by By Jon Land
“Steer us around it!” Danielle ordered, the authority clear in her voice.
“Means risking a ride through the shallows.”
“It’s worth it,” Ben said. “Believe me.”
“Just put the gun down,” one of the barge pilots said to the Dragon. “We’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“Just keep moving!” Matabu ordered, a new strategy in mind. “Don’t stop unless I tell you!”
She aimed the pistol she had taken from Timo’s belt at the radio and fired two shots into it.
“Try to leave this pilot house and I will shoot you. Slow this barge and I will shoot you. Do you understand me?”
Both men nodded fearfully.
By the time theSpirit of St. Louis’sbow approached the barge’s stern, Ben and Danielle had armed themselves with the weapons Defense Minister Sukahamin had packed into the duffel bag for them.
“Let’s move,” she signaled, taking charge. “You take the second deck, I’ll take the top.”
Ben squeezed his assault rifle in both hands. “So she can’t shoot us both before one of us gets her.”
“That’s the idea.”
“They’re here!”
Her barge was approaching the Jefferson Barracks Bridge when Latisse Matabu heard the voice in her head warn her once again of the presence of the hawk and the eagle, the Israeli woman and Palestinian man who had somehow escaped death in Sierra Leone. On the Missouri side of the river, beyond the bluffs, the barge was passing a sprawling military cemetery.
Another omen, the Dragon thought.
After killing the soldiers who tried to betray her, the Dragon saw her only hope lay in releasing the Black Death into the river here and now, by herself. She could summon the strength, even if it was the last she could ever muster. Drag as many of the crates as possible from their refrigerated compartments and let the sun thaw out the eggs. They would then hatch almost immediately, freeing the Black Death once she emptied the crates overboard.
Now, though, there was the presence of the hawk and the eagle to consider.
Latisse Matabu’s head pounded again. Nausea threatened to overcome her. The brief illusion of strength was gone.
She needed time to make her new plan work!
She scrabbled forward to the case Dikembe had stowed near the front of the stacked crates, flown to America under the guise of religious materials. She snapped it open and tore aside books and papers until she came to the secret compartment contained beneath them where the Kalashnikov assault rifles were hidden, just as a riverboat angled straight through the shallows for her barge.
Ben stood with his M-16 poised over the deck rail, ready to fire as soon as Matabu reappeared. He caught a flash of motion and tried to trace it when a burst of bullets clanged off the rail and shattered the windows at his back. He lost grip on his rifle and strained to reach for it as it dropped off the side. He hit the deck hard, narrowly avoiding the next barrage that just missed his head.
On the deck above, he could hear Danielle answering the fire with bursts of her own. He remembered the pistol tucked into his belt and yanked it free, instantly more comfortable with a weapon he was familiar with. He tried to sight down on Matabu, but she moved too quickly, dancing and darting across the deck of the barge like a phantom.
Danielle’s fire from the third deck finally pinned the Dragon down. But their riverboat was sliding past the barge too fast, and Ben realized their best, perhaps only, opportunity would be lost.
He made the decision in the next instant, no time to think or plan further. Time only to lift himself over the rail and leap down for the deck of the barge directly beneath him.
The Dragon glimpsed the barge’s pilots trying to flee their posts as soon as the shooting started. She rose, aimed her Kalashnikov, and fired off twin bursts. Her bullets slammed into the men and spilled them off the pilot house ladder to the deck.
Almost instantly the barge, now out of control, listed severely to port, angling toward the blackened river bottoms on the Illinois side of the river. Armies of mosquitoes buzzed the air in droves, welcoming her. The Dragon smiled. Land was what she needed.
She rushed to the back of the barge and emptied the rest of her clip into the trio of compressors. Sparks and smoke burst outward. The power instantly died, deactivating the refrigeration units which kept the temperature inside the holds at a constant forty degrees. Beneath the spill of the Mississippi’s hot sun, that temperature would begin to rise almost instantly and so would the thawing of the Black Death.
The riverboat was past her now, taking the hawk and the eagle with it. Latisse Matabu reached into her pocket for a spare clip and had just snapped it home when the hawk slammed into her.
She landed hard on the deck with the rifle pinned against her chest and the Palestinian man atop her.
* * * *
Chapter 98
R
everse us! Get us back to the barge!” Danielle screamed at Captain Lockridge, shoving her rifle at him.
”We got bigger problems than getting back to that barge,” he said, gesturing out the window.
A massive tow hauling eight oil barges loaded with the tanks that supplied fuel to harbors up and down the Mississippi steamed toward them from down river, blasting its horn.
“He’s got right of way,” Lockridge said. “I don’t yield, and we’re all gonna leave this world in a hurry.”
“Fine.”
“What?
