The Black River (The Complete Adrift Trilogy)

by K. R. Griffiths

  Vega doubted that Phillips, Saunders or Ferguson had ever seen any meaningful action during their careers, and if things went sour down on deck three, they would probably be little help. He would have to direct them every step of the way.

  Still, they would have to suffice. Even if this turned out to be nothing, Vega would need backup. The ship logged every opening of the weapons locker, and there would be paperwork, and questions asked.

  The weapons locker in his office held three more pistols identical to the one he now wore like a glove at his ribs. The pistols represented the sum total of the firearms aboard the Oceanus.

  Vega felt a trill of excitement coursing through him. As soon as the team arrived, all four weapons would be making their way down to deck three.

  To enemy territory.

  Just like old times.

  *

  "Uh, it's Katie, right? Do you know what's going on? Can I leave?"

  Katie glanced at Dan and shook her head slightly, before returning her attention to Steven Vega’s office, and Dan flushed.

  Just go, for fuck's sake, he thought. Stop asking for permission like a child.

  Dan stood rooted to the spot. His feet, apparently, were having ideas of their own, and refused to respond to his increasingly frantic pleas that they should transport him away from the security suite as fast as possible.

  He followed Katie's gaze, and saw Mr Vega striding to the doorway of his office. Dan's eyes immediately fell on the gun.

  Oh.

  Shit.

  "You stay here, Mr Bellamy. We're not done."

  Vega's words felt like a clenched fist driven into Dan's stomach.

  "Katie, make sure Mr Bellamy does not leave before I return. We'll need a statement from him."

  Dan turned to stare at Katie, wide-eyed. He saw his own surprise and confusion mirrored in her gaze.

  "Uh, Mr Vega? What's going on?" Katie asked hesitantly.

  "You saw the tape," Vega said flatly. "We've got hostiles on board."

  Hostiles? Dan thought. Vega had a way of choosing words that set off all sorts of alarms in his head.

  Katie opened her mouth to say something—which Dan hoped was going to be can't we all just calm down for a moment?—but before she could utter a word, the door to their left opened and three men wearing security uniforms walked in. Vega immediately told the men to arm themselves, and Dan and Katie watched in mute astonishment as the group stepped into Vega's office and pulled on holsters identical to the one Vega wore so proudly.

  "We've got a situation on deck three," Vega said brusquely. "Potential murder, and at least two hostiles. Could be armed, so stay behind me, and follow my lead, got it?"

  The three men looked like they wanted to ask questions, but the expression on Steven Vega's face said he wouldn't be answering. He turned on his heel and strode to the door that exited to the passenger areas, and the three armed men followed him silently, exchanging glances that Dan thought clearly said what the fuck?

  The door swung closed behind them, leaving Dan standing in a dull office space that suddenly felt vacuum-packed and airless.

  "Okay," he said finally, concerned to hear the trembling in his tone. "I think I'm going to go back to my cabin now. You know where to find me, and—"

  Katie placed a hand on Dan's chest, and he flinched visibly. He felt his cheeks redden.

  "Just stay here, Mr Bellamy," Katie said. "I don't know what's happening, but I can tell you one thing: right here is the safest place on the ship right now. I'm sure this will all be sorted out before you know it."

  Dan blinked at her.

  "Right here hasn't felt safe since the minute I first walked through the doors," he said.

  Katie smiled politely, and said nothing.

  She must have thought he was joking.

  *

  The security suite was at the base of the superstructure toward the Oceanus' expansive fore, several decks directly below the bridge, and a couple of levels above the park that was the natural landmark by which to navigate around the ship.

  Twelve elevator shafts ran down through the ship like pillars, each glass-fronted and offering a spectacular view of the park as they descended down past the decks that held the cabins. The two decks that rose immediately above the park consisted mainly of dining areas: the Oceanus catered to virtually every taste, and no less than twenty restaurants offered everything from hot dogs and pizza to Michelin-starred haute cuisine.

  Below the decks, below the park, the elevator would drop past the ice rink, the casino and nightclub; the health spa, the video arcade and aquatheatre. On those decks the glass walls of the elevator were a little less impressive, mainly offering a view of corridors and distant entertainment areas. To counter that, the lift moved very slowly, giving the occupants ample time to see what was available on each deck.

  The decks around the park teemed with life, despite the fact that the ship was only at half-capacity. As the last of the sun's light filtered through the gathering clouds overhead, the Oceanus became a neon playground, a floating city of warm lights and heady excitement. The entertainment would be starting soon: a range of live comedy and music, theatre productions and the latest movies on show at the cinema on the lowest of the passenger decks.

  Steven Vega ignored the view beyond the glass as the elevator dropped agonisingly slowly. All his senses were focused inward, on the frantic thrumming of his nerves.

  Alongside him, Saunders, Phillips and Ferguson stood in uncomfortable silence. He had briefed them on what they were walking into, and had once more repeated that they should follow his lead before turning his mind to concentrating on the task ahead.

  There were at least two killers on board. Quite possibly armed.

