by Cindy Dees
As the swimmers started exiting, she looked around the tank. How in the hell was she going to get what looked like close to a hundred children who couldn’t swim out of here? The top hatch. It was wide-open, creating a good eight-foot gap in the ceiling. The ceiling of the water plant was only a few feet higher than the tank.
She felt the pouches hanging off her belt. Oh, yeah. She still had a block of C-4 left. And she had an idea.
But how in the hell was she going to get up there to do it? The insides of this tank were perfectly smooth, and she hadn’t seen any ladder rungs on the outside of the tank when she’d reconned it last night.
She jumped as a male voice said behind her, “Need a boost?”
Michael. Praise the Lord. “Yes, I do.”
“Climb on my shoulders.”
She nodded and wasted no time in moving behind him, putting her right foot on the top of his thigh where he bent it for her, and then putting her left foot onto his left shoulder. He made a funny sucking sound between his teeth—hey, she wasn’t that heavy!—oh wait. She’d shot him in the shoulder. He held his hands up over his head to steady her. Carefully, he took a step and stood upright. She teetered, straightening up carefully.
“A little to your left and a couple steps forward,” she directed him.
He moved as she indicated, and she extended her arms over her head. The lip of the opening was tantalizingly out of reach, maybe a foot over her head. “I can’t quite reach it. I’m going to jump for it.”
A grunt of assent from Michael, and she felt him brace himself beneath her feet. She bent her knees and gave a mighty push as she jumped. Her fingers grabbed the edge of the opening. And slipped! She lurched, regripped with her right hand and stabilized, hanging from the metal rim. Now to get out the damn hole.
She put her weight on her left hand and quickly reversed the grip of her right hand. Then she released her left hand and rotated her entire body, turning 180 degrees. She caught the rim again with her left hand, now grasping it behind her head. She swung her feet out and up, taking several swings to build up momentum. Then, one last big swing and she kicked her feet up and over her head into a somersault that landed her belly first on the roof, looking down into the water tank.
A cheer went up from below.
Michael was bent over, gasping in what appeared to be pain. No time to worry about that now. She had to get those kids out.
She rolled over onto her back and pulled out the C-4, rolling it into a cone between her hands. She needed a directional charge to blow all the force of the explosion through the steel deck above her and not back down into the water tank. She hollowed out the bottom of the cone and pressed the whole thing against the ceiling a little to the side of the water tank. She reached for a detonator in her utility belt, but had to grab the handle of the hatch beside her as the ship dipped abruptly and listed about ten degrees to the side. Oh, Lord. The ship was already starting to roll. Not good. The Grand Adventure was going down soon.
“Hurry,” Michael called up to her.
No kidding. Her fingers found a detonator and yanked it out. She shoved it into the plastic explosive. Ready. She pulled out a length of nylon rope and quickly lashed it to a metal piece of the top hatch. Then, straining, she pulled the hatch mostly closed, leaving only a thin gap for her to slip through.
“Look out below!” she called as she slid down the rope in a controlled fall. She splashed into water that was now waist deep.
About half of the kids who could swim had already exited via the maintenance hatch, and that operation looked to be progressing in an orderly fashion. But the nonswimmers inside the tank were a different matter. Lots of the kids were barely keeping their heads above water, the staffers and taller kids supporting the smallest children. Crap. They were running out of time.
She stopped the next kid in the line to swim out, a boy who looked to be about thirteen, and directed him, “Tell the moms outside to cover their ears. I’m about to blow a hole in the ceiling. And tell some of them to get up to Deck 2 directly over this spot to help the kids we pass up there to get to Deck 5. Got all that?”
The boy nodded, took a deep breath and ducked under the water.
“Hands over your ears, everyone!” she yelled. She gave them a few seconds to comply, and then she blew the C-4. The sound was tremendous, ringing through her head until her eyeballs hurt. Some of the children started to cry. She hoped she hadn’t blown any eardrums. Although that was a lesser evil than dying.