Danielle shoved the rifle at him again. “Just keep going and get me as close to that oil barge as you can!
“That means steering toward the bluffs!”
“That’s right.”
Lockridge’s mouth dropped in shock. “You don’t know this river, ma’am.”
She saw the steel emergency kit tucked into a slot next to the old-fashioned wheel and reached down to open it. “No, but I’m learning.”
Ben had landed hard atop Latisse Matabu. He felt her ribs contract violently, certain a few had snapped like pencils. She carried a carrion stench on her, something rotting away as it died. Her breath was stale and hot, coming in long dry heaves. But she somehow managed to twist and spin up on top of him, raking his eyes with her nails, then tearing at his cheek with her teeth.
The intense pain gave Ben the adrenaline burst he needed to kick her from him. His vision clouded, he was still able to see her scrambling for the rifle she had dropped on impact. Ben lunged onto Matabu’s back before she could reach the rifle and squeezed his fingers into her hair, trying to slam her face into the wet wood. At that instant the barge ran aground on the river’s bottom with a rattling thud and water the color of dirt splashed up on deck.
Matabu uttered a throaty scream and twisted violently, throwing Ben off her. Then she rushed in a crouch to the nearest refrigerated compartment and threw the door open.
“Here we go,” Lockridge called out to Danielle from the pilot house, as the riverboat hugged the shore below the bluffs rimming the Jefferson Military Barracks. “Best I can give you is one shot.”
“Just get me as close as you can.”
Sliding past the bridge, Lockridge managed to brush the starboard side of the Spirit of St. Louis against the aft side of the frontmost oil barge in tow, so all Danielle had to do was leap up onto its raised deck. She landed hard and fell deliberately forward to make sure she didn’t slip off.
The barge’s small crew was oblivious to her presence, all their attention focused on the Illinois side of the river toward the supply barge that had run aground and was perched halfway up the riverbank. Danielle cut between the assortment of tanks, dodging the various thick tubular hoses, as she drew her pistol and chambered a round.
She fired into the air to seize the men’s attention, the crew simultaneously turning to look her way, shocked and stunned.
“Get off! Now!” she screamed at them, brandishing her pistol.
“Huh?” one of them managed.
“Get off! Jump! Swim!” Leveling th
e pistol toward the speaker now, her blazing eyes insisting she would use it.
The men backed off, a series of splashes following soon after. A pair of men remained dumbstruck in the control room, and raced desperately to contact the tow to get it to stop. Danielle ignored them and studied the bilge controls, reaching for the nearest hose at the same time.
The Dragon could feel the temperature in the compartment rising. It might have been her imagination but she felt certain she could already hear the crackle of the awakened troops of the Black Death fighting through the confines of their eggs, free to wreak havoc as soon as the crates were open.
She would let them loose inside here. They would move instinctively toward the light, toward the heat.
Toward food.
Just open the crates and let fate do the rest.
Latisse Matabu moved to the first crate and unlatched it. She raised the top, as a shadow crossed the hold’s doorway.
Ben threw himself against Matabu, impact knocking over the crate and spilling its contents to the hold floor.
Tiny black insects began scampering across the floor, searching for their bearings. Other eggs remained whole, beginning to crack and open in the brief glimpses he caught before Matabu began kicking at him wildly. She slashed a booted foot into his face and he fell, crawling after her when she moved to another crate.
She had gotten that one open, too, when he latched onto her legs and tried to pull her away. She bellowed, shoved him aside, then retreated from the hold back onto the barge’s deck, looking for one of the guns lost in the struggle with the hawk. She caught sight of the Kalashnikov and lurched toward it.
Ben staggered to his feet and wobbled after her. He felt dazed and dizzy. The world was spinning. He tasted his own blood and thought he was going to be sick. The sun burned his wounded eyes when he reemerged into the light.
A huge oil-stained barge drew directly alongside. Ben saw Danielle standing on the edge near the center, holding a black hose in both her hands.
Danielle twisted the nozzle open and felt the resulting pressure turn the hose into a snake in her hands. She held fast, separating her legs for more balance, and watched the stream of black, noxious liquid pour through the end. It shot slightly into the air and carried over onto the supply barge, coating the holds, spreading across the decks in a thick murky film that left a gray residue hanging in the air.
Danielle maintained her grip as long as she could, feeling the heat of the hose singe her palms, until the slowing oil barge slid past its cousin and an enraged Latisse Matabu appeared in the stern, Kalashnikov steadied dead on her.
The Dragon could feel the oil running down her skin in the moment before she fired, the eagle from her dreams directly before her locked in her sights. She caught sight of the hawk rushing her from the side just as she pulled the trigger. Impact sent the shot off enough to miss the Israeli woman.
