Plague Ship

Satisfied he had enough room to squeeze through, he gripped each thin metal bar and bent it outward. He poked his head outside. There was a narrow platform immediately below the diffuser, and a ladder to his right that led upward. He was just turning to look to the left when he was grabbed by the shoulders and yanked out of the exhaust shaft. It happened so fast he had no time to react before he was thrown onto a dock. Two guards stood over him, each with a submachine gun slung under his arm. Unlike the kid Max had knocked unconscious back in the generator room, these two had the look of professionals.

“And just what do you think you’re doing, mate?” The guard spoke with a thick cockney accent.

With the helmet on and his ears ringing from so much time spent in the duct, Max saw the guard’s lips moving but couldn’t hear the words. As soon as he moved to pull his helmet off, their fingers tightened on the triggers. One guard stepped back to cover his partner, who tore the helmet away. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Hiya, fellas, I’m Dusty Pipes from the Acme Chimney Sweep Company.” CHAPTER 36

"IT’S MAX!” HALI CRIED, AS SOON AS HE SAW THE guards haul a figure wearing a silver suit out of the exhaust vent.

Juan snapped around to look at George Adams. “Last resort. Let’s go!” The chopper pilot threw a toggle on his console that put the aerial drone into a mile-wide circle. It would maintain that pattern until someone took over the controls or it ran out of fuel. He swung the camera so it pointed directly at the dock and hit a button so it would track, to keep the dock in frame. “Giddy-up.” Cabrillo launched himself across the room, heading for a stairwell to the aft deck, the long-legged Adams barely keeping pace. Juan’s mouth was set in a tight line, but his body was loose and relaxed. He was wearing black fatigues, with one of the flex-screen panels sewn onto a sleeve. He carried a pair of FNs, Five-seveNs, in kidney holsters, and another two slung from his hips. With the chopper’s stability in question, he wasn’t going to risk anyone else on a flight, so he purposefully overloaded himself with weapons. In his thigh pockets were four stick magazines for the Heckler and Koch MP-5 machine pistol already stowed in the Robinson.

“How’d he do it, ya wonder?” George said.

“I keep telling everyone, he’s a crafty one.” Juan turned on his combat radio. “Comm check. Do you read?”

“Right here,” Hali replied.

“Helm, Wepps, do you copy?”

The man and woman manning the weapons station and the ship’s helm control responded immediately.

“Wepps, I want you to take over control of the drone from your console and fire up its laser designator.

I’m going to use its camera to call out targets. When I laze ’em, open fire with the one-twenty.” The Oregon’s fire control was nearly as sophisticated as the Aegis battle space computer aboard a Navy cruiser. The small laser in the chin of the drone would light up a target, the computer could automatically calculate its exact GPS coordinates, raise or lower the ship’s 120mm cannon, and send any number of types of rounds downrange.

“We need to close in on the island. Helm is taking us in now.” Juan activated his flex-screen panel. He could see Max still sprawled on the dock, but it wouldn’t be long before they tossed him in the back of the pickup truck and drove him to the bunker.

With the Oregon pounding through the sea at flank speed, the wind across the deck was like a hurricane.

Juan and George raced to the Robinson, where crewmen were holding open Adams’s door. Juan’s had been removed. They had caught a break. The engine had just been shut down, so when George fired it up again he could immediately engage the transmission and start the rotor spinning. Only after the blades were turning did he pull on a headset and strap himself in.

“Helm, this is Gomez. We’re ready to fly. Decelerate now.” The Oregon’s pump jets cut out immediately, and then they were fired in reverse. It looked as though a torpedo had struck the bow when a gush of water exploded from the front end of the ship’s drive tubes, as she went into an emergency stop. While most vessels her size needed miles to come to rest, the Oregon’s revolutionary propulsion system gave her the braking ability of a sports car.

When an electronic anemometer, placed on one corner of the elevator platform, indicated the wind speed had dropped to twenty miles per hour, George fed the chopper power and lifted off the deck.

“We’re clear,” he radioed as the skids whizzed over the stern rail.

The propulsors were reversed once again, and the Oregon began to accelerate back up to flank speed.

The maneuver had been so well timed that they lost less than a minute.

“Well done,” Juan said.

“They say practice makes perfect. ’Course, I always believed starting out perfect never hurt.” Cabrillo grinned. “Ego, thy name is Gomez.”

“Chairman, this is Wepps. Computer says the one-twenty will be in range in eight minutes.”

“Fire off a triple salvo of flares,” Juan ordered. “Let Max know the cavalry’s coming.” He turned to George. “What’s our ETA?”

“I didn’t file a flight plan or anything. I don’t know, five minutes maybe.” Juan had synchronized his digital combat watch with the master countdown for the Orbital Ballistic Projectile’s impact. He had fifty-five minutes to rescue Max and get the Oregon out of the danger zone.

"ON YOUR FEET,” the English guard snapped, and when Hanley was slow to cooperate he was kicked in the hip.

Max held out his hands like a supplicant. “Take it easy, boys. You got me fair and square. I’m not going anywhere. Let me just get this tank off and get out of this suit.” Had he been thinking clearer, Max realized he should have rolled into the water. The suit was airtight, and the weight of the oxygen cylinder would have made him sink like a stone. Something out to sea caught his attention. He squinted into the setting sun and saw a tiny white orb hovering next to it. Another burst just below. And then a third.

If a hunter is ever lost in the woods, the internationally recognized call is to fire three evenly spaced rounds to attract search parties. The flares weren’t a distress call from a ship in trouble; it was Juan telling him the Oregon was here to rescue him.

He had never given up hope, so he really wasn’t that surprised, but it took effort to keep a smug look off his face.

Max slowly shed the heavy tank and peeled off the tattered remains of his thermal-insulation suits. While the front of the outermost suit remained shiny silver, the back was blackened by heat and soot.

One of the guards was on his walkie-talkie, getting orders from a superior.

“Nigel, Mr. Severance wants to see this bloke right away. They’re going to open the outer doors only when we arrive.” He poked Max in the back with his gun. “Move it.” Max took a halting step and collapsed onto the dock. “I can’t go on. My leg’s all cramped from crawling out here. I can’t feel it.” He clutched his knee with the theatrics of a soccer player hoping to draw a foul on an opponent.

The guard named Nigel fired a single bullet into the dock inches from Max’s head. “There. Bet it isn’t so cramped now, eh?”

Max got the message and hoisted himself to his feet. He made a show of limping ahead of them as they started for shore, and when he slowed too much for their taste he was shoved in the back.

The black Robinson helicopter suddenly thundered around the headland like a raptor chasing prey and dove straight for the dock. George kept the nose down so the blades chewed the air a few feet above the timber jetty. Max was already on his stomach from the push and was joined by the guards, throwing themselves flat, as the chopper roared overhead.

Gunmen in observation posts on both cliff tops overlooking the beach opened fire, but Adams danced the helo like a boxer avoiding a jab. The men didn’t have tracer rounds, so they couldn’t correct in time to hit the bird.

“We’ve got to wait until they get him off the beach,” Juan said. “They’ll kill us with that cross fire.” With shadows lengthening, the only way to spot the guards patrolling the beach was by the muzzle flash of their automatic weapons, as they added their weight of fire to the melee.

On the dock, each guard grabbed one of Max’s arms and dragged him toward shore, trusting their partners in the guardhouse and along the beach to keep the helicopter at bay. Max tried to fight them, but after the ordeal he’d been through his struggles were ineffective.

RACING OVER GREENLAND like a vengeful demon, the Soviet Orbital Ballistic Projectile satellite was going through the last of its systems checks as it prepared to launch one of its eighteen-hundred-pound tungsten rods. Inside the external case, the telephone-pole-sized projectile had been spun up to a thousand RPMs to give it stability for when it hit the atmosphere. The targeting computer, archaic by today’s standards but more than sufficient for the task, waited, with single-minded focus, as the satellite hurtled toward the proper coordinates.

A tiny burst of compressed gas vented from one of its maneuvering rockets when it detected the need for a minute course correction. The cover over the launch tube slowly peeled open, like the petals of a flower, and, for the first time in its life, the tungsten core was exposed to the vacuum of space.

It continued to streak over the earth, as the planet rotated below it, every second bringing it closer to its firing position with no regard to the drama playing out below.

"CHAIRMAN, WEPPS,” Juan heard over his tactical radio. “We are in range.”

“Lay an antipersonnel round on the eastern cliff,” Cabrillo ordered.

Eight miles out to sea, the autofeeder for the L44 selected the desired round from stores and rammed it into the cannon’s breach. The gun was located in the Oregon’s bow, in a hidden redoubt, giving it a nearly one-hundred-and-eighty-degree traverse when its carriage was fully extended. The outside doors had already been lowered and the barrel run out. Deep inside the ship, the targeting computer recognized the laser pip beamed at the top of the cliff by the drone and instantly calculated its position relative to the cannon. The barrel came up to the right elevation, and, when the bow rose on a wave, the big gun bellowed.

The computer was so accurate, it fired an instant early to account for the microseconds it took for the round to leave the barrel and the distance the earth would rotate while the projectile was in flight.

Ten seconds after leaving the gun, the shell split open, releasing a metal storm of hardened pellets that hit the top of the cliff like a massive shotgun blast. Clouds of dust exploded off the cliff, and somewhere within the choking pall were the minced remains of the two Responsivist guards.

“Nice shot,” Juan called. “Now the west.”

