Red Tide (27 page)

49

H
aving climbed over the rail without being noticed, Bobby Darling swallowed hard and swung out into space. The rope was thinner and less easy to grasp than he’d imagined. He tried to get another loop around his ankle and failed, leaving his entire weight suspended from his hands and arms. Ten seconds in and his muscles were already screaming for relief.

As he mustered the courage to loosen his grip and slide down the line, the breeze blew him around in a slow circle and then another, before slackening and allowing the rope to twist him back the other way. He tightened his grip and mouthed a silent prayer that when he stopped twisting in the wind, he would end up facing the ship. Unlike so many other nights, the gods were listening. He took heart. Once stabilized, he began to loosen his fingers, one by one, until he started to slide downward. The friction burned his hands right through the gloves. He squeezed with all his might and came to a halt about halfway down.

He took a deep breath and for the first time looked past his feet, causing a muffled shout to jump from his throat and the blood to run backward in his veins. The dock was barely visible through the fog. The people looked like insects. He pressed his eyes closed and rested his forehead against the quivering rope. “Just a little farther, Parag,” he said to himself. “Just a little farther.”

They were nearly at the back of the ship. Jim first. The three cops trailing along behind, just like they’d worked it out. Didn’t want to look too threatening as they moseyed along. He’d encountered a lot of good-natured ribbing about the moon suit and passed three East Indians, two men and a toothless woman, but neither of the pair he’d seen at the parking garage.

The suit was air-conditioned, but Jim was sweating bullets. He moved slowly, forcing himself to concentrate on the faces, hoping for all he was worth that this foolish act of bravado would somehow make up for whatever reprisals would be in store over the wrecked van and the purloined radio. He’d risked his life, hadn’t he? For the common good and all. Howya gonna come down hard on a guy like that? Yeah, that was it. No way they could forget what he was doing here today.

The last group of diners rose in stages as he approached, picking up their garbage as they went forward, moving over against the bulkhead so he could pass.

His mind was so full, he nearly walked right on by. If the white rope hadn’t squeaked from the dangling weight, he probably would never have noticed it looped around the white railing.

Jim wandered over and looked down. At first glance, his brain failed to process exactly what it was he was looking at. “Hair,” he thought. “Something with hair.” About the time he figured out it was the top of somebody’s head, the guy looked up and Jim needed wonder no more. He was sure. This was the smaller of the pair from the garage. A high-pitched keening noise rose from the kid’s chest to Jim’s ears as he turned and motioned for the cops to hurry.

They covered the distance with practiced ease. Jim pushed the speaker button on his throat. “That’s one of them,” he said pointing down the rope. All three officers leaned out over the rail and looked down.

“You sure?” the nearest cop wanted to know.

“Positive,” Jim said.

The cop pushed his radio button and began to talk.

Jim watched as the cop talked back and forth with whoever he had on the other end.

The cop pushed the speaker button. “They won’t send anybody else on board,” he announced. “They say we should pull him up, get him secured and wait for instructions.”

At that moment, the other three officers appeared on the rail one deck down, like reflections of one another. “We got him surrounded,” Jim thought. A mad chuckle escaped his throat, forcing him to turn away.

Holmes held the knife down along his side. On his left, an ornate modern bar ran half the width of the ship. In the cold gray light, the jungle of neon tubes looked like untended vines. Four leather-topped stools at each end, twelve running the long way. Down to the dance floor and the individual tables at the far end. On his right, the deck arched out from under the roof, flowed under the painted white rails until your eyes took off for the horizon like a plane on a carrier.

“What now?” Corso asked.

Holmes shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You’re the last one. The others didn’t make it.”

Holmes nodded. Shouts could be heard in the distance.

“I’m going to kill you,” Holmes said.

“Why?” Corso asked.

Holmes could feel the fear in himself. The natural revulsion for the unknown that each man carries in his heart. Fear of the pain. Fear of how he might react in that final moment. How one might taint a lifetime with an instant. But there was no panic in this one. No tears. No remorse. Not this one.

“Because it’s what men do in moments like this,” Holmes said.

