by Sam Sisavath
You and me both, brother, Xiao thought, when a small burst of flames shot up from somewhere at the stern of the boat—possibly from on top of one of the containers—and the same Bell that had razed the bridge of the Winter burst into flames just as it was coming back around for another run.
“Fuck!” Stormare shouted.
Sounds about right, Xiao thought as pieces of the helicopter plummeted out of the air and disappeared into the murky black Gulf of Mexico water.
She should have felt bad for them, for the half dozen crewmen onboard, but the truth was she didn’t know anyone on that destroyed craft, and it was easy to compartmentalize the loss and stay on mission.
And then there were three...
The second attacking helicopter was hovering over the now-drifting ship and firing onto the Winter’s deck, undeterred by the loss of its fellow Bell. It was targeting the railings, the streams of fire coming out of it like something from a dragon’s mouth, bright and impossible to miss against the moonlit ocean night.
Xiao’s chopper was still too far away for her to be sure, but she thought she could make out small silhouetted figures racing along the sides of the boat and returning fire with small arms. The Bell was moving now, making itself into a harder target while continuing to unleash rounds at a hellacious pace. Xiao didn’t want to think about what kind of damage that many bullets could do to a human being, Rhim or otherwise.
Better them than us is right.
“One minute!” Stormare shouted next to her.
She thought about telling him he didn’t have to shout, that the comm could transmit his warning even if he were whispering, but decided the man was probably unable to help himself. Like he had said, he and the others had been training for this moment for years now. She was already having to calm herself down and couldn’t imagine the adrenaline pumping through their veins.
Xiao knew they were almost on top of the Winter when they started taking gunfire. The pilot banked and rounds zip-zip-zipped! past them and some ping-ping-pinged! off the bottom hull of the aircraft.
I don’t think that’s a good sound!
But they were still in the air and heading toward the bow of the boat, so it couldn’t have been that bad. Soon they started to descend even as Xiao leaned farther out of the side and spotted men racing back and forth below. They were wearing civilian clothes, which made perfect sense because the Winter was supposed to be a commercial vehicle hauling cargo.
The fourth Bell broke off from them as soon as they reached the ship and headed toward the stern. It was taking fire from below, sparks flickering in the night sky as bullets grazed its belly. The same would have been happening to their aircraft if not for the fact that the remaining attack helicopter had returned to their side of the stalled cargo liner and was picking off targets along the railing and drawing even more attention as a result.
“Get ready!” Stormare shouted as two metal containers on two different stacks sitting side-by-side rushed up at them from below. It wasn’t the best LZ she’d ever seen in her life, but it beat having to rappel on ropes.
They were about to touch down when Xiao glimpsed another streak of fire and looked off the side of the Winter, just in time to see the remaining attack helicopter burst into a ball of flames and disappear from view.
And then there were two!
“Go, go, go!” Stormare shouted as soon as the Bell’s landing struts made contact with the two connected container roofs, the aircraft rocking slightly on the uneven surface before settling.
Xiao had already unlatched herself from the chopper and jumped out even before the vehicle stopped wobbling completely, and was flicking on the flashlight underneath the P90 the instant her boots slammed into the steel surface.
Bam! as Stormare landed next to her and said through the comm, “Make your way downside pronto, and secure the deck! Secure the deck!”
The Winter might have begun to drift after it lost its bridge, but its cargo was stacked so high up that Xiao couldn’t fight the feeling of standing on the rooftop of a big moving building with nothing but open spaces waiting for her at the edges. A combination of natural wind this high up and the still-spinning rotor blades behind her sent a constant wall of cold air against her face. Even with the thermal sweater, urban assault vest weighted down with magazines, and the balaclava pulled over her face except for her eyes, she still shivered against the unrelenting chill.
In the five or so seconds after touching down, Xiao took stock of her position.
She was standing on one of the higher container piles on the boat, either seven or eight boxes deep, which meant she was either sixty or closer to seventy feet up in the air from the deck—not that ten or so extra feet mattered when she was already this high up. There were multiple steel towers at the same height in front of her—the exact number impossible to make out in the near-darkness, even with her flashlight turned on—and more behind and to the sides of her. But the stacks wouldn’t be the same height everywhere, and they were going to have to find the smaller ones in order to make their way down. It wasn’t ideal in terms of rapid-fire assaults, but they couldn’t exactly just land on where most of the “crew” were congregated and waiting.
Xiao looked around, grimacing behind the thick fabric of the balaclava against the cold, when something zipped! past her right cheek. She spun with it, just in time to see one of Stormare’s men, in mid-jump out of the Bell, jerking back as a bullet slammed into his chest and knocked him to the container roof. The dead man—like Xiao and Stormare and everyone else in their party—didn’t wear a name tag, so Xiao didn’t have a clue who he was.
“Sniper!” someone shouted. It might have been Stormare, but with the whup-whup-whup of the helicopter in her ears, she couldn’t be sure.
