Plague Ship

by Clive Cussler

  “And just what do you think you’re doing, mate?” The guard spoke with a thick cockney accent.

  With the helmet on and his ears ringing from so much time spent in the duct, Max saw the guard’s lips moving but couldn’t hear the words. As soon as he moved to pull his helmet off, their fingers tightened on the triggers. One guard stepped back to cover his partner, who tore the helmet away. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Hiya, fellas, I’m Dusty Pipes from the Acme Chimney Sweep Company.”

  CHAPTER 36

  "IT’S MAX!” HALI CRIED, AS SOON AS HE SAW THE guards haul a figure wearing a silver suit out of the exhaust vent.

  Juan snapped around to look at George Adams. “Last resort. Let’s go!”

  The chopper pilot threw a toggle on his console that put the aerial drone into a mile-wide circle. It would maintain that pattern until someone took over the controls or it ran out of fuel. He swung the camera so it pointed directly at the dock and hit a button so it would track, to keep the dock in frame. “Giddy-up.”

  Cabrillo launched himself across the room, heading for a stairwell to the aft deck, the long-legged Adams barely keeping pace. Juan’s mouth was set in a tight line, but his body was loose and relaxed. He was wearing black fatigues, with one of the flex-screen panels sewn onto a sleeve. He carried a pair of FNs, Five-seveNs, in kidney holsters, and another two slung from his hips. With the chopper’s stability in question, he wasn’t going to risk anyone else on a flight, so he purposefully overloaded himself with weapons. In his thigh pockets were four stick magazines for the Heckler and Koch MP-5 machine pistol already stowed in the Robinson.

  “How’d he do it, ya wonder?” George said.

  “I keep telling everyone, he’s a crafty one.” Juan turned on his combat radio. “Comm check. Do you read?”

  “Right here,” Hali replied.

  “Helm, Wepps, do you copy?”

  The man and woman manning the weapons station and the ship’s helm control responded immediately.

  “Wepps, I want you to take over control of the drone from your console and fire up its laser designator. I’m going to use its camera to call out targets. When I laze ’em, open fire with the one-twenty.”

  The Oregon’s fire control was nearly as sophisticated as the Aegis battle space computer aboard a Navy cruiser. The small laser in the chin of the drone would light up a target, the computer could automatically calculate its exact GPS coordinates, raise or lower the ship’s 120mm cannon, and send any number of types of rounds downrange.

  “We need to close in on the island. Helm is taking us in now.”

  Juan activated his flex-screen panel. He could see Max still sprawled on the dock, but it wouldn’t be long before they tossed him in the back of the pickup truck and drove him to the bunker.

  With the Oregon pounding through the sea at flank speed, the wind across the deck was like a hurricane. Juan and George raced to the Robinson, where crewmen were holding open Adams’s door. Juan’s had been removed. They had caught a break. The engine had just been shut down, so when George fired it up again he could immediately engage the transmission and start the rotor spinning. Only after the blades were turning did he pull on a headset and strap himself in.

  “Helm, this is Gomez. We’re ready to fly. Decelerate now.”

  The Oregon’s pump jets cut out immediately, and then they were fired in reverse. It looked as though a torpedo had struck the bow when a gush of water exploded from the front end of the ship’s drive tubes, as she went into an emergency stop. While most vessels her size needed miles to come to rest, the Oregon’s revolutionary propulsion system gave her the braking ability of a sports car.

  When an electronic anemometer, placed on one corner of the elevator platform, indicated the wind speed had dropped to twenty miles per hour, George fed the chopper power and lifted off the deck.

  “We’re clear,” he radioed as the skids whizzed over the stern rail.

  The propulsors were reversed once again, and the Oregon began to accelerate back up to flank speed. The maneuver had been so well timed that they lost less than a minute.

  “Well done,” Juan said.

  “They say practice makes perfect. ’Course, I always believed starting out perfect never hurt.”

  Cabrillo grinned. “Ego, thy name is Gomez.”

  “Chairman, this is Wepps. Computer says the one-twenty will be in range in eight minutes.”

