Authors: David Hagberg
Soldier of God (13 page)
McGarvey appeared on the aft observation platform at the same moment the small fishing boat peeled away from the
Spirit
, and Katy flew into his arms. She shivered almost uncontrollably from the cold, from the horror she had witnessed, and now from the sudden letdown.
Spirit
, and Katy flew into his arms. She shivered almost uncontrollably from the cold, from the horror she had witnessed, and now from the sudden letdown.
“I thought they had killed you in the water,” she sobbed. “My God, I didn’t know how I could go on.”
For several long seconds McGarvey stared at the retreating fishing boat. He wouldn’t put it past them to circle around and attack again. They had come for Shaw, and they had not only left without him, but they had also lost a significant number of their people. But he felt as if he had failed here tonight, because a lot of the passengers and probably most of the crew had been gunned down in cold blood.
Worst of all was the young mother and her infant son. The woman’s screams would never leave that dark corner of his brain where his most terrible memories lived.
“Are you okay, Katy?” McGarvey asked, afraid to give voice to his worst fear. “Is the baby all right?”
“I think so,” she said, looking up at him in wide-eyed wonderment.
“You have to be strong for just a little while longer,” he told her. “I have to go below and get the passengers out.”
“What can we do?” Donald Shaw asked. He was too old for this, and his injuries were slowing him down, but he was tough and he hadn’t given up.
“Find the controls for the lifeboats, pull off as many of the covers as you can, and get ready to abandon ship.”
Shaw’s lips compressed to a thin line. “You think he’s going to push the button?”
“Yes,” McGarvey said. He gave his wife a last, reassuring look, then turned and headed belowdecks, not sure how much time remained. But the count on the terrorist’s wristwatch in the radio shack was at zero. Whatever was going to happen would happen at any moment.
Compromising with the terrorists, allowing them to leave the cruise ship alive, had gone against nearly every fiber of McGarvey’s being. He’d told himself that Khalil would push the button once he was in the clear, but in the delay perhaps some of the passengers’ lives could be saved. Had he put a bullet into Khalil’s brain there was a very good possibility the man would have pushed the button as his last dying act.
Time was all they needed. Just a few minutes … five minutes and he would have the passengers topside.
Provided he could find them.
McGarvey stood on the catwalk at the head of the stairs that led down to the engine room, the big diesels quiet now. Only the auxiliary generators one compartment forward were still operating, supplying electrical power to the ship.
But the engine room, where he thought the passengers might have been locked up, was empty except for the bodies of at least three of the legitimate crew.
Adding these to the passengers and crew the terrorists had killed in the Grand Salon, plus those on the bridge and in the radio room, and
probably in the galley and crew’s quarters, there were about fifty corpses littering the ship. In addition, there were the mother and her infant son in the water.
probably in the galley and crew’s quarters, there were about fifty corpses littering the ship. In addition, there were the mother and her infant son in the water.
That left at least one hundred passengers and crew members still unaccounted for, and there weren’t that many spaces aboard the
Spirit
that were large enough to accommodate them all. The Grand Salon, the Klondike Dining Room, here in the engine room. Or the crew’s mess, which was probably somewhere forward, most likely below the galley.
Spirit
that were large enough to accommodate them all. The Grand Salon, the Klondike Dining Room, here in the engine room. Or the crew’s mess, which was probably somewhere forward, most likely below the galley.
McGarvey turned. Standing on the catwalk above the engine room, he was two levels below the main deck. He raced back the way he had come, taking the stairs two at a time to the next deck up. Emerging from the stairwell, he found himself in a long, dimly lit, narrow corridor that ran forward at least one-third the length of the ship, ending at a T intersection. Doors along the length of the corridor indicated that it was probably the crew’s quarters.
Superconscious of the ticking clock, he raced past them to the intersection where the corridor split left and right. He hesitated for only a moment before he took the right passageway The bulkheads here were plain painted steel with firefighting equipment in alcoves, and the overhead was laced with tubing and electrical conduits, all marked with stenciled legends, much the same as aboard a naval vessel.
The corridor jogged left: then thirty feet farther, it opened to a broad intersection with stairs leading up, and corridors branching forward and port. Double steel doors marked Crew’s Mess were across from the stairs. A steel chain was looped around the door handles and secured with a stout padlock.
McGarvey banged on the door with the butt of his pistol. “Is anyone in there?”
He thought he heard a sound, as if someone were standing just on the other side of the door.
“The hijackers are gone. My name is McGarvey. I’m a friend.”
“We’re here,” a man called from within. “I’m Third Officer Mark Hansen. Both doors seemed to be jammed.”
“This one’s chained and padlocked. How many are you?”
“One hundred eighteen, passengers and crew. Some of them are in bad shape.”
“Hold on, Mr. Hansen, I’m going to get you out of there. But we have to get to the lifeboats as quickly as possible. Get your people organized. And see if you can find some flashlights, life jackets, anything else you can use.”
“Yes, sir.”
McGarvey had one bullet left in the Steyr, but even a 9mm round would have little or no effect on the padlock.
He stuffed the pistol in his belt, then turned and hurried back the way he had come, to the first fire-emergency alcove. He broke the glass with his elbow, grabbed the fire ax from its brackets, and rushed back to the crew’s mess.
A thump somewhere forward sounded as if the ship had bumped into something. But they were resting at anchor, and the engines were shut down.
Unless a log or some other bit of heavy flotsam had come down on the current and hit the hull.
McGarvey held his breath waiting. A second later another thump came from somewhere deep within the bowels of the ship, followed by a third and fourth. The bastard had triggered the explosives after all.
He swung the ax, sparks flying from the chain holding the doors. He swung again and again, trying to hit the same link.
Already the ship was beginning to sink by the bow, and settle slightly to port.