Four powerful strides and Holmes was on him. Corso was ready, legs braced, hands ready to defend himself, but the sheer force of Holmes’s impact threw them both to the deck before either man could gain an advantage. The moment Holmes wrapped an arm around him, Corso knew he was in trouble. His moon suit was far too cumbersome for self-defense. It left him pawing at his attacker like a schoolgirl as they rolled about the floor, swinging wildly, seeking leverage on one another.

Not only that, but this Holmes, whoever he might be, was ungodly strong. He had one arm clamped diagonally across Corso’s ribs, squeezing Corso’s bulk like he was a doll. Corso slammed an elbow back at his attacker, but the padding from the suit robbed the blow of any significant force. He rolled once, twice, but the man had his legs around him now and was beginning to squeeze the breath out of him. Corso used both hands to wrench the man’s ankles apart. He filled his lungs with a bolt of fresh air and rolled over, teetering with his knees in the middle of Holmes’s chest, for the first time feeling he might have gained a slight advantage.

And then, in an instant, Corso felt the air rush from his suit and a burning pain in his chest that refused to allow him to breathe. He heard the hiss of oxygen and the sound of something cracking as he struggled. He clutched at his side, when another blow bowled him over backward, banging his head hard on the deck, swimming his vision.

As he sought to regain his senses, Corso could feel hands around his helmet. He opened his mouth to speak just as Holmes tore the helmet from his head and pressed his face to Corso’s. For an awful moment, Corso thought the other man might be going to bite him in the face. He turned away just as the shouts began in earnest. Next thing he knew, he was being jerked to his feet and dragged backward like a puppet. Corso gasped for breath, trying to breathe around the arm pressing his throat, trying to ignore the excruciating pain in his side. And suddenly there they were, in the mirror behind the bar. Corso red-faced, flailing with one arm, Holmes with a burly arm around Corso’s neck, holding him upright, dragging him around at will, and in the other hand a black Commando knife pressed hard to Corso’s throat. “Get back…get back…I’ll kill him…I’ll kill him,” Holmes shouted at the pair of cops who had suddenly appeared, guns in hand.

“Easy,” said the nearest cop. Dropping his gun hand to his side. “Easy.”

50

“O
n three…you ready?”

Jim watched the officers jockey for position along the rail. Each man trying to find a space where he could get a purchase on the rope and use his strength to haul the guy up the side of the ship. They hunched together in a quivering mass of muscle waiting to explode into action like a bull bucking out of the chute.

Jim kept his distance. When they made the first pull, he leaned over to see what the guy’s reaction would be. Naturally, he looked upward in horror. Eyes wide, teeth bared. And then he loosened his fingers and slid down the rope in what, at the moment, seemed to Jim one of the most pathetic acts of futility he’d ever witnessed. Fifteen feet below the guy’s locked ankles, an orange and white life preserver swung to and fro in the night air. Where did the guy think he was going? Only thing under the life ring was a couple hundred feet of foggy air. “Pull,” ricocheted through the air and another four feet of rope curled onto the deck. “Pull.” And still more line came on board.

When Jim looked down a second time, the kid’s face was transformed. Devoid of the horror he’d exhibited just a minute before, he was looking up, but not at them, with an air of expectation. He was focused on something above them. Something high in the sky. Jim craned his neck and looked up the side of the ship. Nothing but steel, and patches of glittery fog sliding across the dark sky.

The kid shouted something, but Jim could not make out the words. “Pull,” sounded in the night and then the kid let go of the rope. Not to slide, but to fly, as the sleeves of his coveralls began to flutter in the breeze, as the weight of his torso began to pull him backward, arms and legs stretched out at his sides like he was making a snow angel in the clouds.

The sudden lack of resistance sent the officers staggering back against the bulkhead, dumping them in a heaving irregular pile on the deck, leaving Jim Sexton the only one to witness the kid as he floated past the life ring, turned a full somersault in the extended position of a skydiver, and then hit the dock facedown, with a sickening crack such as Jim had never heard before. Jim brought a hand to his mouth and turned away.

Corso waved at the kneeling officer with his free hand. “Don’t,” he screamed as the cop sighted along his arm, looking for any opening that would allow him a head shot at Holmes, who jerked him higher, trying to keep Corso’s head in front of his own as he sidestepped along the deck. The second cop had fanned out to the right in a flanking movement, leaving Holmes vulnerable from both sides. The blade dug harder into Corso’s throat.

