Typhoon Fury

35

So far, none of the Magellan Sun crewmen had noticed the missing lock on the equipment room door when they passed, but Eddie assumed their luck wouldn’t last much longer.

“Time until you finish?” he asked Murph.

“Got it,” Murph said, closing up his tablet and putting it in his bag.

“Where has the ship been?” MacD asked.

“Don’t know yet. It’ll take some time to analyze the data.”

Eddie kept an eye on the radar image of the door. No one was outside. “What about the ship’s armaments?”

“All I could see was that there were three linked fire control systems. They looked like guns, not missiles, but I’ve got no clue on caliber or location on the ship. I could keep looking if you want more details.”

“We don’t have time. They must have installed them to protect the cargo from pirates.”

“Or the Coast Guard,” MacD added.

“Another reason to get out of here quietly,” Eddie said. “Gomez, anyone come inside lately?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” Gomez replied. “You’re clear on drone view.”

Eddie nodded to MacD and Murph. “Okay, let’s go.”

MacD put up a hand. “Hold up. We’ve got movement out in the corridor.”

The white outline of a man sauntered past on the screen of the radar imager. When he passed, Eddie said, “Give him a minute to get out of the hall.”

Instead, the figure returned and faced the door, cocking his head at where the missing lock should have been.

“We’ve been made,” MacD whispered.

“We can’t let him warn the others,” Eddie said. He put his hand on the door handle. Murph moved back, and MacD raised his crossbow. “Ready?”

MacD nodded.

Eddie yanked the door open and was greeted by the shocked face of a ship’s crewman, identifiable because he didn’t have the muscled build of a guard.

The man instantly threw his hands in the air when he saw the crossbow. MacD grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him inside. Murph closed the door.

Eddie frisked the man. He held a radio in his hand, but he had no weapons. Eddie took the radio and gave it to Murph, who clipped it to his belt.

“Is anyone else with you?” Eddie asked.

The man shook his head. The surprise on his face was now gone. He eyed them warily.

“Why are you on my ship?”

“Your ship?” Eddie said. “Are you the captain?”

The man’s lip curled into a vicious smile. “I guarantee you’ll never get off this ship alive.”

MacD chuckled at the man’s bravado. “That sounds like something a captain would say.”

“What is your cargo’s destination?” Eddie asked.

“Somewhere on this island.”

“That narrows it down,” Murph said. “Any more details on the location?”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

MacD shook his head in disbelief. “In case you didn’t notice, buddy, we’re the ones with the weapons.”

“And that’s supposed to scare me? You have no idea what my employer would do to me if I told you anything.”

“You mean Salvador Locsin?” Eddie said.

The captain’s expression of defiance faltered, but he said nothing.

“Yes, we know who your boss is,” Murph said. “Surprise!”

“And we know you’ve delivered cargo to a dig on a small island,” Eddie said. “What island?”

The captain hesitated, then his resolve completely evaporated. “I’ll tell you,” he said with a quavering voice. “But take me with you. Locsin tricked me into this job. You can make it look like a kidnapping. It’s the only way I’ll get away from him. His men are animals.”

Eddie had heard a similar story from Dr. Ocampo and the scientists from the lab, but the captain’s transition to trembling captive seemed too abrupt. He looked at MacD and Murph. “What do you think?”

“He might have some useful intel,” Murph said with a shrug.

MacD peered at the captain with a furrowed brow. “Ah don’t trust him any further than Ah can throw a moose.”

“Neither do I,” Eddie said, “but leaving him here to rat us out isn’t a much better option. He goes with us.”

Without another word, MacD pulled out a zip tie and clasped the captain’s hands behind his back while Eddie improvised a gag from a portable tourniquet and gauze in his med kit.

With the captain trussed up, Murph held on to him while Eddie opened the door. MacD leaned out and swept the corridor with his crossbow. When he had checked both directions, he nodded that it was clear.

The four of them crept down the corridor single file, with MacD in the lead and Eddie taking the rear. MacD had reached the stairwell just as the radio on Murph’s belt crackled to life.

“I hear them coming,” an accented voice said over the handheld unit.

Someone else rasped, “I said radio silence, you idiot.”

Eddie and the others froze. The captain grinned wickedly at him. He must have alerted while he was offscreen in the corridor before being captured.

MacD backed into the captain just as one of the guards charged up the stairs, firing blindly with his automatic weapon.

MacD and Murph dived out of the way. The captain caught a round in his leg and went down, howling into his gag.

Eddie fired back, taking out the guard with a well-placed trio of shots, but others were running up the stairs. More footsteps were pounding toward them from the direction of the equipment room.

“This way!” Eddie yelled. Murph tried to drag the captain with him, but Eddie shouted, “Leave him!”

They reached the end of the passageway, which had no exit door since they were two stories above the deck. Eddie pushed into the room at the end of the hall, and Murph and MacD followed him in, as bullets plunked into the wall behind them.

It was one of the crew quarters, with three bunk beds, lockers, and a metal desk. Eddie wrenched the desk from its spot and propped it upright against the door.

The guards outside didn’t waste any time. They began pouring rounds into the door, but the bullets were stopped by the desktop. Then the gunfire abruptly ceased.

Eddie could hear the captain say, “I want them alive. Get a tank of acetylene. We’ll smoke them out.”

A single, rectangular window, only two feet wide, overlooked the deck below. If the captain and his men funneled smoke into the room, it wouldn’t be able to ventilate enough air to keep them from suffocating.

Still, the window was the reason Eddie had chosen the room. The free-fall lifeboat was cantilevered in its cradle outside, just twenty feet away and one story down.

“Linda,” he called on his radio, “Eddie here. Extraction is about to get more complicated.” He bashed the glass with the butt of his assault rifle, shattering it. “And tell the Chairman that the ‘stealth’ part of our plan is literally out the window.”