Plague Ship

He keyed his communications pad. “Medical to the Op Center. Hux, we need you now!”

“Are those what I think they are?” Eric Stone asked in a hushed whisper.

“Aye, lad,” Max replied, equally subdued. “Her deck’s littered with bodies.” There had to be a hundred corpses on the deck, sprawled in twisted shapes of agony. Their clothing fluttered with the breeze. Adams zoomed in on the open deck around the ship’s swimming pool, where it seemed as if every guest at a party had simply collapsed, the area was strewn with dropped dishes and glasses. He tightened the camera’s focus as he slowed the UAV to narrow in on one passenger, a young woman in a dress. She lay in a pool of her own blood. It looked as though everyone was.

“Did anyone notice the ship’s name?” Mark Murphy asked.

“Golden Dawn,” Juan told him, all thoughts of salvage and prize money driven from his mind.

Mark concentrated on his computer, calling up everything he could get about the ship as the others stared transfixed at the grisly tableau.

Julia Huxley rushed into the Op Center wearing pajama bottoms and an oversized T-shirt. Her feet were bare and her hair was a gnarled mess. She carried a medical case that she kept in her stateroom.

“What’s the emergency?” she asked breathlessly.

When no one answered, she looked up at the screen holding their attention. Even for a seasoned medical professional, the carnage arrayed around the deck of the cruise ship was appalling. She visibly blanched, before composing herself with a subtle shake of her head. She approached the monitor and cast a critical eye at what she saw. The low light and unsteady UAV made it difficult to discern details.

“It doesn’t appear to be trauma,” she said. “I’d say they were struck by some kind of fast-acting hemorrhagic virus.”

“Natural?” Max asked.

“Nothing in nature strikes this swiftly.”

“They didn’t have the time to send out a distress signal,” Juan remarked, to back up Hux’s assessment.

Julia turned to him. “I need to get over there. Take some samples. There is biohazard gear down in the medical bay, and we can set up a decontamination station on deck.”

“Forget it,” Juan said. “There’s no way I’m letting you get some virus anywhere near this ship.” Julia made to argue but Cabrillo wasn’t finished. “We’ll do decon on a tethered Zodiac inflatable and then sink it. Eric, take over the UAV from George. Gomez, get down to the hangar and finish prepping the chopper. Mark, go roust Eddie, get yourselves a couple of pistols from the armory, and meet us in the hangar. Julia, do you need a hand?”

“I’ll get an orderly to help me,” she said.

“Okay. Bring a couple extra bio-suits in case there are any survivors.” Cabrillo was already on his feet. “I want to be in the air in twenty minutes.”

The Oregon reached the stricken Golden Dawn a minute short of Juan’s deadline. Because of the Robinson’s weight limitations, it would take two trips to ferry everyone and their equipment to the cruise ship. Eric had scouted the liner from the drone and determined the best place for them to land was on top of the bridge. It was the largest area on the ship that was free of the dead. Though the chopper wouldn’t land directly on the Dawn, George Adams was kitted out with a rebreathing orange biohazard suit like the rest of them, and two of Julia’s staff were prepping a hose on deck, fed from a tank of powerful bleach concentrate, to disinfect the chopper prior to its touching back down.

Juan was taking no chances. The crewmen who would tow the Zodiac over with the ship’s SEAL assault boat would go through a similar drill. Because whatever agent had wiped out the passengers and crew of the Golden Dawn wasn’t natural, he knew they were looking at a case of intentional terrorism and murder on a mass scale. He was concerned not only about the virus itself but was already thinking ahead to the people responsible.

He held out his hands to Julia so she could duct-tape where the suit’s tall gloves meshed with the sleeves.

She then secured the back zipper with more of the silver tape. The airflow off his tank was steady, and the carbon scrubbers were activated. He had three hours before he needed to be out of the suit.

“Move slowly and deliberately,” Julia was telling them over the integrated communications net as she worked. “Plan out everything before you do it. Avoid running. These suits are your life. If the pathogen is airborne, a tiny tear could leave you exposed.”

“What happens if I do rip the suit?” Mark asked. His voice quavered.

Murph had been on a few shore operations, but he was clearly uncomfortable going over to the Dawn.

Cabrillo wanted him with them to check the cruise ship’s computers and learn exactly where she had been in the past few weeks.

“I’m going to leave extra lengths of tape on all of your suits. If you get a rip, tape it up immediately and contact me. The suits have a positive air pressure, so, if you’re quick, you should be okay. Don’t move from where you are, because I will need to examine whatever it is that cut you.” She worked on Eddie next, looking over every square inch of the rubberized fabric before taping the seams. He, Mark, and Cabrillo had gun belts slung around their waists. The protective gloves made working the triggers difficult, but there was no way Juan would let them go over unarmed.

“Any time, Chairman,” George said from the Robinson’s open cockpit door. A stack of gear was on one of the nimble little helicopter’s backseats.

Juan tried to shout at a nearby technician but couldn’t be heard through the hazmat suit. He strode over and hit the button that would activate the hangar elevator. Overhead, the two sections of rear deck hatch folded open as the lift eased upward on four hydraulic rams. He secured the helo’s back door once Julia was inside and swung around to the copilot’s seat.

Eddie and Murph backed away to give George some room before he fired the engine. After warming up the helicopter for a couple of minutes, he engaged the transmission to start the main rotor turning. The Robinson bucked and wobbled, as the blades built speed, until it had generated enough force to lift them free.

The ride stabilized as he brought the chopper up vertically and then peeled away from the Oregon. There was a half mile of open ocean separating the two ships. Below, Juan spotted the wake of the SEAL boat and the little Zodiac bobbing behind it. There was a large loading door just above the Golden Dawn’s waterline used when the cruise ship was being provisioned. They would tie off the Zodiac there and return for their bleach shower.

The Dawn had beautiful lines, Cabrillo thought as they approached. She was slightly shorter than his ship, but with seven decks of cabins and suites she was much taller. Her bow had a nice racy curve to it, and she had a classic champagne-glass fantail. Her single funnel, just aft of the pool, was raked back, giving the impression that she was cutting through the water. As the Robinson crossed over the Dawn’s stern, Juan could just make out the Golden Cruise Lines’ logo, a cascade of gold coins, on the smokestack.

Adams brought the Robinson to a hover over the wheelhouse, making sure he had enough room to stay well away from the mass of antennas and radar dishes. The confining suit couldn’t diminish his skills as a pilot. He lowered the chopper to within two feet of the deck and kept it there as though it was tethered.

“Good luck,” he said as Juan threw open his door and jumped clear, instinctively ducking low.

Julia opened her own door and handed out the crates of medical gear, the rotor downwash rippling her suit. Juan set each on the deck and caught Julia as she jumped free. He closed the door and slapped the chopper’s flank. Adams instantly lifted away to get Murph and Eddie.

“I want to get down to the sick bay right away,” Julia said when the noise from the Robinson faded enough to use the radios.

“No. We’re going to wait here for George to come back. I want Eddie with you at all times while you’re looking around.”

Julia knew Juan was right. He wasn’t being protective because she was a woman. He was being protective because she was the only doctor within a thousand miles. If something happened to them while they were out here, it would fall to her to find a cure.

The helo returned in less than ten minutes, her underside still wet from being hosed with bleach. Juan and Julia positioned themselves on the stairwell down to the flying bridge to give George room. Eddie and Mark jumped simultaneously from the chopper, and Gomez took off again. This time, the Robinson would be thoroughly scrubbed down, and left on deck in case the boarding team got into trouble.

“How you doing, Mark?” Juan asked.

“Little creeped out. I’m starting to regret playing those video games about laboratory accidents that create armies of zombies.”

“Want me to stay with you on the bridge for a few minutes?”

“I’ll be okay.” His tone indicated he wanted to accept the Chairman’s offer, but pride was getting the best of him. Eric Stone and the rest of the team in the Op Center were listening in on their conversation, so there was no way he’d show any weakness.

“Good man. Where did you say the Dawn came from?”

“The Philippines,” Murph said. “From the cruise line’s database, I learned she’s on a charter from Manila to Athens for some self-help group.”

“Check her logs and computer memory. Find out if she’s made any stops and, if so, where. Also, see if there’s mention of anything unusual happening during her run. It should all be there. Julia, you know where to go and what you’re looking for. Eddie, stay with her and give her any help she needs collecting her samples.”

“Where are you going to be?” Eddie Seng asked.

“We’ve got three hours of air, so I’m going to search as much of the ship as I can.” He clicked on one of the flashlights they had brought and made sure he had a couple of spare batteries in a pouch at his back.

Cabrillo led them down the stairs and onto the wing bridge. At the far end of the narrow promenade, hanging eighty feet above the ocean, was a set of controls for a harbor pilot to maneuver the cruise liner into port. The door that gave entry to the bridge was closed. Juan pulled it toward him and stepped into the high-tech room. With the power off and the batteries for the emergency lights apparently drained, the bridge was nearly pitch-black. Only the glow of the stars and moon shone through the big windows, rendering everything in murky shadow.

Juan played the beam of the light around. He spotted the first body in less than two seconds. Julia added her torch to the illumination as she moved past him. Mark had a video camera held up to his visor. The corpse wore the uniform of a ship’s officer, white trousers, and a white shirt with dark shoulder boards.

His head was turned away from the team, but even with the uncertain flashlight beams they could see the skin of his neck was a sickly shade of white. Julia knelt at his side and gently turned the body over. The man’s face was smeared with blood, and his torso had been lying in a lake of it. Dr. Huxley performed a quick examination, grunting to herself with each discovery.

As she worked, Mark Murphy was searching for the backup electrical system, and, in a moment, several lights came up and a few computer monitors flickered to life. There were three other corpses on the bridge, two men in utility uniforms and a woman wearing a cocktail dress. Cabrillo surmised that she had been the guest of the officer who was showing off the bridge when they were struck by whatever pathogen had swept through the passengers and crew like wildfire. The other two crewmen had been standing watch.

“Well, Hux?” he asked before she had finished her grisly task.

“It’s possible it was a gas attack of some sort, but with so many of the victims out on deck my money’s on a new form of hemorrhagic fever, but more powerful than anything I’ve ever heard of.”

“Like a super Ebola virus?” Eddie asked.

“Faster and more lethal. This has a hundred percent mortality. Ebola Zaire, the worst of the three strains, is about ninety percent. The blood isn’t black, which leads me to believe it didn’t pass into his gastrointestinal tract. Judging by the spray patterns, I’d almost say he coughed it all up. Same with the woman. However, there are other things at work here.” She gently lifted the officer’s arm. It was as rubbery as a tentacle. “The bones have decalcified to the point they have almost dissolved. I think I can press my finger into his skull.”

“That’s okay,” Juan said before she gave a demonstration. “Any idea what we’re dealing with?” She stood and used a disinfecting wipe to clean her gloves. “Whatever it is, it’s an engineered virus.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. For no other reason than this bug kills its host too quickly to be natural. Like any other living organism, viruses are biologically compelled to reproduce themselves as often as possible. By destroying its host in a matter of minutes, it doesn’t have much time to transfer itself from one person to the next. An outbreak of this stuff in the real world would die out as quickly as it flared up. Even Ebola takes a couple of weeks to kill its victims, leaving enough time for family members and neighbors to catch it. Natural selection would have killed off this bug a long time ago.” She looked him in the eye, so there was no mistaking her meaning in the next sentence. “Someone made it in a lab and unleashed it on board this ship.”

Juan was torn by pity for the poor men and women who were on the Golden Dawn when the virus was set free and rage at those who perpetrated the attack. It was the fury in his voice that carried the strongest over the radio. “Find what you need to nail them, Hux.”

“Yes, sir.” His tone compelled her to salute, even though such actions were almost unheard of for the crew of the Oregon.

Juan turned on his heel and strode aft through a doorway leading into the ship.

The hallway beyond was thankfully empty, and the cabins he peered into were vacant. Judging by the dress of the young woman on the bridge and the other passengers they’d observed from the UAV and chopper ride in, he assumed there had been a large party under way and that most cabins would be empty. When he finished his sweep of the officers’ accommodations, he opened another door that led into what the cruise industry called the hotel section of the ship. Though not as opulent as some modern cruise vessels, the Golden Dawn sported her fair share of polished brass and plush carpets, done in accents of pink and teal. The sound of his own breathing was all he heard as he reached a balcony overlooking an atrium that sank four decks to a marble floor. Without lights, the towering foyer was like a dingy cave. The flashlight beam momentarily flashed off the windows of specialty boutiques down below, making Juan think he’d seen movement.

He was jumpy and took a deep breath to calm himself. There were bodies strewn all around the atrium, each of them settled in a repose of agony. Some lay on the staircases as if they’d sat themselves down to await death’s embrace while others had simply collapsed where they were. As he circled down the wide steps that ringed the foyer, Cabrillo saw where a six-piece orchestra had been. Five of the tuxedoed musicians had simply fallen over their instruments, while only one had tried to get away. He’d made it less than a dozen feet from his bandmates before he had succumbed to the virus.

There were hundreds of stories to tell from the dead: a man and woman clinging to each other as they died, a waitress who’d taken the time to set her tray of drinks on a side table outside a bar before she fell, a group of young women still close enough to each other for him to tell they were getting their picture taken, though there was no sign of the photographer, just his expensive camera lying in pieces on the floor. He couldn’t see inside the glass-enclosed elevator that linked the decks because the panes were painted with blood.

Juan continued on. The hazmat suit and recycled air could protect him from the environment, but nothing could shield him from the horror. He had never seen mass murder on such a scale, and, if not for one hand curled around the flashlight and the other clutching a pistol, he knew they would be trembling uncontrollably.

“How’s everyone doing?” he called over the communications net, more to hear a human voice than any need for a progress report.

“Eddie and I are en route to the ship’s hospital,” Julia replied. The transmission was garbled by interference from the ship’s steel construction.

“I’m about to enter the engineering spaces. If you don’t hear from me in thirty minutes, get Eddie to come find me.”

“Copy that.”

“Murph?”

“With just backup power, the computer’s slower than my first PC on dial-up,” Mark said. “It’s going to take me a while to retrieve what we need.”

“Keep on it. Oregon, do you read?”

“Affirmative,” a voice replied. Static made it difficult to tell who it was, but Cabrillo assumed it was Max Hanley. Juan had never thought to upgrade the suite’s radios from the ones that came standard from the manufacturer. A rare oversight he was paying for now.

“Anything on the scopes?”

“We’re all alone, Juan.”

“If anyone shows up, tell me right away.”

“You got it.”

The door in front of Juan was labeled CREW ONLY and was secured with an electronic lock. With the power out, the lock had automatically disengaged, so he pushed it inward and started down a corridor.

Unlike the passenger spaces, decorated with wood paneling and elaborate lighting, this passage was painted a plain white with vinyl tiles on the floor and boxy fluorescent fixtures on the ceiling. Bundles of color-coded piping conduits ran along the walls. He passed small offices for stewards and pursers as well as a large dining hall for the crew. There were a half dozen more victims here, either slumped over tables or lying on the floor. As with all the others Juan had seen, he noted that they had coughed blood in copious amounts. Their final moments must have been excruciating.

He passed by one of the ship’s gleaming kitchens, which now resembled a slaughterhouse, and an industrial-sized laundry room with twenty washing machines that looked as big as cement mixers. He was aware that certain ethnic groups dominated the service sectors of the cruise industry and wasn’t surprised to see the laundry gang was Chinese. It might seem a racist stereotype, but, in this case, it was true.

He kept on, looking for and finally spotting a heavy door marked ENGINEERING/NO

UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE. Beyond the door was a small vestibule and a second soundproof hatch. He ducked through, and descended three flights of stairs, before emerging in an auxiliary room off the main engine room. His light revealed a pair of generators sitting side by side and banks of computer controls. A massive sliding door aft led to the engine room. Dominating the cavernous space were two huge engines, each the size of a commercial truck. He laid a hand on one engine block. It was stone cold.

The Golden Dawn must have been without power for at least twelve hours for it to have cooled to the ambient air temperature. Overhead, the engines’ exhaust pipes merged into a plenum and funnel that would rise all the way to the main smokestack.

Unlike the hundreds of other engine rooms Juan had been in, he didn’t feel the palpable power, the sense of strength and endurance that these engines were capable of. Here, he felt nothing but the chill of a crypt. He knew if Max was with him, his engineer’s pride would require him to refire the diesels, just to give them life again.

He tried his radio, calling to Hux, then Mark, and finally the Oregon , but interference returned nothing but static. Juan quickened his pace, training his light over the equipment for any sign of something out of the ordinary. He passed through another watertight door and found himself at the ship’s sewage treatment plant. He moved on. Beyond was another set of idle generators and the Dawn’s desalinators.

Using a technique called reverse osmosis, the water treatment system drew in seawater and extracted almost one hundred percent of the salt, rendering it safe enough to drink. This one machine provided water to the galleys, the laundry, and every bathroom aboard the vessel. Of the two places he could think to introduce a deadly virus and make certain it affected everyone aboard, this was number one. He would search for the second—the vessel’s air-conditioning units—later.

Cabrillo spent ten minutes examining the desalinator, borrowing a tool kit from a nearby workbench to unbolt inspection ports and peer inside. He saw no evidence of tampering or recent maintenance. The bolts were all stiff, and the grease felt gritty, even through his protective gloves. There was nothing at all to indicate that a foreign object, like a bunch of vials of toxin, had been injected into the plant.

The explosion came without warning. It rumbled someplace aft of the engine room and sounded deeper within the ship. And even as the sound faded, another blast rocked the Golden Dawn. Cabrillo stood, immediately trying to raise his team on the radio net, when a third explosive charge detonated.

One second, Juan was standing over the desalinator and, the next, he was halfway across the room, his back a flaming sheet of pain from being slammed into a bulkhead. He fell to the deck as another rumbling detonation hit the ship. The blast was well forward of his position, and, yet, he could feel the overpressure wave sluice through the engine room and press him to the floor. He staggered to his feet to retrieve his flashlight, which had been flung ten yards away. As soon as his fingers curled around the light, some sixth sense made him turn. There was motion behind him. Even without electricity, the ship’s gravity-powered watertight doors functioned flawlessly. The thick metal plates began to slide down from the ceiling to cover the open hatchways.

A new sound struck the Chairman, and he whirled in time to see a wall of white water erupt from under the deck through grates that gave access to bilge spaces below the engine room.

A fourth explosion rocked the Golden Dawn and made the entire ship rattle.

As he ran for the descending watertight door, Juan knew that whoever had poisoned the passengers and crew had placed scuttling charges to hide the evidence of their crime. There was something significant in that, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it.

The water welling up from below was already to his ankles when he ducked under the first door, with four feet to spare. Hampered by the protective suit, he ran as best he could across the next room, passing the sewage plant without a glance, his feet splashing through the rising water. His breathing wheezed in his ears and taxed the suit’s filters.

The next door was already a mere two feet from slamming into the deck. Juan put on a burst of speed and dove flat, sliding through the water so it foamed over his faceplate. His helmet hit the bottom lip of the door. He twisted under it, pressing himself flat as he moved, wriggling to get by without ripping the suit. He could feel the weight of the door pressing down and he lurched as hard as he could, pulling his chest and upper legs through. He tried to roll away, but the solid gate continued to drop. In a desperate gamble, he cocked one leg and wedged his foot between the door and the sill.

The door weighed at least a ton, so Cabrillo’s artificial foot delayed its descent for only a second but it bought him enough time to yank his other leg clear.

