by Chris Howard
Andreden just tightened his grip on the man’s shirt and said, “You like eels?”
He stopped and pulled the man to his feet, glancing back at Laeina. “They are a longer term affair, but yes, I have eels.”
So the blue-faceted popcorn thing was short term? He released the manager in the suit, grabbing his shoulders to turn him to face Laeina directly. She already had a bundle of slippery, wriggling animals in one hand, waving Andreden away with the other. Her fingers opened, and the slender animals twisted and spiraled to their target. The manager’s mouth dropped open, hands starting to come up to fend off the eels. Too slow. They wrapped his wrists, circled his legs, slipping under his skin above his socks, under the collar and cuffs of his wrinkled white shirt. The man gave them one squeak of terror before his expression went slack.
Laeina moved closer, her voice gentle. “Now, tell us your name.”
“Brant Secrist.”
“And what do you do here, Brant?”
He waved up and down the hall. “Manage operations.”
“What kind of operations?”
“Shipping, mostly.”
“Who do you work for?”
He looked confused. Andreden stepped into the conversation. “Who do you report to? Who is your boss?”
He nodded, understanding. “Cameron.”
“Cameron have a last name?”
“Cameron Ruths. He’s downstairs, ocean-level command officer.”
Andreden gave Laeina a we’re getting somewhere look.
“Brant, do you do anything unusual here?”
His expression went from calm to contorted fear. He started shaking. “They sent us prisoners.”
“Who sent them?”
“Pierini, Corkran, and Reyes.”
Andreden exchanged a look with Laeina. They only knew the last one. “How many prisoners?”
He stopped and appeared to be struggling against her control. “Eighteen.”
Andreden pointed down the hall, his voice commanding. “Take us to them. Now.”
They met Cameron on the lowest level of the building, an open space with bare concrete walls and the sounds of the harbor coming from somewhere. It was much cooler downstairs; rough walls painted a bland tan, the floor a plain, smooth cement, it looked like a parking garage with no ramps.
Most of the space was dark, but in the center, under intense construction-site lighting, were six shipping containers, forty-footers, with a zigzag pattern of air holes drilled into them. Beyond them were rough, white plastic-looking flattened spheres, each the size of a compact car, ten of them stacked on pallets. An electric forklift sat off to one side of the pods.
A lean, shaven-headed man in black and gray camo moved out from the cover of the nearest container. He held a handgun, pointed at the floor. He considered the approaching party solemnly. “Maureen. Brant. Who are these two?”
Brant spoke up, “They want to know about the prisoners, Cameron.”
“Really?” The gun in his hand lifted fractionally. He looked directly at Andreden. “What about them?”
Andreden tried a casual approach, one hand out toward the containers as if using them to hold prisoners was as common as filling them with cargo. “Two in particular.”
Cameron’s voice strengthened, and the gun leveled on Andreden. “Who sent you?”
“Lenient Luck.” Andreden went with the first vague notion in his head, hoping Cameron would hesitate over it, either knowing what the project name stood for or causing a few seconds of confusion over two words strung together.
It didn’t work. Cameron got a shot off just as Laeina cast some kind of control net over him. Andreden jerked, skidding back on the floor. Something hot punched him high on the leg. The round went through Andreden’s right thigh, and he went down gasping for air. The white lights swung across his vision like whips of molten metal.
The cave-like space under the harbor building went silent, the air so cold it hurt his teeth. But he sucked it in, the burn in his lungs fighting him. The concrete floor shifted like the ocean under him, and he rolled to his side, pulling his wounded leg into his hands. The knee folded weakly, and he clawed at his thigh, both hands clamped around it, shaking with the strain to hold his body together.
The pain was a dagger sliding through muscle, digging around the inside the wound, grinding against the bone.
His fingers were slippery with blood.
Laeina pointed at Brant. “Go. Get a first aid kit.” He hurried off.
She looked at Maureen, the head of security, shaking her head with indecision. “Just sit down. Right there.”
Then she was kneeling over Andreden, her fingers running over his hands, pressing lightly. “Sorry, Jon. He is very fast. I couldn’t stop the gun.” She glanced at the containers. “I will repair the wound in a moment.”
