They were packed like really crowded sardines onto the short, back deck of the RRB. A bolt or screw or some other sharp object protruding out from the towing windlass, dug into Scott’s hip, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it, except jump overboard, into the polluted water, which may or may not be filled with sharks. Didn’t seem like a viable option, so he put up with the pain.
In truth, he was just pleased as punch to still be breathing. If anyone had bothered to ask (and no one had) a couple hours or even a single hour ago, he wouldn’t have given them odds on it. It hadn’t seemed probable, hadn’t seemed plausible, but there he was, on a boat, on the water, speeding away from all that destruction and death. Hot diggity, he thought, bringing up the memory of one of his granddad’s favorite exclamations. Hot diggity dog. He was alive.
The jury was still out on Duke and Jonesy.
The two men, and the RHIB, with the young woman Scott had heard being called Titsy McGangbang, as cox’n, arrived at the water’s edge at virtually the same moment. They didn’t hesitate, didn’t break stride. Duke leapt aboard and kept right on running. Only a last-second grab at the center console kept him from heading straight into the drink. Jonesy landed, tripped, and face-planted into the bottom of the boat. Scott saw him wave his arm forward, but otherwise, he didn’t move. The boat did, however, proving that young miss whatever-her-actual-name-was did not have her own head up her shapely backside.
And then it was over. Then it was done. Elvis has left the building, Ladies and Gentlemen and Zombies.
They’d all made it.
Hot diggity.
172
M/V Point of Order
26.321937 N 176.686691 W
“That tears it,” Doug Hennessy said, staring at the radio in dejected horror. “We’re sprung.”
“No we’re not,” Blackjack Charlie Carter said, as he headed toward the chart table. He’d been navigating by dead reckoning - essentially taking an educated guess (based on the course they were steering and the speed their propeller was turning for) - and dropping in the occasional sun-line he’d taken with a sextant. The calculations made his head ache, and they took time, which he didn’t have, so he’d used his skill at celestial navigation sparingly. Still, it was enough to give him a fair degree of confidence that the educated guess at least put them in the right ball park. He added the latest guessed-at position, grabbed a pair of dividers and measured the distance they still had to go to make Midway: a hundred and ten miles, more or less. Roughly five hours, at their current speed.
From what they’d been able to glean from scattered radio communications between the various Coast Guard and civilian entities, the nearest units - the nearest people who could possibly act to aid those who remained behind on Midway - were Hell and gone from anywhere that would threaten Blackjack Charlie’s plan. They could still do this.
They needed to do this.
He needed this.
Failure now, on top of everything else that had gone wrong since he took charge as the Pirate King - since he led their escape out of Soledad, for that matter - would be a disaster. He led the pirate band out of fear, and the self-interest of the others involved. They feared him, because of just how far he’d already demonstrated he would go, and he quenched their self-interested thirst by his success. Anyone with more weapons, and the balls to use them, could lead by fear. Feeding the self-interest meant demonstrating he would give the people who followed him more than anyone else could. Failure would open the door wide for anyone who thought they could do a better job. Anyone, for example, such as Doug Hennessy, who was now recommending they turn tail and run.
No.
Fuck no.
“Get down to the engineroom,” he told his most likely competitor - but then he came to his senses. “Wait,” he said. “No. Stay put.” Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, he remembered the saying. Was Hennessy an enemy? Why take the chance?
He reached onto the bulkhead behind him and removed the public address microphone from its bracket. “Felix, get down to the engineroom, then call the Bridge,” he barked, adding: “Right fucking now.”
173
M/V True North
22.970878 N 165.326828 W
“...I say again, it is headed toward Midway.” John Gordon stared at the GSB 900 for a frozen moment, then two, then three. The enormity of it washed over him like a massive wave in a force ten gale. Midway...
The vapor lock shattered, and John ran from his position at the bridge windows, disengaged the auto pilot, and jammed the joystick steering control hard over to the right. The antique brass indicator rolled its shiny arrow past right ten, past right twenty, and almost past right thirty and straight into hard right rudder. That would have been bad. That would have been a disaster, resulting in the rudder being jammed all the way to the right, sending the ship spinning in a wide, continuous circle. He backed off the joystick and marked the heading on the gyro compass.
He’d been steering one-one-five degrees True, a little ways south of due east. The compass now read one-seven-five, as the bow turned south, then one-eight-zero, one-nine-zero, two-zero-zero, as the ship pulled what was essentially a u-turn. Unlike popping a you-ee, as he and his friends had called it during his youth, when they’d been screwing around in their first cars, a ship at sea didn’t react like a car on the road. He couldn’t just turn hard over and expect to return to their original track, which was, essentially, a straight line between Midway and Honolulu, and thus the shortest possible route. He needed to finesse it by performing what was called a Williamson turn. Just who the hell Williamson was, he had no idea, but the guy had developed a maneuver to compensate for the fact that ships don’t exactly turn on a dime.
