by Toby Tate
Lilith reached into her pocket and pulled out the cell phone, smiled, then tossed it over the side of the speeding boat.
Hunter looked behind the boat where the phone fell, then back at Lilith.
“You really are psychotic, aren’t you?”
“Hunter, Hunter, such harsh words. The CIA can easily trace the signals of a cell phone, so there’s no sense in keeping it. As a matter of fact, why don’t you hand yours over.” Lilith held out her hand.
Hunter hesitated at giving Lilith the only means of communication with his wife, but changed his mind when the barrel of the Beretta was pushed firmly into his ribs. He fished it out of his pocket and handed it to her, then watched as that, too, was flung over the side of the barge.
“That thing costs me forty dollars a month,” he murmured.
The lights of the boat basin soon began to come into view and Hunter wondered what awaited him there and whether he would ever see Lisa again, or see his baby born. But that thought gave him even more determination to stop Lilith, whatever the cost.
CHAPTER 53
Phillips slid down the ladder from one deck to the next on the handrails without touching a step, then rounded the corner of the passageway to CIC. The ship’s self-defense force, led by the XO, followed close behind, doing their best to keep up. Phillips had no way of knowing whether any of the crewmembers on the force were controlled by Lilith, but that was something he would have to sort out later.
He arrived at CIC and saw that the watertight door was dogged down. Whoever was inside likely had it blocked with a pipe wrench on the door handle. Phillips thought for a moment. If they tried to undog the door and arrest everyone, the person controlling the console would probably fire the missile in response. The same scenario would apply if they tried cutting a hole through the door. There was simply no other way into the room and no way to override the controls from outside the room. He had to stop it here.
Then Phillips had an idea. As the XO and his team rounded the corner, Phillips held up a hand and put a finger to his lips, indicating silence. The XO stopped in his tracks and raised a hand for his team to do the same. The heavily armed crewmembers watched Phillips expectantly, wondering what his plan was.
Phillips motioned for his XO and the NCIS agent, who had just joined them, and they quietly moved to where he stood.
“I have an idea,” he whispered to the two men. “Johnson, go down to Lisa Singleton’s stateroom and have Seaman Blount come up here on the double.”
“Yes, sir,” Johnson said, making tracks down the passageway.
Geralds smiled at the CO. “Going to try to bluff him out of there? How do you know who it is?”
“I don’t, but I have a pretty good idea.”
Within minutes, Phillips could see Johnson’s bulk moving down the passageway with Jessica Blount in tow.
“Seaman Blount…Jessica,” he said, placing his hands on the young woman’s shoulders. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this, but it could be a matter of life or death. I believe the person inside that room controlling those missiles is probably our weapons officer, Lieutenant Duncan. Do you remember being with him while you were infected with the parasite?”
Jessica furrowed her brow, as if trying to repress a painful memory, then looked the CO in the eyes.
“Yes sir. I think so, but I don’t know for sure. The memories from that time are like a dream that fades in and out.”
The CO nodded. “I understand. But Duncan doesn’t know that you’re no longer infected. For all he knows, you’re still under Lilith’s influence, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. What I want you to do is talk him out of that room. Tell him that Lilith’s cell phone was damaged by a bullet or that she dropped it in the water and she can’t send the message. Promise him anything. Lay it on thick if you have to, but get him out of that room. Understand?”
“Yes sir. I’ll try.”
“I know you can do it, Jessica. And when this is over, I’ll see that you make third class petty officer. I promise.”
Jessica turned to the door of CIC and Phillips motioned for the rest of the group to back off farther down the passageway to give her some privacy.
As Phillips was ushering them down the hall, Sammy appeared from behind the group, holding up two syringes of yellow liquid for the captain to see. Phillips waved him up to the front.
“Good job, Sammy,” he whispered. “Seaman Blount is going to try to talk whoever is in CIC out of there. When they open that door, be ready to load somebody up with that stuff ASAP.”
“Who do you think is in there, captain?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s Lieutenant Duncan.”
Crane’s eyes grew wide. “The WEPS officer?”
“Yeah, afraid so.”
Sammy shook his head as he eyed Blount down the hall. “Let’s hope she’s good at bluffing,” he said.
It was at that moment the alarms went off.
CHAPTER 54
The sun had just gone down as Hunter and Lilith pulled up to the 79th Street Boat Basin. The famous restaurant with its row of dramatic stone arches stood dark and empty because of the storm and the few boats that were still there looked beat up and half sunk. Several pylons were bent at different angles and most of the boards were missing from the piers. Hunter was surprised there was anything left at all. The restaurant itself looked to be intact, though most of the surrounding trees in Riverside Park had been flattened, roots sticking up in the air like mud-caked branches, many lying across the boardwalk between the river and the restaurant. The lights were still out since power to the city had yet to be restored. He could see two figures standing on the rickety pier as he throttled down, then reversed the engine to slow the barge.
As Hunter maneuvered the boat pier side, Lilith tossed the mooring line to one of the people and Hunter could see that they were both men. He wondered if it would be possible to make a run for it once he got off the boat. New York City was a huge place, literally a jungle. There were so many places to hide, he could easily get lost until he had a chance to make a call to the ship and find his way back to Lisa. He would just have to wait for the opportunity.