Grimacing, Andreden let his head drop with a thump on the concrete, bright lights flashing across his vision. He sucked in another breath, biting down on the words as if each caused him pain. “Okay. Just see if Martin and Rebekah are here. Please.”
Brant returned carrying a big green metal case with a white cross painted on the lid. He stood there like a zombie, and Laeina had to point at him again. “Help him. Use the kit to heal him.”
There were voices coming from the nearest container. Andreden gasped another breath, and then he caught the sound of Rebekah’s voice, a whispered question in old Attic Greek, “Leg-ho tee?”
Then he clearly heard Martin reply in Greek, “Someone is here.”
Laeina stopped, glancing at Andreden.
He angled his chin toward the big dark green metal box. “Martin, Rebekah.”
She straightened, Rebekah’s words catching up to her, and then she laughed, “Finally, I meet someone speaking words of the enlightened.”
Laeina made a slashing motion with one hand that sheared the padlock off the doors and sent heavy chunks of steel flying. It took her a few tries, but she figured out the lift and roll bars to open the doors. The bright light cut into the white interior, and Laeina smiled. “Hello, Martin. It is good to see you alive. You must be Rebekah?”
Martin was getting to his feet stiffly. Rebekah jumped up, helping him while giving Laeina suspicious looks. After stretching and taking a step toward the doorway, Martin shook his head. But he had to laugh. “I have never been so glad to see you, Laeina. Security wasn’t a problem, I hope?” He looked past her. “Is Jon here?”
She nodded, and lost her smile. “He’s been shot.” She backed out of the way. “Can you help him? I am going to release the others.”
Andreden, with Brant the Zombie’s help, scooted up against one of the floor’s support columns, as big around as a large tree but painted and ringed in black and reflective yellow angle tape. He let out a deep breath when he saw Martin and Rebekah.
“Are you okay?”
Martin made an angry face. “Are you?”
Rebekah knelt down opposite Brant, who had cut through Andreden’s jeans, had a compression bandage in place, and was wrapping the wound. “You’re the one who got shot. We’ve just been sitting around in the dark, with the occasional chat in the middle of the night with our seafaring neighbors.”
“Seafaring?” Andreden tilted his head back against the concrete, watching Laeina opening the other shipping containers to release the prisoners.
Martin squatted down right in front of him, giving Brant’s actions careful study. “Some of them off a salvage ship in the Caribbean. The Marcene.”
“And another ship, something that started with an I.” Rebekah pointed at the gathering under the bright lights. “One of them is a doctor.” She stood and called out, “Dr. Kozcera?”
A group of tired-looking men and women in heavy work clothing, a couple with hardhats, moved away from the containers.
The doctor looked over everything Brant had done, politely pushing others out of the way. “It is satisfactory,” he said in a thick Polish accent. “You need to go to the hospital.”
/> Laeina moved in, taking command, waving at the head of security. “Maureen. You will show these people the way out.” To the ships’ crews she said, “Follow her up the stairs and out the front doors. There is a clear lot across the street.”
From the floor, Andreden added, “Anyone have a phone? If not, here’s mine. Call the police.” He glanced at the screen before handing it up to someone. “No service down here.”
“They’re jamming all comms. Just as they did aboard the Irabarren.”
Laeina stood in the middle of the group from the two different ships, tilting her head a little as if trying to hear something faint over the chatter of the group. “There was a ship on the seafloor? You were attempting to raise her to the surface?”
“Not to the surface,” said one of them, a short, stocky man with a French accent. “I am Andres Jeanpierre, dive master on Irabarren. The plan to bring the vessel to the surface was shit from the charterer, Corkran. A deception. They wanted to move the vessel into deeper water, drop her there. To lose her forever.”
Andreden looked around at a few surprised expressions—apparently that wasn’t well known. “Why did they take you off your ship and bring you here?”
There was some speculative grumbling, mostly, “They wouldn’t tell us.”
Andres waved to the stacked white pods. “I think it was to put us in those rebreather containers.”
