Virus (10 page)

“Please, God, don’t let us find any bodies,” said Squeaky, and as they started down the stairwell, Steve wondered about that.

Where
are
the bodies? And if the whole crew was slaughtered, who took the lifeboats?

None of it made sense. They reached the bottom of the first flight and started down the next, Steve finally giving voice to his unease as they moved through the quiet blackness.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this; it just doesn’t add up, Russian vessel sittin’ out here, no crew . . . Why would they abandon ship?”

He paused, then decided to ask outright. “Squeak, who do you think we can trust?”

Squeaky had obviously already given it some thought. “Forget the captain. Woods is wound so tight you couldn’t pull a pin outta his ass with a tractor. Richie looks like a waste case, but I gotta admit—he’s sharp, man, like a fox. He’ll be there if we need him. Hiko, I can’t tell yet, Foster’s good.”

Steve frowned. “How do you mean?”

“She’s solid. On the level.” There was a pause, and Squeaky’s voice had taken on a lighter note when he spoke again.

“What’d you
think
I meant? Like, do I find her—attractive?”

Steve was suddenly glad that it was so dark. “Do you?”

He could hear the grin in his partner’s voice. “Sure, I’d go for it. Can’t say I’d mind slipping into those waters, she’s one hot piece . . . How ’bout you?”

“Hadn’t really thought about it.”

Squeaky chuckled. “Yeah,
right,
hadn’t really thought about it . . .”

Steve’s light hit on a deck chart at the bottom of the flight, mounted to the wall. They were low enough for the chart to be relevant. He hurried down the last few steps, eager to get off the topic of Foster.

A quick study of the cryptic chart and Steve pointed to a blocked area in the mass of lines and squares. “The engine room should be here. One deck down.”

He saw Squeaky nod in the reflected light and then they were moving again, down the empty stairwell to the engine level.

They picked up the pace as they reached the E deck, on more familiar ground now as they passed a small maintenance room filled with various machine parts and tools. Steve paused to look over their spare sets, and Squeaky checked the next room, a few feet ahead.

“Over here!”

Steve caught up and their beams joined at the main turbine that dominated the engine room. There were at least two other smaller generators, but there was no doubt which was the biggie; she was a beauty, an immense cylindrical machine that put every boat they’d ever worked to shame. The
Volkov
engineers must have been proud, and it appeared undamaged.

Steve hurried over, found the fuel boost pump, and primed it for action. He pressed the starter button and then scowled; nothing.

He turned his light towards his partner, talking fast. “Okay, let’s hustle, Squeak. We gotta be facing into the wind when the storm hits. If we’re in a typhoon without power to the rudder, we’re dead.”

Squeaky nodded and then smiled suddenly. He reached for the wiring harness, holding up the cut cords under Steve’s flashlight.

Jesus, could that be all?

It was almost too good to be true, but it also seemed to be the only thing out of order. Squeaky started reconnecting the sliced cords with practiced ease as Steve moved around the massive turbine, checking switches and opening panels.

Everything was fine, no apparent damage to anything he could see. The saboteur obviously didn’t know much about engines, had only severed a few connecting wires that could be fixed in minutes. It was better than they could have hoped.

“Almost done,” said Squeaky, and Steve moved back to the starter as his partner connected the last wire, twisting the fibers together and pulling down the rubber sheath.

“Try it now.”

Steve pressed the button and the rotor spun into action, filled the room with the rising hum of a well-maintained, powerful engine. Lights flickered on and he and Squeaky grinned at each other, squinting at the sudden brightness.

The
Volkov
had power.

The bridge suddenly surged to activity, undamaged monitors and instruments blinking on, consoles clicking and fans revving, overhead lights snapping away the gloom.

Everton smiled, feeling the
Volkov
come to life all around them. There was movement by the door and a video surveillance camera rose on its mount and swiveled in his direction.

“That’s more like it,” he said, glad that he’d had the foresight to hire such competent engineers. The bridge felt different suddenly, had gone from a dead room on a dead ship to the center of power for a sophisticated vessel; he could actually hear the decks beneath his feet switch on, the hum of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment reactivating—

—and there was a sound rising above the surging hum, like nothing he’d ever heard before—a strange, high-pitched squeal that seemed to grow in strength, swelling up from somewhere deep in the ship. Like a bird, screaming, like the howl of a machine in pain. Or rage . . .

What the devil—

Everton looked at Foster as the sound surged into the bridge, watched her cover her ears as the bizarre squeal became deafening, overwhelming—and then stopped, cut off abruptly as if it had never been.

“What the hell was that?” Foster asked, but Everton ignored her; obviously some damaged circuitry somewhere. The return of power had overloaded it and it had burnt out. An unusual sound, but no great mystery.

And apparently that’s too vast a concept for our navigator to comprehend; what a surprise.

Everton picked up his walkie-talkie and clicked it on. “Good job, Baker. We’re lit up like a pinball machine.”

Baker didn’t answer him directly, but he heard the engineer speak to his partner with the transmit button held. “Let’s get the main engines running—” He cut off.

