by Chris Howard
Andreden, already on the ground next to Kahley’s bright orange SUV, looked up at Laeina. “That would really make my day.”
He rolled to his stomach, crawling closer to the truck. Behind him there were scuffling noises, someone gasping for breath. When he turned, looking for Laeina, a shadow fell over him. He instinctively dug his shoes into the pavement, kicking his body out of the way, shoving his back against one knobby tire.
Thirty pounds of semi-automatic long-range sniper rifle clattered heavily on the street next to him. It had to be five feet long from stock to the blocky muzzle break, topped with a big scope.
Clawing at the asphalt with one hand, Andreden pushed himself into a sitting position against one of the SUV’s wheels. Laeina was standing beside him, with a man in desert camouflage hanging in the air in front of her. And she didn’t look very happy, her dark hair gathered into three long braids that spiraled and danced as if they were planning to reach out and strangle the man. His boots dangled, spasming a foot off the ground.
Then Laeina said something that made everything else that had just happened seem normal. “You have three people inside you, Mr. Shooter. Three names. Which one am I speaking to now? Are you Tanner Darrow? What is Wolfsbane? Not the plant?”
The gunman said nothing, his face reddening with the strain of fighting an invisible hold Laeina seemed to have him in.
She lowered one hand, gesturing to the earth. Then she curled two fingers in, straightened them, snapped her forefinger and pinky in and out. It looked like some kind of signaling or sign language.
Andreden was about to ask if she wanted something from him, but he clamped his mouth shut at the ground shuddering underneath him.
Crab-like machines oozed up out of the pavement, thirty or forty of them at first, then dozens more crawled in, each about the size of a human hand—black metallic legs clicking against the hard ground, keen, serrated claws snapping open and closed. They scurried from under the surrounding vehicles, pointed legs walking right over Andreden to get to their prey.
The mechanical crabs gathered beneath the boots of the gunman, climbing atop each other, building a growing tower of metal bodies, claws and legs hooking and latching to form a rising structure. In seconds there were enough to reach the cleated soles of the boots, and they hooked on, racing up his legs. Some cut through the camo material in their scramble to the top, others slipped into his pockets, under his tactical vest, curiously inspecting the magazine pouches lined along the front.
The man, mostly immobile in Laeina’s hold, looked down wide-eyed, drool starting to run from his open mouth.
Laeina just watched him shake and struggle and dribble saliva. She brought the man’s face closer to hers, her nose wrinkling as she smelled his breath.
She let him go. “You are no good to me now.”
The gunman sagged away from her but didn’t collapse or fall to the ground. The crab machines held him rigid. Then they slowly, mechanically, folded him into a fetal position and lowered him to the street.
When the gunman’s eyes dropped to Andreden’s level they were open, but there was no life left in them. A pale yellow slick of fluid ran from his mouth and nose, pooling along his chin and dripping to the asphalt.
Dead.
The crabs were swarming all over him, pushing and testing with mandibular claws against his throat, hands, joints at the knees and elbows.
Andreden got to his feet, backing away from the gun, the gunman, the crablike machines, and Laeina. “Did you kill him?”
“Poisoned himself.”
Andreden stared down at the man, somehow reassured by the idea of a sniper assassin trying to kill him with real bullets—made of metals he understood like copper. At least that was part of the real world. People shooting other people really happened. He had even been shot before, several times, but that was a long time ago.
Then Laeina’s toys—hundreds of mechanical arthropods that had simply oozed out of the ground—dissolved back into the pavement, taking the gunman and his gun with them. They took everything: the fired copper-jacketed rounds, every last drop of yellow poison drool.
Laeina looked over at Andreden, gesturing at the empty asphalt. “I will play with him later. To see if I can learn more about his identity and motives.”
A gust of salt air off the bay, and Andreden suddenly felt cold. He folded his arms and sighed. “Are you sure you’re a toymaker?”
Chapter Thirteen
Company
Wilraven ran down the gangway and across Irabarren’s deck, his handset jammed against his jaw. “Paulina. Patch me into the PA system.”