The men carrying Max dropped him when the headland disintegrated, and he scrambled to his feet to start running. He only managed a few steps before he was hit by a flying tackle and smeared into the rough asphalt road. Cursing incoherently, a guard clubbed him in the back of the head, and, for a moment, it was as if the sun had been snuffed out. Max fought the curtain of darkness and willed himself to remain conscious.

A second explosion rolled across the beach as another round detonated. It hit just below the snipers’ den and did nothing more than pock the stone with a thousand tiny pits.

“I know, I know,” Wepps called, and, twelve seconds later, the western cliff was obliterated.

The guards threw Max into the back of a pickup, the one pressing Max’s head to the floorboard with a submachine gun while Nigel jumped behind the wheel. They had gone no more than fifty feet when the guardhouse took a direct hit from a high-explosive shell. The corrugated-metal building blew apart at the seams, blossoming with orange fire like a deadly rose. The concussion rocked the pickup forward, and, for a moment, Nigel lost control, but he fought the wheel and kept on the road.

The two guards remaining on the beach must have thought a retreat had been called, because they hopped onto their ATVs and chased after the pickup.

George swung the Robinson around and came up behind the three vehicles, keeping to their right to give Juan a clear line of sight.

“Wepps, lay in an AP directly in the road ahead of that truck and keep firing ahead of them to keep them slowed.” The reply was lost in a staccato burst as Cabrillo opened up with his HK.

The ATV driver he’d targeted swerved but kept going. Juan was an expert shot, but firing from a moving chopper at a moving target was next to impossible. The guy fired back, one-handed, and the stream of bullets came close enough to the chopper that George had to momentarily break off the chase.

The road a hundred feet ahead of the hurtling pickup suddenly vanished, as the depleted uranium core of an armor-piercing round slammed into the earth. Juan had specifically called for AP, because any other projectile in their arsenal would have torn the truck to shreds.

The driver slammed the brakes and cranked the wheel hard over. The road lay in a shallow defile, and the tires spun as he tried to claw the vehicle out.

Cabrillo saw his chance. “George, now!”

The pilot spun the helo and dove after the pickup. The guard holding Max went to raise his weapon, but Max kicked at him, forcing him to contend with his prisoner. With no time to ram a fresh magazine into his machine pistol, Juan tossed it into the back of the chopper and pulled off his safety harness.

Dust kicked up by the whirling blades partially obscured Juan’s target, but he could see well enough, as George dropped their airspeed to match the pickup’s as it neared the crest of the hill.

Juan didn’t hesitate. He leapt when they were ten feet above the truck. The second guard had pounded on the pickup’s roof to warn Nigel as soon as he saw a figure leaning out of the helicopter and Nigel turned the wheel.

Cabrillo landed on the edge of the pickup’s bed, and as his knees bent to absorb the brutal impact, the momentum of the pickup’s turn started throwing him bodily out of the vehicle. He scrambled to grab the guard but couldn’t, and he just managed to snag his fingers over the bed as he tumbled back. His legs were left dragging against the ground as he attempted to pull himself back into the truck.

The guard’s leering face suddenly loomed above him. Cabrillo let go with his right hand to draw one of his automatic pistols but wasn’t fast enough. He had his hand on the weapon when the guard punched the tips of Juan’s left fingers so hard that they opened automatically.

Cabrillo hit the ground hard and rolled with the impact, tucking his body into a ball to protect his head.

He came to a stop as the pickup reached the top of the hill and started accelerating away.

He got to his feet with a curse, a bump to the back of his neck leaving him momentarily stunned. He shook cobwebs from his mind and looked skyward to wave George in to pick him up. Flying up from the road came the two ATVs, their drivers needing both hands on the handlebars to keep the vehicles steady on the hill’s rocky surface.

The range was extreme, but he couldn’t risk them opening up at him with their automatic weapons. Juan drew the two Five-seveNs from the hip holsters and laid down a barrage at the driver coming up on the right. The guns barked as he torched off twenty rounds in less than six seconds. Eight of the rounds hit the guard, pulping his internal organs and blowing away half his skull.

Cabrillo dropped the two smoking pistols, drew his second pair from behind his back, and started blasting again even before the corpse of the first guards tumbled off the quad bike.

The remaining guard drove with one hand, as he reached for the AK-47 slung over his back. He kept charging, even with the air around him coming alive with bullets. He managed to get off a few shots before he took his first hit, a glancing shot that carved a trench through his outer thigh. He fired again, but it was as though his target didn’t care.

Juan didn’t flinch as rounds whipped past him. He calmly kept firing until he found his mark. Two rounds triggered in the time it takes to blink hit the rider in the throat, the kinetic impact tearing the last remaining bits of tendon and sinew so that his head fell off the stump of his neck. The ATV continued climbing the hill, like a modern version of Washington Irving’s headless horseman. When it reached Cabrillo, he lashed out with his foot to kick the body off the saddle seat. The dead fingers still gripping the throttle released, and the machine slowed to an idle.

Cabrillo jumped aboard and took off after Max, hitting the crest of the hill so fast he caught air. The truck had gained a quarter mile on him, but when another armor-piercing sabot round blasted the rock ahead of it the driver veered sharply and gave Juan a chance to cut his lead.

CHAPTER 37

MARK MURPHY HAD NEVER FELT WORSE. HIS NOSE was red and painful to touch, but he kept having to blow it, so it felt like it would never heal. To make things worse, he was a serial sneezer. If he did it once, he’d do it four or five times in a row. His head felt stuffed to the bursting point, and every breath sounded like there were marbles rattling in his chest.

If there was one thought to give him comfort, it was that misery loves company, because nearly everyone on the Golden Sky was in a similar condition. Linda Ross’s symptoms were only slightly less severe than his, but she hadn’t escaped the viral infection that swept the ship like wildfire. Every few seconds, she’d shiver with a bout of chills. Most every passenger remained huddled in their cabin, while the galley pumped out gallons of chicken soup and the medical staff passed around handfuls of cold tablets.

They were alone in the library, sitting opposite each other, and holding books on their laps in the off chance anyone wandered in. Both had tossed wads of used tissues on the nearest coffee table.

“I now understand why they chose to release the virus on a cruise ship.”

“Why?”

“Look at us. For one thing, we’re basically trapped here like rats, stewing in our own juices. Everybody gets exposed and remains exposed until they catch the bug. Second, there’s only a doctor and a nurse.

With everyone getting sick at the same time, they’re overwhelmed. If these terrorists hit a city, there are plenty of hospitals to help and therefore much less exposure time for people to infect others. An outbreak could be isolated and the victims quarantined pretty quickly.”

“That’s a good point,” she said idly, too miserable to become engaged in conversation.

A few minutes later, Murph said, “Let’s go over it one more time.”

“Mark, please, we’ve done it a thousand times already. It isn’t the air-conditioning or water systems, it’s not in the food or anywhere else we’ve checked and double-checked. It’s going to take a team of engineers, tearing this tub apart piece by piece, to find the disbursal device.” Murph had been unable to come up with the solution without the distraction of the cold racking his body, and he really held little hope that it would come to him now, but he wasn’t one to give up.

“Come on, Linda. Think. This is basically a floating city, right? What does it take to run a city?” She gave him a look that said she wasn’t interested in playing his game, so he answered his own question. “Food, water, septic, garbage removal, and electricity.”

“Yes, they’re going to poison the garbage.”

He ignored her sarcasm. “Or let’s look at this another way. A cruise ship is a hotel. What do you need to run a hotel?”

“The same things,” Linda said, “Plus little mints on your pillow at night.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m not trying to.”

Mark suddenly shot forward in his seat. “You got it!”

“Poisoned mints?” she said archly.

“Who brings the mints?”

“A maid.”

“And what is she doing in your room in the first place?”

“Cleaning up and changing the . . . Holy God!”

“I remember back in Greece when we rescued Max’s kid. They had a bunch of industrial washing machines but no dryers,” Murph said. “They were training. The virus is introduced in the laundry.

Passengers get fresh sheets every day. And if that doesn’t expose them to the virus enough, there are fresh napkins in the dining rooms as well as in the crew’s mess. How perfect is that? Wiping your mouth with a tainted napkin is as effective as giving someone a shot of the stuff. I bet within twelve hours of it being introduced into the washing machines, everyone on board comes into contact with viral-laden linens.”

He clamped his hands over his head. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner? It is so obvious.”

“It’s only obvious after you think of it. Kind of like finding something in the last place you look,” Linda teased, throwing Mark’s words back at him. She slowly levered herself to her feet. “Let’s go see if you’re right.”

THE QUAD BIKE WAS DESIGNED to handle rough terrain, with its extra-large shocks and springs, but Juan was pushing the four-wheeler to its very limits as he chased after the pickup. With shells impacting scant feet ahead of it, its driver was forced to keep an erratic track, and Juan made up the lost ground quickly.

“Chairman, it’s Hali. This is the forty-five-minute warning. Repeat, impact in forty-five-minutes.”

“I hear you,” Juan said. They were now cutting into their margin of safety to clear out of the strike zone.

“I just wish I hadn’t. Wepps, I want you to hold fire. George, I need you to distract the guy in the back of the truck so I can get close. Buzz them.”

“Roger.”

With a knee pressing him to the pickup’s bed and the barrel of an assault rifle jammed in his neck, Max had no idea what was happening around him. The gun was suddenly pulled away, and the guard fired a short burst. Max turned his head enough to see that he was firing into the sky. The Robinson suddenly flew over the truck, so low that the guard had to duck.

