Eldridge pointed down a wide corridor. “That way. It leads up into the passenger areas. They’re all dark and a mess. They’ll have a hard time finding us.”
“Then let’s go. You lead the way. Cole, take up the rear and make sure Dodger and his men know which way we went.”
Eldridge’s head snapped around. “But why…?”
“We want them on us, not Ari and the others. These guys are killers. Come on.”
They moved down the corridor away from the work lights and darkness closed in. The wide corridor allowed forklifts to pass, but Nathan still managed to trip over something and went down on one knee. “Damn it, do we have a light?”
Duncan turned one on and handed it to him. “You should get the eye upgrades like I did.”
“Thanks,” Nathan said, reminding himself that Duncan had implants that let him see in the dark. They came in handy working on engines in tight compartments.
“Eldridge, can you see in the dark? You’re getting around pretty well.”
“No, but I’ve been up and down this way searching for salvage.”
They moved on again and came to a flight of stairs leading away from the corridor. “Are we going up?”
Eldridge pointed down into the darkness. “Yeah, this is a service deck for laundry and food service. If we go straight we’ll come to a kitchen and believe me, you don’t want to go there. The power has been off for months so everything has spoiled and it stinks so bad it’s hard to breathe. There’s a casino at the top of the stairs.”
“Well, I’d say we’re gambling today. Up it is.”
Duncan reached into his bag and took out a chemical light stick. He snapped it, shook it and threw it up the stairs. It bathed the area in a greenish-yellow glow.
“This will let Cole know which way we went.”
“Good thinking. Let’s go.”
They mounted the stairs to go up when an explosion of gunfire startled them.
— «» —
“There’s no one in the main camp,” Jonesy said. With Morris gone Dodger needed a new second in command and the hacker got a promotion. “No ‘bots, no one at the piles and no one in the tents. We can’t even find Daryl.”
Dodger pointed at the Athena Star. “They’re playing small games, that’s all. They’re in the wreck, thinking they’re safe. Well, they’re not. Get everyone together and let’s get down there.”
They mounted up in the two vans and drove toward the wreck. Dodger drove the van holding the guys from the apartment building. Cheech lay dead in a dumpster back at Dodge Em’s. Morris’s nephew would have been a pain about his uncle getting killed so Dodger had walked out into the parking lot and shot him while he stood next to the van. A bloodstain in the shape of a smashed cherry pie stained the van behind the driver’s side door. That left him eighteen guys to take care of business.
Losing the lab was a real problem. The Syndicate would hold him responsible so he had to have someone to offer up in his place. Morris had been correct about one thing; the lab could be rebuilt, just not here in Bad Rock. By now Chief Bell and his deputies were probably climbing all over the building and they would find evidence of Diamond K production. Once that happened, they could forget about producing it here ever again. Protective Service agents from Earth might even get involved.
The vans pulled up short of the cargo bay and they quickly emptied out. Dodger watched as they milled around but he noticed none of them actually stepped up to enter the wreck. He grabbed the door and pulled it open.
“You,” he said, pointing at Gary, one of his men from the club. “Get inside there and see what’s going on.”
A stunned expression crossed his face but executing two people this morning had the effect of stopping stupid questions. Gary gritted his teeth and stepped to the door. Dodger gave him a shove and he fell through. When nothing happened, Dodger followed him.
The cargo bay appeared empty. A pair of work lights illuminated the space and Dodger could see where they had collected the reactor coolant. He waved his hands in each direction to his men.
“Fan out and search the area. They’re around here somewhere. Don’t bunch up. It makes you a big target.”
They walked around, checking behind equipment. Jonesy stopped at a hatch. “This one is locked, boss.”
Dodger said, “The coolant tanks are in there. Break it open.”
— «» —
Cole watched from the mouth of the darkened corridor as Dodger and his men entered the cargo bay. Nathan and the others had gone ahead but he had the task of drawing Dodger and his boys away from Marla and the others. They had numbers but as he watched them he realized they didn’t seem to be much more than the run of the mill thugs they seemed to run into everywhere. They clumped together, didn’t check the shadows or corners and seemed mostly concerned with making sure no one got the drop on them.
He adjusted his stance and crouched down further. One of Dodger’s mooks swung by and glanced into the darkness but he stopped walking where the work light ended. Cole remained hidden in the shadow. The guy walked away.
From this vantage point he could see most of the bay. Dodger walked right through the center of the space and then disappeared from view before Cole could react. He heard the moron giving orders like some platoon sergeant in an action holovid. Then he saw one of them checking the hatch Marla and the others had gone through.
He heard Dodger tell the guy to get the hatch open. That absolutely couldn’t be allowed to happen. He raised the rifle and sighted in on the nearest of the two work lights. A quick burst annihilated the light and darkened a large section of the cargo bay.
Dodger’s men panicked. Cole hit the deck as bullets flew in every direction. No one had seen where his shots had come from, so he inched forward to the corner where the cargo bay met the corridor. Dodger shouted for everyone to stop and stepped out from behind one of his men. Cole aimed at him for a second but remembered that Nathan wanted as little bloodshed as possible. He changed his target to the second work light and squeezed his trigger again. It exploded and flew through the air, plunging the cargo bay into darkness.
