Unlucky 13

Chapter 89

Brady led his group from behind, the three of them leaving the open Pool Deck and entering the Luna Grill, which was like a furniture warehouse now, piled with café tables and chairs from the deck outside. A gas lamp that had been placed on top of the piano threw a dim light over the formerly elegant room, which now looked debased, like a used-up exotic dancer turning tricks on the street.

Brady’s three-man resistance force walked around overturned furniture and garbage heaped on the plush carpets past curved windows reflecting the sputtering gas light.

At the far side of the lounge, an open doorway led into the public corridor. Lyle, in the lead, took them to one of the hand-painted murals lining the corridor walls.

He said, “This is how you get to the crew’s stairs.”

He pushed on a panel and a door opened into a wide metal stairwell that ran the entire height of the ship, from the Sun Deck down to the hold. Caged emergency lights on the walls lit the stairs with a flickering low-wattage light.

The three were on the stairs, the hidden door closed behind them, when a voice called out, “Yo. Wassup?”

Brady snapped around, flashed his light up, and saw a man in fatigues sitting on the landing one flight above them. The gunman was fully armed, but he’d taken off his mask, revealing him to be a young white guy in his early twenties with short blond hair.

Brady said, “Chief wants me to take these two to the hold. Cabin steward. And the old dude is an engineer.”

“Why bother locking them up? Why not just—pyewww?”

He put a finger gun to his head and pretended to fire.

“You want to ask Jackhammer?” Brady said. “Go ahead.”

Brady wanted to stop talking and start moving. He didn’t know how tight this unit was, whether they were a band of brothers or mercenaries recruited individually for this mission.

If the kid on the stairs challenged him further, Brady would have to shoot him. That would bring other gunmen rushing into the stairwell and that would be bad.

The young gunman scoffed at the idea of calling Jackhammer, saying, “Yeah, right. Go ahead. God, I was really hoping you were my relief.”

“Sorry, man,” said Brady. “Hey. Put on your mask.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Brady waited while the gunman masked up, then said to Lyle and Lazaroff, “Okay, you two. Down we go.”

Brady prodded Lazaroff and Lyle with the barrel of his AK, and they started down the stairs, one ringing metal flight after another times three sets of footsteps. They passed signs to various decks and public rooms: the Casino, the Spa, and so on, until they saw the arrow marked OFFICERS’ QUARTERS.

The arrow indicated a forty-five-degree turn to the right.

Brady knew that the crew slept in narrow, windowless cabins no wider than four feet across, with single bunks hung on the walls. He wondered how many crewmen were still alive in those slim, airless cells.

He and his team turned the corner and saw a brighter light at the end of this spur off the main corridor. The light came from a gas lantern on the floor next to a man in fatigues who was sitting in a folding chair, guarding the hatch door to the crew quarters.

The guard got to his feet. He was holding his radio phone, and Brady thought the guy upstairs had probably given this one a heads-up.

The guard said to Brady, “What’s up, brother? Who’ve you got there?”

He pocketed his radio and held his AK-47 with both hands.