Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  • • •

  Ensign Amy Liggett hurried down a passageway, clipboard in hand. Earlier, nearing the end of her overnight watch, she thought she’d been tired. No longer. Adrenaline and the sudden appearance of her commanding officer had erased all traces of sleepiness, but those weren’t the only reasons.

  The crew was using the word zombie. People were attacking and eating one another, and the crew was looking to her for answers she didn’t have.

  Having the captain aboard made things better. The woman was a career veteran who knew her business, and she was gifted with a cool decisiveness Amy could only envy. But then, what of the captain? Crew members had told her they’d seen port security take a man off Klondike in handcuffs and put him in the back of a Humvee, someone a petty officer said he recognized as the captain’s brother. Then the captain had shown up, shot down two guardsmen, and brought the man aboard. Now he was loose on the ship and barking orders.

  It couldn’t be true, could it? Just scuttlebutt, people misunderstanding things amid the chaos. And what was really happening? Zombies? Please! Her little brother back in Virginia was a zombie freak, devouring anything that had to do with the walking dead: books, movies, and video games. It was kid stuff, fun, yes, but not real.

  Now they were at battle stations, leaving Base Seattle with less than a quarter-strength crew. They were unprepared for a cruise of any length in a ship not yet commissioned. They were just now transitioning from builder’s trials to acceptance trials, and the cutter hadn’t yet received its Coast Guard markings. Many of the ship’s systems either hadn’t been fully tested or weren’t working at all. Actual readiness was many months away.

  Amid all the questions and unknowns, there was only one certainty, and that was her fear. Amy had never been so scared in her life.

  “Steady,” she chastised herself. An officer had to be locked down and in control, even when all she wanted to do was cry. “There’ll be none of that,” she growled at the empty corridor, turning a corner toward the armory.

  The door was open.

  She slowed, suddenly wary, and looked inside. The lights were on, illuminating a room that was, as it should have been, mostly empty. To the right stood vacant rifle racks, where the M4s, M14s, and shotguns would be, once they were delivered. Beneath these were numerous empty slots for handguns, the forty-caliber Sigs. Regulations at this point of the trial process authorized only three: one each for the captain, XO, and chief of the boat. There they were, snug in their slots. Spaces for rifle and pistol ammunition were all but empty, again as they should be.

  She looked around. The M240 medium machine guns weren’t due to arrive until just before commissioning, and ammo for the ship’s heavier weapons—what was aboard, anyway—would be secured in the magazine one deck below. Four rail-mounted fifty-caliber heavy machine guns had arrived ahead of schedule, along with their crates of belted ammo, and stood against the far bulkhead.

  Why didn’t things look right? She started counting. One . . . two . . . three . . .

  “Uh-oh,” she whispered.

  • • •

  Liz moved to the front of the bridge, holding the radio handset and still on the Guard channel. “DEA flight zero-three, this is Joshua James. That is a negative, do not attempt to board. We are on a war footing per National Command Authority, and we will enter Puget Sound.”

  The response from the loudspeaker came as if those aboard the helicopter weren’t monitoring the military traffic channel. “Coast Guard Cutter, heave to at once.” The sniper in the helicopter’s door raised his rifle and sighted on the bridge. “Captain Elizabeth Kidd,” the speaker boomed, “you have unlawfully seized a vessel of the United States and are harboring a federal fugitive. Surrender your vessel immediately.”

  Liz gripped the handset so tightly she thought the plastic might crack. “Flight zero-three, do you even know what’s happening at Seattle Base?” It was insane. Everything was coming apart, they were in the middle of a national security crisis, and the DEA was worried about Charlie and Elizabeth Kidd? “Flight zero-three, we are—”

  The sniper fired, the bullet sparking off the steel just above the bridge windows with a loud ping. Liz and the crewmen ducked.

  “This is your last warning,” the loudspeaker blared. “Stop your vessel now.”

