Virus (4 page)

Green seawater gushed through a rip in the aft bulkhead, poured into the locked room in a tiny foaming river.

Steve threw himself into the steel door once again, but it wouldn’t give, didn’t even rattle against the frame.

“If that water stalls the engine, we’re fuckin’ dead,” said Richie, and Steve turned, struggled to think straight in the shuddering, screaming corridor.

He looked up into the tattooed face of the silent man behind him, organizing his thoughts even as he spoke. “Hiko, get a torch and cut the door off.”

Squeaky’ll take over, Richie can assist.

“I’m going above,” he finished, and all three of the men nodded; they understood what they needed to do without having it spelled out. Steve silently thanked Everton for having enough sense to hire hands with brains and then he was running, headed through the flashing red hall for the ladder that would lead him to the bridge.

Everton paced the swaying floor, fists clenched, a pounding headache firmly in place from the screaming, flashing alarms. He looked back at the barge, watched another four containers wash away, lost to the swirling black waters. In spite of the loss of ballast, the pull sat low in the tossing seas, too low . . .

. . . but there’s still plenty left, it’s not all gone, it’s not—Jesus, that alarm is driving me insane!

“Turn that damned noise
off.”

Foster fumbled at a panel and the shrieking stopped, the lights flashing silently now; at least she was good for something, terrific, that was just
fine.

Everton’s gaze was drawn again to the gradually sinking barge; he couldn’t watch,
couldn’t,
but he couldn’t look away for more than a second or two, either. It was everything, and nobody understood, nobody cared.

Foster had been tapping at her screens, trying to look busy as his life slipped away. She was an idiot, Woods was an incompetent—the engine alarm had probably gone off because Baker and his man had screwed something up—

“Captain, recommend new course heading of—two two nine degrees,” Foster said. “We’ll find the eye, it’s only an hour and a half out . . . Captain?”

It was impossible. The only way to break the eye wall was if they cut the barge loose, and Foster knew it. What did
she
have to lose?

“We don’t have an hour and a half,” he murmured, and watched as another several barrels slid away, sank beneath the waves. Lost, so much of it lost now . . .

The woman would not stop. “Captain, once we’re in the eye we’ll have calm seas for almost two hours; we could make repairs and steady the barge.”

Did she think he couldn’t hear the pause, the mocking tone in her shrill voice? They didn’t have the power to make it through the worst of the storm, not with the weight of the pull—

Woods spoke urgently. “Captain, I need an answer on that.”

They’re all against me, all of them.

Why couldn’t the
Star
have just gone down, just given him some peace? What had he done to deserve this, to be forced to watch his life torn away?

There was a blast of noise from below and Everton turned, saw Steve Baker climb onto the bridge.

“What the hell’s going on up here, Captain? The engine room’s taking on water!”

Everton felt a surge of anger and self-righteousness; he turned on the younger man, fuming.

“Then pump it out, mister, you’re the bloody engineer!”

“We can’t get in! The bulkhead door took a hit and it’s wedged tight, Hiko’s cutting in now—”

Foster broke in. “Winds one-twenty!”

Baker ran his hands through his hair, looked around the bridge—and his gaze caught the heaving tow behind them.

“The barge! You’ve gotta be fucking
kidding
me.” He stared at Everton, incredulous. “We’ve got to cut it loose.”

“That’s not an option, Baker,” he replied. It was foolishness, cowardice—

“Captain, should I head for the eye? I need an answer, I’m losing her!” Woods asked.

“Winds one twenty-five, sir—”

“I gotta have an answer!”

The woman and the incompetent, and now Baker again, resentful, malicious.

“Captain, I’ll put it real simple for you—if that barge sinks, we sink with it!”

Everton shook his head.
I am captain, I’m captain here!

“A chance I’ll take,” he growled, barely able to suppress his rage at the blatant disloyalty, the willingness of them all to see him destroyed.

Baker stared at him a moment longer and then turned, headed for the stairwell that led out onto the howling deck. “I’m cutting it loose,” he said, and Everton felt something inside snap.

He drew his revolver and leveled it at Baker, the weight of it in his hand good, powerful. He saw fear on the engineer’s boyish face, fear and respect for the gleaming weapon.

“Move away from that door,” he said, and felt his control return in a hot surge of adrenaline;
he
was captain, he would make the decisions, and no one was going to take that away from him.

Baker would stand aside or he’d find out the hard way that Everton meant what he said.

• 3 •

F
oster stared at the captain in stunned disbelief as the
Sea Star
rocked wildly in the raging typhoon. She rose from her seat on numb legs but didn’t leave her console, afraid to draw Everton’s attention.

He hates me enough already—Jesus, he’s nuts!

She could see the same disbelief on Steve’s face, astonishment and a sudden angry curiosity. “What’s so precious about that cargo, what the hell you got back there? Drugs? Gold bouillon? The insurance company’ll eat the loss, Captain! Am I missing something here?”

Everton’s faded blue eyes were wild, his voice desperate. “The cargo’s
mine,
I—I leveraged everything I own and it isn’t insured!”

Everything clicked into place—the anger, the blame-laying. Foster suddenly understood why he’d done this, why he’d risked the lives of everyone on board rather than jettison the barge. There had to be hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake—

—and he’ll see us all dead before giving it up.