The pulverized limb remained jammed under the door and allowed a curtain of water to surge into the main engine room unchecked. It also held Juan helplessly pinned, because, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t free the prosthesis.

Cabrillo was trapped in the engine room of a doomed ship, and, no matter how he fiddled with his radio dials, he got nothing but static.

CHAPTER 8

MAX HANLEY DIDN’T NEED HALI’S FRANTIC CRY TO tell him a series of explosions had struck the Golden Dawn. He could see the bursts of white water erupting in sequence along the cruise ship’s side on the Oregon’s main monitor. It looked like she’d been struck by torpedoes, but he knew that was impossible. The radar scopes were clear, and sonar would have detected the launches.

As the smoke cleared, Eric zoomed the low-light camera in on one of the damaged areas. The hole was easily big enough for a person to walk through, and seawater was cascading into the breach at a staggering rate. With four identical punctures along her waterline, there were too many compartments flooding to save the ship, especially without power going to her bilge pumps. He estimated that she would founder in less than an hour.

Max tapped his communications console. “George, get your butt back in the whirlybird and get over to the Dawn. A series of scuttling charges just went off, and our people are in trouble.”

“Copy that,” Gomez Adams replied instantly. “Do you want me to land over there?”

“Negative. Hover on standby and await further orders.” Max changed channels. “ Oregon to Cabrillo.

Come in, Juan.” Static filled the Op Center. Hali fine-tuned the transceiver, searching in vain for the Chairman’s signal, but he couldn’t find it. “Julia, are you there? Eddie?”

“I’m here,” a voice suddenly boomed over the loudspeakers. It was Mark Murphy. He was still in the Golden Dawn’s wheelhouse and had better reception. “What just happened? It sounded like explosions.”

“It was,” Max replied. “Someone’s trying to sink the ship, and, from what we can tell over here, they’re going to succeed.”

“I’ve barely started on the downloads.”

“Pack it in, son. Gomez is on his way to you. Hightail it out of there as soon as you can.”

“What about Juan and the others?” Murph asked.

“Have you been able to reach them on the radio?”

“No. Juan cut out about twenty minutes ago when he went down to the engine room.” Hanley suppressed a curse. That was about the worst location to be when the explosives went off.

“What about Eddie and Hux?”

“They fell off the net a couple minutes later. I’ll tell you one thing, Max, the radios in these suits are getting upgraded as soon as we’re back.”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Max said, although he’d been thinking the exact same thing. He studied the image relayed to the monitor and saw that the Dawn was settling fast. Her lowest row of portholes was less than three feet from going under, and the ship had developed a slight list to starboard. If he sent Murph out to search for the rest of the team, there was a good chance the weapons specialist would become trapped in the vessel. She was sinking pretty evenly now, but he knew the ship could lurch downward at any second. He would just have to trust that the others would make their own way out.

“Mark,” he called, “get aboard the chopper as soon as you’re able. We’ll have you stay on station, searching over the ship for when the rest reach the upper deck.”

“Roger that, but I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I, lad, neither do I.”

AFTER ONLY A QUICK GLANCE at a ship’s schematic, Eddie Seng led Julia unerringly to the Golden Dawn’s small hospital, located on level DD, well below the main deck. With his help, she had gathered blood and tissue samples from a number of victims on the way.

“You’re holding up pretty well for someone who isn’t a medico,” Hux had told Eddie when she was working on the first of the victims.

“I’ve seen how Chinese interrogators leave their prisoners after extracting whatever information they think the person had,” Eddie had said in an emotionless monotone. “After that, nothing much bothers me.”

Julia knew of Seng’s deep-cover forays into China on behalf of the CIA and didn’t doubt he’d seen horrors far worse than anything she could imagine.

As she had suspected, there was a trail of bodies leading down the corridor toward the dispensary, men and women who had had just enough time after falling ill to go to the one place they thought they could find help. She took samples here as well, thinking that something in their physiology gave them a few minutes other victims had been denied by the pathogen. It could be an important clue at finding the cause of the outbreak, since she was holding little hope of finding any survivors.

The hospital door was open when they arrived. She stepped over a man wearing a tuxedo lying across the threshold and entered the windowless antechamber. Her flashlight revealed a pair of desks and some storage cabinets. On the walls were travel posters, a sign reminding everyone that handwashing was a crucial step in reducing infections aboard ship, and a plaque stating that Dr. Howard Passman had received his medical degree from the University of Leeds.

Julia played her light around the adjoining examination room and saw it was empty. A door at the far end of the office led to the patients’ rooms, which were little more than curtained-off cubicles, each containing a bed and a simple nightstand. There were two more victims on the floor here, a young woman in a tight black dress and a middle-aged man wearing a bathrobe. Like all the rest, they were covered in their own blood.

“Think that’s the doctor?” Eddie asked.

“That would be my guess. He was probably struck by the virus in his cabin and rushed here as fast as he could.”

“Not fast enough.”

“For this bug, no one is.” Julia cocked her head. “Do you hear that?”

“In this suit, I can’t hear anything but my own breathing.”

“Sounds like a pump or something.” She pulled back one of the curtains surrounding a bed. The blanket and sheets were crisp and flat.

She went to the next. On the floor next to the bed was a battery-powered oxygen machine like those used by people with respiratory problems. The clear-plastic lines snaked under the covers. Julia flashed her light over the bed. Someone was in it, with the blankets pulled up over their head.

She rushed forward. “We’ve got a live one!”

Huxley peeled back the blankets. A young woman was sound asleep, the air tubes feeding directly into her nostrils. Her dark hair was fanned over the pillow, framing a face with pale, delicate features. She was bone thin, with long arms and slender shoulders. Julia could see the outline of her clavicles through her T-shirt. Even in repose, she’d obviously gone through an ordeal that had taken its toll.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she screamed when she saw the two figures in space suits hovering over her bed.

“It’s okay,” Julia said. “I’m a doctor. We’re here to rescue you.” Julia’s muffled voice did little to calm the woman. Her blue eyes were wide with fear, and she backed up against the head-board, drawing the blankets over herself.

“My name is Julia. This is Eddie. We are going to get you out of here. What’s your name?”

“Who . . . Who are you?” the young woman stammered.

“I’m a doctor from another ship. Do you know what happened?”

“Last night, there was a party.”

When the woman didn’t continue, Julia assumed that she was in shock. She turned to Seng. “Break out another hazmat suit. We can’t take her off the supplemental oxygen until she’s in it.”

“Why’s that?” Eddie asked, tearing open the hazmat suit’s plastic wrap.

“I think it’s why she survived and no one else did. The virus must be airborne. She wasn’t breathing the ambient air but drawing oxygen from the hospital’s oh-two system, and, when that went down, she started using this portable unit here.” Julia looked back at the girl. She estimated her age to be early twenties, either a passenger traveling with her family or a member of the crew. “Can you tell me your name, sweetie?”

“Jannike. Jannike Dahl. My friends call me Janni.”

“May I call you Janni?” Julia asked, seating herself off the bed and holding the flashlight so Janni could see her face through her suit’s faceplate. Jannike nodded. “Good. My name is Julia.”

“You are American?”

Just as Julia opened her mouth to respond, a deep bass sound filled the room. “What was that?” Eddie didn’t have time to tell her it was an explosion before a second, closer blast echoed through the ship. Jannike screamed again and yanked the covers over her head.

“We have to go,” Eddie said. “Now!”

Two more blasts rocked the Golden Dawn. One of them detonated a short distance from the ward, knocking Seng to the floor and forcing Julia to use her body to shield Jannike. A light fixture crashed from the ceiling, its fluorescent bulb shattering with a loud pop.

Eddie got to his feet. “Stay with the girl.” He ran from the room.

“Janni, it’s okay. We’ll get you out,” Julia said, and drew down the blankets again. Tears coursed down Jannike’s smooth cheeks, and her lower lip quivered.

“What is happening?”

“My friend is checking it out. I need you to put this on.” Julia held out the protective hazmat suit. “We have to do it very carefully, though, okay?”

“Am I sick?”

“I don’t think so.” Julia had no idea until she could run some tests, but there was no way she was going to tell the frightened girl that.

“I have asthma,” Janni told her. “That’s why I was here in hospital. It was a bad attack that the doctor couldn’t control.”

“Has it passed?”

“I think so. I have not used my inhaler since . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“But you stayed on the oxygen?”

“I saw what happened to Dr. Passman and to my friend, Karin. I thought maybe it was something they had breathed, so I kept using it.”

“You are a brave and resourceful girl. I think you saved your life by doing that.” Knowing she had done something to help herself gave Jannike a bit of confidence, and hope that she would get off the ship alive.

Eddie jogged back into the room. “The blast wrecked the hallway about twenty yards from here. We can’t go back up the way we came.”

“Is there another way?”

“We better hope so. I can hear the lower part of the ship flooding.” WATER SURGED UNDER the jammed door like a rising tide, and, if not for the protection of his hazmat suit, with its own air supply, Cabrillo would have drowned. After a few minutes struggling again to free his crushed prosthesis, he lay back and let the sea roar over him, as it rapidly filled the main engine room. The swell was already a foot and a half deep, and rising by the second.

Juan’s only consolation was that the rest of his team hadn’t ventured this deep into the Golden Dawn and would be able to escape relatively easily.

During his earlier examination of the engineering spaces, he hadn’t seen any victims of the virus, or whatever had been unleashed on the ship, telling him that the vessel had been running on automated mode, with just two men on the bridge and no one down here to monitor the power plants. With no one to infect, he wondered, how long would the pathogen remain in the air? Hux might have an idea, but this was a new virus, even for her, so, at best, she could make only a calculated guess.

The air conditioners had been shut down for a while, letting dust and microbes settle. Had enough time elapsed? Cabrillo could only hope so, because he knew that by lying in the torrent of rising water and thinking about it, he was just putting off the inevitable.

He worried his right arm free of his sleeve and snaked it down across his chest to his right leg. He took a handful of cloth from the bottom of his pants and yanked it upward over his artificial limb, giving him access to the straps that held it in place. With practiced fingers, he released the straps and popped the slight vacuum seal that held the leg to his stump. He felt an immediate measure of freedom after detaching the limb, although his suit remained pinned beneath the door.

Now for the hard part. Juan reached over his shoulder to crank up the airflow in his suit and felt it balloon out against its seams. He carried three things on him at all times. One was a cigarette lighter, although all he smoked was an occasional cigar; the other two were a compass, no bigger than a button, and a folding knife. He pulled the knife from his pocket and opened the blade with one hand. He had to lie in a fetal position to reach as far down his pant leg as he could, fighting the weight of water still pouring in from under the door.

The knife was as sharp as a scalpel and sliced though the protective hazmat suit with ease. Air began to gush from the slit, and, for a moment, was able to hold back the force of water trying to exploit the cut, but the suit soon began to fill. Juan worked faster, slicing through the material in a race to free himself before he was overwhelmed by the flood. He was lying on his side, and the water pressed against his face forced him to turn his head and try to raise himself a couple of inches without losing track of where he was cutting the suit.

His new position was too awkward to allow him to work efficiently, so he took a deep breath and lay flat again, torquing the blade around his calf, to keep cutting away the trapped suit material. His lungs screamed for air, but he ignored his body’s needs, working with preternatural calm despite the danger.

He tried yanking himself free, but the tough plastic cloth wouldn’t tear. He tried again with the same results. Now he had to breathe, so he heaved himself upright to clear his helmet of water, but there was too much pressure. The helmet wouldn’t drain.

Cabrillo’s lungs convulsed, allowing a trickle of bubbles to escape his lips. It was like suppressing a cough, and the corresponding pain in his chest was an unnecessary reminder that his brain was starving for oxygen. He was already becoming light-headed. He pulled savagely at the suit and felt it tear slightly, but it wouldn’t give completely. Juan tried to force himself to calm down, but survival instincts were overwhelming any sense of logic. He bent down yet again to work the knife, though this time he hacked at the suit in a frenzy, all the while pulling against it with his last bit of strength.

Without warning, he tumbled back. Either he had completely cut away the boot portion of his suit or it had ripped. He rolled onto his knees and pushed himself from the floor, feeling the water drain from the suit through the rent in its fabric. Fearful of exposing himself to anything, he allowed himself only a tiny sip of air, barely enough to clear the creeping shadows that filled his mind.

He stood, letting the rest of the water that had filled his suit to sluice down his body and out. With seawater surging under the door, Juan couldn’t stand steady on one leg, so he hopped a couple of feet to a workbench. Leaning against it, he quickly tied off the shredded remains of the suit, making the tightest knots he could. He dialed down the airflow when the suit became rigid. He was sure a little would leak through the cut, but, with positive pressure on the inside, he didn’t think anything could enter. In all, his exposure had been nominal, and having spent nearly all of his exposure time under water he was confident that he would be okay.

That was until he remembered he was trapped in a sinking ship, with no way out and no way to communicate with his team or the Oregon.

He groped blindly through the darkness with his hands held in front of him, using his sense of touch to locate his position within the cavernous engine room. Without his artificial leg, movement was clumsy and difficult, but he finally found another workbench he’d seen earlier. He opened drawers and felt around, identifying tools by feel, until he found what he had hoped would be there.

The flashlight wasn’t as powerful as the one he’d lost, but its beam gave him a mental lift. At least now he wasn’t blind. He hopped across the engine room, hampered by the rising floodwater that reached his knees. He passed the twin diesels and reached the far watertight door. This one was down securely. He searched for a manual release that would allow him to open it, but there was no such mechanism.

He felt the first tentacles of panic tickling the back of his mind and crushed them down savagely. Not knowing the extent of damage done to the ship by the scuttling charges, he didn’t know how long the Golden Dawn would stay afloat. If she remained stable, like she was now, it would take a couple of hours for the engine room to fill, more than enough time to think up an alternative escape route or for Eddie and the others to find a way to rescue him.

No sooner had that thought occurred to him than a prolonged moan reverberated through the hull, a rending of metal pushed past its stress point. He physically felt the ship lurch toward the bow. The water in the engine room sloshed in a titanic wave that crashed against the far door. It rushed back, and Juan had to leap onto a table to keep from being crushed against a bulkhead. He shone his light across the room and could tell that the rate of water bubbling up from the forward part of the ship had doubled.

Seawater fountained from under the door in angry geysers, as if the ocean was eager to claim its latest victim.

Cabrillo’s hours had just turned into minutes.

He flashed the light around, looking for any way out of the sealed room. The seed of a crazy idea struck him, and he turned the beam to one of the massive engines and the ducts rising from it. The light slowly drifted upward, his eyes following. “Aha!”

JULIA TURNED TO JANNIKE DAHL, keeping her voice as soothing as she could. “Janni, sweetheart, we have to get you out of here, but, in order to do that, you need to put on a protective suit like the ones Eddie and I are wearing.”

“The boat is sinking?” she asked.

“Yes, it is. We have to go.”

Julia turned on the suit’s battery-powered fans and scrubbers and unzipped the back. She didn’t tell Janni that the garment wasn’t for her protection but rather for the crew of the Oregon, in case she was already infected. Making sure to keep the air flowing through the tubes in her nose, Janni slid her coltish legs into the hazmat suit and shrugged it over her narrow shoulders. Julia helped tuck her long hair into the helmet. Hux could tell it hadn’t been washed in several days. Jannike’s asthma attack had kept her in the infirmary for a while.

“Take a deep breath through your nose and hold it for as long as you can,” she ordered.

Janni’s chest expanded as she drew the pure oxygen into her lungs. Julia unhooked the cannula from around Janni’s ears and tossed the tubing aside. She pulled the two halves of the suit closed and zipped it up. It took her another minute to secure the seams with duct tape.

Hux had to give Eddie Seng credit. Despite the urgency, he showed not the slightest sign of impatience.

He understood that the young woman was bordering on catatonic shock and needed to be treated as though she were a child. Considering what Janni had been through, Julia thought she was doing fine.

When Eddie had returned from his brief exploration, he’d taken a moment to drape sheets over the two bodies outside Janni’s cubicle. The girl still stared at the shrouded figures as Julia led her past. The three reached the hallway where nothing could have been done about the multitude of corpses. Julia felt Janni’s hand stiffen in hers, but, to Janni’s credit, she stayed with them. In Hux’s other hand, she carried her sample case.

“That way is blocked,” Eddie said, jerking a thumb in the direction they had come. “Janni, is there another way to reach the main deck from here?”

“This hallway just stops.” She made sure to look him in the face so as not to stare at the dead. “But there is a metal door at the end I have heard the crew use to work on something down below. Maybe there is a way out.”

“Perfect,” Eddie said. “Must be an auxiliary access hatch.” Following the beam of his flashlight, they threaded their way down the corridor and, as Janni had said, there was a large oval hatch embedded in the bare steel wall. Eddie undogged the lock and peered inside. He was confronted with a tangle of pipework that took him a moment to decipher. “This is the pump room for the main swimming pool. The water is dropped down here for filtering, then sent back up.”

The ship suddenly creaked, as though her hull was splitting, and the Golden Dawn lurched, nearly knocking Jannike to the floor. Julia steadied her as she and Eddie exchanged a glance. Time was running out.

Eddie went through the open hatch and looked for another way out. There was a second hatch on the floor, surrounded by a metal railing. He dropped to a knee to free the locks and heaved the door open against its protesting hinges. A ladder dropped into the darkness. He descended as best he could, the hazmat suit making the narrow space difficult to negotiate. He was in another mechanical room ringed with electronics cabinets. It was a distribution node for the ship’s electric supply and, normally, would have been buzzing with current. Now the room was silent. An open door gave way to another darkened hallway.

“Come on down,” he shouted, and waited at the base of the ladder to guide Janni the last couple of rungs. Though Eddie was of below-average height, he felt he could encircle the girl’s waist with his hands, even with her suit bulking her up like a snowman.

Julia descended a second later, and Eddie led them out of the room. He asked Jannike, “Do you recognize where we are?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied after peering into the gloom. “Many parts of the ship are off-limits to the hotel staff, and I have not been on board for that long.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie said reassuringly, sensing her frustration at not being more helpful.

With the Dawn settling bow first, Eddie turned aft. He could feel a slight strain in his thighs that was telling him he was climbing uphill. The angle was mild, but he knew it would grow steeper as more compartments flooded.

Because of his suit, he never felt the breeze that suddenly came from behind him. It was the tremor in the deck plates below his feet that told him to turn. A wall of water barreled down the hallway at the level of his thighs, a solid green mass that struck them before he could shout a warning. Caught in the maelstrom, the trio was borne along the crest of the wave, tumbling helplessly, until the swell’s momentum slowly petered out. They were dropped to the deck, a tangle of limbs, as the sea continued to flow around them.

Eddie was the first on his feet, and he helped Janni stand. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.”

“Doc, you okay?” he asked.

“Just a little rattled. What happened?”

“A bulkhead must have failed close to the bow and let the wave through. We still have some time.” They continued on, sloshing through the ankle-deep water. Eddie checked the stencils on each of the doors they passed, hoping to find one marked stairwell, but luck wasn’t with them. Down here were rooms for dry storage and storage for spare parts. An I-beam track along the ceiling allowed the crew to use winches to move heavy equipment from there to the nearest elevator. He thought that could make an alternate plan if they didn’t find stairs. He had no doubt he could climb up an elevator shaft, Hux most likely, too, but he didn’t think Jannike had the strength. If not for the suit, maybe he could have her cling to his back while he made the ascent. It was something to consider.

