Plague Ship (18 page)

The ship suddenly creaked, as though her hull was splitting, and the
Golden Dawn
lurched, nearly knocking Jannike to the floor. Julia steadied her as she and Eddie exchanged a glance. Time was running out.

Eddie went through the open hatch and looked for another way out. There was a second hatch on the floor, surrounded by a metal railing. He dropped to a knee to free the locks and heaved the door open against its protesting hinges. A ladder dropped into the darkness. He descended as best he could, the hazmat suit making the narrow space difficult to negotiate. He was in another mechanical room ringed with electronics cabinets. It was a distribution node for the ship’s electric supply and, normally, would have been buzzing with current. Now the room was silent. An open door gave way to another darkened hallway.

“Come on down,” he shouted, and waited at the base of the ladder to guide Janni the last couple of rungs. Though Eddie was of below-average height, he felt he could encircle the girl’s waist with his hands, even with her suit bulking her up like a snowman.

Julia descended a second later, and Eddie led them out of the room. He asked Jannike, “Do you recognize where we are?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied after peering into the gloom. “Many parts of the ship are off-limits to the hotel staff, and I have not been on board for that long.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie said reassuringly, sensing her frustration at not being more helpful.

With the
Dawn
settling bow first, Eddie turned aft. He could feel a slight strain in his thighs that was telling him he was climbing uphill. The angle was mild, but he knew it would grow steeper as more compartments flooded.

Because of his suit, he never felt the breeze that suddenly came from behind him. It was the tremor in the deck plates below his feet that told him to turn. A wall of water barreled down the hallway at the level of his thighs, a solid green mass that struck them before he could shout a warning. Caught in the maelstrom, the trio was borne along the crest of the wave, tumbling helplessly, until the swell’s momentum slowly petered out. They were dropped to the deck, a tangle of limbs, as the sea continued to flow around them.

Eddie was the first on his feet, and he helped Janni stand. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.”

“Doc, you okay?” he asked.

“Just a little rattled. What happened?”

“A bulkhead must have failed close to the bow and let the wave through. We still have some time.”

They continued on, sloshing through the ankle-deep water. Eddie checked the stencils on each of the doors they passed, hoping to find one marked stairwell, but luck wasn’t with them. Down here were rooms for dry storage and storage for spare parts. An I-beam track along the ceiling allowed the crew to use winches to move heavy equipment from there to the nearest elevator. He thought that could make an alternate plan if they didn’t find stairs. He had no doubt he could climb up an elevator shaft, Hux most likely, too, but he didn’t think Jannike had the strength. If not for the suit, maybe he could have her cling to his back while he made the ascent. It was something to consider.

He almost missed a door to his right and had to stop to play the light across the stencil: WATERCRAFT STORAGE.

“Bingo!”

“What is it?”

“Our ticket out of here,” Eddie said, and pushed open the door.

By the light of his torch, he could see a line of gleaming Jet Skis and two-person runabout boats. They were resting on specially designed cradles. There was a large hole in the ceiling the boats could be lifted through and a set of circular stairs leading up to the next level. He climbed, with the others in tow.

This was where passengers could rent one of the personal watercraft when the cruise ship was in port. There was a registration counter along one wall, and posters everywhere with safety reminders. The floor was covered in a nonskid indoor/outdoor carpet, and on the outside bulkhead was a door sized like that of a suburban garage. A hydraulically controlled ramp was folded along the door’s length. When the door was open and the ramp deployed, it would act as a small dock.

Eddie tapped the steel door with the butt of his flashlight. Rather than return a sharp echo, it rang with a dull thud. He tried higher up and finally got the results he wanted. “The ship’s sunk to within two feet of the top of the door,” he reported. “When I open it, this room is going to flood.”

“Will we be able to get out,” Janni asked breathlessly.

“No problem.” Eddie smiled to reassure her. “Once the inside and outside pressure equalize, we’ll be able to swim away. And the beauty of it is, our suits will keep us afloat.”