She shimmied back up the rope, slipping through the gap in the top hatch to sit on the edge of the tank. A ragged hole gaped in the ceiling. Outstanding. Now to get the kids through it.
Jack jumped as a female voice transmitted over the Medusa’s operational frequency, “Roosevelt TOC, we have twenty-two Tangos accounted for and neutralized. Michael’s helping us, and there’s no sign of the supposed twenty-fourth, probably a woman among the passengers.”
“Hot damn, they’ve done it,” Jack yelled in triumph. “They’ve taken back the ship!”
“Yeah, but it’s about to be sitting at the bottom of the Caribbean,” the admiral retorted.
Jack transmitted back to Vanessa, “The Big RV is en route, estimated time of arrival thirty minutes. Frigates will be in the area in twenty minutes. Evacuate the Grand Adventure, over.”
“Negative, TOC,” Vanessa replied. “We’ve got several hundred kids trapped on Deck 1. Will proceed with rescuing and evacuating them.”
Jack’s elation evaporated in an instant. The children were trapped at the very lowest levels of the ship? “Say water depth inside ship.”
“Waist deep and rising fast on Deck 1,” came Vanessa’s ominous answer. “The ship’s listing about fifteen degrees.”
“Hurry, then,” he urged her. “The frigates will put rescue boats in the water as soon as they get into the area.”
“Launch rescue copters, TOC. This is going to be close. Out.”
Jack sagged against the counter in front of him. To have gotten this far, only to face losing all the children? He could barely wrap his mind around the prospect. C’mon, snake ladies. Pull another miracle out of your hats.
Chapter 20
Aleesha called down into the tank, “Michael, can you and the orange shirts build some sort of human pyramid that the little kids can climb? I’ll reach down and haul them up here.”
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“Send up one of the tallest, oldest kids first. I’ll need help up here.”
In a matter of moments, children started clambering up Michael and onto the other staffers, who’d wasted no time making like cheerleaders and forming a pyramid with Michael as its anchor in the center. In the dim glow from below, she saw him grimace with pain every time someone stepped on his left shoulder. He must be hurt worse from her bullet than he’d let on. Damn.
But then the first child was in front of her, a boy. She grabbed his hands and bodily dragged him up the last several feet. He crawled out onto the gentle curve of the tank’s roof beside her.
“Go over to that hole in the floor and help the little kids climb through it.” The boy nodded gamely.
“You’re being a real hero,” Aleesha added warmly.
He smiled tentatively at her.
Another child came up. A girl this time. And another. They started coming up fast, one right after another. The staffers below had clearly worked out some system for getting the kids up efficiently. She reached down again and again, hauling children until she thought her arms were going to fall off. But it wasn’t as if she could take a break. And she’d be damned if she’d let any of these kids die on her watch. The water was nearly up to Michael’s chest now, and all the remaining children were clinging to adults to stay afloat.
Someone was going to drown in that mess down there. A kid would get tired and let go and nobody would notice. It was such a bloody quiet way to die. She hauled up yet another child, and then jumped when a voice beside her murmured, “Need some hel
p?”
Thank God. Vanessa.
Her boss took one look at the situation and said, “I’ll take over hoisting the kids. My arms are fresh. You jump into the tank and help keep kids afloat. The rest of the team will be here in a few seconds and I’ll send them down to you.”
Aleesha nodded and wasted no energy replying. She merely rolled off the edge of the hole and into the water. Her arms felt like mush. And almost instantly, little arms wrapped around her neck, all but strangling her. She reached out, supporting the smallest children as she took a quick head count. Four kids hanging on to her.
“If any of you feel like you’re going to let go, you tell me, okay?” she told them.
She felt nods and heard a few frightened okays.
Man, the water was up to her armpits, now. She took a quick look around. They had maybe forty kids left to lift out. They weren’t going to make it. The water was going to get too deep in here.
She jumped as a head popped up out of the water beside her. Karen. And another head. Misty. And then Isabella and Kat.