He almost missed a door to his right and had to stop to play the light across the stencil: WATERCRAFT

STORAGE.

“Bingo!”

“What is it?”

“Our ticket out of here,” Eddie said, and pushed open the door.

By the light of his torch, he could see a line of gleaming Jet Skis and two-person runabout boats. They were resting on specially designed cradles. There was a large hole in the ceiling the boats could be lifted through and a set of circular stairs leading up to the next level. He climbed, with the others in tow.

This was where passengers could rent one of the personal watercraft when the cruise ship was in port.

There was a registration counter along one wall, and posters everywhere with safety reminders. The floor was covered in a nonskid indoor/outdoor carpet, and on the outside bulkhead was a door sized like that of a suburban garage. A hydraulically controlled ramp was folded along the door’s length. When the door was open and the ramp deployed, it would act as a small dock.

Eddie tapped the steel door with the butt of his flashlight. Rather than return a sharp echo, it rang with a dull thud. He tried higher up and finally got the results he wanted. “The ship’s sunk to within two feet of the top of the door,” he reported. “When I open it, this room is going to flood.”

“Will we be able to get out,” Janni asked breathlessly.

“No problem.” Eddie smiled to reassure her. “Once the inside and outside pressure equalize, we’ll be able to swim away. And the beauty of it is, our suits will keep us afloat.”

“I’ll go downstairs and close off the door we came through,” Julia said, understanding that, in order for Eddie’s plan to work, the boat garage had to be isolated from the rest of the ship or water would just keep pouring in.

“Thanks,” Eddie said. He positioned Jannike away from the door and up against a railing so she could hold on as the room flooded.

The door was operated by a small electric winch but had a mechanical handle to crank it up or down in case power was ever lost. When Hux returned and was standing next to Janni to help hold her in place, Eddie bent and grabbed the handle. As soon as he put pressure on it, the door crept up a quarter inch and water started to enter the chamber in a flat rush. He was off to the side of the door but could still feel water sweeping by his lower legs as he cranked it higher.

The sea cascaded through the opening in the floor in a thundering waterfall.

Eddie had the door a quarter of the way open when the handle jammed. He pulled on it harder but couldn’t get it to budge. He looked at the door and saw what had happened. The force of water pressing against it had buckled the metal near the bottom and popped the guide wheels off their tracks. Even as he watched, the door distorted further, bending in the middle, as though it was being shoved by a giant hand.

He shouted a warning to Janni and Julia that was lost in the roar of water as the door failed completely. It tore free from its mounts and was tossed across the room as though it were a piece of paper. Free of the constraint, the ocean exploded through the opening in a green wall.

Julia and Janni were far enough to the side to be spared the brunt of the onslaught, but, as the room instantly filled, they were pummeled by the back surge of water. Had it not been for Hux’s presence, Jannike Dahl would have been lost in the tumult.

Shock waves continued to reverberate through the water, sending debris, including a Jet Ski, floating dangerously by. It was only when the water settled that Eddie was able to let go of the stanchion he’d been clutching. He immediately started floating for the ceiling. Like a cat in reverse, he flipped himself around as he sailed upward, to land on the roof on his hands and knees, his flashlight still gripped in his hand. He adjusted the airflow into the hazmat suit to reduce the pressure, and, thus, his buoyancy.

Otherwise, he’d remain stuck to the ceiling and immobilized.

He worked the light to spot Julia and their young charge, hanging on to a railing with their feet pointing up, the air in the suits ballooning the fabric around their legs. He crawled over to them and gently touched Hux’s leg, urging her to let go and float free. She did and rose up to join him. He did the same for Janni, and turned down the airflow from the tanks. He started crawling across to the open door but felt Julia resisting his help. She tapped him on the shoulder and pressed her visor to his.

“I lost the sample case,” she shouted, the vibration of her voice transferring through the plastic so he could hear the words. “We have to find it.”

Eddie looked at the mass of clutter swirling inside the garage: towels, life jackets, notebooks, bottles of sunscreen and water, coolers. It could take hours to find the case, and if it had been sucked back out the door it was already falling to the seafloor, some ten thousand feet below the ship.

“No time,” he said back to her.

“Eddie, we need those tissue samples.”

His answer was to take her hand and start toward the beckoning door.

The sudden influx of water that swamped the boat garage had shifted the Golden Dawn’s center of gravity, and the vessel began to list more heavily. The stresses on her hull were pushing to the breaking point, and, deep along her keel, the steel began to tear. The sound of her death knell echoed over the ocean, as haunting as a whale song or funeral dirge.

Julia and Eddie towed Jannike through the opening. As soon as they were free of the ship, Eddie added air to his suit and shot for the surface.

Nearby, the Oregon was ablaze with lights. Searchlights pierced the darkness and roamed across the Dawn’s deck and along her waterline. The Zodiac inflatable that had been tied off near the garage bobbed nearby, its painter pulled taut and its bow submerged by the draw of the sinking cruise liner. As Eddie untied the line from an eyebolt welded to the ship’s hull, one of the searchlights stabbing out from the Oregon swept past them and then returned, bathing them in a pool of incandescence. Julia and Jannike waved furiously. The light blinked in acknowledgment.

The Robinson helicopter swooped over from the far side of the cruise ship. George Adams held it steady over them long enough to see they were all right before moving off again to spare them the hurricane force of the rotor’s downwash.

Eddie rolled over the Zodiac’s side and hoisted Julia and Janni aboard. In seconds, he had the motor running and the little boat skipping across the waves toward the Oregon. The door over the tramp freighter’s amidships boat garage was open and a team in protective gear was standing by with spray bottles of concentrated bleach solution to decontaminate their suits.

Eddie idled the Zodiac just off the ship. With the radios shorted by prolonged immersion in the water, he couldn’t communicate with the orderlies, but everyone knew his duty. They threw over a couple of scrub brushes to the Zodiac and turned on the powerful jets of bleach. Eddie and Julia first scrubbed Jannike and then each other, making certain every square inch of their hazmat suits had been decontaminated thoroughly. Six inches of bleach sloshed across the Zodiac’s floorboards before they were done.

When Julia was satisfied they had killed any infection that might be clinging to the suits, she ripped away the duct tape over the zipper and freed herself of the claustrophobic garment. The warm, humid air was the freshest she’d ever tasted. “God, that feels good.”

“Amen to that,” Eddie said, peeling off his suit and leaving it in the boat.

He guided a still-suited Jannike onto the Teflon-coated ramp they used to launch the SEAL assault boat.

Julia took charge of her. She would take her down to the medical bay and run a battery of tests in the isolation ward to determine if the young woman was infected. Only then would Janni be allowed to interact with the crew.

Max Hanley arrived just as Eddie was preparing to sink the Zodiac. His face told Eddie that everything hadn’t gone as well for the others as it had for him and Julia. “What happened?”

“Mark is safe aboard the Robinson, but we lost contact with the Chairman.”

“Damnit. I’m going back. He’s someplace in the engineering section.”

“Look for yourself.” Max pointed to the sinking cruise ship. When her keel had split, the volume of water flooding her hull had quadrupled. “There isn’t time.”

“Max, it’s the Chairman, for God’s sake!”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Hanley had a tenuous grip on his emotions.

Across the gulf of water, the Golden Dawn was in her final moments. The rows of portholes that ran along her length below her main deck were all submerged, and, with her back broken, she was settling deeper in the middle than at her bow or stern. The two men watched silently as the ship continued to disappear.

Air trapped within the hull started to vent explosively. Windows shattered and doors were torn from their hinges by the tremendous pressure. The sea washed over her railing and began to climb her upper decks amid erupting geysers of froth. From where they stood, it looked as though the Golden Dawn was surrounded by boiling water.

When the ocean reached the level of the Dawn’s bridge, it shattered the tempered glass. Debris started floating free of the hulk—deck chairs, mostly, but one of her lifeboats had also broken free of its davits and drifted away upside down.

Max wiped at his eyes when the top of the bridge vanished and all that remained above the water were the ship’s communications masts and her funnel. Gushes of air roiled the surface as the sea consumed more and more of the vessel.

Eric Stone was in the Op Center, controlling the searchlights from the weapons station. He left the ship’s most powerful light focused on the Dawn’s smokestack, outlining the gold coins painted on it. The sea bubbled like a thermal hot spring while the Robinson hovered overhead.

Max whispered Juan’s name and crossed himself when the top of the funnel was a foot from disappearing completely. A blast of air suddenly belched from the stack, ejecting a yellow object as if from a cannon. It rose twenty feet, flapping in the air like a bird trying to take flight.

“Holy sh—” He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The yellow object was one of their biohazard suits and the flapping was Cabrillo’s arms windmilling and his legs bicycling. Juan’s trajectory carried him from the smokestack and over the railing before he crashed back into the sea. The impact must have stunned him, because he lay still for a couple of seconds before starting to swim away from the sinking vessel. Eric tracked him with the searchlight as Juan swam to the overturned lifeboat. He heaved himself onto its back, faced the Oregon on his knees, and made a deep, theatrical bow.

Eric saluted him with a blast from the ship’s horn.

CHAPTER 9

DR. HUXLEY WAS CONCENTRATING SO HARD THAT she didn’t hear Mark Murphy and Eric Stone rush into the lab adjacent to the medical bay. Her mind was immersed in the minute realm revealed by her powerful microscope, and it wasn’t until Murph cleared his throat that she looked up from her computer screen. There was a frown on her face from being disturbed, but seeing the two men’s grins she thrust aside her irritation.

Behind them, her patient lay in isolation, shut off from the rest of the ship by a sterile glass enclosure whose air was pumped through sophisticated purifiers and into a thousand-degree furnace before being allowed to leave the ship. Juan slouched in a chair by Janni’s bed, still wearing his yellow biohazard suit.

Until Julia knew if his brief exposure to the water in the engine room had infected him with whatever pathogen had killed the men and women aboard the Golden Dawn, she had to treat him as though he were a carrier. Her microscope, with its potentially infectious samples, was also in the isolation ward, and she could view them only by either wearing a bulky suit or through a dedicated computer feed.

“What is it?” she asked.

“We ran the numbers,” Murph said breathlessly. Like Julia, he had gone straight to work and wore the same sweaty clothes he’d had on underneath his discarded biohazard suit. His longish hair lay limp and oily against his scalp. “There’s no way the Chairman or the girl are infected.” This time Julia didn’t suppress her annoyance. “What are you talking about?” He and Eric noticed Jannike Dahl for the first time. “Whoa!” Stone said as he eyed the young woman asleep in the isolation ward, her black hair fanned out around her pale oval face. “What a babe!”

“Forget it, Stoney,” Murphy said quickly. “I was in on her rescue, so I get to ask her out first.”

“You didn’t even leave the bridge,” Stone protested. “I have as much right as you.”

“Gentlemen,” Julia said sharply. “Please check your under-exercised libidos at the door and tell me why exactly you are here.”

“Oh, sorry, Doc,” Murph said sheepishly, but not without a last glance at Janni. “Eric and I gamed the scenario, and we know that neither of them could have possibly been infected. We knew about twenty minutes ago about the Chairman’s results, but the girl’s numbers just came back.”

“Do I need to remind you that this is about science—biology, in particular—and not some computer program spitting out mathematical gibberish?”

Both men looked hurt.

Eric said, “But you, most of all, should know all science is mathematics. Biology is nothing more than the application of organic chemistry, while chemistry is nothing more than applied physics, using the strong and weak nuclear forces to create atoms. And physics is mathematics writ in the real world.” He spoke so earnestly that Julia knew her young patient had nothing to fear from him. Eric wasn’t bad looking, but he was such a geek she couldn’t imagine him screwing up enough courage to even talk to her. And behind Mark Murphy’s skater-punk façade and scraggly beard beat the heart of the consummate computer nerd.

“Have you found any trace of a virus or toxin anywhere in the samples you’ve taken?” Murph asked.

“No,” Hux admitted.

“And you won’t, because neither was infected. The only way to kill an entire shipload of people without causing a mass panic, as some succumb quicker than others, is food poisoning.” He held up his hand and ticked off his fingers as he made his case. “An airborne pathogen wouldn’t hit people who were out on the decks when it was released. Poisoning the water supply is even less likely, because not everyone is going to drink at the same time, unless you hit first thing in the morning when people are brushing their teeth.”

Eric interrupted. “People with weaker immune systems would have died throughout the day, and, as we saw, everyone was dressed to party.”

“Same thing if a poison was applied to surfaces around the ship like handrails and doorknobs,” Murph concluded. “The killer couldn’t guarantee that they would get to everyone.”

“So you think it was the food?” Julia asked, unable to find fault in their logic.

“Has to be. Juan didn’t eat anything while he was on board, and I bet she didn’t eat tonight either.” Murphy jerked his head at the glass partition separating the lab from isolation.

“To be on the safe side,” Eric said, “we also ran some numbers in case there was an airborne toxin trapped in the engine room. Even if the air was saturated, the volume of water pouring in when Juan cut his suit would have cut the viral load or toxicity levels down from parts per million to parts per hundreds of billions.”

Murph crossed his arms. “Besides, it’s been five hours since the Chairman’s exposure. From what Eddie related about your brief interrogation of your patient aboard the ship, her friends visited her just an hour or two before they were hit. Juan and the hottie are fine.” Julia had already come to the same conclusion concerning Juan, but she wasn’t convinced these two were right about Jannike. Diagnosis was about dogged research, checking and double-checking lab results, until you knew what you were faced with. Just because she hadn’t found a virus in Janni’s blood, spinal fluid, saliva, or urine didn’t mean it wasn’t lurking in her kidney or liver or some other tissue Julia hadn’t tested yet, waiting silently to explode out and overwhelm Janni’s immune system and then move on to its next potential victims, the Oregon’s crew.

She shook her head, “Sorry, boys, but that’s not good enough for me. I think you’re right about Juan, but Jannike stays in isolation until I am one hundred percent certain she isn’t infected.”

“You’re the doctor, Doc, but it’s a waste of time. She isn’t.”

“It’s my time to waste, Mark.” She pushed back on her wheeled lab stool and rolled across the tiled floor to an intercom mounted on the wall. She hit the button. “Juan, can you hear me?” Inside the ward, Cabrillo jerked upright in the chair. Rather then dwell on the fact his body could be harboring a deadly infection, he’d fallen asleep. He stood and threw Julia a thumbs-up and then waved at Murph and Stone. He gathered up the spare batteries used to keep his hazmat suit functioning for so long.

“You’re cleared,” Julia said. “You can head into the air lock for a decontamination shower. Go ahead and leave the suit inside. I’ll dispose of it later.” It took fifteen minutes to cycle the air lock to the isolation ward and for Juan to stand under a thundering shower of bleach and antiviral agents before it was safe for him to hop into the lab.

“Wow, you’re a mite gamey,” Julia said, wrinkling her nose.

“You spend that much time sweating in one of those damned suits and see how you smell.” Julia had already taken the precaution of having one of Cabrillo’s artificial limbs sent down from his cabin. She handed it over, and he settled it onto the stump below his right knee. He gave it a few experimental flexes, then lowered his trouser cuff. “There,” he said, standing. “Nothing a long shower and a good bottle of Scotch won’t cure.” He turned to Eric and Mark, who still crowded near the lab’s entrance. “How’d you make out, Murph?” With his suit’s radio damaged during the engine-room flood, the Chairman had been out of the loop since being brought aboard.

“I salvaged about thirty percent of the ship’s computer archives, including everything about her last voyage.” He held up a hand to forestall Cabrillo’s next question. “I haven’t gone through anything yet.

Eric and I were helping figure out if you and that piece of eye candy in there had been infected.” Juan nodded, although he didn’t think he and their guest should have been their top priority. “Going through those logs is now job one for you two. I want to know everything that took place aboard that ship since this voyage began. I don’t care how trivial.”

“I saw you talking to our patient earlier,” Julia interrupted. “How is she doing?”

“Tired and scared,” Juan replied. “She has no idea what happened to everyone, and I didn’t really want to press the issue. Her emotional state is pretty fragile. She did tell me something that might be pertinent.

The ship was on a charter for a group called the Responsivists.”

“What’s this about Responsivists?” This came from Max Hanley. He strode into the lab like a bull in a china shop. Before anyone could answer, he crossed to Juan and shook his hand. “Scuttlebutt around the ship says you were out of isolation. How are you doing?” It never ceased to amaze Cabrillo how quickly information passed through the crew, even at—he glanced at his watch—four-thirty in the morning. “Glad to be alive,” he said warmly.

“That was a hell of a thing.” Max grinned. “Never seen anything like it in my life. You came out of that funnel like a cork out of a bottle of cheap champagne.”

“I managed to climb almost to the top,” Juan said. “But then I got jammed up. I couldn’t budge, and the water was rising faster and faster. Rather than deflate my suit, I inflated it as far is it would go, to completely block the exhaust stack. Air forced up the funnel by the flooding in the engine room did the rest.”

“Looked like one wild ride.”

“How high did I go anyway?”

“At least twenty feet, and you cleared the rail by fifteen.” Max then seemed to remember his original question. “You said something about Responsivists?”

“Yeah, Miss Dahl mentioned the ship was on a charter for them. From the Philippines to Athens.”

“Piraeus, actually,” Eric corrected automatically. “Athens is inland. Its port is the city of Piraeus.” Murph smacked him on the shoulder. “Do you honestly think we all don’t know that?” Julia couldn’t suppress a smile, more certain than ever that neither of these paramour wannabes would get very far with Janni.

“I talked to my ex again,” Max said. “This really wasn’t a kidnapping at all. She said that to light a fire under my tail. Kyle has always been a follower—you know, someone easily swayed by peer pressure.

He fell in with the wrong crowd in high school, and that’s how he ended up busted for drugs. His rehab counselor told me Kyle doesn’t have an addiction problem; he has a self-esteem problem. Anyway, he met up with this group at some demonstration and within a few days he declared himself a Responsivist.

He even went so far as to see a urologist about a little snip-snip and is now in Greece. Apparently, they have some sort of compound on the Peloponnesian Peninsula.”

“He had a vasectomy?” Julia asked. “He’s only twenty-one or twenty-two. There aren’t many doctors who will perform one on a man much before thirty unless he already has a family.”

“Kyle’s twenty-three, and the Responsivists have their own doctors that do nothing but vasectomies and tubal ligations all day long.”

“I hadn’t heard of Responsivists before Jannike mentioned them,” Juan said.

“I don’t know much myself,” Max admitted. “Just what Lisa told me.”

“You guys need to read more Hollywood gossip,” Julia said. “Ever heard of Donna Sky?”

“The actress?” Mark asked.

“The highest-paid actress in history, as a matter of fact. She’s a Responsivist. So are a lot of people in the film world. It’s the newest thing in Hollywood.”

“Is it a church or a cult or something?”

“No one is exactly sure. At least, no one on the outside,” she replied. “It was started back in the seventies by a geneticist named Lydell Cooper. Cooper had been instrumental in developing cheaper drugs to fight malaria and smallpox. Some credit his work for saving hundreds of millions of lives.

“He didn’t see it that way, at least not after a while, as he watched population explosions all over the globe. By eradicating diseases, he had helped remove one of the natural checks and balances in human population control. People weren’t having more children, but more of the ones they had were living, and then more of their children were surviving, too. Without disease, he started to argue, humanity was doomed to extinction because of our swelling numbers.