  Vega felt a distant pang of guilt when he realised that he sort of hoped they would be armed.

  He was oblivious to the discomfort of the three men travelling with him. Oblivious to the way they registered the eager excitement that radiated from every pore in Vega's body, and did their best to focus impassively on the windows, and the slowly descending view.

  Outside, the park was still just about visible. The elevator—plush and accommodating—was not built for responding to an emergency.

  There were a couple of service elevators toward the middle of the ship, and Vega cursed himself for not walking to them. Those elevators were all about function rather than style: wide boxes of metal that ferried staff from deck to deck with far greater speed than their glass counterparts.

  He hadn't wanted to walk through the throngs of passengers while armed, and so had commandeered the closest of the public elevators. In his haste to see some action, he hadn't thought through the options.

  As he watched the view scrolling past the glass inch by inch, he found himself cursing the decision.

  A sign, Vega supposed, that he was getting rusty; that the boredom of civilian life was grinding something away from him. Less than a year since he'd been in active service, and already some of his sharpness felt like it had been worn smooth. He would have considered all the options out in the desert, because failure to do so would very likely get him and his team killed.

  At least, he thought, choosing the wrong elevator simply meant moving more slowly, not people ending up dead. After all, there was virtually no chance of that happening on a cruise ship.

  12

  "Is it ready?"

  "Yep. Are you?"

  "Shut up, Herb."

  Mark was lying flat on his belly, listening to the words of a group of men—at least three, maybe more—who were gathered in one of the larger junction boxes that connected the various parts of the Climate Control Centre. He couldn't see them; not quite, but a vent a few feet ahead of him would offer him a view.

  He crawled toward it, sliding on his belly like a snake, doing his best to make no noise. Occasionally the thin metal beneath him creaked a little, but in the abdomen of the ship, the engine was much louder than on the passenger decks, and he thought the ever-
present rumble would cover any low-level noise he made.

  He inched forward, listening intently.

  His pulse thundered in his ears. The hunch he'd had, that the men were not supposed to be there, was feeling more and more like accurate intuition with each passing second.

  Who the fuck are these guys?

  "Phil? Seb?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, everything looks ready, Ed."

  "What time do you all make it?"

  Three voices answered almost simultaneously.

  "Seven twenty-seven."

  "Sun's setting. There will still be light for another half hour or so."

  "Not much, though."

  "So...shall we do it now, Ed? We're in international waters. Have been for a least a couple of hours."

  "Just hold on. I'm thinking."

  "Thinking that maybe this is all a terrible idea?"

  "Shut up, Herb."

  Mark slithered forward, and finally a little of the room beyond the vent hovered into view.

  He saw four men, all wearing maintenance uniforms that he recognised as belonging aboard the Oceanus. Engineering staff, he thought, though he couldn't be absolutely sure. Most of the uniforms the staff aboard the ship wore were nearly identical, with only small insignias on the chest and tiny variations in colour differentiating between officers or maintenance or entertainment staff.

  There was something off about the men, though, and it took Mark a few seconds to work out what it was: they all looked alike; their facial features similar enough that Mark was certain they had to be related, and were most probably brothers.

  Mark didn't know all the people who worked on the ship, not even close, but he thought he would have been aware of four brothers working among the staff. It was the kind of odd detail that stuck in the mind.

  What was really strange, though, was what the men were doing: the four of them were sweaty and oil-stained, and surrounded by tools that were casually strewn across the floor around their feet. Through the narrow slit in the vent, Mark saw wrenches and screwdrivers, and even something that appeared to be a welding torch. It looked like they had been hard at work on building something. That something, Mark thought, could only be the strange device that sat on the floor between them.

  It was metallic, roughly the size of a large suitcase, and Mark didn't have the first idea what it was. What he did know was that despite its mechanical appearance, it was not part of the Climate Control Centre. The air conditioning unit behind the men looked untouched. Judging by the tools and the dishevelled, weary state of the four men, the strange object looked like something that they had only just constructed.

  He waited a moment, until one of the men moved aside and gave him a clearer view. Mark focused on the device, and felt clammy fear grip his mind.

  A large cylinder formed the bulk of the machine, surrounded by lots of exposed wiring and circuitry, wrapped in a skeletal metallic casing that looked to have been hastily welded together. It was ugly and functional; definitely not in keeping with the Oceanus. There was only one thing it could possibly be.

  A bomb.

  Mark hadn't seen a bomb in his life, but he'd seen plenty of them in the movies, and the exposed wires particularly brought back memories of frantic races to cut the correct wire before the timer ticked to zero and killed the star. Mark couldn't see a timer, but once he saw the wires, bomb was all he could see.

  In a world gripped by fear of terrorism, there was no way to get such a device aboard a cruise ship. The days of minimal security were long gone, even on a boat that expected to play host to wealthy people who planned only to spend weeks lazing by a pool and drinking champagne.

  The men had circumvented the security checks at the terminus by building the bomb once the Oceanus was at sea.