Matabu tried to right the gun again, but the hawk had hold of her wrists and wouldn’t let go. She struggled with him and her feet slid out from under her, tumbling both of them to the slippery deck. This time it was she who landed on top. Hands on his throat now, squeezing until he died so she could finish her work.
Danielle tore the flare pistol she’d found in the Spirit of St. Louis s emergency box out of her belt and aimed it at the stranded oil-soaked barge. She was ready to fire now, but paused, afraid to shoot off the flare whose flames were certain to capture Ben once the fire caught.
Agonizing over the fact that she would soon be out of the flare gun’s effective range, Danielle leveled the barrel toward the barge and squeezed one eye closed.
Ben caught a glimpse of Danielle well past the grounded barge now, flare pistol in hand. He knew she was going to fire,had to fire, just as he knew there was no way he could break Latisse Matabu’s grasp in time.
So he stopped trying. Rolled sideways across the slick deck surface of the barge, locked in a desperate embrace with Matabu, her hands pressing deeper into his throat, as they slid closer to the port side of the barge that remained perched over the river near the stern.
The Dragon realized his intention at the last moment and tried to pull both of them back. Ben, though, had already fastened his hands to the wrists that were choking the life out of him, refusing to let go. Breath bottle-necking in his throat, he mounted one final surge atop the slippery deck that pitched both of them over the side into the brown, oil-slicked waters of the Mississippi below.
Danielle fired as soon as Ben dipped below the surface. The flare shot out like a rocket, then lost speed as it neared the stranded barge. For a moment it seemed the flare might drop harmlessly into the water, but it continued to sail through the air on direct line with the craft.
The flare struck a section of the barge broadside and sent a red flaming sheet exploding outward, swallowed almost instantly by a burst of flames. A match striking fluid-soaked charcoal multiplied a million times that pushed its heat into Danielle’s face and hair. There was no explosion when the flames caught, the oil fueling the spread of fire that covered the entire barge between breaths while she watched. The fire licked at the water as well, stubbornly clinging to the surface at the same time the flames on the barge spread across the refrigerated holds, certain to incinerate the crates of the Black Death contained within.
Danielle pulled her eyes off the flames, searched the waters for Ben.
No sign of him.
She dove in and swam rapidly toward the shallows already heated by the flaming oil slick.
“Ben!”
She screamed his name futilely, the surface of the water so thick now it was difficult to swim, much less tread on the surface. Black oil coated every inch of her skin and clothing, slowing any motion she tried to make to bring her closer to the flaming barge.
“Ben!” Danielle screamed again as she tried to calculate how long he’d been under, how much air Latisse Matabu might have choked from him before they plunged into the river together.
Danielle heard a popping sound, felt a wave of oily water drench her. She swung and saw Ben gasping for breath just a few feet away. Swam toward him as he writhed and struggled, choking.
Latisse Matabu sank further away from the amber glow of the waters above, the world darkening around her. She felt strangely peaceful, the pain of the disease that had ravaged her body finally receding.
In her mind she saw the Moor Woman swimming toward her, disappointed that her parents, or grandmother, or even her son had not come to greet her in death instead. But none of them would be waiting in the place where Matabu and the Moor Woman belonged. And in that moment she realized there would be no salvation or happiness in death. The same pain she had known in life awaited her, only for eternity.
The Moor Woman continued toward her, extending a hand. And Latisse Matabu reached out to take it before her eyes closed at last.
Danielle, still struggling to hold Ben above the surface amidst the flaming swells, turned toward the sound of a racing engine. A river patrol boat raced straight for them, kicking up a wide foamy froth in its wake, its siren wailing. The boat slowed only at the very last moment when a collision seemed inevitable and cut its engine to idle as it bobbed to a stop alongside them.
Jim Black looked down at Danielle and shook his head. “Man oh man, you really know how to throw a party, don’t you?”
* * * *
Chapter 99
B
lack stretched a hand toward her, revealing the Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistols dangling at his waist in their twin shoulder holsters.
“I thought you were dead,” Danielle said from the water.
“Yeah, well good thing for you and your boyfriend there you were wrong.”
Danielle reached up and felt his powerful grasp close on hers. She had barely struck the deck when Black reached back down and hoisted Ben out of the water.
“Your boyfriend’s cut up pretty bad, but he’ll live,” the cowboy said simply and turned back to Danielle. “Something on your m
ind?”
Danielle raised the Sig Sauer she had plucked from its holster when Black had lowered her on board.
Black smiled. “You gonna give me a chance to draw mine?”
“Go ahead.”
“Nah,” the cowboy grinned. “I think I’ll just see how this plays out.”
Danielle swung the gun round and handed it butt first back to Black. “We’ll just have to finish it another time.”