“He wrote a book on the subject, and began to crusade for family planning on a global scale. He founded a group of like-minded people, the Responsivists, which comes from ‘those who are responsible.’ Soon, the movement was known as Responsivism, and it began to attract some big-name people from all walks of life, politicians, sports stars, actors and actresses. Cooper died about ten years ago, but the movement’s flourished under a husband-and-wife team. I don’t know their names, off the top of my head.”

“What does this group do now?” Juan asked.

“They operate family-planning centers all over the world, providing free condoms, abortions, and reproductive surgeries to men and women. They’ve been in a long-running battle with the Catholic Church, as you can well imagine, and with everyone on the right side of the political spectrum.” Juan looked around the room. “Next question is, what have the Responsivists done to make someone wipe out a cruise ship full of its members?”

No one had an answer to that.

CHAPTER 10

THE CIRCLING PAPARAZZI HELICOPTERS WERE FOILED by the snowy white tent erected over the manicured lawns of the Beverly Hills estate. The tent was easily twice the size of the nearby azure Olympic-sized swimming pool. When a Los Angeles County sheriff’s Bell JetRanger appeared, as per their instructions, the two hired choppers took off before their tail numbers could be identified for later prosecution for encroaching on the no-fly zone. The pilots weren’t going to risk arrest, no matter how much the photographers tried to bribe and then harangue them.

The pampered guests under the marquee were accustomed to such intrusions of their privacy and paid scant attention to the drama. The sound of the aircraft faded, and the buzz of conversation returned to its normal level. The band, on a raised wooden platform at one end of the tent, resumed playing, while toned starlets in skimpy bikinis, de rigueur for any Hollywood party, ventured back to cavort around the swimming pool.

The house looming over the expansive backyard was a faux Mediterranean villa encompassing nearly forty thousand square feet of living space, with a separate guesthouse twice the size of the average American home. The underground garage could accommodate twenty cars. Two multimillion-dollar properties had been bought and leveled to give the new owners what they wanted, and crews had worked nearly around the clock for three years to complete the walled compound. In a town accustomed to garish displays of wealth, the estate had sent chins wagging since it was first proposed.

The owners were Thomas and Heidi Severance. They weren’t actors, nor were they moguls in the film industry, although Thom Severance had worked as an executive at a studio for a couple of years. They were the benefactors and guardians of the estate of the late Dr. Lydell Cooper, the founder of Responsivism, and they now headed the growing institution. The money to build the house, which doubled as the group’s California headquarters, had come from donors from all over the world, although the bulk had been raised among the Hollywood elite who flocked to Responsivism in ever-increasing numbers.

Thom Severance had been among the first to recognize the brilliance of Dr. Cooper’s breakout book, We’re Breeding Ourselves to Death, and had sought the author out to help spread the word. It was natural that Thom would find a kindred spirit in Cooper’s daughter, Heidi. They were married after a two-month courtship, and it was their boundless energy that had grown Responsivism into the worldwide phenomena it was today. They had taken over, as Cooper had wanted, upon his death, and continued his work. Their charisma had especially attracted followers in the entertainment industry, and when Oscar-winning actress Donna Sky had admitted to the world she had been practicing Responsivism for many years, the group’s popularity exploded.

Thom Severance stood at a solid six feet, with surgically enhanced features that gave him a commanding aura. He was fifty-three, yet his sandy hair had yet to thin and his eyes had lost none of their compelling appeal. The cream linen jacket he wore was cut too large for his frame, but rather than detract from his exercise-hewed body the effect made him look even more well muscled. When he laughed, which was often, his white teeth contrasted with the permanent tan he sported.

Heidi stood at his side. She was only a couple of years younger than Thom but looked to be in her late thirties. She was the quintessential California girl, with perfectly tinted blond hair, radiant blue eyes, and the figure of a professional athlete. Her neck was her greatest asset, long and graceful, and she took full advantage of it by wearing low-cut tops and necklaces laced with flawless diamonds.

Individually, Thom and Heidi were attractive people. Together, they made such a striking couple that it was little wonder they were always the center of attention. And no more so than here, at a Responsivist function, to celebrate the grand opening of their new headquarters.

“Congratulations, Thom,” a famed director said, sidling up and kissing Heidi’s burnished cheek with easy familiarity. “You, too, Heids. You should both be very proud of yourselves. I know Dr. Cooper would be.” He spoke the name reverently. “Future generations will look back at this center as the place where the dark tides of overpopulation were finally pushed back.”

“It will be a beacon of hope for the world,” Heidi Severance replied. “As my father told us, the beginning of the struggle will be the most difficult. But as word spreads and people begin to understand what is at stake, ours will be seen as the responsible lifestyle.”

“I read in Generations about the declining birthrates in the villages around our new clinic in Sierra Leone,” the director went on. Generations was the group’s biannual magazine.

Severance nodded. “Sited far from where Christian and Muslim missionaries have plied their trade and corrupted the people with their lies, we’ve done better than we hoped. We’re getting the villagers to understand that preventing unwanted children raises their standard of living more than handouts and platitudes from churches.”

“The article didn’t say if we’re explaining how our lives are influenced through intra-brane interference and how we can fight back against it.”

This time, Thom shook his head. “The fact that an alien presence exists in a dimension of the universe parallel to our own isn’t something we feel they can handle just yet. Our guiding philosophy will come a bit later. For now, we’re just content to lower the regional birthrate.” The director accepted this, and saluted the couple with his highball glass, before drifting off into the crowd so the others in the throng hovering around the Severances could add their congratulations.

“He’s a good man,” Heidi whispered to her husband.

“His last film grossed over two hundred million, but his contributions over the past twelve months are down five percent.”

“I’ll talk to Tamara.” Tamara was the director’s new trophy wife and one of Heidi’s protégées.

Thom didn’t seem to hear as he was reaching into his jacket pocket for a vibrating cell phone. He folded it open, said his name, and listened for a minute without changing his facial expression. “Thank you,” he said at last, and refolded the phone. He looked at Heidi. Her shining eyes and smile were brighter than the eleven-carat diamond at her throat. “That was Kovac,” Thom said quietly, so no one else could hear.

“A freighter just reported spotting wreckage floating in the Indian Ocean.”

"Oh my God!”

“It was positively identified from a life raft as the Golden Dawn.” Heidi Severance’s hand went to her neck as her skin grew flush.

“There were no survivors.”

Her smile blossomed, and she gushed, “That is wonderful, simply wonderful.” Thom looked as though a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “A few weeks, darling, and everything we and your father have worked for will come to pass. The world will be reborn, and this time we won’t screw it up.”

“It will be reborn in our image,” Heidi added, taking his hand. She gave no thought to the seven hundred and eighty-three men, women, and children who had perished on the cruise ship, many of them members of her organization. It was only a tiny fraction of the deaths to come.

CHAPTER 11

LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS AFTER REPORTING THE sinking of the Golden Dawn, admitting nothing about their foray aboard, Cabrillo and his team hadn’t yet formed a cohesive plan, but they had a direction. That they were going to get to the bottom of this mystery was never in doubt.

The Corporation ran strictly as a for-profit enterprise, but they were guided by Juan Cabrillo’s moral compass. There were jobs they wouldn’t take, no matter how much money was offered. And then there were opportunities to do the right thing, regardless of profit. As he had done in the past when there was no chance of a payday, Juan had offered his crew the chance to leave the Oregon until the current mission was complete. He had no qualms putting himself in harm’s way for the sake of what was right, but he would never demand it of his crew.

Like the few times before, not a single man or woman aboard ship had accepted the offer. They would follow Cabrillo to the gates of hell. As proud as he was of the technological marvel that was the Oregon, that feeling paled next to what he felt for his crew.

They might have been mercenaries, but they were also the finest people he had ever worked with. And while they had amassed a fortune over the years, it was the unspoken truth among all of them that they put themselves in harm’s way again and again for the same reasons they had during their years of government service. They did it because the world grew more dangerous every day, and if no one else stood up to face it, they would.

The ship was charging hard northward, having cut through the choke point of Bab el Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears, that separated Yemen from the African nation of Djibouti. They were in the Red Sea, and Cabrillo had already called in enough favors with Atlas Marine Services, the Egyptian company that ran the Suez Canal, to see that his ship would be part of the next morning’s only northbound convoy.

It would take eleven hours to transit the one hundred and one miles from Suez to Port Said, but once they were clear their final destination was only a day away.

With the number of vessels heading into and out of the Suez Canal, the shipping lanes in the Red Sea were heavily congested. So as not to arouse undue suspicion from passing ships, Juan had posted a watch on the bridge, even though the Oregon was being piloted from the Op Center belowdecks.

He was on the bridge now, overseeing preparations for taking on a canal pilot in the morning.

Sandstorms raged in the western sky over Africa. The sun setting through burnt sienna clouds cast the bridge in an otherworldly glow. The temperature remained near eighty degrees, and wouldn’t get much cooler when the sun did finally settle over the horizon.

“What a view,” Dr. Huxley commented as she emerged from a secret doorway in the chart room at the back of the pilothouse. As she stared at the distant storm, the ruddy sky made her face glow like a Plains Indian’s. The kind light helped hide her deep exhaustion.

“How’s our patient doing?” Cabrillo asked, unfurling a dog-eared chart across an old, scarred table.

“She should be fine,” Julia replied. “If she’s still asymptomatic by morning, I’ll let her out of isolation.

How are you?”

“There was nothing wrong with me that a hot shower and some rack time couldn’t cure.” Juan used carpenters’ C-clamps to secure the wrinkled map, as the clips built into the chart table had been intentionally snapped off to make the Oregon look as dilapidated as possible. When it came to camouflaging his ship’s true nature, there were no details too small for Cabrillo’s discerning eye. “Have you learned anything more about her experience?”

“Linda’s compiling a report right now of everything we’ve gotten so far, not just my notes but the stuff Mark and Eric have been able to piece together, too. When I spoke with her, she said she should be ready in a half hour.”

Juan glanced at his watch without really looking at the time. “I didn’t expect anything definitive for a few more hours.”

“Murph and Stone are more motivated than usual.”

“Let me guess: they want to impress Miss Dahl with their sleuthing abilities?” Julia nodded. “I’ve taken to calling them the Hardly Boys.” It took a moment for the joke to register, and Juan chuckled. “That works on so many levels.” When Julia smiled, her nose crinkled like a little girl’s. “Thought you’d like that.” An ancient intercom mounted on a bulkhead squawked like an asthmatic parrot. “Chairman, it’s Linda.” Juan mashed the TALK button with the heel of his hand. “Go ahead, Linda.”

“I’m set up in the boardroom. Eric and Murph are here already. We’re just waiting for you, Max, and Julia.”

“Hux is with me,” Cabrillo said. “Last I saw Max, he was in his cabin, arguing with his ex-wife again.”

“I’ll send Eric to go get him. I’m ready anytime.”

“Be there in a minute.” Juan turned to Julia Huxley. “Go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.” She thrust her small hands into the pockets of her lab coat and stepped onto the elevator that would take her down to the Op Center, the most direct route to the boardroom.

Juan walked onto the bridge wing, the wind ruffling his light cotton shirt. He could taste the distant desert in the back of his throat as he drew a deep breath. Though drawn to the sea since he was a boy, the desert also held a similar fascination. Like the ocean, it was an element that was both inhospitable and indifferent, and yet, since time immemorial, men have ventured across it both for profit and exploration.

Had he been born in a different time and a different place, Cabrillo could see himself leading camel caravans across the trackless Sahara or through Saudi Arabia’s Rub’ al-Khali, the Great Empty Quarter.

It was the mystery of what lay beyond the next wave, or the next dune, that drew him.

He didn’t yet know where delving into the deaths on the Golden Dawn would lead. But the mass murder of hundreds of people was an injustice he couldn’t let go unpunished. His crew had been working tirelessly on gathering background material, and, in a few minutes, they would have their plan. Once their strategy was set, it would be executed with military precision. It was what they did best. Standing at the rail, his hands gripping the hot iron, Juan could allow himself the last moments of unrestrained emotion.

When the briefing began, he would direct his feelings, use them to drive himself onward, but for now he let them boil inside his skull—the rage, the rampaging anger at the senseless deaths.

The injustice of what had happened to those innocent people was like a cancer eating away at his guts, with the only cure being the utter annihilation of the killers. He had no sense of who they were, their image was lost in the fires of his fury, but the Corporation’s investigation would quell those flames as they drew closer to their quarry, and bring the monsters into focus.

The knuckles of Juan’s index fingers popped, and he relaxed his grip on the railing. The metal had scored lines across his palms. He shook blood back into his hands and took another deep breath. “Showtime.” The conference room was filled with the aroma of spicy food. With Africa such a short distance away, Maurice had laid out an Ethiopian meal. There was a stack of injera—unleavened sour-dough bread—and dozens of sauces, some cold and others steaming hot. There were chicken, beef, and mutton stews, lentils and chickpeas, and spiced yogurt dishes. A diner eats the meal by tearing off a section of bread, ladling on some stew, and rolling it up like a cigar, to be chewed in a couple of quick bites. The affair could get messy, and Juan suspected Maurice had served these dishes intentionally for the comic relief of watching Linda Ross, a notorious chowhound, stuffing her face.

As a veteran of the Royal Navy, Maurice strongly believed in the English tradition of grog aboard ships, or, in this case, amber bottles of an Ethiopian honey wine called tej, whose sweet flavor could cut the strongest spices.

Cabrillo’s brain trust—Max Hanley, Linda Ross, Eddie Seng, and Dr. Huxley, as well as Stoney and Murph—sat around the table. Juan knew that, down in the armory, Franklin Lincoln was holding a meeting of his own with the Ops team. Juan didn’t have much of an appetite, so he charged his glass with the wine and took an appreciative sip. He let his people fill their plates, before calling the meeting to order by leaning forward in his seat.

“As you know, we are facing two different but possibly related problems. The first is rescuing Max’s son from the Responsivist compound in Greece. Using satellite images and other information that Mark and Eric put together, Linc is working with his gundogs on a tactical assault plan. When they’re finished, we’ll go over it separately. What do we need to do on our end, once we’ve gotten Kyle?”

“Will he need to be deprogrammed?” Hux asked, wondering if Kyle would require specialized psychiatric help to break the mental grip Responsivism had on him.

“By all indications, yes,” Mark replied.

“So they are a cult?” There was heaviness in Max’s tone, sorrow that his directionless son had fallen in with such a group.

“They fit all classic parameters,” Eric said. “They have charismatic leaders. Members are encouraged to sever relationships with friends and relatives who do not belong. They are expected to live by a certain code laid out in their founder’s teachings, and when someone drifts away from the group other members will try to stop him.”

“Stop them how?” Juan asked. “Physically?”

Eric nodded. “There are reports of lapsed members being abducted from their homes and transported to facilities run by the group for, uh, reeducation.”

“We know about the compound in Greece,” Juan said, looking around the burnished table. “And they replaced their old headquarters in California with that estate Murph showed me pictures of this afternoon.

What else do they have?”

“More than fifty health clinics in some of the poorest third world countries in the world—Sierra Leone, Togo, Albania, Haiti, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and several in China—where they receive a lot of government support, as you can well imagine.”

“That’s an interesting case,” Mark Murphy interjected, with his mouth half full of food. “The Chinese hate cults with a passion. They crack down on practitioners of Falun Gong all the time, seeing it as a threat to the central party rule, but they allow the Responsivists because of their whole population-control thing.” Under a ragged denim shirt, Murph wore a T-shirt that had an arrow pointing up with I’M WITH STUPID below it.

“Beijing knows they could be a threat but are willing to risk it because the Responsivist presence gives a little Western legitimacy to their draconian one-family, one-child policy.” Eddie said. Given his experience inside China, no one doubted his assessment.

“Back to helping Kyle,” Juan said, to move the meeting along. “Have we been in touch with a deprogrammer?”

“We have,” Linda Ross replied. “Technically, we are kidnapping Kyle, so we need to get him out of Greece as quickly as possible to avoid any problems with local police. The counselor will meet us in Rome. Tiny’s repositioning the Gulfstream from the Riviera to the Athens airport to fly him to Italy. We have rooms reserved at a hotel near the Colosseum. The shrink’s name is Adam Jenner. He specializes in helping former Responsivists return to a normal life, and, from everything we’ve been able to gather, he’s the best in the world.”

“Was he a member himself?” Juan asked, knowing it was common for deprogrammers to have once been held sway by the group they fight against, much like recovering alcoholics helping others overcome their addiction.

“No, but he’s made it his life’s mission to bring the group down. He’s helped more than a two hundred people escape Responsivism in the past ten years.”

“And before that?”

“A private-practice therapist in L.A. Not that it matters, but his fee is fifty thousand dollars, plus expenses. He guarantees, however, that, when he’s finished, Kyle will be back to normal.”

“He damned well better be,” Max grumbled.

“For someone to make their living deprogramming, the group must be pretty big,” Eddie said. “How many members are there?”

“On their official website, they claim there are more than a hundred thousand worldwide,” Linda replied.

“Jenner’s site said that that estimate is overblown by half. Either way, it’s still a significant number. And with some high-profile Hollywood types jumping on the bandwagon, recruitment is up as people copy the stars.”

“Just so I know in case I meet him, what cover story did we use in our approach of Jenner?” Juan asked.

“I have it all here in my report.” Linda held up a binder. “Max is a real-estate developer from L.A. who wants to get his son back. We are the private security company he’s hired to coordinate his return.

Jenner’s assistant was pretty nonplussed when I laid out our story, so I have a feeling this is something they’ve seen before.”

“Okay, so once we grab Kyle we get him to the airport, where Tiny Gunderson flies to Rome, and we hand him over to Jenner.” Cabrillo had a sudden thought. “They’ll have control of his passport, so we need to make a new one.”

“Chairman, please,” Linda said, as if she’d been insulted. “Max’s ex has e-mailed a picture of Kyle.

We’ll doctor it so it looks like an official passport shot and print a new one from our store of blanks.” Juan indicated Linda should wipe some grease from her chin. “That takes care of problem number one.

Now, on to problem number two. What happened to the Golden Dawn and why? What do we know so far?”

Linda tapped at the keys of her laptop to bring up the information. “The Golden Dawn and her sister ships, the Golden Sky and Golden Sun , are owned by Golden Cruise Lines. They’re out of Denmark, and have been in business since the mid-eighties. They do the typical Caribbean, Mediterranean, and South Seas cruises that everyone else does, as well as charter ships for specific groups or events.

“The company was approached four months ago to ferry four hundred and twenty-seven Responsivists from the Philippines to Greece. The Dawn was the only ship available.”

“That seems like a lot of people to staff a reproductive-education clinic,” Juan said.

“I thought so, too,” Linda agreed. “I’m looking into it. There is nothing on the Responsivist website about the trip or what such a large group was doing in the Philippines.”

“Okay, keep going.”

“They left Manila on the seventeenth, and, as far as what Murph could get from the logs, there were no incidents reported. It was smooth sailing all the way.”

“Right up to the point where everyone died,” Max said caustically.

Eric glanced down the table at the Corporation’s number two. “Not everyone died. I went back over the computer discs of the UAV flyby. One of the Golden Dawn’s lifeboats was missing.” He glanced at Cabrillo. “Sorry, I didn’t notice it last night.”

Juan let it pass.

“The ship’s computer log confirms that a lifeboat was lowered about eight hours before we showed up,” Mark confirmed.

“So the killer or killers were on the Dawn the whole cruise?”

