Demon (26 page)

The transmission broke off.

“Both teams, pull back to the perimeter.” Temms sighed and looked at Mike, her eyes weary. “A lot of people just lost friends down there.”

“I'd like to go down there,” Mike said.

“Not yet.” Temms jumped down from her chair. “Officer of the Deck.”

A young officer walked over from the navigation table. “Yes, ma'am.”

“We're going to stay at security alert. We may go to GQ if we have to.”

“What do you want entered in the deck log?” the OOD said.

Temms chewed her bottom lip. “Just put ‘crew riot' and the frame numbers until we can investigate further.”

The OOD nodded and walked back to the navigation table.

Temms lifted the radio. “All department heads, this is the captain. Assemble in the wardroom in five minutes.”

Then Temms motioned Mike to follow.

S
emyaza didn't know how much longer he could go on. He had defeated the soul but again just barely. He had thought he was ready to fight and would not have a problem winning. He was wrong. The soul had fought hard. At one point, Semyaza had almost given up.

He crawled through blood and over bodies to a door. He reached up, his hand shaking, flakes of skin showing on his face, and grabbed the knob and turned. Semyaza pulled himself in and shut the door and looked around.

Another fan room.

Y
usuf lay in his rack shaking. He had heard the voice of the female over the loudspeaker and heard the pounding of feet outside. Although he understood hardly any English, he knew what was happening. Knew all too well.

This time, though, he had no control over the situation. Like a rat, he sat trapped in his little metal bed. The rest of his crew around him knew, too. He heard them whispering. They talked of fleeing, making a run for it.

“We need to do something,” one of them said. “They will just leave us locked in here to die while they abandon their ship.”

“Yes,” another said. “They will blame us for what is happening. And then they will sink their ship with us aboard.”

Yusuf closed his eyes. He wanted nothing to do with this madness anymore.

“If we are going to act, we must act now,” said Mahmoud.

Yusuf's eyes opened. He sat up and looked into the space between racks and saw Mahmoud surrounded by seven other men.

“We can overpower the doctors in here, use them as hostages to force them to let us out,” Mahmoud said.

No,
Yusuf thought.

“Do you all want to die?” Yusuf said.

Mahmoud's eyes settled on him. “How is that? We are trying to prevent just that.”

Yusuf shook his head. “You are all panicking. There is no reason to act this way.”

“You heard the woman on the intercom,” Mahmoud said. “And I know you heard the sound of people running. It has happened again. They have had an outbreak of violence, just like we had. The dead are walking again.”

“I know.” Yusuf pushed out of his rack. His ribs ached and he grabbed his side. “But if we add to the chaos, what do you think they will do?”

Mahmoud shrugged. “We will have their people. They will let us go for their safe return.”

“And where will we go?”

“They have life rafts. They will give us enough for our numbers. And we will get far away from this place before they all realize they are doomed.”

Yusuf shook his head. “I will not allow this.”

Mahmoud just stared at him. “You are not our captain anymore, last time I checked.”

Yusuf's face slacked. “Mahmoud, do not—”

“It is done.” Mahmoud broke his stare and turned his attention back to the men around him. “Tell the others. We move in five minutes. If they want to join us, they will help. Those who cannot because of their injuries, we will carry off.”

“Where is Feisal?” Yusuf said. “He will tell you how insane this is.”

Mahmoud kept his back to Yusuf. “He died.”

Yusuf's stomach folded. “No. He was fine. I saw him. They had—”

“He is dead, Omar. They could not fix him. His wounds were too great.”

The others nodded and walked to other sections of the berthing to spread the word. Once they were gone, Mahmoud turned to Yusuf. “I am sorry, Omar, but we have to do this.”

Yusuf leaned against the racks and breathed short, shallow breaths. “I pray, for all our sakes, you do not get us all killed. The Americans will not take kindly to Arabs taking hostages on their ship.”

“It will work.”

Yusuf glared at Mahmoud. “If it does not, all our souls are on you.”