“I’ll go downstairs and close off the door we came through,” Julia said, understanding that, in order for Eddie’s plan to work, the boat garage had to be isolated from the rest of the ship or water would just keep pouring in.

“Thanks,” Eddie said. He positioned Jannike away from the door and up against a railing so she could hold on as the room flooded.

The door was operated by a small electric winch but had a mechanical handle to crank it up or down in case power was ever lost. When Hux returned and was standing next to Janni to help hold her in place, Eddie bent and grabbed the handle. As soon as he put pressure on it, the door crept up a quarter inch and water started to enter the chamber in a flat rush. He was off to the side of the door but could still feel water sweeping by his lower legs as he cranked it higher.

The sea cascaded through the opening in the floor in a thundering waterfall.

Eddie had the door a quarter of the way open when the handle jammed. He pulled on it harder but couldn’t get it to budge. He looked at the door and saw what had happened. The force of water pressing against it had buckled the metal near the bottom and popped the guide wheels off their tracks. Even as he watched, the door distorted further, bending in the middle, as though it was being shoved by a giant hand.

He shouted a warning to Janni and Julia that was lost in the roar of water as the door failed completely. It tore free from its mounts and was tossed across the room as though it were a piece of paper. Free of the constraint, the ocean exploded through the opening in a green wall.

Julia and Janni were far enough to the side to be spared the brunt of the onslaught, but, as the room instantly filled, they were pummeled by the back surge of water. Had it not been for Hux’s presence, Jannike Dahl would have been lost in the tumult.

Shock waves continued to reverberate through the water, sending debris, including a Jet Ski, floating dangerously by. It was only when the water settled that Eddie was able to let go of the stanchion he’d been clutching. He immediately started floating for the ceiling. Like a cat in reverse, he flipped himself around as he sailed upward, to land on the roof on his hands and knees, his flashlight still gripped in his hand. He adjusted the airflow into the hazmat suit to reduce the pressure, and, thus, his buoyancy. Otherwise, he’d remain stuck to the ceiling and immobilized.

He worked the light to spot Julia and their young charge, hanging on to a railing with their feet pointing up, the air in the suits ballooning the fabric around their legs. He crawled over to them and gently touched Hux’s leg, urging her to let go and float free. She did and rose up to join him. He did the same for Janni, and turned down the airflow from the tanks. He started crawling across to the open door but felt Julia resisting his help. She tapped him on the shoulder and pressed her visor to his.

“I lost the sample case,” she shouted, the vibration of her voice transferring through the plastic so he could hear the words. “We have to find it.”

Eddie looked at the mass of clutter swirling inside the garage: towels, life jackets, notebooks, bottles of sunscreen and water, coolers. It could take hours to find the case, and if it had been sucked back out the door it was already falling to the seafloor, some ten thousand feet below the ship.

“No time,” he said back to her.

“Eddie, we need those tissue samples.”

His answer was to take her hand and start toward the beckoning door.

The sudden influx of water that swamped the boat garage had shifted the
Golden Dawn
’s center of gravity, and the vessel began to list more heavily. The stresses on her hull were pushing to the breaking point, and, deep along her keel, the steel began to tear. The sound of her death knell echoed over the ocean, as haunting as a whale song or funeral dirge.

Julia and Eddie towed Jannike through the opening. As soon as they were free of the ship, Eddie added air to his suit and shot for the surface.

Nearby, the
Oregon
was ablaze with lights. Searchlights pierced the darkness and roamed across the
Dawn
’s deck and along her waterline. The Zodiac inflatable that had been tied off near the garage bobbed nearby, its painter pulled taut and its bow submerged by the draw of the sinking cruise liner. As Eddie untied the line from an eyebolt welded to the ship’s hull, one of the searchlights stabbing out from the
Oregon
swept past them and then returned, bathing them in a pool of incandescence. Julia and Jannike waved furiously. The light blinked in acknowledgment.