Max used the distraction to ram an elbow into the guy’s groin. The blow was clumsy and awkward and didn’t seem to slow the man at all. He whipped the gun around, and Max blocked it with his arm so that, when it discharged, the bullets sailed harmlessly into the darkening sky. Eyes burning from the spent gunpowder, Max saw his opportunity and punched the guard’s exposed flank. The guard counterpunched Max in the face. The renewed agony seemed to goad Hanley and he went into a rage, swinging wildly, and slowly getting up to his knees to get more power behind his punches.

The pickup’s bed was too confined for the guard to bring his assault rifle to bear, so he used it to shove Max off of him. Hanley went down, sweeping out his leg to knock the gunman on his butt. Max stood shakily, clutching the side of the truck to keep himself steady.

Juan was not more than two feet from the pickup’s rear bumper, on an all-terrain vehicle. He was hunched low over the handlebars so the driver couldn’t see him. Max could see Juan’s lips moving, as he spoke to either George, still circling overhead, or someone on the Oregon.

Max jumped the supine guard like a professional wrestler, only the elbow he smashed into the man’s gut wasn’t for show. The guard’s eyes bulged from his head, and his cheeks expanded as every bit of air in his lungs exploded out of his body.

A few seconds later, another round from the ship’s main gun hit just in front of the pickup truck. The driver slowed and veered left, giving Juan a chance to pull up alongside the vehicle.

“Max, stop screwing around and jump!” Juan shimmied forward on his seat to give Hanley as much room as possible.

Max crawled over the rear gate to crouch on the bumper. He reached out with a leg, getting it over the saddle seat before throwing his weight. He landed solidly, clutching at Juan’s waist to keep himself firmly planted.

Nigel, the English guard driving the truck, chose that moment to look in his rearview mirror. Realizing the prisoner was escaping, he swerved toward the ATV, forcing Juan to slam on the brakes. Nigel jammed on his, and then when the ATV started to scoot away he went after it.

With two big men astride the quad bike, the vehicles were evenly matched for speed over the rough ground. Juan couldn’t pull more than a few feet ahead of the pickup, and, no matter how sharply he turned, the driver kept with him. The Responsivist had to have realized that if he stayed close to the fleeing four-wheeler, the big cannon targeting him wouldn’t fire.

“He’s toying with us,” Juan spat, glancing over his shoulder to see the truck’s flat grille less than five yards from their rear wheels. “And we don’t have time for this. By the way, it’s good to see you, and, boy, is your face a mess.”

“Good to see you, too,” Max yelled over the wind. “And it feels worse than it looks.”

“Hold on,” Juan warned, and sent the ATV over the hill that led back to the road. They roared down it at a breakneck pace, Juan turning the handlebars so that the bike skidded onto the macadam. He cranked the throttle, as the pickup fishtailed behind them.

They gained fifty feet, tempting Juan to call in a shot from the Oregon , but the pickup was much faster than the ATV on the smooth road and closed up the gap again before he could issue the order.

“Wepps, prepare to fire HE at the end of the dock.”

“Standing by.”

“What are you doing?” Max called anxiously.

“Plan C.”

They flew down the road, although not at the ATV’s top speed. Cabrillo needed to keep a little in reserve. They shot past the still-flaming ruin of the guardhouse, threading around smoldering sheets of corrugated metal. Juan hit the dock and opened the throttle as far as it would go, expertly judging speed, distance, and time.

“Fire.”

The pickup’s driver hung back, not understanding why the ATV would intentionally corner itself on the pier, but when he realized it wasn’t slowing he hit the gas to keep close.

“George,” Juan shouted into his radio. “Prepare to pick us up in the water.” The pilot replied something that was lost to the wind.

Juan and Max rocketed down the length of the dock, coming up on fifty miles an hour.

Max finally realized what Juan was doing and shouted, “You crazy son of a biiiii . . .” They flew off the end of the dock, sailing out almost twenty feet, before splashing into the sea. An instant later, the pickup screeched to a halt in a four-wheel drift that almost flipped it on its side. Before the truck fully settled on its suspension, the door flew open and the guard raised his assault rifle, wanting nothing more than to kill the two men as soon as they surfaced.

The high-pitched whistle lasted less than a second, giving the guard no time to react.

The explosive shell actually hit the dock and not the truck, but it hardly mattered. Both were disintegrated by the blast, sending debris arcing across the sea.

Juan helped Max claw his way to the surface. He spat out a mouthful of water and surveyed the damage behind them. Half of the dock was simply gone, while the rest had become splintered timber and destroyed pilings.

“Was that strictly necessary?” Max grumbled.

“Remember me telling you about one of my first missions with the Company?”

“Something about a Russian satellite.”

“An Orbital Ballistic Projectile weapon.” Juan pulled his arm out of the water to check his watch. “It’s going to obliterate this island in thirty-eight minutes. I, for one, want to be as far from here as possible.” The Robinson R44 was trailing smoke when it appeared over the cliff, beating its way to the dock. That must have been what George had tried to tell us, Juan thought, that their helo was damaged. Adams deftly swung the chopper over the two men, hovering just above them, the downdraft kicking up a choking mist of roiled seawater. He came down even lower, until the skids were awash. Juan reached up to open the door and helped Max clamber into the chopper. It dipped dangerously as his weight upset the center of balance.

He was about to follow Hanley when a stream of autofire bracketed the helo.

“Go!” he shouted, and clutched the skid.

George didn’t need to be told twice. He revved the engine and tore away from the dock, where another pickup truck had appeared with two men in its bed, hammering away at them with AKs.

Hanging by his arms and legs like an ape, Juan clung to the Robinson’s skid for all he was worth. The wind buffeting him was brutal, and his wet clothes felt like ice, but there was nothing he could do about it.

The Oregon was only a couple miles out, and he didn’t want George to slow down for him to climb in the cabin.

Adams must have radioed ahead about the situation, because every light on the ship was ablaze and extra crewmen were on deck to assist in the landing. The helmsman had already turned the bow away from Eos Island, and the old girl was under way.

George gave himself plenty of clearance as he came over the fantail. He ignored the warning lights flashing and horns sounding in the cockpit that indicated his beloved chopper was in her death throes. He imagined the oil burning away in the overheated transmission, as he gently reduced his altitude.

Juan let go of the skid when he was a just above the waiting hands of the deck crew. They caught him easily and lowered him to his feet. They scrambled out of the way to give Adams the room he needed to set the Robinson on the deck.

“Helm, flank speed,” Juan ordered the instant the skids kissed the pad. “Sound general quarters and rig the ship for collision.”

Adams killed power as soon as he felt the skids bump down, but the damage was already done. Flames erupted from the engine cowling and around the rotor mast. Crewmen were standing by with fire hoses, and he and Max jumped from the chopper amid a torrent of spray.

George looked back when he was a safe distance away, his handsome face drawn. He knew the chopper was a total loss.

Juan clamped a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get you a shiny new one.” They went inside before the wind became too strong. In the Oregon ’s wake, Eos Island crouched in the sea, an unsuspecting ugly lump of rock that was not long for this world.

CHAPTER 38

THOM SEVERANCE WASN’T SURE WHAT TO DO. THE guards at the dock had reported capturing Max Hanley as he tried to escape the facility through the exhaust vent, of all things, and then they said they were being attacked by a black helicopter. For a brief instant, he feared the UN was behind the assault, what with rumors of their squadrons of black choppers. He caught a few snippets of garbled conversation over the walkie-talkie and then everything had gone silent. The cameras mounted atop the guardhouse were out, so he finally ordered a vehicle to check out the dock.

“They escaped, Mr. Severance,” the guard captain reported. “Hanley and another man in the chopper.

The guardhouse has been destroyed and so has the dock. A lot of my guys are missing.”

“Are there any more of them?”

“I’ve got patrols sweeping now. So far it appears as if it was just the one man.”

“One man killed all your guards and destroyed the dock?” he said doubtfully.

“I have no other explanation.”

“Very well, continue checking, and report anything out of the ordinary immediately.

Severance raked his fingers through his hair. Lydell Cooper’s final orders had been very specific. He wasn’t to send the signal for another two hours. But what if this had been the vanguard of a much larger assault? To delay might mean failure. On the other hand, if he sent the signal early it could mean that not all the virus had been attached to the feed lines of the laundry machines on all fifty cruise ships.

He wanted to call his mentor, but this was a decision he felt he should make on his own. Lydell was en route with Heidi and her sister, Hannah. They wouldn’t arrive until after the virus was released. He had had full control of the Responsivist movement for years, and, yet, like a son taking over a family business, he knew that he was under a constant microscope and wasn’t truly in charge at all. He never forgot that Lydell could override any decision he made, without warning or explanation.

He had chafed at that a little, not that Cooper interfered much. But now with the stakes so high, he wished he had that safety net of being told what to do.

What would it matter if they missed a couple of ships? Lydell’s calculations of the disease’s vector only called for forty shiploads of people in order to infect everyone on the planet. The extra ten were insurance. When questioned why some of the ships escaped infection, he could claim the dispersal devices failed. And if they all worked, no one would ever know.

“That’s it,” he said, slapping his thighs and getting to his feet.

He strode into the ELF transmitter room. A technician in a lab coat was bent over the controls. “Can you send the signal now?”

“We aren’t scheduled to send it for another couple of hours.”

“That isn’t what I asked.” Now that his decision had been made, Severance’s haughtiness had returned.

“It will take me a few minutes to double-check the batteries. The power plant is off-line because of the damage to the exhaust system.”

