Plague Ship

He found tools and ear protectors on a workbench at the back of the control room and slid open the door to the power plant’s main floor. With his ears covered, the engine’s whine remained at a tolerable threshold. Before he got to work, he checked a distinctive red cabinet. Without its contents, his escape attempt would kill him.

There was an access port on each of the four exhaust pipes that was secured with a ring of bolts. He got to work removing the three-inch-long bolts, taking care that none rolled away from him. He had taken apart his first engine at age ten and had never lost his love of machinery, so he worked swiftly and efficiently. He left one bolt in place but had loosened it so he could pivot the inspection hatch away from the hole. Although the engine fitted to this exhaust duct was silent, the fumes rising up from the pipe made his eyes swim.

He grabbed a handful of short, fat bolts from a drawer of spares in the control room. They were a fraction too small for the threaded holes, but they would more than pass a cursory inspection. When the turbine was fired up, the pressure would blow them out of the hatch like bullets, but that wasn’t Max’s problem. He replaced the tools back in the control room and checked on the unconscious guard to make sure he was still breathing.

The red cabinet contained firefighting gear—axes, heat detectors, and, most important, air tanks with masks. Because any fire that broke out in the generator room would most likely be fed by the jet’s kerosene fuel, there were also two silvery one-piece metallic suits with hoods that would protect wearers from the tremendous heat.

Max had noticed all of this on his first foray into the generating room, and the discovery had been the genesis of his escape plan. He cut off one of the suit’s hoods and slid into it, pulling the second one over him so that everything but his head was double insulated. There was enough play in the boots for his feet, barely. He carried two of the air cylinders to the open access port. His movements were awkward, like a robot from an old science-fiction movie. The tanks were fitted with armored hoses that jacked directly into the suit at hip level through a valve. He would have preferred carrying more air, but he wasn’t sure if his battered body could heft the extra weight.

He shoved the tanks into the duct and climbed in after them. The fit was extremely tight, but once he wriggled his way past the manifold he would have more than enough room. Lying on his back, he was able to rotate the hatch closed and partially thread one of the bolts he’d removed into its hole to hold it in position.

After securing the hood of his outermost suit, he cracked open the air tank and took a breath. It tasted stale and metallic. Max had no idea how far the duct ran before reaching the surface, nor what he would find there once he got there, but he had no choice but to start climbing.

Pushing the tanks ahead of him, he squeezed himself forward a couple of inches. The pipe was a black so deep it felt like a presence in there with him, while the roar of the ru

The pain in his chest wasn’t too bad, a background ache to remind him of the beating. It wouldn’t last, he knew, and very soon he’d be in real agony. Pain was a distraction, Linc had told him, passing on some of his SEAL training. It’s your body’s way of telling you to stop doing something. Just because your body is sending you a message doesn’t mean you have to listen. Pain can be ignored.

He scraped over the heat exchanger’s fins and moved into the manifold, where all four exhausts came together. Even with the protection of the suit, he could feel a blast of heat, as if he were standing at the open door of a glassblower’s kiln. It would get much worse once he entered the main duct. The exhaust gases originated thirty feet away and had gone through a cooling device, yet it felt as though he were lying directly at the back of the engine nacelle.

The force of the exhaust was like a hurricane. Without the suits and the oxygen, Max would have been poisoned by the carbon monoxide and his body burnt to a crisp. Even with the double-thermal protection, sweat erupted from every pore in his body, and it was as though someone was holding a hot iron to his feet.

The main duct was nearly six feet around and rose at a slight angle. He struggled into the air tank’s flame-retardant harness, keeping low, so as not to get blown off his feet. As he was gingerly pulling the straps over his shoulders, the foot he had placed atop the spare tank slipped. The stream of hot exhaust took hold of the tank, launching it down the pipe like a bullet from a gun. He could hear it, banging against the side of the conduit over the jet’s banshee scream.

Max tried to walk, but the pressure against his back was simply too great. Each step was a precarious balancing act that threatened to send him careening down the pipe like the errant air tank. He dropped to his hands and knees, and began crawling blindly out of the bunker. The intense heat blistered his knees and hands through the high-tech suit and gloves, and the weight of the tank on his back made it so his ribs felt like shattered glass grinding inside his chest.

As he lurched farther up the duct, the earth encasing it bled away a lot of the heat. The force of the exhaust pummeling his backside and legs never diminished, but at least the broken blisters had stopped multiplying.

“Pain . . . can . . . be . . . ignored,” he repeated, saying each word as he moved a limb.

JUAN ORDERED AN AERIAL DRONE to be launched as soon as the Oregon was within range of Eos Island. George “Gomez” Adams piloted the UAV from a console behind Cabrillo’s seat. Only the Chairman and Hali were members of the first watch, the watch Juan always used when steaming into a potentially dangerous situation, and it wasn’t as if the replacements were any less competent. He just preferred to have his people with him at a time like this. Eric and Mark and the others could anticipate his orders as if they could read his mind, shaving seconds off reaction times, seconds that could mean the difference between life and death.

Eddie was down in the boat garage, prepping the RIB, the Rigid Inflatable Boat, with Linc and the gundogs. There was only one dock on Eos, and they suspected it was heavily defended, but it might be their only way onto the island. The real-time video feed from the flying UAV would give them an idea of the defenses they might face. Down in the moon pool, the dive team was prepping the Nomad 1000, in case they needed the larger of their two submersibles, and laying out tanks and equipment for a ten-man underwater assault. Weapons crews had gone over every gun on the Oregon, ensuring they were cleaned and the ammo hoppers were full. Damage control reported they were prepped, and Julia was down in medical, if the worst happened and her services were needed.

Gomez and his hangar team had pulled double and triple shifts since Kyle Hanley’s rescue, trying to get the plucky little Robinson helicopter airworthy again. The chopper jockey wasn’t too happy with the results. Without a proper test, under controlled parameters, he couldn’t guarantee the bird would fly. All the individual mechanical systems worked; he just couldn’t say if they all worked together. The elevator had raised the helo to the main deck, and a technician kept the engine warmed to flight temperature, so it sat on five-minute standby, but Adams begged Cabrillo to use it as the absolute last resort.

Juan glanced at the digital countdown on the main view screen. They had one hour and eleven minutes to find Max and get his sorry butt off the island. In truth, they had less than that, because when the Orbital Ballistic Projectile slammed into Eos there was a good chance it would spawn a massive wave. Eric’s calculations said that it would stay localized, and the topography of the sparsely populated Gulf of Mandalay would severely dampen its effect, but any ship within twenty miles of Eos was in for a wild ride.