The trick was to turn right or left full (the direction didn’t matter), follow the compass until it reached one hundred and thirty-five degrees from the original heading, then shift the rudder, until it reached full in the opposite direction of the initial turn. He’d been going one-one-five. Adding one hundred thirty-five degrees to it, in his head, which was filled with one single word: Midway, proved difficult, but not impossible, so when the compass read two-five-zero, he shifted the rudder, brought it back to the reciprocal of his original course, then pulled back on the joystick again and returned the rudder to amidships, leaving it pointing straight back into their wake, and the bow (in theory) pointing right back down the track the True North had been steering. It was certainly close enough for his purposes. He’d take a fix later and adjust the course accordingly. In the meantime, he had more important things to do.
Leaving the ship to steer itself for a moment, he grabbed the 1MC microphone off the bulkhead behind the steering console, depressed the key, and said: “Gus, get your ass down to the engineroom and kick those gerbils. Give me everything you’ve got.”
174
USCG Integrated Support Command
Sand Island, Oahu
“Get off your lazy ass,” Duke said, reaching out a hand to help Jonesy up from his still-prone position in the bottom of the RHIB.
“Five more minutes, Mom,” Jonesy groaned. Once again, his everything hurt. This was becoming far too much of a habit. First chance he got, he needed to speak to whoever was in charge of this mess, and lodge a formal complaint. Not that it would do him any good.
He accepted his large friend’s hand and groaned some more until he regained his feet. “Don’t be such a baby,” Duke said.
Jonesy’s brain dead-tired mind searched for an appropriate response, came up with nothing, and resorted to the old standby: “Fuck off.”
Seaman Tara McBride, their cox’n for the pleasant little boat ride they’d taken across Honolulu Harbor, passed no more than three feet away as he said it. “Sorry,” he apologized.
She smiled. “Don’t fucking worry about me,” she said, and kept right on walking onto the pier.
Jonesy laughed. It hurt, so he stopped.
They’d landed at the Small Boat Station, as had the o
verloaded Rapid Response Boat, which had tied off ahead of them and was still disgorging its cargo of refugees. He saw Harold and Greg Riley, and Scott Pruden. They looked like death warmed over. He could relate.
He did not, however, see the Duck Bus. He looked toward the buoy tender pier, where the Sass was moored. No joy.
“Where...?” He asked.
Duke waved his thumb over his shoulder. “Couldn’t dock the bus at the pier, so they headed over to that piece of shit beach.”
It took Jonesy a few moments to translate what the man was saying. Beach...what? Then his brain started working again, and he realized Duke was referring to the uneven strip of sand and rocks and broken concrete that marked a long-ago abandoned pier at the extreme end of the base, nearest the Container Port. It wasn’t much of a beach. No one had lounged on its shore, catching rays, in who knew how long. But it did serve as pretty much the only suitable landing spot for the vehicular version of a duck-billed platypus that Molly had - for whatever insane reason - chosen to use as the primary rescue platform.
The Duck Bus had wheels. It used them to roll up onto the shore. Craning his neck and standing on tiptoe to see over the stacks of buoys and other assorted aids to navigation, supplies, and equipment that lay between the Small Boat Station and the so-called beach, he saw the unlikely thing slowly making its way toward them. The RRB had taken as many of the refugees off the top of the strange vehicle before they’d all headed across the harbor, but it was still stuffed to the scuppers with people. They all looked...happy.
Well, maybe not happy. Seemed like too strong a word. Maybe relieved was as close to describing what the shell-shocked, utterly traumatized survivors felt. Whatever the linguistically-correct term, they were damned glad to be away from that fucking mall. Again, Jonesy could relate.
The ungainly bus pulled to a stop, with a hiss of its air brakes, about twenty feet away. The door popped open and a crowd of humanity issued forth like a swarm of ants.
Something about the image disturbed him, though why that would be, he didn’t immediately understand. Then he did. He’d used the same ant-analogy when he saw the zombie horde come boiling out of the wreckage of the doghouse structure, as its sides peeled away like an onion, on the roof of the mall. A chill started in his toes, danced around his balls for an uncomfortable moment or two, then shot straight up his spine to his own traumatized brain.
He felt as if he might puke, so he ripped off the gas mask that had been strapped to his head for so long, he felt certain the straps had left permanent divots crisscrossing the back of his skull. The air felt cool on his face. He breathed a relieved sigh.
As soon as he’d done it, he realized his mistake. Without the mask, there’d be nothing to hold back the stench of Honolulu. Too late, he thought, fully expecting to blow chunks at the first whiff, but then his overtaxed brain realized he’d already been breathing when the mask came off.
He took an experimental sniff. The stench was still there, still vile and disgusting, but somehow it had become muted and less vomit-inducing. Now why would that be? How could that be?
He examined the filters in their compartments on either side of his jaw. Brand new, the things were white as the driven snow. Now, they were a sort of greyish brown. They stopped working, he mused. His sleep-deprived brain registered the thought and considered it, like the curiosity it was. He’d been breathing in the stench for some time - maybe hours.
Could he have actually gotten used to the smell?
He shook the question off. Or rather, something - someone - that caught his eye shook it off for him: Molly.