“Do it.”

The man conferred with a colleague deep beneath the facility using an intercom, speaking in arcane scientific jargon that Severance couldn’t follow.

“It will just be another moment, Mr. Severance.”

THE RUSSIAN SATELLITE’S electronic brain marked time in minute fractions as it streaked over Europe at seventeen thousand miles per hour. The trajectory had been calculated to the hundredth of an arc second, and when the satellite hit its mark a signal was sent from the central processor to the launch tube. There was no sound, in the vacuum of space, as an explosive gush of compressed gas blasted the tungsten rod out of the tube. It was pointed almost straight down, and it began its fiery trip to earth, descending at a slight angle, as its builders had designed, so it could be confused with an incoming meteor. Hitting the first molecules of the upper atmosphere created friction that merely warmed the rod.

The lower it fell, the more the heat built, until the entire length of the rod glowed red, then yellow, and, finally, a brilliant white.

The heat buildup was tremendous but never approached tungsten’s melting point of over three thousand degrees Celsius. Observers on the ground could see the rod clearly, as it hurtled across Macedonia and the northern Greek mainland, leaving sonic booms in its wake.

THE DIGITAL CLOCK on the main monitor was into the single digits. Juan had avoided looking at it before Max’s rescue but now couldn’t tear his eyes off of it. Max had refused treatment in the medical bay until after the impactor hit Eos, so Hux had brought her kit up to the Op Center and was working on his injuries. The seas were smooth enough for her to do her job, even though the Oregon was charging eastward at top speed.

Max usually had a sarcastic comment about Juan running his engines above the red line, but he knew full well what was coming and kept it to himself. They weren’t yet at the minimum safe distance from the blast, and if the Chairman thought getting out and pushing would help he’d do it.

Hali Kasim tore his earphones off his head with a curse.

“What is it?” Juan asked anxiously.

“I’m picking up a signal on the ELF band. It’s from Eos. They’re sending the trigger code.” Cabrillo paled.

“It’s going to be okay.” Max’s voice sounded nasal because of the cotton balls stuffed in his battered nose. “The wavelengths are so long, the full code will take a while to broadcast.”

“Or they could release the virus at the first sign of an ELF signal,” Hali said.

Juan’s palms were slick. He hated the thought that they had come so far only to fail at the eleventh hour.

He wiped his hands on his wet pants. There was nothing he could do but wait.

He hated to wait.

WEARING THEIR CUSTODIAL UNIFORMS, Linda and Mark prowled the lower decks of the Golden Sky once again, trying to remember where the ship’s laundry was located. There were only a few crewmen roaming around, and each was too lost in his own suffering to question two unfamiliar faces.

The whine of dryers spooling up drew them to their destination. Steam billowed from the dimly lit room.

None of the Chinese workers looked up from their duties when the two stepped inside the laundry.

A man leaning just inside the door that they hadn’t seen grabbed Linda’s arm in a tight grip.

“What are you doing here?” he challenged.

She tried to yank her arm free. Mark recognized the guy as one of the men who had arrived by helicopter with Zelimir Kovac. He should have known they would post a guard. He moved to intercede, and the man drew a pistol and pressed it against Linda’s temple.

“One more step and she’s dead.”

The laundry workers were well aware of what was happening but went about their business of transferring clothes, folding sheets, and pressing shirts.

“Take it easy,” Mark had backed up a couple of paces. “We have a work order for a busted clothes press.”

“Show me your ID badges.”

Mark plucked his ID from the front of his overalls. Kevin Nixon hadn’t known the exact design the Golden Line used for their employee identification cards, but it was a good fake, and he doubted Kovac’s henchmen would know the difference. “See. Right here. I’m Mark Murphy.” Kovac suddenly appeared, his bulky body practically filling the doorframe.

“What is this?”

“These two claim to be here to fix something.”

The Serb pulled an automatic from inside his windbreaker. “I gave the captain express orders that no one other than the laundry workers are to enter this room. Who are you?”

“It’s finished, Kovac,” Linda said, her girlish voice icy hard. She could tell using his name had startled him. “We know all about the virus and how you spread it using the washing machines on cruise ships. As we speak, your people are being rounded up on ships all over the world. The devices are being removed. Give it up now and you might see the outside of a prison again.”

“I doubt that very much, young lady. Kovac is not my real name.” He mentioned another, one that had been all over the news during the Yugoslav war. It was the name of one of the worst mass murderers to ever come out of the conflict. “So you see, I don’t believe I would ever be allowed out of prison.”

“Are you totally out of your mind?” Mark asked. “You’re willing to die for this stupid cause of yours? I was aboard the Golden Dawn. I saw what your virus does to people. You’re a freak.”

“If that’s what you think, then you don’t know everything. In fact, I think the two of you are bluffing. The virus loaded in those”—he swept his hand to indicate the massive washing machines—“isn’t the same I used on the Golden Dawn. It was created from the same strain, but this one isn’t deadly. We are not monsters.”

“You just admitted killing almost eight hundred people and you say you’re not a monster?” Kovac actually smiled. “Very well. Dr. Lydell Cooper isn’t a monster. The virus we are about to release will cause nothing more than a bad fever, only there is one small side effect. Sterility. In a few months, half of the world’s population is going to discover that it can’t have children.” Linda felt like she was going to throw up. Mark actually swayed on his feet when he grasped the insidious nature of their plot. Responsivists were always going on about how the planet was doomed because of overpopulation. Now they were planning on doing something about it.

“You can’t do this,” Linda cried.

Kovac leaned his face in inches from hers. “It is already done.” THE GUARDS SEARCHING Eos Island stopped their work and gazed heavenward. What at first looked like a particularly bright star quickly grew in size and intensity until it seemed to fill the entire sky.

And what started as mild unease quickly exploded into panic, as the object plunging from space appeared to be aimed at the island. They ran, for when faced with danger it is what instinct compels humans to do, but it made no difference. There was no escape.

Down in the transmitter room, Thom Severance tapped his foot impatiently against a table leg as the display in front of him showed the agonizingly slow pace of the ELF signal being sent around the globe. In few minutes, it would be done. The first of the virus would flood out of its vacuum-sealed containers and into the washing machines where it would contaminate the sheets, towels, and napkins. That precise amount of virus would be released into each load of laundry, thereafter, until the dewars were emptied.

A faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

The tungsten projectile hit Eos island almost dead center, three miles from the subterranean base. Its tremendous speed and weight turned the potential energy of falling two hundred miles into the kinetic energy of a massive explosion.

The center of the island blinked out of existence. The rock was torn apart at the molecular level, so there remained virtually no trace of it at all. As the blast rippled outward, it sent a shock wave through the island that heaved hundreds of tons of rubble into the air. Much of the rock was melted into glowing globules of lava that snapped and hissed when they plunged into the cool sea.

The panicked guards were carbonized, their ashes mixing with the dust and debris.

When the shock wave hit the facility, the hardened ferroconcrete used in its construction cracked like fine porcelain. The building didn’t collapse but rather was uprooted and thrown out of the ground. Walls, ceilings, and floors pancaked on themselves, crushing everyone inside. The destruction was absolute. The miles of thick copper wire that was the ELF antenna were ripped from the earth and melted into streams of liquid metal that poured into the ocean.

The earth shook so fiercely that huge slabs of cliff face sheared away, and cracks spidering out from the impact’s epicenter split the island into seven smaller ones.

A massive tidal wave surged off Eos in the direction the Orbital Ballistic Projectile had been traveling.

Unlike a tsunami, which travels below the surface and grows in height only as it shoals, this was a solid wall of water with a frothing crest that seemed to curl forever. It roared as though the gates of hell had been thrown open and raced across the sea at astronomical speeds. The wave wouldn’t last. Friction would eventually reduce its size until it wasn’t even a ripple, but, for as long as it lasted, it was the most destructive force on the planet.

Forty miles away, the Oregon was racing with everything she had. All her hatches had been doubly secured. Her two submersibles had been lowered into their cradles and lashed down. Every loose object the crew could think of had been stuffed into closets and drawers. They knew they weren’t going to get out of this without some damage, but they wanted to keep it to a minimum.

“Time till impact?’ Juan asked.

“I estimate five minutes,” the helmsman reported.

Juan hit the button for the shipwide PA system. “This is the Chairman. Everyone hold on tight. We’re in for a wild ride. Five minutes.”

The mast-mounted camera was turned aft and switched to night vision mode so they could watch the wave coming at them. It filled the sea from horizon to horizon, impenetrable, implacable. Its face was veined with emerald lines of phosphorus, and its crest looked like green fire.

“I have the conn,” Juan said suddenly, and took command of his ship.

He had noticed they were running from the wave at a slight angle and gave the Oregon a bit of rudder by way of correction. If they were going to ride this out, they needed to take the hit directly on the stern.

Any deviation and the five-hundred-foot ship would auger into the wave and roll a dozen times before being released from its grip.

“Here we go!”

It was like an express elevator. The stern came up so fast that, for a moment, there was no water under her middle. The sound of the hull’s moaning was lost in the savage roar of the wave. The bow plunged into the sea. Juan cut power to keep her from burying her prow, and then the entire ship was dragged up the face of the wave. The acceleration sent everyone lurching forward. The ship climbed the wave, her bow pointing down at a dizzying angle. Juan glanced at their speed through the water, which was down to four knots, but their speed over bottom was nearly seventy miles an hour.

