Trident Force (27 page)

 

His mind and heart racing, Cagayan worked his way aft along the fourth deck, hanging on to the rail every step of the way. When he reached the aft end, he stepped carefully onto the ladder and climbed down even more carefully, his feet slipping on the treads and his hands on the rail as the ship did its best to throw him overboard. He repeated the process on the next ladder.

Once on the boat deck he paused to look around and catch his breath.

There wasn't a soul in sight and he was certain there wouldn't be. There was no way the boatswain was going to send anybody on deck in this weather without a very good reason, and even the stupidest passenger wasn't that stupid. Satisfied, he moved rapidly to a large metal chest. He opened the chest and withdrew a pair of bolt cutters. He then trotted forward to the aftmost boat.

Shit! There
was
somebody besides him on deck. Somebody—probably some half-assed passenger out for a thrill—was standing next to the boat looking out into the storm. He slipped into the shadows, his hands tightening on the cutter handle, uncertain whether to attack or to wait. Waiting, at least for a minute or two, seemed the least disruptive. Within a few seconds, the figure turned and, hastened by the howling wind, hurried through one of the doors, leaving Cagayan all alone again.

Confident he had no further company, Cagayan tripped the pelican hooks that secured the boat's two wire gripes. Now only the boat's weight was holding it in its cradle. He then used the bolt cutter to cut the forward falls, the wires by which the bow of the boat was raised or lowered. He finished his preparations by setting the controls on the winch he'd so carefully greased a few days before, to pay out when the strain of the boat's weight pulled on them. After preparing the three boats on the port side, he hurried around to the starboard side and repeated the process.

When he'd reached the aftmost boat on the starboard side, he paused a second to gently massage the cell phone. Then, with the closest thing possible to a song in his heart, he started forward again, tripping the gravity davits holding each boat.

 

Their sidearms drawn, Mike and Alex followed Rodriguez through a maze of narrow, almost dingy passageways leading to the crew's quarters. Except for asking the two or three people they encountered if they'd seen Cagayan recently—none had—they maintained silence.

Rodriguez stopped and turned toward them. He pointed ahead and to the right, toward a door. Mike nodded, then motioned for the young engineer to stand back. After nodding at Alex, he tiptoed past the door and stood a moment, his face pressed up against the bulkhead on the far side.

This was the bad part, he thought as he took a deep breath. What was waiting for him? A shotgun? A pistol?

He reached out with his right hand and tried the knob. It was locked. He stepped back from the bulkhead and, after another nod to Alex, charged into the door, using his left shoulder.

Fortunately, the lock was far from substantial.

With Alex two steps behind, Mike allowed his momentum to carry him into the room. It proved to be a small dormitory with six built-in racks and chests of drawers, a table and several chairs. The compartment smelled strongly of people crammed into a small, poorly ventilated space for long periods of time. It was empty.

“Jerry,” he said into the walkie-talkie, “he's not in his quarters, so you be alert. We're on our way.”

“Roger.”

 

Once released, each lifeboat started to slide down two inclined ramps leading over the side of the ship, groaning and squealing slightly as it went. As each boat moved toward the edge of the deck, its davits—the upper arms of its cradle—pivoted out, morphing into the cranes from which the boat was supposed to hang.

With a thump, each of the davits stopped rotating out. Normally, the boat would then hang suspended fore and aft by its falls. But with one set of falls cut, the bow of each boat toppled down toward the pounding waves, while its stern falls paid out slowly. The ten-ton steel boats were now hanging—bows down—over the side. The sharp-tongued waves immediately attacked them, lunging and snapping. The boats began to pound with thunderous fury against the side of the ship, doing who-knew-what damage to the
Aurora
and shattering themselves.

Cagayan would have liked to stay and enjoy the spectacle close up, but he might be spotted. Anyway, he told himself, he had to warm up again before he continued. He threw the bolt cutters over the side and dashed up two outside ladders in the howling wind. All the way, until he slipped back into the funnel where the engine room's roars and groans out-shouted everything, he could hear the boats pounding themselves into scrap. This, he thought, should really scare the shit out of them.

 

“Ms. Smith,” called out the helmsman, a look of shock mixed with suspicion on his face.

The mate of the watch turned and walked over to the console and looked where the helmsman was pointing. Six red lights in a row were blinking, indicating that all six of the ship's lifeboats were being launched. “There must be an electrical problem,” she shouted over her shoulder as she headed out the pilothouse door onto the port wing.

Oh my God, she thought as she looked aft and down, cringing from the wind as she did. There was no electrical problem. There was a very big, very real problem. All three boats were grinding their way outboard; she could now feel it through the deck. Then, to her utter horror, one of the boats reached the end and toppled out, its bow plunging down toward the breaking waves. She turned and ran back into the pilothouse, where she immediately paged the boatswain.

“MacNeal,” squawked the walkie-talkie. Fortunately, thought the mate, he's one of those guys who's wide awake the second he wakes up.

“Listen up, Boatswain, because this is hard to believe. Somebody has launched all six lifeboats and it looks as if the forward falls have been cut. Get up there with some men pronto.”

“Shit!” replied the boatswain. “I'm on my way.”

The mate then stepped into Captain Covington's sea cabin to notify him of the inexplicable disaster. “Do you want me to stop, Captain?”

“No. Not with these monsters chasing us.” He paused, deep in thought. “Try reducing speed to six knots and see how the ship reacts. If she becomes hard to handle, we're going to have to put some more turns on again.”

 

“It must be Cagayan,” said Mike into the walkie-talkie when Covington advised him of the lifeboat disaster. “We're going to have to reverse our strategy—instead of trying to trap him belowdecks, we're going to trap him above. How's Ellison doing at closing the gaps?”