He was shouting into the device in his palm, shutting down the job and ordering everyone to run for cover, when a series of sharp metallic pops rang out above him: automatic weapons fire, bullets hitting the structural members of the cranes and lift towers.
Warning shots, he thought. Put some metal into the air to get our attention and then come alongside and unload a group of guys with guns.
No, thank you. We already have our own, and they’re causing enough trouble.
A small craft came racing by Irabarren’s south side, what looked like a patrol boat, but not from any navy Wilraven had ever seen. The boat was full of men without uniforms, just lots of guns raised threateningly. A couple of guys midships with binoculars and other scanning gear.
Wilraven stopped on his way back toward Marcene to try to get a better look. No flag flying, and there was something rough and undisciplined about it. Cuba had ships and real patrol craft, mostly Russian- or Chinese-made. These guys were amateurs, local sea-bullies or some “independent militia” with powerboats.
More gunshots and screams of alarm behind him. Wilraven turned to see the last of the crane crews scattering and a few holes opening up across the windows of Crane One’s cabin.
Wilraven waited at the top of Marcene’s gangway for the last of Irabarren’s crew to find safety, then ran up the switchbacked set of stairs to the bridge. He kept the ship’s gun, a SIG with a fifteen-round magazine, in the bridge safe for the rare emergency. He’d never had to fire it in the five years he had been captaining the Marcene, and he’d only once had to wave it around as a warning.
Shoving in the magazine, he tucked the gun into the inside pocket of his jacket and was just coming out onto the landing through the starboard door to the bridge when another string of shots popped its way along the upper deck wall and the windows on his side.
Something kicked Wilraven in the shoulder, spun him around and planted him face-first against the bridge door. Then he was on his back, blue sky blurry with clouds, eyes watering, and a burning pain seeping into his upper arm. One hand didn’t want to do much without hurting. Dazed, he reached out his right, gripped one of the two-inch steel pipes of the ship’s railing, and pulled himself up to a kneeling position.
He did a quick examination of his jacket, which now had a fraying hole high on his arm, fingers of fused foam and Gore-tex pasted down as if the bullet had just skimmed him. He wiggled the fingers on his left hand, so he figured the damage couldn’t be too bad. He used his good elbow to brace himself against the railing, clapping a firm hand over his arm because there was something warm and fluid running down to his elbow, pooling in the jacket’s sleeve.
“That can’t be good.” He felt dizzy, almost silly, like on thirty-hour work days with little time for food breaks.
Behind him, the bridge door banged open, and Angelo jumped out. “Saw you run for the Marcene. I was on Irabarren’s far side. Had to wait for the gunboat to make another sweep before it was safe to cross the deck.” He glanced curiously at the way the captain was leaning, one hand clapped to his arm, squeezing. “Holy shit, you’ve been shot.”
Wilraven nodded over his good shoulder to his first. “Not a bad one, apparently, but I’m losing some blood.”
“Come on, let’s get you down to the doc.”
Wilraven released the railing, thinking that was a good idea. The gunboat
was off to the north, but was on its way around for another pass, so it was move now or hunker down for another set of bullet holes in the walls and windows of the bridge.
Wilraven stopped, pulled back against Angelo’s motion. “Wait,” he said quietly, tilting his head toward the railing and down to the landing on the deck below.
Two of the security team, including Goatee Boy, had mounted some gear and were scanning the incoming gunboat with it. They could hear Levesgue’s voice from somewhere, an open handset one of the team carried.
“Countermeasures are on. They’ve done enough shooting. Put them in the dark.”
“Yes, sir,” said the soldier beside Goatee, who was holding what looked like a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. He looked a little older, his squarish head covered with an even stubble of dark brown hair.
Blockhead.
Angelo leaned in, whispered to Wilraven. “A Javelin launcher. The other guy is targeting with the CLU.” Angelo pronounced it like “Clue.”
Wilraven glanced at him, not comprehending the word.
“Command Launch Unit. It’s the targeting system: fire and forget.” Angelo nodded toward the sea, presumably at the gunboat. “They are going to blow it up.”