The stern burst through the wave’s crest in an explosion of froth that swamped the decks. Water sluiced from the scuppers in sheets and blasted from the drive tubes in solid white jets. Thirty, forty, fifty feet of Oregon’s stern hung suspended over the back of the wave before she began to tip. And then she went over, falling faster than when she’d been plucked off the surface.

Cabrillo fire-walled the engines, asking his ship to give him everything she had. When they hit the bottom of the wave, her stern would knife through the surface, and if the Oregon didn’t have enough power she would simply keep going until the ocean closed over her bow.

With the ship at an almost sixty-degree angle, the fantail splashed into the rough water in the wave’s trailing edge, and vanished. The sea climbed over the rearmost cargo hatch, and, had it not been for the thick rubber seals, the helicopter hangar under it would have swamped.

“Come on, girl,” Juan cajoled, watching the water claim more and more of his ship. “You can do it.” The angle began to flatten out as the bow came off the wave, and Oregon’s plunge into the abyss seemed in check. For a long moment, she neither sank nor rose out of the water. The vessel shuddered with the strain of her engines trying to deadlift eleven thousand tons from the sea’s crushing embrace.

And slowly, so slowly at first that Juan wasn’t sure he was seeing it right on the monitors, the deck began to clear. The leading edge of the stern hatch appeared as the magnetohydrodynamics thrust her out of what should have been her watery grave.

Cabrillo finally joined the chorus of whistles and cheers when he saw the sodden Iranian flag hanging off her jack staff. He eased off the power and turned control back over to the helmsman.

Max sidled up to his chair. “And I thought you were crazy jumping an ATV off a dock. Any other ship would have turtled on a wave like that.”

“This isn’t any other ship,” Juan said, and patted Max’s arm. “Or any other crew, for that matter.”

“Thank you,” Max said simply.

“I’ve got one of my wayward children home. It’s time to get the other two.” CHAPTER 39

KOVAC KNEW THERE WAS TROUBLE WHEN HE TRIED TO reach Thom Severance from the Golden Sky’s radio room and got no response. He didn’t even get a ring.

With the radios switched off, on Kovac’s orders, it wasn’t until twenty minutes later that word reached the ship from a satellite-news broadcast. A meteor had been spotted streaking across southern Europe.

Estimated at weighing a ton, it had hit an island off the coast of Turkey. A tsunami alert had been issued, but there was only one report from a Greek ferry about a wave, and it was said to be only a few feet high and presented no danger.

He knew it was no meteor. It had to have been an atomic bomb. His two prisoners hadn’t been lying at all. The American authorities knew about their plan and had authorized a nuclear strike. The light people had seen streaking southward across Europe must have been from the cruise missile that delivered the warhead.

Kovac hit the MUTE button on the television remote to cut out the anchorwoman’s speculative blather.

He had to consider his options. If they had sent operatives to the Golden Sky, they must have known he was on the ship. No, that logic wasn’t right. He was here because he suspected they were aboard first.

So they didn’t know where he was. His solution, then, was simple: kill his two captives and leave the ship when it made its scheduled call on Iraklion, the Cretan capital.

“But they’ll be waiting,” he muttered.

Whoever sent the two Americans—the CIA, most likely, but what did it matter—would have operatives at the port to meet the ship. He wondered if he could slip through their dragnet. Then he wondered if it was worth the risk. Better to simply stop the cruise ship and escape in one of the lifeboats. There were thousands of islands in the Aegean to hide on until he planned his next move.

That still left the question of the prisoners. Should he kill them or take them as hostages? He wasn’t concerned about controlling the man, who looked like a stoner to Kovac. But there was something about the woman that told him she could be dangerous. Better to kill them both than worry about them trying to get away.

That left one last detail. The virus.

It lived only for a couple of weeks in its sealed canister, so it wouldn’t do him much good after his escape. Releasing it would infect the thousand or so people on the ship, and, with a little luck, they would spread it when they returned to their homes. But he didn’t think there was much chance of that. The ship would be quarantined and the passengers held in isolation until they were no longer infectious.

It was better than nothing.

Kovac got up from his chair and walked onto the bridge. Night had fully descended, and the only illumination came from the consoles and radar repeaters. There were two officers on watch and two helmsmen. Kovac’s assistant, Laird Bergman, was outside on the flying bridge, enjoying a cigarette under the stars.

“I want you to go down to the laundry and release the virus manually,” Kovac told him.

“Did something happen to the transmitter?”

“Nothing that concerns you right now. Just get down to the laundry and do what I say. Then find Rolph and report back up here. We’re getting off this ship.”

“What’s going on?”

“Trust me on this. We’re going to be arrested as soon as we reach Crete. This is the only way.” One of the officers suddenly shouted, “Where the hell did he come from and what does he think he’s playing? Call the captain up here and sound the collision alarm.” He rushed out to the opposite flying bridge.

“Stay with me,” Kovac said, and he and Bergman jogged after the ship’s officer. A huge freighter was coming straight at the Golden Sky. She looked like a ghostship with all her running lamps extinguished, but she was cutting through the water at a good twenty knots.

The officer shouted back to the others on the bridge. “Didn’t you see him on radar?”

“He was ten miles away, last time I checked,” the junior officer replied. “And that was only a few minutes ago, I swear.”

“Hit the alarms.”

The Golden Sky’s bellowing horns had no effect. The freighter continued to aim straight for them, as if it intended to slice the cruise ship in half. Just when it seemed there was no avoiding a collision, the freighter’s bow turned sharper than any ship the officer had ever seen, and she came alongside with only a few dozen feet separating them. It was an incredible piece of ship handling, and had the officer not been so angry he would have been impressed.

Kovac recalled that there had been reports of a large ship making an illegal passage of the Corinth Canal the night the Hanley kid had been snatched. He had always known that the two incidents were related, and now a freighter makes an appearance on this of all nights. With the feral instincts of a rat, he knew they were here for him.

He moved back inside and away from the crewmen. Their walkie-talkies didn’t work well around so much steel, but he raised Rolph Strong, the third man who had choppered to the ship with him.

“Rolph, it’s Kovac. I need you to clear everyone out of the engine room and lock yourself inside. No one is to enter, and kill anyone who resists. Do you understand?” Unlike Bergman, Strong never questioned orders. “Clear the engine room and let no one enter. Copy.” Kovac pulled his pistol from under his windbreaker and said to Bergman, “Go out and find six or seven women. I don’t care if they’re passengers or crew. Bring them back here as quickly as you can. Also, go to my cabin and bring the rest of our weapons.” Before Bergman could inevitably ask for an explanation, Kovac added: “Thom Severance is dead, the plan is ruined, and the people responsible for it are on that freighter. Go!”

“Yes, sir!”

The Serb locked the bridge door before threading a silencer onto the end of his automatic and dispassionately shooting the two crewmen and one of the bridge officers. The soft reports were drowned out by the blaring air horns, so the second officer didn’t know what was going on until he stepped in off the flying bridge and saw the bodies. He had time to look to Kovac before two crimson blooms appeared on his starched white uniform shirt. His jaw worked silently for a moment, before he collapsed against a bulkhead and slumped to the deck.

Suspecting that the operatives on the freighter were going to throw a line onto the cruise ship to send over a boarding party, Kovac stepped up to the controls. There was a dial to order more or less speed from the ship’s engines and a simple joystick to turn the rudder. Maneuvering such a massive vessel was as easy as steering a fishing smack.

He cranked the throttle to maximum and veered the ship away from the rusted-out freighter. The Golden Sky was only a few years old, and, while she was built for luxury more than speed, he was supremely confident he could outrun the derelict.

They started to pull ahead, easily outpacing the freighter, but only for a few moments. It, too, put on a burst of speed, and exactly mirrored his turn. Kovac was dismayed that a ship that looked ready to dissolve into a rust stain could move so swiftly. He checked the throttle control and noticed that if he pulled the dial upward, he could draw what was called EMERGENCY POWER.

He did, and watched their speed continue to increase. Looking across the bridge, he saw the freighter slowly falling back. Kovac grunted with satisfaction. It would take an hour or two to put enough distance between the two ships for them to stop so he could lower a lifeboat, but it didn’t matter.

As if the freighter were toying with him, the big merchantman inexorably accelerated to match his speed and once again positioned itself no more that thirty feet off the Golden Sky’s beam. A quick glance confirmed the cruise ship was pounding across the flat sea at thirty-six knots. There was no way the freighter should be able to achieve that speed, let alone maintain it.

Kovac’s frustration quickly morphed into rage. There came a sharp burst of automatic fire from the corridor behind the bridge, followed by a chorus of high-pitched screams. He rushed to the wheelhouse’s sole entrance and threw back the bolt, his pistol at the ready. The ship’s captain lay in a widening pool of blood on the carpeted deck, and four other officers cowered along the passageway. They must have tried to rush Bergman when he returned. Behind them, his assistant had seven women huddled in abject terror.

“Inside! Now!” Kovac snarled, and gestured with his weapon for the women to enter the bridge.

They moved in a tight cluster under Bergman’s watchful eye, tears streaming down their cheeks.

“Stop this at once,” the seniormost officer demanded.

Kovac shot him in the face and closed the bridge’s thick metal door.

He grabbed one of the women, a dark-haired beauty he recognized was a waitress from the dining room, and raced back to the helm. He positioned her between him and the stalking freighter as a human shield, in case they had snipers. He noted that the merchantman had narrowed the gap even more.

“I believe the game is called chicken,” he said to no one in particular, and savagely pushed the rudder control to port.