Xiao turned back around, dropping to one knee to make herself as small a target as possible, and spotted him—a crewman about fifty meters in front of her. The man either hadn’t seen her or was too busy taking aim at someone else when Xiao squeezed the trigger two times on the P90, her suppressed gunshots lost in the wind and spinning rotors, and the shooter collapsed.
“Fuck!” someone shouted behind her.
She turned, saw Stormare crouched over his man. “Stormare, we have to move!”
He looked up and clenched his teeth, then nodded and stood back up. “Go, go, go! Get down there! Clear the deck!”
One of Stormare’s men took point, racing away even as the Bell’s last passenger hopped off and the chopper began lifting up into the air. Xiao could hear the ping-ping-ping! of bullets hitting its sides, the rounds coming from below, but the aircraft continued up stubbornly anyway, undeterred.
Don’t go too far, boys! I’m going to need a ride out of here later!
She followed Stormare and his people as they jumped the short distance—less than three feet—over to an adjoining stack of containers, before going down the side of that one. Xiao let her flashlight lead the way while more men nipped at her heels.
Gunfire continued across the ship, with most of it coming from the stern where the other Bell had dropped off its ten-man team. Either the Winter’s fake crew had failed to properly identify two separate assault groups, or they were concentrating on the second one for some reason.
It was possible to tell the assault teams from the ship’s crew by the sounds of their gunshots—or at least when the gunfire didn’t completely blend into one incoherent noise. Every single one of the assault members were carrying suppressed P90s, and while the built-in silencers didn’t make the Belgium guns completely silent, they did produce a very distinctive pop! that was different from the much louder pop-pop-pop of unsuppressed automatic rifles being used by the enemy.
After the first sniper, there wasn’t anyone to stop Stormare’s team as they hopped between containers, slowly but surely making their way down toward the deck. Maybe it was the attack helicopter that had come to their rescue earlier; it was very possible it had taken out all or most of the crewmen on this side
of the vessel. That would also explain why Chopper Four’s team was taking the brunt of enemy fire.
Thank God they were on our side—
She hadn’t finished the thought when the night exploded in a new frenzy of gunfire, except unlike the last two or so minutes they spent climbing steadily down, these weren’t coming from the stern but right in front of her. Someone screamed—then someone else joined them—before bodies began falling around Xiao. Stormare was in mid-stride directly in front of her when he seemed to trip and collapse, then disappeared over the side of a box.
Ambush!
Xiao leapt forward and down, slamming chest-first onto the roof. She wasn’t sure what was louder—her surprised grunt from the impact or the sound of her vest and the magazines stuffed into them banging against the 14-gauge steel.
One of Stormare’s people had returned fire—then a second joined him—and Xiao was rolling away from their position and getting closer to the edge so she could see over it when one of the two assaulters collapsed. That left one, and the man got off a full magazine before he, too, fell on his side, blank eyes looking back at her through the semidarkness from five feet away.
Xiao kept rolling until she was finally at the edge and able to look down at four men below. They were partially hidden behind the side of a container resting on the deck, and she spotted them while they were reloading, frantically swapping magazines. Two more crewmen in civilian clothes lay on the floor around them, groaning from their wounds.
One of the shooters saw her and scrambled to simultaneously pull his rifle’s charging handle and lift it in her direction. He managed to finish one of the moves, but she shot him in the chest before he could the other. Instead of going down, the man stumbled back into the shadows.
Her element of surprise gone, Xiao scrambled to her knees and flicked the fire selector on her P90 from semiautomatic to fully auto and stitched the deck, emptying the magazine in two sweeps, the ping-ping-ping! of bullets hitting and ricocheting off steel like music. She didn’t stop shooting until she had run dry, then quickly reloaded and swept the area, looking for still-standing crewmen.
Groaning, bleeding bodies were rolling around on the deck when Xiao made the five-feet jump and landed with a loud bam!—
—and almost crushed Stormare’s head at the same time.
She crouched next to him and placed two fingers against the side of his neck. There! It was weak, but he was definitely still alive despite having been shot and falling off the side of the container.
Tough guy, huh?
She stayed next to Stormare in a slight crouch, using the submachine gun’s light to sweep from one crewman to another. Five in all. They were all shot and bleeding—
Wait. Five? Where’s the sixth—
A flicker of movement and Xiao turned, facing a figure sitting in the shadows to her right. The first man she’d shot—still alive (of course) and staring back at her as he struggled to pull a pistol from behind his back. He was young—early twenties—with an almost boyish look about him that didn’t fit in with the plaid work shirt and pants he was wearing. The wardrobe looked absurd on him, like something he had stolen from his father’s closet.
She shot him once in the forehead.
Xiao stood up and walked over and put a round in the temples of each of the crewmen lying on the floor. With each pull of the trigger, she said the names of people who the Rhim had taken.
Mary…
Mack…
Jack…
Kyle…
Abbie…
When she was done, she walked back over to Stormare while she reloaded. She was still kneeling next to him when the shooting from the other side of the boat began to slow down, the gunfire gradually becoming a series of sputtering back-and-forths. It was easier now to distinguish the pop-pop of suppressed P90s and unsuppressed rifles, which meant there were still some of Stormare’s assaulters out there.