The Robinson helicopter swooped over from the far side of the cruise ship. George Adams held it steady over them long enough to see they were all right before moving off again to spare them the hurricane force of the rotor’s downwash.

Eddie rolled over the Zodiac’s side and hoisted Julia and Janni aboard. In seconds, he had the motor running and the little boat skipping across the waves toward the
Oregon
. The door over the tramp freighter’s amidships boat garage was open and a team in protective gear was standing by with spray bottles of concentrated bleach solution to decontaminate their suits.

Eddie idled the Zodiac just off the ship. With the radios shorted by prolonged immersion in the water, he couldn’t communicate with the orderlies, but everyone knew his duty. They threw over a couple of scrub brushes to the Zodiac and turned on the powerful jets of bleach. Eddie and Julia first scrubbed Jannike and then each other, making certain every square inch of their hazmat suits had been decontaminated thoroughly. Six inches of bleach sloshed across the Zodiac’s floorboards before they were done.

When Julia was satisfied they had killed any infection that might be clinging to the suits, she ripped away the duct tape over the zipper and freed herself of the claustrophobic garment. The warm, humid air was the freshest she’d ever tasted. “God, that feels good.”

“Amen to that,” Eddie said, peeling off his suit and leaving it in the boat.

He guided a still-suited Jannike onto the Teflon-coated ramp they used to launch the SEAL assault boat. Julia took charge of her. She would take her down to the medical bay and run a battery of tests in the isolation ward to determine if the young woman was infected. Only then would Janni be allowed to interact with the crew.

Max Hanley arrived just as Eddie was preparing to sink the Zodiac. His face told Eddie that everything hadn’t gone as well for the others as it had for him and Julia. “What happened?”

“Mark is safe aboard the Robinson, but we lost contact with the Chairman.”

“Damnit. I’m going back. He’s someplace in the engineering section.”

“Look for yourself.” Max pointed to the sinking cruise ship. When her keel had split, the volume of water flooding her hull had quadrupled. “There isn’t time.”

“Max, it’s the Chairman, for God’s sake!”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Hanley had a tenuous grip on his emotions.

Across the gulf of water, the
Golden Dawn
was in her final moments. The rows of portholes that ran along her length below her main deck were all submerged, and, with her back broken, she was settling deeper in the middle than at her bow or stern. The two men watched silently as the ship continued to disappear.

Air trapped within the hull started to vent explosively. Windows shattered and doors were torn from their hinges by the tremendous pressure. The sea washed over her railing and began to climb her upper decks amid erupting geysers of froth. From where they stood, it looked as though the
Golden Dawn
was surrounded by boiling water.

When the ocean reached the level of the
Dawn
’s bridge, it shattered the tempered glass. Debris started floating free of the hulk—deck chairs, mostly, but one of her lifeboats had also broken free of its davits and drifted away upside down.

Max wiped at his eyes when the top of the bridge vanished and all that remained above the water were the ship’s communications masts and her funnel. Gushes of air roiled the surface as the sea consumed more and more of the vessel.

Eric Stone was in the Op Center, controlling the searchlights from the weapons station. He left the ship’s most powerful light focused on the
Dawn
’s smokestack, outlining the gold coins painted on it. The sea bubbled like a thermal hot spring while the Robinson hovered overhead.

Max whispered Juan’s name and crossed himself when the top of the funnel was a foot from disappearing completely. A blast of air suddenly belched from the stack, ejecting a yellow object as if from a cannon. It rose twenty feet, flapping in the air like a bird trying to take flight.

“Holy sh—” He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The yellow object was one of their biohazard suits and the flapping was Cabrillo’s arms windmilling and his legs bicycling. Juan’s trajectory carried him from the smokestack and over the railing before he crashed back into the sea. The impact must have stunned him, because he lay still for a couple of seconds before starting to swim away from the sinking vessel. Eric tracked him with the searchlight as Juan swam to the overturned lifeboat. He heaved himself onto its back, faced the
Oregon
on his knees, and made a deep, theatrical bow.