  “Cease fire!” Liz shouted into the mic. “Do not—”

  The chopper banked left and roared over the ship toward its stern, flying over Coseboom’s SRP as the officer prepared to come around to the cutter’s boat ramp for recovery. The DEA bird hung in the air, then pivoted to face the ship’s stern, and then four men in black with assault rifles rappelled from its doors, two on each side. All four descended an even twenty-five feet on their lines and hung there in the air.

  On the water, Boomer completed his turn around a ship that was backing toward him. He couldn’t think about helicopters now, or about what the loudspeaker had said about his captain, though all other eyes on the small boat were looking up. He had to concentrate on lining his boat up with the narrow, alleylike gap that was the cutter’s boat ramp.

  Above, the DEA helicopter moved forward, the four men beneath it swinging backward as a group. Seconds later the chopper flared and hovered, a maneuver that now swung the four men forward and low over the flat, eight-by-fifty-foot flight deck, where they would unclip and drop onto the vessel.

  • • •

  Liz dropped the mic and headed for the ladderway on the run. “Mr. Waite has the conn,” she yelled as she disappeared down the metal stairs, leaving command of a vessel nearly as big as a Navy frigate to a midlevel enlisted man. Her boots pounded the steel decking as she ran aft down the passageway. The DEA would board at the flight deck, she knew. Liz had worked enough joint operations with them to know their tactics.

  She had to get there before they boarded, had to reason with them when they arrived, before any of her people could be hurt. Two-thirds of the way along the passage, Amy Liggett charged up a ladderway to the left and started running behind her captain.

  A moment later they both heard the thunder of a heavy machine gun.

  • • •

  At a range of one hundred feet, a storm of fifty-caliber bullets shredded the helicopter’s cockpit, both pilots and the sniper in back. More bullets raked across the fuselage, rotor blades, and engine cowling. The weapon, designed to go up against armored vehicles, knocked the thin-skinned aircraft out of the sky. It crashed into the channel and went down fast. As it fell, the four men still attached to it by rappelling lines were snapped away, their bodies slamming hard against rails and steel protrusions before being dragged beneath the surface by their tethers.

  Still reversing, Joshua James crept past the point where the helicopter had gone under, the surface boiling with bubbles and oil. LCDR Coseboom’s SRP roared up the boat ramp a moment later, and the officer and his small crew immediately began helping the handful of Klondike survivors up onto the deck.

  Elizabeth Kidd and Amy Liggett burst through a hatch and onto the aft deck that sat atop the ship’s twin helicopter hangars, overlooking the flight deck and boat ramp below. Directly ahead of them, Senior Chief Charlie Kidd stood behind an M2 heavy machine gun set in a pintle mount, the deck around him littered with fifty-caliber shell casings. Liz slowed as she reached him, her face revealing her horror.

  “You did do it,” she whispered. She didn’t mean the helicopter.

  Chick turned to his sister, giving her a salute and a lazy smile. “Captain, boarders have been repelled.”

  Liz glared at him, then looked over the side to where pieces of honeycomb rotor blades and other debris were floating to the surface amid a spreading oil slick. “Secure that weapon,” she hissed.

  On the lower deck, Lieutenant Commander Coseboom, half carrying a Klondike survivor, was calling for a medic. “See to that,” Liz said, directing the order at the young en
sign beside her, but still staring at a point in the water where seven men had just lost their lives.

  • • •

  The bridge was quiet when she returned, QM2 Waite calmly giving orders to the helmsman as Joshua James finished backing into the Duwamish Waterway, preparing to engage forward propulsion. The enlisted man glanced at his commanding officer, who was standing off to the side, hands on her hips and looking up at the bulkhead above the bridge’s front windows. Despite her presence on the bridge, his command of the conn had not yet been relieved, so he ordered a course that would take them northwest into Puget Sound, calling for seven knots.

  Liz stared at the bold, black letters stenciled above the windows, stark against the white bulkhead. Honor. Respect. Devotion to Duty. The Coast Guard’s core values. Then she looked out the starboard side, thinking about what she had seen and done in Admiral Whelan’s office, about the DEA helicopter and its loudspeaker, and once again seeing her brother leaning on a smoking machine gun.