“Sit tight; I’ll be back,” Xiao said to Stormare’s unmoving form.
She stepped over a pair of bodies in civilian winter coats and slid in between two stacks of containers. The multicolored metal boxes rose around her like steel walls, the ending of each one leading to another dark alley for her to walk through.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of metal death, I will fear no evil, for thou’s Belgium-made P90 is with me…
A radio squawked in front of her, coming from beyond the mouth of two parallel containers she was currently squeezed between. She went into a slight crouch, the submachine gun rising to take aim even as she scooted over to one side to make sure she was in the shadows.
A small group of men walked past her. At least three crewmen, dragging someone between them. The captive was wearing black fatigues identical to the same clothes she was wearing at the moment.
She let them past before standing up and hurrying forward. She counted to five, then stepped out into a large opening. She didn’t have to look far to reacquire the men—they had only gone about fifteen feet, the weight of their captive slowing them down.
Xiao flicked the fire selector on her weapon back to semiautomatic and shot the third one—who walked alongside the two dragging the man in black—in the back of the head. One of the other two crewmen dropped his cargo and turned.
Pop! pop! as Xiao put two rounds into his chest.
The last remaining crewman was still holding onto Stormare’s man for some reason as he turned around, and Xiao shot him in the center of the face.
She ran over toward the black-clad figure as it collapsed onto its side after being dropped. Like the others, Xiao didn’t know his name or even remember if she’d actually seen him before. He was bleeding from a gash in his forehead and two bullet wounds in his legs, and remained unconscious even after she gave him a couple of taps on the cheek—
A familiar voice, coming through her headset: “Hello? Is anyone there? If anyone can hear me, please respond, because I’d really like to get the hell off the Titanic before she sinks.”
No way, Xiao thought, even as the grin spread uncontrollably across her face.
Chapter 26
Quinn
The explosion sent her reeling—it sounded way too close—and left the 14-gauge steel around her trembling for minutes afterward. Or, at least, it seemed like minutes. The truth was, it could have just been a few seconds, but Quinn’s mind was spinning, trying to understand what was happening out there. Without any tangible evidence of something, anything was possible.
Before the explosion, she’d heard a large machine gun firing, then small detonations, glass shattering, and people screaming. Something must have collapsed after that, because the wooden floor under her feet shook. The torrent of gunfire that followed made her think there was a small army out there firing an endless wave of bullets.
But at what? Or maybe the better question was, at whom.
“Coast Guard?” Porter had asked the man on the radio.
“Unknown,” the man had replied. “They’re not responding to hail, but they’re getting closer, and we’re definitely their objective. They could have gone around us a few miles back, but they’re clearly on a direct approach.”
Then there was the look Porter had given her, as if she should know the identity of the people on “a direct approach” toward them. The fact that he didn’t have a clue made her optimistic because anything that was throwing Porter’s plan into chaos was good for her. Or she hoped it was, anyway.
There was a war going on outside, but she couldn’t do anything about it, so she concentrated on what she could control instead, like trying to get free from her restraints.
What was that Porter had said?
“Your senses are getting better. Pretty soon you’ll be as strong as me. Maybe stronger, if the eggheads are correct.”
Stronger? How was she going to get stronger? Her body was changing, even if she wasn’t quite sure how. Her left arm had healed from the break in record time—something that should have been impossi
ble—but she hadn’t noticed anything else that made her less than “normal.” Maybe he was right, maybe her senses were getting better—sharper, somehow—but as for the rest of her? She wasn’t any stronger before she’d met him and learned that the Rhim existed, and she wasn’t any stronger now.
Her eyes had readjusted to the blackness after Porter turned off the lightbulb, and she was able to pinpoint where the walls began and ended, along with the doors in front of her. Porter would no doubt have locked her in after leaving, but that wasn’t her primary concern at the moment.
The plastic ties around her wrists were tight and so were the ones cinching her arms—at the elbow joints—to the metal bars that made up the back of the chair. She thought about attempting to break the piece of furniture, but that didn’t seem remotely possible. She couldn’t really tell how heavy it was because she couldn’t even move the thing, but would Porter really strap her into one she could destroy so easily?
She tried moving around in the chair again, swaying back and forth, then side to side. Unlike the last time, she was able to move a few inches, but the ties were just too tight, limiting her ability to create enough momentum to rip the chair out of whatever was keeping it nailed in place. And the damn thing was unyielding—
Bam-bam-bam! from above her.
Her head snapped up to the ceiling. Footsteps—very heavy footsteps—as someone in thick combat boots moved around up there after jumping down from a higher position. The familiar clink-clink-clink of bullet casings raining down on metal, and she swore she heard steel ripping nearby, followed by people screaming.
The gunfight outside raged on without an ending in sight, and there was nothing she could do about it. Not while in here, anyway.
So she forced herself, once again, to refocus on getting free.
She couldn’t topple the chair, so where did that leave her? The only way out was to break loose from the zip ties, but that seemed even less possible than ripping the chair free.