At this speed, the ship responded nimbly, and her bow came over. It slammed into the side of the freighter with a titanic scream of tearing metal. The impact heeled the ship to starboard, staggering Kovac, who had braced for it. The bow railing was crushed in, and the two ships grated against each other. A dozen balconies for the most expensive cabins were torn away, while, all over the ship, passengers and crew were thrown to the deck. There were injuries throughout the vessel, though nothing more severe than a few broken bones.

Kovac turned the ship away from the scene of impact. The freighter turned with him but kept a much wider separation this time, its captain obviously leery of another collision.

He wasn’t sure what inspired him, but Kovac had a sudden idea to end this quickly. Leaving the helm position, he yanked one of the dead officers from the floor and walked the corpse outside, with one hand on the officer’s belt and the other on the back of his neck so it appeared he was walking on his own.

Kovac paused for a second, to make sure the men on the other ship had a chance to see him, before rushing the flying-bridge rail and heaving the body over.

He ducked behind the rail and couldn’t watch the body fall the hundred feet to the sea, but he was certain his opponents had. Kovac knew they wouldn’t let an innocent man drown, and it would take them at least an hour to rescue him. He liked the irony that they would be forced to give up their pursuit for a dead man.

“DAMAGE REPORT,” Juan called, as soon as the two ships pulled apart.

“Crews are on their way,” Max said straightaway.

When they hadn’t been able to raise the cruise ship on the radio, their plan had been to get the crew’s attention and hail them with loudspeakers. The owner of the Golden Line was most likely complicit in Severance’s plot, but it couldn’t involve all of his officers and crew. If they could get a warning to them about Zelimir Kovac’s real reason for being aboard, they could put an end to this once and for all.

Cabrillo had fully expected the shipmaster to turn away, as he had, but never anticipated being intentionally rammed. No captain on earth would jeopardize his ship and crew with a stunt like that.

There was only one logical conclusion. “Kovac’s taken over the Golden Sky .” Max eyed him and nodded imperceptively. “Only thing that makes sense. How do you want to play it?”

“We’ll lay up alongside again and fire over grappling hooks. I don’t know how many men he has, but I think a dozen of us ought to suffice.”

“I like your Captain Blood style.”

“Avast, ye matey.”

“If he tries to turn in to us again, you boys are going to be in a world of hurt.”

“It’s your job to make certain he doesn’t.” Cabrillo was about to call down to Eddie to prepare a boarding party when Hali suddenly shouted, “Someone was just tossed off the wing bridge!”

“What?” Max and Juan said in unison.

“A guy in a dark windbreaker just threw what looked like an officer off the wing bridge!”

“Helm, full reverse,” Juan snapped on the intercom. “Man overboard. Man overboard. This is not a drill.

Rescue team to the boat garage. Prepare to launch the RIB.”

“He’s playing dirty,” Max said.

“We can play dirtier. Wepps, aim the gun cameras on the Golden Sky’s bridge ASAP and put them up on the main screen.”

A moment later, the images flashed on the monitor. Because the cruise ship was so much taller than the Oregon, the best angle came from the camera mounted on the ship’s mast. When the camera was switched to low-light mode, they could clearly see into the bridge. There were women standing at all the portside windows, hostages placed there so a sharpshooter couldn’t get a clean hit. There was a figure crouched at the helm, possibly Kovac, with another woman pressed tightly against him.

“He’s no dummy, Juan. We can’t risk a shot with him using those folks as human shields.”

“Chairman, it’s Mike. Doors are open and we are ready to launch.” Juan looked to see their speed through the water, waited a moment for them to slow to the maximum safe speed, and ordered Trono and his rescue team to go.

The Rigid Inflatable Boat flew down the Teflon-coated ramp and hit the seas hard. Mike turned the RIB

immediately to port to ease the transition into the swiftly passing water.

“We’re clear.”

Using thermal-detection gear, they should have no problem spotting the officer. Mike Trono had been a pararescue jumper before joining the Corporation, and was cross-trained as a medic. There was no need for the Oregon to stand by.

“Helm, bring us to ninety percent of our former speed. If he turns, match him, and if he slows don’t close the gap. I want him to think we can’t catch up.” Max shot Juan a questioning look. “We need a little time to get a boarding party organized, and I don’t want him pressured into thinking he should keep throwing people overboard.”

Cabrillo was changing in his cabin when he got word from Hali that Mike had found the officer and reported he’d been shot twice in the chest. Juan calmly gave his orders that the RIB should remain deployed in case Kovac tossed someone alive off the bridge. Inside, his emotions distilled down to a burning fury. He didn’t care that they had wasted minutes searching for a corpse. With the Oregon’s massive speed advantage, there was no way they would ever lose the Golden Sky.

The anger was directed at himself. An innocent man was dead because he came charging in like a bull in a china shop. There could have been another way to capture Kovac and rescue his people. He should have come up with a better plan.

His phone rang and he snatched it up, barking, “Cabrillo.”

“Knock it off right now,” Dr. Huxley said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I just heard about what happened and I know you’re blaming yourself for it and I want you to stop this instant. As soon as the news broke that Eos had been destroyed, Kovac went into trapped-rat mode.

He’s cornered and panicked. That’s why that officer was killed, not because of us. You and I have been over this a hundred times before. You aren’t at fault, so don’t take blame that isn’t yours. All right?” Juan blew out a breath. “And here I am working myself into a world-record bout of recrimination and self-loathing.”

“I knew you were. That’s why I called.”

“Thanks, Hux.”

“Go take him down before he kills anyone else, and you’ll feel much better.”

“Doctor’s orders?”

“Exactly.”

Fifteen minutes later, Juan was on deck with his team. He divided them into two groups of six, with Eddie leading the first and him in charge of the second. In order to maintain control of the cruise ship, Kovac would need people on the bridge as well as in the engine room, to stop crewmen from killing power. That would be Eddie’s responsibility. Juan wanted Kovac all to himself.

They all wore black formfitting outfits over Kevlar body armor that wouldn’t snag on obstacles and impede their assault. Their boots had soft rubber soles, and each man carried a gas mask, because all sported tear gas grenades. The interior of the Golden Sky would be brightly lit, so only one man on each team carried night vision gear.

With the number of civilians aboard the ship, Cabrillo ordered half loads for their ammunition to avoid overpenetration killing someone beyond their target. He carried a Glock instead of his usual FNs, since even a half charge of powder would send the smaller bullets through a man.

Their grappling hooks were launched by a shotgun-type weapon. The lines they trailed were incredibly strong and light, which made climbing difficult. For that, each wore special gloves with mechanical pincers to grip the monofilament.

“Max, you read?” Juan said into his throat mike.

“You’re live.”

“Okay, take us in flank speed, and don’t forget to tell Mike.” The acceleration was almost instantaneous. Juan slit his eyes against the brutal wind. The Golden Sky lay four miles ahead, her gleaming upperworks making her look like a jewel on the dark waters, while her wake glowed with an ethereal trail of phosphorescence.

The Oregon was moving some twenty-odd knots faster than the cruise ship, so they quickly cut the distance.

“Kovac must be going nuts,” Eddie remarked. “We keep showing up like the proverbial bad penny.”

“Chairman, he tossed another,” Hali shouted over the radio. “It was a woman this time, and she was definitely alive.”

“Alert Mike. Wepps, give ’em a squirt with the Gatling as close to the wing bridge as you can. Let Kovac know the next time he sets foot out there, we’re going to shred him.” The armored plate covering the starboard-side Gatling gun folded back and the weapon peeked from its redoubt, as the motor spun up its six rotating barrels. When it fired, the sound was like a mechanical buzz saw tearing itself to pieces. A tongue of flame shot twenty feet from the Oregon’s flank and a stream of two hundred depleted uranium rounds arced across the sky. They passed so close to the flying bridge that paint blistered off the metal railing. The bullets peppered the sea ahead of the ship in a multitude of tiny eruptions.

The Golden Sky immediately turned away from the attack.

“That rattled his cage.” Eddie was grinning.

Max kept the Oregon a hundred feet off the other ship as they came abeam and when Kovac tried to turn into them again Max kept just out of reach, using the bow thrusters to keep the Oregon turning tighter than the Golden Sky.

“Max, get ready,” Juan said, “Wepps, prepare to fire again on my mark, but don’t hit the ship.” He waited for his men to get in position on the Oregon’s rail, their grappling-hook guns at their shoulders.

“Aim for the main deck. Max, go!”

The Oregon carved in on the liner, cutting the gap in half in just a few seconds.

“Fire,” Juan said, and the Gatling shrieked again, as he and the assault team launched their grappling hooks.

All twelve hooks sailed across the gap, and when they heaved back on the lines all had caught firmly.

The Oregon came in even tighter, almost brushing the cruise ship, so the men wouldn’t injure themselves when they arced across, while the Gatling continued to spit a continuous stream of fire across the Sky’s bridge.

“Go.”

Juan gripped the line tightly and leapt over the railing, swinging across the gap at an ever-accelerating pace. The Oregon cut away sharply behind him. He had intentionally aimed above a large row of windows and had judged the distance perfectly. His feet hit the glass, and he exploded into the deserted dining room, saving himself the tedious task of climbing up the line. His team knew to hook up outside the bridge if they got separated.

He unslung the MP-5 from across his back. Moving cautiously, the weapon tucked high on his shoulder so he had a constant sight picture, he weaved through the tables toward the exit.

He came out on the mezzanine level of the atrium. Passengers were milling around, still dazed after the impact with the Oregon . A man was lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs being attended to by a pair of women. An elderly lady screamed when she spotted him.