  Her entire adult life had been dedicated to her country, her crew, and saving lives. Now, in the course of a morning, Captain Elizabeth Kidd had broken out a federal prisoner, fired upon and killed agents of a sovereign nation, and unlawfully seized an American military vessel: all acts of aggression against her own country.

  The word for that was traitor.

  “Mr. Waite, advance to flank speed and keep us clear of that destroyer to the north,” she ordered. As she looked out at the gray surface beyond the bow of her cutter, she thought about how quickly things and people could change, and wondered at what new changes lay ahead.

  FOUR

  January 12—San Francisco Bay

  Father Xavier Church worked the heavy bag, slowly circling on the balls of his feet, throwing punches in combinations. He had already skipped rope until sweat plastered his shirt to his broad back, and twenty minutes on the speed bag had the muscles in his arms and shoulders burning. Soon he would begin running laps around Nimitz’s flight deck.

  He worked the bag harder than usual, fists slamming into the leather and dense padding with thumps that could be heard all the way across the gym. He was worried, and feared for the friends who had lifted off from the flight deck in Vladimir’s Black Hawk only yesterday: Angie, Skye, and Carney. He prayed for their safe return from Chico, prayed they would find Angie’s family safe and whole. Yet he couldn’t help but think that their chances would have been better had he gone with them.

  In his middle forties, Xavier’s dark brown face was a graphic example of man’s capacity for violence. A scar split his visage down the center, from hairline to chin, and a trio of pale claw marks gouged one cheek. Behind the damage were dark eyes that were both watchful and weary with responsibility. Taking Nimitz from the dead had come at a substantial cost; friends had been lost and children orphaned. Xavier felt the absence of every life.

  His fists hammered the bag, and he blinked away sweat as he struck, still dancing in a circle. He threw a powerful combination to the center and then a roundhouse high on the bag, hits that would have put a heavyweight on the canvas. Xavier winced as the grenade fragment deep in his thigh twitched, but he gritted his teeth and worked through the pain. Doc had managed to remove all of the other pieces of metal, and now only the one remained, too deep to reach without risking nerve and tissue damage. She hoped movement and time would work the piece closer to the surface, where she could get at it with a simple incision. Doc said it would be a painful process, and she had been right.

  A balanced diet from the aircraft carrier’s galley, combined with an exhausting and disciplined workout regimen, had returned the priest to fighting shape, hardening the wide V-shape of his boxer’s physique. He still limped after exercising, or if he overdid the walking when he was out with the hunting parties, searching out the dead in the carrier’s miles of passageways, but it couldn’t be helped. There was always so much to do, and Xavier wouldn’t allow himself to be slowed down.

  He gave the bag a final, powerful hit, then crossed the mat to where a towel was draped over the back of a chair. A pump shotgun leaned there as well. Xavier mopped his head and face, then hung the towel around his neck. He was tightening his shoelaces when a man walked into the gym.

  Calvin was older than Xavier by about ten years, but now he looked senior by at least twenty. A gray ponytail hung down his back, and he was dressed in jeans and boots. A sleeveless leather vest revealed lean, muscled arms. The man had ten days of gray stubble on his drawn face, and the lines at the corners of his eyes, put there by sun and laughter, had deepened from grief. He looked pale, and his eyes no longer gleamed with mirth. Calvin carried an assault rifle, a big knife, and a woman’s wedding ring hung from a thong around his neck.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Father,” he said.

  Xavier finished tying his shoes and stood. It had been only two days since he last saw Calvin, but he was nonetheless startled by the man’s appearance. He looked washed out. “Are you feeling well, Cal? Getting enough sleep?”

  The man shrugged but didn’t reply. He tapped a legal pad he was holding. “I wanted to give you some updates. I can come back if you’re busy.”