Mahmoud reciprocated the glare. “Better to die on our feet than drown in a”—Mahmoud paused and looked at the berthing around him—“cage. Where is the honor in that?”

“We are lucky to be alive.”

“Maybe it would have been better to die.” Mahmoud smiled. “We tried to get away and it still found us. You know that it is just a matter of time before this ship experiences what we did. I will not experience it again.”

Then Mahmoud turned and joined the other men. Yusuf closed his eyes and held his ribs and tried to take deeper breaths. Then he prayed for the safety of what crew he had left.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

M
ike stood and leaned against a bulkhead in the wardroom, eating a banana he'd lifted from a fruit tray. The
Rushmore
's department heads, all either lieutenant commanders or lieutenants, sat at a long dining table sans food. Temms stood before them, hands in her pockets.

“Is everyone here?” Temms said and looked around.

Everyone nodded, but no one said anything. Mike continued to eat, his stomach rumbling as he did. He hadn't realized how hungry he had been until he'd taken his first bite. Now, though, the lightheadedness that had persisted started to subside.

“Okay,” Temms said. “Everyone, listen up because I'm going to say this only once. Save your questions until I'm done. We don't have a lot of time.”

Mike listened as Temms told her department heads about Captain Yusuf and the crew of the
al-Phirosh
and what had happened to them and how the same thing was now happening on the
Rushmore
. Mike watched their reactions as Temms referred to it as a biological weapon gone awry and briefly covered the events of Basra. Some stared in disbelief. Others just shook their heads. And the rest did nothing except breathe. When Temms got to the part covering the events of the last half hour, a few choked up, especially when she mentioned Doc Morris's fate.

“So now the question is, what do we do next?” Temms said. “The answer is not to abandon and scuttle the ship as Captain Yusuf did. Not yet at least. But we will prepare as if we are going to. So, I want all of you to put your departments into a condition one setting. I'm not going to pass the word for general quarters because I don't want to interfere with the security alert posture. Just get your departments moving via radio. And stay away from the first, second, and third decks forward of frame twenty.”

Temms paused and looked over everyone again. “Do you all understand what I'm saying?”

A few said, “Yes, ma'am.” Others only nodded. Mike wondered if Temms was just falling into the same trap Yusuf had. The shipmaster had tried several different tactics, including containment, before finally having to abandon ship. Was Temms repeating history?

“Now for the immediate and grisly task,” Temms said. “The dead in the secured zone needed to be identified, collected, and disposed of yesterday. Every department is to provide four personnel to execute this and it needs to be done within the hour.

“This will be treated like a CBR attack, not a drill. Everyone involved will be in full chem gear. Gas masks on. Autoinjectors will be worn. DCA will establish the route through the starboard side DECON station. The chief engineer and first lieutenant will coordinate this. Cheng will oversee the movement of bodies to the boat deck. First will take over from there, ensuring bodies are disposed of and working personnel are properly decontaminated once they are no longer needed.”

Temms paused for a breath. “Working party personnel will not return to ship's company once complete. They will be isolated in the truck tunnel for further observation to ensure they are not infected. Right now, we're establishing a safe stay time of four hours. Once that time elapses, they will move to troop berthing forward of medical for another forty-eight hours. If no outbreak occurs among them within that time frame, they will return to ship's company.”

“What do you mean by disposed of, ma'am?” Lieutenant Schiffer said.

“Returned to the sea.” Temms flexed her hands. “I wish there was another way, but we don't have a choice.”

“Ma'am, how will we explain this?” Schiffer said. “These people have families—”

“I understand that, Ops.” Temms took a deep breath and didn't speak for a moment. “The infection spread on board here by way of a dead body. It started in the refrigerator where the five corpses we pulled from the water were stored. Not in the quarantined berthing. We must assume the dead down there right now are just as capable of spreading this bug. Captain Yusuf did not dispose of his dead. We will. And hopefully, we'll save the ship doing it.”

“What about air evacuation?” someone else said. “We're closer to Djibouti. Maybe we can start flying people off as a precaution.”