  “Fire off a triple salvo of flares,” Juan ordered. “Let Max know the cavalry’s coming.” He turned to George. “What’s our ETA?”

  “I didn’t file a flight plan or anything. I don’t know, five minutes maybe.”

  Juan had synchronized his digital combat watch with the master countdown for the Orbital Ballistic Projectile’s impact. He had fifty-five minutes to rescue Max and get the Oregon out of the danger zone.

  "ON YOUR FEET,” the English guard snapped, and when Hanley was slow to cooperate he was kicked in the hip.

  Max held out his hands like a supplicant. “Take it easy, boys. You got me fair and square. I’m not going anywhere. Let me just get this tank off and get out of this suit.”

  Had he been thinking clearer, Max realized he should have rolled into the water. The suit was airtight, and the weight of the oxygen cylinder would have made him sink like a stone. Something out to sea caught his attention. He squinted into the setting sun and saw a tiny white orb hovering next to it. Another burst just below. And then a third.

  If a hunter is ever lost in the woods, the internationally recognized call is to fire three evenly spaced rounds to attract search parties. The flares weren’t a distress call from a ship in trouble; it was Juan telling him the Oregon was here to rescue him.

  He had never given up hope, so he really wasn’t that surprised, but it took effort to keep a smug look off his face.

  Max slowly shed the heavy tank and peeled off the tattered remains of his thermal-insulation suits. While the front of the outermost suit remained shiny silver, the back was blackened by heat and soot.

  One of the guards was on his walkie-talkie, getting orders from a superior.

  “Nigel, Mr. Severance wants to see this bloke right away. They’re going to open the outer doors only when we arrive.” He poked Max in the back with his gun. “Move it.”

  Max took a halting step and collapsed onto the dock. “I can’t go on. My leg’s all cramped from crawling out here. I can’t feel it.” He clutched his knee with the theatrics of a soccer player hoping to draw a foul on an opponent.

  The guard named Nigel fired a single bullet into the dock inches from Max’s head. “There. Bet it isn’t so cramped now, eh?”

  Max got the message and hoisted himself to his feet. He made a show of limping ahead of them as they started for shore, and when he slowed too much for their taste he was shoved in the back.

  The black Robinson helicopter suddenly thundered around the headland like a raptor chasing prey and dove straight for the dock. George kept the nose down so the blades chewed the air a few feet above the timber jetty. Max was already on his stomach from the push and was joined by the guards, throwing themselves flat, as the chopper roared overhead.

  Gunmen in observation posts on both cliff tops overlooking the beach opened fire, but Adams danced the helo like a boxer avoiding a jab. The men didn’t have tracer rounds, so they couldn’t correct in time to hit the bird.

  “We’ve got to wait until they get him off the beach,” Juan said. “They’ll kill us with that cross fire.”

  With shadows lengthening, the only way to spot the guards patrolling the beach was by the muzzle flash of their automatic weapons, as they added their weight of fire to the melee.

  On the dock, each guard grabbed one of Max’s arms and dragged him toward shore, trusting their partners in the guardhouse and along the beach to keep the helicopter at bay. Max tried to fight them, but after the ordeal he’d been through his struggles were ineffective.

  RACING OVER GREENLAND
like a vengeful demon, the Soviet Orbital Ballistic Projectile satellite was going through the last of its systems checks as it prepared to launch one of its eighteen-hundred-pound tungsten rods. Inside the external case, the telephone-pole-sized projectile had been spun up to a thousand RPMs to give it stability for when it hit the atmosphere. The targeting computer, archaic by today’s standards but more than sufficient for the task, waited, with single-minded focus, as the satellite hurtled toward the proper coordinates.

  A tiny burst of compressed gas vented from one of its maneuvering rockets when it detected the need for a minute course correction. The cover over the launch tube slowly peeled open, like the petals of a flower, and, for the first time in its life, the tungsten core was exposed to the vacuum of space.

  It continued to streak over the earth, as the planet rotated below it, every second bringing it closer to its firing position with no regard to the drama playing out below.

  "CHAIRMAN, WEPPS,” Juan heard over his tactical radio. “We are in range.”