“That’s what it looks like to us. Stoney and I hacked the cruise line’s computer for a passenger manifest and list of the crew, but without having the bodies to verify who was aboard when she went down there’s no way to narrow our list of suspects.” Mark forestalled Juan’s next question. “We already checked.

There were no unscheduled crew substitutions after the charter was first proposed, and there were no last-minute changes to the passenger manifest. The people who were supposed to be on that ship were on it.”

“Then who the hell killed them all?” Max asked.

“If I were to guess, I’d say the Responsivists either did it to themselves, but they aren’t a suicide cult, like Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple or Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo. Some people claim Lydell Cooper took his own life in the ultimate act of Responsivism, but the group doesn’t support suicide. They say that since you’re already born, it is your moral responsibility to spread their beliefs, not kill yourself. The other option is that someone infiltrated the group.”

“Any suspects?”

Linda said, “Because of their stance on birth control and abortion, they’ve been engaged in a running battle with the Vatican for years. The same goes with a number of conservative Christian organizations.” Cabrillo shook his head. “I can see one nut job with a rifle killing an abortion doctor. But to kill a shipload of people takes a highly organized and well-funded team. I don’t buy a handful of priests and nuns infiltrating the cult in order to kill a few hundred of their members.”

“My money’s on a group of zealots,” Mark said. “A countercult to the Responsivists, maybe made up of former members or something. You know, apart from the whole not-having-kids thing, this group’s into some pretty weird stuff.”

Juan ignored him. “Let’s explore why they would kill some of their own. Ideas?”

“No, seriously,” Mark continued. “Once you’ve been involved for a while, do your charity work in some third world toilet, they start letting you in on some of the bigger secrets to Responsivism, and how the knowledge will save you.”

“Go on,” Juan said to indulge him. Murph might be flakey, but he had a topflight mind.

“Ever heard of ’brane theory?” He’d already talked with Eric about it so only Stone didn’t return a blank stare. “It’s right up there with string theory as a way of unifying all four forces in the universe, something Einstein couldn’t do. In a nutshell, it says our four-dimensional universe is a single membrane, and that there are others existing in higher orders of space. These are so close to ours that zero-point matter and energy can pass between them and that gravitation forces in our universe can leak out. It’s all cutting-edge stuff.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Cabrillo said.

“Anyway, ’brane theory started to get traction among theoretical physicists in the mid-nineties, and Lydell Cooper glommed on to it, too. He took it a step further, though. It wasn’t just quantum particles passing in and out of our universe. He believed that an intelligence from another ’brane was affecting people here in our dimension. This intelligence, he said, shaped our day-to-day lives in ways we couldn’t sense. It was the cause of all our suffering. Just before his death, Cooper started to teach techniques to limit this influence, ways to protect ourselves from the alien power.”

“And people bought this crap?” Max asked, sinking deeper into depression over his son.

“Oh yeah. Think about it from their side for a second. It’s not a believer’s fault that he is unlucky or depressed or just plain stupid. His life is being messed with across dimensional membranes in space. It’s an alien influence that cost you that promotion or prevented you from dating the girl of your dreams. It’s a cosmic force holding you back, not your own ineptitude. If you believe that, then you don’t have to take responsibility for your life. And we all know nobody takes responsibility for himself anymore.

Responsivism gives you a ready-made excuse for your poor life choices.”

“With people suing fast-food companies because they’re overweight, I can see the attraction,” Juan said.

“But what’s this have to do with someone killing a ship filled with Responsivists?” Mark looked a little sheepish, “I haven’t thought it all the way through, but what if it’s true, you know”—his voice took on a feverish edge—“and some alien from another ’brane is fighting one trapped in ours and we’re caught in the middle? Like pawns or something?” Cabrillo closed his eyes and groaned. Mark’s flakiness was overwhelming his first-class mind again. “I’ll take that under advisement, but, for now, let’s stick to terrestrial enemies.” Mark whispered to Eric, “That sounded better when we were talking last night, didn’t it?”

“That’s because we hadn’t slept in twenty hours and had downed about thirty Red Bulls each.” Eddie Seng popped a piece of bread into his mouth. “Could this particular group have been selected because they were trying to leave the cult and the leaders made an example out of them? Eric mentioned earlier that kidnapping isn’t beyond them. What if they’ve taken the next step to murder?” Max Hanley shot him a startled look, his face etched with concern over Kyle’s safety.

“That’s a possibility,” Linda said, before seeing Hanley’s obvious pain. “Sorry, Max, but we have to consider it. Besides, your son’s a new convert. He doesn’t want to leave them at all.”

“You sure you want to be here for this?” Juan asked his closest friend.

“Yes, damnit,” Max snapped. “It’s just, I don’t know, painful and embarrassing all at the same time. This is my son we’re talking about, and I can’t help but feel I’ve let him down. If I’d been a better father, he wouldn’t have drifted into something so dangerous.”

No one knew what to say for a second. Uncharacteristically, it was Eric Stone who broke the silence. So versed in technical matters, it was easy to overlook his human side. “Max, I grew up in an abusive home.

My father was a drunk who beat my mother and me every night he had enough money for a bottle of vodka. It was about the worst situation you could imagine and yet I turned out okay. Your home life is only a part of who you become. You being a larger part of your son’s life might have changed things or it might not have. There’s no way of knowing, and if you can’t know for certain there’s no need for useless speculation. Kyle is who he is because he chose to be that way. You weren’t around for your daughter either, and she’s a successful accountant.”

“Lawyer,” Max said absently. “And she did it all on her own.”

“If you don’t feel you can take responsibility for her success, then you have no right to take responsibility for Kyle’s failings.”

Max let the statement hang, before finally asking, “How old are you?” Stone seemed embarrassed by the question. “Twenty-seven.” “Son, you are wise beyond your years.

Thank you.”

Eric grinned.

Juan mouthed the words Well done to Stone and resumed the meeting. “Is there any way to check Eddie’s theory?”

“We can hack into the Responsivists’ computer system,” Mark offered. “Something might turn up, but I doubt they’re going to break down their membership into lists of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.”

“Try it anyway,” Juan ordered. “Cross-reference the passenger manifest with everything they have going on. Some factor singled these particular people out. If they weren’t about to leave the cult, it has to be something else.” He turned to Linda. “I want to know why so many of them were in the Philippines at the same time. The answer to that question might be our only solid clue.” Juan stood to indicate the meeting was adjourned. “We hit the Suez Canal at oh-five-hundred tomorrow morning. Remind your staffs that we’ll have a pilot on board until we clear Port Said, so we’re running on full-disguise mode. Max, make sure the tanks to the smudge engine that sends smoke out our funnel are topped off, and that the decks are double-checked for anything that can give us away. Once we’re in the Med, we have twenty-four hours to finalize our plans with Linc, another twelve to put everything in place, and then we extract Kyle Hanley. Forty-eight hours from now, he’ll be in Rome with the deprogrammer and we’ll be on our way to the Riviera on that eavesdropping job.” There was no way for Cabrillo to know how far from simple things were going to be.

CHAPTER 12

JUAN SETTLED THE EARBUD OF HIS RADIO A LITTLE deeper and tapped the throat mike to let the others know he was in position. Below him lay the Responsivist compound, a collection of rambling buildings surrounded by a whitewashed cement-block wall. Behind the compound was a rocky beach with a single wooden jetty running a hundred feet into the Gulf of Corinth. With the tide just coming back in, he could smell the water on the soft breeze.

The buildings were low-slung, as if clinging to the ground, reminding Cabrillo of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The shallow roofs were covered in barrel tile that looked black through his third-generation night vision goggles, but he knew from their prelaunch briefing the titles were red clay. The lawns within the compound were burned brown from a drought, and the leaves on the few gnarled olive trees were dried husks. It was three-thirty in the morning, and the only lights showing were affixed to strategically placed poles.

He turned his attention to the wall. It stood ten feet high and was a double layer of thick cement blocks, running for nearly eight hundred feet on a side. As was the custom in this part of the world, upright glass shards had been embedded in the top of the wall to deter intruders. Earlier in the day, he and Linda had gone to the only security company in the nearby town of Corinth, posing as an American couple who’d just purchased an ocean-side house and wanted to install an alarm system. The store’s owner boasted he’d done extensive work for the Responsivists, pointing to an autographed eight-by-ten glossy of Donna Sky as if it were proof.

The trip wire running atop the wall was one of the first things Juan observed when he got into position.

Next came the cameras, and, by the time his team had finished counting, they had spotted thirteen on the exterior of the buildings alone. They could only assume there were more inside.

There was a single rolling gate bisecting the stone driveway, and another, smaller gate at the back of the facility in line with the jetty. A pair of chain-link fences jutted from the compound walls and out into the sea to prevent people walking along the shore from trespassing on Responsivist property.

Although the security measures weren’t particularly overt, it did give the complex a forbidding aura—but not from the outside, Juan reflected. It didn’t look as though the place was designed to keep people out but rather to keep them in.

He scoped the grounds between the buildings once again. Three jeeps were parked in front of the main building. A thermal scan showed their engines were cold. There were no guards patrolling the paths crisscrossing the compound, no roving dogs, and the cameras mounted under eaves and on the light poles remained stationary. It was likely that there was a manned security station inside one of the buildings with a guard staring at a bank of monitors, which was why Cabrillo had the advance team keep watch from the moment they could be choppered from the Oregon to Athens.

Linc and Eddie had needed only two hours, sitting across the coast road in an olive grove overlooking the facility, to map out the cameras’ blind spots and transmit that information back to the ship. They had estimated that there were currently about forty-five Responsivists inside, although there were enough buildings to house twice that number in relative comfort.

With their strategy worked out ahead of time and final tactics honed, the crew had spent the day putting everything into place, securing rental cars, scouting escape routes, and finding a suitable place nearby for George Adams to land the Robinson and transfer Kyle to the general aviation apron at Athens’s Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport. Chuck Gunderson already had the Corporation’s Gulfstream executive jet prepped for the quick flight to Rome. All the paperwork had been filed, and a limousine was waiting for them at the other end.

And if things didn’t go as smoothly as planned, they had alternatives ready to go at an instant’s notice.

The details were so meticulous that Eric Stone, aboard the Oregon, who’d been studying the tidal charts, had determined the precise moment they should commence their covert assault.

Although Cabrillo was taking a role in the snatch and grab, Eddie Seng, as chief of shore operations, would lead the four-person attack, and it was his responsibility to make sure everyone involved was ready.

“One minute from my mark,” Juan heard him whisper over the radio. “Mark.” Juan tapped his TRANSMIT button in acknowledgment. He tested the pair of quick-draw holsters hanging from his hips, making certain the pair of compact Glock 19s came out easily. Though he favored the new Fabrique Nationale Five-seveN automatic as his personal sidearm, because the small 5.7mm bullets could defeat nearly any flak jackets, this mission wasn’t about killing. The crew in the ship’s armory had soft-loaded the Glocks’ 9mm rounds with half their normal charge and had topped them not with lead bullets but ballistic plastic. At close range, the bullets could be deadly, but at anything beyond fifteen feet the nonlethal shells would take the fight out of the average person with a single hit.

The seconds trickled by, and, as if a sign from above, clouds slid over the quarter moon, turning the night inky. Faintly, Juan could hear the throb of the Robinson R44 as Gomez Adams got into position.

“You ready?” he asked Mark Murphy, who was hunkered down next to him in the same roadside ditch.

“Two missions in three days,” Mark breathed. His face was streaked with camo paint, and his long hair was tucked into a black bandanna. “I think you’ve got it in for me.”

“Consider yourself our resident combat hacker.”

Cabrillo glanced at his sleeve. Embedded in the fabric was a tiny flexible computer screen. The e-paper’s resolution was crystal clear, and the image it showed was the Responsivist’s compound from an altitude of a thousand feet. Linda Ross was in a van down the road at the controls of their UAV. With the camera zoomed in, Juan had an unobstructed view of the facility, but, more important, he would know the location of anyone walking the grounds. The experimental view screen was giving off too much light, so he turned down the gain until it was a muted glow. The rig’s batteries and computer were sewn into the back of his combat vest.

“Let’s go,” Juan heard Eddie say. He tapped Murph on the shoulder, and they ran across the road together, their soft-soled boots making no sound on the macadam.

When they reached the cement-block wall, Cabrillo turned so that his back was toward it and cupped his hands. Mark stepped up onto Juan’s palms, and then, with a boost, onto his shoulders.

Mark almost made the mistake of grasping the top of the wall to steady himself but stopped just before he shredded his hands on the glass. He paused for a moment, to let the Chairman find his center of balance. Had Mark not known it was there, the monofilament security trip wire was nearly impossible to see. It ran along the perimeter of the wall, less than half an inch from the edge, supported by dozens of tiny insulators. If he were to guess, he’d say that less than ten pounds of pressure would cut the wire and trigger the alarm. He pulled a voltmeter from a pouch at his hip to test the current flowing through the delicate wire. He selected an appropriate pair of alligator clamps and attached them to the wire, letting three feet of line dangle over the far side of the wall. With his bypass in place, he snipped the wire, wincing unconsciously in case he’d gotten it wrong. There were no raised cries, no Klaxons, and no lights snapped on in any of the buildings.

From another pouch, he unfurled a role of carbon-fiber cloth and settled it over the top of the wall. Mark heaved himself atop the wall, and, even with his full weight bearing down on the razor-sharp glass, it couldn’t cut through the high-tech material. He dropped down to the ground and moved slightly to his left. A moment later, he heard Juan scramble up and over the wall. He fell lightly at Mark’s side.

“When we’re back on the ship, you’re going on a diet,” Juan said, but showed no ill effects of holding Murph aloft. He keyed his throat mike. “We’re in.”

On the opposite side of the compound, where there was another gap in the video camera coverage, Page 73

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Eddie and Franklin Lincoln were making their covert entrance. Though Linc was the best the Corporation had at security bypasses, it had been Eddie who cut the wire for the simple reason that all the martial arts training in the world couldn’t give him the strength to hold Linc’s two-hundred-and-fifty-pound frame.

“So are we. Standing by.”

Keeping flat, Cabrillo led Murph away from the wall, snaking across the grounds in a seemingly random pattern, but the route had been carefully mapped out so they avoided the numerous cameras. At one end of the main building, the roof sported several satellite dishes and a spindly radio transmission tower. This was their destination, and it took seven minutes of crawling to reach it.

Juan removed his goggles, and, cupping his hands around his eyes, pressed his face to a window. There was a dim smear of light near the back wall, the glow of a computer on standby mode. The preraid reconnaissance had confirmed that this was the camp director’s office.

He noted an alarm pod attached to the window sash that would trip if the window was opened. He pulled a device from his combat vest, and, when he aimed it at the alarm, an indicator glowed red. Next, he swept the device along the glass to determine if wires had been embedded between the two panes, but the device remained dark. If this was the level of security provided by Corinth’s finest company, he considered making a career change, to Greek cat burglar.

He attached two small suction cups to the glass and then scored the window with a cutter, moving slowly so the sound of the pane being sliced never rose above a rough hiss. He heard an audible sigh when the vacuum between the two pieces of insulated glass were released. He handed the cutter to Mark and carefully pulled the pane free of the frame with the suction cups. He repeated the process with the inner piece of glass and set it on the floor inside the office when he was finished.

Juan legged over the sill and ducked into the building. When Mark had scrambled through the window, Cabrillo drew down the shade. “We’re in the office.”

“Roger,” Eddie replied.

Juan gestured to the computer. “It’s up to you.”

Murph cracked his knuckles and took a seat behind the desk, turning down the screen before waking the system. From a fanny pack, he removed a battered piece of electronics covered in decals and wads of dried gum. He jacked it into the computer’s USB port. A moment later, a laughing skull appeared on the monitor. When it disappeared, Mark began to pound the keyboard with one ambidextrous hand while the other rolled the mouse like a child would a toy truck.

Juan left him to his work, and examined the office using a tiny penlight, making certain he stayed away from the window in case there was a gap around the shade. They had learned from the Responsivists’

website that the facility’s director was another Californian named Gil Martell. A little digging showed that Martell had sold luxury automobiles in Beverly Hills prior to his joining the group, and that his name had come up several times in an investigation of a car-theft ring. Although he was charged, several key witnesses vanished back to Mexico before the trial, and the indictment was dropped.

The room’s furniture was what Cabrillo expected—desk, credenza, a couple of chairs, a sofa along one wall with a coffee table. He recognized it was all expensive. The Oriental rug under the coffee table was a flat-weave antique kilim that would fetch a considerable price at auction. Framed photographs adorned the walls, Martell’s shrine to himself. Juan didn’t know some of the people smiling into the camera with Martell, while others were easily recognizable. He spotted several with Donna Sky. Even in these candid shots, the movie star’s beauty was undeniable. With her dark hair, almond eyes, and the sharpest cheekbones in the business, she was the epitome of Hollywood royalty.

Cabrillo wondered idly what part of her life was so miserable that she would allow a cult to take it over.

Another picture caught his attention. It was an older photograph of Martell and another man on the deck of a sailboat. It was signed “Keep the faith. Lydell Cooper.” The snapshot must have been taken shortly before Cooper vanished at sea on his ketch. He’d read the Coast Guard report, and it appeared that the boat simply capsized in a storm that had come out of nowhere. Five other small craft had also been caught unaware, and an additional three people drowned.

If Juan could use a single word to describe the scientist-turned-prophet, it would be bland. There was nothing distinguishing about Cooper. He was in his mid to late sixties, paunchy, with an egg-shaped head, glasses, and a hairline in full retreat. His eyes were a plain brown, and the gray beard and mustache neither added to nor took away from his appearance. It was as if the facial hair was expected on a retired researcher, and he’d grown it out of obligation. Juan saw nothing that could inspire thousands to join his crusade—no charisma, no charm, none of the things that would attract followers at all. Had he not known what Cooper looked like, he could have guessed Martell kept a picture of his accountant on his wall.

“Got it!” Murph cried, then looked around guiltily for speaking so loudly. “Sorry. I’m into their system.

Piece of cake.”

Juan strode across the room. “Can you find which room is Kyle’s?”

“They have everything cross-referenced. He’s in building C, which is the newest one right near where Eddie and Linc climbed the wall. Kyle Hanley’s room is number one-seventeen, but he’s not alone. He’s got a roommate named, let’s see, Jeff Ponsetto.”

“Well done,” Cabrillo said, and relayed the information to Eddie and Linc. “Start to download what you can off their computer.”

Linda Ross came over the tactical net: “Chairman, check your view screen. You’ve got company coming.”

Juan glanced at his sleeve. Two men dressed in maintenance workers’ overalls were crossing the compound. They carried toolboxes, and appeared to be heading toward the main building, where he and Murph were. Had there been some sort of emergency call to the engineering staff, surely they would have heard voices. Whatever was going on, Cabrillo didn’t like it.

“Murph, forget the download. Let’s go!”

As Juan went toward the door, he tucked an electronic bug under the desk lamp. He knew it would be found quickly, once the break-in was detected, but it would transmit the first critical moments of whatever took place in Gil Martell’s office. He paused at the window and checked the view screen once again. The maintenance workers were approaching the building’s front door, which gave him and Mark the time they needed to get clear.

He slowly opened the shade and eased himself over the window sash. His Glock was in his hand, though he had no conscious memory of drawing it.

Keeping low and following their carefully laid map to avoid the cameras, they moved toward building C.

The grass was dry under their shoes and crackled with each step. Like the others in the Responsivist compound, building C was one-storied, with whitewashed walls and a barrel-tile roof.