She stepped down from inside the bus and turned her head to the right and left, as if searching, until finally her eyes locked on Jonesy. She closed those eyes, exhaled a deep breath, then opened them again and walked straight toward him, ripping her own mask off her face. His heart skipped a beat, then two, then three. It restarted before reaching four, just in time for her to say:
“Take this any goddamned way you like.”
She kissed him, in front of God, the survivors, their fellow shipmates, and everybody. And Jonesy kissed her back.
175
M/V Corrigan Cargo III
19.154468 N 158.888839 W
The shotgun blast took Morris Minooka on the left side and spun him like an unbalanced top. He saw it in his mind’s eye, as if he were watching the slow motion movie of someone else’s demise. Curious. He felt no pain as his body bounced off the console where the GSB 900 sat, and watched in fascination as he slowly slid toward the deck.
His right arm and hand moved as if someone else were controlling it. He watched it raise his weapon toward the man who had undoubtedly killed him, registering that the man in question was none other than Dirk Parker. He felt his finger pull the trigger again, and again, and again, and watched with his dying eyes as the sadistic pirate danced with impact after impact.
Center mass, he thought, slipping into the void.
176
Missile Control
M/V Corrigan Cargo III
Lieutenant Commander Lawrence David Woodruff was on a mission. He knew what he had to do for the first time in days, maybe weeks. Maybe months, though he doubted it. In any case, he’d been living with one nine November Echo six three two seven Charlie Golf nine-nine-five Delta Uniform Tango six STAR, STAR one-one-three EXECUTE, for so long, it was hard to recall a time before it became such an important part of his life.
With the mission came a clarity he might have found curious, if he weren’t so focused on the task at hand. And what was that task? What drove him and cleared the throw pillows someone had stuffed into his head, was another tidbit of vital information - another number: 198274372. And what was this number? What was this thing that removed those fluffy cushions from his brain?
A missile.
This was to be expected. There were, after all, several missiles on this ship that wasn’t his original ship. Where his original ship might be didn’t matter, because the weapons from that ship were now on this ship. And how did he know that? Because he’d kept his ears open and his mouth shut - just as they’d taught him to from almost the very first moment he arrived at Annapolis.
And what had those ears heard? Everything.
He sat at the main computer terminal and typed in his password. The fact this was the same terminal on this ship that had come from the other ship - his original ship - didn’t so much register, as fall into the comfortable category of familiar things. He knew this computer, knew its function. More importantly, he knew its secret.
One nine November Echo six three two seven Charlie Golf nine-nine-five Delta Uniform Tango six STAR, STAR one-one-three EXECUTE, wasn’t just a code to release the positive action lock on one of the nukes. It was the code to release the positive action lock and cause the timed detonation of one specific nuke - a tomahawk, to be precise. This was the failsafe. This was the court of last resort. This was his mission.
He called up the weapons inventory, scrolled down the list, and found missile number 198274372. God bless the anal-retentive nature of the United States Navy. A place for everything, and everything in its place with the proper nomenclature in the proper box on the master computer screen - right where it was supposed to be. He clicked on it.
The display page popped up, showing all the pertinent details about one particular, specific missile. Well, almost all of the details. One tidbit of information was missing. He pressed the control, function, and alt keys on the keyboard, each in turn, each held in place by a finger of his left hand. A small dialogue box appeared, displaying only a horizontal line, and the blinking vertical cursor.
He entered a single word: extremis, all in lower-case letters, then hit enter. Another window appeared - another horizontal line, another cursor.
This was it. This was the moment he’d been preparing for, the final purpose that had kept him going, kept him calm, kept him sane for as far back into the past as his brain could register. He started typing.
EXECUTE
He moved the mouse, and positioned the cursor over the button.
177
USCGC Assateague
Honolulu Harbor
Pirates? Frank Roessler asked himself in horrified wonder. Midway? Nukes?
“What the fuck?” Gary King asked, staring at the GSB 900 radio through the eyepieces of his gas mask.
“...Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star, this is COMMSTA Honolulu, Channel Sixteen. Switch and answer Channel Two-Two.”
Frank nodded his head toward the VHF radio hanging from the overhead near the helm. Gary didn’t need an interpreter. He switched to the new frequency.
“Go, COMMSTA,” a gruff, male voice said.
“Did you copy that last transmission?” The voice of Amber Winkowski replied.
“We did,” the male voice answered.
Silence followed, as if Amber were waiting for further information - which, undoubtedly she was, Frank knew. So was he.
Finally, after relative time played its little game of making things seem as if they took seventeen times longer than they actually did, the female Operations Specialist said: “What are your orders?”
“Stand by,” the gruff male voice said.
“Stand by?” Gary King’s question exploded out of his mouth. “I got your stand by dangling, motherfucker.”
“Easy,” Frank said, though, in truth, he felt just as frustrated, just as explosively anxious for someone to tell them what to do. They needed to do something. He needed to do something.
He switched his comm unit to intercom, so he wouldn’t be stepping all over the far more important conversation playing itself out over the airwaves.
“Babbett, Stern, get ready to raise the anchor,” he said, peering down from the bridge windows at the two men who’d been operating the chain gun on the bow of the Patrol Boat.
Guardians of the Apocalypse (Book 4): Zombies of Infamy Page 29