  Xavier frowned. Even the man’s voice was diminished, no longer booming and gregarious, and he now spoke only of business, never about his family. Xavier would see him moving quietly through compartments and passageways, usually alone and rarely speaking, tending to the needs of those on board; ensuring they were fed, properly quartered, had enough clothing, and were staying healthy. The only thing he seemed to speak about with any passion these days was his constant reminder to remain watchful and stay out of the unsecured areas of the ship.

  He’d lost his wife and brother within hours of one another, followed by more than half the members of his traveling hippie family during the taking of Nimitz. Like Xavier, he bore the weight of that, but in his case, it had devoured him. Ghost was the word that came to Xavier’s mind when he saw his friend. Pale, silent, lacking any spark of life.

  “Grab a seat,” Xavier said, indicating the chair.

  Calvin didn’t take it. “I won’t be long.” He looked at his pad. “Yesterday’s hunt bagged four drifters down in engineering. No casualties. Chief Liebs thinks they’re coming in from the bow.”

  Xavier’s frown deepened. It was something he and the chief had discussed at length, both of them frustrated by the lack of a solution. The aircraft carrier’s forward decks remained a nest of zombies, mostly in the lower areas. The survivors had tried to contain them, but Nimitz was a rabbit warren of passageways, ducts, and connecting compartments, and somehow the dead were slipping into the rest of the ship. Not in great numbers, he conceded, but even one of them in a supposedly secure area could be disastrous. The only way they would ever be safe was by hunting down every last walking corpse, and that was a task not without peril, especially in the bow.

  “The doc reported a slip on a ladderway that caused a twisted ankle, and one bump on the head that needed stitches.”

  “Knee knocker?” the priest asked. Calvin nodded. Knee knockers were the oval-shaped openings for hatches in corridors and compartments, designed to strengthen the ship’s overall structure. The lower portion rose six inches above the floor, while the arched top was lowered, requiring ducking. Passing through them at any speed required timing and kept Rosa in practice with her needle and thread. Both men had visited her for such injuries, angry at their own clumsiness.

  “How is Maya?” Xavier asked, interested in her health, but more interested in getting Calvin to speak about his family.

  “She says the pregnancy is normal and on schedule,” the hippie leader replied, speaking as if Maya were a stranger and not his firstborn.

  Xavier tried again and smiled. “You’re going to be a grandfather. How’s it feel?”

  Instead of answering, Calvin began a terse, bullet-point report on food supplies, fresh water levels, the status of repai
rs for various ship’s systems, an overview of training as everyone learned new skills, and the usual no results in regard to their attempts to reach the outside world with the aircraft carrier’s communication gear. He spoke of crop conditions. Last fall, Vladimir had set his Black Hawk down in the parking lot of a Berkeley garden center, and an army of hippies had raided the place for seeds, tools, fertilizer, and bags of potting soil. A small farm was created on the hangar deck, close to one of the aircraft elevators so it could get sunlight. The winter crop was surviving. Many on board were hoping they would find some goats or even a couple of cows out there, and sling them under the chopper for the ride home. Xavier grinned every time he pictured a dairy cow clopping through a space that had once held jet fighters.

  Calvin wrapped up his report by stating there had been no excitement to speak of, just another couple of routine days for the survivors on Nimitz. It was just the way the priest liked it.

  “Cal,” Xavier said, his voice soft, “we can talk any time.”

  “I know.”

  “About anything. If you’re feeling . . .”

  The hippie raised a hand and gave his friend a gentle smile, but his eyes warned him off the topic. They had been here before.

  The priest nodded. “You know where to find me.”

  Calvin left without another word, departing as silently as he had arrived.

  • • •

  Xavier’s sneakers thumped on the rubberized coating of the flight deck as he ran, a Windbreaker zipped up to his neck with U.S. Navy across the back. It was California, but it was still January, and a chill wind was pushing in from the bay, giving him resistance as he ran. There were no aircraft up here, of course, nothing to interfere with his circuit of the deck’s perimeter. He was alone, the only other person in sight a single lookout high on a superstructure catwalk, bundled against the wind.