Hunter managed to get the boat next to the pier and mentally prepared himself to make a break for it. If he waited until they got wherever they were going, he might never have another chance. At least it was dark and there was the park and the fallen trees to take cover in. The debris from the hurricane that covered the streets would also make it difficult for them to give chase once he was on the run.
The two dark figures tied up the boat as Hunter stood at the wheel, waiting to step off the barge. He mentally pictured himself punching one man in the stomach while simultaneously kicking the other one of the face. Anyone that chased him would get a well-placed throat punch and maybe a kick in the knee. Hunter had been keeping in practice with his Kung Fu since Lisa had returned, and she had always been his best sparring partner.
Hunter felt the Beretta in his back as Lilith came up behind him.
“Alright, lover-boy, let’s get moving,” she said.
Hunter stepped over the side of the barge and onto the rickety pier, eyeing the men that stood on either side. Up on the boardwalk, he spied four other people waiting. He would take care of them when the time came.
As one man tried to take his arm, Hunter pulled it away, grabbed the man’s wrist and brought his knee up at the same time, knocking the breath out of him. With a grunt, the man fell over the side of the boat and into Lilith. Before anyone could react, Hunter turned a 180 and aimed a well-placed blow to the second man’s throat. The man grabbed himself in pain, struggling to breathe through a partially-crushed larynx.
Hunter was ready to make a dash down the pier when the plank he was standing on cracked and he fell through into the water with a splash. He considered swimming under the pier and out into the river, then realized he was stuck between the slats on either side of the one that broke. He couldn’t move.
<
br /> “Fuck.”
The other four people that had been on the boardwalk were now running toward the pier and looked to be armed with handguns. Hunter craned his neck and saw Lilith stepping onto the pier, the M9 pointed in his direction.
Lilith looked like a feline eyeing her prey. “Hunter, you are just full of surprises aren’t you? Do you really think you could escape that easily?”
“What do you expect me to do, just wait around while you take over New York City and destroy the Ford?”
Lilith walked toward him slowly, with the grace of a model on a catwalk. She stopped inches from Hunter then knelt on the deck beside him and stared into his face, her eyes boring into his.
Hunter flinched, expecting her to strike. But instead, she leaned in closer, laid the Beretta down and grabbed the back of his head. “Perhaps you just need a little…persuasion,” she whispered.
She pressed her lips onto his and Hunter could feel her wet tongue slip into his mouth. He grabbed her arm and tried to pull it away, but she was incredibly strong—it didn’t budge. He wanted to punch her, but he had never hit a woman and couldn’t bring himself to do it, even now.
Then something else invaded his throat. Something wet and cold, something that was definitely not flesh and blood. Hunter forgot his chivalry and brought a fist down into Lilith’s ear. It didn’t faze her. He grabbed a handful of hair and yanked it out by the roots. She showed no sign of pain as she kept her mouth over his, giving access to what Hunter realized was the parasite. He flailed about, trying to gain some kind of leverage to get himself out of the hole he was stuck in, but couldn’t move. Suddenly it became hard to breathe and as he tried to close his mouth he found it impossible. Gelatinous, slimy ooze slid down his esophagus and into his belly and it was as if his whole body was getting numb. He felt like going to sleep, like someone had just given him a sedative.
The last thing Hunter remembered thinking as he slipped off into unconsciousness was how much he loved his wife and unborn baby and how much he would give to see Lisa just one more time.
CHAPTER 55
An alarm trilled like a European police siren throughout the ship, signaling trouble with the ship’s power plant. Phillips felt his stomach clench as he prepared for the worst. What the hell had Lilith—or someone—done to the power plant?
Or to the reactor core.
He could hear crewmembers yelling and running through the passageways and up and down steel ladders as they made their ways to their assigned duty stations for this latest crisis.
Jessica stared at the CO, as if wondering what to do next. The door to CIC remained closed. Whoever was inside probably knew what was going on in engineering, but Phillips didn’t have time to interrogate them right now—he had to get down there.
“Seaman Blount, stay here with the XO and try to get them to open that door,” Phillips said, then said to the XO, “You and Johnson keep the self-defense team here and be ready when that door opens, then get control of CIC ASAP. Sammy, be ready with that syringe and pop whoever comes out of that door first, got it?”
“Aye, captain. You can count on it,” Sammy said.
“Mac, you come with me down to the number two engine room. That’s where Lilith came from so I’m sure that’s where the problem is.”
Phillips and MacIntyre took off down the passageway to the nearest ladder and began their descent to the engineering deck far below.
* * *
The alarm finally stopped its shrill wailing and Jessica waited for the go-ahead from the XO to coax whoever was in CIC, out of CIC. He nodded to her, mouthing the words, “good luck.”
She cleared her throat and tried to think of what she would say if she were still under Lilith’s control. Then inspiration came.
“Lieutenant Sanchez,” she said, hoping that was really who was in the room. “Open up.”
No response.