Linc and Eddie were pressed to the wall next to a door, out of view of the camera mounted above it. A security keypad was to the right, and its faceplate had been removed and left dangling by a bunch of wires. Linc had already installed his bypass. Despite having such large hands, the former Navy SEAL was the best lockpick the Corporation had, and he worked his tools with the delicate touch of a brain surgeon. With a pick and torsion rod in place, he gave the lock a jerk to the left, and the door snicked open.

“Fourteen seconds,” Eddie whispered.

“The maestro strikes again,” Linc smirked, and stepped into a long hallway running the length of the building.

The hall was lined with dozens of identical doors and was illuminated by shaded fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The carpeting was an institutional gray, not much softer than the concrete slab on which the building was constructed. The four men started down, peering into a large kitchen to their left and a room lined with a dozen commercial washing machines to their right. Juan didn’t see any clothes dryers, and assumed they had drying lines behind the building. Part of Responsivism was to reduce one’s impact on the natural world, so not having dryers fit their beliefs, as did the solar panels they’d spied on the roof of one of the buildings.

They quickly found room one-seventeen. Linc reached up to remove the cover over the closest light fixture and pulled the fluorescent tubes from their brackets. The four donned night vision goggles, and Juan turned the doorknob. The room beyond looked like a typical dorm room, with two metal-framed beds, a pair of desks, and matching bureaus. The adjoining bathroom was a small tiled enclosure, with a drain on the floor for the shower. In the eerie green cast of the goggles, shapes were indeterminate, and colors washed out to shades of black, but the silhouettes of people sleeping on the beds were unmistakable. So was the snoring.

Eddie pulled a small plastic case from the thigh pocket of his fatigue pants. Inside were four hypodermic needles. The narcotic cocktail inside the barrels would incapacitate a grown man in under twenty seconds. Because Kyle had willingly joined the cult, he would surely resist their efforts to get him out.

The deprogrammer, Adam Jenner, had recommended drugging the youth to Linda, when they’d spoken, although Juan had planned to do it even without the advice.

Eddie gave a needle to Cabrillo and approached one of the beds. The man was sleeping on his stomach, his face turned to the wall. In a fluid movement, Seng clamped his hand around the man’s mouth and slid the needle into his neck, his thumb coming down on the plunger with even pressure. Across the room, Juan did the same thing. His victim came instantly awake and bucked against Juan’s arm, his eyes wide with panic. Juan held him down easily, even when the man’s legs began to thrash.

Juan counted down from twenty in his head. When he reached ten, the man’s gyrations were slowing, and when he hit three the guy was totally still. Juan flashed his penlight into the man’s face. Although Kyle Hanley took after his mother, Juan saw enough of Max in the boy to know it was him.

“Got him.”

As a precaution, Linc whipped FlexiCuffs around Kyle’s ankles and wrists before tossing him over his shoulder.

“All set, big man?” Juan asked.

Linc grinned in the darkness. “I carried your sorry butt for eight miles in Cambodia three years ago, so this boy’s nothing. Can’t weigh but a buck-twenty.”

Cabrillo checked the e-paper screen on his sleeve. Everything looked quiet, but he radioed Linda for confirmation.

“The janitors are still in the main building. A light came on across the compound from where you are but went out again a minute eight seconds later.”

“Pit stop.”

“My guess, too. You’re clear for extraction.”

“Roger.” He turned to his team. “We’re good to go.”

A bell began shrieking just as they started back down the corridor. It sounded like a fire alarm, a shrill, piercing sound that pounded on their eardrums like daggers. There was no way to communicate over the din, but the men were seasoned professionals and knew what was expected of them.

Eddie was in the lead, followed closely by Linc and Mark. All three men accelerated down the hallway, any attempt at stealth forgotten. This was no longer a snatch and grab but a race to the perimeter wall, where, if Linc and Eddie had done as ordered, a limpet mine was in place to blast through the blocks.

Linda Ross was near enough to hear the Klaxon and would be on the radio instructing George Adams to bring the Robinson in for a fast extraction. He’d land directly on the road and would have the team aboard before any guards knew what had happened.

A door to one side of Juan flew open, and a sleepy-eyed man wearing pajama bottoms stepped into the corridor. Cabrillo slammed his elbow into the man’s jaw, spiraling him to the carpet in a rubbery heap.

Ahead, another man poked his head out of his dormitory room. Even with the deadweight of Kyle Hanley on his shoulder, Linc juked sideways and stiff-armed the Responsivist. The man’s head hit the metal doorframe, and, as Juan raced past, the man’s eyes rolled into his head until only the whites shone.

He collapsed backward like a felled tree.

Eddie instinctively paused when they reached the exterior door. Juan checked the video feed on his sleeve, but Linda must have been occupied with Adams because the circling drone’s camera showed nothing but the ocean just north of them. He could hear her girlish voice in his radio’s earbud, but the alarm was too loud to make out her words. All he caught was her strident tone.

He shrugged at the lack of intel and opened the door, leading with his Glock. With the exception of alarms sounding across the compound, everything looked as tranquil as before. There were no rushing guards, or any movement at all. It didn’t even appear that additional lights had come on.

Clear of the sonic avalanche of the bell inside the dormitory, Juan pressed his hands to his ears to try to hear what Linda was shouting.

“—t of there. Guards on the far side. Gomez is coming in. Hurry.” He was fumbling for his night vision goggles when a trio of men in gray uniforms appeared around the corner of a nearby building. Juan took a fraction of a second too long to see if they were armed. One of them opened up with a compact submachine gun, spraying an arc of bullets that blew plaster dust into the air as the rounds dug into the dormitory. Cabrillo dropped flat and fired. His aim was perfect, hitting the guard center mass, but rather than going down the man simply staggered back a bit.

“Inside!” he shouted to his team, and crawled into the corridor once again, closing the door with his foot.

He screamed, to be heard over the alarm: “They’ve got automatics and Kevlar vests. Our plastic bullets don’t even slow them down.”

“Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight,” Eddie yelled.

A fresh barrage of autofire tore at the building’s façade, seemingly shaking the entire structure.

Linc jammed a chair under the door handle so it couldn’t be opened from outside, then reached up the wall and tore the horn off its mount, silencing it. “More like a blowgun to an artillery duel, my friend.”

CHAPTER 13

CABRILLO NEEDED ONLY A SECOND TO DEVISE A PLAN. “There’s a window in Kyle’s bedroom. The back of this building is closer to the perimeter wall.” He led them down the hallway again, flashing his pistol at anyone peering out of his room. The sight of the weapon was more than enough to encourage them to stay inside. Kyle’s roommate continued his drug-induced sleep despite the commotion. Juan charged across the room, firing several shots at the large picture window on the far wall. The plastic bullets carried more than enough kick to loosen the glass before he hurtled himself bodily through it. Shards cascaded around him, as he rolled onto the dried-out lawn, and he felt a few rip small cuts in his hands and at the back of his neck.

With multiple lights shining from the dorm rooms, he had a clear picture of the cement-block wall fifteen yards away. The guards continued to concentrate their fire at the entrance and had yet to encircle the building. Glass crunched behind him, as Murph, Linc, and Eddie stepped through the ruined window.

Juan’s actions had bought them a few seconds at best.

The explosives Eddie had planted were midway down the wall’s length, the location chosen because of the cameras rather than it being the best tactical location. To reach it, they would have to cross a hundred yards of open ground, a perfect killing field for the Responsivist guards.

“Linda, give me a sit-rep.” Cabrillo needed a clearer overview than the tiny e-paper screen on his wrist.

“Is that you who just went through a window?”

“Yes. What’s the situation?”

“There are three guards near the dorm’s entrance and another dozen or so fanning out across the compound. All are heavily armed, and two of them are on four-wheelers. George is on his way. You should be able to hear the chopper.”

Juan could hear the drumming of the Robinson’s rotor through the evening air. “Tell Max to get moving, too. We might have to use plan C.”

“Juan, I’m on the net,” Max Hanley said over the radio. “We’re under way right now. Do you have Kyle?”

“We do. He’s fine for the moment, but we need to get the hell out of here.”

“Don’t worry, the cavalry’s coming.”

“That’s what they said at Little Bighorn when Custer showed up, and you know how that turned out.” The sound of the approaching helicopter reached a fever pitch, and just before the copter thundered over the wall Juan nodded to Eddie. There was no need to talk to each other. With plan A in ruins, they seamlessly switched to plan B. Eddie had the explosive’s detonator in his hands. He waited a beat, as a guard in a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle approached the bomb, and then casually triggered it.

A section of wall erupted in a roiling cloud of white dust and flame. The guard was blown off the four-wheeler and thrown twenty feet, before tumbling to the ground in a loose-limbed roll. His ATV had been flipped onto its side, its balloon tires spinning uselessly. Bits of concrete fell like hail across the compound, as the mushroom of dust and fire climbed into the sky.

The team took off in a dead sprint, Linc easily keeping pace despite the deadweight of Kyle Hanley over his shoulder. When they reached the corner of the building, Juan peered around it. One of the guards who’d first opened fire was down, his face a sheet of blood from a scalp laceration caused by a chunk of cement. He was being tended to by another guard while the third was trying to get the door unstuck.

Taking careful aim, Juan cycled through the remaining four rounds in his Glock. Knowing their torsos were impervious to the plastic bullets and reluctant to kill the guards outright, he fired two low-aimed rounds at each man. The pairs of bullets wouldn’t emasculate them, but their groins were going to be swollen for weeks. They went down screaming, clutching themselves in utter agony.

“Sorry, boys. Literally,” Juan said, and relieved them of their weapons. They carried mini-Uzis, which were terrific close-work guns but useless at any meaningful range. He tossed one to Eddie and the other to Linc, who was a better shot carrying a man on his shoulder than Murph was at a firing bench with his gun bolted to the table.

The black Robinson R44 suddenly roared overhead, flying so low that the skids nearly knocked tiles off the roofs. George Adams pirouetted the chopper above the compound, using the rotor’s downwash to kick up a sandstorm. The maelstrom of grit served to cover Juan and the others, as well as keep the guards pinned.

Amid the deafening throb of the blades beating the air and the chaos all around them, no one knew where a fresh burst of gunfire originated. A flurry of white spiderwebs suddenly appeared in the chopper’s windshield and the copilot’s window. Embers of hot metal peeled away from the aircraft’s skin as bullets tore through its hull. George ducked and weaved the helo like a prize-fighter in the ring, but the stream of tracers continued to pour in until a gush of smoke erupted from the engine cowling.

Juan frantically changed frequencies on his radio, shouting, “Get out of there, George. Go! Go! Go!

That’s an order.”

“I’m outta here, sorry,” Adams drawled. With that, the chopper turned like a dragonfly and veered back over the wall, trailing smoke that was blacker than the night.

“Now what?” Murph asked the Chairman.

Seventy-five yards of open ground yawned before them, and already the Responsivists were up and getting organized. The Corporation team had cover in a shallow drainage ditch, but it wouldn’t last long.

Already, guards were forming search parties, their flashlights lancing out into the darkness.

“Where are you, Linda?” Cabrillo asked.

“Just outside the wall, not far from where you guys blew it open. Can you reach me?”

“Negative. Too many guards and not enough cover. I swear, this place is more like a military barracks than a wacko retreat.”

“Then I guess its time for a diversion.”

“Make it good.”

Over the radio, he could hear the sound of an engine accelerating, but Linda didn’t respond.

Thirty seconds later, the compound’s main gate was torn off its hinges and the back end of the van they had rented burst through, its bumper hanging askew. The dozen or more guards covering the facility turned at once. Some began running toward this latest threat, not noticing the shadows rising out of a culvert and racing for the breach in the wall.

Guns opened up on Linda’s van, forty holes appearing in its sheet-metal hide before she could wrestle the transmission back into drive. The tires kicked up feathers of gravel before regaining traction, and she drove out of the withering barrage.

As they ran for the wall, Juan called to Linc and Eddie. “Switch to plan C, and I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Where are you going?” Mark was panting.

Cabrillo thought idly that they really did need to get Murph to the ship’s exercise room. “They got one of Linda’s tires. There are jeeps in front of the main building. They’ll catch us before we make it a half mile.

I’m going to delay them so you can get to the bridge.”

“That should be my job,” Eddie said.

“Negative. Your responsibility is with Max’s son. Good luck.” Juan angled away from the smoking pile of rubble that had once been the wall. The ATV was still on its side, exhaust curling from its tailpipe. He turned to see his men climb through the gap before grabbing the handlebars. He goosed the throttle and worked the wheel, using the four-wheeler’s power rather than moist his strength to right the six-hundred-pound vehicle. It bounced onto its rubbery tires, and he threw his leg over the seat, gunning the motor before he was settled in.

The machine’s 750cc engine growled as he took off across the lawn. A detachment of guards ran for the open-topped jeeps, while those closest to the wall turned to resume their hunt of Juan’s team.

Cabrillo maintained the advantage of his night vision goggles, but more lights were being turned on all around the compound. The pole-mounted spots cast blinding pools of incandescence. He had a minute or less before they recognized it wasn’t one of their own driving the ATV. He tore around as if searching for the intruders while trying to find a guard farthest from any illumination. He spotted a man taking cover behind one of the desiccated trees near where two of the perimeter walls met. He raced over, pulling off his goggles but pausing in a shadow so his face remained hidden. Not knowing what language the guard spoke, Cabrillo waved him over, indicating he should hop on the back of the big four-wheeler.

The guard didn’t hesitate. He ran to Juan and jumped onto the seat behind him, bracing himself with one hand on Cabrillo’s shoulder while clutching a machine pistol with the other.

“Not your lucky day, pal,” Juan muttered, and torqued back on the throttle.

“I’ve got everybody,” Linda Ross called. “We’re on the main road now.” Glancing at the jeeps, Juan saw that the first one was ready to head out in pursuit. Apart from the driver and the guard in the passenger seat, there were two other armed men in the back, clinging to the metal roll bar. He knew his people would make a good show of themselves, but they were virtually unarmed, in a van with a flat tire that couldn’t do more than fifty miles per hour. The outcome was inevitable, especially when the other jeep took off after his team, too.

It was time to level the playing field.

The guard riding the back of Cabrillo’s ATV tapped him on the shoulder, pointing, that they should head toward the back of the dormitory. Juan seemed to comply, accelerating evenly across the smooth terrain.

He could feel the eyes of the other guards watching him, so he waited until the last possible second to crank the handlebars hard to the right. The balloon tires tore furrows out of the ground, and had Juan not thrown his weight in the opposite direction the four-wheeler would have flipped. Coming back down on four wheels and pointing straight at the breach in the wall, Juan put on the power. He wrenched the guard’s mini-Uzi from his hands and jammed it into his own belt. The guard was confused for a second but quickly recovered. He threw his arm around Juan’s neck, his ropy bicep crushing Cabrillo’s larynx and windpipe with unholy strength.

Juan gasped and choked, working his powerful lungs to draw in little sips of air while keeping the ATV

accelerating toward the gap. The hole had a ragged six-foot diameter, and, beneath it, was a jumbled pile of shattered cement blocks and loose mortar. They were barreling in at forty miles per hour, with less than fifteen yards to go, when bullets began to strike the wall. The Responsivist guards had seen the fleeing vehicle and assumed the two men sitting astride it were the ones who’d infiltrated their lair.

Cement chips and dust erupted from the wall as rounds were sprayed at the ATV in a punishing fusillade.

Juan could feel the heat of the bullets whizzing all around them. He even felt one graze his artificial leg but ignored the distraction, keeping his diminishing focus on the hole. His lungs convulsed from lack of oxygen, as the guard redoubled his hold, bearing down with every ounce of his strength, trying to choke the life out of his prey.

Come on, you bastards! Shoot straight for once! Juan thought as his peripheral vision vanished into a rapidly expanding darkness, as though he were looking down an ever-lengthening tunnel.

Do it! Cabrillo knew it could be his last thought on earth.

Then he felt a powerful jolt, as if he’d been sledgehammered in the spine. The guard’s tenacious grip came free. He made a gurgling sound as he slumped over the Chairman, blood from his ruptured lung spilling from his mouth. The burst of autofire from the Responsivists had struck their own man. He fell off the back of the quad when Juan hit the base of the pile of debris. The fat tires found easy purchase on the loose rubble. He shot up the incline and through the gap, ducking so as not to tear his head off. He soared out the other side, instinctively rising from the seat just before landing, to absorb the shock.

The big Kawasaki bounced on its suspension, bucking Cabrillo so he almost flew over the handlebars.

His radio earbud popped free and dangled across his chest on its wire. He held on grimly, struggling to refill his lungs through his damaged windpipe. As soon as the ATV settled firmly again, he twisted the handlebars hard over, turning so he could get on the coast road leading to Corinth, twelve miles away.

He hit the pavement just as the first jeep burst through the ruined gate and tore down the road. Linda and the others had maybe a half-mile head start. Not nearly enough. A switch on the handlebars disengaged the ATV’s front wheels, giving Juan a burst of speed. He accelerated down the road along the outside of the wall.

The gate was twenty yards away when the second jeep careened through, its tires kicking up dirt before they hit the blacktop. There were only three guards in this one, a driver, passenger, and a man standing in the rear clutching an AK-47.

Juan had the advantage of momentum and raced up behind the jeep before they knew he was there. He kicked himself up so he was standing on the saddle seat, the wind stinging his eyes. Slowing only slightly so that he was going just a few miles per hour faster than the jeep, he crashed the front of the ATV into the jeep’s rear bumper.

The impact launched Cabrillo off the Kawasaki, his shoulder slamming the guard standing in the rear. The man’s face smashed into the roll bar with teeth-splintering force, and he was bent backward until it seemed his heels would touch his head. If the collision hadn’t killed the guard, Juan was still certain the man was out of the fight. Juan untangled himself enough to kick out with his artificial leg, a sweeping arc that caught the guard in the passenger seat on the side of the head. With the jeep’s doors removed, there was nothing to keep the man from tumbling out of the vehicle and cartwheeling down the road.

Cabrillo had the barrel of the mini-Uzi pressed to the driver’s head before he was fully conscious of what had happened.

“Jump or die. The choice is yours.”

The driver did neither. He crushed the brake pedal to the floor. The tires lit up as the rear of the jeep nearly lifted free of the road. Juan hit the windshield, folding it flat, and he tumbled across the hood, falling over the front so quickly he didn’t have time to grab the grille.

As soon as Cabrillo had vanished from sight, the driver released the brake and mashed the accelerator again, knowing the man who’d attacked them was lying helplessly on the road.

CHAPTER 14

THE OREGON’S BOW CUT THROUGH THE DARKENED waters of the Ionian Sea with ease. Her revolutionary magnetohydrodynamic engines could have pushed her through four feet of pack ice just as effortlessly. They were just west of Corinth, having rounded the Peloponnesian Peninsula, and were driving due east to get into position. There was little maritime traffic around the ship. What showed on the radarscope were a couple of coastal fishing boats, probably trawling for squid feeding near the surface at night.

For the moment, Eric Stone was pulling double duty. Seated in his navigator’s station, he had control of the ship, but he had turned one of Mark Murphy’s computer monitors toward him so he could take over flying the UAV still circling over the Responsivist complex. When they got closer to shore and steering the ship would demand his full concentration, he would turn the drone over to Gomez Adams, who was on final approach in the damaged Robinson.

“ Oregon, this is Gomez.” Hali had put the helicopter’s comm channel on the overhead speakers. “I have you in sight.”