“You will tell them?” a voice in his ear.

Corso didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

“If I let you live…you will tell them what I say?”

Corso managed the smallest of nods. As Holmes began to whisper in his ear, the second cop had made his way to a position nearly parallel to theirs. He held the black automatic in two hands and braced himself to shoot. Corso closed his eyes and waited to die.

And then the pressure of the blade relented, and just in the instant when he was more concerned with being shot than with having his throat cut…he heard the noise…just as he’d imagined it would be…the crackle of cartilage and the sudden rush of arterial air as his throat came open to welcome the night, the warm gush of blood running down over him like a flash flood, cooling as it traveled down inside his suit and across his chest…and then the deck coming up fast beneath him as he dropped to the seat of his pants.

He looked down to find himself covered with blood. Was amazed to find he could look up again and see the cops creeping his way. He touched his throat with disbelieving fingers and found it whole. His mouth fell open. For some unfathomable reason, he stuffed his fingers into his mouth and then looked up to the cop.

Electronic words tumbled from the helmet speaker. “Son of a bitch cut his own throat,” the nearest cop said, in wonder. “How in hell do you muster up the
huevos
to do that?”

The other cop was on the radio. “Second suspect secured,” was all he said.

Charly Hart limped along behind the scattered knots of dignitaries until he found the chief, standing off to the south side of the yard, with Ben Gardener and a couple of people from Emergency Services. Everything on Pier Eighteen had been moved as far away from the ship as possible, while the CDC team worked at securing the area around where the body had landed. Word so far indicated that the body was hot. Hot as anything they’d ever tested, which undoubtedly explained the intense deliberation with which they now worked the scene. In order to slip Bobby Darling’s lifeless corpse into a hazard bag, they’d been forced to slide a piece of plywood under the remains, as the fall and subsequent impact had jellified the flesh into something more akin to cranberry sauce than human tissue.

The chief noted Charly’s approach, excused himself from the group and walked Charly’s way. “You seem to be having trouble with the concept of a direct order, Detective,” Harry said without a trace of humor.

“Yessir.”

“I hear we got lucky.”

“Yessir. The other two sites test out negative. Not a trace of the virus anywhere except those two sprayers we retrieved.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“Bad?”

“Not as bad as it could have been…but bad.”

“What about the perps?”

“They’re both down.” The chief nodded at the CDC crew as they sprayed decontaminant over the half acre nearest where the body had landed. “One of them either jumped or fell off the side of the ship, depending on who you ask. The other one cut his own throat up on deck three.” Harry winced and shook his head in disbelief.

“Did they…”

“Sprayed everywhere. Infested everything except the crew areas, which, thank god, they couldn’t get into.”

“What now?”

“We don’t know,” Harry said. “We’re not set up to deal with this many potential carriers.” He jerked a thumb toward the federal contingent. “The brain trust is working on that right now.”

A deep rumble filled the air, and then another, almost in harmony with the first, a throbbing two-part bass, coming from everywhere at once.

“They say Reuben’s gonna be okay,” Charly Hart said.

“That’s what I heard.”

“Probably isn’t gonna be joggin’ anymore, but at least he’ll be able to get around.” Charly waved a hand. “Play with the grandkids, that kind of thing.”

A wet whistle wailed in the stillness. Once, twice and then a third time.

A tugboat. Red and white,
Crowley
painted across the side, had wedged itself between the
Arctic Flower
and Pier Eighteen and was slowly but steadily pushing the massive ship’s prow away from the pier. As the bulk of the ship displaced the surrounding air, the fog scattered and it became obvious from the black smoke percolating out of the stacks that the ship’s diesels were running.

As Harry began to move forward at a lope, the
Arctic Flower
’s running lights suddenly blinked on, all bright and twinkly and cheerful. The Fun Ship grinning in a gruesome parody of the moment at hand.

“What’s this?” Harry wanted to know.

The governor put on his command face. “We’ve decided to deal with it in situ,” he said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“In situ?”

“We’re keeping everybody on board.”

“For how long?”

“Until it’s over,” the governor said.