Plague Ship

He tried his radio, calling to Hux, then Mark, and finally the Oregon , but interference returned nothing but static. Juan quickened his pace, training his light over the equipment for any sign of something out of the ordinary. He passed through another watertight door and found himself at the ship’s sewage treatment plant. He moved on. Beyond was another set of idle generators and the Dawn’s desalinators.

Using a technique called reverse osmosis, the water treatment system drew in seawater and extracted almost one hundred percent of the salt, rendering it safe enough to drink. This one machine provided water to the galleys, the laundry, and every bathroom aboard the vessel. Of the two places he could think to introduce a deadly virus and make certain it affected everyone aboard, this was number one. He would search for the second—the vessel’s air-conditioning units—later.

Cabrillo spent ten minutes examining the desalinator, borrowing a tool kit from a nearby workbench to unbolt inspection ports and peer inside. He saw no evidence of tampering or recent maintenance. The bolts were all stiff, and the grease felt gritty, even through his protective gloves. There was nothing at all to indicate that a foreign object, like a bunch of vials of toxin, had been injected into the plant.

The explosion came without warning. It rumbled someplace aft of the engine room and sounded deeper within the ship. And even as the sound faded, another blast rocked the Golden Dawn. Cabrillo stood, immediately trying to raise his team on the radio net, when a third explosive charge detonated.

One second, Juan was standing over the desalinator and, the next, he was halfway across the room, his back a flaming sheet of pain from being slammed into a bulkhead. He fell to the deck as another rumbling detonation hit the ship. The blast was well forward of his position, and, yet, he could feel the overpressure wave sluice through the engine room and press him to the floor. He staggered to his feet to retrieve his flashlight, which had been flung ten yards away. As soon as his fingers curled around the light, some sixth sense made him turn. There was motion behind him. Even without electricity, the ship’s gravity-powered watertight doors functioned flawlessly. The thick metal plates began to slide down from the ceiling to cover the open hatchways.

A new sound struck the Chairman, and he whirled in time to see a wall of white water erupt from under the deck through grates that gave access to bilge spaces below the engine room.

A fourth explosion rocked the Golden Dawn and made the entire ship rattle.

As he ran for the descending watertight door, Juan knew that whoever had poisoned the passengers and crew had placed scuttling charges to hide the evidence of their crime. There was something significant in that, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it.

The water welling up from below was already to his ankles when he ducked under the first door, with four feet to spare. Hampered by the protective suit, he ran as best he could across the next room, passing the sewage plant without a glance, his feet splashing through the rising water. His breathing wheezed in his ears and taxed the suit’s filters.

The next door was already a mere two feet from slamming into the deck. Juan put on a burst of speed and dove flat, sliding through the water so it foamed over his faceplate. His helmet hit the bottom lip of the door. He twisted under it, pressing himself flat as he moved, wriggling to get by without ripping the suit. He could feel the weight of the door pressing down and he lurched as hard as he could, pulling his chest and upper legs through. He tried to roll away, but the solid gate continued to drop. In a desperate gamble, he cocked one leg and wedged his foot between the door and the sill.

The door weighed at least a ton, so Cabrillo’s artificial foot delayed its descent for only a second but it bought him enough time to yank his other leg clear.

The pulverized limb remained jammed under the door and allowed a curtain of water to surge into the main engine room unchecked. It also held Juan helplessly pi

Cabrillo was trapped in the engine room of a doomed ship, and, no matter how he fiddled with his radio dials, he got nothing but static.

CHAPTER 8

MAX HANLEY DIDN’T NEED HALI’S FRANTIC CRY TO tell him a series of explosions had struck the Golden Dawn. He could see the bursts of white water erupting in sequence along the cruise ship’s side on the Oregon’s main monitor. It looked like she’d been struck by torpedoes, but he knew that was impossible. The radar scopes were clear, and sonar would have detected the launches.

As the smoke cleared, Eric zoomed the low-light camera in on one of the damaged areas. The hole was easily big enough for a person to walk through, and seawater was cascading into the breach at a staggering rate. With four identical punctures along her waterline, there were too many compartments flooding to save the ship, especially without power going to her bilge pumps. He estimated that she would founder in less than an hour.

Max tapped his communications console. “George, get your butt back in the whirlybird and get over to the Dawn. A series of scuttling charges just went off, and our people are in trouble.”

“Copy that,” Gomez Adams replied instantly. “Do you want me to land over there?”

“Negative. Hover on standby and await further orders.” Max changed cha

Come in, Juan.” Static filled the Op Center. Hali fine-tuned the transceiver, searching in vain for the Chairman’s signal, but he couldn’t find it. “Julia, are you there? Eddie?”

“I’m here,” a voice suddenly boomed over the loudspeakers. It was Mark Murphy. He was still in the Golden Dawn’s wheelhouse and had better reception. “What just happened? It sounded like explosions.”

“It was,” Max replied. “Someone’s trying to sink the ship, and, from what we can tell over here, they’re going to succeed.”

“I’ve barely started on the downloads.”

“Pack it in, son. Gomez is on his way to you. Hightail it out of there as soon as you can.”

“What about Juan and the others?” Murph asked.

“Have you been able to reach them on the radio?”

“No. Juan cut out about twenty minutes ago when he went down to the engine room.” Hanley suppressed a curse. That was about the worst location to be when the explosives went off.

“What about Eddie and Hux?”

“They fell off the net a couple minutes later. I’ll tell you one thing, Max, the radios in these suits are getting upgraded as soon as we’re back.”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Max said, although he’d been thinking the exact same thing. He studied the image relayed to the monitor and saw that the Dawn was settling fast. Her lowest row of portholes was less than three feet from going under, and the ship had developed a slight list to starboard. If he sent Murph out to search for the rest of the team, there was a good chance the weapons specialist would become trapped in the vessel. She was sinking pretty evenly now, but he knew the ship could lurch downward at any second. He would just have to trust that the others would make their own way out.

“Mark,” he called, “get aboard the chopper as soon as you’re able. We’ll have you stay on station, searching over the ship for when the rest reach the upper deck.”

“Roger that, but I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I, lad, neither do I.”

AFTER ONLY A QUICK GLANCE at a ship’s schematic, Eddie Seng led Julia unerringly to the Golden Dawn’s small hospital, located on level DD, well below the main deck. With his help, she had gathered blood and tissue samples from a number of victims on the way.