not sure,” the radar operator answered.

  “Guess.”

  “It looked like an explosion. Threw up a big plume of water or debris. I painted it for only a couple sweeps of the radar, and then it died down and I’m painting nothing.”

  Jack swore under his breath. How in the Sam Hill had the fast boats been blown up? Missiles from the Grand Adventure? Aleesha’s contact inside the terrorist group hadn’t said anything about missiles being aboard. Had the guy withheld information? Was that Michael character a terrorist plant after all? Had he only been trying to infiltrate the rescue operation? Were the Medusas, and maybe this whole mission, compromised?

  What about underwater mines? Were they a possibility? Except how in the hell could Viktor position the Grand Adventure next to a minefield in the middle of the flipping Caribbean at exactly the time the SEALs made their rescue attempt? How unlikely was that? Unless…had Aleesha had let something slip to Michael and he’d set up the SEALs?

  “Status!” Jack barked into the radio. “How many men down?”

  “Stand by,” Bud Lipton ground out, the sounds of men yelling coming through behind his voice.

  Damn. That sounded like a complete clusterfuck out there. “Do you need a rescue helicopter?”

  “Damn straight, I need one,” Lipton yelled. “I’ve got thirty men in the water. Six of them are seriously injured and need airlift ASAP. Twenty more have moderate injuries. I’ve got one boat afloat with the casualties and it’s sinking fast. It’s got maybe ten minutes, and then we’re all swimming. There’s a crapload of blood out here.”

  Holy shit. This was the time of year sharks migrated through these waters.

  Jack spun and ordered the immediate launch of a rescue copter. The rescue mission was blown. Somehow, some way, the terrorists had figured out the Navy was coming and had set a trap for the SEALs. The Medusas—oh, shit! The Medusas! They were already rolling with the op. They had the kids hidden and were in the middle of running around the ship knocking out security cameras right now!

  He jumped onto the radio. “Adder, abort! I say again, abort!”

  Isabella’s voice came back, scratchy, but clear. “Unable, repeat, unable. We’re committed.”

  Jack closed his eyes. Holy Mary, Mother of God. All those hostages. And nobody was coming to rescue them. He spoke fast to Isabella. “The boats were blown out of the water. The teams are down. You’re on your own. Can you halt operations?”

  “I’ll try, but I doubt it. Stand by.”

  Aleesha moved toward the middle of the ship, tucking herself into one of the very crannies she’d worried about someone hiding in last night when she was down here scouting out the place. Her right earpiece—the Medusa headset—crackled.

  She moved out from behind the pipes, and her earpieces—both of them—erupted in chaos. Something godawful was happening to the SEALs. They were completely jamming the frequency with their shouts and calls. Stunned, she looked at her watch. They weren’t supposed to be here for another eight minutes. Surely they hadn’t arrived at the Grand Adventure so wildly off schedule. But they’d sure as shootin’ sounded as if they were under attack.

  She frowned as she caught bits and pieces of a transmission from Isabella above the din from the SEALs. “…destroyed…multiple injuries…can’t abort. On…own…” What the heck was going on?

  The heavy silence that settled in Isabella’s transmission spoke volumes. Something very bad was going down. Crap. What had she missed? Aleesha darted out from her nook and sprinted down the hallway, clear of the worst of the pipes and vents.

  “Adder,” she whispered, “say again.”

  The answer was immediate and cut right to the chase. “The SEALs aren’t coming. We’re on our own. We’re changing to the back-up frequency in sixty seconds.”

  “Copy,” she mumbled. Oh my God. There was no way to halt this op, no way to put the kids back in the adventure area, no way to unkill the terrorists who’d already been taken out. They were committed. And they were flying between two trapezes without a safety net. Nowhere to go but forward or down. Hosed didn’t quite capture the severity of the situation. Neither did screwed. Or completely nuked.

  Innocents were going to die. Hundreds of them. And their blood would be on the hands of the Medusas.

