Kronos

44

The Titan

Atticus slapped Andrea gently on the cheek. She roused from unconsciousness with a grunt and blinked at the brightness assaulting her unadjusted eyes. She immediately recognized where they were. “Not again.”

“Welcome back sleepyhead,” Atticus forced a smile, knowing it would do little to keep Andrea from quickly realizing their predicament. Atticus had been awake for an hour. He’d tried to rouse Andrea three times, but the drugs she’d been given had had a stronger effect on her smaller body.

As he’d sat in the room, guarding Andrea’s inanimate form, he’d tried to distract himself with thoughts of his family: Mom, Dad and, Conner. Was Dad still in the hospital? Was Conner still waiting for him at home? But the thoughts came and went in a haze. He struggled to come up with some kind of escape plan, but his mind had been unable to concentrate.

With Andrea awake, he felt a part of his mind refocus, but he was no closer to coming up with a useful strategy. He stood on wobbly legs and sat next to her on the wooden bench. His body sagged. “Hell of a first date.”

“Second date,” Andrea said. “Our first included you jumping from a hospital window and scaling down the side of the building like Spider-Man.”

A slight smile crept onto Atticus’s face. He couldn’t imagine ever having the energy to pull off a stunt like that. “I’m far from a superhero.”

Andrea rested her head on his shoulder while rubbing one of her temples with her fingers, fighting off the same blazing headache still hammering Atticus. “Well, you’re my hero.”

“You won’t think so when that door opens and the only thing I can do to defend you is shout obscenities.”

She slid an arm up around his back and patted gently. “They’ve got bigger fish to fry…much bigger fish. I’m sure they’ve forgotten about us for now.”

A resounding clunk signified that the brig door was being unlocked.

“Or not…” Andrea said as she did her best to stand. Atticus could see she wouldn’t go down without a fight, and he’d be damned if she would have to fight alone. He stood and nearly collapsed as the world momentarily fizzled to black. His vision returned just as the white door swung open to reveal a black specter.

“O’Shea?” Atticus said, not trusting his eyes.

O’Shea bowed. “At your service.” He quickly handed them bottles of water. They twisted off the caps in an instant and chugged down the cool liquid.

After finishing their drinks, O’Shea handed Atticus his dive knife and. 357. “I was able to get these, but I’m afraid your other weapons have been impounded, or in some cases, dispersed among the crew.”

Atticus checked the. 357. It held six rounds. Not exactly enough to combat the entire crew of the Titan if it came to that, but if his aim was true, six shots would be enough to incapacitate six people-permanently-and do a fairly good job of intimidating the rest of the crew. The knife, on the other hand, would never run dry. And in his previous experience with the SEALs, it had ended the lives of more enemies than any other weapon he’d used. SEALs often relied on stealth, and nothing attracted less attention than a blade. Atticus slid the. 357 into his belt and was about pocket the knife when O’Shea suddenly turned pale.

“What are you doing here, Father?” The voice wasn’t familiar to Atticus. It must be one of the many crew members Atticus had yet to meet.

“Just making sure our prisoners are well cared for,” O’Shea said, doing his best to sound cool and collected.

“Is that so?” O’Shea tumbled into the brig, shoved from behind. A tall man carrying an H amp;K UMP submachine gun followed him in. The man’s lanky body showed a dark tan. Patchy stubble coated his face, giving him the look of a sixteen-year-old trying to grow his first beard. But the ferocious gleam in his deep-set, hazel eyes told Atticus the man’s innocence had died a long time ago. He suspected that most every man on the Titan ’s crew had either been a criminal before being hired, or at the very least, had become one since.

The man positioned himself behind O’Shea and kept the UMP against his back. At that range, the. 45mm rounds would blast straight through O’Shea and pepper the brig. The man was taking precautions.

Smart man, Atticus thought. Some of his strength had returned since drinking the water. Atticus stood sideways to hide his right hand and hip. He let the dive knife slip down so that he was holding the razor-sharp blade between his fingers, which he suddenly realized, still shook from the effects of dehydration.