Misty said jauntily, “I hear you guys are having a party in here. Can I play, too?”
The remaining orange staffers all but wept in relief. Over the next few minutes, a good half of the remaining kids were passed over to Aleesha and her four teammates to wear like precious little angels around their necks. The water was lapping over Aleesha’s shoulders now, and she was starting to get cold. Heck, she had on a full wet suit. The kids must be freezing. She felt the small bodies of the children shivering against her.
“Not much longer now, guys,” she said encouragingly, “and then it’ll be your turn to go. We got rid of all the bad guys, you know. Your moms are upstairs waiting for you. As soon as you get out of here, you get to go on a really cool lifeboat. And then you get to go on a big ship. I think your daddies are there, waiting to see you. How awesome is that?”
The kids nodded at her, blue-lipped but game. Gutsy, they were.
She stretched up on her tiptoes for as long as she could, but the water continued its inexorable rise. Hell, at this rate, the water would just float the kids to the top of the tank and they could all step out like getting out of a swimming pool.
“Hey, kids,” she said calmly. “I’m going to have to start kicking my legs to keep us afloat. I need all of your to pull your knees to your chests and curl up in little balls so I don’t kick you. But keep your arms around my neck, okay?”
The children nodded. Besides, the fetal positions would help the kids retain a little more body heat while they waited their turns to be rescued.
The water level was definitely rising more quickly now. The holes Viktor had blown in the ship must be getting bigger as the rush of water flooding into the ship tore them wider. And the water tank was showing a definite tilt. She’d estimate it was up to nearly twenty degrees. At some point, a ship this size would reach the angle where it would topple over of its own weight, and capsize. And pretty much anyone left on the ship when that happened was hosed.
The other issue was whether or not the lifeboats would launch properly once the ship was leaning over too far. The downslope boats could still launch, but the upslope life boats would be trapped on the sides of the ship. Big passenger liners were designed for the lifeboats to handle a fairly impressive list—the tilt of the ship—but ship designers weren’t miracle workers.
One problem at a time. All the remaining orange staffers had offloaded their burdens of kids and were helping pass children up the human pyramid to the roof. Michael’s chin was in the water, now. He wasn’t going to be able to anchor the human ladder for more than a few more seconds before he’d be underwater.
“Quickly,” Aleesha urged the staffers who were still passing up kids.
Michael started to cough and choke.
“That’s it!” Aleesha shouted. “Everyone get down off Michael!”
The others jumped down into the water and he surfaced, still coughing and gasping for air.
“Now what?” one of the orange shirts asked, looking up longingly at the ceiling.
“Viper!” Aleesha called out. “Can you tie a bunch of knots in some rope and throw it down here?”
“Affirmative,” came the response from above. “Stand by.”
The line that Aleesha had used to climb back down into the tank earlier disappeared above. Vanessa was undoubtedly combining that line with hers to increase the thickness of the rope to make it easier to climb. Indeed, in under a minute, Vanessa tossed down the end of the doubled-up rope, now with knots placed every foot or so along it.
“Okay,” Aleesha called out. “Which of you kids know how to climb a rope?”
Thankfully, a good dozen kids responded with yesses. Swimming around with their heavy loads of kids, the Medusas took turns maneuvering over to the rope to transfer children onto it. Michael treaded water below, steadying the rope as the kids climbed. It was much slower going than the human ladder before, but every child they got out of here was one more life saved.
Aleesha’s legs were starting to cramp up. She’d passed tired a while ago and was well into the realm of forcibly ignoring the piercing pain of overextended muscles, because she had no other choice.
The Medusas talked the remaining orange shirts into climbing the rope, as well. And that left only the five Medusas, Michael and fifteen children in the tank. The ceiling of the tank was only about five feet over their heads, now.
Vanessa called down, “Karen, if you’ll come up here and sit on my legs, I think I can lean down far enough to grab some kids.”