  “Suggestions?” Vanessa’s voice cut across Aleesha’s near panic—sharp, determined.

  It snapped Aleesha back into the moment, back into combat reaction. They were far from done. The six Medusas were heavily armed and fully trained to fight in an urban hostage scenario. With a little bit of ingenuity, and maybe a little bit of help, they just might be able to pull this thing off. They knew the layout of the ship like the backs of their hands, they knew the habit patterns of the hijackers, what their likely responses would be to combat decisions. They could do this. She was not going to let innocents die on her watch.

  She spoke up. “How about we spread a little chaos? Viktor surely knows by now that the kids are gone and some of his men are dead. What if we really up the confusion level on the ship?”

  “Like what?” Vanessa asked.

  Aleesha recognized the tone of voice. Her boss wasn’t mad—just intensely focused on finding a way to succeed. None of the Medusas were good losers. It was part of why she herself was a hell of a trauma surgeon. She refused to yield gracefully to death.

  “How about I blow up the electrical generators while I’m down here? It’ll knock out all the communication and navigation capabilities of the ship. Heck, if we’re lucky, it’ll knock out the engines, too.”

  Karen piped up. “Not likely. The engines probably have their own internal generators for the fuel injectors and the like. Not important, however.”

  Aleesha continued. “We can set off the fire alarms. Anyone know if there are automatic sprinklers on this baby?”

  She could almost hear the grin on Vanessa’s face as her teammate replied, “Go on. Then what?”

  “Then we do what the SEALs were going to do. Under the confusion of it all, we move around the ship using the microburrs to track the Tangos and pick off as many as we can before they get scared and cluster together.”

  “And after they clump up?” Vanessa challenged.

  An image of Bud Lipton’s SEAL team clustered on the bridge of the destroyer in Norfolk a lifetime ago popped into her head. They’d known then that the Medusas were ill suited to a brute force takeover. They were still ill suited for it. But unfortunately teams like theirs didn’t get to pick the scenarios that were handed to them in the field. They might have dodged the test in Norfolk, but they were going to have to look the real thing square in the eye here and stare it down.

&nb
sp; She answered Vanessa slowly, “Then we duke it out with the bad guys. I’d bet on Cobra against the best shooters in the business, and the rest of us aren’t too far behind. We’ll hold our own.”

  “We can’t just hold our own. We’ve got to win this one. A hell of a lot of lives ride on it. This is an all or nothing deal.”

  Aleesha knew what Vanessa was saying. This was a succeedat-all-costs mission. All costs. If every last one of them had to die, then that’s what they’d have to do. “Let’s do it,” Aleesha answered quietly.

  Apparently, she spoke for the whole team because nobody else offered any other suggestions or disagreed with the parameters Vanessa had just laid down for them.

  “How quickly can you blow the generators?” Vanessa asked.

  “Give me three minutes to get there and two to slap down some C-4.”

  “You’ve got it. Adder, we need your firepower out here, and you’re about to lose electricity anyway for your monitor. Python, Sidewinder, I need you up out of that tank. Can the staffers down there handle the children without you?”

  Karen answered dryly, “I think we’re scaring the kids. They’ll be calmer without commandos and semiautomatic submachine guns in their midst.”

  “Then come up here. We’re in the disco on the port side of Deck 7 forward. We’ll work on setting a fire up here. All three of you, split up and take different routes. Set off the fire alarms as you go.”

  “I’ll be there in under five minutes,” Isabella replied.

  “Give me one last look at Deck 1, Adder,” Aleesha grunted as she took off running for the rear of the ship and the ship’s power plant. She dropped her weapon into a hip-firing position, ready to blow away on the run anyone who happened to get in front of her.

  “Deck 1 is clear all the way to the engine room,” Isabella said. “There’s a Tango moving down the aft stairwell, passing Deck 6. He could be a problem. And I’m outta here.”