Juan raised the submachine gun’s barrel in a nonthreatening manner. “Ladies and gentlemen, this ship has been hijacked,” he said. “I am part of a United Nations hostage-rescue team. Return to your cabins immediately. Tell passengers you see that they must stay in their cabins until we have secured this ship.” A man in civilian attire with the aura of authority approached him. “I’m Greg Turner, second assistant engineer. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Tell me the fastest way to the bridge, and see that these people get to their rooms.”

“How bad is it?” Turner asked.

“Have you ever heard of a good hijacking?”

“Sorry. Dumb question.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

Turner gave Juan the directions, as well as a magnetic pass card to get him into the off-limits spaces, and Cabrillo took off at a trot. When he reached the door marked NO ADMITTANCE, he swiped the card through the reader and propped the door open with a nearby potted fern for the rest of his team. By his estimates, they should be only a minute behind him.

He jogged past countless cabins and raced up two flights of stairs before emerging in the hallway that gave access to the bridge. He activated his laser sight as he slowly approached the door. Cabrillo paused when he heard voices muttering in a cabin a few doors back from the bridge entrance.

“Captain?” he called softly.

The voices stopped, and someone peered around the doorjamb. The single eye he saw widened in horror at his appearance.

“It’s okay,” Juan said softly. “I’m here to stop him. Can I speak to your captain?” The person came fully around the corner. She was wearing a uniform, and, judging by the stripes on her shoulder boards, she was the Golden Sky’s first officer. She had jaw-length dark hair and perfectly tanned skin that set off her honey brown eyes. “That butcher killed the captain and our third purser. I am Leah Voorhees, first officer.”

“Let’s talk in there,” Juan said, pointing to the cabin behind her.

He followed her inside. There were two man-size lumps on the bed with a sheet pulled over them both.

Dark blood stained the chest of one and the head of the other.

Leah Voorhees tried to introduce him to the rest of the officers, but Juan cut her off. “Later. Tell me what you know about what’s happening on the bridge.”

“There are two of them,” she said at once. “One named Kovac, the other I’m not sure. There is a third barricaded in the engine room.”

“You’re sure there’s just one down there?” When she nodded, Juan radioed this piece of information to Eddie. “Go on.”

“They came aboard by chopper not long after we left Istanbul. We were given orders from our head office to do whatever Kovac asked of us. They were supposedly looking for two stowaways who might have murdered a passenger.”

“Those stowaways are part of my team,” Juan assured her. “They didn’t murder anyone. Do you know where they are?”

Given the circumstances, she accepted Juan’s statement without question. “They were found a short while ago and are locked in the captain’s day office directly behind the bridge.”

“Okay. What else?”

“There were two ordinary seamen on duty, as well as two officers, when he took over. They also have female passengers as hostages. Who are you? Where did you come from?”

“This is a United Nations mission. We have been shadowing this terrorist cell for some time. Kovac shook us when he boarded your ship, so we had to act fast. I am sorry that you couldn’t be informed, and I am sorry for the danger you’ve been put in. It was our intention to grab Kovac earlier, but, well, the UN’s a bureaucracy like any other.”

The rest of Juan’s squad suddenly appeared, throwing dots of laser light around the room as they checked it.

“It’s okay, boys,” Juan called, and the weapons were lowered. While he filled them in on what he knew, he asked Leah to draw a diagram of the bridge, and called Max. “Give me a sit-rep.”

“Mike fished the woman from the drink. She’s fine, if a little hysterical. Kovac is still at the helm, surrounded by three of his hostages. We’ve spotted a second gunman, but he isn’t in view right now. The three other women are still pressed to the windows.”

“Pull ahead of the Sky and get directly in front of her so you have a clear view of everything going on.

Mark and Linda are being held in an office behind the bridge. See if you can spot them.”

“Aye, aye.”

Eddie called in to say they were in position and that they would have to blast through the door to gain access to the engine room. Juan told him to wait so they could synchronize their attack.

Max radioed back, “I see a door on the back wall of the bridge, it’s closed right now, but I bet that’s the place. Kovac has shifted his three human shields to the main bridge windows. His chief goon is down a small corridor on the starboard side, standing at what I believe is the main entrance.” Cabrillo penned in the positions of everyone on the bridge on the diagram the first officer had drawn so his team knew what to expect. To date, they had never caused what was euphemistically called collateral damage, a record Cabrillo was immensely proud of and one he had vowed to keep.

In the wake of 9/11, not only had cockpit door on aircraft been beefed up but a great many cruise ships had also installed reinforced doors to protect the bridge. Juan placed the plastic explosives on it himself and retreated back into the cabin. He called Eddie and Max to tell them it was a go in thirty seconds.

He kept his eyes glued to his watch and held up his splayed fingers when five seconds remained. He dropped a finger at every tick of the clock and pressed the button on the remote with his other hand.

The blast filled the hallway with reeking white smoke and was a brutal assault on their senses. Cabrillo was in motion less than a second after the shock wave rolled past the cabin door. The beam of his laser cut a ruby line through the coiling haze.

He raced onto the bridge with his men at his back, rushing past the red-hot remains of the door and ignoring the pile of gore that had once been Laird Bergman.

“Down! Everybody, down!” the men repeated as they swept the room with their weapons.

Kovac had reacted faster than Juan thought possible. As he pegged the Serb with his laser, Kovac had already pulled one of the women in front of him and pressed his pistol to her ear.

“Another step and she dies,” he roared.

Juan was staggered to see that his hostage wasn’t a stranger. Kovac must have known she was part of their team, because he had taken Linda Ross from the captain’s day office and was using her as his shield.

“It’s over, Kovac. Let her go.”

“It is over for her if you move a muscle.” To emphasize his point, he pressed the gun even harder to her ear. Linda fought the pain but couldn’t manage to stifle a whimper. “Drop your weapons now or she dies.”

“You do it and you’ll follow her a second later.”

“I realize now that I am a dead man, so what does it matter to me? But wouldn’t you hate to see this young life extinguished needlessly? You have five seconds.”

“Shoot him!” Linda cried.

“I’m sorry,” Juan said, and let his machine pistol drop from his fingers. The incredulous look on her face crushed his heart. “Everyone, put them down.”

The men let their weapons fall to the floor.

Kovac pulled his pistol away from Linda’s head and aimed it at Cabrillo. “Smart move. You will now kindly jump over the rail and return to your ship. If you follow this vessel again, I will continue to throw passengers overboard, only from now on I will bind their hands.” He pushed Linda into Juan’s arms.

A thousand yards ahead of the Golden Sky, Franklin Lincoln stood at the stern rail of the Oregon, watching everything unfold though the telescopic sight of his favorite weapon, the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle.

“Bye-bye.”

While Kovac had been concentrating on the Chairman, his man had used subtle hand gestures to get the women he’d posted in front of the windows to lie flat on the floor to give Linc a clear field of fire.

On the bridge, they heard only a quiet ping as the bullet passed through the safety glass. The sound of it hitting Kovac between the shoulders was something altogether different, a thick meaty tone like a hammer striking carpet. Blood fountained from his chest, as the bullet transited his body with enough kinetic impact to toss his corpse a good five feet.

“Did you doubt me?” Juan smiled down at Linda.

“I should have known when I didn’t see Linc,” she said with a saucy grin, her composure fully restored.

“I assume that was him.”

“I can’t think of anyone else when I need a million-dollar shot.”

“Well?” It was Max.

“Congratulate Linc. He was dead on target. Linda’s fine.” Juan pulled away his earbud and put the radio on speaker mode so everyone could hear.

“Hi, Max,” she said

“How are you doing, honey?”

“Other than this lousy cold, I’m fine.”

Mark had been released from the office and the FlexiCuffs cut away from his wrists and ankles. He shook Juan’s hand, smiling broadly.

“I’ve been thinking,” Max continued. “You guys should probably check down in the laundry room. I think you’ll find that is how they planned to disperse the virus.” Mark’s smile fell until it had turned into a pout. His moment of glory had been stolen.

Juan read his emotions perfectly. Mark had figured it out, too, and was doubtlessly going to impress the nubile Miss Dahl with his insight. He didn’t have the heart to tell him his competition for her affections was a bona fide astronaut now, and, in his book, that trumped just about anything in ways to impress a girl.

EPILOGUE

IN THE WEEKS SINCE THE DISASTER ON EOS ISLAND, age had finally caught up to Lydell Cooper. He had spent decades and millions on reversing the process, having cosmetic surgeries and illegal organ transplants. However, it wasn’t his body that was letting him down. It was his mind.

He couldn’t accept his utter failure, and, because of that, he went through the motions of life in a daze.

It had been his daughter Heidi who had taken charge when they were still flying toward Turkey. She had told the pilot to alter their flight plan and had directed them to Zurich instead. There, she had drained several Responsivist bank accounts, converting the cash into stocks purchased by a dummy company she had the bank set up for her. She had understood that, with Eos destroyed, the authorities would arrest every high-ranking member of the organization, and her only chance to remain free was to go into hiding with her sister.

Cooper wanted to stay with them, but she said that he had loose ends to tie up back in the States, and since his Dr. Adam Jenner persona was a world-renowned critic of Responsivism he was above suspicion.

So he had returned home, mostly to empty a series of safe-deposit boxes in Los Angeles that the FBI didn’t know about. When he’d taxied past the big house in Beverly Hills, there was crime-scene tape draped like a garland along the perimeter fence and uniformed police with cruisers camped in the driveway.

