HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) (40 page)

They needed weapons. Real firearms that fired real bullets.

He had a plan.

He and King crouched behind the main lobster tank in the middle of the restaurant, listening for the gunmen’s approach.

King was rubbing something between his thumb and fingers.

Forest glanced down, read part of an imprinted name and then did a double-take.

‘What’s that?’

King closed his hand, but Forest knew what he saw.

‘Are they Marlin’s dog tags?’

King opened his hand, revealing the tags.

But that’s impossible,
thought Forest.
Marlin was wearing those tags when he died. He was incinerated.

Forest knew Marlin’s remains had been recovered with a vacuum. Nothing identifiable was found. Marlin had been cremated up in those ventilation ducts. His dog tags should have melted.

The tags in King’s hand weren’t even scorched.

King met Forest’s questioning stare.

‘Bora gave them to me in the hospital. He said once I’m better, he’s going to find me.’

‘He’ll have to get in line,’ whispered Forest. ‘Listen. Here they come.’

The sound of boots stopped outside the restaurant where King and Forest had discarded their now-useless weapons. The plan was to make the gunmen feel overconfident.

It didn’t work.

Instead of charging into the restaurant and into Forest’s trap, the two gunmen began hosing down the restaurant with gunfire.

The lobster tank above Forest and King exploded.

Glass smashed down between them.

Water cascaded over their helmets and shoulders.

Huge lobsters rained down over them.

All around the restaurant, tanks exploded as the gunmen opened fire. Hundreds of fish and crabs and eels poured down onto the floor, flopping over tables and scuttling under the chairs.

Everywhere Forest looked, the floor was writhing with sea life.

The lobsters pumped their tails madly, getting nowhere for their efforts. Crabs raised their claws aggressively. Fish flipped themselves in the air.

The gunmen began walking into the restaurant, kicking aside the animals, firing in spurts as they came.

King nodded at Forest.

This was it.

They would only get one shot.

Quite literally.

Together, they sprung up from behind the broken lobster tank and fired.

Forest had spotted the weapons hanging on the back wall. The two spear guns looked ancient. They probably hadn’t been fired in years.

To Forest’s relief, both guns fired.

The stretched surgical rubber accelerated Forest’s solid steel spear straight at his target. The man stood just two meters away.

The steel point drove through the man’s light body armor, into his chest and straight through his left lung before emerging out his back. The impact knocked him backward over a chair. His rifle clattered to the floor.

Forest glanced at the second gunman.

King had fired too early.

He’d hit, but he’d speared the other gunman through the thigh. The spear had gone clean through the man’s leg, only stopping because of the rope tether joining the spear to the gun.

The gunman staggered backward, but raised his weapon.

Forest dived for the fallen firearm, but knew he’d never reach it in time.

The gunman had a clear shot at King.

As he raised his weapon, King jerked the spear gun with both hands over his head.

The tether designed for pulling in big fish yanked the wounded gunman’s leg out from under him.

The man slammed down onto his back.

Before he could recover, King leaped on him.

Forest watched King crush the man’s throat with the spear gun.

The sound was gut-wrenching, but over quickly.

King took the man’s gun and what little ammunition remained.

Forest did likewise.

At the rear of the restaurant they found no sign of Erin until Forest approached the service door.

She swung the door open from the other side, obviously relieved.

‘Your plan worked!’

‘Kind of,’ said Forest.

King nodded. ‘We’ve got weapons and they’ve got corpses. It’s a good start.’

Bolton’s team moved much faster now that they’d placed the explosives in the engine room.

They’d abandoned the trolleys.

The two men taking point had the occasional insane passenger to incinerate, but that barely slowed them down.

Bolton folded away the map he’d taken from the bridge.

After years of looking at schematic maps, he knew all the cryptic symbols by rote. He barely glanced at the map now as he led his men down the steps, through a security door and finally into a short passageway painted bright red.

Everything was red. The walls, the ceiling - even the carpet was bright red.

Clever
, thought Bolton, studying one wall.
If you didn’t know they were here, you’d walk right by them, but the bright red color made them obvious to staff who needed fast access in an emergency.

Bolton pointed at the wall.

‘This is it. Open it up.’

Two men with breaching tools hammered the chisel-like ends of their tools into the barely-visible groove.

They wrenched back on the tools.

The concealed lock broke apart.

The doors flew wide open.

Recessed behind the doors lay the most important switchboard on the ship. If the
First Lady of the Sea
had a brain, then Bolton had just cut into her spinal column, the conduit through which she received and sent signals around the entire ship.

But not just any signals. The ship had hundreds of switchboards. Almost a thousand, in fact. Only this one mattered to Bolton

This switchboard controlled the ship’s anti-saturation measures.

Anti-saturation was a fancy way of saying ‘not sinking’.

The ship was fitted with the most advanced anti-saturation measures ever devised. She was very difficult to sink. Even when you tried to sink her on purpose. Even after you strategically packed critical areas with high explosives to blow massive holes in her hull.

Even
then
she wouldn’t sink.

Large holes weren’t enough. Not nearly enough.

Sensors all over the ship monitored humidity, air pressure, temperature, and half a dozen other variables to ensure every part of every deck stayed dry.

Ingress of water anywhere was detected in seconds. The ship didn’t rely on lagging human response times to slow it down. She monitored herself constantly.

Once a hull breach was detected, the ship activated her anti-saturation measures.

Forty-eight bulkheads descended automatically, isolating the breached area. Gigantic air-bladders inflated inside the ship’s hull, sealing holes and increasing buoyancy. Outside the hull, under the waterline, a system of long inflatable bags would burst from their compartments to form the world’s largest life jacket.

A life jacket for a ship.

Then there were the pumps.

The
First Lady of the Sea
had the most powerful pumps ever installed on a cruise ship. Capable of pushing out three million liters of water per minute, the force of the jets could literally push the ship through the water.

But all those systems needed power.

Power that ran through this switchboard.

A switchboard protected by hundreds of fuses.

Bolton stood back and waved three men forward.

‘Pull out all those fuses. Quickly. All of them!’

The fuses were coded, not labeled, and Christov wasn’t taking chances.

Best to yank them all out to be sure.

The men began pulling out the black fuses.

ZAAAAAP!

The man closest to Bolton flew back from the switchboard. His boots didn’t touch the floor.

THUMP!

He smashed into the opposite wall and collapsed into a lifeless-looking mess on the carpet

‘Idiot,’ spat Bolton, taking the man’s place. ‘Don’t touch anything metal. The switchboard is still live.’

With each fuse he jerked free, Bolton imagined the ship growing dumber and dumber.

When he finished, the ship would be so stupid she wouldn’t know she was sinking until she crashed into the seabed.