Wilraven was low on the landing, peering down through the space between the floor and the bottom rail. Goatee had his face in the targeting thing, while Blockhead crawled along the walkway, keeping the launcher low, still hidden from view. He looked back. “Ever sink a ship with one of these?”
“That’s not a ship. It’s a boat with too many pirates in it. And we aren’t going to sink it. We’re going to wipe it out of existence.” Goatee glanced over, signaled something, got a nod back. “Going to seeker.”
Levesgue came over the comm. “Fire when ready, gentlemen. Delete that fucker.”
Apparently there was no need to answer. Blockhead grunted, then said, “Lock, third of the way down the portside, right at the waterline. Do it.”
He braced himself, pivoted forward, put his weight against the Marcene, and brought the launch tube over the rail. “These guys aren’t going to know what hit them.”
He paused a second, maybe to give Levesgue or Goatee one shot at recalling the order, squeezed the trigger and let the Javelin go. The recoil thundered against the ship, a hot blast of air washing up from below.
Wilraven felt a thump like a sledgehammer slamming into the metal run through the deck. Tucking his head down and closing his eyes against the punch of the launch, he heard the deep swoosh as the rocket launched, followed by the thud of impact, and a second thump of an explosion.
Goatee’s voice cut through the roar with, “There goes the fuel, too.”
When his vision cleared, Wilraven tried to find the gunboat. Debris rained down: several large chunks of hull and what was left of the pilothouse, rolling on its side, tossing pieces of burning bodies into the water.
Levesgue’s voice came back with, “Nice work, gentlemen. Stow that gear.”
Angelo helped Wilraven get to his feet, braced the captain against him, and slowly took the stairs to the deck below. They reached the main deck a minute later.
Goatee Boy came around the portside with the CLU, humming “Smoke on the Water.” He saw Wilraven staggering against the first officer, blood running through the fingers gripping his shoulder. The soldier grinned. “Looks like you got tagged, man. Better see the doctor and get patched up.”
He stopped, kept the swagger and grin, but he was looking down at the Glock in the captain’s shaking hand. He stepped in, took the gun in one hand, and twisted it right out of Wilraven’s.
“I’ll take that.”
Wilraven just looked down at his empty hand. He didn’t remember pulling the gun out of the inside pocket, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out why.
Chapter Fourteen
The Sting
Dr. Kozcera cut through Wilraven’s shirt, tearing the sleeve down to the wrist and then through the seam along the shoulder to expose a bloody and fairly ugly surface wound across his arm, peeling back the shirt’s blood-soaked material like a cut-open aluminum can. His sea jacket—now with a hole in the upper arm—had slipped off easily enough, but the doc didn’t want to move the arm any more than he had to.
Feeling light-headed, Wilraven sat at the end of one of the gurneys, leaning back against the wall of the medical station. Over the last year Kozcera had outfitted the “hospital,” a good- sized cabin on Marcene’s main deck, with cabinets full of supplies, some scanning equipment including a fairly modern ultrasound, defib gear, and two full-sized collapsible gurneys lashed to the steel wall railings.
Out on the deck—bolted to it, around the corner from the med station’s door—was the decompression chamber, a large, four-man tank under the awning that covered the back side of Marcene’s superstructure—the forward mass of white-painted walls, three stories of cabins and service rooms, topped with the ship’s bridge.
Wilraven clamped his teeth tight against the pain shooting down his arm, waving Angelo over with the other. “Get the job back on track.” He gasped the words out. “Let me know how the Serina’s sitting on the floor. If she’s intact, work with Adam to get the crawlers down there to run the bags. We need to get those slings tunneled and tied.”
Angelo turned for the door, saying over his shoulder, “Got it, Cap.” He was gone, racing for the gangway to the Irabarren.
Sling bags were long, inflatable bands several meters wide. The crawlers pulled them—collapsed flat—beneath a grounded vessel, and they could then be used to lift the hull, and even inflated from the surface, gently taking a ship from water-heavy to something close to neutral buoyancy. If everything went well, they would have four or six of them cradling the Serina’s hull, and once she was hauled up a ways, they would be pumping in air while the cables running from the big cranes on Irabarren brought the ship to the surface.