This time they definitely saw where the shots came from. Rounds zipped all around him, ricocheting off the walls of the corridor. He laid flat on the deck with his rifle in front of him until they stopped. Dodger yelled again, trying to get everyone under control. They finally calmed down and the air grew silent.
“Keep your heads, damn it!” He heard Dodger yell. “Does anyone have a light?”
Cole slowly rose, careful not to make any noise. He smiled and pulled a ball-shaped object from his jacket pocket. He twisted the dial on top of it and thumbed the plunger before throwing it. A bright light exploded from the device when it landed. Dodger’s men cried in pain from the intense flash. Then the secondary function kicked in. A high-pitched wail in the 115 decibel range issued from the device and deafened everyone in the bay. Cole covered his ears with his hands but he could still hear the device as it rolled around the area. The Rolling Betty would keep moving, screaming and flashing until someone found it and deactivated it or until it ran out of power.
Cole turned and hurried up the corridor to meet with Nathan.
— «» —
“What was that?” Eldridge said as the sound of the short battle carried up the stairs to them.
“Hopefully it’s Cole keeping Dodger and his morons busy,” Nathan said. They had moved up the stairs and stood in one of the Athena Star’s casinos. The light from the glow stick carried almost the length of the room. It reflected off the tacky chrome and mirrors that littered the walls and floors. The gaming tables remained bolted to the deck but chips, chairs and drink tumblers littered the carpeted floor.
He walked over to a blackjack table and stepped behind it. “Let’s wait for Cole here. It’s a good vantage point for the stairs.”
They all moved behind the table and he sighted in on the top of the stairs. He picked up some of the chips laying on the floor and thought about his money problems. “What about all the chips? Can you cash them in?”
Eldridge laughed. “I wish. They’re all marked with the ship’s insignia and have been retired by the cruise line. Ari and I joked that we’d be millionaires with a vacuum cleaner if we just swept up in here.”
They heard someone on the stairs and Cole called out before he got to the top. “Don’t shoot, it’s me.”
He came around the corner breathing hard and watching over his shoulder. Nathan waved him over and he leaned against the table.
“How did it go?”
“Dodger brought a ton of guys with him. I’d estimate more than a dozen.”
“We heard shooting. You okay?”
Cole nodded and kept an eye on the stairway. “Yeah, they started messing with the door Marla and the others went through so I distracted them with my last Rolling Betty. I can’t hear too well right now, between that thing and the gunshots.”
“A dozen guys is a lot. If Marla and the others manage to get ahold of Bell and he comes out here he may not be able to handle them.”
Cole edged closer to the top of the stairway, and peeked down it. “Nathan, I know you don’t want anyone shot or harmed but if these guys catch up to us, we won’t have a choice. You know that, right?”
He nodded. “I do but when this is all over I don’t want to have to explain a bunch of dead bodies.”
“We didn’t have to explain the ones in Port Haven,” Cole said.
Nathan recalled the two Syndicate hitmen who had snuck up on them while they escaped from the compound of the Children of the Apocalyptic Rainbow. One of them had managed to shoot Cole, and he had only survived because of an armored vest.
“I get what you’re saying,” he said. “We’ll do what we have to. I’m certainly not asking anyone to get shot. Let’s just stay ahead of them and let the plan work.”
“Plan B kind of sucks.”
“Well, it’s the only one we have right now. Let’s move a little further down the line.”
— «» —
Marla saw Ari obsessively watching the door to the compartment where they hid. She took her hand.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “The guys will take care of Dodger. We have to make the call to Chief Bell.”
Ari’s eyes were wide. “Those were gunshots.”
Marla stroked her arm. “I know, but Duncan and the others will take care of it. We planned for this, remember?”
Tricia came over and motioned her aside. “Nathan said things usually don’t get this crazy.”
Marla shrugged her shoulders. “This one has been off the charts, I’ll admit.” She put her ear to the door. “I don’t hear anyone coming up. Maybe they lured them away. Now, how do we get to the signal booster?”
Ari pointed up. “Two more decks up but if we go out in the corridor and they manage to get into the coolant storage room, they’ll hear us.”
Fred stepped to the door and cracked it open, peering into the dark corridor. The coolant tank stretched up through several decks and the catwalk they climbed allowed access to them. He shined a light and shook his head. “I don’t see anything, but I hear something. What is that?”
Marla smiled and pulled the door open the rest of the way. “That’s one of Cole’s toys. It should keep Dodger and his boys distracted and they won’t hear a thing until they manage to shut it off. Let’s get moving.”
They filed out, Marla leading the way with Ari directing them, followed by Tricia with Fred bringing up the rear.
— «» —
Dodger lay stunned on the deck of the cargo bay. The light flashes blinded him and now the damn noise made him deaf. He closed his eyes and backed up instinctively. The cargo bay lay shrouded in darkness without the work lights that had been on when they entered. He stood up and felt around in the darkness.
