Ride the Titanic! (47 page)

A shadow, a bump, Max’s hand still gripping mine, and Cameron’s blurry face above me, his hand moving, and suddenly I’m rising against my will, leaving Max behind, but then I reach back, grab his belt and pull him along with me and he follows and we EXPLODE into the moist, wonderful, sweet air of the loading stage.

Coughing and spluttering, I find my footing on the maintenance walkway, and with Cameron’s help drag Max’s limp body toward the boarding ramp.

‘Cut, cut, CUT, Bobby, lend a hand!’ Cameron shouts, his face streaming water, his smile like a happy searchlight.

Bobby puts down his camera rig, splashes toward us, grabs Max like a limp doll and heaves him over his shoulder. As he does, Max coughs and vomits a sludgy mixture of food and water down the man’s back.

Cameron’s booming laugh bounces off the steel walls. ‘Dinner is served, baby.’

‘What happened down there?’ I finally manage to say.

The work lights glint off a menacing-looking knife in Cameron’s hand. ‘‘
Ka-bar
time, baby. Never leave home without it.’

‘Marines used those things.’

‘Still do because they still work.’ He slashes it through the air. ‘Made mincemeat out of that safety line.’

Max lies on the steel floor. He coughs again and then bolts upright as though someone slapped him. ‘With my own eyes I see it, but it’s
impossibile
.
I pull the charge handle and it comes off in my hand.’

‘It broke?’

He shakes his head. ‘Martensitic stainless steel cannot break by accident. That is why we always use it for these applications.’

‘What are you saying?’

Another round of coughing. ‘I believe that – sorry, I do not know the English word.’

‘Sabotage,’ Cameron says. ‘Won’t be the first time somebody tried to sink the
Titanic.’

I hear him, but it feels like a movie, especially because a Hollywood celebrity is saying something profoundly dramatic, almost like it’s in a script. The only difference is, I can talk back.

‘It wasn’t the first time for us, either.’

‘Looks like it’s your last,’ Cameron says. ‘You sure that hatch is busted for good? Won’t close at all?’

Max shakes his head. ‘The compressed air charge needs mechanical leverage to activate. Without it. . .’ His eyes widen in shock. ‘
Cazzo!
They could not have done such a thing here. It would have required special welding tools, special ventilation – no, they must have done this long ago. At Fincantini itself. Even back then, they wanted it to fail.’

Cameron says, ‘Who’s ‘they’?’

I say, ‘We never found out. But one thing’s for sure, they didn’t want us here in Vegas. And it looks they got their wish. Unless you think there’s any chance that. . .’

Max touches my arm. ‘I am sorry,
Michele,
but our beautiful submarine has double redundancy, not triple. You are now on the back side of the curve. The weight of the incoming water will overwhelm your negative buoyancy and eventually flood the entire hull.’

I try to keep my voice steady but it doesn’t work. I’m no Captain Smith with a steel-stiff upper lip.

‘How much time?’

Max looks around at the loading area and sniffs the air, as if that gives him some kind of information otherwise unobtainable. ‘At this rate of flooding, you have thirty minutes at the very most. Probably less.’

‘To get everybody out.’ 

‘Si.’

‘Let’s do it then.’ I turn to Cameron and put out my hand. ‘Thanks for saving Max and me.’

‘All in a day’s work.’

‘I owe you an apology.’

‘Lock and load, brother.’

‘I thought you were an asshole. But you’re not. You’re a hero.’

‘I’m both. So’s everybody else in the world. Just depends on which part gets the upper hand.’

I laugh. ‘Glad it was your hero side.’

‘Me too.’ He sheathes his knife. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

When we burst into the Ride Bridge everyone turns and stares at us like a freeze frame in a movie; faces upturned, hopeful, fearful, calm, but terrified too as I lead the way down the spiral stairs to where Molly sits slumped in her chair, head buried in her arms, motionless.