“He says he's got most of them filled.”

“Good. Tell him the target is above him, not below. I also want you to get all the passengers in one place . . .”

“The Main Dining Room's the largest, but there'll be standing room only.”

“That's unfortunate, but it won't kill them and this guy we're chasing very probably will, if he gets the chance. I'm going to wake Ray Fuentes and have him organize security there. You have any men who can be trusted with weapons?”

“A number. I'll have Mr. Winters work with Fuentes.”

“Good. And have Ellison join them when he's finished posting men below. The four of us are going to hunt this SOB before he comes up with something else.”

“Jerry,” he then snapped into the walkie-talkie, “our man is on deck—he's just launched all the lifeboats . . .”

“What? In this weather? Is he trying to trash them?”

“It looks that way. I want you and Ted to meet me and Alex at the suite. We'll arm ourselves properly and track this bastard down.”

“Roger.”

 

“What the fuck's that?” demanded Brad when he felt the rumbling of the lifeboats as they rolled over the side.

“No idea,” replied Wendell Gardner. Gardner stood and looked out the window onto the storm. “Can't see anything. Something must have broken loose somewhere. If it's important, they'll tell us.”

When Chrissie had thrown Brad out of her suite, he'd ended up in a cabin on the main deck, one level below the boat deck and two below Chrissie's suite. He'd started drinking tequila early and was still at it, in his cabin, explaining to Wendell what was wrong with everybody else in the world.

“Fuckin' ship's a disaster.”

Wendell smiled. He enjoyed getting people cranked up.

“And this bullshit about having to go jam ourselves into the dining room with a million retards. Those navy guys are on a power trip. Whenever they don't know what to do, they dream something stupid up for us to do. If something bad's going to happen, it's going to happen where all the people are. We're much safer here, drinking in peace.”

Wendell didn't bother to answer, although he did intensely dislike the military.

A few minutes later the tour guide noticed lights moving around on the deck outside the window. He returned to it and looked out. “Something's happening. I'm going to take a look.”

Brad waved his consent.

Three minutes later Wendell was back, soaked and frozen. “Somebody's launched all the fucking lifeboats,” he cried, a note of fear clear in his tone. “There's no way they can get them back aboard. If something happens to the ship, we're all dead.”

Brad looked up at him. “Bullshit.” He then passed out on the couch.

 

Boatswain MacNeal stepped out onto the port boat deck and immediately wished he hadn't. He'd failed to dress properly and it was now too late to do anything about it. He cursed himself for his stupidity, then again when he saw that all three boats were gone, each set of falls bouncing and twitching like a fishing line with a shark on it. He struggled into the wind and across the icy deck to the rail and looked down, flashing a hand spotlight as he did.

There they were, he thought with a mixture of surprise, anger and fear. The remains of the three boats were right below him, tangled up in one dark mass, pounding against the ship's side and against one another as they were dragged through the churning water. How in God's name was he going to recover them?

 

James Ives was scared, but more than that he was angry. He hated being stuck in the middle of a crowd. He hated it all the more when he was being shoved and stepped on by people who were even more panicky than he.

“It will be okay, dear,” he reassured his wife—just to keep her quiet, if for no other reason—as they were carried down the passageway toward the Main Dining Room. They passed a media crew standing in a cabin, documenting the surrounding chaos. God! he thought. That's the end! To be shown round the world trapped and surrounded by a mob of terrified idiots. It was enough to make him almost forget his own fear.

“Please move along as rapidly as you can.”

Ives looked to the side and saw one of the navy guys in his blue coveralls standing in a cabin. The guy who'd been limping ever since he arrived. He looked sick. Barely able to stand.

“They're gone!” somebody behind him shouted. “The lifeboats are gone. The crew must have taken them. They've left us here to die.”

What shit, he thought as somebody rammed him from behind, almost knocking him to the deck.

“Keep moving there.” It was that Ellison fellow. The security director, or something like that. “Don't stop, damn it! Keep moving! That's right, all the way back.”

The room was already crowded, and Ives guessed that only about half the passengers had arrived. As the mob behind pushed him ahead, he forced his way to the left, toward the windows, dragging his wife with him.

When he finally reached a window, he jammed his face against it and placed both hands on either side, attempting to block out some of the light. He couldn't see much, but he could see enough. There were lights moving around on deck, and the dark blobs that should have been there—the lifeboats—were missing. Maybe they were there, but he didn't think so. Whoever had been shouting was right. The goddamned boats were gone. They were all dead.

The room was becoming uncomfortably hot and noisy, even though most of the passengers thought they were talking quietly. The air began to vibrate with terror as more and more realized they now had no escape.

 

“Shit!” said the first of MacNeal's men to arrive on the scene. “What the hell do we do now?” There was a note of despair in his voice.

“When I tell you, we're going to cut that mess loose,” replied MacNeal in the most confident, authoritative voice he could muster. “For now, you find the bolt cutters in the boat tool chest while I check the other side.”

“Okay, Boats.”

“Remember, don't do a damn thing until I tell you.”

“Okay, Boats.”

Both men were shouting to be heard above the storm.

MacNeal ran through the superstructure and out onto the starboard boat deck, where he found two of his men hanging over the side, looking down. He joined them to discover that the situation wasn't quite as bad. All three boats were there, being dragged stern first, but none had swamped. They weren't as tangled, and they hadn't been beaten to shit by the waves' pounding them against the ship's hard side. At least not yet.

“Bridge, this is MacNeal,” he shouted into his walkie-talkie.

“This is Covington, Boats.”

“The boats on the port side are a total loss, Captain. When you're ready, I want to cut them away before they beat their way into the ship. I think we may be able to salvage one or two of the starboard ones.”

“How soon before you're ready to cut?”