“Roger that,” Karen called back. She passed off the three children she was supporting to Michael, and headed for the rope. The glow sticks floating on the surface of the water cast an eerie yellow light. Aleesha noticed how, even taking the funky lighting into account, Michael was starting to look pretty out of it—dazed, and maybe even in shock. She frowned, but there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it at the moment.
Karen hauled herself up the rope and flopped onto the roof of the tank. In short order, Vanessa dangled upside down, hanging from her hips. She instructed the kids, “I’m going to reach down and grab you, and then you’ll have to climb me like a ladder. Put your feet in the armholes of my vest and on my belt. Okay?”
The first children nodded. The procedure worked for the oldest remaining children. But the last half-dozen little kids couldn’t pull it off. They were simply too cold and exhausted.
Now what?
A sailor on the birdwalk, the narrow balcony running around the carrier’s bridge, called out, “I have visual on the Grand Adventure.”
Jack bolted out the door and all but ripped the large set of binoculars from the guy’s hands. He looked through them, and his stomach dropped to his feet. A half-dozen lifeboats were already in the water, their white shapes bobbing like corks on the angry sea beside the bulk of the giant cruise ship. Gaping holes were visible in the side of the ship, and it was listing a good twenty degrees.
Merciful God in Heaven.
“Say status,” he barked into his radio at the Medusas.
There was a short pause and then Karen snapped, “We’re busy right now.”
He replied evenly, not offended in the least, “Then just listen. I’ve got rescue boats in the water and a rescue helicopter is orbiting the Grand Adventure. Four more helicopters are ready on the Roosevelt’s deck for immediate launch. The topside evacuation of the Grand Adventure looks to be going fairly smoothly. The crew was alert enough to launch the upside lifeboats first. They got eight off the ship before the list got too bad. There are fourteen more lifeboats hanging on the downhill side of the ship, and we estimate that only twelve will be necessary to complete the evacuation. What appear to be crew members from the Grand Adventure are directing the loading and launching of the boats. We will be in position to start recovering life boats from the water in five to seven more minutes.”
“Copy,” Karen grunted, obviously in the middle of some signi
ficant physical exertion.
He shut up. He knew a busy team when he heard one. And whatever they were doing to rescue the children right now, they clearly had their hands full.
Aleesha called up to Vanessa, “It’s only going to be a few more minutes until we float up to the roof. How about we just ride it out until then and hand the kids up to you when we’re close to the rim?”
Vanessa looked down at the tank doubtfully. “It won’t leave us much time to get out of there. A couple minutes at most.”
“We’ve only got six kids to go.”
Vanessa nodded. “Okay. That’s probably safer than trying to climb the ropes and asking the kids to hang on to your backs.”
It grew quiet in the tank. The Medusas and Michael treaded water in silence, each lost in a private hell of pushing through the pain and keeping moving. Every few seconds Aleesha did a mental check of the grips of the three children hanging on to her, making sure that none of them were weakening.
She’d had enough of death for one day. She’d faced her worst fear—having to pull a trigger against another human being—and she’d prevailed. She’d done the right thing and killed when she had to. Now was the time for saving lives. Odd how, in the course of one mission, she’d been called upon to both take lives and save lives. But, she was learning, such was the duality of her work.
And such was the pain of her work. Her body was screaming for relief. But it was just like her days in the Medusas’ initial training. There came a point when the mind—the will—simply overcame whatever limits the human body believed it had. No matter how bad it got in this tank, she was not quitting. These three kids would survive at all costs.
In the darkness and the cold, something dawned on her. She might not be able to save them all, like Vanessa had said on the bridge. But in this job, she got a fighting chance to try. On her very first day of medical school, a professor had warned her entire class that they were not miracle workers. They were only human beings who would be trained to do their best. That would have to be enough for them and their patients. And out here she wouldn’t stop every bad guy or save every innocent. But the two weren’t mutually exclusive. It was possible to kill and still be committed to saving lives.