Everton walked to the port windows and looked down on the
Sea Star
as it moved into position to push the
Volkov’s
bow. Everything was going smoothly, perfectly—even the fog had thinned a bit. Richie had thrown down a line to Hiko and was directing Woods over the walkie while the Maori tied the hawser to the towing bit, just as they’d been ordered; Baker and his man had performed admirably, quickly. Foster, who had done nothing but poke at a few circuit boards and then declare the radio transmitter broken, was at least keeping her rather large mouth shut; he supposed it was the best he could hope for from her . . .

There was a rhythmic clicking hum from one of the consoles and Everton turned, wondering if the girl had actually managed to do something useful after all—but she was still digging through the charts, nowhere near the three screens that had booted themselves up in the center of the room.

She glanced at him, frowning, and walked across to the console. He joined her, not sure why he suddenly felt a bit—uncomfortable. The computers hadn’t been on when the power had come back, he was sure of it. Now they were flipping through lines of data like slot machines, running through their programs at lightning speed.

“What the hell is going on?” Everton mumbled. The Cyrillic letters flashed past rapidly, almost as if the computers were searching for something.

Foster pressed a few buttons on the computer’s keyboard, but nothing happened, at least that Everton could tell. He looked around the bridge absently and then back at the screens.

“Someone else is running this,” said Foster nervously.

Everton frowned. “Looks like it’s running itself.”

“Computers don’t run themselves,” she said, and started tapping keys again.

Letters and numbers raced across the monitors, and Everton felt a cold fist tighten in his gut as they stopped suddenly, fixing on an icon of an anchor. The symbol blinked red, and Foster punched at more keys in desperation, accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Damn it, what now?
Everton turned back to the windows, angry and suddenly quite nervous. Everything had been going so well—

—and he held his breath at the sound of heavy chain rattling outside, a sound he shouldn’t,
couldn’t
be hearing. Because the
Volkov’s
anchor was directly above the
Sea Star’s
position.

Richie held the walkie-talkie loosely and looked down on Hiko, standing on the deck of the
Star
and watching solemnly as the tug pushed the massive ship’s bow into the direction of the coming wind. He was thinking idly about what a Maori would do with three million dollars; more tatts? Maybe there was a panel of tribal elders who decided shit like that, took money and passed it out to the peasants or something . . .

Whatever. Richie had already started making plans; he was gonna set himself up good. He was gonna buy a new car, a Lamborghini, the kind you couldn’t get in the States. He was gonna get a big ol’ house in the Caribbean with a private beach and find one of those smiling island beauties to spend some time with, a nice girl with a tight body and big tits. They were gonna spend all day on the beach drinking and getting high and watching the waves, all night screwing their brains out on silk sheets—

There was a heavy rattling and Richie felt his brain freeze suddenly, even as he jerked his gaze down to the anchor well. He knew that sound.

No—

Time stretched and slowed, the next few seconds horribly clear, Richie helpless to stop it. He could only watch in dumb surprise as Hiko looked up, directly beneath the rattle of chain, his cool expression melting into one of shock and fear—

—as the
Volkov’s
anchor, seven to eight tons of iron and chain, let go of its mount and plummeted down.

• 10 •

F
oster looked away from the obstinate machine, frustrated and upset—and heard a tremendous, booming crash, her fears confirmed as Richie yelled from out on deck in panic.

“Fuck! Fuck—!”

His voice suddenly blared into the room over their walkies, high and breathless. “Emergency on main deck! The anchor hit the tug! Ripped a hole right through her!”

Everton pushed past her and they both ran for the door, hurrying out onto the deck and racing across to the port side. The captain shouted into his walkie as he ran.

“Baker! Baker, did you copy? Get up here!”

“Copy, I’m on my way—”

Foster rushed to the side and looked down, saw in a split second that the damage was irreparable. The
Sea Star
was going down fast, stern first, water spurting up through the gaping hole in the deck.

Hiko!

The Maori staggered across the tilting deck, blood pouring from a wound in his leg. Foster realized that he must have been almost right under the anchor; a thick, jagged chunk of wood decking had been driven deep into his right leg.

Hiko stopped, gripped the wood with a shaking hand, and pulled it out, face contorted in pain. He dropped the bloody, eight-inch shard to the deck and struggled on, trying to reach the railing.

Richie had grabbed a life preserver and marker, tossing them overboard even as Hiko collapsed to the deck, clutching his leg weakly. Foster looked around desperately, but there was only the one, the other preservers gone to the storm or the Russian crew.

Woods suddenly appeared from the
Sea Star’s
bridge, his face pale with terror. The helmsman saw the floating preserver and seemed to fix on it. He ran, stumbling across the slanting deck—and racing right past Hiko.

Hiko raised himself up, calling after him. “Woods, I can’t make it! Where you goin’? Come back here, goddamn it—”

Woods didn’t seem to hear him, didn’t even pause, eyes wild and desperate. He dove off the sinking tug and struck out for the preserver, leaving Hiko behind.

Foster paced, searched for a place to dive in, but the angle was wrong, too close, she’d land on the sinking boat and break her neck. The anchor chain snapped from its eye suddenly, the heavy chain plunging to the deck and pushing the
Sea Star
down even faster.

She turned, started to run towards the fore—

—and saw Steve sprint out from the entry to below deck and run across to the
Volkov’s
railing.