The dream was well and truly over.

Greek authorities had closed the Responsivists’ compound in Corinth, and nations were kicking out Responsivist clinics all over the world. Even though there had been no mention in the media of the plot to sterilize half the planet’s population, the corruption charges filed against the group had caused a backlash that continued to reverberate. Famous members, like Donna Sky, were turning their backs on the faith, claiming they had been brainwashed in order to financially support the group.

In a fourteen-day span, Cooper’s lifetime achievement had been reduced to fodder for comics on late-night television. He closed up Jenner’s practice, happily telling the other psychologists who shared the office suite that his work was done and he was retiring, while, inside, he was dying by degrees. He put his house up for sale, instructing the broker to accept the first offer.

Rather than live in glory as the famed Dr. Lydell Cooper in a sustainable world, he was forced to retire to obscurity as Adam Jenner.

He was returning to his house the day before he was to fly to Brazil, which has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States. Because of the crippling arthritis in his hands, he had replaced a normal lock-and-key entry with a push-button pad. He pressed the sequence and stepped inside, using his elbow to close the door behind him. A moving company had packed the few possessions he wanted to keep, while the rest was to be sold with the house.

He crossed the foyer and made for his study to check the latest news on his laptop. The heavy wooden door closed behind him when he entered. He turned. A stranger had been hiding behind it.

Had he been in a normal frame of mind, he would have demanded the person leave, but he just stood there mutely instead, staring at the man who had invaded his home.

“Dr. Jenner, I presume?”

“Yes. Who are you? What do you want?”

“I paid you a great deal of money to help a friend not too long ago.”

“I am retired now. All that is finished. Please leave.”

“And how do you feel about that?” the stranger asked. “Responsivism is dead. You won. You must feel vindicated.”

Cooper couldn’t bring himself to answer. His identities blurred in his mind. He didn’t know how to feel or act any longer.

“You know what?” the man continued. “I don’t think you feel good about it at all. In fact, I think you’re reeling inside because I know something that would surprise a lot of people.” Somehow, Cooper knew what was coming. He sat heavily on a couch, his artificially youthful face ashen.

“Even if you hadn’t been overheard bragging to Kovac on Eos Island, I think I would have figured it out.

You were the only person who could have betrayed us in Rome. We thought Kyle might have had an embedded radio tag, but now we know he didn’t. He had no idea where he was being taken, so there was no way he could get a warning out to Kovac to snatch him back.” Now that the truth was out, Cooper sat straighter on the sofa. “That’s right. I did make the call, getting Kovac to Rome and then telling him which hotel, once I had arrived and was left alone with that kid. You were behind the attack on Eos?”

The stranger nodded. “And we discovered the virus in the Golden Sky ’s and all forty-nine other cruise ships’ laundries you tampered with. The fifty containers are at a level-four biohazard lab in Maryland.”

“Don’t you understand that the world is doomed? I could have saved all of humanity.” The man laughed. “And do you know how many crackpots have been saying the world is doomed over the past couple hundred years? We were supposed to run out of food in the 1980s. We were supposed to run out of oil in the 1990s. The population was supposed to hit ten billion by the year 2000. Every one of these predictions was wrong. Heck, they wanted to close the U.S. Patent office in 1900 because everything that could be invented had been invented. I’ll let you in on a little secret: you can’t predict the future.”

“You’re wrong. I know what is coming. Anyone with half a brain can see it. Fifty years from now, civilization will be swept away in a tidal wave of violence, as nations realize they can’t support their populations. It will be anarchy on a biblical scale.”

“Funny you should mention that.” The man removed a pistol from behind his back. “I’ve always liked biblical justice. An eye for an eye, and all that.”

“You can’t kill me. Arrest me. Put me on trial.”

“And give you a stage to spout your demented ideas? I don’t think so.”

“Please!”

The gun spat. Cooper felt the impact, and when he moved to touch his neck he could feel something sticking in his flesh, but his clawlike hands lacked the dexterity to remove it.

Cabrillo watched for ten seconds as the tranquilizer from the dart gun coursed through Cooper’s body.

When Cooper’s eyes closed and he slumped over, Juan brought a radio to his lips. Moments later, a big ambulance pulled up the drive, and two paramedics burst out the back doors, pushing a gurney.

“Any problems?” Eddie asked, wheeling the stretcher into the study with Franklin Linclon.

“No, but after talking to him I feel like I need a shower. I’ve seen some loons in my life, but this one beats all.”

Linc gingerly lifted Cooper off the couch and set him on the gurney. As soon as Cabrillo found Cooper’s passport and a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro in a kitchen drawer, they rushed out of the house. A neighbor had come out of her house to see what was going on.

“He’s had a heart attack,” Juan told her, as he held open the ambulance doors so Linc could slide the gurney inside.

Forty-five minutes later, the ambulance arrived at LAX, and, ten hours after that, the Corporation’s Gulfsteam touched down at Gardermoen airport, thirty miles north of Oslo, Norway.

They had a brief reunion at an airport lounge with Jannike Dahl. She had permitted Eric Stone to escort her home. When Eric declined her invitation to show him the sights of Oslo, saying he had to return to the ship, Juan had taken him aside and explained that she wasn’t that interested in him seeing her home-town.

Eric had asked what she really wanted, and the Chairman had to explain it further. Red-faced with embarrassment and unbridled enthusiasm, Eric quickly accepted her offer.

It took another jet flight to Tromsö, in the far north of the country, and a helicopter ride, to finally arrive at their destination. Cooper was kept sedated the entire time and was closely monitored by Julia Huxley.

The glacier sparkled in the bright light of a summer afternoon, glittering as though it was the finest lead crystal. Outside the valley, the temperature hovered in the mid-fifties, but on the ice it was just above freezing.

George Adams had flown them in on an MD-520N, the replacement for the little Robinson. This chopper was larger than the previous one, and required some modifications to the hangar elevator, but it was also much more powerful and faster. And because it vented engine exhaust through the tail, to counter the main rotor’s torque rather than rely on a second, smaller rotor, it was significantly more quiet.

The Oregon was positioned just off the coast, and Adams would fly them out once they were finished.

Cooper was half conscious by the time they touched down but didn’t fully comprehend where he was until another fifteen minutes had elapsed.

“Where are we? What have you done?”

“Surely you recognize where we are, Dr. Cooper,” Juan said innocently. “But, then again, maybe not.

After all, it’s been more than sixty years since you were last here.” Cooper stared blankly, so Cabrillo continued. “The one thing that kept nagging at me this entire time was how a virus discovered by the Nazis and later given to their Japanese allies ended up in your hands.

There was no record of its discovery, or of its transfer to the Philippines, nothing to give any indication of what was found here.

“Only one thing made sense to me. You discovered it yourself. There are quite detailed records of the Nazi occupation of Norway, and my team found something rather interesting. A four-engine Kondor reconnaissance plane was shot down on this very glacier on the night of April twenty-nine, 1943. Every member of the crew was killed save one, a gunner named Ernst Kessler.” Cooper winced at the mention of the name.

“What I find so fascinating is that Kessler is the German word for ‘cooper.’ Ironic, isn’t it? And the publishing house you started to get your book in print—what was it called? Raptor Press, I believe—is it coincidental that a condor is a kind of raptor? I don’t think so.” Cabrillo threw open the chopper’s door and shoved Kessler/ Cooper onto the ice. In all his dealings with Cooper, Juan had kept his tone light, almost pleasant. But his anger suddenly boiled over, and he seethed. “We also discovered that after the plane crash, Ernst Kessler was accepted into the Gestapo, and was allowed to receive medical training at a lovely spot called Auschwitz. His final orders before war’s end was a transfer to the German Embassy in Tokyo. I assume that was a cover for your going to work for Unit 731 in the Philippines.

“You should have died that night and saved the world a lot of misery, you sick freak. I have dealt with al-Qaeda assassins and Soviet torturers, and every perverted piece of slime in between, but you are the single-most-evil human being I have ever met. You could have shown the world one of the greatest discoveries of all time, perhaps the inspiration for a most beloved Bible story, but instead you only cared about reaping death.

“Well, Kessler, you have reaped what you’ve sown, and when I think about you freezing to death, tonight over dinner, I am going to smile.” Cabrillo closed the helicopter door. “Let’s go.”

“What happens now?” Julia asked as the chopper shot past the edge of the glacier and over open water.

“He dies.”

“I mean, with the ark.”

“Oh that. I’ve already contacted Kurt Austin at NUMA. He told me they are going to find a way to convince the Norwegian government to let them do a detailed survey of that glacier. With her copper bottom, they should have no problem locating the ancient wreck.”

“I wonder what they will find.”

Juan gave her a dreamy look. “Who knows, maybe all the creatures of the world loaded two by two.” MAX HANLEY SAT ON A BENCH near the Griffith Park Observatory, overlooking downtown L.A.

A shadow passed over his face, and when he looked up his son Kyle was standing over him. Max made a wordless gesture for him to sit. He could feel the anger radiating off the boy as though it were waves of heat.

Kyle was staring off into the distance, so Max studied his profile. There was a lot of the kid’s mother in him, but he saw a few of his own features. As he watched, a single tear rolled down Kyle’s cheek, and as if a floodgate had opened Kyle began to cry— deep, choking sobs that sounded like his soul was being torn apart. He clutched at his father, and Max took him in his arms.

“I am so sorry, Dad,” Kyle sobbed.

“And I forgive you.”

Because that’s what fathers do.