Sundowner 01
F-A 18 Aircraft
400 Miles Southeast of Miami
6:23 am
The radio squawked. “Sundowner Zero One, do you have radar contact with the target vessel?”
“Affirmative, Top Hat, radar contact.”
“Copy, Sundowner. Cleared hot to attack.”
“Top Hat, be advised that we have what appears to be a lifeboat three hundred yards from the target ship. Do you want us to take care of that as well?”
“Negative. I’ll drop a helicopter on that.”
Lifeboat
6:23 a.m.
Jakjak’s arms still cradled Lars Paulissen. The hard fall had jarred the Captain’s bruises and broken bones. He was moaning from the pain.
Jakjak looked out the window. They had gotten away, so far. The lifeboat was powered by a heavy electric motor that drove the little craft forward at three miles an hour. The swishing sounds of the propeller filled the stuffy interior of the little pod, and then suddenly Jakjak saw a flash through the porthole. There were three, near-simultaneous explosions, so close that the lifeboat rocked hard and flipped on its side.
The two men fell against the wall of the lifeboat. They shivered as they braced themselves for more explosions. A few seconds later, another barrage of Harpoon missiles from the American fighters exploded on the Ana Brigette. The lifeboat rocked again and righted itself.
Ignoring his pain, Lars got up on his knees to look out the window. His beloved Ana Brigette was engulfed in flames.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Aboard the Royal Princess
Miami Harbor
6:23 a.m.
I LOOKED AT KEYES. “No time for explanations. I’m certain the nuclear bomb is on this boat. We’re headed for the heart of the city.”
Three sirens blared from the direction of the Coast Guard station. The gunfire had alerted them. Then came the sound of jet fighters, followed almost immediately by a loud explosion within a half-mile of us.
Keyes steadied herself on her shaky legs and said, “You are absolutely right. That was a conventional weapon, fired from the Ana Brigette. The nuke is on this boat.”
Another explosion went off, but like the other one, it was no where near the American Airlines Arena. The missiles had landed in the opposite direction, behind us.
“We’ve got seven minutes.”
“It’s got to be in the front cabin, Farok’s master bedroom.”
“Go.”
I was surprised at the improvement in those “paralyzed legs” of hers. The adrenaline had taken over.
We ran to the front of the ship. Keyes stopped. “It’s gone!”
“What? Where?”
“The fore cabin. It used to be there,” she said, pointing to a blank wall with no door, no windows, and a half dozen framed seascape paintings hanging on it.
I ran to the wall and struck it with my gun. It was hollow. I stepped back and then threw my body forward and the thin plywood collapsed, exposing the locked cabin door.
“Careful,” she said. “There’ll be explosives.”
I broke the door lock and opened the door. The huge luxury bedroom had been greatly altered. All the furniture and cabinets had been removed. The room was now filled to the brim with fifty-gallon drums bearing bio-hazard labels.
A horrified look came over Keyes’ face as she took in the spectacle of thousands of gallons of biotoxin, all clustered around a thick, steel cylinder in the center. It looked like something from Hell. “Oh my God. Farok, you insane motherfucker. It’s a dirty bomb. It’s not a nuke. The whole thing’s been a ruse. He’s figured how to get everybody to look the other way while he sneaks in and parks this thing next to the Pope’s Mass ... and blows this shit all over everywhere.”
“Good God.”
“The wind will pick it up and spread it all over Miami within a day. It’ll kill every human, dog, cat, bird, goat—you name it—in its path.”
“We’re here, now, so what do we do?”
“That’s the detonator,” she said.
It was an impressive-looking silver canister, the size of a fifty-gallon drum, secured in a wood cradle next to what was obviously the bomb.
Keyes inspected detonator. “I gotta have some tools. Right now. To begin with, I need a Phillips screwdriver. I also need a pair of wire snips, the smaller the better. Go.”
I took off running to the engine room, grabbed everything I could grab in ten seconds, and sprinted back to Keyes.
She began by removing the heavy screws from the detonator’s casing. She spoke without looking up. “Farok’s put a lot of thought into this. This whole unit may be booby-trapped to keep someone like us from doing just what we’re about to do.”
“So you’ve done this before.”
“Can’t tell you all my secrets.”
With the panel off, she looked at the complex wiring. I looked at my watch. “Six minutes.”
“Don’t do that. It’ll take as long as it takes, no matter what time it is.”
I kept quiet, but kept looking at the watch.
Aboard the Royal Princess
6:25 a.m.
The Royal Princess leaped forward, accelerating rapidly. The sudden motion threw me and Keyes backward, knocking the screwdriver from her hand. I retrieved it for her.
Is someone else on board, or is the Royal Princess being controlled remotely from another vessel?
We had barely accommodated the forward motion when we heard jets, gunfire, and boat engines in the water, about a hundred yards away.
Keyes steadied herself to her task. I spoke to her, but all her attention was on the bomb and on adjusting her hands to the speeding boat.
There was a lot of activity outside the Royal Princess. Several Coast Guard sirens were coming toward us on the water. We heard a helicopter make a low-level pass. I knew they were going to attack the yacht any moment now. I could hear my heart thumping in my chest. Keyes’ hands were deftly twisting the screwdriver into a deep hole between two wires. She was in a world of her own, a world she knew.
