HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) (34 page)

Erin heard shouts of surprise as the cubicle wall smashed the gunmen off their feet. Forest stood and kicked the cubicle’s opposite corner. Plastic brackets snapped. Forest pulled Erin through the gap he’d made.

 ‘Stay low,’ he hissed.

They wove through the cubicles so fast that Erin completely lost her sense of direction. She heard shouting behind them. A moment later came gunfire.

‘What about King?’

‘He’ll meet us. Just keep moving.’

They reached the edge of the cubicles.

 ‘Where does that door go?’ pointed Forest.

‘It’s just a service door,’ replied Erin. ‘A stairwell.’

‘Open it,’ said Forest. ‘Hurry.’

Erin swiped open the door.

At the very same moment, Sergeant King crashed through a cubicle wall just meters away.

‘This way!’ Erin yelled at King.

Forest ran through the doorway, pushing Erin in first. King dove through behind them.

‘Get down!’ yelled King.

He dropped to the floor and kicked the door shut.

Erin dropped to the floor barely in time.

Bullets smashed into the door. Splinters of wood burst out all over them. The light above the doorway shattered and rained down glass and plastic. The door handle fell off and clattered on the stairwell’s metal landing.

Erin crawled away. Clear of the doorway, she leaped to her feet with the Marines right on her heels.

She didn’t need prompting.

She dashed down the metal stairs as gunfire tore the door right off its hinges.

‘We need to reach another level,’ Forest shouted.

Erin knew the staff service areas like the back of her hand. She reached the first intersection and chose a corridor without hesitation.

‘I can get us anywhere,’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘You two just keep up!’

Justin had scrambled under the pharmacy’s marble counter when the gunfire broke out.

He covered his ears as the entire pharmacy collapsed around him. Boxes and shelving and ceiling tiles fell down everywhere, burying him under the counter.

When the firing paused, he kept completely still.

He listened.

He heard Myers and Craigson. They were leaving him behind!

He began squirming free, but stopped.

He heard boots.

Someone jumped over the bench above him.

The boots landed just inches from his face. Another man leaped over the counter, landing on the debris near Justin’s knees. They were almost on top of him. If they looked back, they’d see him instantly!

Neither did.

They both crouched behind the high pharmacy shelving.

Justin held his breath. If he moved even slightly, a box or a piece of ceiling tile would shift. They’d notice him for certain then.

The two gunmen waited only a moment before pursuing the Marines.

Justin squirmed out from under the debris, wincing at the noise.

I have to find Mom. She’s probably hiding somewhere like I am.

Justin quietly climbed over the counter and sneaked back up the passageway to the room with Elizabeth Green and the yellow life raft.

His mother had been in the very next room. She could be hiding anywhere. She may have even abandoned her wheelchair to crawl somewhere safe.

Justin gripped his wrench tightly and scanned the room.

‘Mom?’ he said quietly.

He heard something.

Is that her?

No. It was more gunmen.

Jesus, I have to hide!

He desperately scanned the room for somewhere to hide.

Beside Elizabeth’s body stood a waist-high cupboard. Justin wrenched open the door and pulled out the stored rolls of paper towels. He crammed himself inside the cupboard and closed the door.

Keep still
, he told himself.
Just wait for them to pass.

He waited, but couldn’t hear anything.

Are they gone?
Maybe they didn’t even come into this room.

Justin slowly opened the door an inch.

He listened.

Nothing.

He opened it another inch.

Wait. What’s that sound?

Someone grabbed his wrist and hauled him from the cupboard. Justin panicked and attacked.

His wrench was caught midair and yanked from his hand.

Five men surrounded him. The tallest man grabbed Justin’s hair and shoved him against the wall so hard that Justin heard the wall crack.

Four of the men had guns.

No, not guns,
realized Justin.
They have flamethrowers.

‘If he moves, burn him,’ the tall man ordered.

Justin froze, absolutely terrified.
He means me. He means they will burn me!

Still holding Justin’s wrench, the man in charge frowned over Elizabeth’s tray of belongings.

‘It’s not here,’ he said quietly. ‘They’ve taken it.’

Justin couldn’t take his eyes off the men with flamethrowers. He imagined flames rushing from those guns and setting his clothes on fire. Setting his hair on fire. They would probably even set his skin on fire.

Justin felt himself shaking. He didn’t want to be burned alive.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

The man holding Justin’s wrench pulled a chair close to Justin and sat down.

‘Justin Kershaw, sir.’

Justin could feel the heat from the flamethrowers. To his great relief, the man waved the flamethrowers back.

‘My name is Christov. I’m going to ask you some questions. You will tell me the answers. If you lie, you will die. Right here and right now. Do you understand, Justin?’

‘Yes, sir,’ stuttered Justin. He’d never felt so alone and scared in his life.