“Roger, Gomez. Commencing deceleration,” Max said from the captain’s chair. “Five knots, if you please, Mr. Stone.”

Eric made a few keystrokes to slow the volume of water gushing through the Oregon’s drive tubes until he could reverse the pumps and drop the ship down to the required speed. They had to maintain some headway in order to keep the ship from rolling with the swells and complicating Adams’s landing.

Max spun his seat so he could see the damage-control officer standing at his station at the back of the room. “Fire teams ready?”

“In full gear, sir,” he said immediately, “and I’ve got my fingers on the triggers for the water cannons.”

“Very good. Hali, tell George we’re ready when he is.” Max keyed the intercom to the hangar where Dr.

Huxley was standing by. “Julia, George is only a couple of minutes out.” A bullet had only grazed the pilot’s calf, but Max Hanley felt as guilty as if the entire team had been wiped out. No matter how anyone tried to rationalize it, Juan and the others had put themselves in danger because of him. And now the mission, which should have been simple, had thoroughly fallen apart. So far, George’s flesh wound was the only injury, but Juan had dropped off the tactical net and Hali couldn’t raise him. Linda had Linc, Eddie, and Kyle with her in the van, and they reported a heavily armed jeep in close pursuit.

For the hundredth time since the Chairman was first ambushed, Max cursed their decision to use only nonlethal weapons. No one had expected an army of armed guards. Hanley still hadn’t yet considered the implications of so many weapons at a cult’s compound, but it didn’t bode well. From everything he’d heard and read since his ex had called him, the Responsivists weren’t violent. In fact, they eschewed violence in all its forms.

How this connected to the mass murder aboard the Golden Dawn, he didn’t know. Were the Responsivists at war with some other group? And, if so, who were they? Another cult no one had heard of, a group willing to kill hundreds of people just because the Responsivists believed in population control?

To Max, none of it made sense. Nor did it make sense that his only son would get mixed up with a group like this. He so wanted to believe that none of it was his fault. A lesser person would have been able to convince himself of just that. But Max knew where his responsibilities lay, and he had never shied away from them.

For now, he compartmentalized his guilt and focused on the big screen, where a window had opened with a camera view of the helipad over the Oregon’s aft-most cargo hatch. Lit only by the moon, the damage to their R44 looked extensive, as George flared the chopper over the stern railing. Smoke poured from the engine cowling in dense waves that were twisted into a wreath by the whirling blades.

This was another example of why no one ever questioned Adams’s courage. He’d flown the crippled chopper over twenty miles of empty sea rather than do the safe thing and land it in some farmer’s field.

Of course, that would have raised all sorts of questions with the Greek authorities. And the Chairman’s plan C called for everyone to be on the boat and in international waters as quickly as possible.

George hovered the helicopter a few feet off the deck and slowly lowered it. An instant before the skids kissed, a massive gush of smoke erupted from the chopper’s exhaust. The engine had seized, and the Robinson smacked into the landing pad hard enough to crack a strut. Max could see George calmly shutting down the helo’s systems, one by one, before unstrapping himself. As the hangar elevator began to descend, George looked straight at the camera and threw a cocky, one-sided grin.

One safely home, Max thought. Six more to go.

WITH A FLAT REAR TIRE, the rental van drove like a pig. Linda had to wrestle it through the corners, as she maneuvered them toward the New National Road, the main artery back off the Peloponnese. Her rearview mirrors were thankfully clear, but she knew that wouldn’t last. While Linc prepared the ropes, Eddie scrounged the inside of the van for anything they could use to slow their eventual pursuers. Linda had used a laptop to control the UAV, so that was useless, but she had installed a rolling chair and a small desk Eddie could toss out the back doors. He’d also pooled all their weapons and ammunition. He had three pistols and six extra magazines of plastic bullets. The rounds would probably blast through a windshield but bounce off tires like spitballs.

They flashed through tiny villages that clung to the sides of the road, a clutch of stucco buildings, homes, a taverna with seating under grape trellises, an occasional staked goat. Although foreigners were building vacation houses along the coast, just a mile or two inland it looked as if life hadn’t changed in this part of the world for a hundred years.

Something caught Linda’s eye, a flash in the mirror. There had been no other traffic this late at night, so she knew it had to be the headlights of one of the jeeps she’d spied back at the compound.

“We’re about to have company,” she said, and pressed the accelerator a bit harder, balancing speed against the burst tire’s shredding.

“Let them get right up to us,” Eddie called from the rear of the van, his voice jumping in time with the flattened wheel. He had one hand on the door handle and the other on a pistol.

The jeep had to be doing eighty miles an hour and ate the distance in seconds. Peering out the back window, Eddie watched them come and realized they weren’t going to tuck in behind the van but come alongside it.

“Eddie!” Linda cried.

“I see it.”

He threw open the door when the jeep was ten yards back, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. His first rounds bounced off the jeep’s hood and grille, but the next few found the windshield. They punched neat holes through the glass, forcing the driver to swerve and slow. For a moment, it looked like he was going to roll the four-by-four, but at the last second he cranked the wheel in the opposite direction of the jeep’s slide, and its left wheels crashed back to the pavement.

Almost immediately, he started after the fleeing van.

“Linc, down! Linda, hold on,” Eddie shouted when the guard in the jeep’s passenger’s seat raised himself over the windscreen. He cradled an assault rifle.

The gun’s chattering and the metallic whine of bullets chewing through sheet steel came at the same time.

The windows in the van’s back doors exploded, showering Eddie Seng in a cascade of diamond chips.

Metal crackled with heat where rounds punched through, and one bullet ricocheted inside the van before embedding itself in the back of Linda’s chair.

Eddie raised his second pistol over a window frame and fired blindly, while Linc used his body to shield Kyle Hanley’s unconscious form.

“I don’t know how you did it,” Linda called from the driver’s seat. She was hunched over the wheel and looking at the side rearview mirror. “You hit the shooter in the chest.”

“Did I kill him?” Eddie was slamming home fresh magazines.

“Can’t tell. A guy in the back is taking his gun. Hold on!” Linda hit the brakes and swerved into the jeep’s lane. The two vehicles came together with a sickening crash, the van riding up onto the jeep’s bumper for a moment before coming back down with a hard bounce. The limp passenger was thrown from the jeep, while the men in back crashed into the roll bar.

Hitting the gas again, Linda bought them a hundred-yard head start before the guards could regain the hunt.

“ Oregon, how far are we?”

Eric Stone answered immediately. “I have you in sight from the UAV. You’ve got another six miles.” Linda cursed.

“To make matters worse,” Stone continued, “there are two more jeeps coming up behind the first. One’s maybe a quarter mile back and the other a little farther.” The jeep came up on them again, but rather than get too close, it hung back, and the armed guard started firing at the van’s tires. Linda worked the wheel to foul his aim, but she knew it was only a matter of time.

“Any bright ideas back there?”

“I’m afraid I’m out.” Eddie admitted, but then his face brightened. He tapped his radio mike. “Eric, crash the UAV into the jeep.”

“What?”

“The drone. Use it like a cruise missile. Hit the passenger compartment. It should still have enough fuel on board to blow up on impact.”

“Without it, we won’t be able to pick up the Chairman,” Stone protested.

“Have you heard from him in the past five minutes?” The question hung in the air. “Do it!”

“Yes, sir.”

NO SOONER HAD CABRILLO hit the pavement in front of the jeep, its driver hit the gas. Juan had a fraction of a second to flatten himself and reach up, as the bumper loomed over him. He grasped its underside, with the jeep picking up speed, dragging him down the road. He reached up higher to get his backside off the rough pavement, while rubber was chewed off his boots.

He hung on like that for a couple of seconds to catch his breath. He’d lost the mini-Uzi but still had a Glock in a holster at his hip. He doubled his grip with his left hand and used his right to grab his earbud and set it in place in time to hear the last exchange between Eddie and Eric.

“Negative on that,” he said, his throat mike easily negating the engine roar inches from his face.

“Juan,” Max shouted in jubilation, “how are you?”

“Oh, I’m hanging on.” He tilted his head back so he could look up the road. Even with everything upside down, he saw two sets of car taillights and the unmistakable flicker of rifle fire from one of them. “Give me thirty seconds and the van’ll be in the clear.”

“That’s about all the time we have left,” Linda cautioned.

“Trust me.” With that, Cabrillo tensed his shoulders and pulled himself higher, so that he was lying across the bumper just out of the driver’s view. Clutching the grille as tightly as he could, he cross-drew the Glock from its holster with his left hand. He pushed off with his right to vault over the hood.

He drew down as he came up, double-tapping the driver in the chest. At this range, the plastic bullets would have been fatal, had the driver not worn a Kevlar vest. As it was, the two slugs hit with the kinetic energy of a mule, blowing every molecule of air out of the driver’s lungs.

Cabrillo scrambled across the hood, clutching the wheel as the driver released it, his face already a deathly white as his mouth worked soundlessly to draw air. Cabrillo kept to the middle of the road by looking back at where they’d been rather than forward where they were heading. It didn’t help that the driver kept his foot pressed to the gas pedal.

Juan had no choice but to reach over the dash with his pistol and shoot the man in the leg. Blood splattered the dash, the driver, and Cabrillo, but the shot had the desired effect. The driver’s foot came off the gas and the jeep began to slow. When they were down to twenty miles per hour, Cabrillo leveled the pistol between the driver’s pain-seared eyes. “Out.” The driver jumped clumsily, falling to the macadam, clutching his bleeding thigh and coming to a stop in a heap of abraded skin and broken limbs.

Juan swung over the lowered windscreen, settled into the driver’s seat, and started after the first jeep. In his mirror, he could see a set of headlights barreling down the road and rightly assumed it was another contingent of Responsivist guards. The tenacity of their pursuit set off all sorts of alarm bells in his mind, but that was something to think about when they were well away from here.

The men firing at the van had no reason to suspect Juan’s jeep as he came up behind them, even as the third jeep narrowed the gap. They flashed under a sign announcing in both Greek and English that they were fast approaching the entrance ramp for the New National Road and its vital bridge over the Corinth Canal, so it was the timing, not the execution, that worried him. It would have to be perfect. The ramp was coming up on their right. The third jeep was fifty yards back, and bullets continued to ping off the side of the van ahead.

“Linda,” Juan said, eyeing the jeep in front and the one coming up behind him, “speed up as fast as you can go. Don’t worry about losing the tires. Just floor it.” The van started to open a gap between it and the jeep, but the jeep’s driver fed it a bit more gas and closed the gap again. Cabrillo came up to the jeep’s bumper and hit it with what police refer to as PIT, or Precision Immobilization Technique. The impact wasn’t very hard and didn’t need to be. The trick was to hit in such a way that the back end of the target vehicle gets spun around.

Feeling like a stock-car driver gunning for the lead, Juan hit the jeep a second time, just as the driver corrected from the first impact. This time, there was no saving it, and Juan had to crank his wheel hard to the left as the Responsivists’ four-by-four careened out of control, swinging in a wide arc across the road, before its two left tires hooked and the jeep began to flip over and over, shedding bits of sheet metal and the bodies of its occupants as it rolled.

The jeep came to rest on its roof, lying across the single-lane entrance to the thruway, effectively blocking it. Linda’s back was covered, and she was clear to make her run for the bridge. Juan kept watching his rearview mirror. The party in the third jeep slowed as they approached the on-ramp but must have soon realized their quarry had escaped, because they accelerated again after Cabrillo, who continued to drive toward the heart of Corinth.

NO ONE IN THE OP CENTER could believe what they saw from the flying drone until Eric radioed Cabrillo. “Is that you in the second jeep, Chairman?”

“Affirmative.”

“Nice piece of driving.”

“Thanks. How’s everything look?”

“Linda and her team are in the clear. There are no other vehicles coming out of the Responsivists’

stronghold, and, so far, your fireworks display hasn’t caught the attention of the local authorities. We’re about two minutes from entering the canal. George just came in from the hangar and will be taking over the UAV.”

“What about my route through town?”

“Last sweep looked clear. As soon as Linda reaches the bridge, you’ll have primary aerial coverage.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

Wearing his flight suit with the pant leg cut off and a large bandage taped to his thigh, George Adams settled himself at a computer, keeping the injured leg extended stiffly.

“How you doing?” Max asked, trying to sound more gruff than normal to hide his guilt.

“One more scar to impress the ladies. Hux only needed eight stitches. I’m more worried about the Robinson. Talk about giving something the Swiss cheese treatment. There were eleven holes in the canopy alone. Okay, Stoney, I’m ready.”

Eric flipped UAV control to Adams so he could concentrate on getting the big freighter through the Corinth Canal.

First proposed during Roman times, a canal across the narrow isthmus was beyond their capabilities.

Being master engineers, the Romans built a road, which the Greeks called the diolkos, instead. Cargo was removed from ships at one end, and both freight and vessel were loaded onto wheeled sleds that were dragged by slaves to the other terminus, where the ships were refloated and reloaded. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that the technology had evolved to excavate a proper canal and save modern cargo vessels the one-hundred-and-sixty-mile journey around the Peloponnese. After a failed French effort, a Greek company took over and completed the canal in 1893.

At a little less than four miles long and only eighty-two feet wide at sea level, there wasn’t much to note about the canal except for one special feature. It was carved through solid rock that soared more than two hundred and fifty feet above the ships transiting through it. It was as though an ax had cleaved the living rock to create the narrow passage. A favorite tourist activity was to stand on one of the bridges that span the canal and peer down at the oceangoing ships far below.

Had it not been for the lights of the tiny town of Poseidonia, the view on the Oregon’s main screen would have looked as though the ship was racing toward a cliff. The canal was so narrow it was difficult to spot.

It was just a fractionally lighter slash on the dark stone. An occasional headlight swept along the main bridge a mile inland.

“You sure about this, Mr. Stone?” Max asked.

“With the high tide, we’ll have four feet clearance on each side of our wing bridges. I can’t promise I won’t scrape some paint, but I’ll get us through.”

“Okay, then. I’m not going to watch this on TV if I can get the live show. I’ll be up on the bridge.”

“Just don’t go outside,” Eric cautioned, a little uncertainty in his voice. “You know. Just in case.”

“You’ll do fine, lad.”

Max took the elevator topside and emerged on the dim pilothouse. He glanced aft, to check where crewmen were making preparations under the direction of Mike Trono and Jerry Pulaski, two of Linc’s best gundogs. Crewmen were also stationed at the bow.

The ship was steaming at nearly twenty knots as it made its approach. Though the canal is used today primarily by pleasure boats and sightseeing craft, any large vessel was towed through by tugs because of its tight confines and speed was limited to just a few knots. Max had supreme confidence in Eric Stone’s ship-handling abilities, but he couldn’t ignore the tension knotting his shoulders. He loved the Oregon as much as the Chairman and hated to see even a scratch mar her intentionally scabrous hide.

They passed a long breakwater to starboard, and the collision alarm sounded through every compartment on the ship. The crew knew what was coming and had taken the proper precautions.

Small bridges running along the coast roads spanned each end of the canal. Unlike the high truss bridges that towered over the water, these two-lane structures were just above sea level. To accommodate ships transiting the waterway, the bridges could be mechanically lowered until they rested on the seafloor so that vessels could pass over them. Once the ship was clear, the bridges were cranked back into place and cars could cross once again.

With her bow configured and reinforced to crash through sea ice, the Oregon slammed into the bridge, riding up on it in an earsplitting squeal of steel. Rather than crush the bridge, the tremendous weight of the hull snapped the locks that held it in place and it sank under the hull. The Oregon came back down with a tremendous splash that sloshed back and forth against the canal sides and dangerously slewed the ship.

Max looked up. It was as if the canal’s featureless rock walls reached the heavens. They dwarfed the ship, and, up ahead, the automobile and railroad bridges looked as light and delicate as girders from his boyhood Erector set.

The tramp freighter continued to charge through the canal, and, to Eric’s credit, he kept it dead center, using the Oregon’s athwartship thrusters with such delicacy that the flying bridges never once touched the side. Max chanced stepping out on one and walking all the way to the end. It was foolish and dangerous.

If Eric made a mistake, a collision at this speed would tear the platform off the superstructure. But Max wanted to reach out and touch the stone. It was cool and rough. At this depth, the canal remained in shadow for most of the day, so the sun never had the chance to warm it.

Satisfied, he hurried to the bridge just as the Oregon heaved slightly and the railing smacked the canal wall. Eric shifted their heading infinitesimally, so as not to overcorrect, and centered them once again.

“Linda’s van is just about at the New National Road bridge,” Gomez called over the intercom. “I can see the Chairman, too. He’s still got a good lead on the jeep chasing him.”

“On my way down,” Max said, and moved for the elevator.

THE DAMAGED TIRE finally shredded a quarter mile from the bridge, and they covered the distance riding on the rim, sparks shooting from the back of the van like a Catherine wheel. The sound was like fingernails across a chalkboard, something Linda hated more than any other noise in the world. She wasn’t sure what made her happier when they reached the center of the span: that they were almost home free or that the unholy shriek had ended.

Franklin Lincoln threw open the side door as soon as they stopped. He could see the Oregon fast approaching and heaved three thick nylon climbing ropes off the bridge. The ropes were secured around the van’s seats and through a frame member that was exposed in the cargo area. They uncoiled as they fell through space and came up just ten feet shy of the sea.

Linda quickly jumped out of her seat and donned her rappelling gear—harness, helmet, and gloves—while, two hundred feet below them, water frothed at the Oregon’s stern as reverse thrust was applied to slow her. With the power of her massive engines, she lost headway almost immediately.

Linc had already strapped himself into a harness used by tandem parachute jumpers, and, with Eddie’s help, they had clipped an unconscious Kyle Hanley to him. The three of them then secured themselves to the lines and waited for word from down below.

On the Oregon, crewmen at the bow grabbed the dangling ropes and guided them aft as the vessel crept forward, making sure they didn’t become entangled with the superstructure, communications antenna, or any of the hundreds of things that could snag them. As soon as the men reached the aft deck, Max ordered his people to go.

Never one to be bothered by heights, Linda stepped onto the guardrail and started lowering herself from the bridge. Eddie was on one side of her, and Linc, carrying Kyle, made his way down the other. They lowered themselves down the bridge’s underpinning girders, and then, suddenly, they were dangling two hundred feet over their ship, nothing holding them in place but the three-quarter-inch lines.

With a whoop, Linda shot down her rope like a runaway elevator. Eddie and Linc quickly followed, almost free-falling through space before using their rappelling harnesses to slow their descent. They touched down at almost the same time, and stood still so that their crewmates could unhook them from the ropes. The lines’ trailing ends were quickly knotted around cast-iron bollards bolted to the ship’s deck.

Breathless from the adrenaline rush, Linda said, “Now for the fun part.” Watching the action on deck from the closed-circuit television system, Eric Stone didn’t wait for orders.

He eased the T-handle throttle forward slightly to edge the ship farther up the canal. The slack in the ropes vanished in an instant, and then they quivered for a second before the ship’s thrust rolled the rental van over the guardrail. It plummeted like a stone, smashing into the water just behind the Oregon’s fantail. The impact flattened its roof and blew out all its windows. The weight of its engine caused the van to upend, like a duck diving for food, and it bobbed in the ship’s wake for a moment before filling with water and sinking out of sight. They would tow the ruined vehicle well into the Aegean before cutting the ropes and allowing the van to sink to the bottom.