I call her name, but no response. I turn to Lewis. ‘What’s going on?’

‘She’s been like this ever since the hatch fail.’

‘Eject status?’

He pulls up the display showing the progress of the various EMV’s along the ride track. The curving, twisting, looping line is blessedly empty of lifeboats, including the one with Geena and Joe and the gang. By now, all of them must be floating in the ride basin, waiting with the rest of Las Vegas for the great moment when the
Titanic
will perform as advertised and sink beneath the waves.

The good news is that I don’t have to worry about my family. The bad news is that our ship actually IS sinking, and the worst news is that the rest of my ‘family’ looks at me like I have another silver bullet to solve an insolvable problem. 

I put my hand on Molly’s shoulder and turn to face the crowd, trying to keep my voice light and matter-of-fact. ‘Hate to say this, folks, but this is more than a P-stop. We’ve got to abandon ship.’

A ripple of murmurs as the shock wave hits them.

‘You know the drill; shut down sub-stations, cross-check hydraulics, secure electrics and power down. We’re heading out.’

Cameron’s film crew ignores me. They keep shooting like it’s a pileup on the L.A. Freeway, which it is, emotionally and literally, as people bump into each other racing to their stations to power down the systems. Ironic that Cameron is going to beat me once again, documenting the death of
Ride the Titanic 2.0.
I go over to where he crouches next to motionless Molly, aiming his small camera at her crumpled figure.

‘This isn’t a movie,’ I say.

‘Not yet, but it will be one day.’

‘Providing we get out alive, which won’t happen if you keep dicking around here.’

Once again his maniacal, Jack Nicholson-like grin. ‘Careful, Mr. Sullivan, you’re asshole’s showing. These folks need a hero to lead them to the Promised Land.’

‘I’m fresh out.’

Molly stirs and sits up, her face no longer that of a calm, steady, utterly competent technician. She’s a frightened little girl. Wisps of blonde hair stick in her mouth and she spits them out.

‘It’s all wrong.’

‘C’mon, Molly, we’ve got to go.’

I gently take her by the elbow to get her stand, but she shakes free. ‘They said it would flood just enough for a P-stop. That’s all. Nothing more.’

Cameron and I exchange a quick look. He says sharply, ‘Who’s ‘they, sweetheart?’ And brings up his camera to focus on her bedraggled, desperate face.

‘The guys who hired me. The guys who. . .’ she stops as if slapped. Tears fill her eyes. ‘Mr. Sullivan, it’s happening all wrong. I had nothing to do with this part, honest.’

I say, ‘What did you do? C’mon, baby, you can tell us. It’s okay.’

She looks away from me and stares into space, her voice dull and mechanical. ‘I modified the ingress hatch like they asked. I put in the sensors that would. . .’

‘Would what?’

Lewis’s voice surprises me, coming from over my shoulder ‘Sensors that would show false positives on the board, right? Nice job, Molly, real nice. They sure as hell did.’

‘Shut up, Lewis.’ I touch her cheek. ‘These people. . . . they gave you the replacement sensors?’

She nods slightly. ‘All I had to do was install them and make a small adjustment to the program sequence.’

Lewis says, ‘What’d you use?’

Molly says, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘To change the program. How’d they give you the data?’

She looks momentarily dazed. ‘Flash drive.’

‘In and out again, slam, bam, thank you ma’am. Perfect choice.’’

Her voice like a child’s. ‘It was.’

Lewis whistled. ‘Back-doored us with a different program that matched our algorithms, except for the hatch sequence. That takes a lot of firepower. These guys aren’t Vegas geezers. They’re major players.’

Max joins us, still bedraggled, but eyes bright, focused, ready for anything. ‘But how does this explain the broken handle on the load hatch? It is in my shipyard that this cowardly act must have been committed. It is impossible to accomplish anywhere else.’

‘What’d I just say?’ Lewis says, ‘A bunch of A-Team bad guys dreamed this up and then pulled it off.’

‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘We’ll sort this out later.’

‘If there is a later,’ Lewis snaps.

‘What do you mean?’

‘They sold Molly on giving us a
Titanic
with its ass stuck in the air. That’s an embarrassment we can fix. But a
Titanic
that sinks and kills the folks running it? That’s a disaster, and that’s what the bad guys had in mind all along.’

‘We’ll never find out who,’ I say.

‘Wrong again, as usual.’ Lewis darts over to one of the consoles, shoulders aside one of the techs, keys a quick sequence of codes, to which the computer screen erupts with an explosion of impenetrable data. ‘No matter how many pairs of gloves you wear, you always leave traces.’

‘You can find these guys?’

‘Eventually. For now I just want their fingerprints – the basic program architecture they used to highjack us.’

Molly says, ‘If it helps, I can tell you who I talked with.’

‘Forget that part, kid,’ Lewis say. ‘Gimme’ some clues here.’

He and Molly began tossing computer programming terms back and forth like ‘run-type values,’ ‘parse trees’ and ‘identifiers.’

A sudden commotion by one of the console banks near the wall; techs looking down and backing away as if seeing a snake. But worse.

‘Water’s coming in!’

I grab Lewis by the shoulder. ‘C’mon let’s go!’

‘Hang on, hang on – GOT it!’

‘It won’t matter if we don’t get out.’ I cup my hands and shout, ‘ABANDON SHIP!’

I turn and collide with Bobby the cameraman, who’s been weaving in and around us during Molly’s amazing confession. Cameron stands beside him.

I say, ‘Don’t you ever quit?’

‘Do you?’

‘No.’

To Bobby, ‘Keep shooting and watch out for Mattie, he’s in your shot.’ Then to me; ‘How’re we getting out of Dodge without a lifeboat?’

‘Maintenance walkway. Along the ride track.’

‘Hey.’ He looks around in alarm. ‘You notice something weird? The way everything is. . .’

‘We’re thirty-five degrees down by the bow, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Yeah, yeah, funny thing, after all this time I just realized it.’

‘It’s called sinking.’

Like a panicky Pied Piper I lead my ride techs on the maintenance walkways alongside the ride rails. Lewis takes up the rear to watch out for stragglers. Except for the increasing down angle of the sinking ship, the first part of our escape is uneventful as we weave our way through the
Boat Deck
scene and the
Wireless Room
scene, now brightly lit by work lights that show the hidden projection screens and props. With the steadily decreasing function of computer control, all traces of theatrical drama are gone, revealing in their stead, the illusions they always were.

Instead of following the ride track down to the
Engineering Room
scene, I climb toward the
Boat Deck
Scene. Just before we arrive, the work lights flicker once, twice, then go out, wrapping us in a velvet curtain of pitch darkness. Cries of alarm, of calm, and then silence as the pale green, luminescent emergency lighting comes on.

Lewis calls out from behind. ‘Ride Bridge must be gone.’

Cameron shouts. ‘Go Low-light!’

A laconic, ‘Already there,’ from Bobby, followed by a cheerful, ‘Great stuff, sir,’ from Mattie.

I shout, ‘Everybody listen up. Use your flashlight app if you got one.’

A swarm of LED fireflies erupt as the team add the light from their smartphones to the sickly green. But it isn’t much help. Even with the extra illumination the way forward is murky; every conceivable surface plane is painted ultra-flat black so as not to distract the riders from the unfolding scene. Proof of this comes seconds later when I crack my head on an invisible reinforcing girder.

‘Heads up,’ I shout. ‘Overhang dead ahead.’

The team passes my warning down the line like someone in a mosh pit. Their young voices, brisk and focused, hold enough panic and fear in them to make me move faster. But it isn’t easy. A faraway creaking sound, then a POP as something deep in the heart of the ride gives way. The noise is so ominous that at first I don’t hear the other sounds coming from ahead. But then I do. Faint at first, then louder and louder.