Laeina stepped into the conversation, staring across the space at the pods. “What do they do?”
Even the dive master didn’t know. “I’m not certain. We brought three up from the ship inside one of those. Two living, one dead.”
Laeina moved through the gathering on her way to inspect the pods, but stopped suddenly, facing them. “What was the ship’s name?”
“Serina Beliz,” said several of them at the same time.
Chapter Forty-five
Not Over
First Officer Angelo Goriaga was just coming around, blinking hard to get his eyes focused. He was sitting on the gray-painted deck with his back to the Marcene’s hull, fingers rubbing at his temples, clearly trying to shake off a stabbing headache. Wilraven squatted next to him, looking through the matted blood in his hair for the wound Levesgue had delivered.
The first officer’s question came out weakly. “What was that about?”
“The comms station. Pretty sure he just shot the fuck out of everything—VHF, the address system, Paulina’s marine ham gear.” Wilraven stared after Levesgue and Royce; Levesgue swinging around the other side of the ship to head toward his cabin. Crazy was one thing, but stupid and crazy . . . somehow that didn’t make sense. “Why didn’t he just turn off his own jammer and use our radio?”
Forehead creased with pain, Angelo bent forward, rubbing his eyes. Then an answer apparently came to him, and he lifted his head. “He may have some handshaking security thing going, an encrypted channel that’s trusted. Any talk coming in on another frequency—or without the handshake—is going to be ignored. Or at least suspected of being false, or a trap.”
So, extremely angry, maybe not that stupid. But still crazy. “Great. He’s alone out here . . . with us.” That made Wilraven feel even worse.
He helped the first officer to his feet, guiding him to the deck wash station. There were some standard eye-wash chem containers and a deep plastic sink. They would need to go up to the med station for some real stuff.
The sun was climbing through scattered soft clouds. The captain turned and frowned at the faint shouting and threatening barks of abusive language filtering in from the other side of the Irabarren. He crouched to try to get a clear view through the cranes, but he couldn’t see what was going on.
“Is that Levesgue?”
“No idea. Doesn’t quite sound like him.”
Angelo bent over the running water in the sink and washed up, letting the cold water run through his hair. He spent a few minutes rinsing out blood and cleaning the wound. Then they broke through Dr. Kozcera’s quarantine to get to some antiseptics. The room smelled of damp and chemicals. The two from the pod, Adista and Tychasis, were still out, although it looked as if they had been moving around. Both had their legs hanging off the edges of the thin mattresses. Both had one wrist bound to the aluminum frame of their gurneys. While Angelo went through the wound-cleaning supplies, Wilraven dug out a scalpel, cut the plastic ties on their wrists, and moved each of them closer to the wall, lifting their legs back onto the thin plastic-covered mattresses.
“If that’s Levesgue shouting . . . ” Wilraven looked up from Tychasis, who was breathing in short rapid breaths, broken with seconds of no breathing at all, and some movement around his mouth as if he was speaking in a dream.
“Royce is probably with him.” Angelo ducked into a wall mirror to apply a bactericidal cream from a plain white tube. “If Levesgue’s on the other side of Irabarren, we should see what he’s hiding. See if we can’t get ahold of a gun.”
Wilraven gave it a moment’s thought, and then they were moving. What they needed was some clear advantage over the lone soldier, and they needed it before Levesgue dug himself in and started setting wires and traps all over the ship. “I’ve seen some of the hardware. Not keen to get a closer look. I do want to know what he has for radio gear. We may need it.” Not much of a gun guy, he still had to admit it. “Getting my Glock back would be nice.”
Wilraven and Angelo made their way to Levesgue’s cabins with just enough speed and quiet to be able to listen for Levesgue returning. They had just reached the point in Marcene’s hull where it began curving toward the bow when the alarms went off, a high electronic buzz and a subsonic burst that rolled through muscles and organs and made Wilraven feel out of balance. He grabbed the railing to steady himself.
Ahead of them a door swung open and Levesgue stepped out, scowling. A quick wave of suspicion passed over his features. His gaze narrowed, taking in the ship’s captain and first officer, and then he smiled and let out a laugh.