Jessica rapped her knuckles on the steel door. “Lieutenant Sanchez…Joe, let me in. I have to talk to you.”
A faint male voice came from the other side. “What do you want?” it said.
“Joe, Lilith doesn’t have the phone. She dropped the phone in the water and told me to tell you to stand down as she was leaving in the admiral’s barge.”
Slight pause, then another voice, different from Sanchez. “How do we know you’re not lying, Blount?”
“Why would I be lying? Lilith left the ship and doesn’t want missiles hitting New York while she’s there, that’s all. The missile you launched did the trick and she was able to leave the ship.”
A long pause of silence, then Jessica had another idea.
“Come on out, guys, and I’ll do both of you. We’ll have a great time.”
After a few seconds, Jessica could hear movement inside the room. Then, the door slowly began to unlock.
CHAPTER 56
Phillips and MacIntyre stood before the control panel in the maneuvering room of number two engine room, watching the neutron detector gauges going haywire as lights flashed and the siren continued to wail. A trickle of sweat dripped down Phillips’ forehead but he ignored it.
“Jacobs, shut off the alarm,” he yelled to a nearby watch stander. Seconds later, the siren wail ceased and only the sound of the steam turbines filled the room outside, muffled by the soundproof walls of the room.
Phillips eyed the gauges on the wall, his eyebrows knit with apprehension. He picked up the phone and called the watch stander at the reactor control panel. First class machinist mate Simpson picked up.
“What the hell’s happening? It looks like the control rods are being pulled out,” Phillips said. “Are we pulling them?”
“We’re not pulling them, sir,” Simpson said.
“What do we show—do we show them moving or not? Check the circuitry,” Phillips said, unsure of whether the men in the engine room were under the influence of Lilith. He hated not being able to trust his own crew.
A few seconds later, Simpson said, “The circuitry indicates the rods are not moving, sir.”
“They’re moving!” Phillips spat. He realized he was beginning to lose his temper, and took several deep breaths as he considered the consequences of damaged control rods—nuclear meltdown. But he was determined that wasn’t going to happen—not on his watch.
“Scram the reactor,” he said to Jacobs.
The petty officer flipped several switches that would allow the control rods to descend to the bottom of the core, absorbing the alpha and gamma particles and stopping the nuclear reaction.
Phillips and MacIntyre watched the gauges, but the rate of reaction continued to increase.
“Shit,” Phillips said.
“What’s going on?” MacIntyre asked.
“The reactor core is overheating. Without the control rods, the reactor will run away and cause a meltdown of the nuclear fuel.”
“What happens then?”
“It will probably overheat to the point that it catches the ship on fire, then you’ll have a radioactive cloud hovering over New York Harbor and probably over the city, as well.”
“Can’t we move the ship?”
“There’s no time—we only have minutes before it overheats.”
“Surely there’s something we can do.”
Phillips shook his head slowly. “Not unless we replace those rods, but each rod is over ten feet long and weighs a half ton. My question is when the hell did Lilith do this? The alarms would have gone off almost immediately and she left the ship an hour ago.”
“Captain, you have to let me go in there,” MacIntyre said.
Phillips eyed the commander warily. “Let you go in where? The reactor core? You’d be killed from the radiation, and besides, you’d need a chain hoist to lift those hafnium fuel rods.”
“I wasn’t being completely honest with you, captain, when I said I didn’t have the same powers as my sister.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember when I told you I watched Lilith pick up the fron
t end of a car once?”
Phillips nodded.
“Well, just to one-up her, I lifted the front end of an old school bus about three feet off the ground—with one hand.”
Phillips stood silent, momentarily stunned. It was a little disconcerting to suddenly discover that your communications officer was Superman.
“You’re shitting me, right?”
Mac was lying. He had no idea whether he could pick up any more weight than the barbells he lifted at the gym. But he had to try. If it was possible he was a Lilitu, then it was also possible he had the same powers as Lilith.
“What about the radiation?”
“I doubt that it will even affect me. It didn’t seem to faze Lilith at all.”
After all the crazy things Phillips had seen in the last few days, he figured letting Mac try to reinsert gigantic control rods into a runaway reactor core was a no-brainer. If he could prevent a meltdown, it would be worth whatever risk was incurred.
“Sure, what the hell. Go for it. You just have to guide them into the top of the core and they should fall all the way in. That will stop the reaction—that is, if we’re not already too late.”
Without a word, Mac opened the door to the engine room and ran out toward the reactor room, steel deck plates clanging under his feet. Phillips watched him go, praying that the man knew what the hell he was doing.
CHAPTER 57
After Jessica left Lisa’s stateroom, Lisa felt as if she might go crazy thinking about Hunter and where he might be—or whether he was even alive. She needed a distraction and ended up next door in Blakely’s stateroom, watching as he pored over the files in Lilith’s laptop.
Blakely sat at his desk, his shock of red hair sticking out in all directions like a lawn that hadn’t been mowed in months as he sipped his coffee and scrolled through page after page of files. Lisa sat next to him, trying her best to concentrate on the operative’s actions instead of the morbid thoughts that raced through her own mind.