He bumped into something behind him. His hands found a latch and he realized he had found the hatch they had entered through. He worked it, finally getting it open and letting faint moonlight in. He stumbled outside and fell to his knees as he tripped over the uneven edge of the hatch.
More men followed him, attracted by the pale glow visible in the hatchway. Eventually, all of them saw the opening and made their way out.
“What the hell was that?” Jonesy said after they got the hatch closed.
“Some kind of flash bang grenade,” Dodger said. “I had a chance to buy some once. It’s going to keep going off until someone kills it.”
“We need some lights, too. Going in there without being able to see is suicide.”
“Have a couple guys scrounge the camp. They’ve got to have lights around here somewhere.”
Jonesy pointed toward Eldridge’s maintenance rig parked near their vans. “I saw that when we pulled up. I’ll bet it has what we need.”
He walked over to it and pulled open the equipment lockers mounted on the bed. Sure enough, lights hung on hooks and he handed them to a couple guys. Then Dodger saw him smile.
“What is it?”
He held up a couple sets of hearing protectors. “These should work for whatever is rolling around in there.”
He tossed a pair to Dodger and put a set on. They slipped back into the cargo bay with a couple other guys. Sure enough, the hearing protectors made the sound more bearable. Dodger tapped one of the guys and had him shine a light around. Something rolled into view and he raised his gun, taking a shot at it. Everyone joined him and a hail of bullets rained down on the device. It shattered into small pieces and the noise stopped.
Dodger pushed the protectors down so they hung around his neck. He slapped Jonesy on the back. “Good going. Now, which way do you think they went?”
“The guy shooting at us hid over there,” he said, pointing to the darkened corridor.
“Okay, let’s go that way.” He stopped and nodded toward the coolant storage compartments. “One of the guys said those doors were locked right before the shooting started. Send a couple guys that way and have them checked out.”
“You got it.”
Chapter 24
Marla stopped on the metal stairs and listened. Something below them banged and the noise reverberated up the stairway. She turned and saw Tricia staring at her. They had all heard it.
In front of her, Ari leaned over the rail to catch a better look. As the beam from her light stretched down into the compartment holding the coolant tanks, someone shouted.
Tricia grabbed Marla. “We have to move. Someone is coming after us.”
“I know.” She turned to Ari on the stair above her. “How much farther?”
She pointed up the stairs. “One more flight and then it’s the room at the end of the corridor. It will only take a minute.”
“Then let’s go.”
They moved fast, with Fred bringing up the rear. The older man breathed heavily by the time they got to the compartment. Ari held the door open and waved at them.
They tumbled in and she closed the door, spinning the locking mechanism. “Okay, they aren’t getting through that unless they have explosives.”
Tricia took up a position beside the door and pulled out the gun Nathan and Cole had given her.
The running made Marla sweat and she pulled her dark hair into a pony tail with an elastic tie. She pulled out her mobi and the screen lit up. “How do I make the call?”
Ari breathed hard but pointed to a panel. “There’s a cable in there connected to the signal booster. Just plug in and you’ll get a signal.”
Marla pulled open the panel. She saw a mass of tangled wires but nothing that would plug into her mobi. “I don’t see it.”
Ari gave her an annoyed look and shined her light into the panel. “It’s
right there…” She paused and put the light on the door. The markings read ‘5D’. “Oh damn it.”
“What is it?” Marla said.
“We’re in the wrong compartment. I lead us up one deck too many.”
They all fell silent and looked at Marla.
“Well, crap.”
— «» —
“Which way?” Nathan asked Eldridge. The young man pointed to the left.
“That way.”
Duncan reached into his bag and brought out another glow stick. He cracked it, shook it and dropped it on the floor. “Do you really think Dodger will follow us?”
The engineer was sweaty and seemed anxious. “You worried about Marla?”
“You know I am.”
“I think they’ll be okay. We’re leaving them a trail a blind man could follow and Cole got them good and angry at us. Besides this place is a maze. How would they even know where else to look?”
“I guess. I just want to get this over with.”
“It won’t be too much longer.”
Eldridge led them down a corridor and Nathan had to keep a hand on the decorated walls to stay steady. The pitch of the ship threw off his equilibrium. He had to keep adjusting his footing so he didn’t fall.
The corridor dumped them out into a lounge area. Large windows that could be used for sightseeing ran from the floor to the ceiling but corrugated shutters covered them. They had probably dropped into place during the re-entry to protect the passenger compartments. Upended couches and tables littered the area. It would have been a nice way to spend time on the cruise, watching the stars outside as the big starliner made its way through the darkness. The Athena Star would never fly again, though, and maybe, neither would his beloved Bandit. He shook off the morose thought and got his head back in the game.
He let Duncan and Richie go past him and waited for Cole. It took a moment but eventually he rounded the corner into the lounge. “Are they coming?”
Cole stopped for a moment and pulled a water bottle from his belt. “They’re back there for sure and coming fast. I can hear them so I’d say they’re not much more than a couple minutes behind us. Can we move a little faster?”
Bad Rock Beat Down (The Milky Way Repo Series Book 2) Page 26