The van was rented by a disguised crew member using false identification, and there would be no link back to the Corporation. And only one more person needed to rejoin the ship for the mission to be considered a success, even if they had to go so deep into their playbook that they had to use plan C.

CABRILLO RACED TOWARD the Corinth Canal, flashing by villages and small farms in a blur. In the moonlight, stands of conical cypress trees looked like army sentries guarding the fields.

No matter how recklessly he took corners or how brutally he punished the jeep’s transmission, he couldn’t shake his tail. Denied returning their kidnapped member, the men chasing him wanted blood.

They drove just as hard, using both lanes of the road and often skidding into the gravel verge in their pursuit. They had managed a few potshots at Cabrillo, but at the speeds they were traveling there was no chance to fire accurately, and they’d stopped, presumably to conserve ammunition.

Juan regretted not raising the windscreen as he squinted against eighty-mile-an-hour wind. It didn’t help that a breeze had picked up, and grit as nebulous as smoke drifted across the road and scoured his eyes.

He flashed past the site of ancient Isthmia. Unlike other ruins dotting Greece, there was nothing to see on the low hillock, no temples or columns, just a sign and a tiny museum. What he noticed most, however, was a sign stating the modern town of Isthmia was two kilometers ahead. If the Oregon didn’t get into position soon, he was going to be in trouble. The jeep’s gas gauge was staying above EMPTY on the sheer force of his will.

He heard his name in his earbud and had to adjust the volume on his radio. “Juan here.”

“Chairman, it’s Gomez. Linda and the others are safely aboard. I’ve got you on the drone, and Eric’s making his calculations now, but you might want to slow down a touch.”

“You do see that other jeep behind me, right?”

“I do,” the chopper pilot drawled. “But if we don’t get this just right, you’re going to end up like a fly on the wrong side of a swatter, if you know what I mean.” The simile was more than apt. “Thanks for the mental picture.” The road started to descend down to the coast. In order to save fuel, Juan mashed the clutch and let momentum and gravity take over for a few seconds. He drove with one eye on the side mirror, and a few seconds after spotting the Responsivists’ headlights he eased off the clutch to let the engine engage again.

The motor sputtered. It caught instantly, but gave another weak cough. Cabrillo used an old stock-car driver’s trick, weaving the jeep to slosh the gasoline in the tank. It seemed to work because the engine purred.

“Juan, Eric’s finished with his number crunching,” Adams said. “You’re eight hundred and seventy meters from the bridge, meaning you’re too close. You need to slow down to fifty miles an hour if we’re to make this happen.”

The pursuing jeep was eighty yards back and closing. The road was too straight for Juan to do much maneuvering, and, when he tried to swerve again so they would waste a shot, the motor wheezed. He cursed.

“I’m coming in hot. Tell Eric to goose the old girl and meet me.” He entered the town of Isthmia, a typical Greek seaside village. He could smell the sea and the iodine taint of drying fishing nets. The buildings were mostly whitewashed, with the ubiquitous red-tiled roofs.

Satellite dishes grew from many of them like high-tech mushrooms. The main drag opened on a small village square, and Cabrillo could see the stanchions that raised and lowered the narrow bridge to cross the canal beyond.

“Okay, Chairman.” This time, it was Eric in the earbud. “You need to slow down now. Exactly fifty-two kilometers per hour or you’re going to hit us.”

“You’re sure?”

“It’s simple vectors. High school physics,” Eric replied as if he’d been insulted. “Trust me.” The crack of a rifle sounded behind Cabrillo. He had no idea where the bullet went but had no choice but to ignore it and comply with Eric’s directions. As he slowed, the AK-47 chattered on automatic. He could hear the bullets striking the jeep. One passed over his shoulder close enough to ruffle the cloth of his uniform shirt.

The bridge was fifty yards away and the Responsivists maybe fifty yards behind him. Traveling at the required speed took every ounce of self-control Cabrillo possessed. The primitive part of his brain was screaming for him to floor it, to get out of there as fast as he could.

Appearing like a colossus, the bow of the Oregon suddenly emerged from behind a four-story building that was blocking Juan’s view of the canal. She never looked so beautiful.

And, suddenly, she was rearing up, her plates scraping against the bridge, as she had done when she’d first entered the canal. She rose higher and higher, climbing up the bridge as if she were cutting an ice pack. With a shearing clang, the mechanical systems that operated the bridge gave out under her titanic weight, and the ship crashed back into the canal with barely a check in her speed.

Juan kept driving at her, seemingly bent on crashing into her armored flank. The men chasing him must have thought he was bent on suicide.

Fifteen yards to go and panic began to hit him. They’d timed it wrong. He was going to slam into the ship as she glided out of the canal. He could feel it. More gunfire erupted from behind him. It was answered by someone firing from the Oregon’s railing. He saw the muzzle flash against the darkened hull.

Seconds now. Speed, vectors, timing. He’d gambled and lost and was about to crank the wheel over when he spotted the yawning opening of the boat garage bathed in red battle lights. The Oregon was ballasted perfectly to the bottom lip of the ramp they used to launch Zodiacs and their assault boat was just slightly lower than the roadway.

Keeping it at exactly fifty-two kilometers per hour, he hit the end of the road, jumping the one-foot gap separating the damaged bridge from the Oregon and landing inside his ship. He hit the brakes and caromed into reinforced netting set up to stop boats during high-speed maneuvers. The jeep’s air bag deployed, further cushioning Juan from the brutal deceleration.

From outside, he heard the squeal of brakes. Tires dug in hard but not hard enough. Spinning sideways, the pursuing jeep slammed into the hull with a dull ring and teetered against the plates as the ship passed by. Metal tore against metal, as the Oregon ground the jeep against the side of the canal, flattening the vehicle and its occupants, until Eric Stone gave a little lateral thrust and the jeep fell into the water.

Max materialized at Cabrillo’s side and helped him dig out from under the deflated air bag. "Plan C, huh?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” They exited the boat garage, Juan moving a little stiffly. “How’s Kyle?”

“He’s sedated down in medical with Hux.”

“We’ll get him straightened out.”

“I know.” Max stopped and looked into Juan’s eyes. “Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary.” They started walking toward the infirmary.

"If plan C was this nuts, you’ve got to tell me about plan D.”

“Oh sure.” Juan grinned. “Only problem with that one was, we couldn’t find enough Spartans to re-create the battle of Thermopylae.”

CHAPTER 15

A PATROL CRAFT FROM THE HELLENIC COAST GUARD approached the Oregon just as the dawn sun crested the horizon. After a mad sixty-mile dash from the Corinth Canal, they were cruising at a steady fourteen knots, an appropriate speed for such a dilapidated ship. The sooty smoke pouring from her funnel made it appear as though the engine was burning as much oil as bunker fuel. Over the radio, the captain of the forty-foot patrol boat didn’t sound too concerned about a rust-bucket freighter, so far from the scene of the crime, being the culprit.

“No, Captain,” Juan bluffed smoothly. “We’ve been nowhere near Corinth. We were on our way to Piraeus when our agent radioed that our contract to haul olive oil to Egypt had been cancelled. We are continuing on to Istanbul. Besides, I don’t even think this old girl could fit in the canal. Too wide in the hips.” Cabrillo gave a lewd chuckle. “And if we had hit a bridge, our bows would have been crushed. As you can see, that is not the case. You are welcome to board and inspect them, if you wish.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the Coast Guard captain replied. “The incident occurred a hundred kilometers from here. By the looks of your vessel, it would take you eight hours to travel that far.”

“And only with the wind at our backs,” Juan quipped.

“If you see any ships acting erratically or have damage to their bows, please contact the authorities immediately.”

“Roger that, and good hunting. Atlantis out.” Juan waved at the small cutter from the wing bridge and ambled back inside, blowing out a long breath. He hung the radio hand mike back on its hook. The coiled cord trailed onto the floor.

“Did you have to invite them over for an inspection?” Eddie Seng asked from where he stood at the ship’s wheel, pretending to steer.

“They never would have taken me up on it. The Greeks want to nail someone’s hide to the outhouse door for what happened back in Corinth. They’re not going to bother with a ship that couldn’t possibly be involved.”

“What happens when they correlate all of their eyewitness accounts of what happened and come to the conclusion that we are the only vessel that fits the description?” Juan slapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll be deep into international waters and they’ll be looking for a ship called the Atlantis. As soon as there’s no other boat traffic around, I want the name plates on the fantail and fairleads changed back to Oregon.” He paused for a moment before adding, “Just in case someone has an eye for detail and a long memory, we’ll be avoiding Greece for a while.”

“Prudent precaution.”

“First watch should be up any second. Why don’t you head below and get some well-earned rest. I’ll want your after-action report on my desk by four this afternoon.”

“Should make for some interesting reading,” Eddie remarked. “In my worst nightmares, I never expected that hornet’s nest we walked in on.”

“Me neither,” Juan admitted. “There’s a lot more to these people than what we saw on their website and what the deprogrammer told Linda. That level of paranoia means they’re hiding something.”

“The obvious question is, what?”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and no one will notice the bug I planted.” Eddie shot him a dubious look. “The first thing their head of security’s going to do is sweep every square inch of that place looking for listening devices.”

“You’re right. I know. So if an electronic spy doesn’t work, we send in a human one.”

“I’ll go.”

“You don’t exactly have the look of a lost soul searching for meaning in life who’s willing to blindly follow some wacko’s rants.”

“Mark Murphy?” Eddie suggested.

“He fits the bill to a tee, but he doesn’t have the skill sets to pull off an undercover job like this. Eric Stone would be another candidate, but the same problem crops up. No. I was thinking of Linda. As a woman, she would draw less suspicion automatically. She’s got a background in intelligence work, and, as we have both seen a dozen times over, she knows how to keep her head.”

“How would you make it work?”

Juan smiled tiredly. “Give me a break, will ya? I’m making this up as I go along. The three of us will meet before dinner and brainstorm a strategy.”

“Just so long as it doesn’t turn into a plan C,” Eddie teased.

Cabrillo threw up his hands in mock exasperation. “Why is everyone giving me a hard time about that?

The plan worked.”

“So do most Rube Goldberg contraptions.”

“Bah!” Juan dismissed him with a wave.

Before heading for his cabin for what he hoped to be about ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, Juan took the elevator down to the Op Center. Hali Kasim was bent over his workstation, papers strewn about his desk as though a hurricane had just passed through. A pair of headphones flattened his otherwise-curly hair. Unlike others whose faces turn to stone when deep in thought, Hali’s Semitic features were serene, a sure sign his brain was churning.

He startled when he felt Cabrillo standing over him. He stripped off his headphones and massaged his ears.

“How’s it coming?” Juan asked. Moments after checking in on Dr. Huxley and Kyle Hanley when he’d returned to the Oregon, Juan had asked Hali to monitor the bug he’d placed in Gil Martell’s office.

“Reminds me of that urban legend about hearing voices in the white noise of a television tuned to a station that’s off the air.” He handed the headphones to Juan.

They were warm and a little damp when he slipped them on. Kasim hit a button on his computer. Static filled Juan’s ears, but in it he could hear something. To call them words would be an overstatement. They were more like low tones underlying the crackle of electronics.

He pulled off the headphones. “Have you tried scrubbing the tape?”

“This is scrubbed. Twice.”

“Put it on speaker and play it from the beginning,” Juan told him.

A few keystrokes later, the recording began. Because the bug was sound activated, it had remained dormant until someone entered the office.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no. This can’t be happening.” The voice, Gil Martell’s, was panicked, but managed to retain its California charm. Then came the sound of drawers opening and closing, presumably Martell checking to see if he’d been robbed. A chair creaked as he sat. “Okay, Gil, get ahold of yourself. What time is it in California? What does it matter?” A telephone handset rattled, and, after a long pause, Martell began to speak. “Thom, it’s Gil Martell.”

Juan knew that Thom would be Thomas Severance, who headed the Responsivist movement with his wife, Heidi.

“Someone broke into the compound about fifteen minutes ago. It looks like a rescue operation. One of our members was abducted from his room . . . What? Ah, Kyle Hanley . . . No, no, not yet. He’d only been here a short time. . . My security guys tell me there were a dozen of them. They were all armed.

They’re chasing them now in jeeps so there’s a chance we’ll get the kid back, but I wanted you to know.” There was a long pause while Martell listened to his superior. “That’ll be my next call. We’ve thrown enough money around to the local authorities so they won’t dig too deep. They can claim the local cops stopped arms traffickers or al-Qaeda or something . . . Could you repeat that? The connection’s terrible . . . Oh yeah. They first broke into my office and then went . . . Hold it!” Martell’s voice rose defensively. “You don’t need to send Zelimir Kovac. We can take care of this ourselves. . .

Bugs? This whole country’s crawling with them. Oh, electronic bugs. Damnit! Sorry.”

Cabrillo heard the sound of drawers opening and closing again as Martell looked for something, and then came the blast of static. Martell had turned on an electronic jammer to defeat any listening devices that might have been left behind.

Hali killed the recording. “I can keep working at it, but I don’t know how much good it will do.”

“Whatever you can find in all that static will be worth the effort.” Cabrillo rubbed his tired eyes.

“You ought to get some sleep,” Hali suggested needlessly. Juan was dead on his feet.

“Do you have someone looking into this Zelimir Kovac?”

“I Googled him, but there wasn’t anything there. When Eric comes back on duty, he’s going to try to find out about him.”

“Where’s Eric now?”

“Wooing our young charge down in medical. He’s bringing her breakfast, and taking advantage of Mark being asleep in his cabin.”

Juan had forgotten all about Jannike Dahl. He knew she had no immediate family, but there had to be some people back home, believing she had been lost with all the others aboard the Golden Dawn.

Unfortunately, they would have to suffer awhile longer. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to delay announcing her rescue, but the sixth sense that had served him so well over the years was telling him to keep her survival a secret.

The people responsible for the attack on the cruise ship believed they had succeeded in killing everyone.

There was an advantage in knowing something they did not, even if Juan didn’t yet recognize what it could be. For the time being, Janni was safe with them aboard the Oregon.

He turned away from Kasim. “Helm, what’s our ETA in Iraklion?”

“We’ll be there around five o’clock this afternoon.”

They were diverting to the capital of Crete, where Chuck Gunderson would be waiting with their Gulfstream to take Max, Eddie, and Kyle to their rendezvous in Rome. Juan had until then to reconsider keeping the young woman aboard. He went to his workstation and typed out some instructions to Kevin Nixon down in the Magic Shop to prepare a passport for her, just in case. He also made a mental note to consult with Julia Huxley before making his final decision. By keeping Janni on the ship, there was a chance Hux could discover something about her physiognomy that had helped the young woman survive the toxin, if Mark and Eric were wrong about acute food poisoning.

Ten minutes later, Cabrillo was sprawled across his bed, sleeping so soundly that, for the first time in a long time, he didn’t need the mouth guard to keep him from grinding his teeth.

CHAPTER 16

ZELIMIR KOVAC ENJOYED KILLING.

He hadn’t discovered this particular interest until civil war erupted in his native Yugoslavia and he had been drafted into the military. Prior to going into the army, Kovac had been a construction worker and amateur heavyweight boxer. But it was in the military that he found his true vocation. For five glorious years, he and his unit of like-minded men had torn a swath through the country, killing Croats, Bosnians, and Kosovars by the hundreds.

By the time of NATO’s intervention in 1999, Kovac, who had been born with a different name, heard rumblings about trials for people who had committed crimes against humanity. He was certain he would head the list of those sought by the authorities, so he deserted, fleeing first to Bulgaria, eventually to Greece.

Standing at six feet eight inches, with the build of a wrestler, it hadn’t taken him long to find a niche in the Athens underworld as an enforcer. His street cunning and ruthlessness were rewarded with promotions within the organized-crime world, and he cemented his reputation by killing an entire gang of Albanian drug dealers trying to horn in on the heroin trade.

During his first few years in Athens, he began reading books in English to learn the language. The material itself was unimportant to him, and he read biographies of people he’d never heard of, histories of places he had no interest in, and novels whose plots he didn’t care about. The fact that the books were in English was all that was important.

That is, until he found a dog-eared book in a secondhand shop. The title intrigued him: We’re Breeding Ourselves to Death, by Dr. Lydell Cooper. He mistakenly thought it was a book about sex and bought it.

Between the covers was a rational explanation for everything he had believed since the war. There were too many people on the planet, and, unless something was done about it, our world was doomed. Of course, Dr. Cooper didn’t single out any ethnic groups in his treatise, but Kovac read the book with his own racist perspective and was certain Cooper meant the inferior races, like the ones Kovac had slaughtered for so long.

With no natural predators, there are no limits to our burgeoningpopulation, and the hardwiring in our DNA to procreate means we will not stop ourselves. Only the lowly virus stands in our way, and each day we draw closer to eradicating this threat as well.

He took this to mean that mankind needed predators to cull the weak so that the healthy could thrive.

This wasn’t Cooper’s point at all. He wasn’t espousing violence of any kind, but that didn’t matter to Kovac. He had found a cause he could truly believe in. Man needed predators again, and Kovac wanted to be part of that.

When he discovered that the Responsivist movement had opened a facility outside of Corinth, he knew finding that book was providential.

Thomas Severance himself was at the compound the day Kovac had shown up to offer his services, and the two men talked for hours, discussing fine points of Dr. Cooper’s work and the organization it had spawned. Severance subtly made Kovac understand the true philosophy behind Responsivism but never once tried to blunt the Serb’s rough edges.

“We ourselves aren’t violent, Zelimir,” Severance had told him, “but there are others who don’t understand us, who want to ensure that our great founder’s message isn’t spread. No one has tried to hurt us yet—physically, I mean—but I know it’s coming, because people don’t want to be told they are part of the problem. They are going to lash out at us, and we will need you to protect us. That will be your function.”

So Zelimir Kovac would continue his role as an enforcer, only this time he did it for the Responsivists and himself rather than for drug lords and dictators.

Gil Martell looked sleek behind his desk, his bronze hair slicked back and his capped and bleached teeth shining when Kovac strode in. Martell could only hold the pose for a second before his smile faded.

Hooking up with Thom Severance had been good for him. It got him out of L.A. before the police closed in on his auto-theft business again. He had a huge house facing the ocean just down the road from the compound and any number of willing women for his bed from the transient population of Responsivists who came to Greece on retreat. Part of him even believed that there were too damned many people on the planet. He didn’t believe any of that garbage about alien membranes, but he was a consummate salesman and could feign belief better than the most devout.

As for Thom and Heidi’s master plan, what did he care about a bunch of rich people on cruise ships?

It was only around Kovac that his façade cracked. The big Serb was a psychopath, plain and simple. Gil didn’t know the man’s background but could only assume he’d been involved in the ethnic cleansing he’d read about in Yugoslavia back in the late nineties. The rescue of Kyle Hanley had been a disaster, but Martell felt he could handle the fallout. He didn’t need Kovac watching over his shoulder and reporting every little detail back to Thom and Heidi. He admitted he should have anticipated his office had been bugged, but he’d said nothing substantive before turning on the jamming device. It was a minor lapse that didn’t warrant Thom calling in his creepy lapdog.

Kovac held a finger to his fleshy lips in a shushing gesture before Martell could speak. When Kovac reached the desk, he shut off the jammer, then took a small piece of electronics from the inside pocket of his black leather jacket. He systematically swept the room, his small eyes never leaving the electronic readout as he moved the device over bookshelves, furniture, and the carpet. Satisfied, he slipped it back into his pocket.

“So there weren’t any—”