Suddenly machine gun fire erupted from a dozen guns on two boats. They were flanking us on one side. There was another burst of heavy machine gun fire and the whole yacht vibrated. They were shooting at the engine room and the pilothouse. Then we heard the distinct roar of two jets coming in. “If they fire their missiles,” Keyes said, “Farok won’t need a FUCKING DETONATOR!”
The jets roared overhead without firing. I started to get up to go on deck to try to signal them to stop, but Keyes said, calmly, “Help me.”
Keyes had determined which screws to work on, but they were in a bad place, too far in and too tightly screwed. The screwdriver couldn’t turn them.
I leaned in to the detonator and placed my thumb and index fingers around her hand and grabbed the screwdriver.
“Clockwise,” she said.
On my first attempt, my fingers slipped off the handle. I wiped the sweat from my hand and took the screwdriver from her. I squeezed as hard as I could and turned. It didn’t yield. I moved my index finger down a quarter of an inch. This time, I had leverage, and the screw began to move.
“Half a turn only,” Keyes said.
I twisted my entire wrist to complete the half-turn.
“Stop! That’s good.”
Aboard the Royal Princess
6:27 a.m.
Two helicopters were roaring directly above the boat, but the shooting had stopped. We could hear the two flanking boats, close beside us now.
Three minutes. For God’s sake, don’t shoot missiles at us.
Keyes put her face near the opening of the panel and studied the interior of the casing carefully. She inserted the screwdriver, couldn’t get it to turn, and again asked for my help.
I put my thumb and
index finger, bent at the first joint, on the screwdriver and twisted.
“Just a half-turn,” she whispered.
As I moved the screw, one of the boats outside barged up against our side. The yacht trembled and my hand slipped
“Careful Scott! Godammit!” Keyes blurted.
I reached back in, grasped the screwdriver handle in my hand, and turned the screw nearly a full turn. Keyes looked in and said, “Back a half-turn.”
Again the Coast Guard came alongside, but this time all we heard was a rubbing sound. They were going to board. They’d obviously decided against blowing up the boat. Overhead, we heard the clump, clump of men jumping aboard.
Aboard the Royal Princess
6:29 a.m.
“Hurry,” I said, “they’re going to come in shooting.”
Keyes frantically searched through a jumble of wires and circuit boards.
She placed her right hand on one of the circuit boards and tugged lightly. It didn’t budge.
We could hear the boarding party searching the boat. The sounds of frantic men were everywhere, running down hallways in heavy boots and kicking in doors. I looked at my watch: Thirty seconds to go. Sweat dripped down my face. I thought to start shouting to let them know we were friendlies, when Keyes said, “I see it!”
The door to the cabin burst open and three riflemen charged in. I jumped up to shield Keyes. “WE’RE DEFUSING A BOMB!” I shouted. My hands were in the air and I was screaming, “WE’RE DEFUSING A BOMB! WE’RE DEFUSING A BOMB!”
The lead rifleman reacted by pointing his gun in my face, then down at Keyes, then in every direction.
“WE’RE DEFUSING A BOMB!”
The three men crouched for a moment, aiming their rifles at us. My chest was heaving from the shouting and sweat was pouring out of me. There was dead silence in the room. I swallowed and then slowly lowered my hand to look at my watch. “Fourteen seconds,” I said.
“Oh fuck,” a coast guardsman whispered.
Keyes gently shook a circuit board inside the detonator, and tugged it. Nobody moved as she slowly lifted the component from the bomb.
I looked at my watch. Keyes stood up and dangled the circuit board from her fingers.
My mouth was completely dry from dehydration and screaming. I tried clearing my throat, but all I could manage was a scratchy whisper: “Will that do it?”
“Only if there’s no override, Scott. Only if this is the one thing Farok hasn’t thought of. I did what I could in seven minutes.” She looked at me and her eyes turned red. A tear ran down her cheek. “Time’s up.”
Funny how a few seconds can seem like an eternity. A bomb detonates quicker than human nerves can transmit the pain of the impact. The pain relay gets interrupted before the brain receives the signal, so there is no pain, and by the time the vision of the blast goes from the eyes to the occipital lobe for interpretation, the brain has been destroyed and with it the visual record of the blast. There is neither hurting nor sensory perception of the explosion. Just moving from the state of awareness to nothing. Nothing at all.
I swallowed again, and whispered in my raspy voice: “Five, four, three, two ... ”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Aboard the Royal Princess
Miami Harbor, Florida
6:31 a.m.
I heard Keyes’ voice. “Open up, Captain Courageous.”
I opened my eyes, not realizing I’d closed them in anticipation of the explosion. Keyes was standing in front of me. The bomb was still there, and the ship was intact. The coast guardsmen were now joined by half-a-dozen others. I sat down for a minute. “We’re friendlies,” I said to the growing group of confused boarders. “I assure you, we’re friendlies.”
Aboard the Royal Princess
6:44 a.m.