  “Lay an antipersonnel round on the eastern cliff,” Cabrillo ordered.

  Eight miles out to sea, the autofeeder for the L44 selected the desired round from stores and rammed it into the cannon’s breach. The gun was located in the Oregon’s bow, in a hidden redoubt, giving it a nearly one-hundred-and-eighty-degree traverse when its carriage was fully extended. The outside doors had already been lowered and the barrel run out. Deep inside the ship, the targeting computer recognized the laser pip beamed at the top of the cliff by the drone and instantly calculated its position relative to the cannon. The barrel came up to the right elevation, and, when the bow rose on a wave, the big gun bellowed.

  The computer was so accurate, it fired an instant early to account for the microseconds it took for the round to leave the barrel and the distance the earth would rotate while the projectile was in flight.

  Ten seconds after leaving the gun, the shell split open, releasing a metal storm of hardened pellets that hit the top of the cliff like a massive shotgun blast. Clouds of dust exploded off the cliff, and somewhere within the choking pall were the minced remains of the two Responsivist guards.

  “Nice shot,” Juan called. “Now the west.”

  The men carrying Max dropped him when the headland disintegrated, and he scrambled to his feet to start running. He only managed a few steps before he was hit by a flying tackle and smeared into the rough asphalt road. Cursing incoherently, a guard clubbed him in the back of the head, and, for a moment, it was as if the sun had been snuffed out. Max fought the curtain of darkness and willed himself to remain conscious.

  A second explosion rolled across the beach as another round detonated. It hit just below the snipers’ den and did nothing more than pock the stone with a thousand tiny pits.

  “I know, I know,” Wepps called, and, twelve seconds later, the western cliff was obliterated.

  The guards threw Max into the back of a pickup, the one pressing Max’s head to the floorboard with a submachine gun while Nigel jumped behind the wheel. They had gone no more than fifty feet when the guardhouse took a direct hit from a high-explosive shell. The corrugated-metal building blew apart at the seams, blossoming with orange fire like a deadly rose. The concussion rocked the pickup forward, and, for a moment, Nigel lost control, but he fought the wheel and kept on the road.

  The two guards remaining on the beach must have thought a retreat had been called, because they hopped onto their ATVs and chased after the pickup.

  George swung the Robinson around and came up behind the three vehicles, keeping to their right to give Juan a clear line of sight.

  “Wepps, lay in an AP directly in the road ahead of that truck and keep firing ahead of them to keep them slowed.” The reply was lost in a staccato burst as Cabrillo opened up with his HK.

  The ATV driver he’d targeted swerved but kept going. Juan was an expert shot, but firing from a moving chopper at a moving target was next to impossible. The guy fired back, one-handed, and the stream of bullets came close enough to the chopper that George had to momentarily break off the chase.

  The road a hundred feet ahead of the hurtling pickup suddenly vanished, as the depleted uranium core of an armor-piercing round slammed into the earth. Juan had specifically called for AP, because any other projectile in their arsenal would have torn the truck to shreds.

  The driver slammed the brakes and cranked the wheel hard over. The road lay in a shallow defile, and the tires spun as he tried to claw the vehicle out.

  Cabrillo saw his chance. “George, now!”

  The pilot spun the helo and dove after the pickup. The guard holding Max went to raise his weapon, but Max kicked at him, forcing him to contend with his prisoner. With no time to ram a fresh magazine into his machine pistol, Juan tossed it into the back of the chopper and pulled off his safety harness.

  Dust kicked up by the whirling blades partially obscured Juan’s target, but he could see well enough, as George dropped their airspeed to match the pickup’s as it neared the crest of the hill.

  Juan didn’t hesitate. He leapt when they were ten feet above the truck. The second guard had pounded on the pickup’s roof to warn Nigel as soon as he saw a figure leaning out of the helicopter and Nigel turned the wheel.

  Cabrillo landed on the edge of the pickup’s bed, and as his knees bent to absorb the brutal impact, the momentum of the pickup’s turn started throwing him bodily out of the vehicle. He scrambled to grab the guard but couldn’t, and he just managed to snag his fingers over the bed as he tumbled back. His legs were left dragging against the ground as he attempted to pull himself back into the truck.