The engineer saw it, too, and Foster could tell that it wasn’t going to stop him. Steve moved again towards the door.

Everton pulled back the hammer smoothly, cocking the long barreled .455 Webley.

Steve shook his head in exasperation. “I go out that door, you’ll shoot me; I stay here, we all drown!”

The captain couldn’t hear him, just as he hadn’t heard Foster or Woods. “I’m warning you, mister!”

Steve glared at him for another second and Foster held her breath, wondered if she could make it to Everton in time; a step and a jump, he wasn’t looking at her . . .

Steve turned and grabbed for the door just as the
Sea Star
was pitched forward suddenly, throwing them all across the bridge.

Foster hit the console, bounded off into the same railing that caught Everton; she heard Woods trip and fall behind them. Steve was tossed against the side of the stairwell and came up fast, ready to charge the captain.

They all heard it then, the whiplike, springing
thwapp
of cabled steel snapping.

Foster looked through the storming night and saw the shredded cable give, lash across the top deck to tear out more of the safety railing and knock the cheap aluminum lifeboat off its mount. The small boat was immediately torn away by the storm—and the heavy barge disappeared behind a swell, lost from view.

Seconds ticked by and the
Star
kicked up, gave them all a clear view of the cargo barge as it slipped beneath the waves. Everton’s obsession was gone.

For a moment, nobody spoke, all of them staring out at the vast and blustering sea. Foster could feel the change, imagined they all could—the
Sea Star
had more power, had lightened suddenly and smoothed in the turbulence. The waters were still rough, but without the drag of the container barge, their chances had improved about a hundred percent.

Foster looked at Captain Everton, who dropped his gaze to the revolver in his hand as if he didn’t understand how it had gotten there. After a moment, he eased the hammer down and reholstered the weapon.

Steve stared at the captain, his eyes bright and flashing with anger. “Let me tell you something,” he said softly, and took a menacing step towards Everton, hands tightening into fists. “If you
ever
pull a gun on me again, I’ll . . .”

“You’ll what?” said Everton, but the fight had gone out of him. He seemed defeated, his shoulders slumped.

Foster moved past the captain and took Steve’s arm, pulled him back towards the ladder. Everton still
had
the weapon, and the tempers were too high, the storm too strong, for them to lose their engineer.

“You figure it out,” said Steve, but he let Foster lead him, still glaring at Everton.

“Stand your station, Foster,” said the captain, but it came out bluff and weak; she ignored him. Getting the engineer off the bridge, getting
herself
off the bridge, was more important right now. Woods had the coordinates; let him deal with Everton.

She watched Steve go down and then started after him, suddenly more tired than she could remember being in years.

Everton watched them leave, watched Foster defy him openly, and then turned to Woods. The helmsman wouldn’t meet his gaze, but Everton was too angry to care.

“Woods, enter in the ship’s log—oh four hundred hours, Captain Robert Everton jettisoned cargo barge to preserve the lives of
Sea Star
crew. Captain was unaware of impending typhoon conditions, owing to the failure of meteorologist and navigator Kelly Foster,
female,
to inform.”

He turned back to the window, saw only simmering water where his future had been, and felt the anger die. It didn’t matter anymore, none of it. They could all go to hell.

Woods cleared his throat nervously. “Captain, what about Foster’s idea? We can reach the eye . . . Captain?”

Everton stared out at the ocean, the massive swells whipped into foam by the winds, torn apart and then rising again, endlessly. After a while he heard Woods make the changes that would take them to the eye, and that didn’t matter, either.

. . . gone, gone, gone . . .

He stood there for a very long time, Captain Everton and the sea.

• 4 •

“I
t’s comin’ in faster than it’s goin’ out,” said Squeaky, and Steve sighed and nodded. Even with the pumps on full, the level in the engine room wasn’t dropping. It had been hip-deep an hour ago and now it sloshed against Steve’s navel. Water shot out of the open deck hatch, the hum of the pumps’ generator the only mechanical sound in the eerie quiet of Leiah’s bizarre, unblinking eye.

They’d made it just before dawn, broken through the eye wall in a final, frantic push and been received by a strange and unreal calm. When the sun had come up, Steve had taken five and gone out on deck for a long look; he’d never seen anything like it.

The
Sea Star
floated gently a few miles in front of a solid bank of fog, thick and swirling. The fog extended out and around in a curve, blocking much of the eye from view; beyond was the storm itself, impossibly tall walls of dark and solid driving rain. The sea pitched mildly beneath the tug, under a ragged but distinctly circular patch of clear morning sky overhead. They were in the vacuum caused by the wildest of the gusting winds, the eye wall; Leiah raged on, but the
Sea Star
was in a soundless, pressurized pocket, only the lap of water against the hull and the soft noises of human beings at work in the still, moist air.

Steve was exhausted and frustrated and extremely goddamn cranky. Having his balls immersed in murky salt water was certainly helping to keep him awake, but did nothing for his state of mind. The engine room was flooded, the marine diesel shut down and half submerged, along with him and Squeak—and the pumps weren’t enough, not anymore. The
Sea Star
had taken too much damage as she’d made her thrashing way through the storm; tiny holes in the hull had been battered into rips and tears that seeped unseen. Already she sat too low in the water.