“Let me see what’s in your hands,” the guard said. Atticus and Andrea held up their emptied water bottles.

“They would have died in here without a drink,” O’Shea said, sounding as humanitarian as possible.

“Maybe that was the point,” the guard said.

“I do believe Remus wants them alive when he returns,” O’Shea said matter-of-factly.

The man considered this, and, while he did, O’Shea took the opportunity to roll his neck, stretching the muscles that were becoming tight with anxiety. In that moment, time slowed for Atticus. It’d been a lifetime since he had taken another man’s life, but he didn’t see how he could disarm the man without O’Shea’s being shot in the process. He also knew that the guard would soon discover that O’Shea had betrayed Trevor, and the brig would become a shooting gallery with no place to hide. Atticus’s vision narrowed. He saw nothing but the guard and O’Shea.

O’Shea’s head stretched one way, then the other. The guard spoke the words Atticus had been hoping for. “I want to see both hands.”

Atticus raised his knife hand so that the back side faced the guard, hiding the blade behind his palm and wrist. As he turned his palm toward the guard, Atticus gave his wrist a quick snap. No one saw the knife fly through the air, but a sickening sound like scissors cutting through thick fabric followed by a wet pop confirmed its passage to the man’s brain. His body fell in a slump behind O’Shea, who’d gone rigid, in mid-stretch as the reality of what had just happened dawned on him.

O’Shea spun quickly, looked down, and jumped back. “Wow!” he whispered.

“Sorry,” Atticus said to O’Shea. “I didn’t have a choice.”

O’Shea snapped out of his daze and looked to Atticus. He smiled. “You forget, I’m not a priest. And that man was a killer. He would have killed us all.”

Atticus felt relieved by O’Shea’s assessment. He took no pleasure in taking another man’s life. That there had been no other recourse eased his guilt. But he doubted the man’s death would be the last one on his hands before they escaped the Titan. The stakes had been raised again, but he doubted Trevor would enjoy these as much as those he set himself.

Atticus bent down to the dead guard, searching his body. He picked up the UMP and found two spare magazines. With twenty-five rounds each, the weapon improved their odds.

With a quick yank, Atticus extracted the dive knife from the man’s eye socket. After wiping the blade clean on the dead man’s pant leg, Atticus pocketed it and turned to Andrea.

Although she was a member of the U.S. military, she fought to save lives, not take them. She might have pulled a corpse or two from the water during her career, but she’d obviously never seen a man slain. Her eyes focused on the man’s head, where a pool of blood had collected in his deep-set eye socket.

Atticus gripped her shoulder. “Hey.”

She met his eyes.

“Don’t look at him,” Atticus said. “The nightmares will fade faster if you don’t look at his face.” He’d learned that from personal experience. While taking the UMP and retrieving his knife, Atticus hadn’t once looked at the man’s face.

Andrea gave a faint nod. Atticus handed the. 357 Magnum to Andrea. The weight of it in her hand brought her fully back to reality. “It’s got a pretty severe kick to it, so take time to aim between shots. You’ve got six rounds. Make them count.”

He felt no fear of being judged by Andrea for what he’d done. While the shock of seeing a man violently killed had taken her by surprise, she was still a member of the United States Coast Guard and no doubt recognized the need to fight and kill when necessary. She took the gun and held it firm. “I’m ready,” she said.

“We need to get out of here,” O’Shea said. “Trevor has the Titan on high alert. Every crew member is armed, and it won’t be long before someone comes looking for him.” O’Shea nodded toward the dead man. “I rigged the security system. All the cameras are running on fifteen-minute loops, and I’ve disabled the lock systems so they work for anyone. They won’t care whose thumbprint or retina they scan. If the system is reset, everything goes back to normal; so, once they notice, we’re stuck. We’re dead.”

Atticus moved to the door and checked both directions, leading with the UMP. The hall was empty. “We need someplace to hide. Someplace no one would ever go without Trevor.”

A crafty grin spread as O’Shea began to speak. “I know just the place.”