  The guard’s leering face suddenly loomed above him. Cabrillo let go with his right hand to draw one of his automatic pistols but wasn’t fast enough. He had his hand on the weapon when the guard punched the tips of Juan’s left fingers so hard that they opened automatically.

  Cabrillo hit the ground hard and rolled with the impact, tucking his body into a ball to protect his head. He came to a stop as the pickup reached the top of the hill and started accelerating away.

  He got to his feet with a curse, a bump to the back of his neck leaving him momentarily stunned. He shook cobwebs from his mind and looked skyward to wave George in to pick him up. Flying up from the road came the two ATVs, their drivers needing both hands on the handlebars to keep the vehicles steady on the hill’s rocky surface.

  The range was extreme, but he couldn’t risk them opening up at him with their automatic weapons. Juan drew the two Five-seveNs from the hip holsters and laid down a barrage at the driver coming up on the right. The guns barked as he torched off twenty rounds in less than six seconds. Eight of the rounds hit the guard, pulping his internal organs and blowing away half his skull.

  Cabrillo dropped the two smoking pistols, drew his second pair from behind his back, and started blasting again even before the corpse of the first guards tumbled off the quad bike.

  The remaining guard drove with one hand, as he reached for the AK-47 slung over his back. He kept charging, even with the air around him coming alive with bullets. He managed to get off a few shots before he took his first hit, a glancing shot that carved a trench through his outer thigh. He fired again, but it was as though his target didn’t care.

  Juan didn’t flinch as rounds whipped past him. He calmly kept firing until he found his mark. Two rounds triggered in the time it takes to blink hit the rider in the throat, the kinetic impact tearing the last remaining bits of tendon and sinew so that his head fell off the stump of his neck. The ATV continued climbing the hill, like a modern version of Washington Irving’s headless horseman. When it reached Cabrillo, he lashed out with his foot to kick the body off the saddle seat. The dead fingers still gripping the throttle released, and the machine slowed to an idle.

  Cabrillo jumped aboard and took off after Max, hitting the crest of the hill so fast he caught air. The truck had gained a quarter mile on him, but when another armor-piercing sabot round blasted t
he rock ahead of it the driver veered sharply and gave Juan a chance to cut his lead.

  CHAPTER 37

  MARK MURPHY HAD NEVER FELT WORSE. HIS NOSE was red and painful to touch, but he kept having to blow it, so it felt like it would never heal. To make things worse, he was a serial sneezer. If he did it once, he’d do it four or five times in a row. His head felt stuffed to the bursting point, and every breath sounded like there were marbles rattling in his chest.

  If there was one thought to give him comfort, it was that misery loves company, because nearly everyone on the Golden Sky was in a similar condition. Linda Ross’s symptoms were only slightly less severe than his, but she hadn’t escaped the viral infection that swept the ship like wildfire. Every few seconds, she’d shiver with a bout of chills. Most every passenger remained huddled in their cabin, while the galley pumped out gallons of chicken soup and the medical staff passed around handfuls of cold tablets.

  They were alone in the library, sitting opposite each other, and holding books on their laps in the off chance anyone wandered in. Both had tossed wads of used tissues on the nearest coffee table.

  “I now understand why they chose to release the virus on a cruise ship.”

  “Why?”

  “Look at us. For one thing, we’re basically trapped here like rats, stewing in our own juices. Everybody gets exposed and remains exposed until they catch the bug. Second, there’s only a doctor and a nurse. With everyone getting sick at the same time, they’re overwhelmed. If these terrorists hit a city, there are plenty of hospitals to help and therefore much less exposure time for people to infect others. An outbreak could be isolated and the victims quarantined pretty quickly.”

  “That’s a good point,” she said idly, too miserable to become engaged in conversation.

  A few minutes later, Murph said, “Let’s go over it one more time.”

  “Mark, please, we’ve done it a thousand times already. It isn’t the air-conditioning or water systems, it’s not in the food or anywhere else we’ve checked and double-checked. It’s going to take a team of engineers, tearing this tub apart piece by piece, to find the disbursal device.”