“Lucky I was in, gentlemen. When I’m out, it’s not so much of an alarm as a boom.”
He made an exploding gesture with his hands. The crazy in him seemed to have increased with rest. Wilraven held the man’s gaze, saw nothing but an implacable hatred there.
The smile dropped off Levesgue’s face, tossed aside at the sound of yelling. His eyebrows ratcheted down and he was looking beyond them, toward the shouts on the crane platform. “Who the fuck is that?”
He reached inside his cabin for something, came out with a compact black assault rifle, snapping open the stock as he jogged right by Wilraven, shouting over one shoulder, “The alarm’s still set. Go to the bridge or I just may come back and kill you both.” He sounded happy about that.
Three minutes later Levesgue was shoving Royce and Jerry through the starboard side door, followed a minute later by the chief. Half the remaining crew of both vessels was on the Marcene’s bridge. They had left Miles and Tam on Irabarren, with the crane platform’s first mate and engineer still locked up.
Levesgue had the stock folded on the assault rifle, and it was on a shoulder strap swinging at his back. He had his handgun out, waving it at the traitorous crane operator. “Tell them what you told me!”
Royce was visibly angry, shaking. He turned on Jerry instead, apparently continuing his verbal barrage. “How could you not fucking hear something hitting the Ira?” He stabbed his finger repeatedly in the air. “Had to be big. Nearly took off half the edging, ten meters of fucking steel. Gone.”
“Shut the fuck up, Royce!” Levesgue had the gun aimed loosely at him. There was immediate silence on the bridge. “I said: explain what is missing off the crane platform. To the captain and the first officer of this ship.” He jammed the gun toward the floor, indicating the Marcene.
Memories flooded through Wilraven’s mind, a dump of activity over the last day that didn’t add up. Angelo directing the welders to put together long pieces of steel bracing, a gracefully curved arc of weather-pitted metal. Angelo
had sent it below—to the Serina—using one of the ROV cranes. The steel had been ripped from Irabarren’s starboard side, the far side, where its absence would be less noticeable. He had wondered about the steel stores DuFour brought with them on the Irabarren. Nothing that big. Just angle, rod, and smaller stock. The captain grabbed the bridge controls, fingers clawing at the nav station’s thick plastic edge. His memory shifting forward to the Serina’s drop into oblivion. Adam’s experimental quick-release bolts firing. The Serina Beliz was finally free of the lines from the roller winches, in the depths on sling bags filled to keep the ship level and neutral. And somewhere below, in Cuban water, those big pieces of welded-together steel were tumbling through several thousand meters of sea. They had hit the floor close enough to be taken as edges of one large shape—the shape of a ship that by every reasonable assumption should have been there. No other explanation. Wilraven looked from Royce to the killer, with the memory of last night still running in his head. Levesgue slumped over the deep-sea viewer, pinging the floor repeatedly, searching the hi-res for what he desperately wanted to see there. The steel shapes had filled in the pattern so neatly. Levesgue had fallen for Angelo’s fakes, the pieces of steel with a ship’s hull curve, linear shapes, man-made patterns on the screen. It had all been there, and it had been enough to seal Wilraven’s plans and the Serina’s freedom.
Royce didn’t get it.
Levesgue did. He was looking right at Captain Wilraven, anger starting to brew, starting to roll off him like an engine’s thermal fins shedding heat.
This was it. Time to die.
He pivoted toward Levesgue, fists coming up, focus narrowed down to the raw animal hate on the soldier’s face. Wilraven wasn’t going to wait for death to come for him. He stepped forward, away from Angelo’s defensive motion he glimpsed to his side. Levesgue was ready, coming at him, handgun swinging into play. A quick elbow jab knocked one of the crew to the deck on his way. It was the chief, now sprawling on the floor.
Levesgue came forward like a hunting cat. “What have you done?”
The captain blocked a punch, twisting out of the way of another, before Levesgue got inside his defenses and hammered a palm heel into the side of his face. Another jab into already bruised ribs. It punched the breath out of him.