‘Where is the acid drive?’

‘I don’t know what that is,’ answered Justin.

Christov studied him. He looked disappointed.

‘I swear,’ repeated Justin. ‘I’ve never even heard of one.’

‘Then why did you come to the hospital?’

‘The Marines brought us here.’

Christov stood and began tapping the wrench on Justin’s shoulder. ‘How many Marines are on board?’

‘Five. I’ve only seen five.’

‘Who’s in charge? What’s his name?’

‘Coleman. Captain Coleman.’

‘Are more Marines coming?’

‘I don’t think so,’ answered Justin, feeling the wrench tap, tap, tapping on his shoulder.

Christov looked Justin up and down. ‘How old are you? Sixteen?’

‘Fourteen, sir.’

‘Why were the Marine’s dragging you around?’

‘They needed my mother’s help.’

‘Who’s your mother? The one in the wheelchair?’

Justin nodded.

‘They needed her help with what?’

‘With the sickness. My mother’s a virologist. She makes plans for pandemics. She was trying to help.’

Christov stared at Justin.

‘Does she work for the government?’ he asked. ‘The U.S. Government?’

Justin nodded slowly. ‘Sometimes. She works for lots of people. She’s a consultant.’

Christov started slapping the wrench into his palm.

‘Did you arrive with the Marines?’

‘No. We were here on vacation.’

‘What a lucky coincidence,’ spat Christov.

Justin could tell that Christov didn’t believe him.

‘It
is
a coincidence,’ rushed out Justin. ‘The Marines just wanted Mom’s help. They saved us and brought us here so Mom could look at the test results from the sick passengers.’

‘Why would your mother do that? Why would she risk your lives when everyone else abandoned ship?’

Christov pointed the wrench at Justin. ‘And don’t lie to me, boy. I’m warning you.’

‘The Marines promised to protect us,’ answered Justin. ‘That’s the truth. Two of them were ordered to keep me safe.’

Christov raised an eyebrow. ‘And do you feel safe?’

‘No,’ answered Justin. ‘I think you might kill me.’

Christov stared at Justin steadily. ‘You might be right, boy. But not yet.’

The door blocked their way.

Bolton pushed the map back into his faded overalls.

He lowered his welding mask.

‘Get back,’ he ordered.

His team retreated.

They were scared, but Bolton was excited. The cylinder strapped to his back contained pressurized oxygen. Beside that was a series of the most expensive lithium batteries money could buy. Connected to an electrical inverter, they provided more than enough energy to power a plasma cutter.

But this wasn’t a normal plasma cutter. Bolton had substantially modified the design. While most plasma cutters could cut through six inches of solid steel, Bolton’s new design allowed him to cut through almost eighteen inches of solid steel.

The plasma reached over 25,000 degrees centigrade, so he’d mounted the tool on a fiberglass shaft. The shaft resembled a shortened version of a medieval knight’s lance, so Bolton had named his tool the ‘plasma lance’.

Smiling, he triggered the lance, hearing the unmistakable –
hissssssss –
as electricity and gas reacted to form plasma.

He pressed the brightly glowing lance tip against the solid metal door.

The ship’s engine room was as well-protected as the bridge, but the solid steel door put up little resistance. Bolton cut a large oval shape through the door with a single looping motion of the lance.

That felt good
, he thought.
This is true power.

He powered down the lance and kicked the metal door. The large oval section of door
crashed
down into the engine room.

‘You,’ he pointed. ‘Go through and unlock the door from the other side.’

The man approached the door reluctantly.

The lance had heated the metal around the hole bright red. Molten metal dripped slowly down the door.

‘Hurry,’ prompted Bolton.

The man sidestepped carefully through the hole, avoiding the red hot metal on all sides.

Bolton threw an asbestos-lined glove through the hole. ‘Wear this or your skin will melt.’

Clunk.

The door unlocked and swung open.

‘Fuck,’ yelled the man inside. He threw the glove down. ‘It burned me. The glove didn’t work!’

Bolton picked up his glove. ‘Really? Then do it again without the glove.’

The man shook his head and backed away.

Bolton smirked and looked around.

The engine room was cavernous. The ship’s parallel series of engines were running at full power. The noise, smell and heat from the engines reminded Bolton of the earliest days of his apprenticeship. He’d seen hundreds of engine rooms since then. He’d destroyed dozens.

But never one as large as this, or on such short notice.

He crossed to the outer bulkhead and thumped the wall. Beyond waited the ocean.

Endless water, all waiting patiently.

‘Hurry up,’ he ordered. ‘Exactly as I described.’

The trolleys of explosives rolled in behind him. His men raced to assemble the explosives into the correct patterns.

On the last trolley rested a laptop computer. Bolton opened the laptop and checked his calculations again.