Temms shook her head. “We are on our own until we beat this thing. We can't risk spreading it to another ship, let alone land. If this thing makes it back to the shore, we'll have another Basra; and we can't allow that to happen again.”

Everyone sat quietly.

“Anything else?” Temms said.

No one spoke.

“Get your people moving. HMCM is standing by in medical to issue autoinjectors. From there, personnel are to report to the DC shop to receive chem suits and masks. They need to be on the turntable in twenty minutes, ready to go. Now get to work.”

Y
usuf tried to control his hands, but no matter how much he focused, they would not stop shaking. He stood in the back of the berthing, watching his men. They had delayed their assault to ensure the majority knew the plan and had no objections. None did, other than Yusuf. Two were too injured to speak and Feisal had died. The rest had not taken much time to convince. Mahmoud had painted a desperate picture and they had all bought it.

Ten men stood or lay in their racks, acting nonchalantly as the two ship's nurses walked around and filled out paperwork on clipboards. Then Mahmoud nodded his head and several men moved forward from their racks or from the bulkhead they had been leaning against.

It happened fast. The men swarmed, tackling the male and female nurses. They threw punches to subdue the man. Then they tied his wrists together with strips of sheets and gagged him with pieces of pillowcases.

Yusuf cringed as he watched the speed with which his crew operated. Desperation and fear made deadly instruments of men. But they did not gag both of them before they could scream. The female nurse belted a short wail that could crack glass and it required three men to finally pull her down and force the gag in.

Within seconds, the doors to the berthing swung open and three armed Marines rushed in, rifles raised and leveled. Yusuf watched them fan out and secure the escape routes. All their eyes shifted back and forth, taking the measure of their opponents.

Yusuf looked to his crew and saw panic festering in their eyes. Sweat poured from their faces. Their hands shook. The ones who had wrenched knives away from the nurses held them to the hostages' throats. The blades trembled.

A broad-chested Marine moved toward Mahmoud, the rifle pointed at the rebellion's leader. He spoke English. His voice sounded calm but focused.

Yusuf swallowed. His breathing was fast. The Marine continued to speak, but none of the survivors spoke English. Even if they did, Yusuf knew they were so scared they would not know what to do.

Now the Marine screamed the same words. Mahmoud did not flinch, nor did he break his defiant stare with the Marine.

“Forget the hostages,” Mahmoud said. “On my order, drop them and charge the soldiers. They will not shoot.”

Yusuf's eyes widened. “Mahmoud, are you insane? These are Marines. They will not hesitate if you charge them.”

Mahmoud turned his head and looked at Yusuf and smirked. “We will die like men,” he said. “Not like farm animals. Not like our brethren on the
al-Phirosh
who did not get to choose how they died. Here we can die with honor.”

The other crewmen seemed to gain strength from those words. Yusuf saw them nod, their hands not as shaky now.

Yusuf could not speak. And yet, he would not know what to say if he could. Although he wanted to live and wanted to see his crew make it safely home, Mahmoud's rationale was compelling. After all, what had happened on his ship had followed them here. Would they escape it a second time?

The Marine barked again. The other Marines also yelled. Mahmoud nodded at Yusuf and turned back toward his opponent.

“Allahu akbar!”
Mahmoud screamed. The remaining crew of the
al-Phirosh
repeated the words with death-filled intensity.

“Allahu akbar,” Yusuf whispered.

Mahmoud pushed his hostage to the deck and rushed forward, the small knife raised above his head. The others holding hostages did the same. Mahmoud took two steps and his chest exploded in a cloud of red. The rifle shot echoed off the metal racks.

Muzzle flashes erupted around Yusuf in three-shot bursts and all of his men fell to the ground in bloody and bullet-riddled heaps. It ended within a few seconds and not one of the crew lived but Yusuf. Tears ran down his face as he looked over his crew, their eyes staring at the overhead. Strangely, though, the feelings of failure he had felt on the
al-Phirosh
, his belief all of it had been his fault, did not rush back now. Instead, looking over his fallen men, pride swelled within him. They had died like warriors. More importantly, they had chosen when they would die. And because of that, they still had their honor.