  Terrorists, Mark thought dimly.

  His mind raced. He carried no weapon other than the heavy flashlight, and all of the men looked physically imposing. All were surrounded by tools that could easily become weapons if the need arose.

  Fighting the men was not an option, yet still it was the urge that came to Mark’s mind first, despite the fact that he had not inherited what his father called the Ledger family’s talent for violence.

  His father had taught Mark never to run; never to back down from a confrontation, and that virtually any problem could be solved by swinging fists at it until it went away. But then, Mark’s father had been a violent drunkard, living on faded memories of his time as a semi-successful boxer. The only useful lesson he had ever taught Mark was how to throw a punch, but Mark could never forget the disappointment in Paul the hammer Ledger’s eyes when it became clear that learning how to step into a swing, how to drive from the hips to increase power and how to follow an uppercut with a well-timed hook held no interest for his only son.

  Still, some relic of those days spent in his father’s garage as a kid, working the heavy bag with his puny arms and trying to stave off endless boredom came back to him; a genetically-coded response to threat. Somehow, the old bastard's programming was still in him somewhere; the urge to fight.

  Mark dismissed the idea. In a four-to-one battle in a confined space, he would have no chance.

  That left only one option. The one Mark’s father would never have taken. Mark had to get the hell out of there. Get back to the security suite and somehow persuade Steven Vega that there were terrorists aboard.

  He just had to hope that the words he had heard the men speaking meant that they were not planning to detonate the bomb immediately.

  They said half an hour, didn't they? That's plenty of time to reach Vega and get some backup.

  And some firepower.

  Mark reasoned that there had to be a timer, and that the men had to plan to escape the Oceanus somehow before they detonated the weapon.

  Unless they're suicide bombers.

  Suddenly, the fact that the four men were obviously related terrified Mark. He imagined a group of children being raised by some monster, their young lives darkened and poisoned until they were capable of carrying out unspeakable atrocities. Capable, even, of sacrificing themselves in the name of some twisted cause that Mark would never understand.

  Get the fuck out of here.

  Wincing at the soft creaking of the metal beneath him, Mark began to awkwardly shift himself backwards in the vent, grateful that the distant rumbling of the engine drowned out the noise he was making.

  The men wouldn't hear him, and as he eased away from the vent and back into the shadows, he knew they wouldn't be able to see him, either.

  No problem. Just move fast, and move quiet.

  Mark shuffled back a little further, until the men disappeared from his sight. Once he was clear of the vent, he began to move through the duct a little more quickly, confident that even if the men heard the noise he was making, they would not be able to see him and would most likely assume it was mechanical.

  It would be okay. The bomb wasn't attached to anything that Mark could see. If worst came to worst, it could be tossed overboard and the Captain could be informed that he should gun the engine and get as far away as possible.

  Mark began to think that despite the sudden, frightening turn his day had taken, everything might just be okay. He had stumbled across the danger with time to defuse it. Hell, even Steven Vega would be proud of him.

  And then the blood in his veins turned to ice as the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt shattered the silence. Static blared, and Vega's voice rang out like an alarm.

  "Ledger, get the fuck away from that deck, and do it—"

  Panicked, Mark fumbled at the radio, finally locating the volume dial, and twisting the noise away into pulsing silence.

  For a heartbeat, he remained frozen in the thick, quiet air, straining his ears and praying that he would hear nothing; praying that the engine was loud enough.

  "Where the fuck did that come from?"

  A whispered hiss reached Mark's ears, floating through the air and into the vent like toxic gas.

&
nbsp; "There's someone here. In the vents."

  Mark grimaced.

  Fuck.

  *

  "I'll go," Herb yelled.

  Edgar wanted to stop it, but it happened too quickly. If he had been able to react in time, he would have grabbed Herb's collar and physically restrained him; would have yelled at his little brother that their work was done, and the authorities finding out that they had intruders on the ship wasn't going to matter now.

  Let whoever was in the vents listen. Let them run for help. By the time it arrived, it would be far too late. The Rennick boys had done the hard part. All that remained now was to push the button and get to the extraction point. They just had to stick to the damned plan.

  But Herb had panicked, and for reasons Edgar didn't think he could possibly understand, had charged from the room, snarling about catching whoever was watching them. Before Edgar could react, Herb was gone, and Phil and Seb were staring at him uncertainly.

  Fucking Herb.

  What Edgar wanted to do—what he absolutely knew that he should do—was arm the device and be done with it. Let Herb pay for his recklessness and his inability to keep a level head. Let him stumble around out there, lost like all the others would be.

  Edgar even found himself reaching for the button, reaching for the moment that had become the whole purpose of his life, the reason they were all there.

  He couldn't press it.

  Herb was blood.

  "Fuck," Edgar roared. "Phil, go after him. Bring him back."

  "What about whoever was in the vents?"

  "Fuck them," Edgar snapped. "They don't matter. In five minutes, I'm setting the damn thing off. If you haven't found Herb in three, get yourself back here. Got it?"