Keyes was weak but walking upright. The guardsmen led us to the aft deck, where the team leader introduced himself as Lieutenant Commander Anthony Johnson.
Dozens of Coast Guard and military vessels were patrolling the entire smoke-covered inlet. Jet fighters and helicopters were flying everywhere. I was amazed to see the American Airlines Arena just a hundred
yards away. Hundreds of police cars and firetrucks were parked everywhere, lights flashing.
Commander Johnson pointed to the throngs of people around the building, all looking at us. “This yacht’s navigation system was programmed to crash the boat through the barriers and hit land at precisely 6:30, when the Pope’s Mass was scheduled to begin.”
I nodded, looking out on the harmless-looking Royal Princess: “Nobody would suspect a luxury yacht in Miami harbor. They’d concentrate on the missiles and the nukes.”
Keyes asked to sit down. She looked tired.
The officers took us to the main salon.
After they’d left, she pulled out a wad of folded papers from her pocket. “Look what I found.”
“What is all this?”
“Paperwork for Coast Guard and Customs clearance for entry into the US. Farok took every step to ensure this boat was not stopped before it delivered the bomb to Miami. It lists you as boat owner and operator. They even have a valid-looking passport for me, even though I’m supposedly on a do-not-enter status with the US.”
“Farok must have friends in high places at Immigration.”
“Scary, isn’t it?” she said. “And they couldn’t have stolen my passport; I’ve never had one.”
I looked at her passport. In the photograph, she was wearing the same dress she’d worn on the Ana Brigette.
I looked at my passport. The photo in it was of me dressed in the fisherman’s shirt I’d bought in Miragoâne.
“I told you, Farok is clever,” she said. “But the boat registration for the Royal Princess citing you as the owner is also here. That means you actually own this yacht.”
“A lot of good that does me. I couldn’t afford the diesel fuel to drive it around the bay or the dock rental for a single day.”
“Look, here’s the Advance Notice of Arrival form, filed ninety-six hours ago. It shows the destination as this exact Miami dock,” she said. “This paper listing you and me as passengers on this boat was sent in four days ago. Did you know four days ago you’d be here?”
“No, I didn’t. But I guess it doesn’t matter. This was all done to make us look authentic. That’s why he didn’t want to hurt us or even make bruises. He wanted us to look healthy and normal in case the Coast Guard boarded. Between us looking normal and the fact that the explosions were going off in another part of the port, he figured we’d slip in unscathed.”
“And if they boarded, they wouldn’t see the bomb.” She stopped and thought. “But the zombie stuff ... That had to be an improvisation.”
“No. As zombies, we’d have been submissive to all that was done in his grand finale. And totally cooperative if the Coast Guard boarded and searched for contraband.”
She sat up and opened her eyes wide. “The money to Sanfia! It went to her a week ago!”
“The last piece of the puzzle: This was all planned well ahead of time. There was no last-minute fabrication.”
“That makes sense,” Keyes said. “But he couldn’t have known the Pope would get sick and spend extra days in Miami.”
I scratched my chin as I thought. And then it came to me. “Farok’s men talked about planning the attack around the Pope’s visit last Wednesday. How could Farok have known then that the Pope would be too sick to travel on Friday? He was perfectly fine on Wednesday. That means one thing: Farok has a spy in the Pope’s inner circle.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Aboard the Royal Princess
Miami Harbor, Florida
6:48 am
COMMANDER JOHNSON’S MEN BROUGHT coffee to Keyes and me. As I took my first sip, we heard the sound of helicopters and a heavy jolt as one of them land
ed on the stern of the Royal Princess.
I went out on deck to see what was happening. It was a party of HAZMAT technicians dressed in white plastic suits and thick face visors.
The leader of the group walked up and said in a nasty tone, “Where’s the bomb?”
“It went off at 6:30.”
He reached out and grabbed my shirt. “Cut the crap, wise guy.”
“Okay, okay,” I said hoarsely. “It’s in the fore cabin, but you guys are twenty minutes late.”
He pushed me aside and led the charge to the front cabin. I walked behind the group, and as we reached the room, the leader stopped and held his hand back. “Wow! What a load.” He twisted his head to the side as he spoke into a microphone on the side of his helmet. “Get as many HAZMAT people out here as you can, ASAP. ”
The helicopter that delivered the HAZMAT team lifted away, and a second helicopter landed in its place.
EPILOGUE
THE POSTAL SERVICE DELIVERED a copy of the Jackson City Daily Chronicle. There was a front-page article about me and my work on the Ana Brigette in Haiti. It occupied most of the front page and showed a photograph of me doing surgery on the hospital ship ... before it was destroyed by missiles. It nicely failed to mention that the missiles had been fired by US Navy jets. The article also told of my annual charitable work in Cartersville, West Virginia, and at the mental facility in Raleigh, North Carolina. It didn’t mention the loss of my medical license and the fight against ISIS in North Carolina or that I’d whipped Farok—again—in Haiti.
I don’t like a lot of publicity, which most doctors do, but it was a nice article. When I returned as Hospital Administrator in a couple weeks, it would be positive for my medical career, however long I could keep that job.
The Zombie Game Page 21