He swung again, and the ax handle shattered, the heavy steel blade flying off down the corridor. The chain, though damaged, was still intact.
“Hold on, Mr. Hansen, we’re almost there,” McGarvey shouted. He sprinted back down the corridor toward the engine room, the deck steadily canting forward and to the left.
The next fire-equipment alcove was nearly all the way aft. He busted the glass, this time cutting a good-sized gash in his elbow, grabbed the fire ax from its bracket, and headed back to the crew’s mess in a dead run. Downhill now.
He could hear a lot of water rushing into the ship one deck below, and even before he attacked the chain again, water appeared just a few feet down the stairwell.
This time the chain parted on the second blow. He tossed the ax aside, freed the latches, and yanked the doors open.
A young man in the uniform of a ship’s officer, his hair disheveled, dried blood on the side of his head, stood there, a grim but determined expression on his narrow features. The room was crammed with people, many of them on the verge of panic, but he and several other officers and crewmen had gotten things well in hand.
“We’re sinking,” the officer said.
“That’s right, Mr. Hansen. Get your people out of here to the starboard deck. Someone’s getting the lifeboats ready.”
“Somebody will have to stay behind to see to the stragglers.”
“I will,” McGarvey said. “Now get the hell out of here!”
Hansen handed him a big flashlight. “Someone has tampered with the emergency lights in here,” he said. “All right, folks, step smartly now,” he shouted to the passengers. “You remember your abandon ship drill. Tonight it’ll be the starboard boats.” He gave McGarvey a last glance. “Good luck, sir.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” McGarvey said.
The deck was down by the bow so steeply that many of the older passengers had to be helped, lest they lose their balance and fall. Third Officer Hansen had his remaining crew people well organized so that the evacuation out of the crew’s mess, across the corridor, and up the stairs to the starboard deck proceeded rapidly. No one protested, and best of all there was very little panic, even when water spilled out of the stairwell and began to cover the deck ankle deep.
A big crash somewhere aft was followed immediately by the loss of their electricity. All the lights went out, plunging them into total darkness.
A woman screamed in abject terror, and several people clutched at McGarvey until he got his flashlight on. There were emergency lights in the stairwell leading up, and two of the crewmen with flashlights were out in the corridor directing the passengers through what had rapidly become knee-deep water.
“Calm down!” McGarvey shouted sternly. “There’s plenty of time to get to the lifeboats. Just keep moving.”
He remained by the doors, herding the people out of the crew’s mess and into the waiting hands of the crewmen in the corridor, who handed them off in turn to men on the stairs, like a bucket brigade, only with humans instead of water.
The ship seemed to come back upright on her keel as the downward angle on her bow increased. There hadn’t been time to manually close the watertight doors throughout the ship, and apparently the terrorists had sabotaged the automatic controls. In addition to kidnapping Shaw, they’d wanted to kill all the passengers because they could have acted as witnesses. The simplest, most economical way to do that was to lock them belowdecks and sink the ship.
Not this time, McGarvey told himself.
This was not going to be another
9/11.
This was not going to be another
9/11.
The water was chest deep by the time McGarvey handed the last passenger, a man in his early fifties, out to the waiting crewmen; they immediately hustled him upstairs.
A tremendous crash from somewhere aft, probably in the engine room, shook the entire ship as if she were ready to come apart at the seams.
The angle on the bow increased even faster.
“Come on!” the last crewman on the stairs called back, desperately. “She’s going.”
“Right behind you!” McGarvey shouted. He stopped long enough to sweep the beam of his flashlight around the almost completely submerged crew’s mess for any sign of life.
There was no one. He turned and started for the stairs when he heard a faint cry from behind, which was immediately cut off when the level of the water reached the top of the door frame, leaving less than two feet of airspace below the ceiling.
He had to fight his way back, duck under the water, and come up inside the crew’s mess.
“Who’s here?” he shouted, swinging the beam of his flashlight across the surface of the water, which was choked with floating debris.
“Help me,” an old woman cried off to the right.
McGarvey found her in the beam of his flashlight, clinging to a lifejacket, her white hair plastered to her head, her eyes wide with fright. He reached her in a couple of strokes, grabbed her roughly by the back of her dress, and hauled her back to the doorway as the last of the airspace above their heads disappeared.
There was no time to be kind or considerate. The ship was going down right now, and either she would survive the short swim across the
corridor and up the stairs to the surface of the water or McGarvey figured he would probably drown with her.
corridor and up the stairs to the surface of the water or McGarvey figured he would probably drown with her.
He’d lost his flashlight, and the corridor was in total darkness until he started up the stairwell, when he saw several lights above.
He redoubled his efforts, and seconds later a pair of waiting crewmen dragged him and the old woman out on the starboard main deck, now awash.
They were helped across to the last lifeboat, which immediately backed away from the rapidly sinking cruise ship. Six men manning the oars pulled hard to get them away from the side of the ship that was threatening to roll.
Someone put a blanket over McGarvey’s shoulders, and Katy suddenly was there in his arms. “That’s twice tonight I thought I’d lost you.”
“Not a chance,” McGarvey said.
The old woman he’d pulled out of the crew’s mess at the last reached over, patted his hand, then gave Katy a weak smile. “Hold on to him, sweetie; otherwise I’ll grab him.”
Everyone within earshot chuckled.
“It’s a deal,” Kathleen said.
“She’s going,” someone said in awe.
Everyone watched in silence as the
Spirit of ’98
slipped beneath the black surface of the water—everyone except McGarvey, whose gray-green eyes were turned toward the south, the direction in which the small fishing boat had disappeared into the night.
Spirit of ’98
slipped beneath the black surface of the water—everyone except McGarvey, whose gray-green eyes were turned toward the south, the direction in which the small fishing boat had disappeared into the night.
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