The detonation would start here. His second team was laying more explosives through the ship below the water line, but none were as important as these. The explosives in this room would blast through all three layers of the hull. His men were assembling the modular bricks of C4 in large cross-shapes. Bolton knew this pattern worked best for cutting the largest holes in ships. Each blast would tear a huge cross-shape through the hull, weakening the largest possible area. With the hull weakened, water pressure would make the holes even larger.

But that wasn’t Bolton’s only trick.

The laptop computers allowed Bolton to better harness the explosives’ destructive force. The laptops would detonate the explosives at
precisely
the same time. The machines were synchronized down to the millisecond.

Timing was critical.

Having the explosives detonate with atomic clock accuracy would focus the energy outward, effectively doubling or tripling the force against the hull. In the confined engine room, the blast would be devastating.

Christov wanted the ship to appear to have suffered a catastrophic explosion in the engine room.

He also wanted the ship to sink rapidly.

Bolton agreed.

A vessel like the
First Lady of the Sea
deserved a clean death. She shouldn’t be left wallowing for hours, or allowed to flip over with her ass in the air. She should descend with the grace of a submarine, as though she was built to dive underwater.

Her new home would be deep.

Very, very deep.

Coleman hadn’t been wounded.

The bullets that had filled the elevator had found flesh, but not his flesh.

They had hit Neve.

It was Neve’s blood splattered up against the rear elevator wall. Blood pooled under her chair.

‘They shot me,’ she cried. ‘I can feel it. I can feel the pain in my legs!’

‘Put pressure on the wounds,’ said Coleman. ‘I’ve got a med kit.’

The elevator doors opened.

Coleman was stunned for a moment.

They were in the heart of the most incredible casino Coleman had ever seen. Even empty of people, the place seemed alive. The entire casino looked maritime-inspired, with treasure hunting themed slot machines and roulette tables shaped like crows’ nests.

A shimmering blue sign read:

Welcome to Arcadia

The place seemed to go on and on.

Coleman pushed Neve around a roulette table and up behind a group of fake palm trees.

He studied the pattern of cameras on the ceiling.

Bryant should be able to see us here.

Kneeling before Neve, he gently lifted her hands from her wounds.

She was shot in both legs. One bullet had torn a channel along her right thigh. Another bullet had passed clean through her calf muscle.

‘I’ve been shot twice,’ cried Neve. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been shot!’

Coleman rapidly unpacked his field medical kit. ‘No arteries were hit. I’m going to glue shut the holes in your calf to stop the bleeding. That won’t work with your thigh. I’ll use clotting agent and a pressure bandage.’

Coleman spread clotting agent on both wounds. ‘Can you feel this?’

 ‘It feels like I’ve been burnt.’

After gluing shut the holes in Neve’s calf, Coleman tore open sterile bandages. Neve shuffled forward so Coleman could bandage her thigh.

‘All right. You’re done until we can find a doctor.’

‘Thank you,’ she said as Coleman tied off the second bandage. ‘Now how do we get back to the hospital?’

‘Justin’s not in the hospital.’

‘How do you know?’ demanded Neve. ‘How do you know where he is? Your radio isn’t even working.’

‘Myers and Craigson had orders. The moment they heard gunfire they would have snatched Justin up. They are taking him somewhere safe right now. He’s probably the safest of all of us.’

‘You can’t know that,’ Neve implored. ‘I’m his mother. His mother! I can’t just
hope
they got away. I can’t just
hope
that he’s safe. I have to make sure he’s safe. You don’t know what it’s like when your child is in danger. You have to fix it!’

Coleman pulled out his photo of David.

He handed it to Neve.

‘That’s my son, David. He’s still a few years younger than Justin.’

As Neve studied the photo, Coleman thought of the progress he and Vanessa had made in the last twelve months. After very nearly losing David, all their disagreements had felt petty and insignificant. They weren’t compatible as husband and wife, but they had become very compatible as parents. They accepted each other and made David’s well-being the keystone of their relationship.

Coleman pointed to David’s photo. ‘I almost lost him once. But I didn’t because he was being protected by Marines. I can promise you that Myers and Craigson will lay down their lives before they let anything happen to Justin. You chose those two Marines, remember?’

Neve nodded and handed Coleman back the photo.

‘Thank you for getting me out of there.’

Coleman nodded.

‘What about Erin?’ Neve asked. ‘Did she make it out?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Coleman. ‘She was right beside me. I yelled at her to follow me, then I grabbed you. When I looked back, she was gone.’

‘I think she got away,’ said Neve. ‘She knows this place better than anyone. They might all be together.’

Coleman nodded, but didn’t mention that the attackers had surprised them from two different directions. If Erin escaped the pathology lab, she could easily have run into the second group of hostile gunmen.