Dr. Kozcera leaned over Wilraven, his Polish accent not thick enough to cover the disdain in his voice. “This will not sting even one bit.” He had made it clear that gunshot wounds weren’t his specialty. And if you came in with serious wounds from a shark attack, you’d better just turn around and get back on the menu. He was an experienced researcher and MD, specializing in underwater-related injuries and conditions, treating bent divers, hypothermia, and arterial gas embolisms. He had spent years on platforms in the North Sea and the Baltic.
Just to be clear, he said, “There will be no stinging, but . . . ” He said something more in Polish.
His green-gloved fingers worked the antiseptic gel into the ragged groove the bullet had cut straight along the muscle of the captain’s upper arm.
Wilraven bit his tongue, squeezing out the words, “Holy shit, that hurts.” Glaring at Kozcera, the captain tried to unclamp his teeth to shout something else.
Kozcera just smiled back at him, nodding as if the captain in his stunned silence meant he was agreeing with him. “See, there is no sting. It will hurt like shit, that phrase is what I was looking for. Not just a sting. Very painful.”
Eyes watering, gasping for more air, Wilraven let his head fall back, banging it against the steel wall. “Thanks for the warning, Doc.”
Kozcera spent another couple of minutes wiping away the antiseptic stuff, following that up with a semi-transparent cream that numbed the wound.
“You couldn’t put that one on first?” Wilraven growled the words half-jokingly, but Kozcera ignored him, setting up the suturing tools on a stainless steel tray. Without further words, he ran a line of stitches—he was quick with the needle—closing up the wound, then spent another twenty minutes creating just the right bandage for the captain’s arm, thin enough to not get in the way, but enough padding to protect the wound.
Wilraven eased himself off the gurney. “Thanks, Doc. Feels better already.” He flexed his fingers, made a fist, curled his wrist in and out, and could feel a tightening in his arm, a mild burning feeling that hadn't been there before.
Manage
able.
Kozcera gestured to his arm, handing over a couple of packs of painkillers. “The wound is clean.” He made a scrunched-up calculating face, half-shrugging. “Should not be too much pain. You’re in pain the pills can’t handle, come see me. I will give you something else.”
“Right.” At the door to the med station, Wilraven turned. “Doc? We’re bringing the Serina up to a hundred meters for the dive team’s detail inspection. No problem if I go down?”
“I would not.” Kozcera smiled again with a less convincing shrug. “But you are the diving captain. The sea loves you. So it should not be a problem. Have fun.” He turned away with the tray of needles and suture thread.
Someone, evidently at Angelo’s bidding, had quietly dropped off one of Wilraven’s shirts during the procedure. The captain pulled it on and was grinning back at the doc when he left the med station, sliding on his jacket with the knot of pale lining at the shoulder sticking out like some weird insignia.
He wanted to talk. First thing he did was to see that there was no sign of Levesgue or the rest of the security detail; then Wilraven met Angelo and DuFour in the middle of Irabarren’s deck. He nodded at the concerned looks on their faces, glancing up to see Dewayne Binman working Crane One’s controls, although it wasn’t easy seeing his face through the half-dollar- sized hole and surrounding snowflake pattern a bullet had left in the cabin’s front window—worryingly right where Dewayne’s head was at the moment.
DuFour looked Wilraven up and down, concerned but clearly happy to see him. “You were shot?”
“Just a flesh wound.” The captain gestured with one hand, doing a vaguely British accent, trying to imitate the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when his arm was cut off. It was one of three old DVDs in Marcene’s galley, and it had been played so much that most of the crew could sing of Brave Sir Robin or do the whole opening scene with the coconuts for hoofbeats from memory.
Then he got serious. “Where’s the Serina?”
Angelo spoke up. “She’s in good shape, intact hull, nothing that looks like damage; she’s resting at a twenty-degree list on a fairly soft sand bank.”
